Podcast (Transcripción) The Daily Utah Chronicle, 09.0.2026 Kaeden Thomas (anfitrión) y Alan E. Eyre (embajador ® y académico norteamericano experto en Irán)
Kaeden: So, welcome to The Full Extent podcast. I’m your host, Kaeden Thomas, and I’m joined here with Alan Eyre, a distinguished individual that worked for the State Department as a diplomat and now is an expert in Iran. Can you introduce yourself a bit and the work you’ve done with Iran to make you one of the most qualified advisors in this current conflict?
Alan Eyre: Well, yeah. First of all, thanks for hosting me today. I worked for the US government for about 40 years in the Defense Department and mostly for the State Department. Most of my career was spent on Iran. I speak the language fluently. I’ve read tons of books and talked to God knows how many Iranians. So, yeah, I’m a long-time government worker, most of the which I was a US diplomat. I negotiate. I was part of the team that did the nuclear negotiations with Iran from 2010 to 2015. I had two roles in the US delegation. I was the subject matter expert on Iran, so I was briefing the delegation on significant occurrences and events and in Iran. And I was also at the State Department’s Persian language spokesperson, where I was interfacing with Iranian media to explain US positions and policies. And then after the JCPOA in 2015 I worked on sanctions. And so, yeah, I’ve spent most of my time working on Iran. I’ve enjoyed it personally. In my free time, I was always reading about Iran or talking with Iranians. And I retired in 2023. My last job, I was working as a contractor with the State Department trying to counter Iranian disinformation and misinformation.
Kaeden: Correct me if I’m wrong, but you lived a portion of your life in Iran. Is that correct?
Alan Eyre: I will correct you because you’re wrong in this case. Never been to Iran in my life. There was a generation of experts in the State Department, we called them the “Iranosaurs,” who actually spoke Persian, knew a lot about Iran, and had lived in Iran, like John Limbert is a famous one, or Mike Matrenko, but they have all retired. So, the next generation of experts, were ones who never lived in Iran. So, no, I have been following Iran since 1984 and I have never been to Iran.
Kaeden: Let’s delve into the matter a little bit. What have US Iranian relations been like for the Iran war, the current Iran war, and being a key negotiator in the JCPOA, did you ever expect tensions to boil over as they have in the last month?
Alan Eyre: One of the few constants of American foreign policy since 1979 has been antagonistic relations with Iran. It hasn’t been an up and down relationship. It’s just been a consistently down relationship. We broke diplomatic relations shortly after the Islamic Revolution in 1979 and the relation has been bad because the strategic goals of the two countries have been incompatible. It’s not a question of us not understanding the other, though we really don’t. It’s a question of Iran as a rejectionist power that is seeking to be a regional hegemon in the Persian Gulf, and the US doesn’t want Iran to be regional hegemon. It wants to be the one, along with its Gulf allies who have control in the Persian Gulf. There’s also historical animosity. The Iranians blame the US for imposing the Shah of Iran, who they got rid of, on Iran. They blame it for overthrowing Prime Minister Mosaddeq in 1953 who nationalized Iranian oil because the Anglo Iranian oil company was ripping off Iran to a fare thee well. So, there are historical grievances on both sides. There’s lack of understanding, but there’s also serious strategic clashes. So that’s why the relationship has always been bad. There’s never been a congress person or a senator who stood up and said, we need to improve our relations with Iran. What are the few things that the US Congress agrees on internally? Iran is bad. We need to oppose them. The second part of your question was …
Kaeden: Sorry, being a key negotiator in the JCPOA, did you ever expect relations to be frayed like this in recent months?
Alan Eyre: Yeah, I didn’t expect war. My opinion of the Trump administration is that it’s manifestly incompetent, and that incompetence has had economic, political and now military consequences. So, yeah, I didn’t expect them to handle the Iran portfolio, well, but neither did I expect Iran, the Trump administration, to involve us in an illegal, immoral and unnecessary war that, even now, is threatening to escalate disastrously.
Kaeden: You categorize the Trump administration as being incompetent. Could you expand a bit on that? Is there a complete misunderstanding of what Iran is to the US? Is there a misunderstanding of their intentionality with the US, or is it something completely different?
