Conflicted Community: Karim Sadjadpour Interview Pt.1 – Iran’s Global Strategy
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Hello, dear listeners. Just a quick note at the top here to let you know we had such a long and fruitful conversation with our guest today that we have split the episode into two parts. This first part is going out to all of our dear listeners. But to hear the second hour, you will have to subscribe to our conflicted community. You can find information on how to do that in our show notes.

That second part will be going out to subscribers tomorrow. Oh, and if you haven't already seen, Conflicted Season 5 is coming to your ears on July 17th, just a month away. We're discussing exactly what we'll be covering this season over on the Conflicted community. So if you want to find out, please do sign up. Now, on with the show. ♪

Hello, dearest listeners, Thomas Small and Eamon Dean here with another episode for members of our conflicted community. Eamon, you've been busy on Twitter this morning. I actually saw you retweeted or you tweeted back. I don't know what the word is. You tweeted the Ayatollah Khamenei today.

In response to his tweets about American university students protesting the war in Gaza being on the right side of history. Oh, yeah. He said, I invite the students of the U.S. universities to acquaint themselves with the Quran. So actually, I retweeted him. I said, how about you do it first? Well.

What a funny world we live in, Eamon. I mean, Lord have mercy, the Ayatollah of the Islamic Republic using Elon Musk's mass communication device to talk to left-wing students at Columbia University, who is then being retweeted by Eamon Dean, former spy, living God knows where in some kind of underground bunker, I think. What a world we live in. It's all connected. Yeah.

Now, dearest listeners, for the first time for our conflicted community, we have a guest with us.

A couple of his accolades, he's a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment Think Tank. He's adjunct professor. I've never known what that means, but he's an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and a prolific commentator for The New York Times, The Atlantic, on all things Iran. Dearest listeners, please welcome Kareem Sajjapoor. Hello, Kareem. Welcome to Conflicted.

Thank you so much, Thomas and Eamon. It's wonderful to be with you. How are you? It's great to have you on the show. This is the first time, Karim, that Eamon and I have engaged for the podcast, engaged in a conversation with someone that neither of us knows. But I think very quickly you will become a friend of the show. Well, that's very kind. And even though we haven't yet met, I feel like I know you guys because I've been listening to you for

a long time I'm a runner so I one of the ways I sustain my my running is by listening to podcasts and so I feel like I know you even though it's the first time we're talking oh thank you oh well that's sweet

We'll give you a chance in a moment, Kareem, to introduce yourself properly. But first, dearest listeners, with Kareem's help this week, we will be returning to the Islamic Republic of Iran. We'll be looking at the history, the current strategies of Iran's foreign policy, whether Iran is actually a threat to the West, the degree to which it is a threat, unrest inside Iran, unrest among the Iranian diaspora, and so much more. Let's jump right in.

Well, Eamon, today's episode is something of a departure. As I said, we're out of our comfort zone. We're having an ordinary, unstructured conversation with someone neither of us knows. So, Karim, as well as being a devoted, dear listener yourself, can you start off by telling us a little bit about yourself? You're from Iran. You're from Iran.

But where did you grow up? How has your experience as a member of the huge and actually extremely well-connected Iranian diaspora informed the work you do in foreign policy? So I grew up in the United States. My parents are both of Iranian origin. They were both born in Iran, but they both left Iran at a relatively young age. My father was a neurologist who left Iran early.

in his late 20s. He emigrated to the United States in the late 1950s. And my mom was born in Tehran, but she spent her formative years in Italy. And

They settled in the United States where I was born, and I think they perhaps thought they would one day go back to Iran. But when the revolution of 1979 happened, they stayed put in the United States. So I'm one of four siblings, and we were all, for the most part, raised in the U.S., although I spent almost a decade overseas. Initially, I had very little interest in the Middle East, despite my heritage. I lived in Latin America in high school.

