Is the Collapse of the Iranian Regime Necessary for Regional Stability?

Disclaimer: This transcript is an edited version version of a transcript created using AI technology and may not reflect 100% accuracy.

The video can be found here.

Sarah: Good afternoon and welcome to another topical and extremely timely EMET webinar. Before we begin today’s webinar, I’d like all of you to just take a moment to think about the great American patriot and tremendous lover of Israel and of the Jewish people, Charlie Kirk. We just lost a 31-year-old husband and a father of two, and one of the most articulate and eloquent spokesman for the American system of values that we all know and love. I remember being with him when he was just creating Turning Point USA, an organization that has touched and reached the hearts and minds of millions upon millions of young and not so very young inspiring Americans. He carried with him the patience and the tolerance to clearly debate anyone who challenged these ideas. There’s now a huge vacuum today in many of our hearts.

What Charlie Kirk cared most about was the preservation of Western values, and specifically freedom of speech. And if there is one place where true freedom of speech is not valued, it is the Islamic Republic of Iran. We have us with us today, Barak Seener, who is a true expert about the Islamic Republic of Iran. Barak, who among many things, is a dear, dear friend of mine, and of EMET’s, and a research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society, and is the Director of the Middle East section there.

Previous to that, Barak was a Middle East fellow at RUSI, or the Royal United Services Institute, and he’s also contributed to the writings at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. Barak also orchestrated the world’s first conference in London for RUSI on Palestinian statehood. He’s published in a great many of outlets, including Newsweek, the National Interest, the American Interest, Jane’s Intelligence Review, and has appeared on Al-Jazeera, on the BBC, CNN, Chinese CCTV, Fox News, Sky News, Bloomberg, Reuters, the American Press, the Evening Standard, the Jerusalem Post and Xinhua, if I’m pronouncing that correctly.

Barak, I can easily recall the very first anti-Iranian legislation going back to November 1979, before you were born, and the days of President Carter’s executive action against the takeover of the United States Embassy. This legislation froze Iranian assets, and Congress later expanded the sanctions in the 1980s. In 1984, Iran was designated as “a state sponsor of terrorism,” and the very first Iran-Libya Sanctions Act, imposing sanctions on any government that invested more than a certain degree of money and Iran’s petroleum industry went into effect.

Now, flash forward to 2025, and we have the Solidify Iran Sanctions Act, which passed the House this past May. This legislation is to ensure that the United States continues to have the ability to restrict Iran’s ability to finance terrorism and regional aggression, and to counter its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Today, it is still in the Senate as S. 556, the Enhanced Iran Sanctions Act, to increase pressure on the Iranian regime as it is marching once again with its advances in its nuclear program, and to try to cut off its main sources of revenue.

Barak, how do you think the international community has evolved in its attitude towards the Islamic Republics since those first days?

Barak: First of all, before I answer the question, I want to thank you, Sarah, for hosting me. Your organization, EMET, is an organization I’ve admired an enormous amount of time for the unique work that you do. And I also have admired you for many, many years, and I see you as an individual that couples rigorous insights, analytical research with actual passion for the issues of Israel security or Middle Eastern security more broadly.

And the reason why I think that’s unique is so many people approach foreign policy or international affairs in a kind of abstract academic manner that is divorced from genuine care about the issues at hand. And that’s never been something that you’ve failed with. So I admire you and appreciate you enormously. And you know me, I’m a blunt individual. I say it as it is. So thank you so much for the work that you do and for hosting me today.

How the international community has evolved is I think that there is a recognition, you saw this on the part of the Germans, that were quite explicit about saying that Israel is doing their dirty work for them. And that sentiment is going to grow. The hypocrisy will also grow because you’ll see a divergence between public criticisms and denouncement of Israel. As a result of Israel’s growing power projection across the region, there’ll be a growing recognition in Western capitals that this is shoring up their own security. This is what they are not able to be doing.

One of the reasons why that divergence will be taking place, and a silent appreciation of Israel’s work will be, many European states, including Britain, have slashed their military expenditure. They find themselves unable to contend with growing Russian threats on their borders. And as a result of that, not only can they not deal with the threats close to home, they certainly can’t contend with threats in the Middle East. Western states, such as Britain, lack the ability to achieve strategic lift between its armed forces and that of the United States.

