On Monday night, forty-eight hours after President Donald Trump ordered a series of strikes on Iranian nuclear sites, he announced a ceasefire between Israel and Iran. Earlier that day, Iran had fired missiles at an American airbase in Qatar, an attack that came with advance warning and resulted in no casualties. The Trump Administration had initially signalled a reluctance to formally get involved in Israel’s campaign to destroy the Iranian nuclear program, but, since the strikes on Saturday, Trump had publicly mused about the possibility of regime change. Even after his Monday announcement that he’d helped broker a pause in hostilities, Iran and Israel continued to exchange missile attacks, each side accusing the other of breaking the terms of the ceasefire. On Tuesday morning, Trump told reporters at the White House, “We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing.”
Nicole Grajewski is a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Nuclear Policy Program, and the author of the book “Russia and Iran.” (On Monday, the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, met in Moscow with his country’s most powerful ally, Vladimir Putin, who had criticized the American strike.) Grajewski and I spoke just prior to the ceasefire announcement, and followed up after Trump’s declaration. Our conversation, edited for length and clarity, is below. In it, we discuss why a ceasefire may be difficult to sustain, what Russia’s relationships with both Iran and Israel may portend for the region, and why a war meant to end Iran’s nuclear program may instead have delivered prolonged uncertainty.
What are your concerns about a ceasefire holding in the short, medium, and long term?
In the short term, I think my primary concern is accidental escalation. Whether that’s Iranian proxy groups in Iraq launching something against Israel and Israel responding, or because of a response to statements from Israel or Iran. In the medium to long term, my concern has to do with the acrimonious relationship between Iran and Israel which would likely continue. This ceasefire is not going to eradicate years of shadow war that Iran and Israel are locked into. And the nuclear issue continues to loom.
How so?
On Monday, the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee of the Iranian parliament approved an outline of a bill that would suspend Iran’s coöperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency. That would curtail efforts at identifying, or at least accounting for, Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium and access to these nuclear sites. So there may be momentum within Iran that seems to be pushing against international oversight on its nuclear program.
Netanyahu has also been very aggressive lately—could you see him giving Trump a victory on a short-term ceasefire, as he did with Gaza, and then wanting to re-start the war?
It’s very foreseeable that Israel takes the opportunity again to go in and eliminate certain facilities or leadership. I think a lot of the escalatory dynamics probably hinge on what is left of the Iranian nuclear program and how close they are to reconstituting. Some of the uranium metal facilities have been destroyed, so that’s actually a pretty good stopgap for some of the weaponization work. But we don’t know where the highly enriched uranium that Iran had is. And then Iran has a lot of components of centrifuges, and these haven’t been under I.A.E.A. inspection since 2021. So, on the long-term side of it, you could see Iran developing a covert program. Moreover, because you did see Israel assassinating Iranian scientists in the past, Iran created a pretty robust community of nuclear scientists, nuclear engineers, nuclear physicists, so that continuity of knowledge would be maintained. So it’s not like the knowledge is eradicated either. And I think one thing that’s going to happen as a result of the mass intelligence penetration that really curtailed Iran’s military response and led to this destruction of their Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (I.R.G.C.) leadership, is that there’s going to be a higher-surveillance state, a higher clampdown at a societal level, and, I think, a far more secretive program.
What internal and external dynamics do you see within Iran right now?
There is a domestic audience to whom the Iranian leadership wants to convey a semblance of stability and a semblance of strength. But this is also about signalling to the United States that Iran is not weak and that, despite these massive hits when it comes to their military facilities, when it comes to their conventional power they still reserve a right to respond. But it seems that there was some warning or signalling to America and/or Qatar before this Qatar military-base attack. Iran likely doesn’t want to get involved in a war of attrition with the United States, even if they are preparing for one.
So the signalling is just to make clear that a prolonged war is not what Iran wants?
Yeah, and there’s obviously now this concern about regime change and internal stability. And so that’s going to be something, I think, that Iranian strategists are thinking about as well, because the continuation of this war for them also increases their vulnerability when it comes to the kind of control that they have at home. Israel on Monday targeted some of the organs of repression within Iran, such as the so-called Basij force, for example, and other parts of their internal security services.
Can you talk a little bit about how the regime is structured and operates?
The regime functions on repression, and terror to an extent. That’s how it was formed in this revolutionary context and then after the Iran-Iraq War. But it’s heavily bureaucratized and also institutionalized. And the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is one aspect of this. And one part of that is the Basij, which is their internal clamp on power. But they also have major conglomerates of economic interests that are really predicated on corruption. And it is factionalized. There are certain factions where you have the clergy and that emphasis in just certain parts of the country. So in Qom, for example, that’s a pretty large concentration of power when it comes to the clergy. And so you see that in discussions of the Guardian Council, which oversees elections and approves legislation, or even with succession talk. But then there’s also these hard-liners who are very much entrenched in this ideology of confrontation with the United States and Israel. And this also includes a very strong emphasis on maintaining at least this kind of threshold nuclear status and also projecting its power throughout the region.
So Iran functions as somewhat of a kleptocracy, but also a heavily ideological one. And, of course, this is all driven by an acute sense of vulnerability to any kind of internal or external upheaval that might threaten the very existence of the regime. And, of course, there’s a Supreme Leader, and he is the ultimate arbitrator within Iran, but there’s a cadre of élites around him.
I have seen you warn about the consequences of regime change. What about this regime’s structure that you have just broadly defined makes you concerned specifically?
One problem with the discussion of Iranian regime change in the United States is that it’s a goal within itself, but there is nothing with what happens after. The experience of Iraq is a good example of this. But with Iran, I think what’s worrisome is that there are such strong and also militarized factions that could potentially mount somewhat of a countercoup. The Iranian people mostly don’t support the current regime, and many Iranian people don’t support a revolutionary theocracy. But there are also the people who are actually in charge of this massive repression apparatus. And so one of my concerns is also that we pursue a policy of regime change, and what actually happens domestically in Iran is far greater repression and far more insecurity to the extent that the civilians are the ones who suffer the most. Regime change is ultimately up to the Iranian people. One would hope that this regime does fall at some point and some democratic government rises. But, you know, that’s not always how international relations play out.