DURHAM, N.C. (RNS) — Mohsen Kadivar follows the war in Iran with a growing sense of déjà vu.

A research professor of Islamic studies at Duke University, he has been living in exile from his native Iran for 18 years. A staunch critic of the regime in Tehran and an advocate for democratic reforms, Kadivar now believes the United States is undergoing a similar descent into authoritarian rule.

Kadivar supported the 1979 revolution that ushered in the Islamic Republic, hoping it would bring about a more just society. Things didn’t turn out that way. When he wrote articles and books critical of the regime, the authorities sentenced him to 18 months in the infamous Evin Prison in Tehran.

He came to the U.S. in 2008, first to the University of Virginia and then to Duke. But he’s become critical of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. “Journalists ask me, what do you think about the defeat of Islamic Republic?” he said. “And I tell them, what do you think about the defeat of liberal democracy in the U.S.?”

He said he’s appalled by the war’s rationale — the lack of any immediate threat to the U.S. , the rush to war without congressional authorization. He believes it will only strengthen religious fundamentalism around the world and that it has already led to the collapse of democratic forces within Iran.

RNS interviewed Kadivar from his home in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, this week. The interview was edited for length and clarity.

How is your family in Iran?

My mother and also two of my kids are living in Tehran. There is no international internet in Iran. There is a national internet, like in China. So they can contact each other on the internet, but not us. They can purchase some international telephone cards. We can talk for a few minutes every day, and we understand that they’re safe.

What’s your sense of this war?

This is not war. This is aggression of Israel and the U.S. towards Iran. It is exactly in reverse to what President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu thought might happen. Iranians are now more supportive of the Islamic Republic than before. They support the Iranian army and the IRGC (the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) that is defending them. Iran’s movement for democracy and freedom has suffered a lot of damage. Israel assassinated most of the moderate Iranians, political leaders and commanders of the IRGC. More radical hard-liners have taken their place.

I can give you two examples: The second supreme leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, was cautious on the nuclear issue. He issued a fatwa (Islamic ruling) prohibiting the use of nuclear bombs as haram, or Islamically prohibited. Are we sure that his son will keep the fatwa? I’m not sure. Israel assassinated the Secretary of the National Security Council, Ali Larijani, who was a moderate. He was a man of negotiation. He was replaced by a hardliner radical figure, Mohammad Baqir Zulqadar.

Do you think that the Iranian people were ready for democracy before the war?

Iran was the country most ready for democracy in the Middle East. We have had two revolutions in less than 80 years, 1906 and 1979. In the past three decades, Iran has had demonstrations. It has an elected parliament. Has Saudi Arabia? Has the UAE done that? No. All of these regimes are authoritarian, but Islamic Republic has an advantage. It has elections. The people can elect the president, the parliament, city council and also the Assembly of Experts. The supreme leader (Ayatollah Ali Khamenei) tried to restrict the votes of the people in the elections, but he could not destroy it completely. There is a lot of propaganda against Iran in Western media. It’s not correct. Iran is complex.

The Islamic Revolution ushered in a government by religious jurists. Can that work?

There was a theory that the most learned jurist should govern the country. In practice, jurisprudence is not enough. To manage a country, you need to take into account expediency and public interest. Jurisprudence is not politics. The second supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, became the leader not because of his jurisprudential knowledge — he did not have the high prestige of the first leader, Ayatollah Khomeini — but he had been president of Islamic Republic for eight years. Political experience is more important than jurisprudential knowledge. So in appearance, it is religious, but the body of the regime is more functional, pragmatic.

My criticism is that we need more democratic approaches and a separation of mosque and state. Ayatollah Khomeini was able to balance between the right and left, but his successor, because he did not have charismatic leadership and did not have high Islamic knowledge, relied more on rightists and removed leftists, who were called reformists. These reformists were banned, their journals, their political parties. They were imprisoned or put into house arrest. He relied more on the IRGC.

Do you know the new ayatollah, the son of the assassinated leader?

No. He’s a shadow man. We do not have anything about him. He has not published anything. We do not have audio or video from him. And because he was injured by U.S. and Israel on the first day of the assault, many of his family members also were killed in front of him, he has suffered trauma. What I’m sure of is that the country is ruled by the IRGC, not by the supreme leader. The supreme leader at present has a symbolic role, like the king of England.

Religion has been declining around the Western world. Has it declined in Iran, too?

Iran has a national survey in Iran every 10 years, even before the revolution. Based on those surveys, there is no meaningful change when it comes to belief in one God, belief in the next life and belief in the prophecy of Prophet Muhammad. We have a serious decline in collective rituals like Friday prayer. Individual rituals have also declined. There is a visible change in the number of women who do not wear the scarf. The regime’s strict and fundamentalist approach to Islam, known in Iran as “Talibani Islam,” has had a profound effect on Iranian youth’s avoidance of religious rituals, especially collective rituals. But, overall, there is no big difference between Iran and Turkey, for example, or between Iran and Pakistan.

Explain the political divisions in Iran.

There is diversity in Iran. We need polling. We need data. I can tell you that 15- 20% of Iranians support the regime. We have another minority among Iranians that support monarchs returning to Iran, bringing back the son of the last shah, Reza Pahlavi. This person is the puppet of Prime Minister Netanyahu but President Trump has not accepted him. We do not have any reliable statistics, but this is also a minority.

Most Iranians do not support the regime. But this invasion will strengthen Iranian hard-liners, strengthen the IRGC. All of these replacement commanders or political figures that are coming to power after Prime Minister Netanyahu’s foolish assassinations are more hard-liners, more radical than those who were before.

What are the long-term ramifications of this war?

Netanyahu and Trump are spreading fundamentalism in the world. Islamic fundamentalism will gradually increase in the U.S., in Europe, in the Middle East, everywhere. Their policies are against peace, against international law, against American values. Trump is even more authoritarian than what we have in Iran. 

I’m critical of the Islamic Republic, but at the same time, I’m more critical of liberal democracy. Malcolm X said what we have is hypocrisy, not democracy.