So while at the moment now they can conduct to a degree joint exercises and perhaps assist the US in striking the Houthis, the convergence of trends will be America seeking a lighter and lighter footprint in the Middle East as it wants to either pivot towards great power competition in Asia, or it wants simply not to get sucked in in the Middle East. And Israel will have to take that mantle.

So the Abraham Accords is underpinned by Israel’s military primacy in the region. It is a growing tiger in the region. So Gulf States appreciate the interconnectivity that they can achieve with Israel, whether it be on defense, security, intelligence, et cetera. So the recognition of the Western states will be predicated on all those aspects. To what extent are they able to engage in the region? To what extent is Israel able to pick up the mantle from the US and calls to blunt China and Russia’s influence in the region too? So it’s not only a defense and security position vis-a-vis Israel, it has geopolitical implications too.

Sarah: Right. So, do you anticipate that the Western powers, particularly the United States, will look to constrain Israel’s powers in the region?

Barak: I think that, historically, America has approached the region within the context of achieving stability for oil flows from the region to the US. So Israel has really operated in the architecture that America has laid down towards the region. As America has become an energy producer, less reliant on engaging in the Middle East, and decreasingly provides a framework for operating in the Middle East, Israel will pick up that mantle and feel less constrained. And we see the trajectory of this when, for example, Israel takes the initiative in striking Iran. And then President Trump thinks, “Okay, to what extent is Israel succeeding in this? Now, how are we going to follow suit?” And it was literally following suit. That is historically unprecedented. And then you see again Israel engaging in Qatar and not necessarily giving the Trump Administration heads up. So I think this shouldn’t serve as noise and for political punditry, but it should serve as a signal for future regional dynamics.

Sarah: Right. Okay, let’s go take a look about what’s happening domestically inside the Islamic Republic. Can you elaborate on the enormous role that the Supreme Leader has and his Supreme Council in selecting who is going to be in the Islamic government and the Majlis?

Barak: The thing about Iran is that the Iranian regime has unfortunately an enormous amount of resilience because of the artificial guise of democracy that it provides at home. And it achieves this by maintaining a hybrid regime. So it has a Supreme Leader that dominates all the organs of the state, including the clerical sphere within the regime. But at the same time, its Council of Ministers and even so-called reformists, they operate within the framework that the Supreme Leader dominates. So it’s very difficult to identify what genuine sway the opposition in the street has in influencing policy. And you see, even the Iranian President, very much coming under the purview of the Supreme Leader. And there’s an unwillingness and inability to formulate independent policies.

Not only does the Iranian regime dupe its own people, it also averts the attention of the international community because very frequently foreign observers, Iran watchers will obsessively look at dynamics within Iran to create these artificial distinctions between reformists and hard liners and attempt to say, “Okay, Iran will crumble under the weight of its own internal contradictions,” which was the same Cold War rationale that the US had vis-a-vis the Soviet Union. And that keeps on failing. And the reformists themselves, Rouhani, he said, “We were able to extend negotiations on the Iran’s nuclear facilities while enriching uranium further.” So it’s even a multi-pronged strategy, which is deployed by the Iranian regime to attempt to leverage the West. So this isn’t only an issue of internal Iranian political dynamics. It has foreign policy, security, and nuclear implications, too.

Sarah: Can you describe the various Iranian communities, both internally and externally, and what is preventing them from uniting behind just a simple, more federalistic goal?

Barak: Look, it reminds me of the movie, the Life of Brian, when they have the People’s Front of Judea versus the Judean People’s Front. And they’re just sort of talking and they’re not really doing any actions. And that’s really what’s happening with the Iranian opposition. You have a flat opposition organization, which is decentralized, so there’s no hierarchy, endless infighting between opposition members, and with each one claiming legitimacy and de-legitimizing the other. The regime is able to benefit from this and co-opt this by pumping out disinformation, by co-opting their narrative and perhaps at least presenting themselves reformists, presenting themselves as liberalizing the need to wear the hijab in public spaces. And what ends up happening is you’ve got that flat landscape, you have an opposition abroad that doesn’t necessarily influence the domestic Iranian opposition. The extent that it can do is unknown.

