Iran on Notice.

One of the US military’s largest aircraft carriers arrives in the Middle East after thousands of Iranian protesters are killed in a brutal crackdown.

These were the largest, most widespread, and deadliest protests since the 1979 revolution.

How vulnerable is the regime, and what are President Trump’s options if he chooses to enforce his red line, tonight on "Compass Points."

♪ Announcer: Support for "Compass Points" has been provided by... the Judy and Peter Blum Kovler Foundation, Camilla and George Smith, the Dorney Koppel Foundation, the Gruber Family Foundation, and Cap and Margaret Ann Eschenroeder.

Additional support is provided by Friends of the News Hour.

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Thank you.

Once again from the David M. Rubenstein studio at WETA in Washington, moderator Nick Schifrin.

Hello and welcome to "Compass Points".

This is an inflection point for Iran, the United States, and perhaps the entire Middle East.

The Iranian protests that began last month have been unprecedented.

Urban, rural, middle, and working-class Iranians by the hundreds of thousands took to the streets an eruption of economic frustration that became a demand to bring down the regime.

The last time Iran experienced such widespread unrest and found itself this vulnerable, 47 years ago this month, the historic 1979 revolution, when the Shah fell and gave way to the ayatollah.

The Iranian crackdown killed thousands.

President Trump drew a red line, and now the USS Abraham Lincoln is in the region.

Iran is threatening regional war against Israel, US Allies, and more than 35,000 American service members, all within striking distance of Tehran.

To discuss all this, we turn to our experts this week.

Firas Maksad, Managing Director for Middle East and North Africa at the Eurasia Group and Associate Fellow at the Middle East Institute.

Vali Nasr, Professor at Johns Hopkins University SAIS and Senior Advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and a former State Department official in the Obama administration.

Behnam Ben Taleblu, the Iran Program Senior Director for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a think tank in Washington, D.C.

And Robin Wright, a columnist at The New Yorker.

Thank you all very much.

I really appreciate your being here.

And I want to start in Iran and in these protests with what is perhaps the most iconic, indeed the most tragic video that we have seen out of Iran, which is this, rows of body bags, all believed to be protesters who fought and died demanding freedom, lying on the floor of a morgue outside of Tehran.

There were so many bodies that day, they overflowed outside.

The regime called all these victims, quote, "armed terrorists."

And this week, we spoke to a witness whose name and voice we are changing for his safety.

[Massoud speaking foreign language offscreen] Schifrin: Vali Nasr, let me begin with you.

What are you hearing from people who you’re talking to inside Iran right now?

Nasr: I mean, the sense that you heard in the video is very much prevalent in Iran.

People are angry, they’re sad, they’re despondent.

There’s a sense of shock at what happened on January 8th and 9th, the scale of the killing.

Everybody I’ve talked to, they know somebody who was killed or somebody who knows somebody who was killed.

So I think this is a true watershed moment, and it’s going to take a very long time for the people of Iran, in fact, to get over what has happened.

But I also think psychologically for the regime, we talk about weak, strong.

I think it was a moment that transformed them as well, as they prepare for war with the United States.

I think they wanted to send a very powerful signal, both to the population, but also to the United States, that they have the resolve and they have discipline internally to actually do what they did.

That they’re determined to survive this moment at all costs.

So I think people are trying to internalize what all of this means.

Schifrin: Behnam, is that how you see it?

Watershed moment?

Taleblu: It certainly is an inflection point for the Islamic Republic.

You know, the scale of the crackdown, the numbers that are coming out, the images, the video that are coming out, the texts that are coming out, all point to this thing being historic, and not just for the 47-year history of the Islamic Republic, but for the past century and a half, if not two centuries, of the battle between the street and the state for power inside Iran.

Never has there been a crackdown like this before in such a rapid period of time in contemporary Iranian history.

This thing is unprecedented, particularly for a population, unlike some of its neighbors in the Middle East, that hasn’t been through insurgency, hasn’t been through civil war, hasn’t been through a sustained major foreign war.

The one question I hear that limited times you could get a call placed to you from Iran, or listening on someone else’s call, is this one word in Persian, which means, will he strike?

"Mizaneh."

almost this apprehension, this hesitation, this wonder, this concern: Will he strike?

Everyone, all eyes, when they can, are trained on Donald Trump, because he’s turned this, he’s raised expectations so much.

And especially given the death toll, one wonders if America doesn’t act, what will happen?

