An interview with Vali Nasr, F83
Fletcher alumnus Vali Nasr is a leading expert on Iranian politics and the strategic calculations of Iran’s leadership. He is the author of Iran’s Grand Strategy from Princeton University Press and the Majid Khadduri Professor of International Affairs and Middle East Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
This interview took place one day before the outbreak of the current war between the United States and Iran. Nasr explains how leaders in Tehran understand the prospect of conflict and why the risks of escalation may be greater than many policymakers assume.
The Fletcher School: U.S. leaders have offered mixed messages about why we are in this moment and what they're seeking to achieve. Do you see a clear reason for the current escalation?
Vali Nasr: The short answer is no. What’s unique about this moment is that usually, the U.S. would arrive at a major war only after creating an internal consensus, sharing goals and information with allies, and building support among the population, the political class, and the media. None of this has happened.
What is the U.S. objective? What is the U.S. national interest, and why is a military campaign necessary?
There is no explanation about why the Iran nuclear issue is urgent. What has happened since June, when President Trump declared Iran’s nuclear program obliterated?
We're in a peculiar moment where American foreign policy is not built from the bottom up but declared from the top. He says he wants to go to war, and now the entire system must gear towards war.
Does the Iranian leadership make decisions similarly?
Iran and the U.S. are the inverse of one another in that Iran's objectives are longstanding: push the U.S. back, get sanctions lifted, protect itself against what it sees as American encroachment on Iranian sovereignty. Questions of whether to pursue a nuclear or missile program are carefully calculated and debated. When they arrive at a strategy, they follow it. Their negotiation strategy is based on decades of experience, and they haven't deviated in their demands to connect sanctions relief to nuclear concessions.
We're not seeing any quick outcomes from U.S.-Iran negotiations because President Trump does not want a negotiated document, which he doesn't have patience or expertise for. He wants a declaration that everything is solved and that Iran and the U.S. will move forward into a beautiful relationship. The Iranians, on the other hand, want a meticulously detailed agreement in which every aspect is verified. They are approaching this moment with a great deal of trepidation, not in the flippant way that President Trump is approaching it.
In a piece you authored for Financial Times, you described the Iranian leadership as inclined towards war, seeing it as a preferable outcome to giving in to U.S. demands.
Even before the massive protests that shook Iran and brought the military option into discussion, there was debate in Iran about what diplomacy can achieve. Iran never thought that the Twelve-Day War with Israel and the U.S. had actually finished, since Israel did not achieve all its goals. Iran assumed the war would resume at some point.
The emerging consensus in Iran is that President Trump cannot be trusted to implement and stand by a deal. Last year, he gave a green light to Israel’s attack even as the United States and Iran were negotiating. He recently put the military option on the table, saying he would help protesters bring about regime change. The Iranians are not convinced that the U.S. approaches negotiations in any serious manner. They believe that no matter what they sign, the fundamental box that Iran has been put in will not change. Iran will remain under economic pressure, will remain subject to Israeli attacks, and will remain isolated by the U.S. diplomatically. They have reconciled themselves to the inevitability of war.
The Iranians ask themselves, if war is coming, how can we use the war to change U.S. calculations? They can't change U.S. calculations at the diplomatic table, no matter what they offer. So, they believe that U.S. calculations can only change through war.
The U.S. administration depicted the Twelve-Day War as an unqualified success with a quick Iranian surrender. But your analysis suggests that Iranian leadership saw themselves as winning that conflict, and that they were willing to fight a longer war. Do you believe the administration has underestimated the risks of a drawn-out conflict?
That’s correct. They are misreading and underestimating.
The question of victory in war is often in the eyes of the beholder. There was no formal surrender by Iran and no occupation of Iran, as in Germany and Japan after World War II. The Islamic Republic believed it survived the war, that Israel could not topple it, and that the U.S. asked for the ceasefire. Iran did not request a ceasefire. They inflicted pain on Israel, showed teeth, and stayed in the game.