I lived in Italy in university, and I started to get into the Middle East just before my graduate studies. And my first week of graduate school, 9-11 happened. Wow, what timing. Yeah, exactly. And that was kind of when it was clear to me that I was interested in

and devoting my career and my studies to the Middle East. So you're truly a member of the Iranian diaspora, but you spent a lot of time inside Iran as well, did you not? How long were you in Iran and what were you doing there? So I did. I spent in total, I would say, several years in Iran. Initially, I had gone there for summer, the summer of 2001, just before 9-11. And I

I spent the summer traveling throughout Iran. I was staying with my 100-year-old grandmother, whom I hadn't seen since I was a child. And then after I finished graduate school, I got a job with, at that time, it was kind of a new NGO called the International Crisis Group. And I was based in Tehran. I was their first student.

kind of Tehran based correspondent. And this was during the era of Muhammad Khatami, the reformist president who, you know, it appeared that Iran was on the cusp of some change. So I was based there for a couple years until I was very nearly imprisoned late 2005 when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the firebrand president was elected. I was one of the first dual nationals whom they warned. And

You know, I heeded the warning. When I was permitted to leave the country, I didn't go back. They warned you in a way suggesting to you that they believed you were probably something like a spy, so you'd better get out of there sort of thing? Yeah, you know, what they had done was they had taken away my passport. In Persian, we call it mamlul khuruj. You know, you're prohibited from leaving. So I was prohibited from leaving the country for several months. I was subject to interrogation. You know, I was at that time in my late 20s.

And I thought by virtue of the fact that I was, my work was in the public domain, you know, I was doing TV interviews and things like that. I thought, you know, it's clear that I'm not working clandestinely.

or any intelligence service. But one of the things you realize when you work on authoritarian regimes, whether it's Iran or Russia, they themselves don't really have independent NGOs and think tanks and organizations. So they assume that our system is the same and that all of our NGOs and think tanks and Hollywood is just all under control.

the CIA machinery. And so even though the work International Crisis Group does is all about engagement and conflict resolution and advocating for dialogue,

I think they just are suspicious of any independent NGOs or academics. Well, what you say, I think, makes sense. These authoritarian regimes, they tend to breed a certain paranoia, I think. I mean, notoriously, Karim, Iranians...

can indulge in a certain paranoia about the means whereby the West controls everything. The CIA, you say, but I think, and this is, you know, Eamon, where maybe you can draw on some of your experience. I believe Iranians are quite willing to believe that MI6 actually still controls everything because Iranians can have a sort of obsession with the British and

believing that the Americans are just kind of a front for British continued domination of the world. Eamon, when you were in the secret services for the Brits, did you ever get that sense from Iranians that you encountered? Oh my God. You mean the Iranians I controlled?

You wish. This immediately, I mean, this is, I was going to ask about Persian-Arab, Persian-Arab relations. Maybe, maybe we should just jump right to it. But first, Eamon, did you ever get a sense in your work for the British services that maybe Iranians were especially prone to think that the British controlled everything? I think one of the things I was told when I was undercover in Afghanistan, and I was told, no matter what you do,

no matter how you do it, if you want to escape Afghanistan because your cover is compromised, never, ever, ever cross the border into Iran. Cross into Pakistan, get in touch with us, and we will rescue you there. If you go into Iran, that's another ballgame altogether. And I said, why? Is it really that bad? I thought they have a problem with the Americans. They

They said, you have no idea the trauma. You know, they still harbor against us. So I was absolutely told never cross the border into Iran. Well, I was just going to say my British diplomat friends, they kind of are proud of the fact that Iran is one or Iranians are one of the few peoples left in the world that believes that Britain controls the world. And I remember saying,

asking a British diplomat friend of mine years ago when I was based in Tehran. He had served in Pakistan, and I asked him were the Pakistanis as kind of conspiratorial about Britain's role in the country, and he said,

Not really, because in the case of India and Pakistan, it was very clear that we were the colonial power. There was no illusions about that. But in the case of Iran, Iran was never formally colonized. So it was always, as they say in Persian, push the power there. Behind the curtain, there was this perception that

British machinations were at play, Russian machinations. And so that created this kind of- Well, not incorrectly, Karim. In fact, behind the curtains, there were British and Russians basically controlling everything. Precisely. And I don't want to jump ahead too far, but when President Raisi's helicopter crashed very recently in Iran- Oh, he went straight for it, dear listener. He just went straight for the helicopter crash. Yeah.