Well, we’ll certainly get to that question.

Robin, you wrote a phrase recently, "A new generation of martyrs "being created about these protests."

What do you mean?

Well, within Shiite Islam, and Iran is predominantly Shiite, the idea of martyrdom has been central since the seventh century.

And the idea is to, it’s better to die fighting for justice than to live with injustice.

And when you see the death toll, and the way people carrying the bodies to the cemetery in Tehran, a place called "the Paradise of Zahra", shouting "Death to Jamenei," and security forces being at the cemetery trying to break them up.

So they’re creating a new sense of martyrs for, within Shiite Islam, but within Iran as well.

And this is a moment, you put it in context of what happened in 2009, protests against a fraudulent presidential election, 2017 and 18 and 19 over economic issues, 2022 over issues of personal freedom.

You see this building in a way that the regime is no longer sustainable.

Schifrin: Vali, do you think the regime is no longer sustainable?

How vulnerable do you think they were during the protests, and still are?

Nasr: I mean, they’re very vulnerable because I think the Islamic Republic has been on its death march for some time.

And it’s been declining.

But it clearly, this point was not when it was going to collapse.

I mean, what Behnam says, that the people are actually looking to the outside to force the issue, means that they don’t feel, and that’s the sense I get, that they have the capability to actually bring the regime down.

And the sense is that the balance of force still lies with the regime.

The way Iranians see it is that this is not one man.

And that’s the difference with 1979 with the Shah.

This is actually a system.

This is a regime.

Maybe there’s a 10% of the population dedicated to it.

Iranians don’t see any evidence that the Revolutionary Guard is fracturing, that there was any garrison that went to the people, that there’s any soldiers that refused to kill.

And the kind of killing that happened, the very shock of it, suggests that, unless there’s an outside intervention, this is not the moment that actually the people themselves can bring down the regime.

Schifrin: Behnam, is that the key, that we haven’t seen defections from the regime or its security services and therefore it will remain in power?

Is it simple as that?

Taleblu: Well, the regime will remain in power so long as the West remains indifferent and so long as the government of the Islamic Republic chooses to shoot its way through the crisis.

Fundamentally, these are unarmed protests against the state that is armed to the teeth.

And we’ve seen flashes in the pan of what this state is capable of when you look at the Syrian civil war and when you look at the civil war in Iraq.

So this is a government that is willing to shoot its way through the crisis.

That is something that unfortunately the Iranian people have learned really the hard way.

And let me just stress, as an Iranian-American first generation, it takes a lot to get Iranians, who are a highly nationalistic population, to be willing to call for this level of foreign intervention.

Again, that one word, I can’t get it out of my head.

Will he strike?

"Mizaneh."

This, it takes a lot to do this.

The limited times that you do have fits and starts of internet connectivity in Iran, some of the tweets that I saw coming out, and you could tell they were from Iran because of the VPN usage, was saying that "If I die from an American missile, "Ali Jamenei is my murderer."

Robin, quickly, before we get to these US options, you know, we talked about whether there will be defections and that may determine the fate of the regime, but the security forces are not monolithic.

I mean, we need to understand that about Iran, right?

Wright: Absolutely.

I remember in 2009 during the Green Movement protest where there were people on top of the Revolutionary Guard barracks in Tehran shouting "Death to the dictator."

People, all young men have to serve in the security forces, and so you see the diversity of opinion.

I’ve always said where there are 5 Iranians, there are 6 opinions, and so there’s a diversity within security forces.

One of the problems is not just that the security forces have not defected, is that the protesters don’t have an organization.

Someone wisely said there are lots of young Nelson Mandelas in Iran, but there’s no African National Congress behind those to... No organizing, no infrastructure, no leadership.

And no idea about what the alternative is yet.

Nasr: Let me just quickly say, I mean, also we have to be careful when we buy models of other governments and even the Shah’s government to Iran.

The Islamic Republic for a long time was not designed to be popular.

It was designed to survive.

And it’s been at war with the US for 40 years.

It’s been at war with its own population increasingly, and ultimately it’s built to have many nodes of power.

That diversity you’re talking about is actually one of the reasons that it’s resilient.

But when it comes to actually it fracturing on the side of the people, or as President Trump wants a Venezuela scenario that the group would come out and break up, it’s not showing that kind of a opening inside of it.

Firas, let me turn to you, because President Trump threatened to strike Iran during these protests if the protesters were killed.

Many protesters were killed after that red line was set.

