Michael Morell speaks with former CIA analyst John Sotos, who’s an expert on Iran. He’s now Chief of Analysis at PersuMedia. They discuss Iran’s goals in the Mideast, its relations with the US, domestic support for the Iranian regime and the modern-day challenges Iran faces since the Iranian Revolution.
Below is the transcript of the podcast:
Michael Morell
This is Intelligence Matters.
John Sotos served for over 34 years at the Central Intelligence Agency. He spent a significant amount of that time as a senior analyst covering Iran. In fact, he is one of the best Iran analysts ever produced by CIA. Today, John is the Chief of Analysis at PersuMedia, a strategic consulting firm, where he oversees a team of analysts conducting AI-assisted research and producing open-source analysis on a number of issues, including Iran. John joins us today to talk about that critically important country.
Michael Morell
John Sotos, welcome to Intelligence Matters, it’s great to have you on the show.
John Sotos
It’s great to be here, thanks for having me.
Michael Morell
And it’s very good to talk to you again, it’s been a long time.
John Sotos
It has.
Michael Morell
John, as you know, we’re going to spend the entire episode here talking about your favorite country, Iran. But before we get to that, I want to ask you, just briefly, how did you end up at CIA? And more importantly, how did you end up focusing a good chunk of your career on Iran?
John Sotos
Well, I guess the way to say it is there were sort of a couple of lucky “Plan Bs” on my part. I had wanted a military career, but the refractive error in my glasses kept me out of the Naval Academy.
Michael Morell
It kept me out of the United States Marines, yeah.
John Sotos
And then when I went to Platoon Leaders class with the Marines after growing up breathing nice clean smog with no problems in Southern California, when they put me in the woods in Quantico, my throat closed up and I was declared not physically qualified on account of asthma.
I wanted a career in public service and in looking at what my strengths were and what my options were, the CIA seemed very attractive to me. I was lucky in that I had a professor who had actually previously done some time as a case officer. He was able to kind of guide me in terms of courses to take and that sort of thing.
When I finished graduate school, it was right during the Reagan expansion of the defense and intelligence budgets, and that’s when I was hired on. I’d studied Middle Eastern history and I thought I was going to be an Arabist. During my first 6-7 years at the agency, I did North African things. When it was time to move on and do something different, well, I thought, “Gee, I’d like to do Iraq because, you know, that war with Iran is over, and that guy Saddam Hussein’s got ambitions. He’s going to be trying to throw his weight around!”
But, there weren’t any openings, I didn’t get the Syria job, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to do Palestinians. So, I said, “Well, there’s an opening on Iran, and the manager there is a really good guy. I’ll go there and wait.” And it just kind of caught my imagination, especially after working a place like Libya, where the intelligence problems all boil down to what’s going on in Gaddafi’s head. Here’s a place where there were real politics.
Michael Morell
Let’s jump into Iran. What are Iran’s objectives in the region? What do they want?
John Sotos
I would say overall that at the top level, they want respect. Iran is kind of the Rodney Dangerfield of the Middle East. It is a large country with a rich culture, an identity stretching back more than 2500 years, and a repeated imperial history.
They think to themselves, “We should be the preeminent power in the region and our interest should be taken seriously by others.” But in fact, what their experience has been, certainly over the last 40 years or so, 45 years since the revolution, is that they’ve been isolated. They’ve been confronted by their neighbors, feared by their neighbors, and their interests have not been respected from their point of view.
But to get down to specifics, I’d say they at least have two main revisionist goals. One, at this time, is the withdrawal of the U.S. military presence from the region. This is of long-standing. Part of its ideology goes back to their revolutionary anti-imperialist vocation. But the real practicality of it is that they see it as a threat and a counter to their own influence. So they would like to see that presence gone.
The second one that has been consistent over the years is the destruction of Israel, or maybe what I should say is the exhaustion and collapse of Israel. Their rhetoric is very florid and it’s filled with anti-Semitic tropes and things that make them sound like a latter-day Hitler. But I don’t think they’re seeking sort of an apocalyptic showdown with Israel that results in its military destruction. Instead, what they’re looking for is to contain it, to keep it under pressure until the system collapses, until Israelis get tired, if you will, of the Zionist project. But that also very much has its origins in its anti-imperialist ideology.