Well, I think, you know, probably few people believe that it was an accident. I think there's a lot of instantly the conspiracy theories went into play about who or which country was really behind it. Yeah. And I can tell you something here. I, too, you know, would love to sympathize with the Iranian current belief that the British control the world because actually the world is in deep shit.

And that is why I could believe that the British are controlling it. Oh, amen. Oh, amen. Below the belt. Terrible. It doesn't take British leadership of the world to turn everything to complete shit. Sadly, American leadership of the world is tending towards transforming everything to complete shit.

But now, Karim, you managed to get out of Iran. You got your passport back. You managed to escape. But what about other people that you knew, other people in the kind of NGO world in Iran at that time when Ahmadinejad came to power and Iran lurched more towards an anti-West position? I mean, did you know anyone who got caught up in that? Absolutely. I would say I have more than a dozen friends.

very close friends who were imprisoned in Iran. Some of them were reporters, people like Maziar Bahari, Roxana Saberi,

who spent months in prison. And I have a close friend of over 20 years, Siamak Namazi, who spent eight years as a hostage. He was released just last fall. And I think what is somewhat counterintuitive about all of these dual nationals whom they've imprisoned is

is that few of them have actually been strong critics of the government. Either they were just doing their job as reporters, or in many cases, including the case of Siamak Namazi, they were actually great advocates of engagement with Iran and U.S.-Iran normalization, which tells you something about the nature of the Iranian regime. These are folks who

are opposed to normalization with the United States. In some ways, a U.S.-Iran rapprochement, in my view, poses a greater existential threat to the regime than continued U.S.-Iran hostility. Because the whole raison d'etre of the regime is to defend...

Iranians and indeed the greater Islamic world from the West, from America, from the great Satan. So if the great Satan suddenly becomes a puppy dog, what are they going to do? The logic of their rule disappears. Absolutely. It's a regime whose identity for 45 years has been premised on death to America, death to Israel. And so

On one hand, it's a very strong part of their ideological identity, their organizing principle. But I would argue there's also a strategic logic behind it. And kind of the best way I like to illustrate this is,

An anecdote from a dinner party in Washington, D.C. from almost 15 years ago. I was at the home of the late great British writer Christopher Hitchens, whom I'm sure you're familiar with. Oh, wow. And Hitch used to have these salon dinners. And one evening, one of the guests at his dinner was the actor Sean Penn.

And Sean Penn had... Amon. Dear listeners, Amon's making faces. He's not a big Sean Penn fan. No, no. I am a big fan of him as an actor, not as a political advocate. Yeah, well, that's fair. And what was interesting was, you know, he at that time was interested in Iran, and he had made a visit to Iran. And he said to me, why doesn't the United States just make amends with Iran, make peace with Iran? And I said, well...

That's not a unilateral decision we can make. It also requires consent from Iran. And I said, this is a regime whose, as I said, its identity is premised on hostility towards the United States. And he said something very interesting. He had just come from Havana. Sean Penn was very tight with Fidel Castro, the late Cuban dictator.

And he said that Fidel always jokes that if America were to remove the embargo against Cuba,

he would do something provocative the next day to get it reinstated because he understands that his power, his authority in Cuba is best preserved in a bubble, in a closed environment. And if you crack open Cuba to the forces of international capitalism and civil society, it's much, much more difficult for him to maintain his hold on power. And I said that same logic applies to the Islamic Republic of Iran. This is a theocracy situation.

Its leader is called the Supreme Leader. He purports to be the prophet's representative on Earth. And it's not a winning governance model for the 21st century. You know, it's a young, dynamic society. You put it like that, Karim, and it's quite funny. Well, I truly believe there's probably few, if any, country in the world with a greater gap between the aspirations of its people and its regime and

than Iran, and that you have a regime that aspires to be like North Korea and a society that aspires to be like South Korea. And I think the way the regime maintains its hold on power is in a closed environment. And so death to America is, I believe, an earnest part of their ideology. They really believe it. They believe in the organizing principle.

