Abbas Milani and HR McMaster Discuss Iran War and the Country’s Future
By Elaine Pasquini
Palo Alto, CA: As the US-Israel war on Iran continues without a permanent resolution, Lt Gen HR McMaster (ret), former US national security advisor, author of Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World and currently a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, hosted historian and author Abbas Milani on his April 24, 2026, Battlegrounds program.
Assessing the situation within Iran with respect to the average Iranian, Milani, currently a visiting professor at Stanford University, described the Iranian people as being in a “state of suspension.” Daily life is difficult. Poverty is increasing day by day and the financial system is on the verge of collapse.
“The people are suffering and clearly they want change,” he stated. “It’s a very fraught moment inside the Iranian society. The regime, also, is at its most fraught moment. It has lost its top leadership and almost all its seasoned commanders.” In addition, “the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) are clearly in command, but they don’t have a consensus even among themselves on how to proceed.”
Milani witnessed the revolution and civil war close-up in 1979 when he was teaching at Tehran University. When the war started, he saw some of his best and brightest students willing to go to war, he said.
Initially, the leaders grew out of a Shi’a revolutionary tradition and they really believed it. “This is no longer the pious regime of the past,” he said. “The IRGC is more like a mafia than an ideologically cemented regime. They’re interested in property rights more than piety.”
Asked if the regime was weakened because of the attacks on military targets and oil infrastructure, he responded that he believes the regime is desperate.
And whenever the war ends the people will go after the regime for its incompetence and for the economic collapse, which he believes is inevitable unless they get a massive infusion of money.
“That’s why I believe one of the biggest sticking points with the US in the negotiations is how much money the Trump administration is willing to release to them,” he added.
With respect to the new Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, Milani related that he’s been marginalized, and no one knows if he’s even alive.
Peace and security in the region will not happen as long as the current regime is in power, he said. “This regime showed a level of recklessness that is even remarkable by its own standards. They have shot twice as many drones and missiles at the United Arab Emirates than at Israel, some 2,600 at the UAE compared to 1,300 at Israel.” He noted that the UAE was shown no special treatment by the regime despite financial connections between the two maritime neighbors.
McMaster questioned the future of Russia and China if the present Iranian government should fall. Both countries, he pointed out, are vested in trying to keep the status quo, which gives them a platform into the Middle East. “If the regime changes, it seems like Russia and China are the big losers,” he said.
China has been distancing itself from this regime for the past few years, Milani noted. “I think China decided that this regime was not going to last in its current form. And instead of signing a deal a few years ago with Iran, China turned to Saudi Arabia and signed a multi-hundred-billion-dollar deal with them and agreed to Saudi Arabia’s request to change the name of the Persian Gulf; and in this war, China has essentially stood on the sideline.”
China could have helped Iran and assisted diplomatically but did not. “So, I think they have decided that the future of the Middle East is much less dependent on Iran than Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates,” he opined.
Milani also commented on the US negotiating team which he said should bring up the subject of the human rights of the Iranian people because some of the people went to the street with hope that help is coming after President Trump tweeted that the US would help them if they overthrew the regime.
“There is enormous respect for what people in the US or UK say,” he stressed. “People take those things very, very seriously.” Negotiations should also include the release of prisoners. And if any of Iran’s frozen assets are released, they should be used to improve the economy. Last year, the Iranians sold $60 billion of oil even while under sanctions, “but none of this seems to have come into the coffers of the Iranian people because they are poorer now,” he lamented.
Iran’s leaders have come to realize that “the game is serious and they can’t win militarily,” Milani stated. “They know they can’t beat the US or Israel militarily and that they can only fight them asymmetrically.”
Milani believes that Iran eventually will become a secular, democratic society that lives by the laws of the nation. “The majority of Iranians want a society where women are equal to men, where Jews, Christians and Bahais can live peacefully, where the Shi’a clergy don’t have a de facto claim to power given to them by Allah,” he said. “That’s the future, I think, that is inevitable.”
In conclusion, McMaster said: “Let’s all hope for a Nowruz, a new beginning in Iran; and, of course, there is this amazing talented population there and a very talented diaspora who would be willing to help in the rebuilding of Iran.”
(Elaine Pasquini is a freelance journalist. Her reports appear in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs and Nuze.Ink.)