And the US officials I talked to said he was very close to ordering the strike.

He took the off-ramp then.

What did countries in the region, how did they respond to the possibility of that strike then, and how has their thinking changed in the last couple...?

I’ll answer your question, but I want to add a different dimension to the conversation that’s already taken place here.

Certainly the domestic factors, social, economic, political, all come into play.

There’s also an outside factor here.

Iran, the regime in particular, has been at its weakest point since the revolution in 1979.

We need to keep in mind that this is not unfolding in a vacuum.

Schifrin: So you’ve got proxies, Hezbollah, Hamas, severely degraded, no Assad in Syria.

Maksad: You have a two-year war where essentially the regime’s forward defense strategy using proxies, Hamas, Hezbollah, and Lebanon being the crown jewel, the Assad regime being the main conduit to project power in the region, into the Levant, no longer there.

And then finally the 12-day war that unfolded yesterday, where the regime took a very heavy beating, not only just physically, but also to its credibility, right?

This regime has been feeding the population for, I don’t know, 4 plus decades now, that this is all being done in the name of resistance and standing up to America.

And then everybody realizes that the regime is a paper tiger.

And in fact, the US and Israel were able to destroy much, or at least significantly set back, the nuclear program and diminish any ability of Iran to resist.

often it’s described right now as a house with no roof.

Air defenses are no longer there.

Schifrin: Although the ballistic missiles are still there, which of course is what we’re about to talk about with the US and Israeli military response, right?

So in terms of that region, that Arab response, what was their caution and where are they now do you think?

So much of the Arab countries, but particularly the GCC, which are in the immediate sort of proximity to Iran, have concerns about blowback.

These are countries that are American partners.

They host military facilities, and they also have quite a bit of energy infrastructure.

The Straits of Hormuz obviously there, where much of that oil transships to the rest of the world.

So there is concern if you don’t have enough American military hardware and security assurances that they are vulnerable to blowback.

And that’s why we saw many of them two weeks ago when this was in play, caution and advise President Trump that this might not be wise at that point.

Maybe that there is a need to set the theater before they move forward.

Set the theater, of course, is what pretty much the United States has done to a certain extent.

You’ve got air defense missiles, F-15s, and of course the US’s Abraham Lincoln, the carrier strike group arriving in the region.

And this brings us to US options.

So the president wrote this on Wednesday.

Part of his message was this.

"Hopefully Iran will quickly, quote, "’come to the table’ "and negotiate a fair and equitable deal.

"No nuclear weapons."

That’s in capitals.

"One that is good for all parties.

"Time’s running out, it is truly of the essence!"

OK, so that sounds like he wants a deal.

And the deal was outlined a little bit more in detail by Steve Witkoff, his chief negotiator, who referred to 4 demands, including the removal of highly enriched uranium from Iran, what he called nuclear material.

Obviously, the deal has to do with missiles.

It has to do with enrichment.

It has to do with non-state actor proxies.

It has to do with the material.

But in my mind, that ought to be things that we can find consensus on.

And if we can’t find consensus on it, I don’t think it’s such a good day for that country or for the world at large.

Robin Wright, that seems like a maximalist list to me.

Is that a deal, those 4 things, that Iran can actually accept?

I don’t think so.

Iran actually has the right, under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, to have nuclear energy.

And that involves or includes enrichment to a certain level.

The problem is Iran, in response to President Trump’s abandonment of the nuclear deal, has continued to enrich uranium.

Now, the US managed to destroy a lot of its infrastructure.

The question is, where is that enriched uranium?

It’s very large.

We’re not sure where it is.

And is a military strike going to be guaranteed to eliminate that?

So getting to the table and getting a deal, I think there’s an interest on both sides.

But is there the ability to compromise?

And that’s unclear.

Taleblu: Just on the nuclear front, rights come with responsibilities.

The Islamic Republic has been in flagrant violations of safeguards.

That’s what really got us into this mess to begin with.

That didn’t begin now.

That began back in 2003, 4, 5, but especially 6.

The resumption of uranium enrichment at a low level.

And one reason right now that we actually don’t have a nuclear crisis on our hands is because of Donald Trump’s successful use of force back in June.

Remember, we have been through two crises with Iran right now, where Iran is not able to play on its classic nuclear playbook of being able to enrich at greater volume or greater purity or greater rates, because there is no declared uranium enrichment in Iran right now, thanks to Operation Midnight Hammer.