I’m always very, very reluctant to give sway to an Iranian opposition group saying, “This is the Iranian opposition group,” because we need to remember the mistakes that happened in the aftermath of the war in Iraq, the Ahmed Chalabi. He had convinced the Bush administrations that the US forces would be confronted with roses being pelted at them, and that never took place. So the question then becomes, if there is a vacuum of governance that takes place after the regime collapses, in that void, what fills that vacuum? Is it going to be the IRGC taking over, albeit in a different name? Will it be an Iranian nationalist that is also autocratic and anti-Western in its orientation? It doesn’t necessarily entail that the outcome is going to be somebody that is going to be pro-Western and liberal in its orientation.

So I think that responsible strategy has to factor in worst case scenario first and work out from there. You spoke about federal system. It will take a while till a political system emerges. And within the stresses that the Iranian regime will experience, you will have secessionist groups, ethnic groups that have been discriminated by the Iranian regime, that hate the fact that resources have been diverted away from their areas to the core, and they will want to break away. You may have neighboring states also seeking to extend their spheres of influence into Iran. So a vacuum of governance is always accompanied by ensuing chaos. And it behooves Western governments to already, at this point, attempt to coordinate the Iranian opposition and to provide with them technologies so that organically, the hierarchy can crystallize and emerge from them. I can’t hear you. Sorry.

Sarah: How concerned are you that no one leader is going to emerge behind which the people can coalesce, and that they might potentially devolve into civil war?

Barak: I mean, credibly, there’s so many areas of civil war that could take place. It could be a result of, as I said, secessionist groups. It could be a result of people that simply, they may have had opposition to the regime, and now suddenly, they prioritize stability over everything else because they want to have basic food stuffs. It could be a result of people prioritizing social liberalization over economic prosperity, or it could be people that prioritize economic prospects over social equality. It depends on what are people’s priorities. Revolutions are never linear. It’s always unexpected. So nobody anticipated that in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, that the Bolsheviks would take power. Nobody anticipated in the wide constellation of actors that sought the overthrow of the Shah and who had aligned with one another, whether they be environmentalists, feminists, anti-Western colonialists, with Khomeini, that Khomeini would then subsequently crush them and dominate them.

I’m always very, very concerned. I’m very wary of making any predictions. I’m always concerned about potential outcomes because of the law of unintended consequences. And for that reason, already now, the legwork needs to be put in by US leadership to coordinate the Iranian opposition. And the reason why I say this is it’s not a luxury issue, and it’s not a fantasy. The existence of an Islamist radical regime that is committed to exporting the Iranian revolution, the very identity of it entails that risk and instability will be fostered in the region.

For their own sense of survivability, they must export terrorism. They must sponsor proxies across the region. They must have a nuclear program. They see that as synonymous with their own survivability. They see the Houthis launching missiles at Israel thousands of kilometers away, as enhancing their own strategic depth. They never anticipated that that would blow back at them and that Israel would achieve dominance over them. So that’s blown back at them. And it doesn’t appear that they have settled upon an alternative strategic calculus to guarantee their survivability. Their survivability is intertwined with a commitment to malign activities across the region and the international community.

Sarah: Right. Okay. So just how wounded do you think the Islamic Republic is since September 2024, when there were these pager incidents, when so many members of Hezbollah were knocked out? Ismail Haniyeh has been knocked out of Hamas. The Houthis are still at it, very much so, as we all know. We’ve all had to run into our sealed rooms as we did during the war in Iran, the 12-day war this past summer. So how wounded and how fast do you think it is that they can recover their nuclear program that was destroyed in Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan, and their air capabilities, their defensive capabilities?

Barak: The first point of call is Iran’s missile capability, which achieved enormous damage to Israel. Despite the fact that Israel has enormous interoperability amongst GCC states, it had them offering a missile defense support for Israel, that at the same time hasn’t been sufficient. There has been enormous damage to Israel’s infrastructure, scientific research centers, et cetera, an enormous amount that isn’t even reported. So let’s not even think upon the enormous threat that their nuclear program can achieve. A couple of scales below that, let’s consider the missile threat that Iran poses, which means that it’s an inevitability that Israel would seek to target Iran’s missile program, not only their nuclear capability.

