Name: What comes next inside Iran? | Global News Podcast
Uploaded: 2026-03-03T23:01:55.000Z
Duration: 11 min 38 s
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Welcome to the global News Podcast on YouTube where we go behind the headlines of a story and tell you why it really matters.

On this episode, we are discussing the U. S. Israel war against Iran.

And after the fall of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, we're going to discuss what happens next.

Will there be regime change or a change of regime?

A difficult, complex question to answer, but

thankfully we have our chief international correspondent, Lyse Doucet with us now.

LYS has covered this region extensively and spent time there as recently as last month.

So the perfect guest to have on this program.

Lisa, thank you so much as always for your time.

Like I said, a complex, difficult question to answer.

But regime change, change of regime, what do you think will unfold over the coming days and weeks?

It means very different scenarios unfolding in Iran.

And I think anyone who has followed war, and

unfortunately there are all too many wars in our time, once they are unleashed, they very difficult control and acquire a momentum on their own, particularly in a war of this magnitude where Iran understands now.

And I heard this when I was in Tehran last month from the deputy foreign minister who said if the war is existential, it will be on a completely different scale.

And the way President Trump and the way Prime Minister Netanyahu continue to talk about it is that they're going to do the military operations, they'll do their job, and

then it's up to the Iranian people to do their job.

And President Trump says, once our bombing has finished, go into the streets and take over your institutions.

There's a long way from that statement to a scenario in which the Iranian people rise up and take control of the institutions.

And in the middle of that is a very complex political and security structure in Iran.

And even though we've often talked about how it is weakened, it is still robust.

There is in the June war of last year, the 12 Day War, there were no mass defections, there were no cracks as far as we could see in the clerical order.

I've heard Iranian observers saying if there were to be defections, if there were to be people stepping forward, it would have been that morning of Saturday when it was clear that the leader was gone.

So I think it's too early to say exactly how this will unfold when it when it comes to Iran, they're fighting back.

The security chief has said that we are ready for a long war.

What do Iran's leaders really want to happen next.

They want to inflict as much pain as possible on everyone who and every place which is in their reach.

We've broadcast the statements, the alarm, the shock in many ways of the Arab leaders, including in the Persian Gulf, they who had worked around the clock trying to convince President Trump not to embark on military action, they failed.

And I put this question to Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Ismail Baghai, on the first day of the war to say you're losing the allies you really need in this moment.

And he said it is we are not retaliating against our neighbors in the region.

And Iranian authorities, even as they are under attack, want to project stability.

They want to project that there is a seamless transition.

as you remember, there were hours in which they officially denied it, as soon as it was confirmed that the supreme leader had been killed, martyred, as they would say, then immediately under the constitution, a three man interim leadership council took charge.

The current president, Masood Pesheskyan, who is a reformist, the head of the judiciary, who is a hardliner, Mohsen Ajay, very, very hard line and a jurist of the Guardian Council, whose name is Alireza Arafi.

Those three people are now in charge and they will be in charge while the assembly of experts, an 88, roughly 88 member of very senior clerics, specially chosen and vetted, do what is one of their main tasks, possibly their only real task, which is to choose a new supreme leader.

Now, right now, there's lots of Discussion how can 88 clerics meet when with the strength of Israeli intelligence and American intelligence, they'll know where they are?

And it's not a kind of assembly that they meet with a zoom call.

So there is a sense in which that even though we heard from the foreign minister, Abbasarakchi, that that choice would be made in a matter of days, that perhaps this three member interim leadership council could stay on for longer.

And I should emphasize that this assembly of experts could choose an individual to become the supreme leader or they could choose a council, a new leadership council so that there would be a coalition of leaders.

I've seen also in the last few days a lot of protests from Shiite Muslims as well across the region protesting, you know, some of them saying that they've been orphaned after the death of the supreme Leader.

It's going to be Interesting to see what unfolds when it comes to people there and what they want to happen.

How to summarize the will of the people of Iran, the people who have lived for 47 years under an increasingly hardening and repressive Islamic Republic of Iran.

That last protest in January, which was nationwide, was put down with unprecedented force, the worst lethal force in the history of the Islamic Republic.

I was really stunned when we went to Tehran and saw how raw the anger and pain was, even asking a general question.

Not knowing how much people wanted to talk, but

when they were sure that their identity would be protected.

The emotions spilled, the tears spilled, the angry questions.

How come so many young people were killed?

Even people marching up to us in the middle of a market saying, I want my voices to be heard.

I've never heard this before in all my trips to Iran, since 1989, since, in fact, since the beginning of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's term, length of time in office.

I want my country to be attacked because it's not nice, they said, but

it's the only way we can bring about change.

And yet, while there are, as far as we can see, so many Iranians who revile this regime, there are those who revere Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who saw him as a spiritual leader, who, for many Iranians of a younger generation, of a certain generation, was the only leader that they knew.

So it is very much a country at a crossroads, pulling in different directions.

And going back to your first question, there has always been this anxiety among Iranians, even those who would like to see change, not wanting their country to be plunged into the kind of chaos and collapse that they see in their neighbors.

They see in Iraq, although Iraq is stable, stabilizing a bit.

They see what happens when there is a foreign intervention.

And so for them, they want to see change in the regime.

But there are those who basically feel the only way to make their lives better, to bring Iran into the international community, to not have this kind of standoff, to not be led by political leaders who spend untold sums of money on foreign proxies and partners right across the region and create even greater problems for Iranians in their daily lives.

Donald Trump wants Iran to follow the model of Venezuela, for example.

He himself, President Trump, has talked about the fact that some Iranian leaders are willing to talk to him as well, so could we say that the regime stays roughly the same, but

it could be more pragmatic, or is that just too simplistic to even say that?

We're back to the question with which we started.

Is it about changing the regime or is it about regime change?

President Trump gave a six minute interview to the New York Times.

And in that small little window where he spoke, he mused that he could do all of those, that it could be about regime change, both the people of Iran taking their destiny in their own hands.

As he said in his first speech, the best chance in generations.

He talked about he could possibly talk to Iranian leaders if they came forward.

He also talked about the Venezuela scenario, which the military action removed the President, Nicolas Maduro, his wife went along too.

They're now facing trial in New York, no American military casualties, and

the Vice president, Elsie Rodriguez, steps up.

She becomes the President and is now working with the United States of America and of course, providing access to the oil.

President Trump described the Venezuela option as the perfect scenario.

And it is true that a new supreme leader could emerge who is less hardline, less hostile to Israel and the United States, less suspicious of the west, less ready to spend all that, you know, millions, if not billions of Iran's money on foreign partners and proxies.

There could be a supreme leader who takes the country in a different direction.

But the whole apparatus of the Islamic Republic is still there, most of all the forces which are expected to play an absolutely pivotal role, no matter who takes the top spot, whether it's one or, as I mentioned earlier, a council, and

that is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

They were formed in 1979 because the new leaders didn't trust the army.

They thought it would be too still too loyal to the Shah.

They have one goal, which is to protect and to preserve the Islamic Republic.

And 47 years on, for many of them, particularly at the top levels, it also means preserving their privileges.

They now dominate Iran in terms of the economy and the security and they are very ideological.

But Iranian history also has another lesson for us.

During Iran's absolutely punishing war, eight year long war with Iraq in the 1980s.

At the end, the revolutionary leader, the first one, Ayatollah Khomeini, used this expression that he would agree to a ceasefire and he would drink from the poisoned chalice.