We went through the snapback crisis with the Europeans and the Russians and the Chinese at the UN.

That was something the Iranians always dangled, going to weapons-grade uranium over.

And now we’re in a major human rights crisis, where President Trump has not drawn one but two, but 8 or 9 times in the month of January alone, he’s made references to holding the regime responsible.

So there is no nuclear off-ramp for a humanitarian catastrophe.

If you want to do a nuclear deal, you can talk about nuclear nonproliferation, and we can have a conversation about nuclear strategy.

But the president actually put himself in this position because he consistently touched an Iranian domestic issue.

Schifrin: Vali Nasr, should the United States strike Iran?

Nasr: So let me just sort of also add to this, because it comes to this point.

I mean, the issue is also, what is the United States offering, which we’re not hearing?

I mean, if it’s in terms of surrender, then... Schifrin: And do you see these 4 things as basically a surrender?

Nasr: Well, I think that some of them can be finagled.

It’s a question of language.

I mean, Iran in the past, for instance, there was an agreement that they could enter into a consortium with other GCC countries.

Schifrin: In terms of enrichment.

So no domestic enrichment.

Nasr: So then there is no enrichment on Iranian soil, but Iran can technically claim that it’s enriching, except it’s not enriching on its soil, it’s doing it in Oman, et cetera.

In last September in New York, for instance, the argument was, "Let’s go big for big," as "We could give everything, but you also have to make that promise," and the US said, "No."

Essentially, you don’t have any options after the 12-day war.

You accept these terms or else.

And so we’re not talking about negotiations.

Presidents has come to the table, but this is really more like Emperor Hirohito meeting General MacArthur.

So we have to put that in that context, aside from all the rights, responsibilities, et cetera.

But the other issue is... So in a sense that if Iran decides that it cannot surrender, because then it would face even more problems at home, or it’s in the mindset of this leadership that it will not surrender, then its only option is to fight.

And ultimately, it’s dealing with a president that has shown that he doesn’t like boots on the ground.

He likes neat and clean wars.

And one argument in Iran is that they’ve always answered to Donald Trump symbolically.

When he killed General Soleimani, it was a symbolic strike.

When he bombed... Schifrin: Although the US troops with TBIs afterward wouldn’t say it’s symbolic, but yes, nobody was killed.

Nasr: They really was not aimed at maximum amount of carnage, like what Iran did, let’s say, in Lebanon in 1985, killing 500 Marines.

So I think this time, the danger is that the calculation in Iran might be different, that you actually have to draw blood, because then... And I think the dilemma for the US of striking Iran is that you can always start a war.

You can have all kinds of theories that you have, but it may not pan out as it did.

I mean, Israel was very successful in the 12-day wars, but it didn’t get actually what it went for.

Schifrin: Robin first.

Wright: Yeah.

I just want to say, the United States is perfectly capable of destruction.

We saw that in Iraq, we saw it in Afghanistan.

The problem is, what is the construct afterwards?

What do you want to see happen, and how do you facilitate that?

And you know, the US goes in, guns a-blazing.

With what end?

And I don’t think we’ve seen the, you know, the plan for that.

And I don’t think that within Iran, there is anyone capable.

And the danger is, you get something worse, that the Revolutionary Guards come in and try to take power.

So there are a lot of questions about this very huge step of a US strike.

Maksad: For a minute, what this is and what this is not.

So we started off talking about the unrest in the streets, and President Trump drawing a red line.

It’s very clear from what we just heard, the clip that you just played, that this is about searching for a deal.

We have a hard-nosed realist administration not looking to come in and empower the protesters, not interested in regime change.

They’ve articulated that time and again.

I remember President Trump being in Riyadh and basically saying, "The neocons are out.

"We’re not in the business of telling the region "who should govern it and how anymore.

"This is not what we’re going to do."

He’s not going to do this.

What he’s looking for is that deal on the 4 items that Steven Witkoff outlined.

Is he going to get that deal?

I feel like that’s very unlikely because of the maximalist position that the administration has taken.

Schifrin: So, Behnam, can a US strike work?

Can there be a military option here?

Taleblu: The million-dollar question is, to what larger political strategy does military force serve?

And I think what we saw in 2025 is Donald Trump is perfectly capable of pursuing all options on the table, but all at once.

And the challenge is, which option will he put most of his political capital towards?

That’s right now an open question.

I think if the president intervened earlier, perhaps earlier this January, the military operation would not need to have to be massive and major.

