The Time of Fear and Hope: A Glimmer of Change in Iranian Society

As I reflect on the current state of affairs in Iran, I am reminded of the importance of hope in the face of adversity. The recent wave of protests and demonstrations that have swept across the country, with hundreds of thousands taking to the streets, is a testament to the enduring power of human spirit and determination. In this moment of crisis, it is easy to lose sight of the bigger picture and become mired in pessimism and despair. But I firmly believe that there is still room for optimism and that a more hopeful future is possible for Iran.

I have written extensively on the subject of Iranian society and politics, and I must say that my views on the matter are rooted in a deep understanding of the complexities and nuances of this fascinating country. For decades, Iran has been trapped in a cycle of fear, repression, and ideological extremism. The Islamic Republic, with its rigid dogma and authoritarian rule, has stifled dissent and creativity, reducing Iranians to mere spectators in their own lives. But despite these efforts, there is a growing sense of discontent and disillusionment among the Iranian people.

The current wave of protests, which began as a response to the government's handling of economic issues but soon spread to include demands for greater freedom and human rights, has been a game-changer. It has shown that even in the darkest of times, there is always a chance for change and that the power of the people can be harnessed to bring about meaningful reform. The fact that these protests have taken place across different regions and cities, with diverse populations coming together to demand their rights, is a testament to the depth of Iranian society's desire for positive change.

One of the most striking aspects of this movement is its generational aspect. A new wave of young Iranians, who are determined to build a better future for themselves and their country, has emerged as leaders of the protest movement. They are not bound by the ideological baggage of the past and are instead driven by a desire for freedom, justice, and human rights. This youth-led movement is not beholden to the same dogma that has held Iranian politics hostage for decades, and it is precisely this fresh perspective that holds out hope for a more inclusive and tolerant society.

In addition to its strategic value, I believe that Iran's future lies in its ability to engage with the outside world in a peaceful and constructive manner. For too long, the country has been driven by a confrontational approach, fueled by a sense of insecurity and paranoia about external threats. But this approach has only served to alienate Iran from the rest of the world and to create unnecessary tensions that have hindered its development as a nation. A more collaborative approach, however, would allow Iran to tap into the knowledge, expertise, and resources available globally, while also fostering greater understanding and cooperation between nations.

As I reflect on the complexities of Iranian politics and society, I am reminded of the wise words of the great American leader, Martin Luther King Jr., who said, "There are mountainsides where freedom is a distant dream, but from those mountain tops, let freedom ring." For Iran, this moment may be one such mountain top, where the forces of hope and change are converging to create a brighter future. As we look towards the next decade, I am optimistic that a more hopeful and inclusive society will emerge in Iran, one that values human rights, diversity, and international cooperation.

Ultimately, my love for the Iranian people is rooted in their deep humanity and resilience in the face of adversity. Like my close friend and childhood companion, who embodies the beauty and complexity of Iranian culture, I am deeply moved by the struggle for freedom and self-expression that defines this society. As I sit down to write these words, I am filled with a sense of hope and solidarity with the Iranian people, who are fighting for a better future for themselves and their country.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthis is not a nice Islamic fatherly regime clear signs of fascism clear sons of the state's control and pay any price to stay in power so even violence extreme violence the following is a conversation with Abbas Amana a historian at Yale University specializing in the modern history of Iran my love and my heart goes out to the Iranian people in their current struggle for freedom I hope that this conversation helps folks who listen understand the nature and the importance of this struggle this is the Lex Friedman podcast to support it please check out our sponsors in the description and now dear friends here's Abbas Amina let's start with the current situation in Iran on September 16th protests broke out in Tehran and quickly spread over the death of a 22 year old maksa amini eyewitnesses saw her beaten to death by the morality police this is a heavy topic but it's a really important topic what can you explain what happened the protests are now in their sixth week the death of that young woman occurred who was visiting Tehran as a tourist parked something very deep that's particularly concerned the younger Generations that is what you would call the equivalent of the Z generation in this country yes they call themselves in person because Iran follows the solar calendar of its own as an ancient solar calendar and this the the time that they were born they were in the 1380s that's what they call themselves it is hashtag for the 80s and uh well the circumstances that surrounds the uh uh unfortunate death of this young beautiful Kurdish woman is really tragic she was arrested by the what is referred to as the morality police morality Patrol called guidance police that is presumably there were two women fully clad that is officers serving on that force and two men and nobody exactly knows what had happened she had been beaten up and apparently there was no uh uh sign of any wrongdoing on her side she was fully covered uh it seems that there was some altercation in the process and the the outcome was that she was unconscious not necessarily when she was arrested but in the course of the detention when they take them to a center presumably to re-educate them yeah and she apparently collapsed and maybe my sense is that she must have had some kind of a problem because of the skull being broken or something has happened and she died in the hospital the next day and that's through the social media was widely spread throughout Iran and almost the next day surprisingly you could see this outburst of sympathy for her people are in the streets weeping because she was seen as such an innocent young woman 22 years old and the family the mother and the father also mourning for her and being a Kurt visiting Tehran this all added up to really turn her into some kind of a martyr of these cause and that's what it is and her picture graphics that were artistically produced based on her portrait has now dominates basically as the symbol of this protest movement and the protest movement goes on everybody was thinking or at least the authorities were thinking that is going to die out in a matter of a few days but it became more intense first in the streets of Tehran by young women mostly probably between I would say 17 18 teenagers to 20 to 23 or thereabouts and then to University campuses all around the country and then even to high schools and that also made it a very remarkable protest movement because first of all it involves the youth and not necessarily the older Generations you see them around but not as many also you see men and women together young girls and boys and um they are adamant they are desperate in the sense of the tone of their protest and they are extremely courageous because they stand against the security forces that were immediately were sent off to the streets so and in full gear that is so what are the the currents of pain emotion um what is this turmoil that Rose to the surface that resulted in these big protests what are the different feelings ideas that came to the surface here that resulted in such quick scaling of this protest well if you listen to the uh main slogan which is the message of this movement it's called women life Freedom Zan zendeji Azadi which is a translation of actually the Kurdish equivalent which is close to Persian being in the European language and it's apparently initiated uh first in this Syrian Kurdistan where they were fighting against the the Islamic daesh forces uh because they were attacking the yazidis there and the women being enslaved but the message as it moved historians are interested in this kind of Trends so it's just moved to Kurdistan and from Kurdistan now being the message of this movement reflects pretty much sums up what this movement is all about women in the Forefront because of all the one might say discriminations the treatment the humiliation that this younger generation feels well not only the younger Generations but most of the Iranian secular middle classes since 1979 basically for the for the past 43 years and uh they would think that these all basically symbolized or uh represented by the varying the mandatory varying of the hijab which is at the core of this protest you see the young women if you look at many of these clips that comes through in the past six weeks women in streets take off their mandatory scarves which is a young child or some kind of a head covering that's all and they throw it into the uh bonfire in the middle of the street and they dance around it and slogans so there is a sense of complete rejection of what this regime for 42 years 43 years have been imposing on women it's as it's sometimes been portrayed a movement against hijab through and through but it's basically says you know there has to be a choice for those who want to wear hijab and those who want to remain without a job yeah the hijab is a symbol of something much deeper much deeper and actually before we get into that it's interesting to note that in many of these demonstrations we see in the University campuses or in the streets you see women with hijab uh young women with hijab are next to those have to remove their hijab and they are together basically protesting that's the most interesting feature of this uh of these demonstrations and then men and women together against the segregation that the regime has imposed upon them with all these years now in terms of what it represents as I pointed out one is the question of the whole series of one might say civil and legal uh discriminations against women you are considered as a kind of a second class citizen you depend on your men there's a kind of a patriarchy that has been institutionalized in the Islamic Republic in a very profound fashion and that means that uh probably in matters of divorce uh marriage and divorce in matters of custody of your children a matter of inheritance in matter of freedom of movement you depend on your husband your father your brother a male member of your family your child even your your son could could be the case and because of that obviously a younger generation who is so well informed through social media knows about the world as much as an American does American kid that's probably sometimes more they're very very curious it's from what I hear or sometimes that I met a few of them outside Iran you'll see that Hadith this a new generation is completely different from what the Islamic Republic wanted to create in its social engineering it's basically the failure of 43 years of the Islamic Republic's acts of imposition of a certain as so-called Islamic values on on women then it's a matter of Education you would see that there is segregation in the schools one of the issues that now right now is at the heart of this demonstrations is that self-services in many of the campuses of Iranian universities are segregated male and female to different rooms to different Halls now they are breaking through the walls virtually everywhere and sit together in order to basically resist the authorities wants to impose segregation in matters of appearance in the public of course it may seem to us as a kind of trivial and secondary but appearance is important clothing is important how you would imagine yourself is important they don't want to be seen in the way that the authorities would like to impose upon them as this kind of an idea of a chaste Islamic woman who is fully covered and is fully protected the idea of a male member of the family protects the female that is what you see at the heart of this uh rebellion and of course that goes with everything as the second part of this message the idea of life basically means if you like to use the American equivalent of this pursuit of the happiness that's what they want they want fun they want music they want dancing they want to be free in the street they want to have girl boyfriends and live freely and don't be constantly looked by the big brother to tell them what to do and not to do or or not to do so that is you that they share with virtually with the entire with the entire Iranian society as of all although the older Generations that's a big puzzle but you would see that the older generation don't so far at least don't take part as extensively as one might imagine and this is a variety of reasons perhaps you can get to that later on if you like but as far as this younger generation they don't care they don't listen even as much to their parents as the older Generations did so all the or one might say even the nature of the relationship between the parents and the youth has changed it's not the concept of again a major a patriarchy that a father or even a mother would tell the daughter or son what to do because basically they have to negotiate it's fundamentally a rejection of the power of authority parents government yeah it's that every person can decide their own fate and there's no uh lessening of value of the wisdom of old age and old institutions precisely that's what it is yeah and they are surprisingly aware that where they are as a generation so it's a sense of a pride as we are different from the older generation from your parents to compromised and lived with the restrictions that the Islamic regime put on you your grandfather your their grandparents with the generation that actually involved in the revolution of 79 the parents which were the middle generation and these are the third generation of the the revolution of 1979 and therefore they differentiate themselves in terms of their identity from the older generation so that's the life part of it everyone can go more and more they want to access and they see on social media what happens in the rest of the world they're well aware there are much better digitally skilled than my generation for instance uh and and they know about all the personalities they know about all the celebrities they know about all the trends that goes at outside Iran so that's a second part of this message and then of course the third part is the word Azadi meaning Freedom or Liberty which is this long standing demand of the Iranians I would say for the whole Century ever since the Constitutional revolution of 1906 Iran has witnessed this problem of uh authorities that usually emerged at the end of a revolution to basically impose its own image on the population and the youth and create authoritarian regimes of which over the course of time I would say that the Islamic Republic is divorced in the sense that it's uh its intrusion is not only in the political sense in the for instance Banning the freedom of speech you know meddling with the elections uh Banning political parties all kinds of that things which are the political or civil freedoms but it's intrusion into the personal life of the individual which is the worst kind in a sense as you would see that there is always that Authority that basically uh dominates your life or monitors their life so I I and they do it in a kind of a very consistent fashion which makes this idea of Freedom so important as as part of the message of this new movement um you would see that in today's Iran there are no independent political parties there is very little uh probably freedom of the press I wouldn't say that it's entirely gone but it's fairly limited there is enormous amount of propaganda machine which dominates the entire uh uh radio and TV system in Iran it's completely in the hands of the government and of course you would see this variety of other tools for trying to indoctrinate uh Iranian population across the board so that's another sign of this kind of a sense of uh sense of being a totally left out you're not belonging to to what's going on in terms of power empowerment and disempowerment so that's that's the situation as far as the idea of a freedom if it's concept and there's three somewhat miraculously and perhaps unintentionally and the three parts of this message uh complements each other because perhaps for the first time we see that women are in the Forefront of a of a movement I hesitate to say Revolution because I'm not particularly happy with the religious revolutions worldwide and in Iran have always been so miserable in terms of their outcome that we have to be careful not to use the word yes the revolution yeah so that's where where it stands now and the regime was thinking that well these are kids uh they're going to go away and they're of course they're completely conspiratorial in their thinking they constantly think that these are all the uh instigations and provocations of foreign powers these are the great Satan the United States this is Israel or these are the it's actually the Supreme leaders that in so many wars his only response so far that he had in the first past six weeks with regard to this demonstrations is that these are the children of the savac being the security forces of the shortest time that's 43 years later he claims that the children 7 16 17 years 20 years old kids in the street are the grandchildren or children of some imaginary survival of the short security so there's uh the idea is that these protests are internal and external salvatures so people trying to sabotage the government yes and and they are misled as far as they can go and then there's the great state in the United States and other places are uh controlling sort of uh either controlling the narrative feeding propaganda or literally uh sending people I noticed that they have I don't think even they have that kind of imagination precise to say what you have said yeah that they would say that they're controlling the narrative they basically say no these are agents yeah of of the foreign powers and their families are all sold out and they are basically lost their loyalties to the great Islamic Republic and therefore they can be treated so brutally they can be suppressed or brutally which I haven't actually said what they are doing because I thought perhaps first we should talk about who these kids are in the streets before we move on in the about the response of the government but one major factor which seems to add to the anxiety of well the regime is extremely anxious now because they are in a position and it shows that they don't have the lack of confidence in a sense that they would see them reacting in a very forceful way because basically they don't seem to have that kind of a confidence to allow this uh this message or the movement to air to be aired but the one element which corresponds to that is that there is a expatriate population of Iranians worldwide they are probably now according to some estimates close to 4 million even more Iranians abroad and they're all over the world from Australia and New Zealand Japan Western Europe uh turkey and United States and Canada so just to give you one example last last Saturday there was a mass demonstrations in Berlin by the Iranians from Germany and all over Europe Western Europe and it was at least I think probably the conservative estimate was about hundred thousand so hundred thousand Iranians showed up in Berlin demonstrating against the treatment of the uh women in Iran were the movement in Iran the government thinks obviously this must have been some instigation by foreign powers and they want to destroy Islamic Republic and not only that but the propaganda is kind of ridiculous because I listened actually to how they portrayed it in the newspapers I listened to the Iranian news that is officially controlled government control news and and in the papers there's much of the papers that are in the control of the government a one of them were actually the the major news program portrayed the demonstrations that 10 000 people showed up in Berlin and protested against the rising prices rising rates for gas and oil in Germany so that's how they mislead in a very rather just stupid fashion because probably 95 percent if not 100 percent of the Iranians are listening to Passion speaking media outside Iran so it's a BBC person there is Iran International there are at least five or six of them that's probably really important to highlight that Iran is a very modern and tech savvy Nation not just the young people probably more than more than I feel sometimes when I compare myself to what they are doing yeah since 1979 the earlier years for a decade or two they tried in a very crude fashion to restrict and access to Media outside Iran and because this is all through dishes okay and satellite dishes are everywhere you know if you look at the uh you know buildings of either a small house small towns and villages in Iran there's always a a dish and they watch all kinds of things through this and particularly because of what's Happening Now they listen to all the news um uh broadcasts from all this media and they're extremely active they are um probably some of them even 24 hours or close very extensive coverage of every clip that comes through so what the government is doing now the Islamic Republic is that they restrict the entire internet the shutdown they shot at the internet but they cannot afford shutting the internet because much of the business much of the everyday life much of the government Affairs depends on the internet like everywhere else and Iran is extremely if you if I hear from many of the colleagues and friends you know it's like in certain respects it's like Sweden where you go there there's no more currency and for a very good reason because there's so much inflation that that the banknotes are worthless in a sense so everything is true you know uh sweeping your card and that's the entire system is in a standstill because people cannot buy food they can you you go to the supermarket that's how you would do it you you order food to come to your house which Iranians at least the middle classes the more prosperously that Christ is doing all the time so they deliver everything and because of the covet it became even more and they have to pay all through this system um so what happens is that now they're estimating that every day 50 million dollars the Iranian government or the Iranian economy is losing because of slowing the internet plus the frustration is growing of course because you can't order food right I mean they are they are in touch with I mean WhatsApp yeah every Iranian virtually every Iran yeah yeah that has the education and education in the sense that has gone through the the high schools and universities knows how to use the WhatsApp so there's a big middle class like you said secular class in Iran and there there's a lot of at least capacity for if not Revolution then um political ideological uh turmoil and a huge amount of hatred so the hatred is grown yes hatred of the of the policies of the regime of isolation that's a huge point that you hear a great deal about that we don't want to be isolated we don't want to be humiliated Iran is not about this this miserable regime that is ruling over us we have a great culture so there's this sense of a pride in their own culture some of it's uh you know Islamic some of it pre-islamic so they there is a huge um a sense of a pride in that and they see that they cannot communicate with the outside world they they want to travel abroad which they do I mean for one thing the Iranian regime never actually for majority of the population never put restrictions it's not like Soviet Union where you have to have a you used to have a permission to move from one place to another and then of course the the Islamic regime since 1979 basically I chased away or destroyed the old middle class that's my generation basically my parents here they say these are the secular middle class of the parliamiera in the hope that they can do this social engineering and create this Islamic uh uh Society of Their Own the bad news for them was that that didn't happen and that memory persisted and the middle class that was created since past 40 years is much larger in size than what it was because there was of course the demographic Revolution that's the way there's a very Foundation of it it's the demographic Revolution population in Iran I've written an article about it actually a population in Iran since uh the turn of the century last century the 20th century population of Iran was about 9 million or so it's now 83 million and that is since 1979 the population was 35 million between the past 40 years it's basically doubled so it's 83 million although one of the great successes I don't want to bore you with the details about the Democracy but it's important demographics is not important you will you can see that the best rate was very high otherwise you wouldn't have double your population in matter of four decades yeah but Iranians because of the urban shift to an urban population because of the growth of the middle class because of the education they basically the pattern of the uh of growth population growth changed Iran used to be 2.8 or 3 percent birth rate in around 1980s I would say 1970s 1980s now it is 1.1 and it's what probably the most successful country in the Middle East in terms of the population control despite the government a consistent uh attempt to try to encourage people to have more kids middle class refuses to do that and this is the middle class not only anymore in the capital but this is very smaller towns and cities places that used to be villages now you look at them they have a decent population 50 000 100 000 and they live in urban life and they don't want to be subjected to that old pattern of agrarian society when you had 10 children or eight children and of course it's a much more advanced in terms of uh in terms of health and medicine so you don't at least lose children as they used to the antibiotics there's always of kids to survive and therefore if you have 10 kids you're sick with 10 kids you don't end up with four as it used to be in the past six of them would have died in the in the after the age of five actually but now because of that you see that this Urban population in the cities have completely different demands and of course the education is important that's another area of how the social engineering of the Islamic Republic went away because they were thinking that you know the growth of the population the growth of the educated higher educated middle classes in their benefit or they could not even control it in a sense now Iran in my time uh probably had in the 1970s probably by the type of the Revolution about 10 12 universities now it has 56 universities all across the country and there is a something referred to as the Free University or that which has campuses all over the country it has 324 campuses all around Iran what does that mean in many respects this youth that are brought up in these families even in a small towns in very traditional families and families that belong to that kind of a more religious the loyal to the clergy or to the clerical classes their children can now move on which particularly women because in in my times it would have been unheard of that you would have a young woman of 18 or 17 18 19 from a traditional City such as for instance Yaz or in in in statistan Iran to move on elsewhere for Education as you do in this country okay now it's completely accepted that a woman wears their job because he's forced to wear a job to go to a university completely on the other side of the country and this movement of the population not only because of the universities but in general if you now visit Iran you hear accents local accents provincial accents all over the country that is a azerbaijani Turkish accent from the north west of the country you can hear it in the forest province in the South and vice versa so and Kurdish for instance or even more marginal regions such as system province in the southeast of Iran which has been the subject of this recent Massacre when they actually attacked the population when demonstrating and killed a fair number at least 60 people so this movement of the population this creation of a larger middle class the better educated middle class much better educated Iran has 86 percent uh uh literacy which I think probably I haven't checked that but probably is better than turkey even is probably better than anywhere else in the Middle East and it sounds like there's a that's quickly increasing so because because of the movement because of the growth that the education system that's precisely Iran has one million School teachers which may not seem as much if you are in the United States but it's a fairly big number actually can you Linger on the massacre what happened there well the system province is the baluch uh ethnicity of paluchi ethnicity baluchi is a particular ethnic group in southern Iran which is certainly rather than she majority and we should say that most of Iran is she another that's a branch of Islam yes let's maybe just briefly linger sheasm and and Sunni what just let's not get into it let's do a one sentence summary uh and that maybe which which is what most of Iran is majority of the population of the Muslim world are sunnis that is a mainstream if you like to call that actually means that kind of a Ministry can you actually Linger on the the Sunni Suna she she uh she means a party means those that belongs to a party of Ali which was goes back to the early Islamic history of 7th Century I mean I'm almost lingering to the silly notion of pronunciation and stuff like that so ah yeah means part like what what is the extra eye at the end yeah she e means belonging to this community yeah Shia means a person yes yeah and she is the community community and in English when it was anglicized it becomes Shiite so if you say Shiite in today it's perfectly acceptable and of course I myself in my writings I always switch between one and the other one of my books is always Shiite the other book is always she and that hasn't been settled but the she population is the smaller compared to the Sunni population in the world in the world in the world but in Iran is the opposite the Iran and Iraq and possibly not Lebanon are the three countries who barely Iraq and Lebanon have barely majority population whereas Iran is a large population due to its history of conversion to shizen that by itself is another story but in the sense that the the way that historically it evolved the center became more she and the peripheries remained certainly so you have communities of the baluch in the south east we have the Kurds a large portion of the Kurds our sunnies they have cheese as well then they have the indigenous religion of their own ideal uh what's called which is the religion of indigenous to Kurdistan there are two commands in the north east of Iran who are also Chinese the other communities the horizontal region in the in the peripherals of Afghanistan they are also Chinese and you have some Arab population Arab speaking population in the rosestan province in the southwest of Iran which is also or across the Persian Gulf is there a lot of conflict between these regions and also like if I uh blindfolded you and dropped you off in one of the regions would you quickly recognize the region like by the food by the music by the accents by so on yeah the answer to your lovely question which I think I hope it would have happened to me is that yes you would see different cultures yes yeah but different food most important different accents yeah or different languages since they have dialects is a different language altogether but or so for that matter Kurdish which is closer to Persian because they are Indo-European languages but Turkish azeri Turkish which is probably closer to the Turkish of techie Republic of Turkey or to the Republic of Azerbaijan in the North they're the same basically actually if you would have looked as a fascinating picture if you have looked at the let's say even 19th century early 20th century linguistic map of Iran would have been amazed in the number of dialects in the number of languages that has survived and this is an ancient country it's an ancient land and it's a lot of mountains all around it or big deserts so there's a sense of isolation so you would say here and there you see a different community that speaks differently all ancient traditions and languages yeah and because of the great number of invasions that Iran witnessed over more than two and a half millennia of course there are all kinds of cultures were introduced into Iran they're all ethnicities were introduced to Iran mostly coming from the north east of Iran from from the uh lowlands of Central Asia and Beyond and and continued into Iran proper so but now what has happened that's what my point that divided to make uh the century of modernity or modernization has produced a national culture of great great strength in a sense I would say I should ended my book um the the book on Iran Iran a mother in history uh basically saying that despite everything else that has created so much trouble for today's Iraq there is a sense of a cultural uh identity that is very strong and I think I can say uh with with some confidence that despite this despite this regional identities that are still there and they're great and they should be celebrated uh this today if you go to uh to Kurdistan or if you go to sistan they all can speak Persian they all have an education in person so they all basically are becoming part of whether they like it whether they like the regime in power or not they have a sense of belonging to a culture and an identity with the center and of course the idea of a center versus periphery in Iran is very old it goes back to ancient times because even the name of the country was the guarded domains of Iran this is the this is the official name namely that it was recognized that this is not just one uh entity but it's the is the collection of entities like the United States of America exactly exactly but the United States of America in a sense you can say that it was a very successful well it remains to be seen how successful to be continued to be to that that was basically invented created that you would have this sense of it in in the case of an old nature which has been on the map of the world for three thousand years 2500 years there's this is not an exaggeration I'm not a nationalist per se but I mean if you look Persia on the map of the word in ancient times is still there as it is today very few countries in the world are like that that they would have that kind of a continuity over a course of time and that's not without a reason because there was this sense of it a center versus periphery that had found some is it there's a huge amount of tension but there is also a sense of belonging to something and state is very much at the center of it I mean that's why the concept of a state matters for the creation for the shaping of of this culture what happened is therefore you can see that today in answer to your point about traveling blindfolded is that you would be surprised to see how much uh people share and in terms of I just give you one anecdote in 1968 I believe must have been I traveled to Azerbaijan I I used to travel and actually photograph not blindfolded mostly well yeah so I went to a Bazaar in the city of hoi which is in the North Western Iran uh on the border with what is today the Republic of Turkey and I went to the bazaar and I was interested in the kind of a leather work that they produce so I tried to buy some stuff and they were surprised to see that how few people knew Persia so they could not communicate in person with you either they have to ask somebody from some other store to come and translate for you this is 1968 96 so even though it's the official language was special of the country they're still yeah so what are they teach in school so it doesn't matter it was special but this guy just doesn't go to school he hasn't been to the school or it was not fully exposed to it and of course usually are very conservative places so it's stuck in my mind now in recently in 2004 I was traveling to the same area not to the same city but to the same area and I was amazed to see how the youth as soon as they would know that you were coming from somewhere else opening conversation with you talking about the latest movies that was produced in the west and it's not only Hollywood of course there's a huge amount of fascination with Hollywood and Western cinema cinema is a major thing filmmaking is a major thing yeah so these kids in the city of Ahad were asking me we're having lunch they're asking me okay then what do you think about this producer not producer this director or that actor American American European as well but mostly America where they speak in Persian it's a complete person that I would converse with them if they speak English too interesting Yes actually you would be surprised to see what percentage of the Iranian youth at least in big cities are fascinated with learning language and for a reason because they think that's the way to get access either on social media or eventually leave it on yeah unfortunately and and because they don't see a future for themselves in the country either you have to be part of this part of this regime or if you hate them and you don't like the way of their life you look up outside you know I was having drivers to drive me around the country in the cities around Iran and the guy was a young extremely well educated well-dressed and we would have looked at him we could have found him in any Street in any country in the western world and his major concern knowing that I'm from outside major concern is well tell me which would be a better place for me to go so what's wrong with the place that you're in right now you are in your own country you speak your own like oh this is no good I have to have a better future this year's no future for me well it's really interesting because the thing I feel about the protest right now is uh there's a large number of people that instead of giving in to cynicism about you know this government is no good yeah they're actually getting this like uh energy this desire to for revolution uh in in the sort of non-violent sort of in the in the Democratic sense of that let's let's actually find the ideas let's let's build a great nation here this is a great nation this is my nation let's build something great here well that's my hope that's well yeah yeah that's what I'm hoping for it I share your uh aspiration but I'm fearing that I hope it's not a wishful thinking it's certainly that's what they want certainly that's what they want to create but the history and always tells you from where they start to be where they finish there is going to be a huge kind of a change and in this particular case I wouldn't be I I would very much hope that it's not going to be a revolution like 1979 Islamic revolution and I have my hopes in that for one thing this is a revolution that doesn't have a leader okay and it seems that they're comfortable with that at least so far because we were the sixth week of this movement and I hope it's not going to be actually a revolution as I pointed out before I hope it's going to be more of a sense of trying to come to some compromise and gradually move toward change rather than a collapse of this regime and replacement with what so the anxiety of the regime you hope will turn into a kind of uh realization that you have to you have to modernize you have to make progress you actually have to make certain compromises yes or constitutional changes all those kind of stuff so the basic process of government and law making problem is that they say we have it all you know we have our Parliament we have our constitution we have our elections which has all been of course fake but they claim they have all of that but the problem for them is that they try to superimpose is an ideology like all other ideological uh autocracies or other cases in this case that tend to dominate uh all this institution buildings that they have and they they constantly claim we have this we have that that is of course there's a generational thing the upper echelons of this regime are mostly older people interpret they are the clergy that are afraid of the fact that they may lose their control over their whole system that is a sophisticated huge system of government and they rely on certain tools of control which is the Revolutionary guards and other other institutions that are loyal to to the state and they spend enormous amount of funds that is available to them at least before the sanctions but even during the sanctions they still have enough funds to do so and in order to remain in power and they are extremely ruthless in that regard this is not a nice Islamic fatherly regime this is a regime that I would see easily in it clear signs of fascism clear sense of the state's control and pay any price to stay in power so even violence extreme violence to return to the massacre what what were the uses of violence to suppress protests well yes it was actually quite remarkable to see that from the first or the second day of the protest you see out in this street this Riot police okay which comes out in large numbers fully geared up their appearance are rather terrifying like any other Riot but it's probably more than any other right police they're violent and they stand in the streets when these students are demonstrating even in smaller number because before I go to that I should point this point these are to you as well that that these demonstrations are not large ones in one place you see you don't see a hundred thousand people in in one place but you see in every neighborhood couple of thousands of kids are demonstrating all the way around all over now all over the world in different parts yes yes yes actually during the demonstrations three weeks ago they as I said they had people in Sydney Australia New Zealand Tokyo all over the world all protesting high gas prices it's funny everywhere everywhere to the extent that they could be ignored yeah nothing but if they could not be ignored and it's actually quite remarkable that this is very embarrassing to them but somehow they think that this propaganda machine of them is working I say you think they don't have a good even sense I mean it's so there's an incompetence within the propaganda machine yes it is there's an incompetence across the board yeah I mean despite all of this massive government Administration or whatever you would call it all these various components of it there is a sense of the existence of inefficiency and incompetence that is associated with in every action that you see even in their suppression of this street movement but in answer to that question you would see that there this uh Riot police uh very it's quite obvious that they were trained for the purpose so this their appearance to everything these are not just regular army forces or soldiers as conscripts they are professional forces and they come not only in on foot number but they come on motorbikes so there are you would see any of these demonstrations there are 10 12 15 20 motorbikes