The problem with terrorist regimes and terrorist sub-state actors are, they’re very, very organic. They draw support from the people, and it’s manifest in a couple of ways, not only in terms of, in Iran’s case, attempting to co-opt the opposition in its messaging and disinformation and clamping down on the digital capabilities to coordinate and message. In Gaza, it takes the form of mass indoctrination of the people. In Iran, you’ll have nuclear sites and uranium enrichment sites, and you’ll have missile facilities in densely populated areas because they want mass collateral damage. You see the exact same thing taking place in Gaza to the point that it’s not an issue. I think Israel, its messaging has been wrong. It’s not about Hamas hiding behind civilian populations. It’s about Hamas managing effectively to transform and overhaul civilian infrastructure to be part of their terrorist infrastructure.

So you can’t make this black and white distinction anymore, and international law doesn’t contend with that gray area. Are they civilians? Are they terrorists? What if they’re both? So as a result of that, because they draw the support from the population in such an organic manner, they’re able to reconstitute themselves rapidly. Look, Israel has targeted effectively every Hamas leader in Gaza. If you look at the scoreboard, there’s now a cross on every single senior Hamas leader, and yet Hamas remains. The threat remains. Israel doesn’t have the ability to lie back on its laurels and say, there is no threat from Hamas.

If you look at Iran, despite Israel effectively striking numerous nuclear scientists and numerous military commanders, the threat remain. You see that they’ve been able to reconstitute themselves so quickly. They managed to impose their authority or control on the Iranian population. The threat hasn’t been eliminated. And there’s even the concern that the younger generation that have replaced the elderly IRGC commanders may be even more hardline and less pragmatic simply based on their youth. It’s like whack-a-mole; you hit one and another three emerge.

Sarah: Right. So since the 12-day war last summer, approximately 700 people have been rounded up, 110 people were incarcerated and executed in July, and another 160 were executed in August. It seems that the Islamic Republic has become more brutal and more authoritarian. Can you address the relationship between the Islamic Republic’s belligerent foreign policy and its oppression of internal domestic groups and their freedoms?

Barak: Look, there’s always an alignment. I think this is the problem with a purely realist school of thought that looks at international affairs because it looks at international affairs in a purely cold, neutral approach of what are dynamics between states, power dynamics. However, we do see that the character of states inform their foreign policy. You see this across the board. Let’s start with China. China, despite its growing economic capabilities that began when America welcomed China into the World Trade Organization, so China grew economically but it became much more hegemonic in its aspirations, both regionally and internationally. But it became a digital totalitarian state in the process. You could see a nexus between taking Hong Kong, having designs towards Taiwan, conducting on a countless foreign policy, predatory economics, dominating foreign markets, and their repression internally.

Conversely, you see GCC states that aren’t democratic, but they need to economically liberalize. And while still being authoritarian, they have become a lot more… It’s not the same Saudi Arabia that had telephones to support the families of suicide bombers two decades ago. This is a very different Saudi Arabia today. So the Saudi Arabia that has a vision, 2030, like every other GCC state has, it’s about also wanting to be part of the Western-led liberal order, and align with Israel, align with the United States at the same time. So you definitely do see that nexus. So in Iran’s case, the repression at home, it certainly serves as an enormous indicator as to what are their foreign policy goals you can tell? Have they changed their foreign policy calculus based on, as you quite rightly identified, the repression that takes place domestically?

Sarah: So I have so many other questions, but some excellent ones came from the audience, and I think the number one question on everyone’s mind is how does Israel strike in Doha, Qatar earlier this week impact on all these efforts?

Barak: On which efforts?

Sarah: Any efforts to modernize and unite the people of Iran against the regime.

Barak: I think it sets a precedent that leaders have to be taken into account. They have accountability for hosting terrorist leaders. If I was Turkey, I would be taking note as to what could be taking place in Istanbul next. If I was the regime in Tehran, I’d be thinking, to what extent can they be held to account for hosting Hamas leaders as they had to when they hosted Haniyeh and was successfully targeted? I think Israel has been able to demonstrate that terrorist organizations have no sanctuary in any country abroad. They just don’t have any sanctuary.

