The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - PREVIEW： Realpolitik #2 ｜ The Geopolitics of Iran

00:00:00.320 Hello, and welcome to a new episode of RealPolitik. I am your host, Firas Modad.

00:00:05.820 Today, I'm going to be talking about the geopolitics of Iran and trying to help us understand this country a little bit better.

00:00:13.400 First, I want to start with a little bit of context here, and I'm going to start with a favorite video of mine of General Wesley Clark,

00:00:20.840 a former NATO commander, describing what the U.S. policy for the Middle East has been since 2001.

00:00:28.580 Let's watch it together briefly.

00:00:30.760 About 10 days after 9-11, I went through the Pentagon, and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz.

00:00:37.960 I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the joint staff who used to work for me,

00:00:42.600 and one of the generals called me in. He said, sir, you've got to come in and talk to me a second.

00:00:47.100 I said, well, you're too busy. He said, no, no. He says, we've made the decision we're going to war with Iraq. 0.69

00:00:53.720 This was on or about the 20th of September. I said, we're going to war with Iraq. Why? 0.97

00:00:59.520 He said, I don't know. He said, I guess they don't know what else to do.

00:01:06.420 So I said, well, did they find some information connecting Saddam to al-Qaeda?

00:01:11.160 He said, no, no. He says, there's nothing new that way. They've just made the decision to go

00:01:16.520 to war with Iraq. He said, I guess it's like we don't know what to do about terrorists,

00:01:21.540 but we've got a good military and we can take down governments. And he said, I guess if the

00:01:27.100 only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail. So I came back to see

00:01:31.900 him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, are we still going 0.55

00:01:36.960 to war with Iraq? And he said, oh, it's worse than that. He said, he reached over on his desk.

00:01:41.480 He picked up a piece of paper. He said, I just, he said, I just got this down from upstairs,

00:01:45.840 meeting the secretary of defense's office today. And he said, this is a memo that describes how

00:01:49.660 we're going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq and then Syria, Lebanon, 0.99

00:01:57.080 Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finishing off Iran. I said, is it classified? He said, yes, sir.

00:02:02.600 I said, I said, well, don't show it to me. So for the neoconservatives, the plan was always to

00:02:11.200 at some point get rid of Iran and to deal with the Islamic revolution and terminate it essentially 0.98

00:02:18.000 in order to give Israel security. But why are Iran and Israel enemies? It doesn't necessarily make

00:02:26.520 sense. They're not exactly neighbors or anything. And the answer is that they weren't always enemies.

00:02:32.100 Biblically speaking, Cyrus the Great was a great friend of the Jewish people. He allowed them to

00:02:38.060 return to Jerusalem and to the kingdom of Judah after the Babylonian exile. And there's praise of 1.00

00:02:47.600 him in the Bible. Previously in the days of the Shah, the former ruler of Iran, who was overthrown by the

00:02:55.580 Islamic Revolution in 1979, Iran and Israel had a pretty good relationship. Israel built a lot of Iranian

00:03:03.840 infrastructure. I believe it included sewage systems, the airport in Tahrani, a bunch of other infrastructure

00:03:11.200 in the country. There was a robust oil trade between the two sides. There was a lot of Israeli middlemen 0.92

00:03:16.720 working as intermediaries for the sale of Iranian oil. So the relationship wasn't always bad. And it's not

00:03:24.120 really based on geography that there's this enmity. If you look at a map of Iran, which is always where 1.00

00:03:31.540 I like to start, Iran is over here. Then you've got Iraq, Syria, Jordan, and then here you have Israel.

00:03:39.120 And so just from a geographic perspective, it makes some sense for Iran and Israel to be friends in

00:03:46.700 order to contain the Arabs between them and to hold the threat from the Arabs. Remember in the 0.99

00:03:55.360 mid-20th century, Arab nationalism was on the rise. The Arabs of Iraq, for example, wanted to be able to

00:04:04.100 take this part of Iran, Khuzestan or Ahwaz, which is majority Arab. So there is reason for them to cooperate.