Alan Eyre: Well, there are all sorts of misunderstandings. I mean, to my mind, at least in terms of foreign policy, the key challenge with the US administration is that they have filled key positions based on personal loyalty to the President, as opposed to expertise. It used to be the case that you had a foreign policy apparatus like the State Department, USAID, whatever, that gathered information and analyzed it. This was done by experts. It moved upwards, and this insight and information went into formulating policy options that were presented to the highest levels of the US government, who then made strategic decisions based on the distilled opinion of collective expertise. That’s not happening. What’s happening now is you have the president and three or four of his friends who hold key positions, who are gathering what they know based on what people tell them, just random people, perhaps, and deciding what an optimal policy is and then implementing it. So, I doubt that anyone with any Iran expertise has been consulted in the lead-up to this war. Certainly, one of the fundamental miscalculations this administration has made is that, because Iran is so weak that if you apply pressure on it, Iran will accept the US’s increasingly maximalist demands, and even now, President Trump is threatening to escalate in the hopes that Iran will accept US demands that are were even unacceptable to Iran before the war. So, yeah, I think this administration is engaged in strategic magical thinking.
Kaeden: We’ve seen recently that the Trump administration has sought to de-escalate the conflict, or maybe that’s wrongly put, but rather seek some sort of agreement so they can extract their military personnel or de-escalate a bit. When do you expect that to actually come to fruition? Do you expect the conflict to end soon? Are our interests completely convoluted by this current conflict?
Alan Eyre: Yeah, I don’t think President Trump is seeking to de-escalate. I think he says soothing things to appease the international markets, financial markets, which are justifiably starting to freak out at where this is going. But we’re still sending troops to the Middle East. President Trump is saying things like, we’re going to take over Kharg Island. We’re going to take the island, we’re going to take their oil. We’re going to level all their infrastructure if they don’t do what we want. So no, I don’t think President Trump is trying to de-escalate. I think he’s increasingly pinning his hopes on military escalation, in the hopes of Iran capitulating to US demands, and that’s not going to happen, because Iran sees itself as involved in an existential fight. They think that Israel and the United States are trying to topple the Islamic Republic of Iran, and they don’t want it. They don’t want that to happen. So, what’s happening now is that President Trump is escalating. He’s also trying to relieve pressure on the Strait of Hormuz, because Iran has found the weak point to the international economy, which is control of the Strait of Hormuz, and they’re squeezing it. And President Trump has to get that to stop, because with the one thing that will cause President Trump to pull away from this war is the increasing adverse economic repercussions of Iranian control of the Strait of Hormuz.
Kaeden: I think I’ve gotten a bit ahead of myself. The following question is: what is the declared purpose of the war by the Trump administration, and does this match up with what has indicated our true intentions in the conflict? Have they been completely honest, is kind of what I’m trying to say, in declaring their intentionality within the war?
Alan Eyre: No, I mean, it is impossible to discern, to divinate, what the US is thinking based on what they say. I’ve given up on that attempt. They say different things, much of which is mutually inconsistent. Don’t forget, we started surging troops toward the Middle East as a result of the late December 2025 Iranian protests, where President Trump said, help is on the way, with the implication of assisting in regime change. That’s gone by the boards. Now at times, the US administration has said that the reason we attacked Iran was because Iran was an imminent threat. With some people saying, well, Iran was an imminent threat for the last 47 years. You can’t have a 47-year-old imminent threat. That makes no sense. Then some people in the Trump administration said, no, we in fact, attacked Iran to punish them for all the bad things they’ve done. Or Lindsey Graham said, we attacked Iran because we’re trying to get rid of all bad people in the world. Or the military said we attacked Iran, and this is probably the most realistic, because we wish to deny Iran the ability to project power beyond its borders by destroying its missiles and eliminating its support for proxy forces, getting rid of its nuclear energy program, which prevents them from surging to a nuclear weapon if they wish to, and also destroying their defense industrial base, getting rid of their air force and their navy. That makes sense, but we don’t know why President Trump started this war, even though, what we do know is that a key role was played by Israel, who came to President Trump and said, in essence, you could do in Iran what you did in Venezuela, quick decapitation strike, kill a few key people, shock and awe, the Iranian military, and they will be far more malleable and pliable, and give you what you want. In and out. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. It won’t take that long. President Trump seems to have bought that. It’s not working out that way.
