CNN International/PBS anchor Christiane Amanpour welcomed former colleague Reza Aslan, whom she labeled an “Iranian-American religious scholar,” to her Friday show to discuss what the future holds for ordinary Iranians after the current war ends. According to Aslan, it is the United States’s fault that previous protest movements have failed to topple the regime because we have “been doing the tyrant’s work for him.”
Amanpour’s question was actually not that bad, “What hope do the Iranians have? Let’s say this war ends or the bombing campaign ends and the regime is still in place. This is the regime that killed so many people and really crossed, if there was a line that it was going to cross, it really crossed the line of barbaric behavior to its own people in January. How do people who want change actually try to affect change?”
Reza Aslan tells PBS/CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour that it is America’s fault that previous Iran protests have failed “Look, an authoritarian regime, a tyrant, stays in power by isolating his people from the rest of the world. The United States has been doing the tyrant’s work… pic.twitter.com/hHAVlidQ8f
— Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) March 14, 2026
Aslan’s answer, however, was that bad, “This is a question that we’ve been asking for a very long time. And there are models of this throughout the 20th century. Look, an authoritarian regime, a tyrant, stays in power by isolating his people from the rest of the world. The United States has been doing the tyrant’s work for him in Iran for the last half century. Our policy of containment, isolation and sanction as a hope for regime change has done the exact opposite. That’s just a fact.”
He added, “We have entrenched this regime further into power. That’s not illogical. If the people themselves have no access to the rest of the world, no access to the free market economy, then they are handicapped from being able to rise up and take down a government that they rely upon for their very sustenance, for their very bread.”
In addition to wanting basic rights, Iranians also protest precisely because the regime can’t provide them with bread. Nevertheless, Aslan then made the illogical claim that if the U.S. wants Iranians to overthrow the clerical regime, then it needs to win the approval of low-level clerics, “No wonder that these protests that we see, these legitimate protests that we see almost every year, which had been brutally repressed by these dictatorial police state in Iran, have never actually managed to bring down this regime because the only way to do so is to get the entirety of the people and particularly the pious poor and the sort of mid-level, low-level clerics and seminary students to come out onto the streets as well.”
The nonsensical suggestions were just beginning as Aslan continued, “Look, we actually had a plan in place. The P5+1 negotiations that President Obama put together, which miraculously brought in Russia and China, two countries that have radically opposing interests in Iran than the United States, was by every measure working. First of all, it absolutely removed Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons, to enrich uranium to the point in which it could develop nuclear weapons.”
It is interesting Aslan cited Russia and China. Both countries are dictatorships. China is still very much economically connected to the outside world, and, before 2022, Russia was as well, and yet Aslan’s theory of economically empowering ordinary people to overthrow their dictatorial overlords never came to fruition. Besides, why would tethering our Iran interests to our Russian and Chinese adversaries be a good idea?
Nevertheless, Aslan reiterated his earlier idea that America is at fault, only this time he implied that President Trump specifically is to blame:
That relationship that we put together under President Obama had an opportunity to possibly give, particularly the struggling middle class in Iran, the chance to rise up and make their voices heard. We started seeing a wave of reform in Iran immediately following that negotiation, but of course the negotiation was torn up.
And what we have seen since that moment, which has resulted in the destruction and death that we are seeing now, was a direct result of reversing course on a policy that had the possibility, not guarantee, but the possibility of actually creating the change that we are desperate to see in Iran.
Aslan’s theory that the way to bring down the regime is to make it richer betrays any idea of common sense. More immediately, given that this war is just the latest in a series of post-October 7 events, it is likely that if the Iran deal had remained in place, Iran’s military would have been in a better fighting position than it was.
Here is a transcript for the March 13-taped show:
PBS Amanpour and Company
3/13/2026
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: What hope do the Iranians have? Let’s say this war ends or the bombing campaign ends and the regime is still in place. This is the regime that killed so many people and really crossed, if there was a line that it was going to cross, it really crossed the line of barbaric behavior to its own people in January. How do people who want change actually try to affect change?
REZA ASLAN: This is a question that we’ve been asking for a very long time. And there are models of this throughout the 20th century. Look, an authoritarian regime, a tyrant, stays in power by isolating his people from the rest of the world. The United States has been doing the tyrant’s work for him in Iran for the last half century. Our policy of containment, isolation and sanction as a hope for regime change has done the exact opposite. That’s just a fact.
We have entrenched this regime further into power. That’s not illogical. If the people themselves have no access to the rest of the world, no access to the free market economy, then they are handicapped from being able to rise up and take down a government that they rely upon for their very sustenance, for their very bread.
No wonder that these protests that we see, these legitimate protests that we see almost every year, which had been brutally repressed by these dictatorial police state in Iran, have never actually managed to bring down this regime because the only way to do so is to get the entirety of the people and particularly the pious poor and the sort of mid-level, low-level clerics and seminary students to come out onto the streets as well.
Look, we actually had a plan in place. The P5+1 negotiations that President Obama put together, which miraculously brought in Russia and China, two countries that have radically opposing interests in Iran than the United States, was by every measure working. First of all, it absolutely removed Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons, to enrich uranium to the point in which it could develop nuclear weapons.
That relationship that we put together under President Obama had an opportunity to possibly give, particularly the struggling middle class in Iran, the chance to rise up and make their voices heard. We started seeing a wave of reform in Iran immediately following that negotiation, but of course the negotiation was torn up.
And what we have seen since that moment, which has resulted in the destruction and death that we are seeing now, was a direct result of reversing course on a policy that had the possibility, not guarantee, but the possibility of actually creating the change that we are desperate to see in Iran.