But I think it's also politically expedient for them, for their survival, to maintain that isolation. There's something, Karim, you said here that, you know, since the regime is, you know, of course, like, I mean, dependent on a supreme leader who pretend to be, you know, the prophet's representative on

on Earth. Does that mean that Iran would be well served to become a non-profit country? A non-profit. Jesus Christ. I'm sorry about the dad jokes.

But seriously, Eamon, I did want to ask you this. So, you know, given what Karim's just said about the Iranian leadership thriving in a bubble and therefore needing the constraints of its ideological vision to remain, you know, remain in place. How do we relate that to Iran's foreign policy, which seems very much interventionist? It seems very much to go beyond its own borders. I mean, what is Iran's current policy?

grand strategy, really. I mean, there doesn't have to be one answer to this because countries, especially large countries, don't necessarily have one-dimensional grand strategies. There are many things on the leadership's mind, maintaining power, obviously to some extent, the economy, so that people don't get too unhappy. But in Iran's case, also, this network of proxies to achieve what exactly? What's their real strategy? It's simple.

I mean, really, if we simplify the complex, we can condense it into this strategic goal.

Nothing should happen in the Middle East without Iran's leadership say so. The whole idea is that we want to have influence, ultimate influence in the region. To give an example, I met recently with someone who was more or less involved in the negotiations between Iran and Saudi Arabia during the months leading up to the Beijing brokered peace that happened in March of 2023.

And he said that one of the Iranian delegates was talking to him. And he said, you know, guys, you really, since 2015, precisely 2017, you started to give us a really big headache in the region. And it's like, what? How? You know, and, you know, he means the Saudis. And he said, because you started opening up.

concerts, more female empowerments, you know, more, you know, of this modernization. And now you're running towards Israel. I mean, all of this is going to put us in a very difficult position.

So, you know, the answer is, well, how? How do we put you in this position? Well, because in the past, we can always, you know, point at you and says, well, we are not the only region or the only country in the Middle East that is, you know, very strict Sharia law and very strict, you know, dress code and all of these things.

Now, you have completely, you know, taken a lot of the pretexts and the safety in numbers that we were enjoying before. And now our own citizens, you know, are looking at a particular direction thinking, well, if these, I'm sorry to use this word, but basically that's exactly what he said. If these desert Bedouins can do it,

So why shouldn't the great descendants of the Sassanid and the Achaemenid and all the other great Persian empires, why can't they do it? I think this is when the Saudis realized that

Well, this is really deeply ideological. It's not just only purely political. You know, this is when the question finally was asked by my friend, this delegate who was close to Ali Shamkhani at that time. Who's that? Who's Ali Shamkhani? Ali Shamkhani, for those who don't know, he was the head of the Admiralty at some point and then the national security advisor to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He is one of the very few Arabs who

who reached the highest possible power in Iran because he's an Arab and he was, though he was incredibly loyal to Iran. Three of his own brothers were killed during the Iraq war on the Iranian side. So, of course, no one questioned his loyalty. But Ali Shamkhani, this guy, basically the Iranian delegate, was close to him. So when my friend, the Saudi friend, asked the question, he said,

What is it that you want exactly, guys? Like, I mean, just, you know, in a few words, what is it that you want? And we could give it to you that we could all live in peace. And he said, well, I don't think you're going to like what I'm saying. He said, say it. He said, we just want to have the final say here in this region. That's really interesting, Eamon. Now, I don't want to

pick a fight, a sort of Arab-Persian fight here on the podcast, although I kind of do. Oh, I'm one third Persian according to DNA. So please, I am one third Persian and proud of it. Karim, can you imagine that what Ayman says is true and that to some extent seeing Gulf Arabs on the other side of the Gulf thriving

would be deeply shaming for Iranians who might instinctively consider themselves to be innately superior to their opposites on the other side of the Gulf? Absolutely. You know, there's... No question, we definitely think we're superior. Well, the reality is that there's centuries-old cultural chauvinism that Iranians, Persians have exhibited towards the Arabs. You know, one of my...

favorite books about Iran is called Garden of the Brave and Warm. And it's a memoir by a guy called Terence O'Donnell, who went and lived on a farm outside of Shiraz in the 1960s and 1970s. And there's an anecdote from that book that always stayed with me. One of his servants in that home was basically a local peasant who was illiterate.