00:04:12.640 But this all changed with the Islamic Revolution. And in 1979, after, you know, disturbances in 1953, where the CIA

00:04:24.100 and the British and Iranian military officers helped remove an increasingly unpopular prime minister of Iran by the

00:04:33.640 name of Mossaddiq. In 1963, there were big protests against the Shah. These kept on escalating as a result of the

00:04:42.100 Shah's policy of trying to modernize Iran too quickly. And that modernization was seen as un-Islamic. And what led to

00:04:49.700 the overthrow of the Shah and this change in relationship was an alliance between the far-left communists of the

00:04:56.920 Tudah party, the Reds, and the black turbans, the religious groups led by, among others, Khomeini and his

00:05:05.660 mentors, which culminated in the success of the Islamic Revolution in Iran in, I think it was January 1979, that the

00:05:17.160 Shah decides that he's going on vacation in order to avoid the consequences of the protests. And then in February

00:05:25.060 of 1979, Imam Khomeini returns. And he returns, and there is this expectation on the part of the Carter

00:05:34.260 administration that Khomeini might be some kind of just figurehead, rather than an absolute autocratic

00:05:42.760 ruler of Iran. That turns out not to be the case. Khomeini drafts a new constitution and a new policy.

00:05:50.500 In November of 1979, a bunch of students that are associated with the Islamic Republic's regime

00:05:59.580 end up taking over the American embassy. And after the takeover of the American embassy,

00:06:08.260 new supreme leader of Iran, Khomeini, declares America as the great Satan, and the Soviet Union as 0.84

00:06:14.540 the lesser Satan, and Israel as the small Satan, I suppose. And this was the way in which the Islamist 1.00

00:06:23.300 rulers of Iran wanted to make it clear that they were charting a new pathway that focused on Iran's

00:06:31.380 Islamic identity, as opposed to the secularizing and modernizing efforts of the Shah. So this is the 0.96

00:06:38.880 context in which we have the Islamic revolution. I don't want to bore you with a long historical

00:06:44.660 discourse, but the idea for the new authorities in Iran under the 1979 Islamic regime was for them to be

00:06:56.740 able to have a strongly Islamist identity and a strongly Islamic identity in order to make Iran into a leader

00:07:08.300 of the Muslim world. This was always a bit of a tall order, because as this graphic will show you in a

00:07:17.060 moment, firstly, big percentages of Muslims don't even recognize the Shia as Muslims. So big percentage 1.00

00:07:26.480 of Sunni Muslims, you have here examples of, you know, Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, Tunisia. Incidentally,

00:07:33.960 the Palestinian territories, 40% of Palestinians don't even recognize that the Shia are Muslims.

00:07:41.340 Yet Iran under Khomeini wanted to claim leadership of the entire Muslim world. So that was a little bit 0.91

00:07:46.980 of a problem. The Shia, you have to remember, are a small minority of Muslims, maybe 15%, maybe 10 to 20%,

00:07:55.600 something in that range. So them trying to claim the mantle of leadership of the Muslim world was always 1.00

00:08:02.660 going to be a little bit of a challenge, shall we say. It wasn't really going to work very well. And yet,

00:08:09.160 the Iranians decided that they wanted to do this. Intellectually speaking, Khomeini, the leader of the

00:08:15.120 Islamic revolution, had translated the work of a man named Sayyid Qutb. I think we'll do an episode of the

00:08:21.700 Muslim Brotherhood at some point. Sayyid Qutb was a key figure in the Muslim Brotherhood who articulated

00:08:27.480 the need for jihad in order to re-Islamize society. And Khomeini, having seen the secularizing 0.77

00:08:34.280 influence of the Shah, wanted to do something similar. And so he was really aiming for this 0.92

00:08:39.380 kind of leadership role in order to become the key power in the region that was around him and in

00:08:48.780 order to become the key power in the broader Muslim world. So this kind of ambition really played a role.

00:08:55.520 So for Iran to try to lead the Muslim world when it's, you know, a majority Shia was always going 1.00

00:09:01.480 to be a total order. In front of you here is a map of the Sunnis and Shia in the Middle East region.

