SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
We're joined now by Ariane Tabatabai. She's the public service fellow at Lawfair, served at the State and Defense Departments in the Biden administration. Thanks so much for being with us.
ARIANE TABATABAI: Good morning, Scott. Thanks for having me.
SIMON: Well, thank you for being with us. And tell us - the view in Washington, D.C., has been that the Iranian government is at a weak point and is especially vulnerable following the attacks in June and, of course, the deadly protests in December and January. Do you think that's accurate?
TABATABAI: Yeah. I do think that is accurate. Iran - the regime in Iran, I should say - is certainly at its weakest point it has been in a really long time, probably since the 1980s, and the factors you just outlined are part of it, right? We've had domestic internal unrest that the regime responded to with sheer brute force just a few weeks ago. And, of course, there were the strikes over the summer. And before that, for a couple of years now, Israel has been kind of going into Iran and hitting its military capabilities. It's been hitting its proxies throughout the region.
But what I think is important for folks to know is that just because the regime is at its weakest, it doesn't necessarily mean that this won't be a extended, potentially, conflict that and that it will actually end on our terms. The last time the regime was this weak, I mentioned, was in the 1980s, and, you know, at the beginning of the 1980s. It was right after the Iranian Revolution, 1979. And Saddam Hussein, at the time, used that moment of weakness thinking he would take over this, you know, oil-rich part of the country. And he would do it really quickly in just a few days, and it would wrap up. Eight years later, hundreds of thousands of casualties, and the borders just went back to what they were in 1979. So we need to be really careful here not to make assumptions just based on the fact that Iran - that the regime in Iran is weak currently.
SIMON: Well, what are you going to be watching for in the days ahead?
TABATABAI: Well, a few things. First of all, I'm going to be watching for what Iran does in response. What we typically see after the United States or Israel or others take action against Iran is generally waves of responses, and we're already seeing a couple of them play out now. And we've seen a couple of them happen overnight and the early morning, Eastern time. Jane was kind of talking to you about some of those earlier on.
Generally, what we see is a conventional phase of the attacks, which is what we're seeing now. And then it's followed by a longer-term - what we call a gray zone campaign, which goes on for a while. And what that typically entails is things like cyberattack, assassination efforts, kidnappings, terrorist attacks in the region and beyond and typically targeting the United States, Israel, but also those who are perceived to be aligned with the U.S. and Israel. So this is not going to end in a few days. If it does, in terms of the conventional phase of it, it will drag on for a while.
SIMON: You're suggesting attacks would occur - it could be a number places all over the world.
TABATABAI: I think that's correct. Yes.
SIMON: What's your estimate of the targets the U.S. and Israel have been hitting? We just heard Jane Arraf mention what seems to be a strike in a girls elementary school in southern Iran, the homes of Iran's leadership. This seems to be widening out from just the target being Iran's nuclear program.
TABATABAI: Right. I do think we need to wait and get more information about what happened on the girls school. This could be - you know, I don't believe that the United States specifically would try to target a girls school. But there are a couple of things to know here. One is that the Department of Defense under this administration has done away with the civilian harm mitigation and response efforts that were ongoing in the department, and that is deeply unfortunate because those efforts were precisely the kind of things that made sure that we didn't hit schools, hospitals, etc., accidentally, even, and thereby inflicting own goals that allow for adversaries to use that as propaganda.
But as Jane mentioned, you know, this was early morning on a Saturday in Iran. This is the start of the school week and work week there. Many of the targets that were hit are actually in pretty densely populated areas, close to population centers or in population centers. That's the case for some of the targets that you mentioned in Tehran. And so I wouldn't be surprised if we see the death toll - the civilian death toll specifically - going up.
To the point about the broader set of objectives and target sets here, you know, I do think that we're seeing something that is far beyond what we had seen over the summer and, you know, in recent years. It does seem like we are not just going after military targets. We're also going after the political decision-making bodies that are located in Tehran and...
SIMON: Right.
TABATABAI: ...Military facilities across the country as well. So, again, this seems like it is aligned with the message coming from the president today that it's really looking at overthrowing the regime and not just going after the nuclear program.
SIMON: Well, let me ask you, in the half minute we have left, President Trump has said, when we're finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. How do you think that message is going to be received in Iran?
TABATABAI: Well, it's a divided country, Scott. You know, you have 90 million people, some of whom will welcome this and many of whom - who won't or will be kind of - you know, who may agree with the sentiment, but who will be confused as to why they should follow the advice of a foreign president. So I think it'll be received in a mixed way.
SIMON: Ariane Tabatabai, who's a public service fellow at Lawfair. Thank you so much for being with us.
TABATABAI: Thanks for having me.
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