with two passengers one in front riding the one in the back fully equipped with the Baton with paint guns with pellet guns and with bullets so they have very fully uh equipped and they are terrifying they go through the demonstrations that hits and beat people and then the areas and then you sit behind the first line of these right police you would see all this latest models of this special uh armored trucks for moving to the demonstrations and arresting people throwing them into this and then behind that water water cannons you see and I was looking at that to say okay this is Tehran probably they have this but then you look at the smallest cities they still have the same thing so all over the country one thing that they had managed to produce extensively irrespective of the fact that whether they are effective or not but you see them everywhere so it just shows that how afraid this regime is but that also shows that there's an infrastructure that can Implement violence at scale yes very much so and it's probably part and parcel of this regime from day one the number of Prisons that they have according to perhaps an exaggerated version they said that about 12 000 or so arrested that's what in jails today since past six weeks they were 230 or 40 people were killed including children I under 18. they are they beat up women in the street which is extremely actually uh disturbing when you see these scenes of so there's a lot of this is on video too right everything is on video everybody has a camera and everybody sends to Major news outlets outside Iran and they immediately showed every night if you look at BBC Persia or Iran International reviewer for I think the six of them actually all over this in England they are in Deutsche Valley in Germany uh which has a particular interest in the Iranian BBC World Service and so forth in London and Voice of America Persian here in this country there is another one radio fader which is also funded by the American government also fully covers all of these events so there is no way that these people can that Iraq can miss what's going on in the streets of these demonstrations and the scenes of beating up women which in Iranian culture as I presume in most cultures in the world there is a certain sanctity that you don't attack women but they do and this is an Islamic regime that supposedly have to have a certain sense of concern and uh protection like a like a deep respect for women grounded in a tradition of protecting them but instead this kind of idea that was instilled in law has turned into a deep disrespect of women exactly or fear that these women are not any longer the girls that we thought we are bringing up in this Society the source of you losing your power will be these these women that's the fear yeah and you see of course this government do have a support base I mean it would be uh totally wrong to think that the Islamic Republic has not created its own power base it does uh but it's probably if there's no way there are no statistics that we can or I'm not aware of any statistics that I can give you in numbers what's the percentage of support for the regime in Iran but quite frankly I don't think it's more than probably 10 of the population very generous I I would be surprised if it's that low I would say so if my understanding because I've been very deeply paying attention to the war in Ukraine in to uh Ukraine to Russia and uh to support in Russia for Putin yes I think without knowing the details without even considering the effects of propaganda and stuff like that is there's probably a large number of people in Iran that don't see this as a battle of Human Rights but see it as a battle of uh conservatism like tradition versus modernization and they value tradition that that what they fear from the throwing away of the hijab is not the loss of power and like the women getting human rights what they fear is is the same stuff you fear when you're sitting on a porch and saying kids these days have no respect basically that they there's a large number of Iranians that probably value tradition and uh the beauty of the culture and like there they fear that kids with their internet and their videos and their Revolution will throw away everything that made this country uh hold together for Millennia right so yes I know I would agree with you in the sense that probably like everywhere else in the world this is the generational thing you know every generation thinks differently about the younger generation No Doubt and in Iran is the same but the there is another Factor here is involved those that we would consider them as traditional no longer seem to have their loyalties to this regime that's powerful meaning that the this the they consider as a brutal regime that is prepared to kill children in the streets and it does a lot of things wrong of course it tries to take care of the its own power base it is a very strong sense of if we start here there's a very strong sense in this regime that there are people that is theirs and their others which are not theirs there's a word for it even impression they call it one of us okay uh so well it's very that's very fascistic it's like yes yes it's all for that matter I I suppose Soviet Union you would have if you were a member of the party and like you know your children would have received a special kind of treatment yourself as well um this sense of us versus them uh for a while worked because the younger people coming from the countryside to the cities certain fact certain sector of them would have found uh with a fund protection and support from the government they they wanted to belong to something and the masks and the mornings uh uh morning associations in the neighborhoods and so forth would have given them there is actually a term for it it's called basigi those those have been recruited by this state and this is the youth kind of vigilante if you like that that you can see them also in these demonstrations sometimes thogs they're called the Civil cloth so the people that that comes to these demonstrations that start beating up these young people and they they are not in uh in a security police uh uniforms but they are just regular clothes and these people yes they still support and they still benefit because they get jobs they get their privileges and these are very important for a for a for a state that's basically monopolize this most of the resources you see even be even during this action let alone before this action the oil revenue of Iran which is the major source of the state government was the Monopoly of the state it was Monopoly of State during the parallel from the start basically so what does that mean that mean that the regime in power is not no longer is particularly accountable to the majority population because it extracts wealth from underground and it uses it for its own purposes in order to make it more powerful in order to make it more repressive that's what it is the regime today so it feeds a small or I wouldn't say but a fair number of its own supporters I mean the Revolutionary regards in Iran is probably about 350 000 or something like that it's a very big Force and this is not a regular army the Revolutionary guards are independent from the from the Revolutionary guard his Armed Forces controlled by the state yes the same as the Army but these are more ideologically tied up with this state and they're also in facing internal facing what's their purpose what's their stated what's the stated purpose of the Revolution they've won when the revolution succeeded the regime in part the Islamic regime in power was vulnerable to all kinds of forces of opposition within Iran itself yeah that's the Revolutionary guards and the job was to try to make sure that the regime stays in power and of course over the force of over the course of 40 years they became more powerful more organized better funded better trained well at least we think they're better trained but we don't know because the level of incompetence perhaps can be seen through the rank and file as well but you know they developed their own uh Indus military industry I mean those uh uh drones that you see now Putin's regime are throwing on ukrainians for ukrainians those are all built by the Revolutionary guards by the military industry under the control not the Revolutionary guys and like similar regimes in the Middle East at least these are military industrial complexes you can find them in Egypt of course which is very powerful very traditionally has been empowered and still is in power you find them in Pakistan which is it is extremely powerful and they can change the prime minister's as they did in the case of the last one you can find them uh probably in Myanmar is the same phenomenon uh and I can if you look around you can find quite a number of them and the Revolutionary regards is the equivalent of that this this is a powerful um uh establishment Force which militarily is powerful industrially is powerful and since the start of the Revolution they have been given projects so you want to build dams which they did a major disaster environmental disaster they built 100 and something dams all across the country this is the Revolutionary regard to Desert so they have all kinds of uh tentacles all around the country controlling various things and because it's their job and they have power their prestige there's a huge incentive to join them and to join them and to stay so like they you know when they're having dinner at home with their families there's not an incentive to uh to join the protests sort of well that is the point I think I remember the evolution you guys may be an extreme but many of the people who depend on this state for their support now the younger generation telling their parents you were wrong you don't provide for us this Society this state does not provide what we want so there is a dissent within the family it seems to me I hope it's not a wishful thinking you know there is a kind of a joke going around you see this attempt guys the clergy bearded and traditional clinical appearance whether you see them talking about women they are very of course politically correct they are very looking down towards women as as I said you know they have to be inside they have to be protected they have not to be seen and so forth but if they have a young person a young daughter in their family you see that their discourse changes they no longer seem to be referring to women as second class yeah so that's very important that's precisely that point that when you have this younger generation no matter how privileged they are and many of them are privileged you know and there is also the regime has created its own uh privileged class that are not necessarily directly paid by the regime but they benefit from contractors certain professions that that benefit from what the state provides for them and Iran is a I mean the past 40 years you can see Iran has developed in terms of material culture remarkably Iran has good communication as roads all over the place it's not like a it's more like I don't know whether you have ever visited turkey for instance in certain respects even more advanced than turkey but it's closer to that rather than if you travel I don't want to bring particular names in North Africa or parts of the Middle East or other parts of the Islamic world it's much much different so in this respect you would see a certain contrast or paradoxes here on the certain respect there is the growth and there is urbanization there is modern economy on the other hand you see this superimposed ideological doctrinal aspect that has driven the regime over all these years and they cannot get rid of it they cannot in this respect they cannot modernize themselves they think that they are already perfect in ideological sense this is the best solution for the world not for only for Iran but for the Muslim world and for the word as a whole we are Anti-Imperialist we have managed to survive either under sanctions this is all parts of the rhetoric but of course at a huge expense uh the huge expense for their own population and the points that we have raised is the fact that we now Witness there is a not only a generation gap between the youth and their parents but there is a break in a sense from the older Generations and they are very distinctly the youth that has a different view of the world and it does not want to compromise whether they would be able to succeed or not remains to be seen whether this regime is going to suppress it maybe uh but it actually brought to surface many of aspects of the weaknesses of this regime in power well I hear from a lot of people that are in these protests now and so my love goes to them and stays strong because uh it's inspiring to see people fighting for those things the women life and freedom especially Freedom yes because that can only lead to a good thing in the long term at least and if possible to avoid a violent revolution of course that is something that we all want to see before we return to the present let's Jump Around let's go to the past we mentioned 1979 what happened in 1979 in Iran well in 1979 there was a revolution that eventually came to be known as the Islamic revolution and even up to this day many of The Observers or those who have strong views that would not like to refer to it as an Islamic revolution or even a revolution this is the because the nature of it in the earlier stages of it started really probably around 1977 it took two years was much more all embracing it was not Islamic in a particular fashion or at all in a sense it started with a kind of a very liberal Democrats uh agenda which required which demanded mostly by people who were the veterans of the older generations of Iranian liberal nationalists that were left out in the palabi period it's a period of the Shah became increasingly um authoritarian increasing the suppressive and therefore basically living no space no political space open for any kind of a give and take any kind of a conversation or participation 2017 70s 70s particularly in the 70s can we actually even like just do a a whirlwind review from 1906 to 1979. okay sure in 1906 there was a period like actually as you might know the first decade or this so of uh of the 20th century witnessed numerous what's referred to as constitutional revolutions including Russia 1905 the first Revolution including the Chinese Revolution in 19 constitution in 1910 the young Texas Revolution in 1908 and the Iranian Revolution in 1906. to understand why the synchronicity of all of it why in so many different places very different cultures very different governments very different cultures but all of them in a sense were coming out of the regimes that became uh uh progressively powerful without having any kind of a legal system that would protect the individual vis-a-vis state so the idea of law and the Constitution According to which there should be a certain protection a certain Civil Society became very common yeah but I wonder where that because that's been that way for for a very very long time and so I wonder you know it's funny a certain ideas just their time comes exactly it's like 1848 when you would see that there's a whole range of revolutions across Europe yeah or you would see for instance the Arab Spring you see all these Revolutions in the Arab world which unfortunately nearly all of them failed so yes these are very contagious ideas that moves across Frontiers from one culture to another and I presume we can add to that there are two elements which one can say there is a greater communication there is the greatest sense of a world economy and the third of the century witnessed the first decade of the century witnessed a period of uh volatility particularly in uh in currency so many of the countries of the world particularly non-west suffered in and particularly the businesses suffered and not surprisingly the business class were in the Forefront of many of this constitutional movements requiring the state to give the a kind of a created the right kind of Institutions to listen to their voices to their concerns and the creation of the democratic system parliamentary and system with which there would be a representation popular representation proper elections and so forth and constitutions and this very much is a kind of a French idea of the Constitution going back all the way perhaps to 1789 Revolution Montesquieu all this kind of philosoph were greatly appreciated particularly a different system so what were the ideas in the 1906 Iranian Constitution they precisely the same they were demanding a creation of a legal system with division of power between the three executive legislative and the Judiciary and that's unlike the American system and they requested um basically a certain uh public space to be created between the two sources of power the state which had this kind of a control over the if you like the secular aspect of life in the society and the religious establishment that had a full control over the religious aspects and both of them from the perspective of the Constitution and this considered as repressive and therefore there has to be a new space open between these two and that was the idea of a constitutional Revolution but but it's very nature it was an idea of modernity they wanted the modern society they wanted a better material life they they wanted a more representation and and so forth the Constitutional Revolution as I always would say is much more of a innocent Revolution it's a revolution that did not particularly have much violence in it contrary to many other revolutions it did not have a centralized leadership per se that's why actually I'm getting I mean besides the practices I'm getting a lot of requests for interviews to compare what's happening now with the revolution of 1906 1909 are there any Echoes yes yes there are there are because that was a movement that started without a without a centralized leadership what actually values to voices that emerged in various among the merchants or the businessman in the economic Community among the representatives who came to the first Parliament the Press the new generation of the privileged aristocracy who were educated and uh believed in the Constitutional values all of these voices emerged at the same time and somehow they managed to uh to coexist in the first and the second uh uh parliaments that were created uh between 1905 6 and 1910 or 1911. but they all face huge problems in the sense that Iran was in a dire economic situation this is before the days of the discovery of oil which actually coincides with this card there are two important coincidences one is that the oil was discovered in the south in 1909 during the course of the Constitutional Revolution the second is that in 1907 the two great powers of the time the Russian Empire and the British Empire who always honored Iran as being a buffer State between them because they didn't want to get too close to one another basically came to an agreement facing the fear of the rise of the German Empire so this is the period of Anton as you might know in European history whereby the front the French the British and the Russians all create a Alliance that ultimately leads to the first world war against Germany and at the same time the discovery of oil that the oil industry being a very powerful defining factor of the 20th century for Iran exactly source of a lot of money a lot of money but not all of it in the hands of the Iranians only 150 of it by way of royalties came to Iran there is much of it went to the Anglo passion a old company which they actually discovered the oil in the province who was the star province in the southwest of Iran raised the major oil Industries today right now and this is an extremely profitable uh Enterprise for that company and for the British government it actually purchased by the British government Churchill purchased anglo-iranian oil company for the British government so it was not anymore a private company it was a British interest as a matter of fact and in the course of the 20th century although it helped the modernization in Iran but it also helped the creation of a more authoritative Syria more strong state if you like to call it that it does that 19th century Iran never had that kind of a power never had that kind of resources it's the 20th century even that one-fifth of the income that reached the Iranian State gave it a greater power that's another coincidence so yes yes you could say the oil was one of the catalysts for absolute power but the 20th century saw quite a few countries um have dictators with power unlike anything else in human history yes that's weird too but precisely and you know you can name them from the beginning of the century with people like um I don't know Lenin or Stalin of course Hitler even though Mao of course you can name them and probably as I would say is the last of them is Khomeini in that Century that you would see this strong man with a sense of even a a artificial or real or a sense of a so-called Charisma and with this total power over the regime that they create in the some of them do Nasser they didn't have much of an oil resources in Egypt but he was also one of these strong men okay in the 20th century loved by some hated by others uh so it necessarily does not tie up to uh to Resource economic resources underground but in the Iranian case unfortunately it did and it was a uh it was more than it created more than one issue for Iran it's created a strong state which is the parlavist state from 1920 one onward because in 1921 at the end of the first world war Iran was in a almost a state of total bankruptcy and uh the British had a desire to try to bring Iran to the system that they created in the Middle East in the postwater era the mandate system Palestine Iraq and then of course French Mandate of Lebanon and Syria all of this and Iran was separate because Iran was an independent country it wasn't part of the ottawan Empire that collapsed so they had to somehow handle it and what they tried to do didn't work as a result partly domestic partly international issues wrote about a regime which is headed by the founder of the Parliamentary okay the first military officer called Reza Khan actually a military officer of the Kozak forces and the Kozak forces was the force that was created in the 19th century model of the Russian kozaks when the ruler in the 19th century visited Russia as in a Royal tour and the desire should the Great uh Kozak forces is that I like this and he created one for himself with Russian officers actually so the Russian officers served in Iran from Iran 1880s up to the revolution of 1917. the collapse of the yeah so many revolutions so many revolutions and Reza shop was an officer in that Reza Khan was an officer in that first and he created a new monarchy for reasons that we needed to go to and Discord the palabi regime regime was a modernizing regime okay that brought a company in effect fulfilled many of the Ambitions of the Constitution many of the aspirations of the Constitution better communication but uh secular education um centralizes States and centralized Army better contact with the outside world greater urbanization that's what a modern state is all about and in that regard in a sense for the first 20 years up to the second world war was successful despite and more significant of all it managed to keep the European powers which is always interfering in the local Affairs of Iran in an amlex so they were there in an arm length but they were also respecting the power of the state part of the Apollo State during the second second world war the same phenomenon as earlier interference led to the occupation of Iran by the Allied Forces the British from the south the Russians from the north the Red Army they took over Iran and of course the second world war yes from 1941 up to 1945 and of course when the when the Red Army refused to uh withdraw from Iranian Azerbaijan and with some thought of possible annexation of that Province there was a big issue in the possible Iran so after 1945 yes 1945 to 1946 there was a big Soviet Union getting greedy yes but eventually they agreed eventually Stalin agreed to leave the Azerbaijan province in the hope that it would get some concessions from Iran which in the oil of the Caspian era area which didn't work and it's a different story altogether but what happened is that in the post-war era between 1944 45 and 1953 is a period of Greater uh democratization was that vessels dictatorship basically disappeared and this is where you would see political parties Free Press a lot of chaotic really as as democracies often are so something like was it was it officially a democracy yes it was it the market was there elections there were elections yes of course yes of course and they were very diverse political tendencies came to the picture including the to the party of Iran which is Communist Party of Iran this Communist Party of Iran is probably the biggest Communist Party of the whole of the Middle East and one of the biggest in the world actually at that time did the Soviet Union have a significant influence on uh of course we're basically following orders from the Soviets although they deny it but in reality that's the case yeah but what happened they were seen by the Americans during the Cold War as if as a threat and Iran was going through a period of demanding nationalization of his oil resources that's a very important episode with mosadir whom you might have heard about his name Dr Muhammad Musa was the Prime Minister and the national charismatic leader from 1951 to 1953 prior to that he was a famous parliamentarian but this period was the Prime Minister of Iran and he nationalized the Iranian oil industry and the British didn't like it at all and eventually resulted in a famous crew which at least partly was supported by the funding and by the moral supports of the British and the Americans particularly by the emergence it was always seen as one of the earliest and the most successful CIA operations during the Cold War to see I had something to do with this of course that's one of the earliest operations of the CIA wait a minute what was yes of course what was the same what was the CIA doing CIA this is the time at the post for era in the 50s in the 50s 40s and the 50s the British Empire which was really the major superpower of the region after the collapse of the desires Empire gradually took the second seat to the Americans to where the newcomers and the great powers and the victors of the second World War and the Americans viewed Iran as an important uh uh as an important country since it has the largest common borders with the Soviet Union and it's what I did the size was the Persian goldfish at the time was the greatest uh uh supplier of uh oil to the outside world and therefore the Americans uh had a particular interest in Iraq and in the earlier stages their interest was in the interest of the Iranian government because they wanted to get rid of both the Soviet Union which made the return in the first War era and of course the British that were gradually withdrawing from Iraq but they they had a full control over the anglo-iranian or company they changed the name to angular Iranian or company when the name of the country officially changed from Persia to Iran in the west the name of the company changed and they got into a huge dispute with the wasada government that eventually led to the coup of 1953 which eventually created it very uh very distressful memory in the minds of many of the Iranian nationalists that this was the betrayer of the great Powers the British and Americans yes CIA played a part because see I feared contrary to the British that they were afraid of their own oil in Iran the CIA was afraid of the Soviet penetration in in the South and particularly because there was a very powerful a very powerful Communist party you know the two-day party of Iran so they gradually shifted between the Truman Administration and our Eisenhower Administration these are early days of the CIA and then they actually did participate uh to set their agents there's a long story to that and it eventually resulted in a successful coup that removed from Power what's the United States interest here why are they using CIA are they trying to make sure there's not too much centralization of power in this region they were afraid of the fact that the that of the Soviet Union and during the Cold War that was the cancer they actually almost want to protect Iran and its own Sovereign processes from the influence of the Soviets yes because they were afraid of the fact if Iran or at least this is part of the I'm simplifying a very complex picture but the but but the Americans basically were thinking that if Iran is going to be lost choose Soviet influence then eventually basically the all the oil resources in the Persian Gulf are going to be threatened and therefore and this would basically is the National Security of the United States and all of the western allies European allies so in a sense this was the long arm of the CIA to try to try to make sure that that's not going to happen and then of course they'll be persuaded by the British because British were the old hand which were in Iran since the beginning of the 19th century they always had relations with Iran and so forth so they gradually replaced and and of course they don't want to give them this kind of a satanic view that American was a bad influence because they had also some very good influences in Iraq but this particular episode somehow shed dark lights on the American presence and was used that abused time and again particularly the revolution 1979 which was this great Satan idea that Khomeini created basically was based on the fact is 1953 you were responsible for the downfall of a national government in Iran which as a matter of fact he had no respect for it Romani had no respect for the national secular National liberals including Muhammad Musa there but he was using it as a as a rhetorical tool for his own purposes but what happened is that after 1953 we see again the rise of authoritarian Muhammad result's power and then he is that's the Shah that's the Shah that we know as sure this is the son of research and uh technically what what is Shah is it actually is an old term impression that comes from a pre-islamic portion of ancient times in the context of democracy should it be seen as like a supreme leader King is the head of the executive power according to the Constitution of 1906. oh that's in the Constitution they actually yeah as a place in the Constitution but the actual term sure okay interesting what this show is a very old term yeah it's almost like a monarchic term like uh like a king yeah it is actually is the term peculiar to Iran I've written about it somewhere but because the term that the Western World in the ancient times has been Rex for royalty and the King in the Eastern World in India is right it's the same origin the same route Iran never shared that they had the idea of because the next Android I don't want to get into the too much of a etymology but this is an interesting one yeah Rex and Raj both means the one that opens the road for basically in four set of religion okay um in uh enforcer of the right religion because Rex and Raj both have the uh after a typological uh origin of Rights you see and right means the right religion basically by the way there's so much beautiful language here I'm just looking at the the Persian constitution in 1906 and it says it's the constitution of the sublime state of Persia pajar Iran I mean just just the extra adjectives on top of this stuff is beautiful I mean yeah because that was actually the change that came about I don't want to go in too much into it but it was called as I pointed out before the guarded domains of Iraq yes they changed that to the sublime state of Iran during the Constitutional Revolution because they wanted to give a greater sense of centrality of this state yeah and Sublime was the term refused but also what permeates all this is a is a poetic I mean there is a history of poetry of course based on the culture it's just fascinating so I mean it's I I of course I don't speak the language but even in in Russian there's also a music to the soul of the people that represents itself that presents itself in the form of poetry and literature in the way that it doesn't in the in the English-speaking world I don't know what that is there's um there's a Romantics like romantic romantic side that's right yeah I agree with you in Iran of course you know it is the time of the Constitutional Revolution it's a time of great poetry this kind of a patriotic sentiments that comes through poetry plays a very important part uh of course these days poetry has kind of declined and instead you see the visual image that is at the center that's why Cinema is so important because these days with their Tick Tock yeah let me finish this about this period of biometricia he built up because he received the greater income from the oil revenue and it built up a very strong state with a strong security Force a strong security apparatus which is the savark there's a uh which is a acronym for the security force in security organization and he of course unfortunately in the 1960s and 70s particularly 1970s basically suppress the voices of or possibility of any kind of a mass participation in the political uh process it became very much an authoritarian regime with its own technocrats very much a modernist vision of of of of Iran's future and almost kind of Messianic that he was hoping that Iran in a decade would become the fifth most powerful estate in the world and the riches as he would have said the gates of the great civilization very much in the mind had this image of ancient Iran of the community Empire and we want to go back to that greatness of the archimedian Empire somewhat rather naive and very nationalistic and crude fashion and what happened is that as a result there was built up some kind of a resistance from the intellectuals from the left eventually resulting in a kind of a protest movement as I said by 1977 1978. then of course the question that comes to mind and the probably it you have you you would like to know about is the fact that why it becomes religious why it's become Islamic if it's the popular you know nationalist liberal tendency of opening up the political uh uh space and along greater participation going back to the Constitution of 1906 1907 why it's all of a sudden it becomes Khomeini where does he come from the reason for that at least in a concise fashion is the fact that on one area that after the greatest suppression of all the other voices remained open was religion masks the mullahs on the pulpit and the message that gradually shifted from the older traditional message of the Sharia of Islam I mean all the rules and regulations of how one has to live into something very political and not only political but also radical political so in the whole period from the Constitutional Revolution to the revolution of 1979 basically the religious establishment gradually was pushed to the opposition they were not originally very conservative supported us of State as the Catholic church for instance was supported of majority of the authoritarian governments around the world but the politicization was the result of isolation because they were left out of the system and while in isolation they did they did not they were not successful in trying to reform themselves to try to become to try to find answers to many of the questions from Modern Times what happens to women what happens to civil rights what happens to a civil society how the modern law and individual freedoms have to be defined in Islamic terms how to separate uh religion and state or how to separate the religion and state these issues were never addressed what happened is that there was this bypass through political uh Islam and revolutionary Islam as it gradually they learned you know that this is the bypass bypass to power basically to become again a voice in the society and eventually a prominent voice and eventually monolithic voice and the society that's the process that led into the revolution of 1979 basically this period greater attention was paid to religion even among the secular middle classes who were alienated for a very long time because of this extensive modernization of the pallavi period they had they didn't have a sense of that old monoliths with their turbans but they became they had it kind of aura in this period yes they are those who remain not corrupted they are the people who basically went against the suppression of the palavi regime and Khomeini became a leader a symbol of that nobody ever thought in the earlier stages and bank this very excited multitudes that came to the streets of the Iranian cities in 1979 or 1978 actually thought that this this old ball line with 70s that all of a sudden has appeared from the najaf through Paris to Tehran is going to take over and create a autocracy a religious autocracy we have to back up for just a second who who is how many uh who you just you just mentioned a few desperate facts about the man yeah he was the person that took power in 1979 supreme leader of Iran yes some you mentioned something about Paris something about being in the 70s yes what should we know about the guy oh yeah who eventually was known as Imam Gomez he was kind of promoted to a even more Sublime position okay okay uh can we I'm just a million tangents uh Ayatollah Imam what do these terms mean well Ayatollah means the sign of God in the course of the 19th century or early 20th century as the religious establishment gradually lost its greater presence in the society and these prominent places in society they had some kind different inflation in titles so they gave themselves a more Grand titles yeah more adjectives more adjectives more Grand titers such as Ayatollah that became a kind of a highest rank of the religious hierarchy but it incidentally was in on you know unofficial hierarchy there was not it's not like the Chris like Catholic Church that you have you know Bishops and you know Federer it was very unofficial mother and he was an Ayatollah it was eventually recognized as an Ayatollah he was in the first Ayatollah no no no not at all the ayatollahs were before him ever since the beginning of the century but he was eventually recognized as an Ayatollah and if I want to study this way Ayatollah how many was born in 1900 and in a sense all these tremendous change that Iran witnessed in the course of the 20th century was in a sense materializing this person he become a mullah of a lower rank went to the traditional mattresses to the traditional centers for the education of the seminarians never had a secular education had a very complex Islamic education on this one-hand jurisprudence on the other hand probably a little bit of Islamic philosophy and mysticism which is unusual for the Juris for the for the factory as they call them this religious Scholars or or legal Scholars of Islam and then he in the 1960s when he was residing in Tehran and gradually becoming more important he became a voice of opposition against the Shah and the reason for opposition uh in the 1960 early 1960s was the fact that the shot carried through a series of extensive modernization policies of which the most important was the land reform so in effect the land distribution that took place in the early 60s removed or weakened greatly that class of land owners from the ancient from the 19th century and he uh Khomeini saw himself as a voice of that old class that uh felt that actually declared that this land distribution is on Islamic according to the Islamic law properties a property is honored and you cannot just no matter how much and how large are these states that the landowning class has the government has no right to redistribute it even Among The Peasants among among the people who are killing the land so that was a major issue Shaw also gave the right of vote to women and that also he objected is that women should not have a right can we just Linger on the Islamic law How firm and clear is the Islamic law that he was representing and embodying is this um codified codified yes that's a good term yeah that's another issue not only the hierarchy was unofficial but also uh Islamic law particularly Shiloh did not have any uh codified system because this religious Authority is always resisted becoming under a umbrella of a more codified system of Islamic law because they were outside the state in essence civil civil law was in the hand of the religious establishment they had their own courts independent of the state but other matters of legal matters was in the hand of the government there was a kind of in de facto division between these two institutions State versus the religious establishment therefore it was not codified so he could declare that this is unofficial or I said illegal according to the Islamic law that you would distributed land to the presence and another must ahead or another religious Authority would say no no it's perfectly fine because he would has a different reading of the law so that being in mind that adds to the complexity of the picture he in the 1963 there was a period of uprising of the supporters of Ayatollah Khomeini that was the turning point in a sense to try to politicize the religious supporters of ayatulate who were loyal to other Harmony and in a sense all the community of more religiously orientated against the secular policies of the Shah and against of course the dictatorship of the show so that's where the religious movement became a political party in 1963 is the first moment it's a huge Uprising and the government suppressed it but then suppression yes would start to build of course and he was sent to Exile he went to najaf which is this great Center in southern so it became a martyr on top of this at the Martyr he was probably even forgotten to some extent but not it was forgotten for the for the secular middle class but not to those supporters of his who were paying him their dues because in Islam you would paid use to religious leaders you know there's religious Jews and arms that you put pay to the clerical authorities and they redistribute them among their own students and so forth so they built actually a network of loyalty based on this uh donations and these donations uh that's received by atolo Khomeini was very effectively through his network was distributed even if he was in Exile asadira so the 1977 1978 when the situation changed and there was a little bit of opening in the political climate then you saw that Ayatollah Khomeini starts sending cassette messages that was his mean of communication but sending cassettes and cassettes were sent through the country by his Network so or declarations and saying first that we would like to see a greater democratization and the Shah has to abide by the Constitution of 1907 this is a constitution this is a democratic system and so forth was he charismatic well it depends who would call what do you call charismatic yeah the long beard it was kind of a man in turban and the Gown which was a very unusual leadership for people who were much more accustomed to the civilian clothing or to the equipments of the Shaw's military uniforms that he used to wear but I also mean like he's a man I was able to take power to become popular sufficiently popular so like I I would like is it the ideas is it an accident or is it the man himself the Charisma or something about the man that led to this particular person basically changing the tide of history in this part of the world in a way unexpected all the above that you mentioned or was it just the beard no I think no it's beyond the appearance because the appearance is greatly helps as you know yeah you know in the 20th century appearance is helpful yeah pictures for propaganda for messaging that's an important factor and he wasn't uh kind of a adamant