Extra: "Crackdowns, Mayhem & Unrest," A Look Inside Iranian Oppression
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This is the Fox News Rundown Extra.

I'm Jessica Rosenthal. This week we spoke with Dr. Nazim Wainian. She's a Ph.D. in Iranian foreign policy and is an associate fellow at the Middle East Institute. She's in touch with people in Iran now and gave us a glimpse into their opinions about the Israeli strikes on the country's nuclear scientists, but also the American strikes on Iran's nuclear sites.

Dr. Muinian also provided us information about Iran's recent history, especially when it comes to their nuclear program, how motivated existing and remaining leadership is to rebuild it, and the reaction of the people to a regime that is weakened, but what rising up or pushing back would look like in a country where its people are unarmed.

We often have to cut interviews down for time during the week, but thought you might like to hear this full interview. Thank you for listening. Please follow the weekday rundown podcast if you don't already. Now here's Dr. Nazim Mournian on the Fox News Rundown Extra. Who have you been speaking with since all of this unraveled, really? And what are they telling you that you can share with our listeners?

Okay. I don't know if I can name my sources, Jessica, but the people in Iran that have reached out to me and other, my colleagues who are Iranian or Iranian American, they basically have a range of opinions on this. And I don't know if I can relay every sentiment that they share with me or they hope for future, but it's complicated.

It's kind of homogenous how they feel about the turn of events, the president's decision, the sacrifice of American servicemen, the sacrifice of Israeli soldiers and what they've been through. So, you know, there's a lot of gratefulness going on and gratitude. Do they have an understanding of what has happened? Like...

that the political leadership hasn't necessarily been impacted, but the IRGC and nuclear scientists have? Like, do they have this full picture? Can you educate us about how they get their media if the Internet is either spotty or not accessible at all times? That's a great question. They are fully aware. Iranians are very sophisticated, very technologically connected. They have, there's about 100,000 Starlink dishes, not tons,

I mean, I don't know what the unit is called. And there is Starlink on. It has been on for some time in Iran. And, you know, there are ways that they could bypass the obstacles the regime has put in place to get online. Because they're so savvy, because they speak English fluently, I've been shocked by some of the videos I receive of even little kids as little as eight or nine years old that have

sent me their wish for their country in fluent English because they watch movies online and they have learned English. So I have no doubt that what I get from them is how they respond to the unfolding events. When we hear...

People in the West, our politicians, our leadership talk about regime change and about Iranians sort of changing the regime from within, right? This is sort of romantic notion that the Iranian people will rise up, right? And we're told, as Americans, we're told that most Iranians don't like the Islamist leadership, the rules, the morality police, but...

We also understand that the Iranian people are not armed. The regime is a rising up of sorts would be how much of an undertaking would it be? So this goes to the heart of why the regime has lasted as long as it has, which is 46 years already. Iranians are very nationalist, very proud. They are proud of their past.

They're proud of how they as a nation, not as a state, have withstood the pressures of the regime and how far they've come individually to contribute to the international community. You know, it's not a secret that when they have left their country and have installed themselves somewhere else outside the Islamic regime, they have immensely contributed to the arts and sciences of that country. And they're one of the most successful institutions

immigrants, the second most successful immigrant group in the United States, according to the 2010 census. So I know I'm digressing, but I'm trying to set this up for you. The regime has about 20% base support.

But it has 100 percent monopoly of violence. They have all the guns. They have the besieged. They have the morality police, the IRGC, which is about 200000 strong. And on top of it, they have the conventional army, which, depending on who the candidate for the presidency is, they may or not, they may not be completely supportive of the candidacy. They don't go by authority.

What they run is called Khat-e-Imam, which is the line of the imam, which is how the indoctrination happens starting from the 1979 revolution, and the things he said, and the perpetuation of those doctrines. So we have a scenario where the regime...

really wants to stay in power and is willing to do whatever it takes to stay in power. And this sophisticated, young, Western-oriented woman

group of Iranians or a broad swath of Iranians that is not willing to be killed. So already there's an asymmetry of intentions. Not only there is an asymmetry of intentions, there is a complete asymmetry of capabilities. So Iran has all the guns, the state has all the guns, and the people don't. That doesn't mean that activism and

Opposition to the regime is dead. It's underground. It's very much a movement. It has banded many different groups of people together. And recently, as...

as early as 2019 when the regime killed about 1500 protesters and we have an audio file of Khamenei, the supreme leader who is sitting around in the supreme national security council saying I don't care, kill as many people as you can they have to be stopped so that audio file is 6 years old but it's verified and we know what the intention of the regime is the 20% that are vocal and have the guns

may have the upper hand, but the 80% that are suffering under the regime and are really looking forward to being integrated into the international community is a young, forward-looking, I want to say brave population that is not willing to stop.

