Name: Iran's survival strategy against US ‘’control’ | Global News Podcast
Uploaded: 2026-03-05T23:01:03.000Z
Duration: 9 min 38 s
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Welcome to the global News Podcast on YouTube.

Today, as the US and Israel continue to strike Iran, we take a look at the Iranian response.

And is the war crucially going beyond Washington's control?

To talk more about this, I've got Bahman Kalbasi from the BBC's Persian service alongside me.

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

Now, first of all, let's kick off then with the Iranian response so far in response to the US And Israeli strikes.

What have you made of the strategy they're using thus far?

A lot of observers thought that if this war started that Iran at some point later on will start targeting Arab countries.

And some people were surprised how quickly they got there.

So I think that shows that they thought of this immediately as a war of survival.

Obviously, targeting of the Supreme Leader and the entire upper echelon of the military gave them the impression that this is a war of a regime change.

Therefore, they have to throw everything at it from the very get go.

The strategy is obviously for them, increasing pressure on global energy supply and making everybody else pay.

The definition of victory for them is survival.

It's not military victory, because that's obviously impossible versus United States and Israel jointly.

So how do you survive is that you increase the cost and stay in power until the calculus changes in Washington that this is going too long, that, that this is too costly and obviously the United States is going to or Trump administration is going to have to worry about the domestic implications of it as well as what the allies in the region are saying.

Bahman has strikes ramp up, so does the rhetoric in all of this we've been hearing again from Secretary of Defense for the United States, Pete Hegseth, using strong language, I quote, he's saying that the US Will control Iran and control it soon.

Can Iran ever really be under control, under the control of the United States?

It's hard to get into the minds of this administration's officials, especially when they speak in such bravado.

So we heard similar language used about Venezuela.

We will take, you know, take the oil even.

But the reality is this is a country of 90 million people.

It's very diverse, and short of entering with ground forces, it's unclear what the bombardment alone will accomplish.

It will obviously deprive the regime of many of its military tools, but

it does not mean that they will fall anytime soon because of it.

No aerial bombardment in history has alone resulted in a regime collapse.

Everybody in this administration almost gives a different definition of what the point of this is and what is the end goal and what when is it that they can declare victory and go home?

Is it the nuclear program which they themselves said was obliterated eight months ago?

All of it is very unclear and moving by the day, sometimes by the hour.

How are Iranian people feeling at this moment?

90 million people, like you say, are a huge country, and

then they're hearing words like, well, Iran will be toast, and they know it.

What can we make of the mindset of Iranians who are having to experience and live through this?

I mean, by the fact of 90 million means it is not a monolith.

And anybody who comes and says Iranians feel this way or the other isn't telling the entire story.

How much they want this regime gone plays a role on how they feel.

So we have people who are celebrating in the first day and hopeful that this will result in regime collapse.

As time goes by and that doesn't happen and the cost of civilians increases and daily life is completely interrupted, the very those very same people might shift their views.

We've had people on the other end who always opposed foreign intervention, who didn't like the fact that the United States came in, took out the leadership, even though some of them despised the leadership because basically, in their view, it wasn't anybody else's job to come in and do so.

We have just heard CNN reporting the CIA has been training or working with Kurdish forces in Iraq to send them through Iran and create a buffer zone that sends shockwaves across the Iranian political and social spectrum.

There is nothing that unites Iranians more from all sides than Iran's territorial integrity.

So the idea that somehow United States is arming ethnic groups that might result in civil war or parts of Iran being separated is a very uneasy feeling for a lot of people.

So maybe among those very people who want the regime changed, suddenly look at that and start worrying about where this is all going.

And therefore, are there fears that this could have parallels with what has happened in Gaza in terms of the length of time it has gone on for and also the number of civilian casualties and deaths that we've seen?

You know, people in sort of maybe self defense mechanism don't want to think that and don't want to go that far.

But there are absolutely voices who would say, okay, this is starting to look very similar to number of, you know, other conflicts in the region, Gaza included.

So I don't think a lot of people in Iran, I just spoke to family about 30 minutes ago begging them to, like, move for the time being.

You know, we hear the bombs, they're mainly hitting, you know, military sites, so we're going to stay.

And then I get messages from other people saying, my friend died and he was just passing by a street corner.

You know, two same people in the same city with the proximity of maybe like four or five miles, one wouldn't even leave because even though they can, they have a place they can go, they just don't want to endure the traffic.

So it just gives you a sense of how one within the same city people could have very, very different feelings about where this is going.

Let's finish off then with the question of control again.

And we've talked about the situation going beyond what the US has planned for and what they've outlined in terms of those, let's say, speculative numbers of four to five weeks and it all being resolved by then.

What resolve means, we don't even know, really.

Is there a worry that Washington loses control of this?

President Trump himself said that he was surprised that Iran was targeting Arab countries in the Persian Gulf.

Anybody who's paid any attention to Iran's strategy for years, that they have telegraphed this very openly wasn't a secret that they will do that.

So the fact that they didn't anticipate that and they're surprised by just gives you a sense that they weren't entirely in control even to begin with.

And the way the Americans are, American citizens are stuck in the region and there was no plan to evacuate them gives you another sense that they weren't necessarily prepared for the day after.

And so the longer this goes, obviously, the more complicated it becomes.

Population movement, shortages of food, the IRGC moving its ground forces into action.

There are still a lot of cards that they have that they could play from the Iranian side.

That could complicate things a lot further.

That's Bachman Kalbasi from the BBC's Persian service.

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