and very severe in his own positions he could appear very uncompromising and he had a sense of confidence self-confidence that we truly everybody else lacked and he was a man of opportunity as soon as he would see that a chance an opportunity would open up he would jump on it and that's what he did basically as more the political space opened the weaknesses of the shortest government became more evident his indecision became more evident his lack of confidence became more evident Khomeini managed to move further into the center of the movement because he was the only Authority that had this network of support through the masks through the people who paid homage to him who followed him because there's a sense of following of the religious leader in shiza you are a follower of this Authority follower of that Society and he's basically created an environment in which people looked upon him as a kind of a Messianic figure yeah that came to save Iran from what they considered at the time the problems of uh dictatorship under the shore so there's not a suspicion about Islamic law being the primary law of the language people had very little sense that what Islamic law is all about because the secular education has left that into the old religious schools this is not something that ordinary educated Iranian who goes to the universities is going to learn and therefore there is a sense of idealization that there is something great there that is and there were quite a number of intellectuals who also viewed this kind of an idea of they would refer to as this toxication that is this civilization of the West that has brought with it all the modernity that we see around ourselves has enormous Sinister features into it and it has taken away from us our authenticity that was the thing that there is something authentic that should be protected and therefore a man in that kind of a Garb and appearance received as a source for return to this originality of their own culture authenticity of their own culture and he perfectly took advantage of that that's how many tricky advantage of it and the circle around him I expensive everybody else which she managed in the course of 1979 to 1989 which he passed away it died in the 10 years during this period managed to basically transform the Iranian Society to create institutions of the Islamic Republic and to acquire himself the position of the Guardian jurists that was something completely new it didn't ever exist before as a matter of fact as you might know the model of government that a religious establishment takes over the states is unprecedented throughout the course of Iranian history throughout the course of the Islamic history I would say this is the first example and probably the only example of a of a regime that religious establishment that has always in the course of Iranian history ever since I would say probably at the 16th century if not earlier has been always separate from this state and always kind of collaborating with this state in a with a certain tensions in between the two of them there were two basically as they would call themselves the two pillars of stability in the society that situation changed for the first time the religious establishment took over the power of this state and that's at the core of what we see today as a major issue for Iranian Society because these are basically that old balance between the religion and the state which was kind of de facto uh separation of the authorities of the two uh has been violated and now you have empowered if your theocracy in effect which of course only in the on the on in its appearances theocracy deep down it's a in my opinion is the brutal fascist regime that it stays in power but it has the appearance of religion into it so this is really the story of the revolution and as a result of that the Iranian middle classes greatly suffered it's not without a reason that you see 4 million Iranians abroad because basically the emergence of this new power gradually uh isolated or marginalized the secular middle class who could not survive under that regime and gradually moved out uh in the course of perhaps 30 40 years up to now Iran has the largest I think I'm right to say so has the largest brain drain in any country in the world according to its population so fascinating that um how much of a weird Quirk of history is it that uh that religion would take hold in a country like does it have to do with the individual it seems like if we re ran the 20th century uh a thousand times we would get the uh 79 Revolution resulting in um Islamic law like less than you know one percent of the time it feels like or no what which percentage would you put well I think has something to do with the very complex nature of how Iran evolved over a long period of time since the 16th century that's why if I would for a moment talk about what I have written I've written a book that's called Iran and modern history and it does not start in the 20th century it starts in the 16th century yeah because that's what I have argued that this complex process that at the end of the day resulted in what we see around us today is something that was in making for a very long time and religion was a big part of it she and the the the Messiah complex the exactly the the longing for this great vision of a great nation that somehow is um the sublime nation that can only be fully Sublime through uh through religion or at the time it was thought that is true religion ever since then it's disillusionment with that image yeah or at least a process of this illusionment the outcome of it is what we see today basically that process of 40 years is a process of readjusting to the realities of the world that that great moment of romantic success of a revolution like most Revolutions of course that is going to change Iran and bring this kind of a moment of greatest led into this great disappointment so the movement of the great disappointment in a sense like most Messianic movements by the way Mosaic move as a general are always leading into great disappointments but what I have here that perhaps should be added to it that yes it was the peculiarity of Iran as a society that had to experience this eventual encounter between religion and state that's something to do with the nature of Jesus that's just one point that should be pointed out most of Sunni Islam don't have that kind of I say most because there is something there but Sony Islam in general does not have that kind of an aspiration for the coming of a Messianic uh uh a leader she's them does she's I mean it's very shaping particularly the way that it was set up in Iran was a religion that has always this element of expectation to it for the coming of this Messianic leader of course I mean between parenthesis all societies look for Messianic leaders I'm just look around us but some societies more than others there's certain culture it might have to do with them the Romantic poetry that we mentioned earlier I mean surely I mean not to draw to me parallels but the Soviet Union there is romanticism too and I mean I don't know there there it does maybe idealism a sense of his savior yeah who would who would bring you out of the misery that you are in and and always looking for a for a third party to solve your issues that's why probably this movement has a particularly significance because it probably doesn't look for a messiah although I was talking to my brother who is the historian also and he was saying perhaps the Messiah of this movement is that mass or amini the 22 year old girl that was killed it's a market Messiah who is now leading a movement which no longer has that charismatic leadership with it but yes I would say that Iran has been the birthplace if I might say that of Messianic aspirations going back to the ancient zoracianism which is the really the whole system that you see in major religions or at least best so-called Western religions it's abrahamic religions is parallel or perhaps influenced by Zoroastrianism in which there is an idea of uh this war than the other word that is Hereafter there is an idea of a judgment at the end of the time and there is a concept that there is a moment of Justice that is going to come with the rise of a religious or a charismatic figure so it's a very old phenomenon in Iran very old and it's time and again repeated itself in the course of its history but never as powerfully as it happened in 1979 and never in the form of authority from within the religious establishment it was always The Descent movements that were kind of antinomian they were against the authority of the uh religious establishment that changed in the 20th century but the revolution 1979 that change is still with us today what can we just Linger on um are there some practical games of Power that occurred you know in the way that Stalin took power and held power in the early days is there something like this in terms of the establishment of the Revolutionary guard and all those kinds of stuff yes so it's the the Messianic figure that has some support from the people but uh does he have to crush his enemies in competition certainly did probably not certainly not as brutal in terms of the victims as you would see in Soviet Union understand who the Bloodshed or the destruction of the population was far greater than what you would find in Iran of the Islamic Republic it's uncomfortable perhaps I would find a greater parallel with matzodun and particularly because China has a very strong Messianic tradition since the ancient times so they have something and Mao appeared as the kind of a Messianic figure there I can see there is a parallel but also you can see with any other authoritarian regime with the Messianic fear at the head of it that it destroys all the other forces so during the course of the first 10 years of the Islamic revolution it destroyed the liberal nationalists secular it's destroyed the Guerrilla movements some of them Islamic some of them marxists who turned into political parties or tendencies in the course of the post-revolution 1979 they were completely destroyed and in a very brutal fashion and uh the their opposition even within the religious establishment because it wasn't a uniform there were many different Tendencies those that were opposed to the authority of Ayatollah Khomeini or not Imam Khomeini meaning almost a sacred religious figure above the level of a religious Authority is a saint kind of a figure he says she's them has this idea of imams they were 11 of them the 12th is hidden and would come back at the end of the time this is okay Messianic figure so the title that was always used for them only in shiza never used for any other person he is the first person in the revolution of 1979 first referred to as Deputy of Imam but the term Deputy gradually disappeared and he became Imam Khomeini this is that his official title I love human beings so much it's so beautiful these uh titles that we give each other it's um but it's marvelous stuff you love it because you haven't been under that system no I I love it in a way I love it in a very dark kind of way it caricatures itself it's it's almost funny in its absurdity if not for the evil that it has led to in human history uh but also the fact that it's a man is in fact fulfillment in a kind of completely um unintended fashion is a fulfillment of that idea of a messiah that they've been fighting for this Imam which is in ahide for a thousand years is here and not here and therefore Khomeini would have in effect fulfilled those anticipations but beyond that I just give you one example I know that you may have other concerns but when I say elimination at the end of the iran-iraq war by the direct order of Ayatollah Khomeini a fatwa that he wrote a group of prisoners who belong to a variety of uh political parties the left religious left majority of them the left and the the Marxist left and the religious left in a matter of a few weeks or perhaps a few months I'm not actually quite sure about the times that uh in a series of these were people who have already been tried and they were given uh sentences they were brought back before the uh summary Trials of three judges or more three four of them one of them is now the new president of the Islamic Republic and they were given a a quick summary sentences which meant execution so something between probably six to eight thousand were executed in matter of a month or two months something like that mostly in Tehran but also in provinces and that's remained an extraordinary trauma for the families for those who had these kids in they're all young all young so this remains very much uh kind of uh original sin of the Islamic Republic that cannot get rid of and it's in people's memories they didn't allow them even the families to go and mourn their dead in a an official symmetry which they created for them now the latest thing is that they put a huge a concrete wall around it so nobody would be able to get into it so these all part of this extraordinary level of level of atrocity brutality that you see that the regime claimed that it comes with the morality of religion and Islam to bring back the justice and and and be more uh in a sense kind to people ended up with what it is in the memory of many of the people in Iraq so developing these fascistic Tendencies very much destroying minorities Baha'is one of them hundreds of bahais were without any reason without any involvement we picked up and uh executed the properties were taken over their rights were taken away from them even up to this day this is the largest by the very religious minority in Iran so you would see that in many areas this is a ax very much as an Beyond authoritarian it's a kind of really fascistic regime foreign held power for 10 years and then took power the next Supreme All Right leader who is still the leader today for over 30 years who is he well he was one of the this is one day perhaps no well they hesitated to use the term Imam for him but in any other respect he was given all of that adulation yes that they did to how many he is the guardian jurist that's what's important because the guardian jurist in the constitution of the Islamic Republic is an authority that is above this state he is not elected quote-unquote because this is a Divine Authority although he has been designated by the group of the terror and mullah's like himself and uh he has the full power over all uh institutions of the state the Army the media the economy every aspect of the acts like you show it's like this authoritarian Authority did that gradually develop or was that very early on well that's part of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic the first constitution um in the first draft of the Constitution did not have the authority of the Guardian Judas but then it was added by Khomeini and his supporters are there actual in the Constitution any limits to his power yes there is a council of the experts so to say that would remove him from Power I think theoretically but there is so much restrictions to that that I don't think it would have ever happened in reality in his case at least but in terms of executive to make decisions and all that kind of stuff does he need to check with anybody no boy he does check with his own advisors but he's he doesn't have any he doesn't have any constitutional obligation to check on the decisions that he's making so that's the supreme leader but there's been presidents yes and what's the role of the president the president in a sense is the executive power under the Islamic Republic there are three heads of powers this is the president that presumably has the executive power there is the head of the judiciary and there is the head of the uh the speaker of the parliament much less Islamic which is the uh the legislative so the legislative Judiciary and executive who is now the president is the uh the head of the Executive above them is the supremely there or the guardian jurist can you give me some insight because I especially I'm not exactly sure why but uh the president Ahmadinejad is somebody I'm as an American really familiar with why is that exactly but why was why was the president the public-facing person to the world versus the supreme leader uh is that just a accident of a particular humans involved or is this by Design no because the supreme leader tries to keep himself out of issues of everyday politics supposedly yeah but therefore he is not coming to United Nations to give a speech during the uh session uh but Mr ahmadines at the time was the president uh would come and make outrageous statements that's why you probably know something about him so all of them make public statements but he had a proclivity for outrageous statements and it does all kinds of things he makes all kinds of statements but he is somewhat above the everyday politics in theory but of course he is pulling all the strings with without doubt in every last respect and it seems that you were asked I thought you're going to ask me this question almost without a an exception since the Inception of the Islamic Republic in 1979 up to the last of the presidents of the Islamic Republic Rouhani before the guy that is last year or a year and a half ago was in a phony election uh uh got into the position of the president all of them on the long list all of them eventually fell out with the regime mm-hmm so there is no president except perhaps to some extent through a honey but we'll wait and see what is going to happen to him but prior to him all of them including ahmadine Azad fell out with the regime with the current regime in Iraq who's Johannes he was officially president for eight years yeah prior to raisy Ibrahimovic the 221 the year what you're saying is a phony election yesterday what happened because the process of actually candidacy for presidency is completely controlled by a a cancer that is under the control of the uh supreme leader so they have to approve who is going to be the candidate so why does everybody can enter and say I would like to be a candidate so did Rouhani follow out of favor you're saying there's something yeah well he is kind of out of favor now because he was more moderate than this this most recent regime what the point is that if you look this is something almost institutional constitutional to the regime this is the regime that rejects all of the executive powers because it's because the division between the supreme authority as the place of a supreme authority versus the presidency has problematic it is as if there would be a a a supreme leader in the United States above all these three sources of power I mean that's the kind of any view that we can see in today's Iran and of course he is at the focus of all the criticism that he receives from the demonstrators in today's Iran so on top of all this recently and throughout the last several years U.S and Iran are in the midst of nuclear deal negotiations this is another part of the story of Iran is uh the development of nuclear weapons the nuclear program they're looking to restore the nuclear deal known as The Joint comprehensive plan of action jcpoa what is the history the present and the future of these negotiations over nuclear weapons what is interesting to you in this full context from the 16th century of the Messianic um yeah Journey uh what's interesting to you here you can argue that for a long time even under the shaw but much more expressively and decisively under the Islamic Republic there was a determination to have a nuclear power or nuclear weapon in a sense I think the bottom line of all the negotiations everything else is that Iran of the Islamic Republic had the tendency of having its own nuclear weapon the reason for that is that Iran was the subject of nearly nine years eight and a half years of uh Iran Iraq War when uh not only Iran faced an aggressor Iraq that actually attacked Iran at a very critical time at the very beginning of the Iranian Revolution but the fact that Iran felt kind of a helpless in the course of this war and has to make great sacrifices actually which supported the Islamic regime and Consolidated the Islamic regime because of this war and most of the time the support of the United States was behind Iraq Visa of Iran and Iran felt that it's been isolated and has to protect itself so there is some argument for having a nuclear capabilities but in reality this has resulted in as a completely mindless crazy a wasteful attempt on the side of the Iranian regime to try to develop a nuclear power and therefore the rest of the world particularly in this region were very worried that if Iran would get access to a nuclear weapon then the entire region of the Persian Gulf might particularly Saudi Arabia possibly turkey possibly Egypt all of them may require uh may may demand to have also nuclear weapon given the fact that Pakistan and India has already have it so there was a determined attempt as you might know on the side of the western communities or now gradually World communities to try to as much as possible to control Iran from getting access to a nuclear capability or actually limit Iran's nuclear capabilities to what was defined usually in a euphemism as a peaceful fashion okay uh that being said there was also Israel which viewed the Islamic Republic as a arch enemy and some of it might be due to the israeli's own exaggeration of Iran's threat and some of it is because Iran has developed a fairly strong military as we see today and as such this attempt to try to prevent Iran from Ever Getting access to nuclear weapon which resulted as you might know in this massive sanctions that were imposed upon Iran ever since the beginning of the revolution in 1979 and of course more intensively since 2015 2016 even prior to that probably a little bit earlier this this agreement the nuclear agreement was supposed to control or monitor Iranian nuclear industry or nuclear setup in exchange for removing the sanctions what this never worked in a matter of fact in a very successful satisfactory way for the Iranians or for the Americans particularly under Trump Administration which I think foolishly decided to scrap the agreement that was reached under President Obama like many other policies that was implemented under Trump Administration this created a major problem that is how to under Biden how to try to come up with a new nuclear agreement with Iran in this process since 2016 where the United States withdrew from the agreement Iran felt comfortable to try to go and do whatever they want without any kind of monitor being monitored by the International Community and that's the situation now we don't know whether Iran is really sincere under the present regime to negotiate a deal we don't know that the United States is willing to do so and it seems that now what is happening in terms of the protests in the Iranian streets makes it even harder in a public eye to try to negotiate a deal with Iran because that means in the minds of many and with some justification that uh if the nuclear agreement would result in the removal of many of these sanctions millions billions uh as the result of the removal of the sanctions and Iran's ability to sell it it's all in the international market without any restrictions means that the Iranian government is going to become even more powerful more financially secure in order to suppress its own people so that's the agreement that goes against coming to terms with with uh Iran but the problem is that there is no clear alternative even I'm not particularly personally favorable for this agreement to be uh to to be ratified but the alternative is very difficult there is no way to try to see what can be done geopolitics where every alternative is terrible let me ask you about one of the most complex geopolitical situations in history um one aspect of it is the cold war between Iran and Israel the bigger picture of it is sometimes referred to as uh israel-palestine conflict what are all the party's Nations involved what are the interests that are involved what's the rhetoric um can you understand make the case for each side of this conflict the European Union can of worms that it takes another three hours of of conversation just three hours at least what what I can tell you is this Iran prior to 1979 viewed itself under the Shah as a kind of a if not supporter of Israel was in very good terms with Israel they had an embassy in Iran or unofficial Embassy you know there are certain projects that's helping with the Agriculture and so forth you know but since 1979 that completely reversed part of it is that the issue of the Palestinian plights remained very much at the heart of the Revolutionary Iranians who would see that part of the United States is to support part of the United States guilt sin is to support Israel vis-a-vis it's very suppressive a very oppressive treatment of the Palestinians completely illegal taking over after territories which is not theirs since 1967. and therefore it is upon the Iranian regime Iranian Islamic Republic to support the cause of the Palestinians this came about at the time when the rest of the support for the Palestinians including Arab nationalism basically reached a stage of bankruptcy I mean much of the regimes of the Arab world either are now coming to terms with Israel or in one way or another because of their own contingencies because of their own concerns and interests are really nearly accepting Israel in the in the region now that all task of rhetorically supporting the Palestinians falls upon the Islamic Republic that sees itself as the champion of the Palestinians now without as a matter of fact having either the support of the Iranian people behind him if you ask if tomorrow there would be a poll or a referendum I would doubt that 80 of the Iranian people would approve of the policies of the Islamic Republic Visa with the issue of Palestine nor the Palestinians themselves because they're the Islamic Republic is only supporting those factions within the Palestinian movement which are Islamic quote-unquote and even within that they there is problems with Hamas for instance but nevertheless it's for the Islamic Republic some kind of a propaganda tool to be able to use it for its own sake and claim that we are the champions of the Palestinian people whether they have a solution if you look at the rhetoric if you listen to the rhetoric it's the destruction of the state of Israel and that's it seems to me creates a certain anxiety in the minds of the Israelis Israeli population and Israeli government particularly those who are now in power Netanyahu the likud and more kind of a right-wing politics of police polity of today's Israel that being said I think also the Israelis try to get an extra mileage out of a threat of Iran quote-unquote in order to present themselves a rightful to for terms of security and whatever else the way that they're treating the Palestinians which I think is extremely unjust I think it's extremely unwise for Israel to carry on with these policies as they did since the 67 at least and not to try to come to terms with it of course there are huge amount of I'm not denying that at all it's a huge amount of uh uh failures mistakes and stupidity on the side of the Palestinian leadership in various stages not to try to make a deal or try to come to terms in some fashion but it's a very complex picture and it's rather unfair to the Palestinians to accuse them for not coming to terms with Israel under a very uneven circumstances when they are not in a position to try to make a fair deal in terms of the territories or in terms of their security in future vis-a-visra so I think there is as you probably know quite a lot of people that would have a different perspective than you just stated in terms of you know taking the perspective of Israel and characterizing the situation Can you steal man that their side can you still man Israel's side that they're trying to be a Sovereign Nation trying to protect themselves against threats ultimately wanting to create a place of safety a place where people can pursue all all the things that you want to pursue in life including foremost happiness I tend to agree with you and I have all the respect for the fact that Israel would like to create security and happiness for its own people but there are two arguments is one is a moral argument to my mind as a historian a uh Jews across around the world for all through their history suffered and this is a history of suffering there is a memory of something and I find it enormously difficult to believe that a nation that's the product of so much uh sacrifice suffering loss of life and variety of Holocaust above all would find itself in a position not to give the proper Justice to a people who could be their neighbors and that is a moral argument which I cannot believe under any circumstances can be accepted second in real terms what do you want to you want to commit to genocide do you have a population there that you have to come to terms with it and you cannot just postpone as they did since 67 they are postponing and hoping that it goes away somehow I don't think it's going to go away and and it's going to get worse right and better it's a long nuanced discussion and I look forward to having it so just leave it um there for the moment uh but it is a stressful place in the world uh where the rhetoric is existential or Iran yeah it makes claims that he wants to wipe a country off the face of the Earth it's just the level of of intensity of rhetoric is unlike anywhere else in the world and extremely dangerous and in in both directions so one the real danger of the rhetoric actually being acted upon and then the extreme political parties using the rhetoric to justify even a greater escalation so uh yeah if Iran is saying that this is it's saying that they're wanting to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth that justifies any response uh on the other side on the other side of course I tend to agree with you fully and unfortunately this is a very critical situation that uh this region is facing Iran in particular I would say that um I hope that in the minds of the people of Israel there is a enough or common sense to realize that probably escalation on the Israeli side is not in the favor of anybody and try to let the Iranians to go on with their empty rhetoric as they do so far but at the same time I cannot deny the fact that you know there is a danger on the side of this regime and what it says it cannot be denied nobody can justify that uh particularly because the Iranian population is not behind this regime certainly in the case of the Palestinians or for that matter it's not Palestine it's the the the Islamic Republic's involvement in Lebanon with Hezbollah it's the Islamic Republic's involvement in Syria with pasture Assad its involvement in other parts of the World perhaps even Yemen that all of them creates extra territorial responsibilities or interventions unnecessary interventions that ultimately is not in favor of best interests of the Iranian people or Iran as a country Iran has never been involved in this kind of politics before after the Islamic Republic so in a sense the Iranian regime it seems to me by going to the extreme try to create for itself a pace that it did not have or did not deserve to have within the politics of the region he said so in other words that has become part of the tool a kind of an instrument for if you like to call it some kind of an expansionism of of the regime uh in parts of the world where it can see there is a possibility for for its presence for its expansion of course historically speaking Iran Everest's 15th century I think that's the earliest example I can see in mother in alibade times has always a tendency of moving in the direction of not only what is today the state of Iraq but further into the eastern coast of mediterranea so that's a long-term ambition that has been in the cards as far as Iran as a strategic unit is cancer but by no means Justified and by no means could be a reasonable could be a sane policy of a nation state as today's Iran but the second point is that also regimes are always victims of their own rhetoric so it's I once you keep repeating something then you become more and more committed to it and it cannot remain anymore in the level of a rhetoric you have to do something about it says something compelling pressure to try to uh to uh to materialize what you've been saying in your rhetoric and that is even extremely more dangerous as far as Iran is concerned and it brings it to some Unholy alliances that today we are witnessing Iran is getting involved even more dangerous than this rhetoric uh in in terms of the visible Israel is its involvement with uh Russia and to some extent with China which we can't talk about what do you think about the meeting between Harmony and Vladimir Putin in July what's that Alliance what's that partnership is its surface level geopolitics is there a deep growing connection I cannot see the difference between geopolitics and these deep connections I see this one and the same why because I think the experience 40 Years of distancing from the West in terms of the Islamic Republic and the fact that there is a shelf life to Imperial presence yeah for any Empire anywhere in the world so after the terrible experience of of the United States in Iraq and in Afghanistan pretty much like the British Empire that after destroys the experience in 56 decided to withdraw from east of Suez maybe there is a moment here that we are witnessing or it may come that a great power like the United States sees in its benefits not to get too much involved into nitty-gritty things in other parts of the world that it's not its immediate cancer and I think that's part of the reason not the entire reason part of the reason why we see the emergence of a new geopolitical environments in this part of the world of which China Russia possibly Iran possibly turkey possibly both of them are going to be part perhaps Saudis also but I doubt that the Saudis under the presidency circumstances although we have witnessed some remarkable issue in the course of the past few weeks where the Saudis giving assurances to American Administration and then shifting and getting along with Putin in terms of the oil production I think it's more than that event and it's not only them but also the Emirates are doing the same thing so what does that just tell us and that's another many hour conversation about the the world industry in in Iran and the the whole region in emerging this kind of a world which was perhaps even 10 years ago unimaginable yeah that you see now a great power China that it's going to remain from what we see around us as a great power and Russia adventurous foolish but nevertheless would remain a criminal I would say as far as the Its Behavior in Ukraine but actually it's a rogue nation that it attracts another Rogue Nation so Iran finds itself now in a greater place of security in Alliance with Russia in the hope that this would give Iran a greatest Security in this part of the world whether this is whether this is uh realistic or a illusion I think remains to be seen I think Iran China relation makes more sense uh although if you ask ordinary Iranians they don't like it they will tell why should we be tied up with uh with China as the only uh trade party with with America because of the I foolish isolations that you have created for us because of all the sanctions that you have created for us the Islamic Republic so in a sense it's a very difficult question to answer probably Iranians also like to be more on the other camp but what happens is that in real term so what surprises me most is not this alliance with China but it's kind of becoming a lucky or subservient to Putin's regime in in Russia since if you look at it Iran ever since at least the 19th century not going further back the beginning of the 19th century always viewed Russia as the greatest threat strategically because it was sitting right at the top of Iran it was uh it was uh infinitely more powerful than Iran has ever been and Iran for two rounds of War at the beginning of the century lost the entire caucuses to Russia and led its lesson that you have to be mindful of Russia and you have to keep it as an arms length and that's what was the Iran's policy throughout the course of the 20th century 19th and 20th Century up to what we see now around us which is a very strange situation um whether the balance has changed in terms of if this if Russia is purchasing weapons from from Iran which was unheard of it means that there is a new balance is emerging a new relationship is emerging perhaps remains to be seen but uh if you look at the Historical precedence it would have been enormously unwise to be an ally of Russia given its long history of aggression in Iraq see Russians part of the reason why it's actually Iran Allied itself with British Empire was the fact that it was so much afraid of the Russian expansion and as such I don't know what's going to be the future of this relationship there is a big disconnect between uh governments and the people and I think ultimately I have faith that there's a love across the different cultures across the different religions amongst the people and the governments are the source of the division and the conflict and the wars and all the geopolitics that isn't part grounded in the battle for resources and all that kind of stuff nevertheless this is the world we live in so you've looked at the modern history of Iran the past few centuries if you look into the future of this region Now you kind of implied that historian has a bit of a cynical View of protests and things like this um that are fueled at least in the minds of young people with hope if you were to just for a while have a bit of Hope in your heart and your mind what is a hopeful future for the next 10 20 30 years of Iran I'm not cynical I'm trying to be realistic and I actually may be critical but I have Great Hopes uh in Iran's future for a variety of reasons I actually did write an article only if the last version of it is going to go out today in which the title of it is the time of fear and women of Hope which in a sense is this whole coverage but what this movement means like that we see today pin May fizzle in a few weeks time or it may just go on and create a new Dynamics in Iranian society that would hopefully resolve in a peaceful process of Greater accommodation and the greater tolerance within the Iranian society and with the outside world and I think majority of the Iranian people don't want tension don't run confrontation don't want crisis day if 40 years they have suffered from a regime that have dictated an ideology that it's uh regressive and impractical they want to go back to a life in which they don't They Don't Really create trouble for their neighbors or for the world and therefore I would see a better future for Iran that's for one reason it's strategically or geopolitically maybe in Iran's advantage in a peaceful fashion to negotiate as it's the fate of all the nations rather than commit itself or sworn to a particular course of a policy so there's a give and take as the nature of politics is the art of possible as it's been said so probably Iran is going to be hopefully moving that direction I think there is a generational thing that's the third reason no matter how much the Islamic Republic tried to islamicize the Iranian Society in its own image of kind of radical ideological indoctrination it has failed it has failed up to what we see today in the Iranian streets and the Iranian population said no to it and I think if there would have been and they very much hope there will be a possibility for a more open environment more open space where they would be able to speak them their views out Iranians are not on the side of moving in the extreme directions they are in the side of Greater accommodation and the greater interest in the outside world and if you look at every aspect of today's beside the government every aspect of life in today's Iran we can see that from the way that people dress to the way that they try to live their lives to the way that you're educating themselves or by educated in the institutions do you see a desire an intention to move forward and I'm optimistic well in that struggle for Freedom like I told you offline I want my close childhood friends is Iranian just beautiful person as families is a wonderful family and on a personal level is one of the deeper Windows into the Iranian spirit and soul that I've gotten a chance to witness so I really appreciate it but in the recent times I've gotten to hear from a lot of people that are currently living in Iran that are currently have that burning hope for the future of the country and so my love goes out to them and the struggle for freedom I ask it's so nice of you to say so and I very much hope so uh there are moments of spare and there are moments that that you would think that there is no hope and uh but but then again something triggers and you see hundred thousand people in the streets of Berlin uh that are hoping for a better future for you and I very much hope it eventually emerges even I'm hoping at the same time that it's not going to be a very strong leadership as it was the case in the past we started with hope we ended with hope this was a real honor this is an incredible conversation thank you for um thank you for giving such a a deep and uh wide story of this great nation one of the great nations in history well that's the kind of used to say so thank you for sitting down today well a history that as I've said in the start of my book I States the history of a nation which has learned a huge amount from from the outside world by force of its geography it was always located somewhere that people would invade yeah or come for trade or something happened to it that is this diffused culture continue to and they were not afraid of learning or adopting as they do right now today this is a very different society never a boring moment in its history as you write about thank you so much this is awesome thank you thanks for listening to this conversation with abasamana to support this podcast please check out our sponsors in the description and now let me leave you with a few words from Martin Luther King Jr from every Mountainside Let Freedom Ring thank you for listening I hope to see you next timethis is not a nice Islamic fatherly regime clear signs of fascism clear sons of the state's control and pay any price to stay in power so even violence extreme violence the following is a conversation with Abbas Amana a historian at Yale University specializing in the modern history of Iran my love and my heart goes out to the Iranian people in their current struggle for freedom I hope that this conversation helps folks who listen understand the nature and the importance of this struggle this is the Lex Friedman podcast to support it please check out our sponsors in the description and now dear friends here's Abbas Amina let's start with the current situation in Iran on September 16th protests broke out in Tehran and quickly spread over the death of a 22 year old maksa amini eyewitnesses saw her beaten to death by the morality police this is a heavy topic but it's a really important topic what can you explain what happened the protests are now in their sixth week the death of that young woman occurred who was visiting Tehran as a tourist parked something very deep that's particularly concerned the younger Generations that is what you would call the equivalent of the Z generation in this country yes they call themselves in person because Iran follows the solar calendar of its own as an ancient solar calendar and this the the time that they were born they were in the 1380s that's what they call themselves it is hashtag for the 80s and uh well the circumstances that surrounds the uh uh unfortunate death of this young beautiful Kurdish woman is really tragic she was arrested by the what is referred to