If Israel and the U.S. were winning as decisively as they claimed, why did they ask for a ceasefire on the 12th day? President Trump seemed desperately eager for a ceasefire in his words and body language. The Iranians now believe that they can survive and manage massive attacks by superior militaries. They recognize President Trump’s worries about U.S. casualties and broadening conflict as key vulnerabilities. They have prepared for the next war with this in mind.
The Iranians may now calculate that symbolic or calibrated responses are a mistake. When President Trump killed Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in 2020, the Iranian response was symbolic. The same was true after U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities. They may believe that they need to answer differently in order to get the president to think differently.
That makes the current moment much more dangerous.
After the surgical action in Venezuela, Trump may be looking for a similar, short conclusion to conflict with Iran. If Iranian leaders see this as a weakness, will they work to deliberately extend the length of the war?
I think that's exactly what they're signaling: that a new war would be messier and costlier to the United States. If Iran targets the Strait of Hormuz or oil infrastructure across the Arab Gulf states, that can significantly impact energy prices. Iran knows that gas prices are a political vulnerability for a U.S. president. If Iran decides to directly attack U.S. aircraft carriers and bases, that could change President Trump’s perception that he can lead cost-free wars. I think they're heavily incentivized to do that, and there lies the risk, because it can easily get out of control.
Our allies in the Gulf States are taking this threat extremely seriously. They don't trust that the U.S. can manage a quick, clean war and protect the Gulf from collateral damage. They believe U.S. has no game plan for how the war ends and what comes next.
Another way that Iran has projected power is through proxy forces. The general perception is that Iran's proxy forces are greatly diminished in strength. Do they still pose a real threat, and what role would they play in new conflict?
They have been greatly weakened and pose a far lesser threat than they did before Hamas' attack on Israel on October 7th, 2023. Hamas can no longer threaten Israel on that scale, and neither can Hezbollah.
The only proxy that still matters on a regional scale is the Houthis, who can threaten maritime trade. The Gulf States, Israel, and the U.S. all want the Houthis gone. But the Houthis have been in a sustained ceasefire with the Gulf States, one that Iran negotiated. The Houthis alone do not constitute the kind of threat that Iran's Arab proxies once posed. Iran has been kicked out of the Levant. Iran now has no say in the future of Syria, no say in the future of the Palestinians, and nearly no say in the future of Lebanon. The diplomatic engagement between Arab states with Iran suggests that they do not view the Arab proxy groups as serious threats anymore.
But despite that engagement, the Iranians did attack Qatar directly last year, and they understand how close Donald Trump is personally with Gulf leaders. Would Iran target the Gulf States in a new conflict, dragging them into the conflict?
The Gulf States are in a very difficult position, because they are allied with U.S. efforts to contain Iran. They don’t host U.S. bases on their territory to deter China. The bases are there for the purpose of attacking Iran. How can they host these bases and claim no part of a U.S.-Iran war?
The Iranians have told the Gulf States that there is no scenario in which war breaks out and they are not impacted. This will not be a symbolic impact. Iran may see attacks on tankers, oil infrastructure, and Hormuz to be necessary to get Trump’s attention. The U.S. and Iran cannot fight a war in the Gulf without the countries of the Gulf being harmed.
American and Iranian leaders have different ideas about how the Iranian public will react to a war. The U.S. seems to believe it would spur on anti-regime protesters, while Iran will be hoping for a “rally around the flag” effect. Who do you think is right?
It's difficult to tell and depends partly on how the war is waged. If the U.S. military can execute a decapitation campaign with a focused target on the Supreme Leader and others responsible for the bloody crackdown on protesters, that is one thing. But if the war begins to damage the country more deeply, people may react differently.
A large segment of the population is angry at the Islamic Republic and want it removed. But there is also pride in the country, aside from the regime. If the territorial boundaries of Iran come into question, Iranians will react to that separately from their feelings about the Islamic Republic.
Iranians started the protests in December because of the dire economic situation. There's a perception outside the country that the Iranian population is willing to be martyred, or accept whatever suffering is imposed in order to serve the greater goal of removing the Islamic Republic. But on the ground, Iranians are trying to protect their lives. A major war threatens not only their physical lives, but also healthcare, education, commerce, public transportation, and other components of daily life. Their livelihoods would be turned into rubble. The regime is brutal, but bombs represent an immediate threat to life. People will respond to the most urgent threat in front of them.
