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Sanam Hi, everyone. Welcome to If You Were In Charge, a podcast about people, power, and possibilities. I'm Sanam Naraghi Anderlini, and usually you're used to me having my co-host, Kavatera Nandini Ramdas with us, but we're just taking a bit of a pause. I wanted to talk a little bit about Iran again, for those of you who are either frustrated with what's going on, like the rest of us, or just thinking, when is this going to end? We're all there, but here's what I see, and I'm going to put my peace negotiation mediation hat on, and going by the title of this podcast, if I were in charge, this is what I would do. And what I'm seeing right now is that there is a general consensus that war is just not an option on the table, even though Israel still wants to go to war, and maybe there are some hardliners in Iran who think that more war is good, but essentially the war camp is a thin minority. We've also seen that the blockade and the whole economic sanctions piece is also just not tenable because of the effect it's having on gas prices in the West and in the US, but in terms of fertilizer and food and others around the world. So the world's poorest are actually being hit the first alongside Iranians who are really feeling the economic impact of the war on them. So war is not working. Economic sanctions are not working. What is left on the table is basically negotiations. Now, negotiations can take two different approaches. One is what we're seeing right now, which is essentially the two sides are bringing their adversarial kind of hatred, if you want, for each other to the negotiation tables, in a way trying to sort of negotiate concessions out of each other to win the war, to see who which side wins. And again, that's really not getting us anywhere. They keep coming up with supposed deals and framework agreements and so forth, but it's still framed as who won and who lost. This itself is dangerous, and it makes a very brittle truce even more precarious as things go on. The other option for negotiations is what we would call a more inclusive process. And in the 30 years that I've been in this field, I've seen two pillars that you need to actually make a peace process work. One is political will from the armed actors or from the political leaders and adversaries. The other is inclusivity from a mix of the societies that are affected by the war, but also our institutions and others, in a way to give the peace process many legs so that if one leg gets wobbly, there are other parts of it that keep it together. Now, in the case of Iran, the Iran-US process, what is it that could happen? In my opinion, this is a moment for the world and the region to come together with the US and Iran and actually think about the future that we all want and let the future dictate the present. And then some of the past or the issues of the past that keep churning in this relationship that are shaping the present and going into the future can be dealt with later. But the future that I imagine, having been through this war and through this economic blockade, is a future where we have essentially a de facto grand bargain, meaning that the US and Iran come to terms with each other, that both are going to be around, the ceasefire in Lebanon has to be held, and it has to become the responsibility not just of Iran asking for it, but actually of the region and the Europeans, frankly. Similarly, Palestinian statehood needs to be on the table. So we have a regional approach with guardrails around how Israel is expanding itself and returning back to its own borders, with guarantees of security for Israel as well. Meanwhile, in terms of the Iran deal, what's interesting is that the Iranians have said that any peace agreement has to be endorsed and sort of put within the framework of the UN Security Council so that there is, it's solid and it's verified and others are involved in ensuring that the Americans uphold their end of the bargain. The US wants the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, involved for the monitoring of the nuclear issues. And then interestingly, there's been some ideas floated around of a $300 billion kind of fund for reparations or for dealing with the effects of the war, (.) with Witkoff and Kushner being involved, which is very dodgy because that basically sounds like people wanting to skim off the top money that really should be going to Iran for the repair and reparations of all the war damage. The Iranians have also said that the tolls that they want to charge on ships coming out of the Hormone Strait isn't really a toll, it's an environmental protection service charge. Again, we can call it whatever we want, but essentially it's some financial charge that they want to make. Again, the concern that many will have is, well, where does this money go? Is it going into the pockets of corrupt Iranians, you know, from the IRGC? Is it going for missiles, et cetera? The way to actually reimagine all this, in my crazy head, as we think about the repair and reparations and the issues that have been damaged, we have the health sector, hospitals and clinics and health institutes. We've got universities and schools, so the education sector. We've got thousands of housing units that have been destroyed, private sector companies that have been blown apart and people are unemployed, and then massive environmental damage. Now, imagine if the structure was set up so that Iranians from within those sectors actually had a seat at the table to determine what happens to those resources, along with UN agencies that could be there. So the UN environmental program could be dealing with the environment. WHO, the World Health Organization, could be dealing with the health sector. UNESCO could be dealing with the heritage sites. UNICEF could be there as part of the education sector. It could be that we end up actually making an inclusive peace process where there is transparency about the money that is coming into Iran and a safe from among Iranians in