Kaeden: You say one of the key intentions from the US government is that they want to prevent projection of power beyond its borders, and a large proportion of that is to eliminate Iranian nuclear ability. How much efficacy has the US government had in targeting nuclear sites and being able to sort of damper down that ability to project power through nuclear ability?
Alan Eyre: Well, Iran’s strategic deterrence isn’t primary centered in their nuclear program, because they don’t have a nuclear weapon. US intelligence was saying that since 2003 they really haven’t been trying to have a nuclear weapon, but what they have is a nuclear program, and they’ve learned how to enrich uranium, which is the hardest part of building a nuclear weapon. So if we had truly wanted to stop the Iranians from having a nuclear weapon, we would have negotiated with them before they mastered enrichment technology over 20-25, years ago. Because once a country learns to enrich uranium, it’s no longer a question of denying their capability. It’s a question of modifying their intention. Okay, so Iran, right now, has a nuclear program. Israel and the US bombed the heck out of it last June, during the 12 day war. We destroyed all their infrastructure,. And we bombed some more this time around. So, yes, we have taken out Iran’s civilian nuclear program that provides nuclear energy. We haven’t eliminated their nuclear reactor in Bushehr, which provides about 1% of Iranian electrical needs, but we’ve taken out the three main enrichment facilities in Natanz, Fordo and Esfahan. But the basis of Iranians, Iran’s nuclear program is the nuclear engineers and scientists they have, or Israel has killed some of them. But you can’t bomb knowledge out of existence. There’s nothing we can do to eliminate the collective knowledge Iran has about how to build centrifuges and how to build nuclear weapons. So paradoxically, even though we’ve eliminated Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, we could have massively increased their desire to have a nuclear weapon as a strategic deterrent, because Iran looks at the world and says, The US bombed Libya because they had a nuclear program, or we’re thinking about it, or we negotiated in a way, and then, Libya fell. Gaddafi fell. Part of the deal with Ukraine was, Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons after the fall of the USSR. We gave them the security guarantee that didn’t count for anything. Iran looks at North Korea who has nuclear weapons. No one’s attacking them. So, one of the results of this war could be that Iran decides to build a nuclear weapon, which means we have to go back every couple of months and bomb stuff again.
Kaeden: So, in your opinion, has this current conflict further entrenched nuclear bombs as an Iranian threat, rather than mitigated that?
Alan Eyre: I think it makes it more likely. I mean, what are the many consequences of this war? We’ve put in power in Iran. You talk about regime change. We’ve changed the regime. The regime in Iran right now is more radical, more militarized and more hardcore, less user friendly, if you will, than the one that existed before the war, and we’ve increased their intention, or at least the possibility of them deciding to go after a nuclear weapon, doesn’t mean they’ll get it, because we and Israel have a say in this, in terms of using our intelligence and our weaponry to bomb what needs to be bombed, that’s not an optimal way to restrain a country’s nuclear program. We had done the JCPOA, which gave us increased visibility into Iran’s nuclear program, which limited the amount of enrich uranium they can have, both in terms of a mountain, in terms of how highly enriched it could be, and also the quality of the centrifuges they had. So, we had dealt with the problem before President Trump ripped up the JCPOA unilaterally and then involved the US in two wars against Iran. So, yeah, we’ve made the, I think, the Persian Gulf, far less stable, far more Hobbesian, if you will, than it was before.
Kaeden: And this leads nicely into my next question, which is: the war in Iran has become a war between the Axis of Resistance and, correct me if I’m wrong, and the bilateral outbreaks between the US and Israel, what has prevented allies of the US from becoming involved in the world war and turning it more into a proxy war?