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Just based on what you read and who you talk to, like, is there, for example, a belief that the nuclear program in Iran is ended, is over, or that this is looked at as a setback and that this regime will continue on and carry on and try and continue to build a nuclear weapon? Yeah. So in order to answer that question, Jessica, I have to dial the conversation back on.

to 2005 to when Ahmadinejad became the president of the Islamic Republic. One of his legacies is that he made the nuclear issue a national issue. So if people didn't have an opinion whether there were centuries of Fijis running and they were in Natanz and Qom and Isfahan and somewhere else, they became politicized about it. And not only they became politicized,

they became very much involved in how much of a nationalistic honor this is to have the nuclear technology, to have the nuclear know-how. So, you know, his unquote that he said to the United States, you know, he's this...

very blustery. He still is, but not to the degree he was before. Like Enfant Terrible of International Relations, where he just spewed out hatred and hate

And he said, we are not a nation of children that you can give us walnuts and chocolate and expect us to hand over our nuclear know-how. If you have it, we will have it too. And there's no way you can stop us. So he's basically he pushed the boundaries of how far the Islamic regime can get away with.

by saying these grandiose statements and not get attacked. So basically we had, we have since then, since Ahmadinejad's 2005, 20 years of the Islamic regime acting with impunity. They have raised the bar on

and spreading violence across the region and cracking down on their own people. I've always said that when the Islamic regime was presented with a choice of reform versus reform,

repression they've always picked up repression so they have never wavered from understanding that the only way they can hang on to this power is by cracking down not only on their own citizens but spreading this mayhem this unrest this absence of ruin instead of access of resistance in the region so that

is basically a continuation of what khomeini in 1979 the leader of the islamic revolution had envisioned

he had envisioned an Islamic caliphate that basically, as Naftali Bennett has said, spreads its tentacles across the region as far back as Europe and United States and replaces the Western civilizations with the Khatah Imam, which is the line of the Imam, which is a political Islam. So that's how the foreign policy of this country evolves.

I know I went through a lot of different paths to tell you that wherever we see the Islamic regime acting irrationally to them, this is very rational. This is what makes sense to them. This is how they operate. And this is how they know how to survive. Compromise is equal to capitulation. And they don't know even how to spell that word.

So in other words, there is a belief that as long as this regime is, a nuclear program would be. Yeah. So that, in other words, a nuclear program...

a nuclear weapons program i just want to make sure that we are um we are on the same page here uh is really needed by this regime because it guarantees its shelf life it prolongs its hold on power we've had this argument that you know i they they're not gonna explode it over israel they're not gonna exploit it over other adversaries and that that may have been true at some point

20 years ago, but as we'd seen with October 7th, there was a switch that was reset. And we understand from the documents that were discovered both in the hands of IDF and the ones that were smuggled out to the Western countries that

But the Islamic regime has every intention to physically attack Israel, disarm Israel, destroy Israel. And then once that's done, the rest of the world is their frontier. And Nazi, what what is that about? Is that and I know that's a big question, right? But what is the obsession with with Jews, with Israel, with the West? Is it?

Is it a spiritual quest to destroy world Jewry? Yeah, I wish I knew the answer. I can only tell you that I have read every word that was uttered or written by Khomeini in 1979. But actually, you know, the book that he put out and the compilation of his sermons is about 13 volumes.

And it's he didn't do it, but his students and people who have who were around him did it. And they started as far back as 1963 when he created riots in the city of Qom, which is the Vatican of Iran, and and led to his being exiled from the country by the Shah because he was such a firebrand and a and a disruptor. So the obsession that

You and I understand both as Jews and as people who are used to liberal ideas is a growing obsession on behalf of Khomeini that the Western civilization is the root cause of evil and injustice. So I want to just emphasize the term injustice and its corollary or opposite justice because

The Islamic regime considers itself the regime of justice. But what is this justice and whose justice is it? So they believe, the clerical regime believes, and Khomeini is the one that kind of handed this doctrine over, that the Muslim lands were usurped and...

looted by the Jews and by the colonial powers. And there has to be a time where this needs to be avenged. And vengeance doesn't stop with the Western powers and the Jews. Also individual vengeance. So he really hated the Shah of Iran. It was a personal vengeance because

In 1963, when he was exiled, the Shah of Iran had passed a set of reforms called the White Revolution that had given women full status, had given the women family protection laws, matrimonial laws.

had allowed them to really, really become a participant in the fabric of their society and help the Iranian state achieve its glorious place in the community of nations. I know I'm using big words, but these are the words that actually have been around because both the Shah and Khomeini have written about this. So...