00:09:08.660 Blue are the Shia, red are the Sunnis. And really, this is an excellent map, firstly. But what it shows 0.97

00:09:15.720 you is that Iran and southern Iraq are the only really majority Shia areas. There is a Shia population

00:09:24.320 in Syria. These are the Alawites. Technically, they're heretical, and they're not included 1.00

00:09:30.280 among mainstream Shia Islam. That's another conversation that I won't get into. The Alawites

00:09:36.320 are an offshoot, if you will, of Shia Islam, just as the Druze in Israel and Lebanon and Syria.

00:09:45.060 And in Lebanon, you see a decent chunk of Shia population. You see Shia in the eastern province

00:09:51.140 of Saudi Arabia. This is where the oil sits. And you have Shia in Kuwait, again, a very oil-rich 1.00

00:10:00.460 country. And then some here in northern Yemen and in southern Saudi Arabia. Again, these are not

00:10:07.740 exactly the right kind of Shia. These are Zaidi Shia. So the way to summarize it is that mainstream

00:10:14.920 Shia Islam believes that there were 12 imams, religious leaders, who were all descended from

00:10:21.500 the Prophet of Islam, Muhammad. And these 12 imams are infallible. The Zaidis, the ones that you see 1.00

00:10:28.160 in Yemen here, these guys stop at five imams. And the Ismailis, they stop at seven imams. Whereas 0.96

00:10:35.660 mainstream Shia Islam continues down for all 12. So this is quickly a map of the Shia world. 1.00

00:10:42.920 And it shows you why Iran has influence in Yemen, why Iran has influence in Iraq, Syria,

00:10:50.200 and in Lebanon. This influence of the Iranians is primarily Shia-driven. But Iran wanted to be the 1.00

00:11:00.580 leader of the Muslim world. And it just couldn't do that. It couldn't make it work. Now going to the 1.00

00:11:05.180 geography of Iran, if you look at this country, it's incredibly mountainous, as I hope the map will

00:11:11.500 show you. You've got this massive sort of salt desert in the middle. It's separated from Iraq by a massive

00:11:20.820 mountain chain. And it has this big vulnerability in the south, in the Ahwaz area. And the oil is

00:11:29.000 concentrated here. And the oil is exported from a tiny little place called Khadig Island, which you

00:11:37.320 should be able to see right here. This is where the processing for export of Iranian crude actually

00:11:48.900 happens. And that's where the Iranians can send their oil into the rest of the world. 1.00

00:11:54.500 And the Iranian exports, as I'd mentioned, happen from this Khadig Island. This is an important point 0.96

00:12:01.240 to understand, because when you look at a map of the region, the ability to export oil is located in

00:12:09.720 these tiny locations. The way that oil exports work is that you need a very specialized, very dedicated

00:12:16.800 port to be able to do it. And each of those countries that are in the Gulf pretty much just have

00:12:22.840 one of those. The Emiratis have more than that. But this is where most of the oil exporting happens.

00:12:29.960 And if this kind of infrastructure is knocked out, if it's threatened by, say, Iranian missiles,

00:12:35.700 that pretty much takes care of it. You can no longer export oil. So the Iranians export from 0.99

00:12:41.060 Khadig Island. The Iraqis have a platform in Basra. The Kuwaitis, mostly from Ahmadi. 0.76

00:12:46.440 The Saudis, you can see that from Ras Al-Nura and Qatar. They have Ras Laffan and they have a terminal

00:12:53.800 up north for the gas exports. These assets are highly concentrated. And understanding this very

00:13:00.900 high concentration helps you understand Iran's military strategy. Because there are these critical

00:13:07.820 nodes from which oil can be exported, it makes sense for the Iranians to have precision-guided 1.00

00:13:15.460 ballistic missiles that can knock out this kind of infrastructure in the event of a war and cripple

00:13:21.760 their enemies. Their enemies rely on American forces and on the U.S. Air Force and on American

00:13:27.760 technology, jets, etc., etc. So for the Iranians, given that they want to be the dominant player in their 0.84