And every morning he would come to bring Terence his breakfast and he would knock on the door and say, are you Arab or Iranian? And if Terence was indecent and he was not dressed, he would answer he's Arab. So even this kind of peasant and provincial Iran felt this concern.

cultural superiority towards Arabs. And what I tell people is I use the word chauvinism and not racism, and that in my view, it's not like a malignant hatred. It's just, you know, this sense that you're almost indoctrinated with as a Neuronian from a young age that, you know, we're not Arab, we're distinct from Arabs. And so absolutely what Eamon said is right, that

I think for years, people, either Islamic Republic officials or people living under the Islamic Republic, could at least say, well, at least women can drive. For example, in Iran, they couldn't drive. In Saudi Arabia, at least we're more advanced than the Saudis. And that's no longer true. You know, Saudi Arabia has, in the last several years, made tremendous social reforms, and

They're hosting Iran's most talented singers and musicians that can't perform inside Iran. And so that has been a great source of resentment among the population in Iran, not just Saudi Arabia, but also Dubai, a place that four or five decades ago was a backwater for Iranians. And now we'll take a quick break here. And when we come back, we'll hear more from Karim. We'll be right back. ♪

Welcome back, dear listeners. We're here with Kareem Sajapur. When we left, we were discussing the frequently fractious relationship between Persians and Arabs. And I think we should continue in that vein. Maybe in classic neoliberal fashion, this sense of competition on the economic and cultural front is actually leading to...

peace. Not only did Saudi and Iran work together through that China mediated peace agreement around Yemen, but one reads, I read yesterday that the Iranian government has announced that the Saudi crown prince, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has accepted an invitation to visit Iran. Now, I don't know if that's true. You may know if it is true, Ayman especially.

But, I mean, that is a remarkable change, if true. I know what is behind all of this, and I think the dear listener would appreciate, like I mean, the amount of information coming. So, actually, Mohammed bin Salman did accept. The date is not set yet, but he did accept an invitation to come to Iran. But he's not coming to Iran purely just to have pleasantries. There has been recently...

an agreement at least between four or five, I would say, senior GCC leaders. You know, this is like, you know, the Emir of Kuwait, the King of Bahrain, you know, the Emir of Qatar finally, along with Mohammed bin Zayed and Mohammed bin Salman, to not allow the Islamic Republic to isolate any GCC country alone and have bilateral agreements with them in isolation from the rest of the GCC.

Mohammed bin Salman want to go now with a full authority from all the other GCC leaders including also the Sultan of Amman to offer Iran once and for all an enduring and lasting non-aggression pact between Iran and the GCC where the GCC from their part would prohibit any third party you know whether it's the US, Israel, wherever you know to use their territories, their airspace, their air bases

to attack Iran or to use their intelligence apparatus in order to undermine Iran. And in return, Iran would do the same. No more trying to support any subversive efforts against the GCC, whether it's from Yemen or Bahrain or Kuwait.

And on top of all of this, the GCC is willing over a period between 10 to 15 years, but most likely 10 years, to invest collectively $250 billion U.S. dollars at $25 billion a year in the Iranian economy, especially in areas that are desperate for investment. Oil, gas, petrochemicals, telecommunications, digital infrastructure, transport infrastructure, all of this. In other words, we will own you. Amen. Amen.

This is shocking. Yes, I know. This is shocking, Eamon. This is such a change. I mean, frankly, in a way, it slightly undermines what we're always thinking about, talking about on this podcast, about the kind of intractable Cold War situation in the Middle East between these two sides. I mean, Kareem, what do you think?

