As the United States and Israel were bombing Iran in March, Princeton scholar Bernard Haykel laid out three possible scenarios for the end of the conflict.
The first option, he said, is that the existing regime, which has now lost its Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, “survives and hardens.”
The second is that it survives in a more moderate form, with “new leadership that’s more willing to cut deals with Americans and give up on some of its revolutionary ideology.” The third, which he considered the least likely, is the fall of the regime.
Now that a ceasefire is in place, albeit one that Vice President JD Vance has called “a fragile truce,” the United States is entering talks with Iran mediated by Pakistan, and both sides are claiming to be winning. Meanwhile, Israel is continuing airstrikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon, and in America, the GOP is warring over Trump’s decision to strike Iran.
The Deseret News spoke again with Haykel, director of Princeton’s Institute for the Transregional Study of the Contemporary Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia, on Thursday about where the war stands some 40 days after President Donald Trump announced the first strikes.
While Haykel said “the situation is opaque and it is impossible to predict outcomes at this stage,” he offered an assessment of the damage in Iran, his thoughts on why there hasn’t been more retaliation against the U.S., and why he considers this campaign “an American misadventure.”
The conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Deseret News: Is the current ceasefire a win for either side? There are analysts saying both yes and no.
Bernard Haykel: Each side is claiming it as a major victory. But frankly, without the opening of the Strait of Hormuz, I don’t see how this can be a win for the United States. And frankly, as far as Iran is concerned, even though the regime may survive this war and think of it as a win, the devastation to Iran is so incredible, so overwhelming, that no matter how they spin it, Iran cannot be a victor in this war. It’s going to take them a decade to rebuild what’s been destroyed, at least.
DN: In The Free Press Thursday, Niall Ferguson, Richard Haass and Philip Zelikow wrote that if Iran emerges with any control of the strait, one of its 10 demands, it would be a “major strategic victory for Iran, more than offsetting the severe damage that has been inflicted on its armed forces since February 28.” Is there any scenario where the United States would agree to something like that?
BH: I don’t think so. First, it’s against international law. Two, it’s not like the Suez Canal or the Panama Canal that are entirely owned by the countries in which they are located. Hormuz is different. It’s more like Malacca or Gibraltar or Bosphorus in Turkey. You can’t impede the flow, except in extreme cases of war. And then the Arab countries, I think, would find it intolerable that gas and oil shipments would be controlled by Iran.
So I can’t see that happening, but I do see concessions being offered to Iran for its willingness to go back to the status quo. Those concessions may involve the removal of economic sanctions, for example. And maybe some other restrictions.
DN: Do you think any payment from the United States, for rebuilding, would be offered?
BH: No, because that would be tantamount to an admission of guilt, that the war was illegal, and I don’t think the United States will admit to that.
DN: You’ve talked about the options for how the war might end, one of them being the regime hardening and surviving. What would that look like, if that is what is emerging now?
BH: It would mean the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the IRGC, will be in full control of the country; it will be a much more repressive regime. It looks like that is what has happened. Now, once the war is over, though, I think the Iranian population will start asking difficult questions, even of a hardened regime: Why did you get into this, was it worth pursuing a nuclear project, why can’t you provide good governance, security, electricity, water, all the things that are basic amenities. So I think the real challenge to the regime will begin after the peace.
DN: This, of course, is a regime that must be not only hardened but embittered by what has happened over the past month. It’s hard to see where any concessions to the citizenry would come from.
BH: I think the population, which is mostly against this regime, will also be embittered and will start asking of this hardened regime all kinds of difficult questions. And that questioning could take the form of demonstrations, as we’ve seen in the past. Iran has a long history of activist, revolutionary politics. In 1905, 1906, there was something called the Constitutional Revolution, and then in the early 1950s, you had a nationalist movement that was led by a very popular prime minister (Mohammad Mosaddeq); you had demonstrations then. And of course, there have been a series of demonstrations more recently. It’s a population that’s organized and restive when it comes to politics.
DN: We’re probably not getting a realistic look of the damage in Iran. What are you hearing?
BH: I’m hearing that 10,000 sites were bombed by the United States alone, and I’m not sure how many by Israel. I think the devastation in Iran, not just to infrastructure, not just to military (targets), has been very, very severe. Also, by the way, the damage in the Arab Gulf countries is more severe than we’re hearing, and in Israel. There’s been information censorship and blackouts on how much the Iranian attacks have caused.
The situation is very, very opaque. It’s hard to know what’s going on inside Iran. We don’t know if there are cracks in the regime, what those cracks might be. There’s a lot of pontification based on very little (information).
DN: Why haven’t we seen more retaliation outside of the Middle East toward the U.S. and its interests? Is there a risk that there will be delayed retaliation, even with this ceasefire?
BH: There’s always a possibility of terrorist activity inspired or led by Iran. But frankly, I think that the claims that Iran has this global network of sleeper cells is overstated and I think blown out of proportion. And after 9/11, the United States is much better at ferreting out potential terrorists. But there’s always the possibility of lone-wolf attacks, like the guy who attacked Salman Rushdie.
DN: So who do you see as winning currently?
BH: I don’t think that thinking in terms of winning or losing is appropriate or an adequate way to understand the dynamic of this war. I think that the Iranians are definitely losers in terms of the destruction and the loss of life they’ve had to suffer. But for them, a political victory is just survival of the regime.
In the case of the United States, you could win any number of engagements and battles, but if you don’t stop the Iranians from their nuclear program, if you don’t stop their ballistic missile program, if you don’t stop them from funding and arming and training their proxies around the region, and if you don’t ultimately topple the regime, then you’ve not won.
So the goals that have been set by the United States are extremely high and unlikely to be achieved. And the goal of the Iranians, which is very low, which is just survival, is more likely to be achieved, because it doesn’t require all that much. Just surviving.
DN: If we should not be thinking about this war in terms of winning and losing, how should we be thinking about it?
BH: First, I think this was an American misadventure. I don’t think it was well-considered. I think the Americans entered this war thinking a deal could be cut, that it would be like Venezuela. It was a misreading of the Iranian regime, and its history and its culture. And so, I think in terms of what the Americans set out to do is unlikely to result in achieving the goals.
As far as Iran is concerned, it will be seriously weakened. How weakened is still a question. It’s possible that the Iran regime is so weakened that it won’t survive much longer after this war is over. And if that’s the case, then the Americans will have actually won. But the jury’s still out on that.