Alan Eyre: Well, I mean, again, the primary actors here right now are the US, Israel and Iran. Yes, Hezbollah is involved, and that’s a whole separate fund, but they’re fighting Israel for reasons that have to do partially with Iran, but also have to do with a lot of other issues. Houthis have just started sort of stepping, sticking their toe in the shallow end of the pool, in terms of bombing Israel. But the brunt of the conflict is between or among, between the US, on the one hand, and Iran and the other. As to as to why US allies are not involved, well, first of all, we didn’t consult them before the war. Unlike, for example, the 2003 Iraq war, the US didn’t go around and say, hey, we think this is a problem because of A, B and C. We’re going to do this. You want to help. They didn’t go to the UN and make a case. This administration isn’t into multilateral action; it’s into unilateral action. So, we did it, and after we had done it, I think our allies looked and said, goodness gracious. What a dumb thing you did. So when, for example, President Trump says, can you help fix this by helping us police the Strait of Hormuz?, they said, no, you didn’t ask us beforehand, so why should we help clean up the mess you’ve made? Our Gulf allies, who were not consulted before, the US and Israel attacked are going, Wait a sec. Why did you do this? This was not a smart idea, and now the consequences are hitting us, literally, as Iranian rocket and missiles target GCC, Gulf Cooperation Council, countries. And also the US doesn’t need allied help, right? We’ve got a trillion-dollar defense budget. Israel has something called a qualitative military advantage over Middle Eastern countries, so militarily, we can whoop Iran with one hand tied behind our back. From a purely military point of view, we don’t need anyone’s help. We’ve got air superiority. We can bomb whatever we want. The problem is that doesn’t translate into strategic success because Iran can still threaten the strait. They still have enough missiles and, more importantly, drones to hit targets in the GCC countries.
Kaeden: And I proposed this question before, had sent it to you, and you gave me a little bit of pushback on this, but I asked, what is the difference between this and a conflict such as R2P, responsibility to protect in Libya, because I could draw a lot of similarities, such as the administration’s expressed interest in preventing crimes against humanity and mass atrocities committed by the Iranian regime. So, what is truly the difference between a proxy war such as that one?
Alan Eyre: Well, again, there’s no similarity. It’s like a fish and a bicycle. First of all, R2P is a term of international law, and Trump doesn’t recognize international law, in the sense that if you are serious about R2P you go to the United Nations. Again, it’s a process that happens within the context of international law. There are UN documents and articles passed relating to R2P. So first of all, R2P presupposes a belief in and a willing to work within the confines and structures of international law that doesn’t exist with the Trump administration. Secondly, the US government doesn’t care about the Iranian people. It’s not doing this, so the Iranian people will have a better life. That’s got zero to do with why we’re attacking Iran. For example, Israel, which, again, it was one of the main factors for starting this war, what their goal is is regime collapse. They see the Islamic Republic of Iran as an existential enemy, and they want it gone. Now, if a pro-Western, user-friendly, pro-Israeli Government magically appears and takes its place, that’s great, but that isn’t necessary for Israel to have achieved its strategic goals. It just wants an Iran that is so busy being a failed state or a near-failed state that it can’t threaten Israel. So, literally, R2P has nothing to do, unfortunately, with this war. In the best of all possible worlds, the US would care about the people of Iran. But then again, if they cared about the people of Iran, you could argue that they wouldn’t have opposed sanctions over decades that have crushed the middle class while empowering those self-same military, security, and intelligence elites that are running the country.
Kaeden: So, the war has dragged on a lot longer than what many in the US had expected, at least the Trump administration had expected. There were certain, and this might be a leading question, were there certain miscalculations that the US made in the Iranian authoritarian resilience and or other factors? If so, what are they?
Alan Eyre: Everything they’ve done is a miscalculation, in the sense that it seems to be the case, that the US thought that if they shock and awed the Iranians, in addition to killing off Supreme Leader Khamenei, that those people left in leadership positions after the first few days would be so shocked and awed and terrified that they would make a deal with the US that accommodated US maximalist demands. There’s a famous Mike Tyson saying everyone’s got a plan until they’re punched in the face. Iran has a plan after they’re punched in the face, after they’re stabbed in the chest and after they’re shot. They’re used to taking a hit. They’re not like we are, very sensitive to internal political discontent. So, you can make the Iranian people poorer than ever, weaker than ever, worse than ever. That in the short and midterm is not going to affect the regime, because the regime has a very effective apparatus for controlling and suppressing their own population. So, making life bad for Iranian people by blowing up their water, blowing up their power sources, blowing up their colleges and universities, which we’re doing now, in the mid to long term, that’s going to affect the people, but it’s not going to exert pressure on this government, the the Islamic Republic, to cede to US demands.
