How We Arrived at this Iranian Moment and What Happens Next

War on the Rocks

News, Politics

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 5 February 2026

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Iranian regime has crushed the latest wave of protests through brute force, but the regime's survival comes at a cost. It now confronts a volatile mix of domestic opposition, weakened regional proxies, and years of economic decay. Ryan is joined by co-host Kerry Anderson in a conversation with Alex Vatanka (Middle East Institute), Holly Dagres (Washington Institute for Near East Policy), and Naysan Rafati (International Crisis Group) about the pressures bearing down on Tehran and what might come next.

This episode is brought to you by Victus Technologies. To learn more about Victus, check out: https://warontherocks.com/victus

Transcript

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0:00.0	You are listening to the War on the Rocks podcast on Strategy, Defense, and Foreign Affairs.
0:15.3	My name is Ryan Evans. I'm the founder of War on the Rocks. And in this episode, I'm joined by my friend and colleague as co-host,
0:21.2	Carrie Anderson. We speak to three great experts on what's happening in Iran, how we got here,
0:26.5	and what comes next before I let them introduce themselves. Some important information.
0:32.4	This episode is brought to you by Victus Technologies. Victus builds resilient navigation and contested environment autonomy for unmanned, manned,
0:40.3	and robotic systems.
0:42.3	MIT-born, venture-backed, and led by former SOCOM aviators and engineers,
0:48.3	Victus delivers mission-ready autonomy for the world's most challenging environments.
0:53.3	In the middle of this episode, I have a very short interview with Jesse Hamill, the Air Force
0:57.6	veteran who founded the company.
1:00.0	Learn more about Victus at war on the rocks.com slash Victus.
1:03.7	That's VICTUS.
1:06.3	Please enjoy the show.
1:08.2	Alex Fetanka, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C.
1:11.6	Holly Degroath, Senior Fellow at the Washington Institute and curator of the Iranist
1:15.4	Substack. Nason, Raffati, senior Iran analyst at the International Crisis Group.
1:20.4	So Carrie and I very much appreciate you all joining us to talk about these fast-moving events
1:24.7	in Iran. A lot's changing very quickly. So just for our listeners,
1:29.6	we are recording this on Wednesday. And where things currently stand is we still have a carrier
1:35.8	group in the Persian Gulf. And we have supposedly nuclear talks, maybe or maybe not, about
1:43.8	to start or starting with the Iranians.
1:46.1	We don't really know.
	...

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