In his 15 years of leading the New Iran, a pro-democracy resistance organization operating from the US, Iman Foroutan has seen a lot. Still, Foroutan described the recent Israeli strikes on Iran as “unbelievable.” In an interview with The Media Line’s Felice Friedson, he said that the Iranian people are “the happiest they can be” about the attacks, which have seriously damaged the country’s military, economic, and nuclear infrastructure and taken out key figures.
“Obviously, I would have hoped that there was no military attack,” Foroutan said. But he described the Israeli strike as a precision operation that has resulted in nearly no “regular people casualties.” (According to the Iranian Ministry of Health, at least 224 people have been killed in the strikes.)
The people of Iran understand that the continued operation may result in more damage and even casualties, Foroutan said. But he said that for years, the Iranian people have been “praying and hoping for a day like this.”
“People are scared, but they’re happy,” he said. “They’re dancing, even in the middle of the traffic inside tunnels where they cannot go anywhere with their cars.”
Speaking over the weekend, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the military operation “could certainly” result in regime change. Foroutan similarly said that regime change is “definitely possible.”
Right now seems to be the best time, because the majority, the vast majority of the Iranian people, both inside and outside, do have a leader in Prince Reza Pahlavi, who for the last 45 years has been talking about civil disobedience.
“Right now seems to be the best time, because the majority, the vast majority of the Iranian people, both inside and outside, do have a leader in Prince Reza Pahlavi, who for the last 45 years has been talking about civil disobedience,” Foroutan said.
Pahlavi, the son of the last shah of Iran, has been living in exile since the 1979 Iranian Revolution, during which his father was overthrown. Many anti-regime Iranians see Pahlavi as the best choice for leader of a post-Islamic Republic Iran.
Foroutan acknowledged the difficulty of contacting those currently in Iran. “Unfortunately, every time that things like this happen inside Iran, the first thing that they do is they cut off the Internet,” he said.
He said activists are working to teach Iranians how to create local virtual private networks to facilitate internet access amid the network blackout.
Speaking to The Media Line on Friday, Foroutan noted that the Israeli military had warned employees of Iranian state media outlets not to go to work on Saturday or Sunday.
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“There is a huge weapon storage under the national TV inside Tehran. This I’ve known for a long time. Many people know that from inside Iran. At some point, I’ve even seen some photos, there’s tunnels, there’s all kinds of weaponry underground under that. So that may be why they’re going to hit that building,” he said.
In fact, Israel did strike the Iranian state TV building on Monday. The building was struck during a broadcast, forcing the news anchor to evacuate on live television as her studio filled with dust and debris.
Foroutan said that shutting down state media would make communications in Iran more challenging. “But that may be one of the things they need to do, because if that goes away, the frequencies and the signals from the national TV goes away, then potentially from outside Israel, US, possibly Prince Reza Pahlavi, they can actually start communicating and sending signals inside Iran,” he said.
In addition to the state media compound, other significant sites struck by Israeli forces include the Defense Ministry headquarters, a weapons manufacturing center, refineries, pharmaceutical centers, atomic laser center, and offices of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Foroutan said. He acknowledged that some residential buildings have also been struck. Some of those housed figures from the regime, he said, while one building was struck as the result of an Iranian missile misfiring.
Overall, he said, the Iranian regime has been severely caught off guard by the attacks, having expected to continue nuclear talks with the US starting last Sunday. He said that many high-level figures have fled to Russia.
“Obviously, I do not have firsthand knowledge of how they feel, but I can only imagine that their first layer of their generals got killed, and then as soon as they appointed somebody else or other ones, a few of those got killed,” he said. “I also heard … that apparently the secondary and tertiary leadership, they have received text messages from Israel themselves—and their wives and their family—that we know where you live, we know where you are. Don’t take the job if you want to stay alive.”
But it’s not only regime officials who are feeling the heat. Foroutan warned that Iran’s Jewish population, some 9,000 or so individuals, is also in danger.