00:13:34.280 region, they want to be able to threaten critical assets, they can't build jets, and they often can't

00:13:41.020 afford to buy an air force the size, say, of Saudi Arabia's or the UAE because they have smaller oil

00:13:48.140 exports, what do you do about that? You build a lot of advanced missiles and you try to solve the

00:13:54.640 problem that way. Given the Shia map of this region, given the religious dynamics, the Iranian strategy

00:14:03.520 that we've seen of trying to create proxy forces in countries that are aligned with them also makes

00:14:11.380 a lot of sense. The Khomeini revolution was always intended to be an exportable product. Khomeini wanted 0.72

00:14:19.720 to not just lead the Muslim world, but he first had to lead his own Shia. And in order to lead the Shia, 0.85

00:14:29.320 he needed to have reliable partners, reliable allies in countries that had a decent Shia 0.96

00:14:37.260 minority or even majority for that dream to happen. So you ended up with the Iranians working very hard

00:14:45.880 after the 2003 invasion on cultivating militias in Iraq and being able to expand their power in Iraq.

00:14:53.160 By the way, all of the Gulf Arab states told the Americans in 2002 and in 2003 that if they

00:15:01.100 actually went ahead with invading Iraq, it was going to strengthen Iran. And strengthening Iran 0.95

00:15:08.700 would be a nightmare for them, given that Iran was a revolutionary country committed to dominating 1.00

00:15:14.780 Islam. The Americans didn't listen to their regional allies. And we got the so-called Shia crescent, 0.93

00:15:22.260 which is a network of governments and militias that were aligned with Iran, extending from Lebanon

00:15:29.760 to Syria to Iraq, and therefore becoming a significantly bigger threat to Saudi Arabia

00:15:35.200 and a significantly bigger threat to Turkey. You have to remember how much the Americans ignored

00:15:41.780 their own allies and all of their Middle Eastern policies. So the Iranians cultivated the strategy and 0.91

00:15:46.760 it was a perfectly reasonable strategy. Why did they want to do it? Well, again, because of geography.

00:15:52.260 Considering that Iran's oil sits in this region, which is where there are no mountains,

00:16:00.460 considering that this is the region that was found easiest to invade by the Iraqis during the

00:16:07.120 Iran-Iraq war, considering that Iran has always been vulnerable to being invaded from this part of

00:16:13.320 the country because that's the main way through. The rest of the country is too mountainous to send armies

00:16:19.980 through it. They saw that they must be in control of Iraq in order to be safe. And when the Americans

00:16:27.280 gave them that opportunity in 2003 by invading and dismantling the Ba'ath party, the ruling party of

00:16:34.940 Iraq, and dismantling the Iraqi military, which was the only challenge against the Iranians, the Iranians 0.51

00:16:41.600 took advantage. They fought Iraq from 1980 to 1988 in an incredibly bloody war. Each side lost at least

00:16:50.360 hundreds of thousands of soldiers. It really forged the Islamic revolution and it forced the Islamic 1.00

00:16:56.740 revolution to be more disciplined and to be more rational because having a war really imposes that on

00:17:04.640 you. When you're fighting a war, you have to behave in a more competent way if you're going to survive.

00:17:11.180 And that's why we see the Iranian military being, you know, not as rubbish as the others. That's why we

00:17:18.520 see Iran focusing on building its own independent defense industry, being able to build drones that end up

00:17:26.600 being imported en masse by Russia and copied by Russia and the Russia-Ukrainian war. That's why we see

00:17:32.080 the emphasis on missiles because, you know, they fought this kind of war and they've tried to figure

00:17:39.740 out the technologies that will work for them while challenging bigger and better armies that are

00:17:47.180 equipped by the West. If you enjoyed this piece of premium content from the Lotus Eaters,

00:17:51.860 head to our website where you can find more.

00:18:02.080 as well.

00:18:11.140 No juicy pieces.

00:18:19.020 Please share your comments.

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - June 30, 2025

PREVIEW： Realpolitik #2 ｜ The Geopolitics of Iran

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