So that's his personal vengeance against the Shah of Iran. You know, how come this is against the Sharia? Women are not allowed to work. Women are not allowed to be seen in public. Women are not allowed to speak and sing and be heard. And their voices have to be only for their husbands. So, you know, like, you know, medieval things that we know and have read about. That kind of resonated with me.

a branch of Muslim Brotherhood which at the time it was called Fidayen Islam which means people who sacrificed their lives for Islam and they took up the mantle of Khomeini

and married it to Marxists and intellectuals in Iran who saw a problem with moving forward, with progressing, with becoming part of the Western civilization. I'm sorry, stop me if this is too much history, but I feel like, you know, if we don't know the background, we can't go forward. So the obsession that you said, and it's a correct word,

is according to the leader of the Islamic revolution Khomeini is an obsession against the injustice

Right. Right.

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One more for you before I let you go. No, but but it's you're right. It's it's interesting. We can edit to what we will. We'll have to edit. But then we can maybe let it breathe in a longer sense, maybe in another podcast. But but just know just before I let you go, one one more thing for you. You know, I just want some of your reaction to what you're hearing in the United States. You know, President Trump says he doesn't want regime change. That would mean chaos.

He said Iran can continue selling its oil to China. When you hear things like that, the reaction from Americans, whether it's the left or the right, there's this desire not to be involved the way we have just become involved. What is your reaction to sort of our reaction to this?

I'm not shocked. Who wants war, Jessica? And who wants to be doing somebody else's bidding? I mean, we've done every nation's bidding around the world and

fought for them and really paid dearly about it, especially in the Middle East. Unfortunately, as Walter Russell Mead, my friend and colleague says, our achievements in Middle East are not crowned in glory. We have messed a lot of things up. So here's another scenario where Americans are looking at President Trump and saying,

you know, you promised us not to take us to another war. And that's completely understandable. What I like about this scenario, and I hear it even more often, is that I was told when I was a graduate student and then when I was a doctoral student and I spoke to many Iranian diplomats who came to the United Nations with a big smirk on their face that, you know, you guys are playing checkers when we're playing chess.

And, you know, they would hang the word there and leave it at that. And now I think we have a president that plays poker. And that's exactly where you corner the Islamic regime. That's how you deal with this regime. First of all, the campaign of I'll give you two weeks and then the first day, you know, he drops the bomb. And then we all know that

He achieved the strategic objective of making sure that the regime doesn't get a nuclear weapon, but we didn't know the extent of that.

So last night was a chaotic night for all of us. You know, why are we calling this off when we could have been there? But I know that the president was privy to the information that we didn't have. For example, nobody knew how much damage Fordow had sustained. Now we know that the actual uranium that was supposed to have been smuggled out of Fordow and moved to Natanz and Esfahan,

is actually not smuggled out. So the extent of damages in Fordow is heavy. I can see this nuclear program on the positive side being set back by 10 to 15 years. And I can see when the Islamic regime has licked its wounds, has hung its head low, and maybe 10 to 15 years down the line, they're hoping that there's a new

kind of psychosis of psychology in DC where they can actually start another program. The father of the nuclear program in Iran, the weaponization, is Ali Salehi. He's 76 years old. I can't see him doing this for another 10 years. I mean, this is an aging regime, by the way. You know, everybody is in their late 60s up to 98, which is actually...

He's quite active, but he's 98 years old. So this is an aging regime. As my colleague and friend Karim Sujat says, the average age is dead for the Islamic cohorts. So I kind of understand how the president said,

we achieved our strategic object objective which was we would never allow them to have a nuclear weapon we showed american military prowess uh we dropped 14 po i'm sorry um ordinances or the 30 000 pound bombs without losing a single serviceman that's a huge achievement and i still have my best ally my most important ally in the middle east as a friend

And I have kept my promise to my nation. I think this is a win-win for America. It's a win-win for Israel because they still have a tight relationship. The Tel Aviv has a tight relationship with Washington, despite the back and forth and maybe the angry phone calls.

Tel Aviv has maintained a posture and will maintain a posture that we are watching you, the Islamic regime. We are watching you. We have infiltrated you. We know where you are. We know where you hide. We can shoot a missile from a thousand mile cross, like a three-point basketball game, and take your bad guys out. So...

So I think this is a win-win for Israel and U.S., and I'm very proud of the president for having made another tough decision, by the way. Dr. Nazim Oneyan, thank you so much for the time, the history lesson, and your expertise. Appreciate you. Thank you very much. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you.

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