I would say an interesting thing has happened over time. When I first started working Iran in the late 80s, when they would discuss Israel, it was all about the liberation of Jerusalem. And nowadays, it’s more about confronting a threat to them. Perhaps it is a threat of their own making, but they see it as a threat and [want to] confront that threat as far away from Iran’s borders as possible. So I think in many ways, while their opposition is still cloaked in ideology, it’s a much more kind of conventional state versus state hostility.
Michael Morell
John, how much of what you just described in terms of objectives are the objectives of the clerical regime and how much goes way back in Iranian history?
John Sotos
Yeah, certainly the self-perception as a major regional power I think is shared by most of the political elite and probably most educated Iranians. That doesn’t mean most educated Iranians are dead set on militarily imposing their hegemony on the region. It’s the regime that is sort of taken, you know a very hard power, aggressive approach in terms of trying to obtain these goals. But what is interesting is there is a lot of ferment in Iranian academia and in their sort of foreign policy establishment about if these goals of ours, our worldview and approach to the changing world order needs a real revision.
It was interesting, just last week their Political Science Association met and speakers there included a lot of the foreign policy elite from across the ideological spectrum. [These included] Former Foreign Minister Zarif, very much a reformist, Foreign Minister Mottaki, who was Ahmadinejad’s Foreign Minister, and Ali Larijani, who is sort of a center-right conservative. And the sort of resolution that came out from this was, “We need a new approach. We need an approach that is based on constructive engagement and interaction with the world, not on resistance and ideology. We need a better emphasis on national interests, not on ideology.” They even said the policy of resistance has produced some political benefits [for us,] but at the expense of our economy and economic goals.
Michael Morell
If those are the objectives, what are the tools that Iran uses to achieve those objectives in the region?
John Sotos
I would say, by and large, Iran has emphasized its hard power, or at least I should say, the regime. We all know about the network of client militias that it has built up over the years in Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, the Palestinians.
Michael Morell
Let’s just mention those, so we’ve got Hezbollah in Lebanon.
John Sotos
Hezbollah in Lebanon, we’ve got Kataib-Hezbollah and a whole host of different militias that kind of grew out of the civil war in Iraq, and also the fight against ISIS. Some of [these] are funded by Iran and pro-Iranian inclination. The Ansar Allah, or Houthis, in Yemen, which in some ways continue to receive support from Iran, but it’s interesting, don’t take Iranian direction quite as well as some of the others. Then a host of the radical Palestinian groups, although a number of them really aren’t very important anymore. The main one is Hamas, which also is a Sunni organization, and being sort of nationalist Palestinians as well, [they] tend to keep the Iranians at a little bit arm’s length. They like the support, they like the money, but they don’t necessarily follow all Iranian guidance. Palestine Islamic Jihad is another one that is closer to Iran.
Michael Morell
OK, so they support these resistance groups if we’re going to call them that. What else in terms of tools?
John Sotos
Well, of course, certainly they have worked to build up their military, and they focused in particular on the missiles and drone program, largely as a deterrent. They suffered missile strikes at the hands of the Iraqis during the war with Iraq and had very limited means of striking back. I think that was the initial impetus. But as they saw the regional militaries grow, they weren’t subject to sanctions, so they can obtain modern weapons. And certainly, as they saw Israel’s military develop, they’ve sought to obtain these kinds of weapons largely as a means of deterrence.
Michael Morell
And deterring who? Deterring us and the Israelis?
John Sotos
Us and the Israelis. They want to avoid what happened to Iraq, what happened to Afghanistan and Libya essentially.
Michael Morell
Have we done anything in the last, you know, decade, two decades that has actually deterred Iran’s regional behavior?
John Sotos
This is kind of a funny answer. It may be a little hard to explain myself, but I would argue Iran is deterred right now. This is kind of what deterrence looks like. What do I mean? In the sense that they’ve actually been relatively restrained in their response to the October 7th events and the subsequent war in that.