“Being Jewish inside Iran at this time when Israel is attacking cannot be a safe thing for them,” he said, noting that he has not managed to get in contact with his Jewish friends in Iran.
Foroutan said that many of Hezbollah’s proxies throughout the Middle East have been severely damaged, but he warned that Iran may have cells throughout the world. “Who knows who’s going to go in one street and do an ‘Allahu Akbar’ or whatever and detonate a bomb or they kill themselves, you know, suicide bombers? These cells have been doing crazy things the last few years, different places,” he said. “That’s the only thing I can think of that potentially could happen.”
The extent that America chooses to get involved in the conflict still remains to be seen. Foroutan said that Israel may ask the US to provide Israel with the “bunker-buster” bombs it would need to take out the Fordo nuclear facility, which is located deep underground. One factor influencing American decision making will be the actions of Russia and China, both of which have interests in Iran.
Regardless of whether he decides to assist in the offensive operation against Iran, President Donald Trump is already “changing the world map,” Foroutan said.
“Those who don’t know Trump, I guess now they’re learning that he means what he says,” he continued. “He doesn’t like war. He didn’t want to have a war with the Islamic Republic, gave them all their chances. Even as of yesterday, he was saying, hey, come to the negotiation table because it could get worse. But the ayatollahs had a huge miscalculation this time around. And thanks to that miscalculation, hopefully very soon people of Iran will be free after 45 years of this totalitarian regime, basically killing them, torturing them, jailing them and so on for nothing.”
In the best case scenario, Foroutan said, the Israeli strikes will lead to swift regime change, with Crown Prince Pahlavi taking the helm. “Not for him necessarily to become the next king, because he has said many times his responsibility ends when Iran is free. After that, his people of Iran, through free elections, they will decide if they want a parliamentary monarchy system or a republican system, whatever,” he said.
He predicted that the Israeli operations against Iran will probably last for at least a week. After several more days of “nonstop basically making sure that the Islamic Republic cannot do anything militarily,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei will likely choose to flee the country, Foroutan said.
“It will still be very difficult the first few months, obviously, after the regime change,” he said. “There will be cells inside. Who knows if ISIS is going to come in, or the Taliban? There’s all these different stuff that can happen. We also hear in northwestern Iran, there are some Kurds, they may want to take advantage of this to actually divide part of Iran.”
Still, he noted that the fall of the Assad regime in Syria ultimately took less than two weeks.
The worst case scenario, he said, is a situation similar to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which was meant to overthrow Saddam Hussein’s regime. “Saddam then had time for some time to start killing all the people who he thought were against him. And we don’t want that to happen inside Iran,” Foroutan said, emphasizing the seriousness of such a situation even if Iran’s nuclear capacity is wiped out.
We may have another massacre inside Iran if there are not proper forces and planning to protect people of Iran who are not armed.
“We may have another massacre inside Iran if there are not proper forces and planning to protect people of Iran who are not armed. Most people inside Iran, they’re not armed,” he said.
As Foroutan looks forward to the fall of the Islamic Republic, he’s hard at work building a network of pro-democracy activism inside and outside of Iran. He recently launched an organization called SOS Iran aimed at connecting and funding activists. The organization’s website describes it as “the first systematic, transideological, project-oriented, and transparent system and tool designed for consensus, collaboration, assistance, solidarity, and organization of the opponents of the Islamic Republic.”
A graphic showing the the different groups that make up the SOS Iran network.
An electrical engineer by trade, Foroutan identified a distinct lack of collaboration among the numerous pro-democracy organizations that have sprung up over the past several years. “And having all those organizations and everybody working in their own circle, not knowing who else is doing what in the opposition, I realized that’s a huge problem we had. And then the solution for that, unlike what I personally have done for the last 25 years, I decided it was not to create another organization and try to bring everybody under that organization, which has never happened,” he said.
“People come around their own projects,” Foroutan said. “They submit a project, they can ask for help, they can fund small projects. So rather than asking for millions of dollars for a big thing, all these projects work together.”