Kaeden: If I may draw a parallel, as we saw in the popular resistance in Syria in 2024, which had success, what is it that the Iranians need to in order to have this regime change? I think we saw extreme debilitation of Syrian capabilities, and that eventually led to them being overrun. What is it that Iran needs? What is the catalyst that may lead them to having a popular revolution? Because I think there’s a lot of discontent within the country from the masses.
Alan Eyre: Well, first of all, again, there’s a popular misconception that the more immiserated, the more pressure you put in a population, the worse life gets, the worse the economy is, the more fragile the regime. That’s not necessarily true, because, for example, the Iranians look around. They see Syria, they see Libya, they see Yemen, they see Afghanistan, and they realize that living in a failed state is no fun. There’s a saying in Arabic: "better 1000 nights of oppression than one night of anarchy". So, it’s not enough to make life bad for most people. Second of all, realize that regime change is tough. There’s like 193 countries in the world. How often do you see quick, dislocated regime change from A to B just doesn’t happen that often, irrespective of whatever conditions exist in Iran right now, but in terms of what makes a successful revolution, yeah, widespread anger is enough. Though it doesn’t have to be 51%. There are all these statistics out about all you need is committed, 3.5- 4% of the population willing to go to the streets. But you need organization. Ambient anger is not enough. We’ve seen that in all the waves of Iranian protests that have taken to the streets, to include the most recent one on December 28, or on January 8 or 9, the Iranians just killed anywhere from eight to thirty odd thousands of its own people to quell that. You need organization. For example, the 1979 revolution, you had industrial workers striking. You had a union strike. You had the bazar class, the merchant class, giving money to people who were striking. You had powerful institutions that were that were committed to the overthrow of the regime. You don’t have that now.
There is no efficient and effective Iranian opposition, either inside or outside Iran there’s thousands of brave, committed opposition. Is there’s no Iranian opposition? Lastly, you don’t have defection from the elites. One of the essential prerequisites for an accessible, successful revolution are people in the elites, the people who control society, saying, enough. I don’t want to play anymore. I’m either leaving or I’m defecting to the other side. You’re not saying that the people who run Iran, the IRGC, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, are their back is to the water on the beach. They’re committed to fighting so, really, other than ambient popular discontent with the regime, none of the conditions for a successful regime change exist right now. That doesn’t mean that it won’t happen in the future at some point, but it’s not going to happen soon.
Kaeden: Going back just a little bit to the to the prior question: So, Iranian militaristic capabilities seem to be centered mostly in missile and drone strikes. How soon after these strikes end can they replenish these reserves? Because that’s where we’ve seen the most destruction come from on the Iranian side.
Alan Eyre: That’s a great question, and I don’t know the answer, in the sense that one of the things Israel has been taking out, and the US, to a lesser extent, is Iran’s defense industrial base. Last year, they took out Iran’s air defense, which opened up the skies for Israel and the US. And they’re bombing all the missile sites where they have missiles. They’re bombing the launchers because a missile without a launcher is no good. But, Iran has made tons and tons of these incredibly cheap drones, and that’s part of the economic calculus. If you have to deploy theater defense and missile interceptors that cost millions to defeat, Iranian drones that cost 20,000, you’re losing that exchange. So, how long will it take to reconstitute? I don’t know, but you can bet that’s going to be a priority. You talk about the eternal dichotomy and an economy between guns and butter, between providing for your own people and providing for the military industrial complex. Iran, whenever this is over, will be focusing on the latter. They will be focusing on guns. It’s like that line from The Matrix, or even John Wick: I need guns, lots of them. That’s what Iran needs. They’re going to need missiles and drones, lots of them. So, I don’t know how long it’ll take. I just know that once this war ends, it will be a strategic priority for Iran.
Kaeden: So, the next question is going to take into account the most recent developments of the war. What will, or what can the US be asking for on the negotiation table? And I think you covered this a bit already, right, with the Strait of Hormuz, but what leverage does Iran still hold?