Sarah: Okay. Our wonderful friend, Claire Lopez, has written that internal MEK resistance units have been incredibly active inside of Iran. How else did the Mossad obtain all the precise targeting information for its strikes last April and October 2024, and then in June of 2025?

Barak: I think that’s right. I don’t have any proprietary information on that, but it’s pretty evident that the very fact that the Iranian regime has to clamp down on its domestic opposition, it’s got to execute numerous people, it needs to imprison numerous people, is because Israel has successfully penetrated the Iranian elite of the regime in a widespread intelligence effort. So, Israel’s intelligence has done phenomenal job in Tehran multiple times, as it just did in Qatar, as it did with Hezbollah, with the Beirut[?] attacks. So this has been a multi-year, if not multi-decade led initiative to penetrate and compromise the regime.

It becomes bankrupt and it undermines the regime’s legitimacy. But that in turn causes the regime to become more authoritarian. It’s not either or, it’s not okay… If the Iranian regime becomes penetrated and delegitimized, that puts wind in the sails of the opposition. Now, on the contrary, it does, but at the same time, it causes the regime to become more repressive and backslide and to further autocracy.

Sarah: Right. So if you were a Saudi leader right now, or Bahraini leader, a Sudanese, Moroccan, how would you evaluate your impact on the Abraham Accords today? Or would you withdraw?

Barak: Look, I think that the Abraham Accords is a reflect… It’s not causal of regional dynamics. It’s reflective of regional dynamics. When I say that, it’s like the Arab world did not suddenly wake up to Shimon Peres. It’s become part of a new Middle East. They didn’t suddenly have this positive dream and become affable towards the Jewish state. They recognized the fact that Israel is now part of CENTCOM. The reason why Israel is part of CENTCOM is because of its growing military capabilities. Israel is rising tiger of the region, and therefore GCC states need Israel’s primacy and need Israel’s intelligence for their own security and need Israel’s technological innovation for their own economic diversification efforts. So if anything, the more Israel takes these types of actions to hold malign actors to account, that will privately boost the confidence of GCC leaders because it just reflects Israel’s capabilities. Now, their public pronouncements may diverge from that, but that’s fine.

Sarah: Right. Barak, can you tell us why you believe that a UN-coordinated conference for all the various opposition groups would be important so that they might eventually federalize and integrate into some decentralized framework?

Barak: I think it’s very important to just have these different actors in the same room. First of all, it will give them legitimacy if the international community recognizes them. It adds pressure to the Iranian regime as well. But it is important to get these people to coordinate amongst themselves because the more that takes place now, prior to regime collapse, the less the prospects are for vacuum of governance and infighting that takes place the day after. It’s an attempt, it’s a responsible attempt to mitigate risk as much as possible on the part of the West.

Sarah: Right. Right now, unfortunately, there has been a decrease of funding of programs like Voice of America or the Persian voice that was inside Voice of America. Can you address the necessities for communication technologies and VPNs so that opposition groups can communicate with one another and the outside world?

Barak: Look, I think that there’s been a continuum between multiple administrations under different ideological guises. For example, you had the Obama administration that was very much against regime change, and he spoke about fostering organic opposition from within Iran and Middle East states, and to lead from behind. Now that was a result of, again, wanting to pivot towards Asia, wanting to have a light footprint in the region, financial austerity as well. And Americans are exhausted being the world’s policeman. Now, while he said that, he slashed funds to the Iranian opposition. Now President Trump, for exactly the same reasons, albeit in a more transactional America-first hat, is wanting to cut funds to not only Middle East opposition groups, but international democracy promotion. So that does undermine the Iranian opposition.

So on one hand, you can’t say we don’t believe in regime change. We don’t believe in nation building, because look at the damage that’s caused. And then deny the opposition groups internally the means to achieve that. And the report that I published on this topic that mentions the slashing of resources to opposition groups was called Regime Collapse in Iran: A Necessity for Regional Stability. I addressed that point, and I believe that it’s been put as well in your webinar chat. So thank you for that. But there’s a problem in that if you don’t promote democracy abroad, or rather liberal democracy abroad, there will be an uptick in threats to your servicemen and assets in the region and to your security interests within the United States.