Is the Iranian regime liable to accept this kind of proposal from the GCC, given everything you just told us about the need that the regime there has to maintain a stance of antagonism to, well, let's say to the West and to the status quo? So none of that is going to happen as long as this current supreme leader is in power, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who's 85 years old. You know, from 1979 to the present,

I would argue there's been no government in the world that has had a more clear and consistent grand strategy than the Islamic Republic of Iran. There's three parts to that grand strategy. Number one, they want to evict America from the Middle East. Number two, they want to replace Israel with Palestine. Number three is they want to help to bring down the US-led world order.

All of those three goals are at odds with the interests and the conduct of GCC states that want a strong U.S. presence in the region. Saudi Arabia is currently negotiating a defense treaty with the United States. Those states are prepared to normalize relations with Israel. And so at age 85, Ali Khamenei is not going to change his worldview.

And it's not the first time that countries, whether it's GCC countries or Europe or, frankly, the United States, has made decisions.

an appeal to Iran to say, listen, it's in your economic interest to change course and prioritize interests before ideology. But for the reasons we've discussed, this is a regime which has shown itself totally committed to its ideology, in part for domestic political expediency. So all of what Eamon laid out may one day be possible when you have leadership in Iran

whose organizing principle is the national interest of Iran rather than the revolutionary ideology of 1979. But for the time being, that's not the case. I want to qualify something here, which is the fact that this offer is time-sensitive. And it's time-sensitive by the fact that Mohammed bin Salman made it absolutely clear through the Saudi leadership channels with Iran that if so much as one person

individual dies in this Hajj because of an Iranian official action there in the Hajj, then this offer is over. Because at the end of the day, the scientists are absolutely terrified

of the fatwa that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued just two weeks ago on Twitter, actually, and on a speech he gave where he said that in this hajj there will be the great, you know, what he called bara'a, you know, which is the great march of denunciation,

against, you know, America and against Israel and against global imperialism. Now, for me, this brings really bad memories because in 1987, the Hajj season was unfortunately disrupted by 160,000 of the Iranian pilgrims at that time who were following the orders of Khomeini and Khamenei at that time and went to the streets of Mecca

420 plus people died. It was massive disturbance. And my mother was in that hajj. So I was, she was with my two brothers. I remember I was back home and there was no internet, no mobile phone. So you have no idea what's happening. We see on the TV, the scenes, you know, and we hear the shocking news about hundreds killed, thousands wounded, you know, Mecca is in deep chaos.

the 1987, they don't want this to be repeated. Basically, if there is any disturbance during the Hajj, the days between 15 of June to 21st of June, due to the call by Ayatollah Khamenei, whether it is by Iranian pilgrims or Iraqi pilgrims or Lebanese pilgrims or Yemeni pilgrims or Pakistani pilgrims who follow the Shia faith, the idea is that this is now the test for Iran. Do you want to live with us in peace?

Or do you want to continue to be a source of instability and sectarianism and a religious strife that would last forever? So the test is the Hajj season that is coming in the next two weeks. Returning to the question of sort of grand strategy, these negotiations, this back and forth between Saudi and Iran, what it suggests to me is

is that that prong of Iran's grand strategy that would undermine the Western world order, the American-led world order, is actually working, especially insofar as Iran is allied to Russia and China. Now, I want to get your sort of thoughts on this. Iran is often lumped in as a member of the so-called new axis of China-Russia-Iran.