For instance, we look at Hezbollah, which is probably the one closest to Iran and probably the best gauge of Iranian intentions. Yes, they’ve entered the battle in the sense that they’re fighting along the northern border, but they’ve tended to be reactive. They’ve confined their fighting to that border area, and they have taken ten times the casualties Israel has. They’re not looking to escalate.
The Houthis are a different story. I don’t know if you saw there was an article in the Atlantic a week ago. One of the quotes they gave to Robert Worth, the author, was the Houthis argued, “We have the most advanced position against Israel of any of the Axis of Resistance beyond even Iran’s. The Iranians were shocked that we had the guts to do what we did. So Iran certainly is still aiding the Houthis, and I think sort of in much the same way that we’re aiding the Israelis, even though we keep asking them to pay greater attention to the civilian casualties.
Michael Morell
This is a really interesting point you’re making. Is one way to think about this long-term assistance to the Axis of Resistance and the behavior that they support from those groups that they think they can get away with that, but they don’t think they can get away with more than that?
John Sotos
That’s one way of putting it. I think number one, they’ve had a ringside seat to what the U.S. military is capable of when it’s unleashed for 30 years. They know that a direct military clash with the United States would be bad for them. And I would also argue as well, and we’ll get to this later if we have time, that their domestic support is very narrow right now. They don’t have the people with them. That’s an added restraint on how much and how willing they are to take us on. The Axis of Resistance that they call this network of militias is, to them, primarily a deterrent in the sense [that] it’s to complicate our abilities to punish them. But it is also a means of keeping pressure on Israel and on us because, as we mentioned, they’d like us to get out of the region. So they, you know, will shoot the rockets and they will harass our positions in Iraq in particular to get us out of there. But, for the most part, they’ve tried to limit the kinds of casualties that that would produce because they know that the United States very much will act if there are casualties.
Michael Morell
Well, so it sounds like raw U.S. military power is the key deterrent here.
John Sotos
It is, I think. If you look, for instance, at the Soleimani assassination, at best, it produced a tactical standdown. I mean even then they felt they had to fire missiles back at us, although they avoided escalation by providing warning. But before that year was out, before 2020 was out, by September, the frequency of militia attacks on the U.S. positions in Iraq had actually increased. And, as we know, later, the IRGC also began operations intended to assassinate senior Trump administration officials until they were disrupted by FBI.
So I think those kinds of actions where we take a single target or hit a base or a senior figure, I think the Iranians see that more as kind of part of the ongoing setting of the rules of engagement, the rules of the game. I don’t want to trivialize it, people’s lives are at stake, but it’s not about deterrence. It’s about, “OK, they’re going to do this” or, “We went a little too far there” but it’s not about, “Oh, we should stop this altogether.” And I think their point of view is, “We have to keep up this pressure or the danger gets closer to us.”
Michael Morell
Have sanctions deterred them? How do you think about sanctions both in terms of their effectiveness at restraining the Iranians and then any unintended consequences or downsides to the United States in sanctions?
John Sotos
Sanctions, it kind of depends on which Iranians you’re talking about.
For those like the reformists, like former President Rouhani, and increasingly some of these sort of establishment conservatives in Iran, they see an increasing need for those sanctions to be lifted because they recognize that it’s weakening Iran and also that what it does is it prevents Iran from engaging with the world in a conventional way. The problem is that you have Khamenei and kind of the hardline circle around him who don’t trust the United States, are concerned that our ultimate goal is regime change, and that therefore making compromises to get the sanctions lifted is a very risky undertaking. That, essentially what it may do is disarm them of some tools and then we just come at them even harder demanding more concessions.
Unfortunately, the way this country has handled the JCPOA kind of reinforced that view. They made a lot of large concessions. We made some concessions too and then we said, “OK, you can have enrichment, but no higher than this. And you’ve got to, you know, you can’t keep a stockpile of uranium bigger than this.” Then, in return, they were going to get some sanctions relief. They got some of it, but a lot of countries were cautious about it anyway. So they didn’t get as much as they thought. But then, when we essentially repudiated it a couple of years later, it sort of reinforced this hardline narrative that, “You can’t trust the Americans.” [The hardliners thought,] “They want our destruction. Any deals with them won’t be upheld. So we’ve hurt ourselves.”