as the morality police morality Patrol called guidance police that is presumably there were two women fully clad that is officers serving on that force and two men and nobody exactly knows what had happened she had been beaten up and apparently there was no uh uh sign of any wrongdoing on her side she was fully covered uh it seems that there was some altercation in the process and the the outcome was that she was unconscious not necessarily when she was arrested but in the course of the detention when they take them to a center presumably to re-educate them yeah and she apparently collapsed and maybe my sense is that she must have had some kind of a problem because of the skull being broken or something has happened and she died in the hospital the next day and that's through the social media was widely spread throughout Iran and almost the next day surprisingly you could see this outburst of sympathy for her people are in the streets weeping because she was seen as such an innocent young woman 22 years old and the family the mother and the father also mourning for her and being a Kurt visiting Tehran this all added up to really turn her into some kind of a martyr of these cause and that's what it is and her picture graphics that were artistically produced based on her portrait has now dominates basically as the symbol of this protest movement and the protest movement goes on everybody was thinking or at least the authorities were thinking that is going to die out in a matter of a few days but it became more intense first in the streets of Tehran by young women mostly probably between I would say 17 18 teenagers to 20 to 23 or thereabouts and then to University campuses all around the country and then even to high schools and that also made it a very remarkable protest movement because first of all it involves the youth and not necessarily the older Generations you see them around but not as many also you see men and women together young girls and boys and um they are adamant they are desperate in the sense of the tone of their protest and they are extremely courageous because they stand against the security forces that were immediately were sent off to the streets so and in full gear that is so what are the the currents of pain emotion um what is this turmoil that Rose to the surface that resulted in these big protests what are the different feelings ideas that came to the surface here that resulted in such quick scaling of this protest well if you listen to the uh main slogan which is the message of this movement it's called women life Freedom Zan zendeji Azadi which is a translation of actually the Kurdish equivalent which is close to Persian being in the European language and it's apparently initiated uh first in this Syrian Kurdistan where they were fighting against the the Islamic daesh forces uh because they were attacking the yazidis there and the women being enslaved but the message as it moved historians are interested in this kind of Trends so it's just moved to Kurdistan and from Kurdistan now being the message of this movement reflects pretty much sums up what this movement is all about women in the Forefront because of all the one might say discriminations the treatment the humiliation that this younger generation feels well not only the younger Generations but most of the Iranian secular middle classes since 1979 basically for the for the past 43 years and uh they would think that these all basically symbolized or uh represented by the varying the mandatory varying of the hijab which is at the core of this protest you see the young women if you look at many of these clips that comes through in the past six weeks women in streets take off their mandatory scarves which is a young child or some kind of a head covering that's all and they throw it into the uh bonfire in the middle of the street and they dance around it and slogans so there is a sense of complete rejection of what this regime for 42 years 43 years have been imposing on women it's as it's sometimes been portrayed a movement against hijab through and through but it's basically says you know there has to be a choice for those who want to wear hijab and those who want to remain without a job yeah the hijab is a symbol of something much deeper much deeper and actually before we get into that it's interesting to note that in many of these demonstrations we see in the University campuses or in the streets you see women with hijab uh young women with hijab are next to those have to remove their hijab and they are together basically protesting that's the most interesting feature of this uh of these demonstrations and then men and women together against the segregation that the regime has imposed upon them with all these years now in terms of what it represents as I pointed out one is the question of the whole series of one might say civil and legal uh discriminations against women you are considered as a kind of a second class citizen you depend on your men there's a kind of a patriarchy that has been institutionalized in the Islamic Republic in a very profound fashion and that means that uh probably in matters of divorce uh marriage and divorce in matters of custody of your children a matter of inheritance in matter of freedom of movement you depend on your husband your father your brother a male member of your family your child even your your son could could be the case and because of that obviously a younger generation who is so well informed through social media knows about the world as much as an American does American kid that's probably sometimes more they're very very curious it's from what I hear or sometimes that I met a few of them outside Iran you'll see that Hadith this a new generation is completely different from what the Islamic Republic wanted to create in its social engineering it's basically the failure of 43 years of the Islamic Republic's acts of imposition of a certain as so-called Islamic values on on women then it's a matter of Education you would see that there is segregation in the schools one of the issues that now right now is at the heart of this demonstrations is that self-services in many of the campuses of Iranian universities are segregated male and female to different rooms to different Halls now they are breaking through the walls virtually everywhere and sit together in order to basically resist the authorities wants to impose segregation in matters of appearance in the public of course it may seem to us as a kind of trivial and secondary but appearance is important clothing is important how you would imagine yourself is important they don't want to be seen in the way that the authorities would like to impose upon them as this kind of an idea of a chaste Islamic woman who is fully covered and is fully protected the idea of a male member of the family protects the female that is what you see at the heart of this uh rebellion and of course that goes with everything as the second part of this message the idea of life basically means if you like to use the American equivalent of this pursuit of the happiness that's what they want they want fun they want music they want dancing they want to be free in the street they want to have girl boyfriends and live freely and don't be constantly looked by the big brother to tell them what to do and not to do or or not to do so that is you that they share with virtually with the entire with the entire Iranian society as of all although the older Generations that's a big puzzle but you would see that the older generation don't so far at least don't take part as extensively as one might imagine and this is a variety of reasons perhaps you can get to that later on if you like but as far as this younger generation they don't care they don't listen even as much to their parents as the older Generations did so all the or one might say even the nature of the relationship between the parents and the youth has changed it's not the concept of again a major a patriarchy that a father or even a mother would tell the daughter or son what to do because basically they have to negotiate it's fundamentally a rejection of the power of authority parents government yeah it's that every person can decide their own fate and there's no uh lessening of value of the wisdom of old age and old institutions precisely that's what it is yeah and they are surprisingly aware that where they are as a generation so it's a sense of a pride as we are different from the older generation from your parents to compromised and lived with the restrictions that the Islamic regime put on you your grandfather your their grandparents with the generation that actually involved in the revolution of 79 the parents which were the middle generation and these are the third generation of the the revolution of 1979 and therefore they differentiate themselves in terms of their identity from the older generation so that's the life part of it everyone can go more and more they want to access and they see on social media what happens in the rest of the world they're well aware there are much better digitally skilled than my generation for instance uh and and they know about all the personalities they know about all the celebrities they know about all the trends that goes at outside Iran so that's a second part of this message and then of course the third part is the word Azadi meaning Freedom or Liberty which is this long standing demand of the Iranians I would say for the whole Century ever since the Constitutional revolution of 1906 Iran has witnessed this problem of uh authorities that usually emerged at the end of a revolution to basically impose its own image on the population and the youth and create authoritarian regimes of which over the course of time I would say that the Islamic Republic is divorced in the sense that it's uh its intrusion is not only in the political sense in the for instance Banning the freedom of speech you know meddling with the elections uh Banning political parties all kinds of that things which are the political or civil freedoms but it's intrusion into the personal life of the individual which is the worst kind in a sense as you would see that there is always that Authority that basically uh dominates your life or monitors their life so I I and they do it in a kind of a very consistent fashion which makes this idea of Freedom so important as as part of the message of this new movement um you would see that in today's Iran there are no independent political parties there is very little uh probably freedom of the press I wouldn't say that it's entirely gone but it's fairly limited there is enormous amount of propaganda machine which dominates the entire uh uh radio and TV system in Iran it's completely in the hands of the government and of course you would see this variety of other tools for trying to indoctrinate uh Iranian population across the board so that's another sign of this kind of a sense of uh sense of being a totally left out you're not belonging to to what's going on in terms of power empowerment and disempowerment so that's that's the situation as far as the idea of a freedom if it's concept and there's three somewhat miraculously and perhaps unintentionally and the three parts of this message uh complements each other because perhaps for the first time we see that women are in the Forefront of a of a movement I hesitate to say Revolution because I'm not particularly happy with the religious revolutions worldwide and in Iran have always been so miserable in terms of their outcome that we have to be careful not to use the word yes the revolution yeah so that's where where it stands now and the regime was thinking that well these are kids uh they're going to go away and they're of course they're completely conspiratorial in their thinking they constantly think that these are all the uh instigations and provocations of foreign powers these are the great Satan the United States this is Israel or these are the it's actually the Supreme leaders that in so many wars his only response so far that he had in the first past six weeks with regard to this demonstrations is that these are the children of the savac being the security forces of the shortest time that's 43 years later he claims that the children 7 16 17 years 20 years old kids in the street are the grandchildren or children of some imaginary survival of the short security so there's uh the idea is that these protests are internal and external salvatures so people trying to sabotage the government yes and and they are misled as far as they can go and then there's the great state in the United States and other places are uh controlling sort of uh either controlling the narrative feeding propaganda or literally uh sending people I noticed that they have I don't think even they have that kind of imagination precise to say what you have said yeah that they would say that they're controlling the narrative they basically say no these are agents yeah of of the foreign powers and their families are all sold out and they are basically lost their loyalties to the great Islamic Republic and therefore they can be treated so brutally they can be suppressed or brutally which I haven't actually said what they are doing because I thought perhaps first we should talk about who these kids are in the streets before we move on in the about the response of the government but one major factor which seems to add to the anxiety of well the regime is extremely anxious now because they are in a position and it shows that they don't have the lack of confidence in a sense that they would see them reacting in a very forceful way because basically they don't seem to have that kind of a confidence to allow this uh this message or the movement to air to be aired but the one element which corresponds to that is that there is a expatriate population of Iranians worldwide they are probably now according to some estimates close to 4 million even more Iranians abroad and they're all over the world from Australia and New Zealand Japan Western Europe uh turkey and United States and Canada so just to give you one example last last Saturday there was a mass demonstrations in Berlin by the Iranians from Germany and all over Europe Western Europe and it was at least I think probably the conservative estimate was about hundred thousand so hundred thousand Iranians showed up in Berlin demonstrating against the treatment of the uh women in Iran were the movement in Iran the government thinks obviously this must have been some instigation by foreign powers and they want to destroy Islamic Republic and not only that but the propaganda is kind of ridiculous because I listened actually to how they portrayed it in the newspapers I listened to the Iranian news that is officially controlled government control news and and in the papers there's much of the papers that are in the control of the government a one of them were actually the the major news program portrayed the demonstrations that 10 000 people showed up in Berlin and protested against the rising prices rising rates for gas and oil in Germany so that's how they mislead in a very rather just stupid fashion because probably 95 percent if not 100 percent of the Iranians are listening to Passion speaking media outside Iran so it's a BBC person there is Iran International there are at least five or six of them that's probably really important to highlight that Iran is a very modern and tech savvy Nation not just the young people probably more than more than I feel sometimes when I compare myself to what they are doing yeah since 1979 the earlier years for a decade or two they tried in a very crude fashion to restrict and access to Media outside Iran and because this is all through dishes okay and satellite dishes are everywhere you know if you look at the uh you know buildings of either a small house small towns and villages in Iran there's always a a dish and they watch all kinds of things through this and particularly because of what's Happening Now they listen to all the news um uh broadcasts from all this media and they're extremely active they are um probably some of them even 24 hours or close very extensive coverage of every clip that comes through so what the government is doing now the Islamic Republic is that they restrict the entire internet the shutdown they shot at the internet but they cannot afford shutting the internet because much of the business much of the everyday life much of the government Affairs depends on the internet like everywhere else and Iran is extremely if you if I hear from many of the colleagues and friends you know it's like in certain respects it's like Sweden where you go there there's no more currency and for a very good reason because there's so much inflation that that the banknotes are worthless in a sense so everything is true you know uh sweeping your card and that's the entire system is in a standstill because people cannot buy food they can you you go to the supermarket that's how you would do it you you order food to come to your house which Iranians at least the middle classes the more prosperously that Christ is doing all the time so they deliver everything and because of the covet it became even more and they have to pay all through this system um so what happens is that now they're estimating that every day 50 million dollars the Iranian government or the Iranian economy is losing because of slowing the internet plus the frustration is growing of course because you can't order food right I mean they are they are in touch with I mean WhatsApp yeah every Iranian virtually every Iran yeah yeah that has the education and education in the sense that has gone through the the high schools and universities knows how to use the WhatsApp so there's a big middle class like you said secular class in Iran and there there's a lot of at least capacity for if not Revolution then um political ideological uh turmoil and a huge amount of hatred so the hatred is grown yes hatred of the of the policies of the regime of isolation that's a huge point that you hear a great deal about that we don't want to be isolated we don't want to be humiliated Iran is not about this this miserable regime that is ruling over us we have a great culture so there's this sense of a pride in their own culture some of it's uh you know Islamic some of it pre-islamic so they there is a huge um a sense of a pride in that and they see that they cannot communicate with the outside world they they want to travel abroad which they do I mean for one thing the Iranian regime never actually for majority of the population never put restrictions it's not like Soviet Union where you have to have a you used to have a permission to move from one place to another and then of course the the Islamic regime since 1979 basically I chased away or destroyed the old middle class that's my generation basically my parents here they say these are the secular middle class of the parliamiera in the hope that they can do this social engineering and create this Islamic uh uh Society of Their Own the bad news for them was that that didn't happen and that memory persisted and the middle class that was created since past 40 years is much larger in size than what it was because there was of course the demographic Revolution that's the way there's a very Foundation of it it's the demographic Revolution population in Iran I've written an article about it actually a population in Iran since uh the turn of the century last century the 20th century population of Iran was about 9 million or so it's now 83 million and that is since 1979 the population was 35 million between the past 40 years it's basically doubled so it's 83 million although one of the great successes I don't want to bore you with the details about the Democracy but it's important demographics is not important you will you can see that the best rate was very high otherwise you wouldn't have double your population in matter of four decades yeah but Iranians because of the urban shift to an urban population because of the growth of the middle class because of the education they basically the pattern of the uh of growth population growth changed Iran used to be 2.8 or 3 percent birth rate in around 1980s I would say 1970s 1980s now it is 1.1 and it's what probably the most successful country in the Middle East in terms of the population control despite the government a consistent uh attempt to try to encourage people to have more kids middle class refuses to do that and this is the middle class not only anymore in the capital but this is very smaller towns and cities places that used to be villages now you look at them they have a decent population 50 000 100 000 and they live in urban life and they don't want to be subjected to that old pattern of agrarian society when you had 10 children or eight children and of course it's a much more advanced in terms of uh in terms of health and medicine so you don't at least lose children as they used to the antibiotics there's always of kids to survive and therefore if you have 10 kids you're sick with 10 kids you don't end up with four as it used to be in the past six of them would have died in the in the after the age of five actually but now because of that you see that this Urban population in the cities have completely different demands and of course the education is important that's another area of how the social engineering of the Islamic Republic went away because they were thinking that you know the growth of the population the growth of the educated higher educated middle classes in their benefit or they could not even control it in a sense now Iran in my time uh probably had in the 1970s probably by the type of the Revolution about 10 12 universities now it has 56 universities all across the country and there is a something referred to as the Free University or that which has campuses all over the country it has 324 campuses all around Iran what does that mean in many respects this youth that are brought up in these families even in a small towns in very traditional families and families that belong to that kind of a more religious the loyal to the clergy or to the clerical classes their children can now move on which particularly women because in in my times it would have been unheard of that you would have a young woman of 18 or 17 18 19 from a traditional City such as for instance Yaz or in in in statistan Iran to move on elsewhere for Education as you do in this country okay now it's completely accepted that a woman wears their job because he's forced to wear a job to go to a university completely on the other side of the country and this movement of the population not only because of the universities but in general if you now visit Iran you hear accents local accents provincial accents all over the country that is a azerbaijani Turkish accent from the north west of the country you can hear it in the forest province in the South and vice versa so and Kurdish for instance or even more marginal regions such as system province in the southeast of Iran which has been the subject of this recent Massacre when they actually attacked the population when demonstrating and killed a fair number at least 60 people so this movement of the population this creation of a larger middle class the better educated middle class much better educated Iran has 86 percent uh uh literacy which I think probably I haven't checked that but probably is better than turkey even is probably better than anywhere else in the Middle East and it sounds like there's a that's quickly increasing so because because of the movement because of the growth that the education system that's precisely Iran has one million School teachers which may not seem as much if you are in the United States but it's a fairly big number actually can you Linger on the massacre what happened there well the system province is the baluch uh ethnicity of paluchi ethnicity baluchi is a particular ethnic group in southern Iran which is certainly rather than she majority and we should say that most of Iran is she another that's a branch of Islam yes let's maybe just briefly linger sheasm and and Sunni what just let's not get into it let's do a one sentence summary uh and that maybe which which is what most of Iran is majority of the population of the Muslim world are sunnis that is a mainstream if you like to call that actually means that kind of a Ministry can you actually Linger on the the Sunni Suna she she uh she means a party means those that belongs to a party of Ali which was goes back to the early Islamic history of 7th Century I mean I'm almost lingering to the silly notion of pronunciation and stuff like that so ah yeah means part like what what is the extra eye at the end yeah she e means belonging to this community yeah Shia means a person yes yeah and she is the community community and in English when it was anglicized it becomes Shiite so if you say Shiite in today it's perfectly acceptable and of course I myself in my writings I always switch between one and the other one of my books is always Shiite the other book is always she and that hasn't been settled but the she population is the smaller compared to the Sunni population in the world in the world in the world but in Iran is the opposite the Iran and Iraq and possibly not Lebanon are the three countries who barely Iraq and Lebanon have barely majority population whereas Iran is a large population due to its history of conversion to shizen that by itself is another story but in the sense that the the way that historically it evolved the center became more she and the peripheries remained certainly so you have communities of the baluch in the south east we have the Kurds a large portion of the Kurds our sunnies they have cheese as well then they have the indigenous religion of their own ideal uh what's called which is the religion of indigenous to Kurdistan there are two commands in the north east of Iran who are also Chinese the other communities the horizontal region in the in the peripherals of Afghanistan they are also Chinese and you have some Arab population Arab speaking population in the rosestan province in the southwest of Iran which is also or across the Persian Gulf is there a lot of conflict between these regions and also like if I uh blindfolded you and dropped you off in one of the regions would you quickly recognize the region like by the food by the music by the accents by so on yeah the answer to your lovely question which I think I hope it would have happened to me is that yes you would see different cultures yes yeah but different food most important different accents yeah or different languages since they have dialects is a different language altogether but or so for that matter Kurdish which is closer to Persian because they are Indo-European languages but Turkish azeri Turkish which is probably closer to the Turkish of techie Republic of Turkey or to the Republic of Azerbaijan in the North they're the same basically actually if you would have looked as a fascinating picture if you have looked at the let's say even 19th century early 20th century linguistic map of Iran would have been amazed in the number of dialects in the number of languages that has survived and this is an ancient country it's an ancient land and it's a lot of mountains all around it or big deserts so there's a sense of isolation so you would say here and there you see a different community that speaks differently all ancient traditions and languages yeah and because of the great number of invasions that Iran witnessed over more than two and a half millennia of course there are all kinds of cultures were introduced into Iran they're all ethnicities were introduced to Iran mostly coming from the north east of Iran from from the uh lowlands of Central Asia and Beyond and and continued into Iran proper so but now what has happened that's what my point that divided to make uh the century of modernity or modernization has produced a national culture of great great strength in a sense I would say I should ended my book um the the book on Iran Iran a mother in history uh basically saying that despite everything else that has created so much trouble for today's Iraq there is a sense of a cultural uh identity that is very strong and I think I can say uh with with some confidence that despite this despite this regional identities that are still there and they're great and they should be celebrated uh this today if you go to uh to Kurdistan or if you go to sistan they all can speak Persian they all have an education in person so they all basically are becoming part of whether they like it whether they like the regime in power or not they have a sense of belonging to a culture and an identity with the center and of course the idea of a center versus periphery in Iran is very old it goes back to ancient times because even the name of the country was the guarded domains of Iran this is the this is the official name namely that it was recognized that this is not just one uh entity but it's the is the collection of entities like the United States of America exactly exactly but the United States of America in a sense you can say that it was a very successful well it remains to be seen how successful to be continued to be to that that was basically invented created that you would have this sense of it in in the case of an old nature which has been on the map of the world for three thousand years 2500 years there's this is not an exaggeration I'm not a nationalist per se but I mean if you look Persia on the map of the word in ancient times is still there as it is today very few countries in the world are like that that they would have that kind of a continuity over a course of time and that's not without a reason because there was this sense of it a center versus periphery that had found some is it there's a huge amount of tension but there is also a sense of belonging to something and state is very much at the center of it I mean that's why the concept of a state matters for the creation for the shaping of of this culture what happened is therefore you can see that today in answer to your point about traveling blindfolded is that you would be surprised to see how much uh people share and in terms of I just give you one anecdote in 1968 I believe must have been I traveled to Azerbaijan I I used to travel and actually photograph not blindfolded mostly well yeah so I went to a Bazaar in the city of hoi which is in the North Western Iran uh on the border with what is today the Republic of Turkey and I went to the bazaar and I was interested in the kind of a leather work that they produce so I tried to buy some stuff and they were surprised to see that how few people knew Persia so they could not communicate in person with you either they have to ask somebody from some other store to come and translate for you this is 1968 96 so even though it's the official language was special of the country they're still yeah so what are they teach in school so it doesn't matter it was special but this guy just doesn't go to school he hasn't been to the school or it was not fully exposed to it and of course usually are very conservative places so it's stuck in my mind now in recently in 2004 I was traveling to the same area not to the same city but to the same area and I was amazed to see how the youth as soon as they would know that you were coming from somewhere else opening conversation with you talking about the latest movies that was produced in the west and it's not only Hollywood of course there's a huge amount of fascination with Hollywood and Western cinema cinema is a major thing filmmaking is a major thing yeah so these kids in the city of Ahad were asking me we're having lunch they're asking me okay then what do you think about this producer not producer this director or that actor American American European as well but mostly America where they speak in Persian it's a complete person that I would converse with them if they speak English too interesting Yes actually you would be surprised to see what percentage of the Iranian youth at least in big cities are fascinated with learning language and for a reason because they think that's the way to get access either on social media or eventually leave it on yeah unfortunately and and because they don't see a future for themselves in the country either you have to be part of this part of this regime or if you hate them and you don't like the way of their life you look up outside you know I was having drivers to drive me around the country in the cities around Iran and the guy was a young extremely well educated well-dressed and we would have looked at him we could have found him in any Street in any country in the western world and his major concern knowing that I'm from outside major concern is well tell me which would be a better place for me to go so what's wrong with the place that you're in right now you are in your own country you speak your own like oh this is no good I have to have a better future this year's no future for me well it's really interesting because the thing I feel about the protest right now is uh there's a large number of people that instead of giving in to cynicism about you know this government is no good yeah they're actually getting this like uh energy this desire to for revolution uh in in the sort of non-violent sort of in the in the Democratic sense of that let's let's actually find the ideas let's let's build a great nation here this is a great nation this is my nation let's build something great here well that's my hope that's well yeah yeah that's what I'm hoping for it I share your uh aspiration but I'm fearing that I hope it's not a wishful thinking it's certainly that's what they want certainly that's what they want to create but the history and always tells you from where they start to be where they finish there is going to be a huge kind of a change and in this particular case I wouldn't be I I would very much hope that it's not going to be a revolution like 1979 Islamic revolution and I have my hopes in that for one thing this is a revolution that doesn't have a leader okay and it seems that they're comfortable with that at least so far because we were the sixth week of this movement and I hope it's not going to be actually a revolution as I pointed out before I hope it's going to be more of a sense of trying to come to some compromise and gradually move toward change rather than a collapse of this regime and replacement with what so the anxiety of the regime you hope will turn into a kind of uh realization that you have to you have to modernize you have to make progress you actually have to make certain compromises yes or constitutional changes all those kind of stuff so the basic process of government and law making problem is that they say we have it all you know we have our Parliament we have our constitution we have our elections which has all been of course fake but they claim they have all of that but the problem for them is that they try to superimpose is an ideology like all other ideological uh autocracies or other cases in this case that tend to dominate uh all this institution buildings that they have and they they constantly claim we have this we have that that is of course there's a generational thing the upper echelons of this regime are mostly older people interpret they are the clergy that are afraid of the fact that they may lose their control over their whole system that is a sophisticated huge system of government and they rely on certain tools of control which is the Revolutionary guards and other other institutions that are loyal to to the state and they spend enormous amount of funds that is available to them at least before the sanctions but even during the sanctions they still have enough funds to do so and in order to remain in power and they are extremely ruthless in that regard this is not a nice Islamic fatherly regime this is a regime that I would see easily in it clear signs of fascism clear sense of the state's control and pay any price to stay in power so even violence extreme violence to return to the massacre what what were the uses of violence to suppress protests well yes it was actually quite remarkable to see that from the first or the second day of the protest you see out in this street this Riot police okay which comes out in large numbers fully geared up their appearance are rather terrifying like any other Riot but it's probably more than any other right police they're violent and they stand in the streets when these students are demonstrating even in smaller number because before I go to that I should point this point these are to you as well that that these demonstrations are not large ones in one place you see you don't see a hundred thousand people in in one place but you see in every neighborhood couple of thousands of kids are demonstrating all the way around all over now all over the world in different parts yes yes yes actually during the demonstrations three weeks ago they as I said they had people in Sydney Australia New Zealand Tokyo all over the world all protesting high gas prices it's funny everywhere everywhere to the extent that they could be ignored yeah nothing but if they could not be ignored and it's actually quite remarkable that this is very embarrassing to them but somehow they think that this propaganda machine of them is working I say you think they don't have a good even sense I mean it's so there's an incompetence within the propaganda machine yes it is there's an incompetence across the board yeah I mean despite all of this massive government Administration or whatever you would call it all these various components of it there is a sense of the existence of inefficiency and incompetence that is associated with in every action that you see even in their suppression of this street movement but in answer to that question you would see that there this uh Riot police uh very it's quite obvious that they were trained for the purpose so this their appearance to everything these are not just regular army forces or soldiers as conscripts they are professional forces and they come not only in on foot number but they come on motorbikes so there are you would see any of these demonstrations there are 10 12 15 20 motorbikes with two passengers one in front riding the one in the back fully equipped with the Baton with paint guns with pellet guns and with bullets so they have very fully uh equipped and they are terrifying they go through the demonstrations that hits and beat people and then the areas and then you sit behind the first line of these right police you would see all this latest models of this special uh armored trucks for moving to the demonstrations and arresting people throwing them into this and then behind that water water cannons you see and I was looking at that to say okay this is Tehran probably they have this but then you look at the smallest cities they still have the same thing so all over the country one thing that they had managed to produce extensively irrespective of the fact that whether they are effective or not but you see them everywhere so it just shows that how afraid this regime is but that also shows that there's an infrastructure that can Implement violence at scale yes very much so and it's probably part and parcel of this regime from day one the number of Prisons that they have according to perhaps an exaggerated version they said that about 12 000 or so arrested that's what in jails today since past six weeks they were 230 or 40 people were killed including children I under 18. they are they beat up women in the street which is extremely actually uh disturbing when you see these scenes of so there's a lot of this is on video too right everything is on video everybody has a camera and everybody sends to Major news outlets outside Iran and they immediately showed every night if you look at BBC Persia or Iran International reviewer for I think the six of them actually all over this in England they are in Deutsche Valley in Germany uh which has a particular interest in the Iranian BBC World Service and so forth in London and Voice of America Persian here in this country there is another one radio fader which is also funded by the American government also fully covers all of these events so there is no way that these people can that Iraq can miss what's going on in the streets of these demonstrations and the scenes of beating up women which in Iranian culture as I presume in most cultures in the world there is a certain sanctity that you don't attack women but they do and this is an Islamic regime that supposedly have to have a certain sense of concern and uh protection like a like a deep respect for women grounded in a tradition of protecting them but instead this kind of idea that was instilled in law has turned into a deep disrespect of women exactly or fear that these women are not any longer the girls that we thought we are bringing up in this Society the source of you losing your power will be these these women that's the fear yeah and you see of course this government do have a support base I mean it would be uh totally wrong to think that the Islamic Republic has not created its own power base it does uh but it's probably if there's no way there are no statistics that we can or I'm not aware of any statistics that I can give you in numbers what's the percentage of support for the regime in Iran but quite frankly I don't think it's more than probably 10 of the population very generous I I would be surprised if it's that low I would say so if my understanding because I've been very deeply paying attention to the war in Ukraine in to uh Ukraine to Russia and uh to support in Russia for Putin yes I think without knowing the details without even considering the effects of propaganda and stuff like that is there's probably a large number of people in Iran that don't see this as a battle of Human Rights but see it as a battle of uh conservatism like tradition versus modernization and they value tradition that that what they fear from the throwing away of the hijab is not the loss of power and like the women getting human rights what they fear is is the same stuff you fear when you're sitting on a porch and saying kids these days have no respect basically that they there's a large number of Iranians that probably value tradition and uh the beauty of the culture and like there they fear that kids with their internet and their videos and their Revolution will throw away everything that made this country uh hold together for Millennia right so yes I know I would agree with you in the sense that probably like everywhere else in the world this is the generational thing you know every generation thinks differently about the younger generation No Doubt and in Iran is the same but the there is another Factor here is involved those that we would consider them as traditional no longer seem to have their loyalties to this regime that's powerful meaning that the this the they consider as a brutal regime that is prepared to kill children in the streets and it does a lot of things wrong of course it tries to take care of the its own power base it is a very strong sense of if we start here there's a very strong sense in this regime that there are people that is theirs and their others which are not theirs there's a word for it even impression they call it one of us okay uh so well it's very that's very fascistic it's like yes yes it's all for that matter I I suppose Soviet Union you would have if you were a member of the party and like you know your children would have received a special kind of treatment yourself as well um this sense of us versus them uh for a while worked because the younger people coming from the countryside to the cities certain fact certain sector of them would have found uh with a fund protection and support from the government they they wanted to belong to something and the masks and the mornings uh uh morning associations in the neighborhoods and so forth would have given them