terms of how that money is spent for the repair of the civilian infrastructure that was damaged. This would be a more sustainable peace. It would be a more inclusive peace. And it would actually be transformative because it would allow Iranians to have a say in this process. And it's important, again, because we've had so much exploitation of human rights and weaponization of human rights in support of the war. So why not turn it around, flip the coin, and turn it into enabling Iranians to have a say in terms of the peace, winning the peace? Similarly, Europeans could have a really important role in this because they're saying their sanctions are about human rights. So they could come in and propose something, some structure or design of a peace process that is more inclusive. And based on the results of that, also release and start to remove the sanctions that they have. So maybe you think I sound naive. I don't know. But honestly, we are at a point where we need imagination to help shape how things are dealt with. And what I'm proposing isn't actually just out of the blue. This is evidence from around the world. It is evidence from the Women, Peace and Security agenda of how inclusivity is so important for transformation. And also, frankly, how peace processes are a really critical moment of inflection in terms of the future of a country. So there is no reason why this can't be done. And I'm going around talking about these things to whoever will listen. So one of the questions that everybody is asking is who's in charge in Iran? Is it the Supreme Leader? Where is he? Is he in a coma? And recently I was talking to somebody and they were saying that the plan for Khamenei, the father, who was sick and had cancer, had been that if and when he died, they would take a long time, they would sort of pretend that he was alive or create some kind of illusion for a period of two to three years to enable other leaders to come out and have a transition. Well, he was killed. Ironically, his son has been put in charge, but we know we haven't seen the son. He was also injured in the attack. So we haven't actually seen him publicly. He apparently issues statements. But what seems to be emerging is that there's a sense of a collective leadership right now making the decisions and that it is prominently from the Revolutionary Guard, which, again, is something that we all, many of us expected, that the transition would be to the hands of some senior leadership in the Revolutionary Guard. And we might be seeing an Egypt-like Iran, meaning that it's basically a military leadership in suits and a form of change, although it's the same, many of the same people. So this is one of the issues that we don't actually know who's in charge. There's also the president, because the Iranian system is complicated at the best of times. Right now, it's even more obscure for people to know. But there is also the president who was elected by the public, Pazeshkian, and he still remains in in situ. And he says things like, we need to respect the public, and we mustn't be arresting them and beating them up. He says these things. But of what use that is, it's unclear. Iran International, which is a Saudi-funded Israeli mouthpiece, has just said that Pazeshkian may be resigning. Again, who knows? The rumors fly all over the place. But it's a little bit of a difficult time to know exactly who was in charge. But at the same time, it seems that they have a pretty strong collective leadership that is standing together. And it's not divided quite yet, which is what I think many of the war advocates had assumed would happen. So thank you for listening. Sorry, it's such a short episode. But we'll be back with a full episode in a couple of weeks to mark London Climate Week with Laura Garcia, who is CEO of the Global Green Grants Fund. She's a feminist funder who has given over 14,000 grants across 168 countries in over 30 years to organizations locally who are doing biodiversity and climate and environmental care. She is from Mexico. (..) And she's been doing this work for a long time. So it's going to be a super cool conversation, as I say, in time for Climate Week. And for those of you who have missed any of the episodes, season three so far has been pretty cool. We've really enjoyed talking to our guests. And just as a reminder, we had Ben Cohen, who is the co-founder of Ben & Jerry's, talking about defense spending and talking about ice cream. We had Stephanie Fox, who's the CEO of Jewish Voice for Peace, a Jewish anti-Zionist organization that's been standing up for Palestine and doing a lot of grassroots work in the States. We had Anasuya Sengupta, of whose knowledge, talking about decolonizing the internet and where does knowledge sit and who owns it. Raffaella Bolini, who is heading up Stop Rearm Europe. And then Naila Kabir, who has been talking to us about what on earth GDP is and why it's such a broken measure about all the issues that really matter in terms of a state and a society. So we've had some fantastic guests. We are going to have some more fantastic guests. But for now, a little pause and we will be back soon. And I'm looking forward to having Kavita back with me. And just to leave you with this, as the poet June Jordan said, we are the ones that we've been waiting for. This is the age of what I call advanced citizenship. Those of us who live in democracy still, this is a huge privilege. And I always feel that the freedom of expression is framed as a right, which it is, but it's also a responsibility when the state is beginning to encroach on us or when we begin to feel afraid of speaking out and speaking truth to power. So it's about advanced citizenship. And I hope that this podcast inspires you, gives you hope, gives you courage also to talk about difficult issues. Sometimes we need a bit of courage ourselves when we delve into things, but so far so good. And we really hope that you're enjoying it as well. So see you soon. And thank you for listening. And please share with others who might be interested. Bye.