What is, Karim, what is Iran's role in that alliance? Because

from the outside, even someone, an armchair expert like myself would think that in that alliance, Iran is really by far the junior member. I mean, Russia's already kind of struggling to remain parity with China, but at least Russia has 7,000 nuclear weapons. But sort of Iran, I just always think of it as it's economically backwards. Its governance structures are very weak. It's struggling to maintain control of its own populace. What role does it

play in that axis. It's true, Thomas, that in the threesome, Iran, China, and Russia, that Iran is the weakest of those three countries, but it's the most vociferous in its anti-Americanism, and that much more than China and Russia, it's willing to sacrifice its own interests. It places a

hostility toward America ahead of its own national interest. I'll give you an example. It was not in the interest, the national interest of Iran for the Taliban to return to power in Afghanistan because the Taliban is a Sunni fundamentalist government that exports mostly drugs and refugees to Iran. It has a long border with Iran. So it was in the national interest of Iran to have

a functioning Afghan government, a small US presence to maintain that functioning Afghan government. But because of the fact that they place hostility toward America above their own national interests, they supported the return of the Taliban to power and it hasn't been positive for Iran. Thomas, if we were having this conversation five, 10 years ago,

There was a conventional wisdom at that time, certainly in Washington, D.C., that Iran is a sectarian actor and it's trying to spread Shiism everywhere. And what I tell people then and now is that Iran is willing to employ sectarianism when it's advantageous. So in places like Iraq and Lebanon, when they have Shia pluralities and majorities, it's useful to play the sectarian card.

But they're willing to partner with Sunni Hamas. They're willing to partner with North Korea, with the Maduro government in Venezuela, with Russia and China, all governments in the world that share that goal of trying to bring down the U.S.-led world order. Iran is willing to partner with. And as I said, they feel that things are going their way. You know, in the Middle East right now,

They're dominating four Arab countries, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Gaza. Ayman mentioned earlier that the Gulf countries and Saudi Arabia want to work with Iran to achieve regional stability.

I think that's certainly a GCC interest to have regional stability. In my view, that's not an Iranian interest because the places where Iran dominates are countries which are fraught with instability, civil wars, power vacuums. That's what Iran has done very well is filling those power vacuums.

Staying on the more global dimension though, and this axis, the new axis of China, Russia, Iran, I was reading only this morning a fascinating and entirely unexpected link between Iran and its network of proxies, including obviously Hezbollah and the Houthis, and the geopolitics of Taiwan. So only this morning, I read a report where analysts believe that China

Is not unlike what many people think is not preparing to invade Taiwan, but rather preparing to subject Taiwan to a naval embargo to basically starve Taiwan until it concedes to Chinese control of the island.

And a number of recent drills by the Chinese Navy seem to suggest this strategy of embargo. But what really was interesting to me in this analysis was that apparently, and I don't know what you think about this, Eamon, apparently the Chinese are paying close attention to the Houthis' actions in the Red Sea as a way of seeing just how impactful the

naval embargoes, naval disruption of shipping can be. Do you give any credence to this, Eamon, that the actions of an Iranian proxy in South Arabia would be informing Chinese strategy over Taiwan? And is this an indication of how this new axis, I'm not suggesting a coordinated work here. I just mean that they have a shared goal and so they can learn from each other. And

In a sense, I would say they have paid attention to what's happening in the South Red Sea for lots of reasons. And one of them we discussed before, if you remember, on the podcast where we talked about China's interest in the port of Jizan, which is across the border from Yemen in Saudi Arabia, and how for them that region is very important because the transport of raw materials from East Africa into South Arabia, and from there you have the

upstream being turned into downstream and midstream, and then from there, you know, exported back into either Chinese markets, Asian markets, or European markets. So therefore, for them, they have studied, you know, this whole thing, not necessarily for the purpose of applying it in Taiwan, but for the purpose of avoiding any trouble in that region. So will they have learned the lessons of how do you execute a naval blockade? I would say necessarily no.

I know it might seem counterintuitive, but I would say no, because Taiwan is a very different ballgame altogether. It's an island. What they have learned, however, is the chokeholds in the Straits, and for them,

There is one particular straits which has always been worrisome for them, which is the Straits of Malacca, you know, just between Indonesia and Malaysia and near the island of Sumatra. I mean, this is where the Chinese are studying, you know, how to break a blockade by ensuring the safety and security of a strait.