there is actually a term for it it's called basigi those those have been recruited by this state and this is the youth kind of vigilante if you like that that you can see them also in these demonstrations sometimes thogs they're called the Civil cloth so the people that that comes to these demonstrations that start beating up these young people and they they are not in uh in a security police uh uniforms but they are just regular clothes and these people yes they still support and they still benefit because they get jobs they get their privileges and these are very important for a for a for a state that's basically monopolize this most of the resources you see even be even during this action let alone before this action the oil revenue of Iran which is the major source of the state government was the Monopoly of the state it was Monopoly of State during the parallel from the start basically so what does that mean that mean that the regime in power is not no longer is particularly accountable to the majority population because it extracts wealth from underground and it uses it for its own purposes in order to make it more powerful in order to make it more repressive that's what it is the regime today so it feeds a small or I wouldn't say but a fair number of its own supporters I mean the Revolutionary regards in Iran is probably about 350 000 or something like that it's a very big Force and this is not a regular army the Revolutionary guards are independent from the from the Revolutionary guard his Armed Forces controlled by the state yes the same as the Army but these are more ideologically tied up with this state and they're also in facing internal facing what's their purpose what's their stated what's the stated purpose of the Revolution they've won when the revolution succeeded the regime in part the Islamic regime in power was vulnerable to all kinds of forces of opposition within Iran itself yeah that's the Revolutionary guards and the job was to try to make sure that the regime stays in power and of course over the force of over the course of 40 years they became more powerful more organized better funded better trained well at least we think they're better trained but we don't know because the level of incompetence perhaps can be seen through the rank and file as well but you know they developed their own uh Indus military industry I mean those uh uh drones that you see now Putin's regime are throwing on ukrainians for ukrainians those are all built by the Revolutionary guards by the military industry under the control not the Revolutionary guys and like similar regimes in the Middle East at least these are military industrial complexes you can find them in Egypt of course which is very powerful very traditionally has been empowered and still is in power you find them in Pakistan which is it is extremely powerful and they can change the prime minister's as they did in the case of the last one you can find them uh probably in Myanmar is the same phenomenon uh and I can if you look around you can find quite a number of them and the Revolutionary regards is the equivalent of that this this is a powerful um uh establishment Force which militarily is powerful industrially is powerful and since the start of the Revolution they have been given projects so you want to build dams which they did a major disaster environmental disaster they built 100 and something dams all across the country this is the Revolutionary regard to Desert so they have all kinds of uh tentacles all around the country controlling various things and because it's their job and they have power their prestige there's a huge incentive to join them and to join them and to stay so like they you know when they're having dinner at home with their families there's not an incentive to uh to join the protests sort of well that is the point I think I remember the evolution you guys may be an extreme but many of the people who depend on this state for their support now the younger generation telling their parents you were wrong you don't provide for us this Society this state does not provide what we want so there is a dissent within the family it seems to me I hope it's not a wishful thinking you know there is a kind of a joke going around you see this attempt guys the clergy bearded and traditional clinical appearance whether you see them talking about women they are very of course politically correct they are very looking down towards women as as I said you know they have to be inside they have to be protected they have not to be seen and so forth but if they have a young person a young daughter in their family you see that their discourse changes they no longer seem to be referring to women as second class yeah so that's very important that's precisely that point that when you have this younger generation no matter how privileged they are and many of them are privileged you know and there is also the regime has created its own uh privileged class that are not necessarily directly paid by the regime but they benefit from contractors certain professions that that benefit from what the state provides for them and Iran is a I mean the past 40 years you can see Iran has developed in terms of material culture remarkably Iran has good communication as roads all over the place it's not like a it's more like I don't know whether you have ever visited turkey for instance in certain respects even more advanced than turkey but it's closer to that rather than if you travel I don't want to bring particular names in North Africa or parts of the Middle East or other parts of the Islamic world it's much much different so in this respect you would see a certain contrast or paradoxes here on the certain respect there is the growth and there is urbanization there is modern economy on the other hand you see this superimposed ideological doctrinal aspect that has driven the regime over all these years and they cannot get rid of it they cannot in this respect they cannot modernize themselves they think that they are already perfect in ideological sense this is the best solution for the world not for only for Iran but for the Muslim world and for the word as a whole we are Anti-Imperialist we have managed to survive either under sanctions this is all parts of the rhetoric but of course at a huge expense uh the huge expense for their own population and the points that we have raised is the fact that we now Witness there is a not only a generation gap between the youth and their parents but there is a break in a sense from the older Generations and they are very distinctly the youth that has a different view of the world and it does not want to compromise whether they would be able to succeed or not remains to be seen whether this regime is going to suppress it maybe uh but it actually brought to surface many of aspects of the weaknesses of this regime in power well I hear from a lot of people that are in these protests now and so my love goes to them and stays strong because uh it's inspiring to see people fighting for those things the women life and freedom especially Freedom yes because that can only lead to a good thing in the long term at least and if possible to avoid a violent revolution of course that is something that we all want to see before we return to the present let's Jump Around let's go to the past we mentioned 1979 what happened in 1979 in Iran well in 1979 there was a revolution that eventually came to be known as the Islamic revolution and even up to this day many of The Observers or those who have strong views that would not like to refer to it as an Islamic revolution or even a revolution this is the because the nature of it in the earlier stages of it started really probably around 1977 it took two years was much more all embracing it was not Islamic in a particular fashion or at all in a sense it started with a kind of a very liberal Democrats uh agenda which required which demanded mostly by people who were the veterans of the older generations of Iranian liberal nationalists that were left out in the palabi period it's a period of the Shah became increasingly um authoritarian increasing the suppressive and therefore basically living no space no political space open for any kind of a give and take any kind of a conversation or participation 2017 70s 70s particularly in the 70s can we actually even like just do a a whirlwind review from 1906 to 1979. okay sure in 1906 there was a period like actually as you might know the first decade or this so of uh of the 20th century witnessed numerous what's referred to as constitutional revolutions including Russia 1905 the first Revolution including the Chinese Revolution in 19 constitution in 1910 the young Texas Revolution in 1908 and the Iranian Revolution in 1906. to understand why the synchronicity of all of it why in so many different places very different cultures very different governments very different cultures but all of them in a sense were coming out of the regimes that became uh uh progressively powerful without having any kind of a legal system that would protect the individual vis-a-vis state so the idea of law and the Constitution According to which there should be a certain protection a certain Civil Society became very common yeah but I wonder where that because that's been that way for for a very very long time and so I wonder you know it's funny a certain ideas just their time comes exactly it's like 1848 when you would see that there's a whole range of revolutions across Europe yeah or you would see for instance the Arab Spring you see all these Revolutions in the Arab world which unfortunately nearly all of them failed so yes these are very contagious ideas that moves across Frontiers from one culture to another and I presume we can add to that there are two elements which one can say there is a greater communication there is the greatest sense of a world economy and the third of the century witnessed the first decade of the century witnessed a period of uh volatility particularly in uh in currency so many of the countries of the world particularly non-west suffered in and particularly the businesses suffered and not surprisingly the business class were in the Forefront of many of this constitutional movements requiring the state to give the a kind of a created the right kind of Institutions to listen to their voices to their concerns and the creation of the democratic system parliamentary and system with which there would be a representation popular representation proper elections and so forth and constitutions and this very much is a kind of a French idea of the Constitution going back all the way perhaps to 1789 Revolution Montesquieu all this kind of philosoph were greatly appreciated particularly a different system so what were the ideas in the 1906 Iranian Constitution they precisely the same they were demanding a creation of a legal system with division of power between the three executive legislative and the Judiciary and that's unlike the American system and they requested um basically a certain uh public space to be created between the two sources of power the state which had this kind of a control over the if you like the secular aspect of life in the society and the religious establishment that had a full control over the religious aspects and both of them from the perspective of the Constitution and this considered as repressive and therefore there has to be a new space open between these two and that was the idea of a constitutional Revolution but but it's very nature it was an idea of modernity they wanted the modern society they wanted a better material life they they wanted a more representation and and so forth the Constitutional Revolution as I always would say is much more of a innocent Revolution it's a revolution that did not particularly have much violence in it contrary to many other revolutions it did not have a centralized leadership per se that's why actually I'm getting I mean besides the practices I'm getting a lot of requests for interviews to compare what's happening now with the revolution of 1906 1909 are there any Echoes yes yes there are there are because that was a movement that started without a without a centralized leadership what actually values to voices that emerged in various among the merchants or the businessman in the economic Community among the representatives who came to the first Parliament the Press the new generation of the privileged aristocracy who were educated and uh believed in the Constitutional values all of these voices emerged at the same time and somehow they managed to uh to coexist in the first and the second uh uh parliaments that were created uh between 1905 6 and 1910 or 1911. but they all face huge problems in the sense that Iran was in a dire economic situation this is before the days of the discovery of oil which actually coincides with this card there are two important coincidences one is that the oil was discovered in the south in 1909 during the course of the Constitutional Revolution the second is that in 1907 the two great powers of the time the Russian Empire and the British Empire who always honored Iran as being a buffer State between them because they didn't want to get too close to one another basically came to an agreement facing the fear of the rise of the German Empire so this is the period of Anton as you might know in European history whereby the front the French the British and the Russians all create a Alliance that ultimately leads to the first world war against Germany and at the same time the discovery of oil that the oil industry being a very powerful defining factor of the 20th century for Iran exactly source of a lot of money a lot of money but not all of it in the hands of the Iranians only 150 of it by way of royalties came to Iran there is much of it went to the Anglo passion a old company which they actually discovered the oil in the province who was the star province in the southwest of Iran raised the major oil Industries today right now and this is an extremely profitable uh Enterprise for that company and for the British government it actually purchased by the British government Churchill purchased anglo-iranian oil company for the British government so it was not anymore a private company it was a British interest as a matter of fact and in the course of the 20th century although it helped the modernization in Iran but it also helped the creation of a more authoritative Syria more strong state if you like to call it that it does that 19th century Iran never had that kind of a power never had that kind of resources it's the 20th century even that one-fifth of the income that reached the Iranian State gave it a greater power that's another coincidence so yes yes you could say the oil was one of the catalysts for absolute power but the 20th century saw quite a few countries um have dictators with power unlike anything else in human history yes that's weird too but precisely and you know you can name them from the beginning of the century with people like um I don't know Lenin or Stalin of course Hitler even though Mao of course you can name them and probably as I would say is the last of them is Khomeini in that Century that you would see this strong man with a sense of even a a artificial or real or a sense of a so-called Charisma and with this total power over the regime that they create in the some of them do Nasser they didn't have much of an oil resources in Egypt but he was also one of these strong men okay in the 20th century loved by some hated by others uh so it necessarily does not tie up to uh to Resource economic resources underground but in the Iranian case unfortunately it did and it was a uh it was more than it created more than one issue for Iran it's created a strong state which is the parlavist state from 1920 one onward because in 1921 at the end of the first world war Iran was in a almost a state of total bankruptcy and uh the British had a desire to try to bring Iran to the system that they created in the Middle East in the postwater era the mandate system Palestine Iraq and then of course French Mandate of Lebanon and Syria all of this and Iran was separate because Iran was an independent country it wasn't part of the ottawan Empire that collapsed so they had to somehow handle it and what they tried to do didn't work as a result partly domestic partly international issues wrote about a regime which is headed by the founder of the Parliamentary okay the first military officer called Reza Khan actually a military officer of the Kozak forces and the Kozak forces was the force that was created in the 19th century model of the Russian kozaks when the ruler in the 19th century visited Russia as in a Royal tour and the desire should the Great uh Kozak forces is that I like this and he created one for himself with Russian officers actually so the Russian officers served in Iran from Iran 1880s up to the revolution of 1917. the collapse of the yeah so many revolutions so many revolutions and Reza shop was an officer in that Reza Khan was an officer in that first and he created a new monarchy for reasons that we needed to go to and Discord the palabi regime regime was a modernizing regime okay that brought a company in effect fulfilled many of the Ambitions of the Constitution many of the aspirations of the Constitution better communication but uh secular education um centralizes States and centralized Army better contact with the outside world greater urbanization that's what a modern state is all about and in that regard in a sense for the first 20 years up to the second world war was successful despite and more significant of all it managed to keep the European powers which is always interfering in the local Affairs of Iran in an amlex so they were there in an arm length but they were also respecting the power of the state part of the Apollo State during the second second world war the same phenomenon as earlier interference led to the occupation of Iran by the Allied Forces the British from the south the Russians from the north the Red Army they took over Iran and of course the second world war yes from 1941 up to 1945 and of course when the when the Red Army refused to uh withdraw from Iranian Azerbaijan and with some thought of possible annexation of that Province there was a big issue in the possible Iran so after 1945 yes 1945 to 1946 there was a big Soviet Union getting greedy yes but eventually they agreed eventually Stalin agreed to leave the Azerbaijan province in the hope that it would get some concessions from Iran which in the oil of the Caspian era area which didn't work and it's a different story altogether but what happened is that in the post-war era between 1944 45 and 1953 is a period of Greater uh democratization was that vessels dictatorship basically disappeared and this is where you would see political parties Free Press a lot of chaotic really as as democracies often are so something like was it was it officially a democracy yes it was it the market was there elections there were elections yes of course yes of course and they were very diverse political tendencies came to the picture including the to the party of Iran which is Communist Party of Iran this Communist Party of Iran is probably the biggest Communist Party of the whole of the Middle East and one of the biggest in the world actually at that time did the Soviet Union have a significant influence on uh of course we're basically following orders from the Soviets although they deny it but in reality that's the case yeah but what happened they were seen by the Americans during the Cold War as if as a threat and Iran was going through a period of demanding nationalization of his oil resources that's a very important episode with mosadir whom you might have heard about his name Dr Muhammad Musa was the Prime Minister and the national charismatic leader from 1951 to 1953 prior to that he was a famous parliamentarian but this period was the Prime Minister of Iran and he nationalized the Iranian oil industry and the British didn't like it at all and eventually resulted in a famous crew which at least partly was supported by the funding and by the moral supports of the British and the Americans particularly by the emergence it was always seen as one of the earliest and the most successful CIA operations during the Cold War to see I had something to do with this of course that's one of the earliest operations of the CIA wait a minute what was yes of course what was the same what was the CIA doing CIA this is the time at the post for era in the 50s in the 50s 40s and the 50s the British Empire which was really the major superpower of the region after the collapse of the desires Empire gradually took the second seat to the Americans to where the newcomers and the great powers and the victors of the second World War and the Americans viewed Iran as an important uh uh as an important country since it has the largest common borders with the Soviet Union and it's what I did the size was the Persian goldfish at the time was the greatest uh uh supplier of uh oil to the outside world and therefore the Americans uh had a particular interest in Iraq and in the earlier stages their interest was in the interest of the Iranian government because they wanted to get rid of both the Soviet Union which made the return in the first War era and of course the British that were gradually withdrawing from Iraq but they they had a full control over the anglo-iranian or company they changed the name to angular Iranian or company when the name of the country officially changed from Persia to Iran in the west the name of the company changed and they got into a huge dispute with the wasada government that eventually led to the coup of 1953 which eventually created it very uh very distressful memory in the minds of many of the Iranian nationalists that this was the betrayer of the great Powers the British and Americans yes CIA played a part because see I feared contrary to the British that they were afraid of their own oil in Iran the CIA was afraid of the Soviet penetration in in the South and particularly because there was a very powerful a very powerful Communist party you know the two-day party of Iran so they gradually shifted between the Truman Administration and our Eisenhower Administration these are early days of the CIA and then they actually did participate uh to set their agents there's a long story to that and it eventually resulted in a successful coup that removed from Power what's the United States interest here why are they using CIA are they trying to make sure there's not too much centralization of power in this region they were afraid of the fact that the that of the Soviet Union and during the Cold War that was the cancer they actually almost want to protect Iran and its own Sovereign processes from the influence of the Soviets yes because they were afraid of the fact if Iran or at least this is part of the I'm simplifying a very complex picture but the but but the Americans basically were thinking that if Iran is going to be lost choose Soviet influence then eventually basically the all the oil resources in the Persian Gulf are going to be threatened and therefore and this would basically is the National Security of the United States and all of the western allies European allies so in a sense this was the long arm of the CIA to try to try to make sure that that's not going to happen and then of course they'll be persuaded by the British because British were the old hand which were in Iran since the beginning of the 19th century they always had relations with Iran and so forth so they gradually replaced and and of course they don't want to give them this kind of a satanic view that American was a bad influence because they had also some very good influences in Iraq but this particular episode somehow shed dark lights on the American presence and was used that abused time and again particularly the revolution 1979 which was this great Satan idea that Khomeini created basically was based on the fact is 1953 you were responsible for the downfall of a national government in Iran which as a matter of fact he had no respect for it Romani had no respect for the national secular National liberals including Muhammad Musa there but he was using it as a as a rhetorical tool for his own purposes but what happened is that after 1953 we see again the rise of authoritarian Muhammad result's power and then he is that's the Shah that's the Shah that we know as sure this is the son of research and uh technically what what is Shah is it actually is an old term impression that comes from a pre-islamic portion of ancient times in the context of democracy should it be seen as like a supreme leader King is the head of the executive power according to the Constitution of 1906. oh that's in the Constitution they actually yeah as a place in the Constitution but the actual term sure okay interesting what this show is a very old term yeah it's almost like a monarchic term like uh like a king yeah it is actually is the term peculiar to Iran I've written about it somewhere but because the term that the Western World in the ancient times has been Rex for royalty and the King in the Eastern World in India is right it's the same origin the same route Iran never shared that they had the idea of because the next Android I don't want to get into the too much of a etymology but this is an interesting one yeah Rex and Raj both means the one that opens the road for basically in four set of religion okay um in uh enforcer of the right religion because Rex and Raj both have the uh after a typological uh origin of Rights you see and right means the right religion basically by the way there's so much beautiful language here I'm just looking at the the Persian constitution in 1906 and it says it's the constitution of the sublime state of Persia pajar Iran I mean just just the extra adjectives on top of this stuff is beautiful I mean yeah because that was actually the change that came about I don't want to go in too much into it but it was called as I pointed out before the guarded domains of Iraq yes they changed that to the sublime state of Iran during the Constitutional Revolution because they wanted to give a greater sense of centrality of this state yeah and Sublime was the term refused but also what permeates all this is a is a poetic I mean there is a history of poetry of course based on the culture it's just fascinating so I mean it's I I of course I don't speak the language but even in in Russian there's also a music to the soul of the people that represents itself that presents itself in the form of poetry and literature in the way that it doesn't in the in the English-speaking world I don't know what that is there's um there's a Romantics like romantic romantic side that's right yeah I agree with you in Iran of course you know it is the time of the Constitutional Revolution it's a time of great poetry this kind of a patriotic sentiments that comes through poetry plays a very important part uh of course these days poetry has kind of declined and instead you see the visual image that is at the center that's why Cinema is so important because these days with their Tick Tock yeah let me finish this about this period of biometricia he built up because he received the greater income from the oil revenue and it built up a very strong state with a strong security Force a strong security apparatus which is the savark there's a uh which is a acronym for the security force in security organization and he of course unfortunately in the 1960s and 70s particularly 1970s basically suppress the voices of or possibility of any kind of a mass participation in the political uh process it became very much an authoritarian regime with its own technocrats very much a modernist vision of of of of Iran's future and almost kind of Messianic that he was hoping that Iran in a decade would become the fifth most powerful estate in the world and the riches as he would have said the gates of the great civilization very much in the mind had this image of ancient Iran of the community Empire and we want to go back to that greatness of the archimedian Empire somewhat rather naive and very nationalistic and crude fashion and what happened is that as a result there was built up some kind of a resistance from the intellectuals from the left eventually resulting in a kind of a protest movement as I said by 1977 1978. then of course the question that comes to mind and the probably it you have you you would like to know about is the fact that why it becomes religious why it's become Islamic if it's the popular you know nationalist liberal tendency of opening up the political uh uh space and along greater participation going back to the Constitution of 1906 1907 why it's all of a sudden it becomes Khomeini where does he come from the reason for that at least in a concise fashion is the fact that on one area that after the greatest suppression of all the other voices remained open was religion masks the mullahs on the pulpit and the message that gradually shifted from the older traditional message of the Sharia of Islam I mean all the rules and regulations of how one has to live into something very political and not only political but also radical political so in the whole period from the Constitutional Revolution to the revolution of 1979 basically the religious establishment gradually was pushed to the opposition they were not originally very conservative supported us of State as the Catholic church for instance was supported of majority of the authoritarian governments around the world but the politicization was the result of isolation because they were left out of the system and while in isolation they did they did not they were not successful in trying to reform themselves to try to become to try to find answers to many of the questions from Modern Times what happens to women what happens to civil rights what happens to a civil society how the modern law and individual freedoms have to be defined in Islamic terms how to separate uh religion and state or how to separate the religion and state these issues were never addressed what happened is that there was this bypass through political uh Islam and revolutionary Islam as it gradually they learned you know that this is the bypass bypass to power basically to become again a voice in the society and eventually a prominent voice and eventually monolithic voice and the society that's the process that led into the revolution of 1979 basically this period greater attention was paid to religion even among the secular middle classes who were alienated for a very long time because of this extensive modernization of the pallavi period they had they didn't have a sense of that old monoliths with their turbans but they became they had it kind of aura in this period yes they are those who remain not corrupted they are the people who basically went against the suppression of the palavi regime and Khomeini became a leader a symbol of that nobody ever thought in the earlier stages and bank this very excited multitudes that came to the streets of the Iranian cities in 1979 or 1978 actually thought that this this old ball line with 70s that all of a sudden has appeared from the najaf through Paris to Tehran is going to take over and create a autocracy a religious autocracy we have to back up for just a second who who is how many uh who you just you just mentioned a few desperate facts about the man yeah he was the person that took power in 1979 supreme leader of Iran yes some you mentioned something about Paris something about being in the 70s yes what should we know about the guy oh yeah who eventually was known as Imam Gomez he was kind of promoted to a even more Sublime position okay okay uh can we I'm just a million tangents uh Ayatollah Imam what do these terms mean well Ayatollah means the sign of God in the course of the 19th century or early 20th century as the religious establishment gradually lost its greater presence in the society and these prominent places in society they had some kind different inflation in titles so they gave themselves a more Grand titles yeah more adjectives more adjectives more Grand titers such as Ayatollah that became a kind of a highest rank of the religious hierarchy but it incidentally was in on you know unofficial hierarchy there was not it's not like the Chris like Catholic Church that you have you know Bishops and you know Federer it was very unofficial mother and he was an Ayatollah it was eventually recognized as an Ayatollah he was in the first Ayatollah no no no not at all the ayatollahs were before him ever since the beginning of the century but he was eventually recognized as an Ayatollah and if I want to study this way Ayatollah how many was born in 1900 and in a sense all these tremendous change that Iran witnessed in the course of the 20th century was in a sense materializing this person he become a mullah of a lower rank went to the traditional mattresses to the traditional centers for the education of the seminarians never had a secular education had a very complex Islamic education on this one-hand jurisprudence on the other hand probably a little bit of Islamic philosophy and mysticism which is unusual for the Juris for the for the factory as they call them this religious Scholars or or legal Scholars of Islam and then he in the 1960s when he was residing in Tehran and gradually becoming more important he became a voice of opposition against the Shah and the reason for opposition uh in the 1960 early 1960s was the fact that the shot carried through a series of extensive modernization policies of which the most important was the land reform so in effect the land distribution that took place in the early 60s removed or weakened greatly that class of land owners from the ancient from the 19th century and he uh Khomeini saw himself as a voice of that old class that uh felt that actually declared that this land distribution is on Islamic according to the Islamic law properties a property is honored and you cannot just no matter how much and how large are these states that the landowning class has the government has no right to redistribute it even Among The Peasants among among the people who are killing the land so that was a major issue Shaw also gave the right of vote to women and that also he objected is that women should not have a right can we just Linger on the Islamic law How firm and clear is the Islamic law that he was representing and embodying is this um codified codified yes that's a good term yeah that's another issue not only the hierarchy was unofficial but also uh Islamic law particularly Shiloh did not have any uh codified system because this religious Authority is always resisted becoming under a umbrella of a more codified system of Islamic law because they were outside the state in essence civil civil law was in the hand of the religious establishment they had their own courts independent of the state but other matters of legal matters was in the hand of the government there was a kind of in de facto division between these two institutions State versus the religious establishment therefore it was not codified so he could declare that this is unofficial or I said illegal according to the Islamic law that you would distributed land to the presence and another must ahead or another religious Authority would say no no it's perfectly fine because he would has a different reading of the law so that being in mind that adds to the complexity of the picture he in the 1963 there was a period of uprising of the supporters of Ayatollah Khomeini that was the turning point in a sense to try to politicize the religious supporters of ayatulate who were loyal to other Harmony and in a sense all the community of more religiously orientated against the secular policies of the Shah and against of course the dictatorship of the show so that's where the religious movement became a political party in 1963 is the first moment it's a huge Uprising and the government suppressed it but then suppression yes would start to build of course and he was sent to Exile he went to najaf which is this great Center in southern so it became a martyr on top of this at the Martyr he was probably even forgotten to some extent but not it was forgotten for the for the secular middle class but not to those supporters of his who were paying him their dues because in Islam you would paid use to religious leaders you know there's religious Jews and arms that you put pay to the clerical authorities and they redistribute them among their own students and so forth so they built actually a network of loyalty based on this uh donations and these donations uh that's received by atolo Khomeini was very effectively through his network was distributed even if he was in Exile asadira so the 1977 1978 when the situation changed and there was a little bit of opening in the political climate then you saw that Ayatollah Khomeini starts sending cassette messages that was his mean of communication but sending cassettes and cassettes were sent through the country by his Network so or declarations and saying first that we would like to see a greater democratization and the Shah has to abide by the Constitution of 1907 this is a constitution this is a democratic system and so forth was he charismatic well it depends who would call what do you call charismatic yeah the long beard it was kind of a man in turban and the Gown which was a very unusual leadership for people who were much more accustomed to the civilian clothing or to the equipments of the Shaw's military uniforms that he used to wear but I also mean like he's a man I was able to take power to become popular sufficiently popular so like I I would like is it the ideas is it an accident or is it the man himself the Charisma or something about the man that led to this particular person basically changing the tide of history in this part of the world in a way unexpected all the above that you mentioned or was it just the beard no I think no it's beyond the appearance because the appearance is greatly helps as you know yeah you know in the 20th century appearance is helpful yeah pictures for propaganda for messaging that's an important factor and he wasn't uh kind of a adamant and very severe in his own positions he could appear very uncompromising and he had a sense of confidence self-confidence that we truly everybody else lacked and he was a man of opportunity as soon as he would see that a chance an opportunity would open up he would jump on it and that's what he did basically as more the political space opened the weaknesses of the shortest government became more evident his indecision became more evident his lack of confidence became more evident Khomeini managed to move further into the center of the movement because he was the only Authority that had this network of support through the masks through the people who paid homage to him who followed him because there's a sense of following of the religious leader in shiza you are a follower of this Authority follower of that Society and he's basically created an environment in which people looked upon him as a kind of a Messianic figure yeah that came to save Iran from what they considered at the time the problems of uh dictatorship under the shore so there's not a suspicion about Islamic law being the primary law of the language people had very little sense that what Islamic law is all about because the secular education has left that into the old religious schools this is not something that ordinary educated Iranian who goes to the universities is going to learn and therefore there is a sense of idealization that there is something great there that is and there were quite a number of intellectuals who also viewed this kind of an idea of they would refer to as this toxication that is this civilization of the West that has brought with it all the modernity that we see around ourselves has enormous Sinister features into it and it has taken away from us our authenticity that was the thing that there is something authentic that should be protected and therefore a man in that kind of a Garb and appearance received as a source for return to this originality of their own culture authenticity of their own culture and he perfectly took advantage of that that's how many tricky advantage of it and the circle around him I expensive everybody else which she managed in the course of 1979 to 1989 which he passed away it died in the 10 years during this period managed to basically transform the Iranian Society to create institutions of the Islamic Republic and to acquire himself the position of the Guardian jurists that was something completely new it didn't ever exist before as a matter of fact as you might know the model of government that a religious establishment takes over the states is unprecedented throughout the course of Iranian history throughout the course of the Islamic history I would say this is the first example and probably the only example of a of a regime that religious establishment that has always in the course of Iranian history ever since I would say probably at the 16th century if not earlier has been always separate from this state and always kind of collaborating with this state in a with a certain tensions in between the two of them there were two basically as they would call themselves the two pillars of stability in the society that situation changed for the first time the religious establishment took over the power of this state and that's at the core of what we see today as a major issue for Iranian Society because these are basically that old balance between the religion and the state which was kind of de facto uh separation of the authorities of the two uh has been violated and now you have empowered if your theocracy in effect which of course only in the on the on in its appearances theocracy deep down it's a in my opinion is the brutal fascist regime that it stays in power but it has the appearance of religion into it so this is really the story of the revolution and as a result of that the Iranian middle classes greatly suffered it's not without a reason that you see 4 million Iranians abroad because basically the emergence of this new power gradually uh isolated or marginalized the secular middle class who could not survive under that regime and gradually moved out uh in the course of perhaps 30 40 years up to now Iran has the largest I think I'm right to say so has the largest brain drain in any country in the world according to its population so fascinating that um how much of a weird Quirk of history is it that uh that religion would take hold in a country like does it have to do with the individual it seems like if we re ran the 20th century uh a thousand times we would get the uh 79 Revolution resulting in um Islamic law like less than you know one percent of the time it feels like or no what which percentage would you put well I think has something to do with the very complex nature of how Iran evolved over a long period of time since the 16th century that's why if I would for a moment talk about what I have written I've written a book that's called Iran and modern history and it does not start in the 20th century it starts in the 16th century yeah because that's what I have argued that this complex process that at the end of the day resulted in what we see around us today is something that was in making for a very long time and religion was a big part of it she and the the the Messiah complex the exactly the the longing for this great vision of a great nation that somehow is um the sublime nation that can only be fully Sublime through uh through religion or at the time it was thought that is true religion ever since then it's disillusionment with that image yeah or at least a process of this illusionment the outcome of it is what we see today basically that process of 40 years is a process of readjusting to the realities of the world that that great moment of romantic success of a revolution