MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
For more on why so many Iranians want to leave the country, we've called Abbas Milani. He is the director of Iranian studies at Stanford University. Mr. Milani, thank you so much for speaking with us.
ABBAS MILANI: My pleasure.
MARTIN: You left Iran in the '80s, but you still have many friends there. What are they telling you about what their lives are like right now?
MILANI: I think what they're telling me is that it's a life of despair and life of failure of hope. The economy is putting pressure on everybody. There's anxiety about possible shortages if the war continues, if the embargo continues. You have to get a sense of the falling value of the currency. The value of the currency has gone, within this war period, this last few months, from 120,000 Persian toman to $1 to now close to 200,000. And everybody expects that value to further collapse.
MARTIN: So to what extent is leaving Iran an option?
MILANI: It's not an option. Nobody leaves their homeland willingly. They leave it when it is despair, when there is no hope. The new appointments that allegedly Mr. Khamenei has made has brought to fore some of the most infamous, brutal leaders of the past. They see the economic reality worsening. They see the regime lining up its most brutal components. And they tell themselves, this is no country for me. I will try to see whether I can find a refuge. And there's virtually nowhere that the Iranian passport can go, and getting a visa has become extremely difficult. The German embassy, the French embassy that used to give more visas are no longer giving visas.
MARTIN: And why is that?
MILANI: The regime keeps tightening its arrogance and its intransigence, and the international community responds. Turkey, which was one of the few places where people can still go freely without a visa with an Iranian passport, just joined an agreement with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, essentially as a threat to Iran and Iran's threat to disrupt the entire economy of the Persian Gulf.
MARTIN: So you're saying that other countries that had been potential refuge for people trying to leave the conditions in Iran are making it harder for Iranians to come as a way to pressure the Iranian regime or as a sign of their disapproval of the Iranian regime. Is that correct?
MILANI: Absolutely.
MARTIN: You know, President Trump and other US officials have talked about using the U.S. blockade and sanctions as a way to make Iran's economic crisis even worse and pressure the regime. I just want to play a short clip from the Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, who was on Newsmax yesterday.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
SCOTT BESSENT: We are going to apply measures like have never been seen in the history of economic isolation on a country.
MARTIN: And what you're telling me is that sanctions have already had such an impact on the economy. I'm trying to figure out if there's a way that economic sanctions or economic warfare, if you will, could inflict pain on the government without also affecting ordinary people. Is that even possible at this point?
MILANI: It's not possible, but the regime doesn't really care. Medicine is in short supply now, and it's going to become more difficult. India is the main source for import of medicine to Iran. India has just stopped allowing planes to carry this because India has told the Iranian government, you have closed the Strait of Hormuz. It is difficult for us to get oil and gas. We're not going to allow these planes.
MARTIN: The ayatollah, Mojtaba Khamenei, who succeeded his father, hasn't been seen in public. It's our understanding that the generals in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have consolidated power. Do you have a sense - based on your understanding of how things are unfolding, do you think that there is any understanding or any unified position within the regime of how they want to see this war end or how they think this war will actually end?
MILANI: No. I don't. I think there are some in the regime who clearly see the writing on the wall. They see the economy is on the verge of collapse. They see the level of anger amongst the people. They see the hardship of the people, and they want to go back to an understanding with the U.S. They want to go back to those 14 points.
But they're a lunatic, radical minority who believes they have won this war. They have defeated the U.S. They have defeated Israel. They can push the U.S. out of the Middle East. And they're willing to put the Iranian people on any kind of a danger to get their quixotic image of the world. And people in Iran at the level I understand, I read, I talk to, understand that these are all delusions - that they're delusions of grandeur for which the people of Iran pay. And the regime is clearly of two very different opinions.
MARTIN: That is Abbas Milani. He's the director of Iranian studies at Stanford University. Mr. Milani, thank you so much for sharing your insights with us.
MILANI: As always, my pleasure. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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