I guess I haven’t answered your question, though. Sanctions have succeeded insofar as they have weakened the regime. They have helped turn the population against them. But I would also argue that it clearly has been unsuccessful in preventing them from building up the largest missile inventory in the Middle East. It has not prevented them from extending their influence to this Axis of Resistance of militias. And it might have got us to a point where it restrained their nuclear ambitions, but we’ve tossed that out. I would argue sanctions were necessary but not sufficient.
What also helped was the coming to power of Rouhani, in his circle, who had a world view of quite frankly, “We want Iran to be a normal power. Our future, our ability to grow and become a strong state depends on our ability to have broad international interaction and and trade and attract investment.” So it dovetailed with their interests.
The other key thing is that we used sanctions as part of a larger overall strategy of engagement where we held out the credible offer of, “We will lift sanctions, or at least some sanctions, in return for concessions for you.”
My concern with sanctions is that it’s almost become kind of a performance art for our U.S. politicians in that it’s a way of demonstrating our righteous indignation, of showing domestic constituencies that we’ve done something. But there’s no thought about, “Well, how do we get from this to the goal of them stopping?” And essentially it’s sort of “Well, we will just keep piling on the pain until they cry ‘Uncle.’”
Unfortunately, all it does is it reinforces the views of the more, hardline, paranoid if you will, and not in a clinical way, leadership that they’re out to destroy the regime. Therefore, there’s a cost to resistance, but the cost of surrender will be greater because they’ll destroy us.
Michael Morell
So, John, one more question on the regional behavior. How do you think the Iranians assess how successful they’ve been in achieving their regional objectives, and, if you can compare that to prior to October 7th? Has October 7th changed any of that?
John Sotos
It’s a mixed picture I would say. You know, Iran’s got some successes it can point to. And as I also alluded, you’ve got a real divide among the political elite between sort of this hardline security military elite around Khamenei and the old reformists that we know and some of these more centrist and kind of moderate conservatives. There’s a real sort of difference about what they assess as success.
From the regime’s point of view, I would argue they’ve got a number of things they can point to. One is the preservation of the Assad regime. Assad and Syria was their main regional ally, and rather than seeing [the uprising] as a genuine revolt against an oppressive government, it was, “No, this is clearly an effort by the Saudis and the Turks, backed by the Americans, to shift the regional balance against us and strip us of our most important ally.”
So they see his preservation as success. I think they see their Axis of Resistance as a successful tool in terms of raising the cost to their enemies. And I suspect they see our gradual withdrawal over the past three administrations as at least a vindication of the policy of resistance, [although,] they probably overestimate their role in that.
And in one of the rare areas where their diplomacy has worked, I think the detente that they’ve established with the Saudis and the Emirates in the past year, year and a half is something they value a great deal as well.
And that’s one also that gets broader political support across the political elite, the reformists are supportive of that. But it’s interesting, each one of those things that I mentioned, from the regime position, there are criticisms of it almost daily in the in the media, primarily from the reformists and from academics. But every now and then, you’ll hear also some of the more thoughtful of the conservatives questioning some of this.
To give an example, one of the ways they tried to sell supporting Assad to the people was, “Well we’ll get all kinds of good economic concessions from the Syrians after the war to help repay our you know what we’ve done for them.” And in fact that Turkish trade with Syria is ten times that of Iran’s and that does not go unnoticed.
You asked about October 7th, I think again part of it kind of depends on how the crisis ends. They see some real benefits so far that have come from that. One, sort of the Israeli myth of invincibility has been dented at least. And insofar as their Axis of Resistance in their military pressure around the edges by the Hezbollah, by the Houthis, has complicated the Israeli military position, they see that as bearing fruit.
And I think also what is especially important to them is that it has revived or placed the Israel-Palestinian question sort of at the center of regional politics. Again that’s an issue they can work with, if you will. Before, when the question was containing Iran or ousting Assad, their standing with Arab publics went way down. On the Palestinian question, they can they can be popular again.