It’s something which is very appealing, the notion of wanting to withdraw and be shielded by two oceans, but in a globalized world, that doesn’t work. And threats will come. Intercontinental ballistic missiles don’t care that you are shielded by two oceans. The oceans don’t exist to the missiles. It did one or two centuries ago. It doesn’t today.

Sarah: So there’s a real fear now that there are Iranian sleeper cells within the United States. I know you have written about this. Can you enumerate these cells? Trita Parsi and Ali Vaez are very active in creating these kinds of apologetics for the Islamic Republic. Are you aware of any of these cells?

Barak: I would say this, it’s better to address this in a more conceptual, thematic manner. You asked before whether there was a linkage, a nexus between Iran’s domestic repression and its foreign policy and its sponsorship of terrorism. And we connect those two dots. There’s also a connection between the pressure that the Iranian regime faces and its ability to—how shall I say—spill over in terms of its conventional force capabilities, its nuclear force capabilities, its sub-state terrorist proxy capabilities. And all these have been a means to shield itself.

Now, if Iran sees that its nuclear facilities have been enormously set back, its nuclear program have been enormously degraded, and Israel’s intelligence is on the ground, and nuclear scientists and military commanders are able to be targeted very effectively, then what needs to be done then is a spillover. And what’s that spillover going to be? It’s going to be activating their personnel that are in foreign countries. So you have cells around the world that they activate. Multiple Israeli embassies have been targeted, over 10 internationally. Jewish leaders have been targeted. Western state leaders have been targeted. Iranian opposition groups have been targeted. And enormous pressure has been placed on them with surveillance through Iranian student groups, who the leadership of these student groups are directly appointed by Iran’s supreme leader.

So student groups on Western University campuses, their leadership is appointed by the supreme leader. Then you have Shia mosques, Islamic Community Centers. In Britain, we have the prevent strategy. It’s a counter-terrorism strategy that focuses on Sunni radicalization. But there’s been no emphasis on sheer radicalization. And that radicalization serves the cultural context in which IRGC members can conduct surveillance, target people, pay gangs to serve as their proxies to do that.

So there’s a cultural and ideological milieu that this takes place that Western governments haven’t begun to address. They only focus on Iran vis-a-vis the Middle East, Iran vis-a-vis its nuclear activities, but not Iran within the US, Iran within the UK, Iran within Sweden. And the Labour Party here in England, it came to office on a manifesto that it was going to prescribe the IRGC as a terrorist organization. And then as soon as they came to office, they didn’t keep that promise. The conservative party beforehand failed to do so. So yeah… [inaudible]

Sarah: We have a problem. We have a huge problem in the United States about the separation of church and state, mosque, state. I know for a fact that there is a very prominent mosque in Potomac that has a school, and they sing hymns to the Ayatollah Khomeini.

Barak: Right.

Sarah: So they’re really indoctrinating young people to become foot soldiers for the Islamic Republic.

Barak: So out of those people, that’s going to be the milieu that the IRGC can tap into.

Sarah: Right. It is horrible. And cutting funding to radio broadcasting, as Claire Lopez has said, in the Middle East, even Aljarah and the Persian service is really a death blow to the United States and what we’re trying to do.

Barak: I just think one final thing. It’s one thing to speak about unfair trade practices and to impose tariffs, which is fair within the sphere of trade. Why should the US be picking up the bill for everybody else? However, you cannot silo an abstract trade from defense and security. There is going to be a spillover. So if you’re going to be putting tariffs on India, increasing tariffs, well, that’s going to just simply push India into China’s sphere of influence. Now, India had been non-aligned, but increasingly gravitating towards the US. Now, we just basically push them back into the arms of China. So it’s exactly the same thing with Iran. Even if you’re going to put sanctions on Iran, well, that’s not good in and of itself because that will cause Iran to gravitate, to look east, to gravitate towards China’s sphere of influence. So if you are going to as well be just sanctioning Iran, that needs to be coupled with military strikes against Iran aimed at toppling the regime supporting the opposition, et cetera.