like most Revolutions of course that is going to change Iran and bring this kind of a moment of greatest led into this great disappointment so the movement of the great disappointment in a sense like most Messianic movements by the way Mosaic move as a general are always leading into great disappointments but what I have here that perhaps should be added to it that yes it was the peculiarity of Iran as a society that had to experience this eventual encounter between religion and state that's something to do with the nature of Jesus that's just one point that should be pointed out most of Sunni Islam don't have that kind of I say most because there is something there but Sony Islam in general does not have that kind of an aspiration for the coming of a Messianic uh uh a leader she's them does she's I mean it's very shaping particularly the way that it was set up in Iran was a religion that has always this element of expectation to it for the coming of this Messianic leader of course I mean between parenthesis all societies look for Messianic leaders I'm just look around us but some societies more than others there's certain culture it might have to do with them the Romantic poetry that we mentioned earlier I mean surely I mean not to draw to me parallels but the Soviet Union there is romanticism too and I mean I don't know there there it does maybe idealism a sense of his savior yeah who would who would bring you out of the misery that you are in and and always looking for a for a third party to solve your issues that's why probably this movement has a particularly significance because it probably doesn't look for a messiah although I was talking to my brother who is the historian also and he was saying perhaps the Messiah of this movement is that mass or amini the 22 year old girl that was killed it's a market Messiah who is now leading a movement which no longer has that charismatic leadership with it but yes I would say that Iran has been the birthplace if I might say that of Messianic aspirations going back to the ancient zoracianism which is the really the whole system that you see in major religions or at least best so-called Western religions it's abrahamic religions is parallel or perhaps influenced by Zoroastrianism in which there is an idea of uh this war than the other word that is Hereafter there is an idea of a judgment at the end of the time and there is a concept that there is a moment of Justice that is going to come with the rise of a religious or a charismatic figure so it's a very old phenomenon in Iran very old and it's time and again repeated itself in the course of its history but never as powerfully as it happened in 1979 and never in the form of authority from within the religious establishment it was always The Descent movements that were kind of antinomian they were against the authority of the uh religious establishment that changed in the 20th century but the revolution 1979 that change is still with us today what can we just Linger on um are there some practical games of Power that occurred you know in the way that Stalin took power and held power in the early days is there something like this in terms of the establishment of the Revolutionary guard and all those kinds of stuff yes so it's the the Messianic figure that has some support from the people but uh does he have to crush his enemies in competition certainly did probably not certainly not as brutal in terms of the victims as you would see in Soviet Union understand who the Bloodshed or the destruction of the population was far greater than what you would find in Iran of the Islamic Republic it's uncomfortable perhaps I would find a greater parallel with matzodun and particularly because China has a very strong Messianic tradition since the ancient times so they have something and Mao appeared as the kind of a Messianic figure there I can see there is a parallel but also you can see with any other authoritarian regime with the Messianic fear at the head of it that it destroys all the other forces so during the course of the first 10 years of the Islamic revolution it destroyed the liberal nationalists secular it's destroyed the Guerrilla movements some of them Islamic some of them marxists who turned into political parties or tendencies in the course of the post-revolution 1979 they were completely destroyed and in a very brutal fashion and uh the their opposition even within the religious establishment because it wasn't a uniform there were many different Tendencies those that were opposed to the authority of Ayatollah Khomeini or not Imam Khomeini meaning almost a sacred religious figure above the level of a religious Authority is a saint kind of a figure he says she's them has this idea of imams they were 11 of them the 12th is hidden and would come back at the end of the time this is okay Messianic figure so the title that was always used for them only in shiza never used for any other person he is the first person in the revolution of 1979 first referred to as Deputy of Imam but the term Deputy gradually disappeared and he became Imam Khomeini this is that his official title I love human beings so much it's so beautiful these uh titles that we give each other it's um but it's marvelous stuff you love it because you haven't been under that system no I I love it in a way I love it in a very dark kind of way it caricatures itself it's it's almost funny in its absurdity if not for the evil that it has led to in human history uh but also the fact that it's a man is in fact fulfillment in a kind of completely um unintended fashion is a fulfillment of that idea of a messiah that they've been fighting for this Imam which is in ahide for a thousand years is here and not here and therefore Khomeini would have in effect fulfilled those anticipations but beyond that I just give you one example I know that you may have other concerns but when I say elimination at the end of the iran-iraq war by the direct order of Ayatollah Khomeini a fatwa that he wrote a group of prisoners who belong to a variety of uh political parties the left religious left majority of them the left and the the Marxist left and the religious left in a matter of a few weeks or perhaps a few months I'm not actually quite sure about the times that uh in a series of these were people who have already been tried and they were given uh sentences they were brought back before the uh summary Trials of three judges or more three four of them one of them is now the new president of the Islamic Republic and they were given a a quick summary sentences which meant execution so something between probably six to eight thousand were executed in matter of a month or two months something like that mostly in Tehran but also in provinces and that's remained an extraordinary trauma for the families for those who had these kids in they're all young all young so this remains very much uh kind of uh original sin of the Islamic Republic that cannot get rid of and it's in people's memories they didn't allow them even the families to go and mourn their dead in a an official symmetry which they created for them now the latest thing is that they put a huge a concrete wall around it so nobody would be able to get into it so these all part of this extraordinary level of level of atrocity brutality that you see that the regime claimed that it comes with the morality of religion and Islam to bring back the justice and and and be more uh in a sense kind to people ended up with what it is in the memory of many of the people in Iraq so developing these fascistic Tendencies very much destroying minorities Baha'is one of them hundreds of bahais were without any reason without any involvement we picked up and uh executed the properties were taken over their rights were taken away from them even up to this day this is the largest by the very religious minority in Iran so you would see that in many areas this is a ax very much as an Beyond authoritarian it's a kind of really fascistic regime foreign held power for 10 years and then took power the next Supreme All Right leader who is still the leader today for over 30 years who is he well he was one of the this is one day perhaps no well they hesitated to use the term Imam for him but in any other respect he was given all of that adulation yes that they did to how many he is the guardian jurist that's what's important because the guardian jurist in the constitution of the Islamic Republic is an authority that is above this state he is not elected quote-unquote because this is a Divine Authority although he has been designated by the group of the terror and mullah's like himself and uh he has the full power over all uh institutions of the state the Army the media the economy every aspect of the acts like you show it's like this authoritarian Authority did that gradually develop or was that very early on well that's part of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic the first constitution um in the first draft of the Constitution did not have the authority of the Guardian Judas but then it was added by Khomeini and his supporters are there actual in the Constitution any limits to his power yes there is a council of the experts so to say that would remove him from Power I think theoretically but there is so much restrictions to that that I don't think it would have ever happened in reality in his case at least but in terms of executive to make decisions and all that kind of stuff does he need to check with anybody no boy he does check with his own advisors but he's he doesn't have any he doesn't have any constitutional obligation to check on the decisions that he's making so that's the supreme leader but there's been presidents yes and what's the role of the president the president in a sense is the executive power under the Islamic Republic there are three heads of powers this is the president that presumably has the executive power there is the head of the judiciary and there is the head of the uh the speaker of the parliament much less Islamic which is the uh the legislative so the legislative Judiciary and executive who is now the president is the uh the head of the Executive above them is the supremely there or the guardian jurist can you give me some insight because I especially I'm not exactly sure why but uh the president Ahmadinejad is somebody I'm as an American really familiar with why is that exactly but why was why was the president the public-facing person to the world versus the supreme leader uh is that just a accident of a particular humans involved or is this by Design no because the supreme leader tries to keep himself out of issues of everyday politics supposedly yeah but therefore he is not coming to United Nations to give a speech during the uh session uh but Mr ahmadines at the time was the president uh would come and make outrageous statements that's why you probably know something about him so all of them make public statements but he had a proclivity for outrageous statements and it does all kinds of things he makes all kinds of statements but he is somewhat above the everyday politics in theory but of course he is pulling all the strings with without doubt in every last respect and it seems that you were asked I thought you're going to ask me this question almost without a an exception since the Inception of the Islamic Republic in 1979 up to the last of the presidents of the Islamic Republic Rouhani before the guy that is last year or a year and a half ago was in a phony election uh uh got into the position of the president all of them on the long list all of them eventually fell out with the regime mm-hmm so there is no president except perhaps to some extent through a honey but we'll wait and see what is going to happen to him but prior to him all of them including ahmadine Azad fell out with the regime with the current regime in Iraq who's Johannes he was officially president for eight years yeah prior to raisy Ibrahimovic the 221 the year what you're saying is a phony election yesterday what happened because the process of actually candidacy for presidency is completely controlled by a a cancer that is under the control of the uh supreme leader so they have to approve who is going to be the candidate so why does everybody can enter and say I would like to be a candidate so did Rouhani follow out of favor you're saying there's something yeah well he is kind of out of favor now because he was more moderate than this this most recent regime what the point is that if you look this is something almost institutional constitutional to the regime this is the regime that rejects all of the executive powers because it's because the division between the supreme authority as the place of a supreme authority versus the presidency has problematic it is as if there would be a a a supreme leader in the United States above all these three sources of power I mean that's the kind of any view that we can see in today's Iran and of course he is at the focus of all the criticism that he receives from the demonstrators in today's Iran so on top of all this recently and throughout the last several years U.S and Iran are in the midst of nuclear deal negotiations this is another part of the story of Iran is uh the development of nuclear weapons the nuclear program they're looking to restore the nuclear deal known as The Joint comprehensive plan of action jcpoa what is the history the present and the future of these negotiations over nuclear weapons what is interesting to you in this full context from the 16th century of the Messianic um yeah Journey uh what's interesting to you here you can argue that for a long time even under the shaw but much more expressively and decisively under the Islamic Republic there was a determination to have a nuclear power or nuclear weapon in a sense I think the bottom line of all the negotiations everything else is that Iran of the Islamic Republic had the tendency of having its own nuclear weapon the reason for that is that Iran was the subject of nearly nine years eight and a half years of uh Iran Iraq War when uh not only Iran faced an aggressor Iraq that actually attacked Iran at a very critical time at the very beginning of the Iranian Revolution but the fact that Iran felt kind of a helpless in the course of this war and has to make great sacrifices actually which supported the Islamic regime and Consolidated the Islamic regime because of this war and most of the time the support of the United States was behind Iraq Visa of Iran and Iran felt that it's been isolated and has to protect itself so there is some argument for having a nuclear capabilities but in reality this has resulted in as a completely mindless crazy a wasteful attempt on the side of the Iranian regime to try to develop a nuclear power and therefore the rest of the world particularly in this region were very worried that if Iran would get access to a nuclear weapon then the entire region of the Persian Gulf might particularly Saudi Arabia possibly turkey possibly Egypt all of them may require uh may may demand to have also nuclear weapon given the fact that Pakistan and India has already have it so there was a determined attempt as you might know on the side of the western communities or now gradually World communities to try to as much as possible to control Iran from getting access to a nuclear capability or actually limit Iran's nuclear capabilities to what was defined usually in a euphemism as a peaceful fashion okay uh that being said there was also Israel which viewed the Islamic Republic as a arch enemy and some of it might be due to the israeli's own exaggeration of Iran's threat and some of it is because Iran has developed a fairly strong military as we see today and as such this attempt to try to prevent Iran from Ever Getting access to nuclear weapon which resulted as you might know in this massive sanctions that were imposed upon Iran ever since the beginning of the revolution in 1979 and of course more intensively since 2015 2016 even prior to that probably a little bit earlier this this agreement the nuclear agreement was supposed to control or monitor Iranian nuclear industry or nuclear setup in exchange for removing the sanctions what this never worked in a matter of fact in a very successful satisfactory way for the Iranians or for the Americans particularly under Trump Administration which I think foolishly decided to scrap the agreement that was reached under President Obama like many other policies that was implemented under Trump Administration this created a major problem that is how to under Biden how to try to come up with a new nuclear agreement with Iran in this process since 2016 where the United States withdrew from the agreement Iran felt comfortable to try to go and do whatever they want without any kind of monitor being monitored by the International Community and that's the situation now we don't know whether Iran is really sincere under the present regime to negotiate a deal we don't know that the United States is willing to do so and it seems that now what is happening in terms of the protests in the Iranian streets makes it even harder in a public eye to try to negotiate a deal with Iran because that means in the minds of many and with some justification that uh if the nuclear agreement would result in the removal of many of these sanctions millions billions uh as the result of the removal of the sanctions and Iran's ability to sell it it's all in the international market without any restrictions means that the Iranian government is going to become even more powerful more financially secure in order to suppress its own people so that's the agreement that goes against coming to terms with with uh Iran but the problem is that there is no clear alternative even I'm not particularly personally favorable for this agreement to be uh to to be ratified but the alternative is very difficult there is no way to try to see what can be done geopolitics where every alternative is terrible let me ask you about one of the most complex geopolitical situations in history um one aspect of it is the cold war between Iran and Israel the bigger picture of it is sometimes referred to as uh israel-palestine conflict what are all the party's Nations involved what are the interests that are involved what's the rhetoric um can you understand make the case for each side of this conflict the European Union can of worms that it takes another three hours of of conversation just three hours at least what what I can tell you is this Iran prior to 1979 viewed itself under the Shah as a kind of a if not supporter of Israel was in very good terms with Israel they had an embassy in Iran or unofficial Embassy you know there are certain projects that's helping with the Agriculture and so forth you know but since 1979 that completely reversed part of it is that the issue of the Palestinian plights remained very much at the heart of the Revolutionary Iranians who would see that part of the United States is to support part of the United States guilt sin is to support Israel vis-a-vis it's very suppressive a very oppressive treatment of the Palestinians completely illegal taking over after territories which is not theirs since 1967. and therefore it is upon the Iranian regime Iranian Islamic Republic to support the cause of the Palestinians this came about at the time when the rest of the support for the Palestinians including Arab nationalism basically reached a stage of bankruptcy I mean much of the regimes of the Arab world either are now coming to terms with Israel or in one way or another because of their own contingencies because of their own concerns and interests are really nearly accepting Israel in the in the region now that all task of rhetorically supporting the Palestinians falls upon the Islamic Republic that sees itself as the champion of the Palestinians now without as a matter of fact having either the support of the Iranian people behind him if you ask if tomorrow there would be a poll or a referendum I would doubt that 80 of the Iranian people would approve of the policies of the Islamic Republic Visa with the issue of Palestine nor the Palestinians themselves because they're the Islamic Republic is only supporting those factions within the Palestinian movement which are Islamic quote-unquote and even within that they there is problems with Hamas for instance but nevertheless it's for the Islamic Republic some kind of a propaganda tool to be able to use it for its own sake and claim that we are the champions of the Palestinian people whether they have a solution if you look at the rhetoric if you listen to the rhetoric it's the destruction of the state of Israel and that's it seems to me creates a certain anxiety in the minds of the Israelis Israeli population and Israeli government particularly those who are now in power Netanyahu the likud and more kind of a right-wing politics of police polity of today's Israel that being said I think also the Israelis try to get an extra mileage out of a threat of Iran quote-unquote in order to present themselves a rightful to for terms of security and whatever else the way that they're treating the Palestinians which I think is extremely unjust I think it's extremely unwise for Israel to carry on with these policies as they did since the 67 at least and not to try to come to terms with it of course there are huge amount of I'm not denying that at all it's a huge amount of uh uh failures mistakes and stupidity on the side of the Palestinian leadership in various stages not to try to make a deal or try to come to terms in some fashion but it's a very complex picture and it's rather unfair to the Palestinians to accuse them for not coming to terms with Israel under a very uneven circumstances when they are not in a position to try to make a fair deal in terms of the territories or in terms of their security in future vis-a-visra so I think there is as you probably know quite a lot of people that would have a different perspective than you just stated in terms of you know taking the perspective of Israel and characterizing the situation Can you steal man that their side can you still man Israel's side that they're trying to be a Sovereign Nation trying to protect themselves against threats ultimately wanting to create a place of safety a place where people can pursue all all the things that you want to pursue in life including foremost happiness I tend to agree with you and I have all the respect for the fact that Israel would like to create security and happiness for its own people but there are two arguments is one is a moral argument to my mind as a historian a uh Jews across around the world for all through their history suffered and this is a history of suffering there is a memory of something and I find it enormously difficult to believe that a nation that's the product of so much uh sacrifice suffering loss of life and variety of Holocaust above all would find itself in a position not to give the proper Justice to a people who could be their neighbors and that is a moral argument which I cannot believe under any circumstances can be accepted second in real terms what do you want to you want to commit to genocide do you have a population there that you have to come to terms with it and you cannot just postpone as they did since 67 they are postponing and hoping that it goes away somehow I don't think it's going to go away and and it's going to get worse right and better it's a long nuanced discussion and I look forward to having it so just leave it um there for the moment uh but it is a stressful place in the world uh where the rhetoric is existential or Iran yeah it makes claims that he wants to wipe a country off the face of the Earth it's just the level of of intensity of rhetoric is unlike anywhere else in the world and extremely dangerous and in in both directions so one the real danger of the rhetoric actually being acted upon and then the extreme political parties using the rhetoric to justify even a greater escalation so uh yeah if Iran is saying that this is it's saying that they're wanting to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth that justifies any response uh on the other side on the other side of course I tend to agree with you fully and unfortunately this is a very critical situation that uh this region is facing Iran in particular I would say that um I hope that in the minds of the people of Israel there is a enough or common sense to realize that probably escalation on the Israeli side is not in the favor of anybody and try to let the Iranians to go on with their empty rhetoric as they do so far but at the same time I cannot deny the fact that you know there is a danger on the side of this regime and what it says it cannot be denied nobody can justify that uh particularly because the Iranian population is not behind this regime certainly in the case of the Palestinians or for that matter it's not Palestine it's the the the Islamic Republic's involvement in Lebanon with Hezbollah it's the Islamic Republic's involvement in Syria with pasture Assad its involvement in other parts of the World perhaps even Yemen that all of them creates extra territorial responsibilities or interventions unnecessary interventions that ultimately is not in favor of best interests of the Iranian people or Iran as a country Iran has never been involved in this kind of politics before after the Islamic Republic so in a sense the Iranian regime it seems to me by going to the extreme try to create for itself a pace that it did not have or did not deserve to have within the politics of the region he said so in other words that has become part of the tool a kind of an instrument for if you like to call it some kind of an expansionism of of the regime uh in parts of the world where it can see there is a possibility for for its presence for its expansion of course historically speaking Iran Everest's 15th century I think that's the earliest example I can see in mother in alibade times has always a tendency of moving in the direction of not only what is today the state of Iraq but further into the eastern coast of mediterranea so that's a long-term ambition that has been in the cards as far as Iran as a strategic unit is cancer but by no means Justified and by no means could be a reasonable could be a sane policy of a nation state as today's Iran but the second point is that also regimes are always victims of their own rhetoric so it's I once you keep repeating something then you become more and more committed to it and it cannot remain anymore in the level of a rhetoric you have to do something about it says something compelling pressure to try to uh to uh to materialize what you've been saying in your rhetoric and that is even extremely more dangerous as far as Iran is concerned and it brings it to some Unholy alliances that today we are witnessing Iran is getting involved even more dangerous than this rhetoric uh in in terms of the visible Israel is its involvement with uh Russia and to some extent with China which we can't talk about what do you think about the meeting between Harmony and Vladimir Putin in July what's that Alliance what's that partnership is its surface level geopolitics is there a deep growing connection I cannot see the difference between geopolitics and these deep connections I see this one and the same why because I think the experience 40 Years of distancing from the West in terms of the Islamic Republic and the fact that there is a shelf life to Imperial presence yeah for any Empire anywhere in the world so after the terrible experience of of the United States in Iraq and in Afghanistan pretty much like the British Empire that after destroys the experience in 56 decided to withdraw from east of Suez maybe there is a moment here that we are witnessing or it may come that a great power like the United States sees in its benefits not to get too much involved into nitty-gritty things in other parts of the world that it's not its immediate cancer and I think that's part of the reason not the entire reason part of the reason why we see the emergence of a new geopolitical environments in this part of the world of which China Russia possibly Iran possibly turkey possibly both of them are going to be part perhaps Saudis also but I doubt that the Saudis under the presidency circumstances although we have witnessed some remarkable issue in the course of the past few weeks where the Saudis giving assurances to American Administration and then shifting and getting along with Putin in terms of the oil production I think it's more than that event and it's not only them but also the Emirates are doing the same thing so what does that just tell us and that's another many hour conversation about the the world industry in in Iran and the the whole region in emerging this kind of a world which was perhaps even 10 years ago unimaginable yeah that you see now a great power China that it's going to remain from what we see around us as a great power and Russia adventurous foolish but nevertheless would remain a criminal I would say as far as the Its Behavior in Ukraine but actually it's a rogue nation that it attracts another Rogue Nation so Iran finds itself now in a greater place of security in Alliance with Russia in the hope that this would give Iran a greatest Security in this part of the world whether this is whether this is uh realistic or a illusion I think remains to be seen I think Iran China relation makes more sense uh although if you ask ordinary Iranians they don't like it they will tell why should we be tied up with uh with China as the only uh trade party with with America because of the I foolish isolations that you have created for us because of all the sanctions that you have created for us the Islamic Republic so in a sense it's a very difficult question to answer probably Iranians also like to be more on the other camp but what happens is that in real term so what surprises me most is not this alliance with China but it's kind of becoming a lucky or subservient to Putin's regime in in Russia since if you look at it Iran ever since at least the 19th century not going further back the beginning of the 19th century always viewed Russia as the greatest threat strategically because it was sitting right at the top of Iran it was uh it was uh infinitely more powerful than Iran has ever been and Iran for two rounds of War at the beginning of the century lost the entire caucuses to Russia and led its lesson that you have to be mindful of Russia and you have to keep it as an arms length and that's what was the Iran's policy throughout the course of the 20th century 19th and 20th Century up to what we see now around us which is a very strange situation um whether the balance has changed in terms of if this if Russia is purchasing weapons from from Iran which was unheard of it means that there is a new balance is emerging a new relationship is emerging perhaps remains to be seen but uh if you look at the Historical precedence it would have been enormously unwise to be an ally of Russia given its long history of aggression in Iraq see Russians part of the reason why it's actually Iran Allied itself with British Empire was the fact that it was so much afraid of the Russian expansion and as such I don't know what's going to be the future of this relationship there is a big disconnect between uh governments and the people and I think ultimately I have faith that there's a love across the different cultures across the different religions amongst the people and the governments are the source of the division and the conflict and the wars and all the geopolitics that isn't part grounded in the battle for resources and all that kind of stuff nevertheless this is the world we live in so you've looked at the modern history of Iran the past few centuries if you look into the future of this region Now you kind of implied that historian has a bit of a cynical View of protests and things like this um that are fueled at least in the minds of young people with hope if you were to just for a while have a bit of Hope in your heart and your mind what is a hopeful future for the next 10 20 30 years of Iran I'm not cynical I'm trying to be realistic and I actually may be critical but I have Great Hopes uh in Iran's future for a variety of reasons I actually did write an article only if the last version of it is going to go out today in which the title of it is the time of fear and women of Hope which in a sense is this whole coverage but what this movement means like that we see today pin May fizzle in a few weeks time or it may just go on and create a new Dynamics in Iranian society that would hopefully resolve in a peaceful process of Greater accommodation and the greater tolerance within the Iranian society and with the outside world and I think majority of the Iranian people don't want tension don't run confrontation don't want crisis day if 40 years they have suffered from a regime that have dictated an ideology that it's uh regressive and impractical they want to go back to a life in which they don't They Don't Really create trouble for their neighbors or for the world and therefore I would see a better future for Iran that's for one reason it's strategically or geopolitically maybe in Iran's advantage in a peaceful fashion to negotiate as it's the fate of all the nations rather than commit itself or sworn to a particular course of a policy so there's a give and take as the nature of politics is the art of possible as it's been said so probably Iran is going to be hopefully moving that direction I think there is a generational thing that's the third reason no matter how much the Islamic Republic tried to islamicize the Iranian Society in its own image of kind of radical ideological indoctrination it has failed it has failed up to what we see today in the Iranian streets and the Iranian population said no to it and I think if there would have been and they very much hope there will be a possibility for a more open environment more open space where they would be able to speak them their views out Iranians are not on the side of moving in the extreme directions they are in the side of Greater accommodation and the greater interest in the outside world and if you look at every aspect of today's beside the government every aspect of life in today's Iran we can see that from the way that people dress to the way that they try to live their lives to the way that you're educating themselves or by educated in the institutions do you see a desire an intention to move forward and I'm optimistic well in that struggle for Freedom like I told you offline I want my close childhood friends is Iranian just beautiful person as families is a wonderful family and on a personal level is one of the deeper Windows into the Iranian spirit and soul that I've gotten a chance to witness so I really appreciate it but in the recent times I've gotten to hear from a lot of people that are currently living in Iran that are currently have that burning hope for the future of the country and so my love goes out to them and the struggle for freedom I ask it's so nice of you to say so and I very much hope so uh there are moments of spare and there are moments that that you would think that there is no hope and uh but but then again something triggers and you see hundred thousand people in the streets of Berlin uh that are hoping for a better future for you and I very much hope it eventually emerges even I'm hoping at the same time that it's not going to be a very strong leadership as it was the case in the past we started with hope we ended with hope this was a real honor this is an incredible conversation thank you for um thank you for giving such a a deep and uh wide story of this great nation one of the great nations in history well that's the kind of used to say so thank you for sitting down today well a history that as I've said in the start of my book I States the history of a nation which has learned a huge amount from from the outside world by force of its geography it was always located somewhere that people would invade yeah or come for trade or something happened to it that is this diffused culture continue to and they were not afraid of learning or adopting as they do right now today this is a very different society never a boring moment in its history as you write about thank you so much this is awesome thank you thanks for listening to this conversation with abasamana to support this podcast please check out our sponsors in the description and now let me leave you with a few words from Martin Luther King Jr from every Mountainside Let Freedom Ring thank you for listening I hope to see you next timethis is not a nice Islamic fatherly regime clear signs of fascism clear sons of the state's control and pay any price to stay in power so even violence extreme violence the following is a conversation with Abbas Amana a historian at Yale University specializing in the modern history of Iran my love and my heart goes out to the Iranian people in their current struggle for freedom I hope that this conversation helps folks who listen understand the nature and the importance of this struggle this is the Lex Friedman podcast to support it please check out our sponsors in the description and now dear friends here's Abbas Amina let's start with the current situation in Iran on September 16th protests broke out in Tehran and quickly spread over the death of a 22 year old maksa amini eyewitnesses saw her beaten to death by the morality police this is a heavy topic but it's a really important topic what can you explain what happened the protests are now in their sixth week the death of that young woman occurred who was visiting Tehran as a tourist parked something very deep that's particularly concerned the younger Generations that is what you would call the equivalent of the Z generation in this country yes they call themselves in person because Iran follows the solar calendar of its own as an ancient solar calendar and this the the time that they were born they were in the 1380s that's what they call themselves it is hashtag for the 80s and uh well the circumstances that surrounds the uh uh unfortunate death of this young beautiful Kurdish woman is really tragic she was arrested by the what is referred to as the morality police morality Patrol called guidance police that is presumably there were two women fully clad that is officers serving on that force and two men and nobody exactly knows what had happened she had been beaten up and apparently there was no uh uh sign of any wrongdoing on her side she was fully covered uh it seems that there was some altercation in the process and the the outcome was that she was unconscious not necessarily when she was arrested but in the course of the detention when they take them to a center presumably to re-educate them yeah and she apparently collapsed and maybe my sense is that she must have had some kind of a problem because of the skull being broken or something has happened and she died in the hospital the next day and that's through the social media was widely spread throughout Iran and almost the next day surprisingly you could see this outburst of sympathy for her people are in the streets weeping because she was seen as such an innocent young woman 22 years old and the family the mother and the father also mourning for her and being a Kurt visiting Tehran this all added up to really turn her into some kind of a martyr of these cause and that's what it is and her picture graphics that were artistically produced based on her portrait has now dominates basically as the symbol of this protest movement and the protest movement goes on everybody was thinking or at least the authorities were thinking that is going to die out in a matter of a few days but it became more intense first in the streets of Tehran by young women mostly probably between I would say 17 18 teenagers to 20 to 23 or thereabouts and then to University campuses all around the country and then even to high schools and that also made it a very remarkable protest movement because first of all it involves the youth and not necessarily the older Generations you see them around but not as many also you see men and women together young girls and boys and um they are adamant they are desperate in the sense of the tone of their protest and they are extremely courageous because they stand against the security forces that were immediately were sent off to the streets so and in full gear that is so what are the the currents of pain emotion um what is this turmoil that Rose to the surface that resulted in these big protests what are the different feelings ideas that came to the surface here that resulted in such quick scaling of this protest well if you listen to the uh main slogan which is the message of this movement it's called women life Freedom Zan zendeji Azadi which is a translation of actually the Kurdish equivalent which is close to Persian being in the European language and it's apparently initiated uh first in this Syrian Kurdistan where they were fighting against the the Islamic daesh forces uh because they were attacking the yazidis there and the women being enslaved but the message as it moved historians are interested in this kind of Trends so it's just moved to Kurdistan and from Kurdistan now being the message of this movement reflects pretty much sums up what this movement is all about women in the Forefront because of all the one might say discriminations the treatment the humiliation that this younger generation feels well not only the younger Generations but most of the Iranian secular middle classes since 1979 basically for the for the past 43 years and uh they would think that these all basically symbolized or uh represented by the varying the mandatory varying of the hijab which is at the core of this protest you see the young women if you look at many of these clips that comes through in the past six weeks women in streets take off their mandatory scarves which is a young child or some kind of a head covering that's all and they throw it into the uh bonfire in the middle of the street and they dance around it and slogans so there is a sense of complete rejection of what this regime for 42 years 43 years have been imposing on women it's as it's sometimes been portrayed a movement against hijab through and through but it's basically says you know there has to be a choice for those who want to wear hijab and those who want to remain without a job yeah the hijab is a symbol of something much deeper much deeper and actually before we get into that it's interesting to note that in many of these demonstrations we see in the University campuses or in the streets you see women with hijab uh young women with hijab are next to those have to remove their hijab and they are together basically protesting that's the most interesting feature of this uh of these demonstrations and then men and women together against the segregation that the regime has imposed upon them with all these years now in terms of what it represents as I pointed out one is the question of the whole series of one might say civil and legal uh discriminations against women you are considered as a kind of a second class citizen you depend on your men there's a kind of a patriarchy that has been institutionalized in the Islamic Republic in a very profound fashion and that means that uh probably in matters of divorce uh marriage and divorce in matters of custody of your children a matter of inheritance in matter of freedom of movement you depend on your husband your father your brother a male member of your family your child even your your son could could be the case and because of that obviously a younger generation who is so well informed through social media knows about the world as much as an American does American kid that's probably sometimes more they're very very curious it's from what I hear or sometimes that I met a few of them outside Iran you'll see that Hadith this a new generation is completely different from what