They are not exactly impressed with Operation Prosperity Guardian, you know, which Biden is trying to effect against the Houthis, you know, because so far it has failed to secure the straits. But they are not looking at the Houthis as an example to how to conduct a naval blockade because the Houthis are doing it using asymmetric warfare tactics, not the Chinese tactics.

Great Navy, which basically can, whenever they want, blockade Taiwan. It's the question of how do you maintain that blockade? That's another issue altogether. Karim, since you inhabit the world of foreign policy NGOs, foreign policy analysis and commentary in D.C.,

How aware now is the American foreign policy establishment of the rise of genuine multipolarity? And when we're talking about Iran here, but it's all part of a much bigger story that is unfolding before our eyes of a post-unipolar world and not really the rise of a multipolar world, but the arrival of a multipolar world.

And when you work in the Middle Eastern, in the Iranian part of that world, how do you bring the new multipolarity to bear in your analysis of global geopolitics? Well, Thomas, right now there's a lot of discussion about the new great power competition. And the Middle East is one of the most important arenas for that great power competition. And I think one of the challenges we have is

Sometimes the tension between our domestic politics and the United States and our foreign policy interests. I'll give you an example. In my view, China and the United States actually have more overlapping interests when it comes to the Middle East than Russia and China do, even though Russia and China are commonly lumped together. Because in my view, China doesn't benefit from regional instability in the Middle East, the disruption of

trade, the disruption of oil prices, conflict which skyrockets the price of oil. None of that is in China's interest. It's certainly in Russia's interest. So in that domain, I think China and the United States actually have some overlapping interests. But

I was on a television program last week, and I suggested this, and I don't think I was convinced any of the hosts. And this is almost a bipartisan issue right now, one of the few bipartisan issues right now in the United States that

China is an adversary, and we are in this new Cold War with China, and it's a zero-sum challenge. When you look back at some of the lessons of the Cold War, Henry Kissinger wrote a wonderful book entitled On China, talking about Nixon's visit to China and their rapprochement with China and what midwife that was.

was in part these mutual fears that America and China had of the Soviet Union. And so I think we probably need to think a little more creatively on, rather than thinking about all these countries as a unified axis, at playing them off one another as we did during the Cold War. I agree with that. And I tell you why, because it is exactly what drove

Beijing to broker that peace between Saudi Arabia and Iran because they were afraid that a shooting war in the region, even between Saudi and Iran, would disrupt 40% of China's daily imports of energy.

Because you have Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar in terms of LNG, and the UAE. These six countries are responsible for 40% of China's daily consumption of energy. China would collapse if there is a massive conflict in the Middle East. They can't survive for too long.

I read that last week Putin visited China with his entire entourage and he came back with certain security agreements, which are from the West's point of view, threatening. But one thing he didn't come back with from his visit to Beijing was any progress on the idea of supplying energy to China.

I'm not sure if that's because China doesn't actually want to yoke its economic prosperity to Russia and would rather maintain its supply chains from the Middle East than have any way of Russia exerting any influence over it.

Clearly, there are fissures in this axis. And what you say, Karim, really echoes with what a lot of analysts from East Asia and Southeast Asia, Southeast Asian geopolitical analysts are saying openly now that America is getting it wrong, is really sort of imposing on the world its own obsession with a new Cold War and that China actually doesn't want this conflict. I read that and I think, well,

Well, really, I don't know. I mean, who knows? I mean, it's all smoke and mirrors, really, in the world of geopolitics. But that America's batshit crazy domestic political scene is not helping matters. I think we can all agree.

Now, I think we should end this first part of our interview with Kareem here. It's been a fascinating conversation. And dear listeners, if you want to hear the second half, you will have to become a dearest listener and join the conflicted community. As ever, info on how to do that is in the show notes.

For our dearest listeners in the conflicted community, expect the second half of our interview with Karim tomorrow, where we'll hear more about Iranian domestic unrest, their quest to prevent global integration, and what the future might hold after Supreme Leader Khamenei dies. We'll see you then. Conflicted is a Message Heard production. This episode was produced and edited by Harry Stott. Our theme music is by Matt Huxley and Tom Biddle.

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