Alan Eyre: Here’s the problem: because Iran is weaker every day in terms of military prowess, the US miscalculates and thinks you can ask for more. If the US wants to get out of this without it getting so much worse, it needs to ask for less. It needs to. It’s not going to be able to get Iran to give up missiles in the future as a strategic deterrent. It’s not going to be able to get Iran to give up on support for proxies. So, if I were in a position of power in the US, I would say, focus on getting a limited nuclear deal with Iran. And even that’s tough, because the Iran of now is less likely to agree to US demands than the Iran of before this war. So, what I’m saying is that because of this war, it’s probable that the US will have to take a worse deal than the deal it could have got before the war, because the Iranian side in the negotiating table now is far more hard line, far more militaristic, far less trusting of the US, and far more desirous of turbocharging strategic deterrence. So Israeli and US attacks in Iran don’t happen again six months from now or a year from now.
Kaeden: I think this goes quite in line with this, with what you’ve just said. But could you expand a bit on the 15-point misfire agreement proposed to the Iranians. Could you expand a bit on that, and is there anything within that could actually take hold, within the negotiation table?
Alan Eyre: Again, I think it’s quite possible, that Iran will relinquish the current control it has over the Strait of Hormoz because it realizes it has to play well with its Gulf neighbors, and they are verbally set against Iran having effective control over the rites of passage in the strait. And I think Iran is willing, or at least was willing before the war, for a nuclear deal where it gives up its store of highly enriched uranium at 60%, roughly 1000 pounds, or 440 kilograms, that it could use if it wanted to build a nuclear weapon. I think Iran is willing to agree to living up to its responsibilities under the NPT, the Non-Proliferation Treaty, of which it’s a signatory, in terms of IAEA inspections of its nuclear facilities. So, to me, a JCPOA plus deal is possible, though, even that, given all the horrible things that have happened, is going to be a very, very heavy lift. Because don’t forget, the current US administration has what I call strategic attention deficit disorder. It’s not good at long-term strategic focus on one issue. The Western press has already said that President Trump is bored with this war. He wants to move on to other issues. So, even though it’s theoretically possible that this administration could negotiate a deal with Iran. Don’t forget, it took us from start to finish five years to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran. Two years of concentrated negotiating. The first years were sort of just circling each other. So, it takes time, and it takes expertise, and I don’t think the US administration is necessarily willing to commit either of those.
Kaeden: Because Israel has such a large stake in the war, and they have such a heavy influence on our politics, what do you expect will be incorporated? Do you think Israeli concessions will be incorporated into final negotiations, or will they be completely cast to the wayside, especially with midterms coming up and Trump having to have some success that comes out of this Iranian conflict?
Alan Eyre: I think the US can get Israel to stop kinetic attacks on Iran. I don’t think the US will try to get Israel to stop its cyber tax, its intelligence penetration of Iran. I don’t think the US can get Israel to stop undermining the Islamic Republic, because, as I’ve said, Israel sees the Islamic Republic of Iran, this regime as an existential threat, and at least as long as this Israeli government’s in power, will continue to fight against it, and don’t forget, this war is still very popular in Israel, and Prime Minister Netanyahu needs that popularity, but I think that the US can get Israel to stop bombing Iranian infrastructure and what it’s attacking now if it chooses to do so.
Kaeden: The President has once urged Iranians during the most recent popular uprisings to take to the streets to force regime change but has now scaled these requests back in an attempt to preserve innocent Iranian lives, or that’s sort of how he presents it. And there’s been a lack of insight as to the plight of the Iranian people due to a lack of internet access. Given your context within the country, what is your assessment of the situation for the citizenry of Iran?
Alan Eyre: It’s interesting, especially during this war, I hear people say, the Iranian people think this, or the Iranian people think that. There are 93 million Iranians. There is no generalization anyone can make about what the people of Iran want other than they want to continue breathing. They want food, a better future. But other than that, it’s not realistic to think that you could make generalizations about what the Iranian people want. Some Iranian people want the US to invade and install a new regime, maybe headed by Reza Pahlavi. A certain number want that. Some are very aggrieved that the US and Israel killed Khamenei, who they see as their religious leader. Again, I’m not saying that’s most Iran, I think the only generalization I feel comfortable making about the Iranian people is that many, if not most, are deeply aggrieved with their own government because it does not do a good job of providing essential goods and services to the Iranian people. The Iranian Nizam, the regime is corrupt and it’s incompetent. So, I’m not saying that most Iranians like their government, but again, something like 36% of Americans think the current administration is doing a good job. So ambient discontent doesn’t mean regime change. I think most Iranians want an efficient and effective and responsive government. They don’t see this government as being that, but it’s a question of how many of them are willing to risk their own lives in the hopes of something better. A lot of them have, as we said, roughly 30,000, maybe, or fewer or more, died from the hands of their own government. But I can also say, I think a lot of Iranians don’t like being bombed, obviously. Regardless of your political views, to have your home blown up, to lose your family members, to lose your friends, to have no power, no clean water, no food for your kids, is not something that most people like, regardless of the greater good or the possibility of a future better life. There’s a great saying in Kenya: when elephants fight, it’s the grass that loses. The Iranian people are the grass in this, in this war.