the Islamic Republic wanted to create in its social engineering it's basically the failure of 43 years of the Islamic Republic's acts of imposition of a certain as so-called Islamic values on on women then it's a matter of Education you would see that there is segregation in the schools one of the issues that now right now is at the heart of this demonstrations is that self-services in many of the campuses of Iranian universities are segregated male and female to different rooms to different Halls now they are breaking through the walls virtually everywhere and sit together in order to basically resist the authorities wants to impose segregation in matters of appearance in the public of course it may seem to us as a kind of trivial and secondary but appearance is important clothing is important how you would imagine yourself is important they don't want to be seen in the way that the authorities would like to impose upon them as this kind of an idea of a chaste Islamic woman who is fully covered and is fully protected the idea of a male member of the family protects the female that is what you see at the heart of this uh rebellion and of course that goes with everything as the second part of this message the idea of life basically means if you like to use the American equivalent of this pursuit of the happiness that's what they want they want fun they want music they want dancing they want to be free in the street they want to have girl boyfriends and live freely and don't be constantly looked by the big brother to tell them what to do and not to do or or not to do so that is you that they share with virtually with the entire with the entire Iranian society as of all although the older Generations that's a big puzzle but you would see that the older generation don't so far at least don't take part as extensively as one might imagine and this is a variety of reasons perhaps you can get to that later on if you like but as far as this younger generation they don't care they don't listen even as much to their parents as the older Generations did so all the or one might say even the nature of the relationship between the parents and the youth has changed it's not the concept of again a major a patriarchy that a father or even a mother would tell the daughter or son what to do because basically they have to negotiate it's fundamentally a rejection of the power of authority parents government yeah it's that every person can decide their own fate and there's no uh lessening of value of the wisdom of old age and old institutions precisely that's what it is yeah and they are surprisingly aware that where they are as a generation so it's a sense of a pride as we are different from the older generation from your parents to compromised and lived with the restrictions that the Islamic regime put on you your grandfather your their grandparents with the generation that actually involved in the revolution of 79 the parents which were the middle generation and these are the third generation of the the revolution of 1979 and therefore they differentiate themselves in terms of their identity from the older generation so that's the life part of it everyone can go more and more they want to access and they see on social media what happens in the rest of the world they're well aware there are much better digitally skilled than my generation for instance uh and and they know about all the personalities they know about all the celebrities they know about all the trends that goes at outside Iran so that's a second part of this message and then of course the third part is the word Azadi meaning Freedom or Liberty which is this long standing demand of the Iranians I would say for the whole Century ever since the Constitutional revolution of 1906 Iran has witnessed this problem of uh authorities that usually emerged at the end of a revolution to basically impose its own image on the population and the youth and create authoritarian regimes of which over the course of time I would say that the Islamic Republic is divorced in the sense that it's uh its intrusion is not only in the political sense in the for instance Banning the freedom of speech you know meddling with the elections uh Banning political parties all kinds of that things which are the political or civil freedoms but it's intrusion into the personal life of the individual which is the worst kind in a sense as you would see that there is always that Authority that basically uh dominates your life or monitors their life so I I and they do it in a kind of a very consistent fashion which makes this idea of Freedom so important as as part of the message of this new movement um you would see that in today's Iran there are no independent political parties there is very little uh probably freedom of the press I wouldn't say that it's entirely gone but it's fairly limited there is enormous amount of propaganda machine which dominates the entire uh uh radio and TV system in Iran it's completely in the hands of the government and of course you would see this variety of other tools for trying to indoctrinate uh Iranian population across the board so that's another sign of this kind of a sense of uh sense of being a totally left out you're not belonging to to what's going on in terms of power empowerment and disempowerment so that's that's the situation as far as the idea of a freedom if it's concept and there's three somewhat miraculously and perhaps unintentionally and the three parts of this message uh complements each other because perhaps for the first time we see that women are in the Forefront of a of a movement I hesitate to say Revolution because I'm not particularly happy with the religious revolutions worldwide and in Iran have always been so miserable in terms of their outcome that we have to be careful not to use the word yes the revolution yeah so that's where where it stands now and the regime was thinking that well these are kids uh they're going to go away and they're of course they're completely conspiratorial in their thinking they constantly think that these are all the uh instigations and provocations of foreign powers these are the great Satan the United States this is Israel or these are the it's actually the Supreme leaders that in so many wars his only response so far that he had in the first past six weeks with regard to this demonstrations is that these are the children of the savac being the security forces of the shortest time that's 43 years later he claims that the children 7 16 17 years 20 years old kids in the street are the grandchildren or children of some imaginary survival of the short security so there's uh the idea is that these protests are internal and external salvatures so people trying to sabotage the government yes and and they are misled as far as they can go and then there's the great state in the United States and other places are uh controlling sort of uh either controlling the narrative feeding propaganda or literally uh sending people I noticed that they have I don't think even they have that kind of imagination precise to say what you have said yeah that they would say that they're controlling the narrative they basically say no these are agents yeah of of the foreign powers and their families are all sold out and they are basically lost their loyalties to the great Islamic Republic and therefore they can be treated so brutally they can be suppressed or brutally which I haven't actually said what they are doing because I thought perhaps first we should talk about who these kids are in the streets before we move on in the about the response of the government but one major factor which seems to add to the anxiety of well the regime is extremely anxious now because they are in a position and it shows that they don't have the lack of confidence in a sense that they would see them reacting in a very forceful way because basically they don't seem to have that kind of a confidence to allow this uh this message or the movement to air to be aired but the one element which corresponds to that is that there is a expatriate population of Iranians worldwide they are probably now according to some estimates close to 4 million even more Iranians abroad and they're all over the world from Australia and New Zealand Japan Western Europe uh turkey and United States and Canada so just to give you one example last last Saturday there was a mass demonstrations in Berlin by the Iranians from Germany and all over Europe Western Europe and it was at least I think probably the conservative estimate was about hundred thousand so hundred thousand Iranians showed up in Berlin demonstrating against the treatment of the uh women in Iran were the movement in Iran the government thinks obviously this must have been some instigation by foreign powers and they want to destroy Islamic Republic and not only that but the propaganda is kind of ridiculous because I listened actually to how they portrayed it in the newspapers I listened to the Iranian news that is officially controlled government control news and and in the papers there's much of the papers that are in the control of the government a one of them were actually the the major news program portrayed the demonstrations that 10 000 people showed up in Berlin and protested against the rising prices rising rates for gas and oil in Germany so that's how they mislead in a very rather just stupid fashion because probably 95 percent if not 100 percent of the Iranians are listening to Passion speaking media outside Iran so it's a BBC person there is Iran International there are at least five or six of them that's probably really important to highlight that Iran is a very modern and tech savvy Nation not just the young people probably more than more than I feel sometimes when I compare myself to what they are doing yeah since 1979 the earlier years for a decade or two they tried in a very crude fashion to restrict and access to Media outside Iran and because this is all through dishes okay and satellite dishes are everywhere you know if you look at the uh you know buildings of either a small house small towns and villages in Iran there's always a a dish and they watch all kinds of things through this and particularly because of what's Happening Now they listen to all the news um uh broadcasts from all this media and they're extremely active they are um probably some of them even 24 hours or close very extensive coverage of every clip that comes through so what the government is doing now the Islamic Republic is that they restrict the entire internet the shutdown they shot at the internet but they cannot afford shutting the internet because much of the business much of the everyday life much of the government Affairs depends on the internet like everywhere else and Iran is extremely if you if I hear from many of the colleagues and friends you know it's like in certain respects it's like Sweden where you go there there's no more currency and for a very good reason because there's so much inflation that that the banknotes are worthless in a sense so everything is true you know uh sweeping your card and that's the entire system is in a standstill because people cannot buy food they can you you go to the supermarket that's how you would do it you you order food to come to your house which Iranians at least the middle classes the more prosperously that Christ is doing all the time so they deliver everything and because of the covet it became even more and they have to pay all through this system um so what happens is that now they're estimating that every day 50 million dollars the Iranian government or the Iranian economy is losing because of slowing the internet plus the frustration is growing of course because you can't order food right I mean they are they are in touch with I mean WhatsApp yeah every Iranian virtually every Iran yeah yeah that has the education and education in the sense that has gone through the the high schools and universities knows how to use the WhatsApp so there's a big middle class like you said secular class in Iran and there there's a lot of at least capacity for if not Revolution then um political ideological uh turmoil and a huge amount of hatred so the hatred is grown yes hatred of the of the policies of the regime of isolation that's a huge point that you hear a great deal about that we don't want to be isolated we don't want to be humiliated Iran is not about this this miserable regime that is ruling over us we have a great culture so there's this sense of a pride in their own culture some of it's uh you know Islamic some of it pre-islamic so they there is a huge um a sense of a pride in that and they see that they cannot communicate with the outside world they they want to travel abroad which they do I mean for one thing the Iranian regime never actually for majority of the population never put restrictions it's not like Soviet Union where you have to have a you used to have a permission to move from one place to another and then of course the the Islamic regime since 1979 basically I chased away or destroyed the old middle class that's my generation basically my parents here they say these are the secular middle class of the parliamiera in the hope that they can do this social engineering and create this Islamic uh uh Society of Their Own the bad news for them was that that didn't happen and that memory persisted and the middle class that was created since past 40 years is much larger in size than what it was because there was of course the demographic Revolution that's the way there's a very Foundation of it it's the demographic Revolution population in Iran I've written an article about it actually a population in Iran since uh the turn of the century last century the 20th century population of Iran was about 9 million or so it's now 83 million and that is since 1979 the population was 35 million between the past 40 years it's basically doubled so it's 83 million although one of the great successes I don't want to bore you with the details about the Democracy but it's important demographics is not important you will you can see that the best rate was very high otherwise you wouldn't have double your population in matter of four decades yeah but Iranians because of the urban shift to an urban population because of the growth of the middle class because of the education they basically the pattern of the uh of growth population growth changed Iran used to be 2.8 or 3 percent birth rate in around 1980s I would say 1970s 1980s now it is 1.1 and it's what probably the most successful country in the Middle East in terms of the population control despite the government a consistent uh attempt to try to encourage people to have more kids middle class refuses to do that and this is the middle class not only anymore in the capital but this is very smaller towns and cities places that used to be villages now you look at them they have a decent population 50 000 100 000 and they live in urban life and they don't want to be subjected to that old pattern of agrarian society when you had 10 children or eight children and of course it's a much more advanced in terms of uh in terms of health and medicine so you don't at least lose children as they used to the antibiotics there's always of kids to survive and therefore if you have 10 kids you're sick with 10 kids you don't end up with four as it used to be in the past six of them would have died in the in the after the age of five actually but now because of that you see that this Urban population in the cities have completely different demands and of course the education is important that's another area of how the social engineering of the Islamic Republic went away because they were thinking that you know the growth of the population the growth of the educated higher educated middle classes in their benefit or they could not even control it in a sense now Iran in my time uh probably had in the 1970s probably by the type of the Revolution about 10 12 universities now it has 56 universities all across the country and there is a something referred to as the Free University or that which has campuses all over the country it has 324 campuses all around Iran what does that mean in many respects this youth that are brought up in these families even in a small towns in very traditional families and families that belong to that kind of a more religious the loyal to the clergy or to the clerical classes their children can now move on which particularly women because in in my times it would have been unheard of that you would have a young woman of 18 or 17 18 19 from a traditional City such as for instance Yaz or in in in statistan Iran to move on elsewhere for Education as you do in this country okay now it's completely accepted that a woman wears their job because he's forced to wear a job to go to a university completely on the other side of the country and this movement of the population not only because of the universities but in general if you now visit Iran you hear accents local accents provincial accents all over the country that is a azerbaijani Turkish accent from the north west of the country you can hear it in the forest province in the South and vice versa so and Kurdish for instance or even more marginal regions such as system province in the southeast of Iran which has been the subject of this recent Massacre when they actually attacked the population when demonstrating and killed a fair number at least 60 people so this movement of the population this creation of a larger middle class the better educated middle class much better educated Iran has 86 percent uh uh literacy which I think probably I haven't checked that but probably is better than turkey even is probably better than anywhere else in the Middle East and it sounds like there's a that's quickly increasing so because because of the movement because of the growth that the education system that's precisely Iran has one million School teachers which may not seem as much if you are in the United States but it's a fairly big number actually can you Linger on the massacre what happened there well the system province is the baluch uh ethnicity of paluchi ethnicity baluchi is a particular ethnic group in southern Iran which is certainly rather than she majority and we should say that most of Iran is she another that's a branch of Islam yes let's maybe just briefly linger sheasm and and Sunni what just let's not get into it let's do a one sentence summary uh and that maybe which which is what most of Iran is majority of the population of the Muslim world are sunnis that is a mainstream if you like to call that actually means that kind of a Ministry can you actually Linger on the the Sunni Suna she she uh she means a party means those that belongs to a party of Ali which was goes back to the early Islamic history of 7th Century I mean I'm almost lingering to the silly notion of pronunciation and stuff like that so ah yeah means part like what what is the extra eye at the end yeah she e means belonging to this community yeah Shia means a person yes yeah and she is the community community and in English when it was anglicized it becomes Shiite so if you say Shiite in today it's perfectly acceptable and of course I myself in my writings I always switch between one and the other one of my books is always Shiite the other book is always she and that hasn't been settled but the she population is the smaller compared to the Sunni population in the world in the world in the world but in Iran is the opposite the Iran and Iraq and possibly not Lebanon are the three countries who barely Iraq and Lebanon have barely majority population whereas Iran is a large population due to its history of conversion to shizen that by itself is another story but in the sense that the the way that historically it evolved the center became more she and the peripheries remained certainly so you have communities of the baluch in the south east we have the Kurds a large portion of the Kurds our sunnies they have cheese as well then they have the indigenous religion of their own ideal uh what's called which is the religion of indigenous to Kurdistan there are two commands in the north east of Iran who are also Chinese the other communities the horizontal region in the in the peripherals of Afghanistan they are also Chinese and you have some Arab population Arab speaking population in the rosestan province in the southwest of Iran which is also or across the Persian Gulf is there a lot of conflict between these regions and also like if I uh blindfolded you and dropped you off in one of the regions would you quickly recognize the region like by the food by the music by the accents by so on yeah the answer to your lovely question which I think I hope it would have happened to me is that yes you would see different cultures yes yeah but different food most important different accents yeah or different languages since they have dialects is a different language altogether but or so for that matter Kurdish which is closer to Persian because they are Indo-European languages but Turkish azeri Turkish which is probably closer to the Turkish of techie Republic of Turkey or to the Republic of Azerbaijan in the North they're the same basically actually if you would have looked as a fascinating picture if you have looked at the let's say even 19th century early 20th century linguistic map of Iran would have been amazed in the number of dialects in the number of languages that has survived and this is an ancient country it's an ancient land and it's a lot of mountains all around it or big deserts so there's a sense of isolation so you would say here and there you see a different community that speaks differently all ancient traditions and languages yeah and because of the great number of invasions that Iran witnessed over more than two and a half millennia of course there are all kinds of cultures were introduced into Iran they're all ethnicities were introduced to Iran mostly coming from the north east of Iran from from the uh lowlands of Central Asia and Beyond and and continued into Iran proper so but now what has happened that's what my point that divided to make uh the century of modernity or modernization has produced a national culture of great great strength in a sense I would say I should ended my book um the the book on Iran Iran a mother in history uh basically saying that despite everything else that has created so much trouble for today's Iraq there is a sense of a cultural uh identity that is very strong and I think I can say uh with with some confidence that despite this despite this regional identities that are still there and they're great and they should be celebrated uh this today if you go to uh to Kurdistan or if you go to sistan they all can speak Persian they all have an education in person so they all basically are becoming part of whether they like it whether they like the regime in power or not they have a sense of belonging to a culture and an identity with the center and of course the idea of a center versus periphery in Iran is very old it goes back to ancient times because even the name of the country was the guarded domains of Iran this is the this is the official name namely that it was recognized that this is not just one uh entity but it's the is the collection of entities like the United States of America exactly exactly but the United States of America in a sense you can say that it was a very successful well it remains to be seen how successful to be continued to be to that that was basically invented created that you would have this sense of it in in the case of an old nature which has been on the map of the world for three thousand years 2500 years there's this is not an exaggeration I'm not a nationalist per se but I mean if you look Persia on the map of the word in ancient times is still there as it is today very few countries in the world are like that that they would have that kind of a continuity over a course of time and that's not without a reason because there was this sense of it a center versus periphery that had found some is it there's a huge amount of tension but there is also a sense of belonging to something and state is very much at the center of it I mean that's why the concept of a state matters for the creation for the shaping of of this culture what happened is therefore you can see that today in answer to your point about traveling blindfolded is that you would be surprised to see how much uh people share and in terms of I just give you one anecdote in 1968 I believe must have been I traveled to Azerbaijan I I used to travel and actually photograph not blindfolded mostly well yeah so I went to a Bazaar in the city of hoi which is in the North Western Iran uh on the border with what is today the Republic of Turkey and I went to the bazaar and I was interested in the kind of a leather work that they produce so I tried to buy some stuff and they were surprised to see that how few people knew Persia so they could not communicate in person with you either they have to ask somebody from some other store to come and translate for you this is 1968 96 so even though it's the official language was special of the country they're still yeah so what are they teach in school so it doesn't matter it was special but this guy just doesn't go to school he hasn't been to the school or it was not fully exposed to it and of course usually are very conservative places so it's stuck in my mind now in recently in 2004 I was traveling to the same area not to the same city but to the same area and I was amazed to see how the youth as soon as they would know that you were coming from somewhere else opening conversation with you talking about the latest movies that was produced in the west and it's not only Hollywood of course there's a huge amount of fascination with Hollywood and Western cinema cinema is a major thing filmmaking is a major thing yeah so these kids in the city of Ahad were asking me we're having lunch they're asking me okay then what do you think about this producer not producer this director or that actor American American European as well but mostly America where they speak in Persian it's a complete person that I would converse with them if they speak English too interesting Yes actually you would be surprised to see what percentage of the Iranian youth at least in big cities are fascinated with learning language and for a reason because they think that's the way to get access either on social media or eventually leave it on yeah unfortunately and and because they don't see a future for themselves in the country either you have to be part of this part of this regime or if you hate them and you don't like the way of their life you look up outside you know I was having drivers to drive me around the country in the cities around Iran and the guy was a young extremely well educated well-dressed and we would have looked at him we could have found him in any Street in any country in the western world and his major concern knowing that I'm from outside major concern is well tell me which would be a better place for me to go so what's wrong with the place that you're in right now you are in your own country you speak your own like oh this is no good I have to have a better future this year's no future for me well it's really interesting because the thing I feel about the protest right now is uh there's a large number of people that instead of giving in to cynicism about you know this government is no good yeah they're actually getting this like uh energy this desire to for revolution uh in in the sort of non-violent sort of in the in the Democratic sense of that let's let's actually find the ideas let's let's build a great nation here this is a great nation this is my nation let's build something great here well that's my hope that's well yeah yeah that's what I'm hoping for it I share your uh aspiration but I'm fearing that I hope it's not a wishful thinking it's certainly that's what they want certainly that's what they want to create but the history and always tells you from where they start to be where they finish there is going to be a huge kind of a change and in this particular case I wouldn't be I I would very much hope that it's not going to be a revolution like 1979 Islamic revolution and I have my hopes in that for one thing this is a revolution that doesn't have a leader okay and it seems that they're comfortable with that at least so far because we were the sixth week of this movement and I hope it's not going to be actually a revolution as I pointed out before I hope it's going to be more of a sense of trying to come to some compromise and gradually move toward change rather than a collapse of this regime and replacement with what so the anxiety of the regime you hope will turn into a kind of uh realization that you have to you have to modernize you have to make progress you actually have to make certain compromises yes or constitutional changes all those kind of stuff so the basic process of government and law making problem is that they say we have it all you know we have our Parliament we have our constitution we have our elections which has all been of course fake but they claim they have all of that but the problem for them is that they try to superimpose is an ideology like all other ideological uh autocracies or other cases in this case that tend to dominate uh all this institution buildings that they have and they they constantly claim we have this we have that that is of course there's a generational thing the upper echelons of this regime are mostly older people interpret they are the clergy that are afraid of the fact that they may lose their control over their whole system that is a sophisticated huge system of government and they rely on certain tools of control which is the Revolutionary guards and other other institutions that are loyal to to the state and they spend enormous amount of funds that is available to them at least before the sanctions but even during the sanctions they still have enough funds to do so and in order to remain in power and they are extremely ruthless in that regard this is not a nice Islamic fatherly regime this is a regime that I would see easily in it clear signs of fascism clear sense of the state's control and pay any price to stay in power so even violence extreme violence to return to the massacre what what were the uses of violence to suppress protests well yes it was actually quite remarkable to see that from the first or the second day of the protest you see out in this street this Riot police okay which comes out in large numbers fully geared up their appearance are rather terrifying like any other Riot but it's probably more than any other right police they're violent and they stand in the streets when these students are demonstrating even in smaller number because before I go to that I should point this point these are to you as well that that these demonstrations are not large ones in one place you see you don't see a hundred thousand people in in one place but you see in every neighborhood couple of thousands of kids are demonstrating all the way around all over now all over the world in different parts yes yes yes actually during the demonstrations three weeks ago they as I said they had people in Sydney Australia New Zealand Tokyo all over the world all protesting high gas prices it's funny everywhere everywhere to the extent that they could be ignored yeah nothing but if they could not be ignored and it's actually quite remarkable that this is very embarrassing to them but somehow they think that this propaganda machine of them is working I say you think they don't have a good even sense I mean it's so there's an incompetence within the propaganda machine yes it is there's an incompetence across the board yeah I mean despite all of this massive government Administration or whatever you would call it all these various components of it there is a sense of the existence of inefficiency and incompetence that is associated with in every action that you see even in their suppression of this street movement but in answer to that question you would see that there this uh Riot police uh very it's quite obvious that they were trained for the purpose so this their appearance to everything these are not just regular army forces or soldiers as conscripts they are professional forces and they come not only in on foot number but they come on motorbikes so there are you would see any of these demonstrations there are 10 12 15 20 motorbikes with two passengers one in front riding the one in the back fully equipped with the Baton with paint guns with pellet guns and with bullets so they have very fully uh equipped and they are terrifying they go through the demonstrations that hits and beat people and then the areas and then you sit behind the first line of these right police you would see all this latest models of this special uh armored trucks for moving to the demonstrations and arresting people throwing them into this and then behind that water water cannons you see and I was looking at that to say okay this is Tehran probably they have this but then you look at the smallest cities they still have the same thing so all over the country one thing that they had managed to produce extensively irrespective of the fact that whether they are effective or not but you see them everywhere so it just shows that how afraid this regime is but that also shows that there's an infrastructure that can Implement violence at scale yes very much so and it's probably part and parcel of this regime from day one the number of Prisons that they have according to perhaps an exaggerated version they said that about 12 000 or so arrested that's what in jails today since past six weeks they were 230 or 40 people were killed including children I under 18. they are they beat up women in the street which is extremely actually uh disturbing when you see these scenes of so there's a lot of this is on video too right everything is on video everybody has a camera and everybody sends to Major news outlets outside Iran and they immediately showed every night if you look at BBC Persia or Iran International reviewer for I think the six of them actually all over this in England they are in Deutsche Valley in Germany uh which has a particular interest in the Iranian BBC World Service and so forth in London and Voice of America Persian here in this country there is another one radio fader which is also funded by the American government also fully covers all of these events so there is no way that these people can that Iraq can miss what's going on in the streets of these demonstrations and the scenes of beating up women which in Iranian culture as I presume in most cultures in the world there is a certain sanctity that you don't attack women but they do and this is an Islamic regime that supposedly have to have a certain sense of concern and uh protection like a like a deep respect for women grounded in a tradition of protecting them but instead this kind of idea that was instilled in law has turned into a deep disrespect of women exactly or fear that these women are not any longer the girls that we thought we are bringing up in this Society the source of you losing your power will be these these women that's the fear yeah and you see of course this government do have a support base I mean it would be uh totally wrong to think that the Islamic Republic has not created its own power base it does uh but it's probably if there's no way there are no statistics that we can or I'm not aware of any statistics that I can give you in numbers what's the percentage of support for the regime in Iran but quite frankly I don't think it's more than probably 10 of the population very generous I I would be surprised if it's that low I would say so if my understanding because I've been very deeply paying attention to the war in Ukraine in to uh Ukraine to Russia and uh to support in Russia for Putin yes I think without knowing the details without even considering the effects of propaganda and stuff like that is there's probably a large number of people in Iran that don't see this as a battle of Human Rights but see it as a battle of uh conservatism like tradition versus modernization and they value tradition that that what they fear from the throwing away of the hijab is not the loss of power and like the women getting human rights what they fear is is the same stuff you fear when you're sitting on a porch and saying kids these days have no respect basically that they there's a large number of Iranians that probably value tradition and uh the beauty of the culture and like there they fear that kids with their internet and their videos and their Revolution will throw away everything that made this country uh hold together for Millennia right so yes I know I would agree with you in the sense that probably like everywhere else in the world this is the generational thing you know every generation thinks differently about the younger generation No Doubt and in Iran is the same but the there is another Factor here is involved those that we would consider them as traditional no longer seem to have their loyalties to this regime that's powerful meaning that the this the they consider as a brutal regime that is prepared to kill children in the streets and it does a lot of things wrong of course it tries to take care of the its own power base it is a very strong sense of if we start here there's a very strong sense in this regime that there are people that is theirs and their others which are not theirs there's a word for it even impression they call it one of us okay uh so well it's very that's very fascistic it's like yes yes it's all for that matter I I suppose Soviet Union you would have if you were a member of the party and like you know your children would have received a special kind of treatment yourself as well um this sense of us versus them uh for a while worked because the younger people coming from the countryside to the cities certain fact certain sector of them would have found uh with a fund protection and support from the government they they wanted to belong to something and the masks and the mornings uh uh morning associations in the neighborhoods and so forth would have given them there is actually a term for it it's called basigi those those have been recruited by this state and this is the youth kind of vigilante if you like that that you can see them also in these demonstrations sometimes thogs they're called the Civil cloth so the people that that comes to these demonstrations that start beating up these young people and they they are not in uh in a security police uh uniforms but they are just regular clothes and these people yes they still support and they still benefit because they get jobs they get their privileges and these are very important for a for a for a state that's basically monopolize this most of the resources you see even be even during this action let alone before this action the oil revenue of Iran which is the major source of the state government was the Monopoly of the state it was Monopoly of State during the parallel from the start basically so what does that mean that mean that the regime in power is not no longer is particularly accountable to the majority population because it extracts wealth from underground and it uses it for its own purposes in order to make it more powerful in order to make it more repressive that's what it is the regime today so it feeds a small or I wouldn't say but a fair number of its own supporters I mean the Revolutionary regards in Iran is probably about 350 000 or something like that it's a very big Force and this is not a regular army the Revolutionary guards are independent from the from the Revolutionary guard his Armed Forces controlled by the state yes the same as the Army but these are more ideologically tied up with this state and they're also in facing internal facing what's their purpose what's their stated what's the stated purpose of the Revolution they've won when the revolution succeeded the regime in part the Islamic regime in power was vulnerable to all kinds of forces of opposition within Iran itself yeah that's the Revolutionary guards and the job was to try to make sure that the regime stays in power and of course over the force of over the course of 40 years they became more powerful more organized better funded better trained well at least we think they're better trained but we don't know because the level of incompetence perhaps can be seen through the rank and file as well but you know they developed their own uh Indus military industry I mean those uh uh drones that you see now Putin's regime are throwing on ukrainians for ukrainians those are all built by the Revolutionary guards by the military industry under the control not the Revolutionary guys and like similar regimes in the Middle East at least these are military industrial complexes you can find them in Egypt of course which is very powerful very traditionally has been empowered and still is in power you find them in Pakistan which is it is extremely powerful and they can change the prime minister's as they did in the case of the last one you can find them uh probably in Myanmar is the same phenomenon uh and I can if you look around you can find quite a number of them and the Revolutionary regards is the equivalent of that this this is a powerful um uh establishment Force which militarily is powerful industrially is powerful and since the start of the Revolution they have been given projects so you want to build dams which they did a major disaster environmental disaster they built 100 and something dams all across the country this is the Revolutionary regard to Desert so they have all kinds of uh tentacles all around the country controlling various things and because it's their job and they have power their prestige there's a huge incentive to join them and to join them and to stay so like they you know when they're having dinner at home with their families there's not an incentive to uh to join the protests sort of well that is the point I think I remember the evolution you guys may be an extreme but many of the people who depend on this state for their support now the younger generation telling their parents you were wrong you don't provide for us this Society this state does not provide what we want so there is a dissent within the family it seems to me I hope it's not a wishful thinking you know there is a kind of a joke going around you see this attempt guys the clergy bearded and traditional clinical appearance whether you see them talking about women they are very of course politically correct they are very looking down towards women as as I said you know they have to be inside they have to be protected they have not to be seen and so forth but if they have a young person a young daughter in their family you see that their discourse changes they no longer seem to be referring to women as second class yeah so that's very important that's precisely that point that when you have this younger generation no matter how privileged they are and many of them are privileged you know and there is also the regime has created its own uh privileged class that are not necessarily directly paid by the regime but they benefit from contractors certain professions that that benefit from what the state provides for them and Iran is a I mean the past 40 years you can see Iran has developed in terms of material culture remarkably Iran has good communication as roads all over the place it's not like a it's more like I don't know whether you have ever visited turkey for instance in certain respects even more advanced than turkey but it's closer to that rather than if you travel I don't want to bring particular names in North Africa or parts of the Middle East or other parts of the Islamic world it's much much different so in this respect you would see a certain contrast or paradoxes here on the certain respect there is the growth and there is urbanization