Sarah: Right. Some more questions here, if we could keep you for a little bit more. First of all, you had four very specific instructions to contain or moreover, exploit the vulnerabilities of the Islamic Republic. Do you remember those four and can you elaborate on those? They had to do with increasing military towards Iran and Israel’s influence in that sphere, increasing things like Radio Florida. It was towards the beginning of your article. Do you remember those?

Barak: So what I can recollect, the different prescriptions that I had were a multi-pronged approach of, number one, obviously providing communication tools to the Iranian opposition to perhaps have a conference, but a serve as a continual hub to coordinate the opposition and in a sense, to achieve greater alignment between them so that a hierarchy could emerge from them. It was increasing military strikes against the regimes assets, whether it be military commanders, nuclear scientists, energy facilities, et cetera, just increase the stresses on the regime. To also engage with external powers to coordinate with surrounding states so that they would be able to assist with the managing of post-regime landscape and not to exploit the vacuum of governance in a way that would be detrimental to a day after. So I think that’s kind of the multi-pronged approach that I was taking.

Sarah: Yes, that is beautiful. There are a couple of other questions, if you could comment. First of all, what is the possible role of Reza Pahlavi’s son that is here in the United States? He has amassed quite a following.

Barak: Look, again, it’s unknown. He has an enormous following abroad. It’s very difficult to gauge the following that it has within Iran. I’m sure it’s a significant following, but there’s also a significant following to other Iranian opposition groups. Some that may be more Republican-orientated, some that may be monarchy-orientated, some that may be anti-Western in their orientation. But again, it feeds into the issue, two issues. To what extent is the Iranian regime able to co-opt either an Islamic identity? Can it co-opt a narrative of Persian nationalism and look what the West is doing to undermine Iranian sovereignty as it has done numerous times in the past?

Finally, there were numerous Iranians that would’ve hated the Iranian regime. And as soon as the military strikes took place in Israel’s recent conflict, they would have rallied around the flag, because they want stability. There are also numerous Iranians that it would’ve deepened their opposition to the regime. And also, psychologically, it’s possible to have a dual mentality simultaneously whereby you oppose the regime and you want stability at the same time, so you become quite ambiguous in your motivations. So I’m just really wary of giving credence to any single Iranian opposition group and saying that’s the one because of the complexity involved on the ground.

Sarah: And you described that so well in your recent article for the Henry Jackson Society. So once more, can you name the article so people could look it up online?

Barak: The report was called Regime Collapse in Iran: A Necessity for Regional Stability.

Sarah: And we cannot be asleep at the wheel of history. This is incredibly important for anybody who appreciates Western values and Western democracy. I want to encourage everybody to follow Barak Seener, both through his writings and through his Twitter page. It is barakseener@twitter…

Barak: No, @BarakSeener.

Sarah. @BarakSeener. And please, be sure to support the Henry Jackson Society. They do a marvelous job. Also, please be sure to support emetonline.org. We really need your contributions in order to continue to do our wonderful work on Capitol Hill. Half of my staff is there on the Hill today. And to continue to fight the good fight. I also have to tell you that on November 19th, we’re having our annual dinner, and we’re honored to say that Ambassador Yechiel Leiter, the Israeli ambassador, is going to be there, as well as Senator John Fetterman, who is one of my heroes, and a wonderful, wonderful Pakistani Muslim woman, Anila Ali among others. So I would like to encourage everybody to come to our EMET dinner. It’s going to be a real spectacular evening. And I have to say thank you, Barak Seener, for your marvelous words.

Barak: I just want to once again, just reinforce my initial sentiment. I admire the work you personally do, Sarah, and EMET’s work. It’s just invaluable. And it’s always been enlightening to receive your insights, which I’ve learned so much from throughout the decades I’ve known you. So thank you so much, Sarah, for everything that you do.

Sarah: Barak, by now, it’s become a very mutual admiration society. Thank you so much, Barak, for all the great work that you do.

Barak: Thank you.

Sarah: Bye-bye now.

Barak: Bye.

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