It could have been a low and asymmetric or a low and slow campaign rather than a massive military operation.

But with President Trump, if past his prologue, one can’t help but think of Machiavelli, that the public display of violence, whether that’s the strike against Soleimani or the strike against Fordow or the capturing of Maduro, is kind of designed to satisfy and stupefy.

There’s a certain political effect that I think the president wants for the violence.

The challenge is, the Iranians are keen to meet him at every juncture.

They achieve parity by responding to, you know, historic strikes.

I mean, the Iranian ballistic missile barrage, we can call that symbolic in January 2020, but that is the biggest ballistic missile barrage that US forces in recorded history.

But I want to push you on this, because there is some disagreement here that perhaps we’re not getting to yet.

So let me try and, you know, tease it out a little bit.

You have been perhaps more in favor of a military strike.

So if there are real goals, tell us how.

How could a military strike actually achieve US national security interests?

Unfortunately, with 47 years of the Islamic Republic, there is no way out but through.

The most hard-nosed, realist thing is to actually pave the pathway for the most pro-American, the most pro-Israeli population in the region, rather than to turn your back on them.

There is a huge difference between foreign-imposed regime change versus foreign-supported regime change.

This needs programmatic stuff at the most low bureaucratic of levels to the most high political of levels, that I fear the Trump administration has not front-loaded the political capital on.

But nonetheless, we are where we are.

[Clears his throat] I think for a regime like this that has a bounty on the president’s head, that is keen to export its revolution, even when it’s at a historic low, there is unfortunately no other alternative than using military force, but to nest that strategy into a larger strategy that paves the pathway for either this or future rounds of protests.

So, quote, "pave the pathway," US official says basically the decision is now go big or go home.

There’s no light, medium or heavy option.

There’s only a heavy option, Vali.

What would be the impact of that?

Nasr: The problem is that I don’t think that the administration has thought through to the extent that Behnam is laying out.

It hasn’t actually stated any objectives.

Early in January, the objective was change of leadership in Iran, supporting the protesters to do what Behnam is saying.

Then he came to the conclusion that there is no alternative to the Islamic Republic.

There’s nobody on the ground that actually can take over, and his opinion was swayed.

And then he clearly is not willing to risk what the next step would be.

You know, as you hit, whether it’s big or small, you cannot decide how the reaction comes.

I mean, the Israelis didn’t expect Iran to be able to hit Tel Aviv or Haifa.

It did.

They expected killing, 30 Revolutionary Guard commanders would collapse the Revolutionary Guards.

It didn’t happen.

So there are unknowns, and the president is clearly not willing to risk that.

So he, first of all, has not really laid out an objective.

We moved from regime change, leadership change, now to come to the table, please.

And then we may go back to hitting them.

And then the other thing is that the administration, to Robin’s point, has not laid out what the plan is for the day after.

I think, you know, the scenario that you would have an actual regime change in Iran is probably not very probable.

You may end up with massive chaos.

You may end up with collapse.

In fact, other than Arab countries, that’s what worries Turkey and Pakistan, that, you know, Kurdistan may separate.

There might be millions of Iranians who would take refuge in Turkey.

And yesterday, Secretary Rubio said, actually, nobody has a clue what would come next.

That’s not really reassuring for a US strategy.

Maksad: I have a different read.

Schifrin: We’re running out of time.

So for us, last word.

10 seconds.

Maksad: Very different read than Vali in terms of what the objective here.

I don’t think that the administration was ever in a place where they were looking for regime change.

In fact, it was very clear Stephen Witkoff was text messaging with the Iranian foreign minister on those 4 items they wanted to get to a deal on.

They were using the public pressure in the streets to try and put pressure on the regime.

They believe they might still get to a deal on the back end of military strikes, whether they succeed or not.

Schifrin: We’ve got a lot more to talk about, but I’ve got to wrap.

Sorry for us.

Robin, thank you so much.

Behnam, Vali, thank you so much.

And thank you for being here.

That’s all the time we have for now.

I’m Nick Schifrin.

We’ll see you here again next week on "Compass Points".

Announcer: Support for "Compass Points" has been provided by... the Judy and Peter Blum Kovler Foundation, Camilla and George Smith, the Dorney Koppel Foundation, the Gruber Family Foundation, and Cap and Margaret Ann Eschenroeder.

Additional support is provided by Friends of the News Hour.

♪ Announcer: This program was made possible by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

Thank you.

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