Middle East Forum Director of Policy Michael Rubin spoke with CNBC about the possible endgame of the U.S.–Iran confrontation. They discussed whether the Trump administration is aiming for full regime change or a “Venezuela-style” transition, the names circulating as possible successors inside Iran’s political establishment, and why Rubin believes any post-Khamenei leadership drawn from the current system would still carry the same ideological constraints.
CNBC: Get some insight from Michael Rubin. He’s not only a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, former Pentagon official, he actually lived in Iran. So Michael, there’s nobody better to speak with than you right now, thank you.
You know, I was talking earlier and saying it’s like a fist fight — you can talk about an endgame, but once you throw a punch, you don’t know how it ends. Iran is a proud nation. We can beat them militarily, but what is the ultimate endgame? What does Iran want?
RUBIN: At this point, what Donald Trump wants is more important, and that increasingly seems to be regime change. The question is whether it will be complete regime change or something more like a Venezuela model.
Increasingly, it looks like Donald Trump is leaning toward the latter. Venezuela’s current leadership is no friend of the United States, but people I talk to say Washington can still work with them. The question is whether Iran could produce someone similar.
CNBC: Is there somebody in Iran who fits that mold? They do not have to like us, but they would be willing to work with us, particularly around their nuclear program.
RUBIN: I think it is possible the Iranians will compromise on their nuclear program. In 1988, when Ayatollah Khomeini accepted a ceasefire with Iraq, he likened it to drinking from a chalice of poison.
The late supreme leader could never make that compromise because Iran lost more than $2 trillion under his watch through sanctions and lost opportunities. He could not tell the Revolutionary Guard that this is what their sacrifice was for and then surrender it. But his successor could.
Three names are being discussed — Hassan Rouhani, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, and Ali Larijani — all figures tied in different ways to the existing system. But this is where I think Donald Trump gets it wrong: he underestimates the ideology these men embrace and how consistently they will try to preserve it.
CNBC: Rouhani is 77. Is that really when you want to start running a nation? And what about the Iranian people? We have seen thousands reportedly killed by the regime. Is there a chance they step up and reclaim their country, or does the theocracy still have too strong a grip?
RUBIN: What you need to understand is that in 1979, Iranians united around what they opposed — the Shah. They were promised Islamic democracy. They got neither. Instead, they got the Iran-Iraq War, a conflict that killed a million people.
That history has made Iranians deeply fearful of what comes after regime collapse and the sacrifice that may follow. The chance of civil war inside Iran is very high.
That said, they hate this regime. It has no legitimacy. The worst thing we could do now would be to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by signaling that Iran might be dismantled — for example, through a Kurdish model. That would be the worst option at this point.