Kaeden: What do you think Trump’s intentionality was in scaling back these calls to action for the Iranian people? Was it to minimize casualties, in order to save face or something else?
Alan Eyre: Again, whatever he says at any given time, I think, is a function of what he thinks sounds good, or he’s trying to influence the markets, or at least address some domestic political consideration. He said, everyone said, when the bombing started, the Iranian people don’t go out in the streets. What President Trump said is that when this is over, it’s up to you to create something better. I’m certain that even President Trump does not want the Iranian people to try and get regime change now, at least I would hope that would be the case. I think his attitude is, we’re going to collapse, or at least Israel’s attitude is, we’re going to collapse the Iranian state. If the Iranian people want to make a move and risk their own lives, because the regime will still have a significant repression apparatus, risk their own lives to put in something better, knock yourselves out.
Kaeden: I have just one last question. So, switching gears, I understand you’re somewhat of a connoisseur for Iranian proverbs and poetry. Is there a Persian proverb or saying or line of poetry that you think accurately depicts or resonates with the current geopolitical situation?
Alan Eyre: Well, there are a lot of them. A great saying by Saadi Shirazi of which is, I think at the UN, where he says:
« ………………… » which is pretty much like John Dunn’s “do not ask for whom the Bell Tolls.” It’s basically saying we’re all part of the same essence, regardless of the tribe or whatever affiliation. And so, if any one part of your body hurts, it’s the whole body. So again, there are a lot of different things you could say about to characterize this war, but let’s not get away from the fact that war is intrinsically immoral. This war is illegal. It’s also unnecessary, but people are overlooking and not focusing on the horrible, much like the war in Gaza. What Israel did there. There’s massive human suffering happening as a result of every airstrike, whether it’s by Israel, the US or Iran, who is certainly not blameless here. What they did to the Gulf countries is horrible. But the human factor, everyone gets so excited about talking geopolitics and great power competition. People are suffering. And those people like the US, or wherever, we’re like, we need to put boots on the ground. We need to do this. Or the worst one is, the US will lose credibility if we back down. A human life is something real. Credibility isn’t. Statesmen and stateswomen who want to sacrifice other people’s kids and other lives to maintain putative us credibility, I find obscene.
Kaeden: There’s been a decentering of the of the morality and the true human impacts of the current war. What do you think it would take for the US populace to recenter those concepts and ideologies? What do you think it’ll take for us to truly refocus on what matters, and that is human lives?
Alan Eyre: I don’t think it’s happened. We’ve seen it by the election of this gentleman, twice. I think everyone in modern America, not everyone, but I think many are focused on their rights, not so much as citizens, as consumers. We saw with this administration’s gutting of USA ID that as President Clinton said, “it’s the economy, stupid.” The middle class has been destroyed progressively over 1970. Economic inequality in the US right now is worse than it’s been since the Gilded Age. We’re, in effect, an oligarchy. So, yeah, ideally, people would feel empathy towards other people in other cultures, but empathy decreases exponentially the farther you get from yourself. Your feet are your family, your friends. By the time it reaches some poor Iranian schmuck, or some starving kid in Africa. It’s nonexistent. The US is no worse here than any other well, not much worse than many other countries. I’m not saying the US is less moral than other countries. I’m just saying that as a practical matter, I’m not waiting for sort of globalistic empathy to kick in among US citizens in order for the US to stop this war.
Kaeden: I think that about does it. I really appreciate your contributions on this podcast episode, Alan Eyre, thanks for being on.
Alan Eyre: Thank you for having me. I wish you all the best. Thank you.