All that said though, the Saudis have said they are still interested in normalization with Israel. The price maybe has gone up, they’re now saying there’s got to be a Palestinian state. We saw a similar spike in pro-Iranian popularity among the Arab publics in 2006 in the war with Hezbollah, but that all dissipated over time, particularly once the Arab Spring and Iran’s machinations in the region became apparent.
So some of these successes they see may be fleeting. And what is interesting, and I’d go back to that Political Science Association, where they essentially said, “Our foreign policy needs a major revamping. It is not successful. It’s not appropriate to the times.”
Another interesting thing [is that] it’s a very insecure nation. They’re also looking around, and despite these successes, they worry they’re falling behind Turkey and Saudi Arabia and even the Emirates, rightfully so. It hasn’t gone unnoticed by the Iranians.
For instance, the Chinese investment in Saudi Arabia in the past few years dwarfs what the Chinese are putting into Iran because the Chinese aren’t fools. Saudi Arabia is a better bet. It’s easier to work with. You’re going to get a return on your investment. And even conservatives look at that and start wondering, “You know, are we aligned too close or relying too much on the Chinese and all the Russians?
So yes, they’ve had successes. Some I think are temporary. Some may be of greater standing. But in the end, Iran, despite its Axis of Resistance, despite its missile inventory and other successes, it’s still just a spoiler. You know, nobody, for instance, responded to Iran’s call to boycott Israel. However this crisis in Gaza ends, it’s going to be shaped by much more by the Saudis, the Israelis and us, and the other Arabs than it is by Iran.
Michael Morell
OK, let’s switch to domestic politics. How much public support does this regime have?
John Sotos
Not much. Ball park figure, I would say maybe 25% of the population is in solid support of the regime.
Michael Morell
And who are those people?
John Sotos
Typically, the support tends to be stronger in rural and small-town Iran than in the cities. It’s among those that are more “pious” and also, to an extent, among the working class. But then, there’s also a whole segment of the population, how much of that, I couldn’t tell you, for whom the revolution’s been very, very good to them. The IRGC, you know, Soleimani had I think like a a 6th-grade education, yet the IRGC propelled him to the heights of of the regime.
For a lot of guys, this has been a way of social mobility. It’s been good to them, the folks that are taking clerical training. As a matter of fact, it’s interesting, a senior Ayatollah a year or two ago complained that they couldn’t get these graduating new preachers, these new clerics, to go be the imam, sort of the parish priest, in small town Iran. They all wanted to work for the big revolutionary institutions in Tehran and the big cities and Qom, where there was money, where there is power to be had. So for lack of a better term, they’ve created, over 45 years, a class of apparatchiks who are part of the regime, so they’re supportive.
Michael Morell
What are the primary reasons for the lack of support right for why that number’s not higher?
John Sotos
Number one I think is the economy, and again that’s kind of where sanctions have had a contributing role. I would argue as well that the system is corrupt. It’s badly mismanaged. So even without sanctions the economy might well be a mess, although it would be less oppressive than it is now.
The economy is one, but there’s also, as we saw in the protests at the end of 2022, the Women, Life, Freedom protest, there’s just a reaction against the day-to-day oppressiveness of the regime, of the getting into people’s personal business. I tend to almost suspect that in some ways it’s this Mickey Mouse stuff about how much hair the women could show and whether or not you can dance in public that drives people crazy. Tthey might understand the execution of a dissident because they say, “Well, he took on the regime, what do you expect?” But it’s this every day treating the population like they’re middle schoolers in a parochial school I think that also is driving this.
It is interesting that we’re seeing several things that really kind of point to the loss of support for this regime. Protests are becoming more frequent. And again, that’s kind of fuelled by the economy often, but it’s often a political thing that sparks again, like how the death of Mahsa Amini set off the Women, Life, Freedom protests.
You know, there’s like a ten-year gap between the student protests in 1999, which were sort of the largest politically oriented civil unrest in Iran since the early ‘80s. We didn’t see anything like that again for ten years until 2009, in the Green movement.
We saw widespread protests in the winter of 2017/2018. We saw short, but terribly violent protests in November 2019 over a botched raising of gasoline prices. And then three years later, we have the Mahsa Amini protest, so these large sort of nationwide spasms of unrest seem to be coming with more frequency. And they don’t really have an answer other than very effective instruments of coercion.
