STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Iranian leaders killed in recent days include Ali Larijani. He was a longtime Iranian official, most recently head of their National Security Council. Larijani was once a guest on this program back in 2015. We spoke with him in New York, and he spoke defiantly.
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ALI LARIJANI: (Through interpreter) Every day, it seems that your secretary of defense wakes up in the morning, opens the window, he shouts something at Iran and says that the military option is still on the table. So what does this mean? If you really want to have war, then just go with it. Why are you just talking about it all the time? Why is it that you just talk about it?
INSKEEP: That's Ali Larijani talking with me through an interpreter back in 2015. We heard earlier that Israel says a top Iranian intelligence official has been killed, so recently was the head of an Iranian militia and, of course, the supreme leader at the start of the war. So how much damage has the United States done to Iran's power structure, really? Scott Anderson is following this. His latest book is "King Of Kings" about the Iranian Revolution. Mr. Anderson, good morning.
SCOTT ANDERSON: Good morning, Steve.
INSKEEP: I just want to note, even though people have questioned what is the strategy, what is the endgame, Iranian missile and drone strikes have broadly declined in number since the start of the war, and a lot of Iranian leaders are dead. Is it fair to say the U.S. and Israeli campaign has done significant damage?
ANDERSON: It's done significant damage if you look at this as a conventional conflict, but I think the Iranian regime has prepared for this day for a long time. You see it both - their strategy on - from a military standpoint, of basically trying to choke off the oil industry in the Persian Gulf.
INSKEEP: Yeah.
ANDERSON: And from - on a political standpoint, I think that they were - have known this was coming for a long time. There's been reports that, you know, every government official has three or four or five replacements. So from a conventional standpoint, yeah, it's worked. But it's - if you're talking about decapitating the regime, that's not going to work in this instance.
INSKEEP: Why not?
ANDERSON: Because you have replacements for everyone, and you have this monolithic Revolutionary Guard structure that's designed to continue on, even without leadership.
INSKEEP: Let me read to you a critique of these recent U.S. and Israeli strikes. This comes from the political scientist Vali Nasr, who's been on the program before, and he posted this yesterday. Larijani's replacement - so this is the guy we just heard, whose voice we just heard has been killed. Larijani's replacement will be appointed by the Revolutionary Guard. This would be the extremists. With every assassination, Vali says, the U.S. and Israel are engineering greater radicalization of Iran's leadership. He says this is counterproductive. Do you think that's right?
ANDERSON: I think Vali has hit it on the nose. Absolutely. You're - the Israelis are essentially killing off the people that you would most likely want to negotiate with or would be open to negotiation and you're replacing with complete unknowns. You know, this idea that you can decapitate the Revolutionary Guard, it's - again, it goes back to this idea of you think you're fighting a conventional force. You're not. This is a force that is an enormous economic power in the country, and it's designed to withstand exactly this kind of war. And it's just going to get more stronger and more militant.
INSKEEP: You don't think that the United States would ultimately get down to the leader who is willing to deal with them the way that the former vice president of Venezuela is?
ANDERSON: Not at all. Not at all. I think just the reverse. You know, the Revolutionary Guard knows it has nowhere to go. This is kind of a fight to the death. You know, this idea that they're going to surrender, and even more absurd, this idea that there is going to be some sort of popular uprising against the Revolutionary Guard, it's just not in the cards. It doesn't matter how much bombing goes on, how much you take out leadership. What you're not taking out of the hands of the Revolutionary Guard are the instruments of death that they used in January against their own people - machine guns. You know, the only way there's going to be a popular uprising is if foreign troops come in on the ground.
INSKEEP: Is it at least possible that the United States could disrupt or even destroy Iran's command and control - make it impossible to run a centralized government?
ANDERSON: I don't think so because I think that this - again, I think that the government prepared for this a long time ago. It's very decentralized. There's not a power structure like you had in Venezuela or even in Iraq under Saddam Hussein. It's far - it has a far more complicated and more complex administration.
INSKEEP: Scott Anderson is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, and his latest book is "King Of Kings" about the Iranian Revolution. Thank you so much, sir.
ANDERSON: My pleasure. Thank you, too. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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