Many Iranians are extremely worried about repeating the experience of Palestinians and Syrians. The people of Iran are traumatized. They went through a war on their own turf six months ago and a harrowing experience in January with the bloody suppression of protests. They listen to President Trump talking about how devastating this war will be and observe their own government's preparation for it, which suggests massive destruction. It becomes less a political conversation than a question about surviving shocks and trauma.
Could elites in the Iranian system take a similar approach to Venezuela, cooperating with the United States to remove the Supreme Leader while keeping the rest of the regime intact?
That is a possibility, but not as a way of averting war. There are serious debates about the future of Iran behind-the-scenes among elites, including those who are loyal to the Islamic Republic.
But none of this is public. Even during the protests, there was no sign of defection from the Revolutionary Guards, the military, or any senior regime figure.
If the Iranian state does not collapse completely, like the Iraqi state did in 2003, the next stage of Iranian government will be built on the Islamic Republic's bureaucracy and security forces. There is no state to import from outside, regardless of how big demonstrations are among the diaspora. Iran has around 700,000 bureaucrats and a similar number of security forces and police. Any functioning state must be built on the back of what already exists.
Still, the state needs political leadership. That leadership could emerge from dissident forces in Iranian prisons and outside Iran, but it would require elements with insights in managing the system.
After the Soviet Union fell, the leaders of the new Russian Federation were people from Soviet institutions, Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin. The KGB became the FSB. Similarly, the Islamic Republic could end in its current form, with the next regime incorporating the functioning parts of the state.
Can studying countries and their leadership lead to better foreign policy decision-making?
I’m an alumnus of Fletcher and taught as a Fletcher professor for three years. Schools like Fletcher and Johns Hopkins SAIS, where I teach now, prepare students who are forward-looking. Whether they go into the business world, NGOs, international organizations, or government agencies, our students are ready to deal with crises and opportunities.
What’s unique about the manpower we produce is that they're not only taught the general toolkit for formulating and implementing policy, including economics, conflict management, comparative politics, and international relations. Our programs are interdisciplinary. We train people that are historically literate. Regardless of what area of the world students choose to concentrate on at Fletcher, they have points of reference to the past and are able to understand the future.
Mark Twain said that history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. Our students learn to understand that rhyme and operate in complexity. Our curricula equip people to understand that there are no simplistic answers to world problems.
Since my own time as a student, the world has become more complex. Issues including the environment, food security, and public health are more prevalent. We also have much greater global conflict. We have the breakdown of the transatlantic alliance. We have the greater antagonism between China and the United States. We have wars and political change in the Middle East and Latin America. We also have chaos emanating from the world's greatest and most consequential power, the United States.
All of this means that we need more analysis at the core of decision-making in government, business, NGOs, and international organizations. The Fletcher and SAIS curriculums are uniquely positioned to address that need.
You studied at Fletcher during an important time in Iranian history, the Iran-Iraq War. What was your experience as a student, and did you plan for the career that you've had, as an expert on Iranian issues?
Even though the Iran-Iraq War was one of the largest conventional wars of the 20th century, there's very little knowledge or study of it. This was also true at the time. There’s always been much more focus on Iranian Revolution itself. How did the United States lose Iran? The revolution signaled the rise of political Islamism as a consequential force in the Middle East.
I focused a lot on this issue at Fletcher. Later on, I pursued a PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, studying what political Islam meant for the United States. American policymakers were mesmerized with the issue, starting in 1979 and going into overdrive after the September 11th attacks. Today, the subject of Islam features much less in American foreign policy thinking. We accuse the Islamic Republic of being a theocracy almost as a throwaway, but no longer seriously argue that Iran's threat to the world rests on its ideology.
When I enrolled at Fletcher, President Ronald Reagan had put a freeze on federal hiring, and international business was a new area of study. Fletcher was beginning to produce more careers in the private sector. I think this demonstrates the school’s entrepreneurial spirit and approach to new frontiers. Many of my classmates did go into government, and many others had success in the private sector and academia.