Iranian academics, especially sociologists and economists, are ringing alarm bells in public, in the media, and in conferences, arguing that especially the public trust in the regime has evaporated and that, essentially, at some point, there will be upheaval of some sort. Unless that gap between what the people want, their lack of trust in the regime, and what the regime delivers is fixed.
Emigration is exploding in Iran, their own migration observatory in Tehran essentially characterized it as uncontrolled mass immigration. Between 2020 and 2021, according to OECD numbers, Iranian immigration to OECD countries doubled 141% I think it was.
And it’s also what we’re finding is that it’s not just the affluent that are getting out. Even poorer working-class Iranians are trying to get out, even if it means going to Turkey or Kuwait and taking menial jobs there. You frequently hear just that, especially young people, they don’t see a future for themselves in Iran.
Michael Morell
So does the regime understand the situation that they’re in? And obviously, they’re not responding to it in a “democratic” way, right? How do they think about this?
John Sotos
They recognize it, but to make the kinds of changes necessary, the kinds of reforms necessary to address it, to win back that population, would essentially be a very public and practical admission that the revolution has failed.
And it has failed, there’s not a religious democracy, there’s not a country with, a strong economy and a vibrant society supportive of the government. It’s become another nasty Middle Eastern dictatorship. And so they’re circling the wagons, for instance.
In past elections, Iran always had a very high turnout. The regime prized this because they could say, “See we got a 70% turnout. This shows that the people view us as legitimate and view the regime as legitimate.”
Last three elections, turnout has cratered because people recognize they’re not getting a real choice. The Majles elections earlier this month were 41% and that’s probably an inflated number. There’s good reason to think it might be closer to 35% or less. In the past, the regime maybe would have made excuses or would have wrung its hands, and now they kind of shrug and say, “Eh, it’s good enough!” And I think what it is, is that they’ve kind of given up. Their approach is, “We will rely on that 25% and the IRGC and guns.” We’ll see how successful they are.
Michael Morell
So does this blow up at some point, or is that just too hard to say?
John Sotos
(Laughs)
This town is littered with predictions of the imminent demise of the Islamic Republic.
Michael Morell
You know, I worked on North Korea, I don’t know, 30 years ago, and you’re right, we said, “This regime cannot last.”
John Sotos
You know, part of the problem is I think the society is very atomized and the regime is very good at identifying early on potential troublemakers and throwing them in jail. So it’s hard to see how the disparate groups that oppose the regime, the disparate parts of society, come together and organize and actually sort of mobilize resources against it. That would seem to be the problem.
The regime is pretty good at keeping them divided and limiting their ability to challenge them other than to kind of go out the streets. And eventually, that blows over, if you will. They just wait them out.
I really do wonder… you know, Khamenei is 85 years old. The expectations of succession are coloring people’s calculations in domestic politics. I do wonder if the succession is not as smooth, certainly not as smooth as the only one they’ve had before, which is when Khomeini died in ‘89, because they have successfully alienated a lot of very powerful people with excellent revolutionary credentials. I should say prominent, maybe I shouldn’t say powerful.
Do they see Khamenei’s absence as an opportunity to regain lost positions, to take on the hardline adversaries that are kind of monopolizing power? Now, that might be one opportunity. Because, if the succession does not go smoothly, if the regime looks kind of incompetent and weak in managing it, typically then that’s when ethnic separatists and others see an opportunity to maybe test the boundaries and see how much they can get away with.
So that’s the time to watch, but it’s real hard right now to see how they organize. Hopefully, I’ll be surprised, but I’m not going to say they can’t keep this up. I’ll say they can’t keep it up forever, but they sure seem to be able to keep it up for the foreseeable future.
Michael Morell
Well, John, I speak from experience, we were all very lucky that you ended up at CIA and you ended up working on Iran because obviously, you know the place probably better than anybody I know. So thank you, thank you for joining us. It’s been great to have you and certainly good to see you again.
John Sotos
It was great to see you and thanks again, I had a great time.