there is modern economy on the other hand you see this superimposed ideological doctrinal aspect that has driven the regime over all these years and they cannot get rid of it they cannot in this respect they cannot modernize themselves they think that they are already perfect in ideological sense this is the best solution for the world not for only for Iran but for the Muslim world and for the word as a whole we are Anti-Imperialist we have managed to survive either under sanctions this is all parts of the rhetoric but of course at a huge expense uh the huge expense for their own population and the points that we have raised is the fact that we now Witness there is a not only a generation gap between the youth and their parents but there is a break in a sense from the older Generations and they are very distinctly the youth that has a different view of the world and it does not want to compromise whether they would be able to succeed or not remains to be seen whether this regime is going to suppress it maybe uh but it actually brought to surface many of aspects of the weaknesses of this regime in power well I hear from a lot of people that are in these protests now and so my love goes to them and stays strong because uh it's inspiring to see people fighting for those things the women life and freedom especially Freedom yes because that can only lead to a good thing in the long term at least and if possible to avoid a violent revolution of course that is something that we all want to see before we return to the present let's Jump Around let's go to the past we mentioned 1979 what happened in 1979 in Iran well in 1979 there was a revolution that eventually came to be known as the Islamic revolution and even up to this day many of The Observers or those who have strong views that would not like to refer to it as an Islamic revolution or even a revolution this is the because the nature of it in the earlier stages of it started really probably around 1977 it took two years was much more all embracing it was not Islamic in a particular fashion or at all in a sense it started with a kind of a very liberal Democrats uh agenda which required which demanded mostly by people who were the veterans of the older generations of Iranian liberal nationalists that were left out in the palabi period it's a period of the Shah became increasingly um authoritarian increasing the suppressive and therefore basically living no space no political space open for any kind of a give and take any kind of a conversation or participation 2017 70s 70s particularly in the 70s can we actually even like just do a a whirlwind review from 1906 to 1979. okay sure in 1906 there was a period like actually as you might know the first decade or this so of uh of the 20th century witnessed numerous what's referred to as constitutional revolutions including Russia 1905 the first Revolution including the Chinese Revolution in 19 constitution in 1910 the young Texas Revolution in 1908 and the Iranian Revolution in 1906. to understand why the synchronicity of all of it why in so many different places very different cultures very different governments very different cultures but all of them in a sense were coming out of the regimes that became uh uh progressively powerful without having any kind of a legal system that would protect the individual vis-a-vis state so the idea of law and the Constitution According to which there should be a certain protection a certain Civil Society became very common yeah but I wonder where that because that's been that way for for a very very long time and so I wonder you know it's funny a certain ideas just their time comes exactly it's like 1848 when you would see that there's a whole range of revolutions across Europe yeah or you would see for instance the Arab Spring you see all these Revolutions in the Arab world which unfortunately nearly all of them failed so yes these are very contagious ideas that moves across Frontiers from one culture to another and I presume we can add to that there are two elements which one can say there is a greater communication there is the greatest sense of a world economy and the third of the century witnessed the first decade of the century witnessed a period of uh volatility particularly in uh in currency so many of the countries of the world particularly non-west suffered in and particularly the businesses suffered and not surprisingly the business class were in the Forefront of many of this constitutional movements requiring the state to give the a kind of a created the right kind of Institutions to listen to their voices to their concerns and the creation of the democratic system parliamentary and system with which there would be a representation popular representation proper elections and so forth and constitutions and this very much is a kind of a French idea of the Constitution going back all the way perhaps to 1789 Revolution Montesquieu all this kind of philosoph were greatly appreciated particularly a different system so what were the ideas in the 1906 Iranian Constitution they precisely the same they were demanding a creation of a legal system with division of power between the three executive legislative and the Judiciary and that's unlike the American system and they requested um basically a certain uh public space to be created between the two sources of power the state which had this kind of a control over the if you like the secular aspect of life in the society and the religious establishment that had a full control over the religious aspects and both of them from the perspective of the Constitution and this considered as repressive and therefore there has to be a new space open between these two and that was the idea of a constitutional Revolution but but it's very nature it was an idea of modernity they wanted the modern society they wanted a better material life they they wanted a more representation and and so forth the Constitutional Revolution as I always would say is much more of a innocent Revolution it's a revolution that did not particularly have much violence in it contrary to many other revolutions it did not have a centralized leadership per se that's why actually I'm getting I mean besides the practices I'm getting a lot of requests for interviews to compare what's happening now with the revolution of 1906 1909 are there any Echoes yes yes there are there are because that was a movement that started without a without a centralized leadership what actually values to voices that emerged in various among the merchants or the businessman in the economic Community among the representatives who came to the first Parliament the Press the new generation of the privileged aristocracy who were educated and uh believed in the Constitutional values all of these voices emerged at the same time and somehow they managed to uh to coexist in the first and the second uh uh parliaments that were created uh between 1905 6 and 1910 or 1911. but they all face huge problems in the sense that Iran was in a dire economic situation this is before the days of the discovery of oil which actually coincides with this card there are two important coincidences one is that the oil was discovered in the south in 1909 during the course of the Constitutional Revolution the second is that in 1907 the two great powers of the time the Russian Empire and the British Empire who always honored Iran as being a buffer State between them because they didn't want to get too close to one another basically came to an agreement facing the fear of the rise of the German Empire so this is the period of Anton as you might know in European history whereby the front the French the British and the Russians all create a Alliance that ultimately leads to the first world war against Germany and at the same time the discovery of oil that the oil industry being a very powerful defining factor of the 20th century for Iran exactly source of a lot of money a lot of money but not all of it in the hands of the Iranians only 150 of it by way of royalties came to Iran there is much of it went to the Anglo passion a old company which they actually discovered the oil in the province who was the star province in the southwest of Iran raised the major oil Industries today right now and this is an extremely profitable uh Enterprise for that company and for the British government it actually purchased by the British government Churchill purchased anglo-iranian oil company for the British government so it was not anymore a private company it was a British interest as a matter of fact and in the course of the 20th century although it helped the modernization in Iran but it also helped the creation of a more authoritative Syria more strong state if you like to call it that it does that 19th century Iran never had that kind of a power never had that kind of resources it's the 20th century even that one-fifth of the income that reached the Iranian State gave it a greater power that's another coincidence so yes yes you could say the oil was one of the catalysts for absolute power but the 20th century saw quite a few countries um have dictators with power unlike anything else in human history yes that's weird too but precisely and you know you can name them from the beginning of the century with people like um I don't know Lenin or Stalin of course Hitler even though Mao of course you can name them and probably as I would say is the last of them is Khomeini in that Century that you would see this strong man with a sense of even a a artificial or real or a sense of a so-called Charisma and with this total power over the regime that they create in the some of them do Nasser they didn't have much of an oil resources in Egypt but he was also one of these strong men okay in the 20th century loved by some hated by others uh so it necessarily does not tie up to uh to Resource economic resources underground but in the Iranian case unfortunately it did and it was a uh it was more than it created more than one issue for Iran it's created a strong state which is the parlavist state from 1920 one onward because in 1921 at the end of the first world war Iran was in a almost a state of total bankruptcy and uh the British had a desire to try to bring Iran to the system that they created in the Middle East in the postwater era the mandate system Palestine Iraq and then of course French Mandate of Lebanon and Syria all of this and Iran was separate because Iran was an independent country it wasn't part of the ottawan Empire that collapsed so they had to somehow handle it and what they tried to do didn't work as a result partly domestic partly international issues wrote about a regime which is headed by the founder of the Parliamentary okay the first military officer called Reza Khan actually a military officer of the Kozak forces and the Kozak forces was the force that was created in the 19th century model of the Russian kozaks when the ruler in the 19th century visited Russia as in a Royal tour and the desire should the Great uh Kozak forces is that I like this and he created one for himself with Russian officers actually so the Russian officers served in Iran from Iran 1880s up to the revolution of 1917. the collapse of the yeah so many revolutions so many revolutions and Reza shop was an officer in that Reza Khan was an officer in that first and he created a new monarchy for reasons that we needed to go to and Discord the palabi regime regime was a modernizing regime okay that brought a company in effect fulfilled many of the Ambitions of the Constitution many of the aspirations of the Constitution better communication but uh secular education um centralizes States and centralized Army better contact with the outside world greater urbanization that's what a modern state is all about and in that regard in a sense for the first 20 years up to the second world war was successful despite and more significant of all it managed to keep the European powers which is always interfering in the local Affairs of Iran in an amlex so they were there in an arm length but they were also respecting the power of the state part of the Apollo State during the second second world war the same phenomenon as earlier interference led to the occupation of Iran by the Allied Forces the British from the south the Russians from the north the Red Army they took over Iran and of course the second world war yes from 1941 up to 1945 and of course when the when the Red Army refused to uh withdraw from Iranian Azerbaijan and with some thought of possible annexation of that Province there was a big issue in the possible Iran so after 1945 yes 1945 to 1946 there was a big Soviet Union getting greedy yes but eventually they agreed eventually Stalin agreed to leave the Azerbaijan province in the hope that it would get some concessions from Iran which in the oil of the Caspian era area which didn't work and it's a different story altogether but what happened is that in the post-war era between 1944 45 and 1953 is a period of Greater uh democratization was that vessels dictatorship basically disappeared and this is where you would see political parties Free Press a lot of chaotic really as as democracies often are so something like was it was it officially a democracy yes it was it the market was there elections there were elections yes of course yes of course and they were very diverse political tendencies came to the picture including the to the party of Iran which is Communist Party of Iran this Communist Party of Iran is probably the biggest Communist Party of the whole of the Middle East and one of the biggest in the world actually at that time did the Soviet Union have a significant influence on uh of course we're basically following orders from the Soviets although they deny it but in reality that's the case yeah but what happened they were seen by the Americans during the Cold War as if as a threat and Iran was going through a period of demanding nationalization of his oil resources that's a very important episode with mosadir whom you might have heard about his name Dr Muhammad Musa was the Prime Minister and the national charismatic leader from 1951 to 1953 prior to that he was a famous parliamentarian but this period was the Prime Minister of Iran and he nationalized the Iranian oil industry and the British didn't like it at all and eventually resulted in a famous crew which at least partly was supported by the funding and by the moral supports of the British and the Americans particularly by the emergence it was always seen as one of the earliest and the most successful CIA operations during the Cold War to see I had something to do with this of course that's one of the earliest operations of the CIA wait a minute what was yes of course what was the same what was the CIA doing CIA this is the time at the post for era in the 50s in the 50s 40s and the 50s the British Empire which was really the major superpower of the region after the collapse of the desires Empire gradually took the second seat to the Americans to where the newcomers and the great powers and the victors of the second World War and the Americans viewed Iran as an important uh uh as an important country since it has the largest common borders with the Soviet Union and it's what I did the size was the Persian goldfish at the time was the greatest uh uh supplier of uh oil to the outside world and therefore the Americans uh had a particular interest in Iraq and in the earlier stages their interest was in the interest of the Iranian government because they wanted to get rid of both the Soviet Union which made the return in the first War era and of course the British that were gradually withdrawing from Iraq but they they had a full control over the anglo-iranian or company they changed the name to angular Iranian or company when the name of the country officially changed from Persia to Iran in the west the name of the company changed and they got into a huge dispute with the wasada government that eventually led to the coup of 1953 which eventually created it very uh very distressful memory in the minds of many of the Iranian nationalists that this was the betrayer of the great Powers the British and Americans yes CIA played a part because see I feared contrary to the British that they were afraid of their own oil in Iran the CIA was afraid of the Soviet penetration in in the South and particularly because there was a very powerful a very powerful Communist party you know the two-day party of Iran so they gradually shifted between the Truman Administration and our Eisenhower Administration these are early days of the CIA and then they actually did participate uh to set their agents there's a long story to that and it eventually resulted in a successful coup that removed from Power what's the United States interest here why are they using CIA are they trying to make sure there's not too much centralization of power in this region they were afraid of the fact that the that of the Soviet Union and during the Cold War that was the cancer they actually almost want to protect Iran and its own Sovereign processes from the influence of the Soviets yes because they were afraid of the fact if Iran or at least this is part of the I'm simplifying a very complex picture but the but but the Americans basically were thinking that if Iran is going to be lost choose Soviet influence then eventually basically the all the oil resources in the Persian Gulf are going to be threatened and therefore and this would basically is the National Security of the United States and all of the western allies European allies so in a sense this was the long arm of the CIA to try to try to make sure that that's not going to happen and then of course they'll be persuaded by the British because British were the old hand which were in Iran since the beginning of the 19th century they always had relations with Iran and so forth so they gradually replaced and and of course they don't want to give them this kind of a satanic view that American was a bad influence because they had also some very good influences in Iraq but this particular episode somehow shed dark lights on the American presence and was used that abused time and again particularly the revolution 1979 which was this great Satan idea that Khomeini created basically was based on the fact is 1953 you were responsible for the downfall of a national government in Iran which as a matter of fact he had no respect for it Romani had no respect for the national secular National liberals including Muhammad Musa there but he was using it as a as a rhetorical tool for his own purposes but what happened is that after 1953 we see again the rise of authoritarian Muhammad result's power and then he is that's the Shah that's the Shah that we know as sure this is the son of research and uh technically what what is Shah is it actually is an old term impression that comes from a pre-islamic portion of ancient times in the context of democracy should it be seen as like a supreme leader King is the head of the executive power according to the Constitution of 1906. oh that's in the Constitution they actually yeah as a place in the Constitution but the actual term sure okay interesting what this show is a very old term yeah it's almost like a monarchic term like uh like a king yeah it is actually is the term peculiar to Iran I've written about it somewhere but because the term that the Western World in the ancient times has been Rex for royalty and the King in the Eastern World in India is right it's the same origin the same route Iran never shared that they had the idea of because the next Android I don't want to get into the too much of a etymology but this is an interesting one yeah Rex and Raj both means the one that opens the road for basically in four set of religion okay um in uh enforcer of the right religion because Rex and Raj both have the uh after a typological uh origin of Rights you see and right means the right religion basically by the way there's so much beautiful language here I'm just looking at the the Persian constitution in 1906 and it says it's the constitution of the sublime state of Persia pajar Iran I mean just just the extra adjectives on top of this stuff is beautiful I mean yeah because that was actually the change that came about I don't want to go in too much into it but it was called as I pointed out before the guarded domains of Iraq yes they changed that to the sublime state of Iran during the Constitutional Revolution because they wanted to give a greater sense of centrality of this state yeah and Sublime was the term refused but also what permeates all this is a is a poetic I mean there is a history of poetry of course based on the culture it's just fascinating so I mean it's I I of course I don't speak the language but even in in Russian there's also a music to the soul of the people that represents itself that presents itself in the form of poetry and literature in the way that it doesn't in the in the English-speaking world I don't know what that is there's um there's a Romantics like romantic romantic side that's right yeah I agree with you in Iran of course you know it is the time of the Constitutional Revolution it's a time of great poetry this kind of a patriotic sentiments that comes through poetry plays a very important part uh of course these days poetry has kind of declined and instead you see the visual image that is at the center that's why Cinema is so important because these days with their Tick Tock yeah let me finish this about this period of biometricia he built up because he received the greater income from the oil revenue and it built up a very strong state with a strong security Force a strong security apparatus which is the savark there's a uh which is a acronym for the security force in security organization and he of course unfortunately in the 1960s and 70s particularly 1970s basically suppress the voices of or possibility of any kind of a mass participation in the political uh process it became very much an authoritarian regime with its own technocrats very much a modernist vision of of of of Iran's future and almost kind of Messianic that he was hoping that Iran in a decade would become the fifth most powerful estate in the world and the riches as he would have said the gates of the great civilization very much in the mind had this image of ancient Iran of the community Empire and we want to go back to that greatness of the archimedian Empire somewhat rather naive and very nationalistic and crude fashion and what happened is that as a result there was built up some kind of a resistance from the intellectuals from the left eventually resulting in a kind of a protest movement as I said by 1977 1978. then of course the question that comes to mind and the probably it you have you you would like to know about is the fact that why it becomes religious why it's become Islamic if it's the popular you know nationalist liberal tendency of opening up the political uh uh space and along greater participation going back to the Constitution of 1906 1907 why it's all of a sudden it becomes Khomeini where does he come from the reason for that at least in a concise fashion is the fact that on one area that after the greatest suppression of all the other voices remained open was religion masks the mullahs on the pulpit and the message that gradually shifted from the older traditional message of the Sharia of Islam I mean all the rules and regulations of how one has to live into something very political and not only political but also radical political so in the whole period from the Constitutional Revolution to the revolution of 1979 basically the religious establishment gradually was pushed to the opposition they were not originally very conservative supported us of State as the Catholic church for instance was supported of majority of the authoritarian governments around the world but the politicization was the result of isolation because they were left out of the system and while in isolation they did they did not they were not successful in trying to reform themselves to try to become to try to find answers to many of the questions from Modern Times what happens to women what happens to civil rights what happens to a civil society how the modern law and individual freedoms have to be defined in Islamic terms how to separate uh religion and state or how to separate the religion and state these issues were never addressed what happened is that there was this bypass through political uh Islam and revolutionary Islam as it gradually they learned you know that this is the bypass bypass to power basically to become again a voice in the society and eventually a prominent voice and eventually monolithic voice and the society that's the process that led into the revolution of 1979 basically this period greater attention was paid to religion even among the secular middle classes who were alienated for a very long time because of this extensive modernization of the pallavi period they had they didn't have a sense of that old monoliths with their turbans but they became they had it kind of aura in this period yes they are those who remain not corrupted they are the people who basically went against the suppression of the palavi regime and Khomeini became a leader a symbol of that nobody ever thought in the earlier stages and bank this very excited multitudes that came to the streets of the Iranian cities in 1979 or 1978 actually thought that this this old ball line with 70s that all of a sudden has appeared from the najaf through Paris to Tehran is going to take over and create a autocracy a religious autocracy we have to back up for just a second who who is how many uh who you just you just mentioned a few desperate facts about the man yeah he was the person that took power in 1979 supreme leader of Iran yes some you mentioned something about Paris something about being in the 70s yes what should we know about the guy oh yeah who eventually was known as Imam Gomez he was kind of promoted to a even more Sublime position okay okay uh can we I'm just a million tangents uh Ayatollah Imam what do these terms mean well Ayatollah means the sign of God in the course of the 19th century or early 20th century as the religious establishment gradually lost its greater presence in the society and these prominent places in society they had some kind different inflation in titles so they gave themselves a more Grand titles yeah more adjectives more adjectives more Grand titers such as Ayatollah that became a kind of a highest rank of the religious hierarchy but it incidentally was in on you know unofficial hierarchy there was not it's not like the Chris like Catholic Church that you have you know Bishops and you know Federer it was very unofficial mother and he was an Ayatollah it was eventually recognized as an Ayatollah he was in the first Ayatollah no no no not at all the ayatollahs were before him ever since the beginning of the century but he was eventually recognized as an Ayatollah and if I want to study this way Ayatollah how many was born in 1900 and in a sense all these tremendous change that Iran witnessed in the course of the 20th century was in a sense materializing this person he become a mullah of a lower rank went to the traditional mattresses to the traditional centers for the education of the seminarians never had a secular education had a very complex Islamic education on this one-hand jurisprudence on the other hand probably a little bit of Islamic philosophy and mysticism which is unusual for the Juris for the for the factory as they call them this religious Scholars or or legal Scholars of Islam and then he in the 1960s when he was residing in Tehran and gradually becoming more important he became a voice of opposition against the Shah and the reason for opposition uh in the 1960 early 1960s was the fact that the shot carried through a series of extensive modernization policies of which the most important was the land reform so in effect the land distribution that took place in the early 60s removed or weakened greatly that class of land owners from the ancient from the 19th century and he uh Khomeini saw himself as a voice of that old class that uh felt that actually declared that this land distribution is on Islamic according to the Islamic law properties a property is honored and you cannot just no matter how much and how large are these states that the landowning class has the government has no right to redistribute it even Among The Peasants among among the people who are killing the land so that was a major issue Shaw also gave the right of vote to women and that also he objected is that women should not have a right can we just Linger on the Islamic law How firm and clear is the Islamic law that he was representing and embodying is this um codified codified yes that's a good term yeah that's another issue not only the hierarchy was unofficial but also uh Islamic law particularly Shiloh did not have any uh codified system because this religious Authority is always resisted becoming under a umbrella of a more codified system of Islamic law because they were outside the state in essence civil civil law was in the hand of the religious establishment they had their own courts independent of the state but other matters of legal matters was in the hand of the government there was a kind of in de facto division between these two institutions State versus the religious establishment therefore it was not codified so he could declare that this is unofficial or I said illegal according to the Islamic law that you would distributed land to the presence and another must ahead or another religious Authority would say no no it's perfectly fine because he would has a different reading of the law so that being in mind that adds to the complexity of the picture he in the 1963 there was a period of uprising of the supporters of Ayatollah Khomeini that was the turning point in a sense to try to politicize the religious supporters of ayatulate who were loyal to other Harmony and in a sense all the community of more religiously orientated against the secular policies of the Shah and against of course the dictatorship of the show so that's where the religious movement became a political party in 1963 is the first moment it's a huge Uprising and the government suppressed it but then suppression yes would start to build of course and he was sent to Exile he went to najaf which is this great Center in southern so it became a martyr on top of this at the Martyr he was probably even forgotten to some extent but not it was forgotten for the for the secular middle class but not to those supporters of his who were paying him their dues because in Islam you would paid use to religious leaders you know there's religious Jews and arms that you put pay to the clerical authorities and they redistribute them among their own students and so forth so they built actually a network of loyalty based on this uh donations and these donations uh that's received by atolo Khomeini was very effectively through his network was distributed even if he was in Exile asadira so the 1977 1978 when the situation changed and there was a little bit of opening in the political climate then you saw that Ayatollah Khomeini starts sending cassette messages that was his mean of communication but sending cassettes and cassettes were sent through the country by his Network so or declarations and saying first that we would like to see a greater democratization and the Shah has to abide by the Constitution of 1907 this is a constitution this is a democratic system and so forth was he charismatic well it depends who would call what do you call charismatic yeah the long beard it was kind of a man in turban and the Gown which was a very unusual leadership for people who were much more accustomed to the civilian clothing or to the equipments of the Shaw's military uniforms that he used to wear but I also mean like he's a man I was able to take power to become popular sufficiently popular so like I I would like is it the ideas is it an accident or is it the man himself the Charisma or something about the man that led to this particular person basically changing the tide of history in this part of the world in a way unexpected all the above that you mentioned or was it just the beard no I think no it's beyond the appearance because the appearance is greatly helps as you know yeah you know in the 20th century appearance is helpful yeah pictures for propaganda for messaging that's an important factor and he wasn't uh kind of a adamant and very severe in his own positions he could appear very uncompromising and he had a sense of confidence self-confidence that we truly everybody else lacked and he was a man of opportunity as soon as he would see that a chance an opportunity would open up he would jump on it and that's what he did basically as more the political space opened the weaknesses of the shortest government became more evident his indecision became more evident his lack of confidence became more evident Khomeini managed to move further into the center of the movement because he was the only Authority that had this network of support through the masks through the people who paid homage to him who followed him because there's a sense of following of the religious leader in shiza you are a follower of this Authority follower of that Society and he's basically created an environment in which people looked upon him as a kind of a Messianic figure yeah that came to save Iran from what they considered at the time the problems of uh dictatorship under the shore so there's not a suspicion about Islamic law being the primary law of the language people had very little sense that what Islamic law is all about because the secular education has left that into the old religious schools this is not something that ordinary educated Iranian who goes to the universities is going to learn and therefore there is a sense of idealization that there is something great there that is and there were quite a number of intellectuals who also viewed this kind of an idea of they would refer to as this toxication that is this civilization of the West that has brought with it all the modernity that we see around ourselves has enormous Sinister features into it and it has taken away from us our authenticity that was the thing that there is something authentic that should be protected and therefore a man in that kind of a Garb and appearance received as a source for return to this originality of their own culture authenticity of their own culture and he perfectly took advantage of that that's how many tricky advantage of it and the circle around him I expensive everybody else which she managed in the course of 1979 to 1989 which he passed away it died in the 10 years during this period managed to basically transform the Iranian Society to create institutions of the Islamic Republic and to acquire himself the position of the Guardian jurists that was something completely new it didn't ever exist before as a matter of fact as you might know the model of government that a religious establishment takes over the states is unprecedented throughout the course of Iranian history throughout the course of the Islamic history I would say this is the first example and probably the only example of a of a regime that religious establishment that has always in the course of Iranian history ever since I would say probably at the 16th century if not earlier has been always separate from this state and always kind of collaborating with this state in a with a certain tensions in between the two of them there were two basically as they would call themselves the two pillars of stability in the society that situation changed for the first time the religious establishment took over the power of this state and that's at the core of what we see today as a major issue for Iranian Society because these are basically that old balance between the religion and the state which was kind of de facto uh separation of the authorities of the two uh has been violated and now you have empowered if your theocracy in effect which of course only in the on the on in its appearances theocracy deep down it's a in my opinion is the brutal fascist regime that it stays in power but it has the appearance of religion into it so this is really the story of the revolution and as a result of that the Iranian middle classes greatly suffered it's not without a reason that you see 4 million Iranians abroad because basically the emergence of this new power gradually uh isolated or marginalized the secular middle class who could not survive under that regime and gradually moved out uh in the course of perhaps 30 40 years up to now Iran has the largest I think I'm right to say so has the largest brain drain in any country in the world according to its population so fascinating that um how much of a weird Quirk of history is it that uh that religion would take hold in a country like does it have to do with the individual it seems like if we re ran the 20th century uh a thousand times we would get the uh 79 Revolution resulting in um Islamic law like less than you know one percent of the time it feels like or no what which percentage would you put well I think has something to do with the very complex nature of how Iran evolved over a long period of time since the 16th century that's why if I would for a moment talk about what I have written I've written a book that's called Iran and modern history and it does not start in the 20th century it starts in the 16th century yeah because that's what I have argued that this complex process that at the end of the day resulted in what we see around us today is something that was in making for a very long time and religion was a big part of it she and the the the Messiah complex the exactly the the longing for this great vision of a great nation that somehow is um the sublime nation that can only be fully Sublime through uh through religion or at the time it was thought that is true religion ever since then it's disillusionment with that image yeah or at least a process of this illusionment the outcome of it is what we see today basically that process of 40 years is a process of readjusting to the realities of the world that that great moment of romantic success of a revolution like most Revolutions of course that is going to change Iran and bring this kind of a moment of greatest led into this great disappointment so the movement of the great disappointment in a sense like most Messianic movements by the way Mosaic move as a general are always leading into great disappointments but what I have here that perhaps should be added to it that yes it was the peculiarity of Iran as a society that had to experience this eventual encounter between religion and state that's something to do with the nature of Jesus that's just one point that should be pointed out most of Sunni Islam don't have that kind of I say most because there is something there but Sony Islam in general does not have that kind of an aspiration for the coming of a Messianic uh uh a leader she's them does she's I mean it's very shaping particularly the way that it was set up in Iran was a religion that has always this element of expectation to it for the coming of this Messianic leader of course I mean between parenthesis all societies look for Messianic leaders I'm just look around us but some societies more than others there's certain culture it might have to do with them the Romantic poetry that we mentioned earlier I mean surely I mean not to draw to me parallels but the Soviet Union there is romanticism too and I mean I don't know there there it does maybe idealism a sense of his savior yeah who would who would bring you out of the misery that you are in and and always looking for a for a third party to solve your issues that's why probably this movement has a particularly significance because it probably doesn't look for a messiah although I was talking to my brother who is the historian also and he was saying perhaps the Messiah of this movement is that mass or amini the 22 year old girl that was killed it's a market Messiah who is now leading a movement which no longer has that charismatic leadership with it but yes I would say that Iran has been the birthplace if I might say that of Messianic aspirations going back to the ancient zoracianism which is the really the whole system that you see in major religions or at least best so-called Western religions it's abrahamic religions is parallel or perhaps influenced by Zoroastrianism in which there is an idea of uh this war than the other word that is Hereafter there is an idea of a judgment at the end of the time and there is a concept that there is a moment of Justice that is going to come with the rise of a religious or a charismatic figure so it's a very old phenomenon in Iran very old and it's time and again repeated itself in the course of its history but never as powerfully as it happened in 1979 and never in the form of authority from within the religious establishment it was always The Descent movements that were kind of antinomian they were against the authority of the uh religious establishment that changed in the 20th century but the revolution 1979 that change is still with us today what can we just Linger on um are there some practical games of Power that occurred you know in the way that Stalin took power and held power in the early days is there something like this in terms of the establishment of the Revolutionary guard and all those kinds of stuff yes so it's the the Messianic figure that has some support from the people but uh does he have to crush his enemies in competition certainly did probably not certainly not as brutal in terms of the victims as you would see in Soviet Union understand who the Bloodshed or the destruction of the population was far greater than what you would find in Iran of the Islamic Republic it's uncomfortable perhaps I would find a greater parallel with matzodun and particularly because China has a very strong Messianic tradition since the ancient times so they have something and Mao appeared as the kind of a Messianic figure there I can see there is a parallel but also you can see with any other authoritarian regime with the Messianic fear at the head of it that it destroys all the other forces so during the course of the first 10 years of the Islamic revolution it destroyed the liberal nationalists secular it's destroyed the Guerrilla movements some of them Islamic some of them marxists who turned into political parties or tendencies in the course of the post-revolution 1979 they were completely destroyed and in a very brutal fashion and uh the their opposition even within the religious establishment because it wasn't a uniform there were many different Tendencies those that were opposed to the authority of Ayatollah Khomeini or not Imam Khomeini meaning almost a sacred religious figure above the level of a religious Authority is a saint kind of a figure he says she's them has this idea of imams they were 11 of them the 12th is hidden and would come back at the end of the time this is okay Messianic figure so the title that was always used for them only in shiza never used for any other person he is the first person in the revolution of 1979 first referred to as Deputy of Imam but the term Deputy gradually disappeared and he became Imam Khomeini this is that his official title I love human beings so much it's so beautiful these uh titles that we give each other it's um but it's marvelous stuff you love it because you haven't been under that system no I I love it in a way I love it in a very dark kind of way it caricatures itself it's it's almost funny in its absurdity if not for the evil that it has led to in human history uh but also the fact that it's a man is in fact fulfillment in a kind of completely um unintended fashion is a fulfillment of that idea of a messiah that they've been fighting for this Imam which is in ahide for a thousand years is here and not here and therefore Khomeini would have in effect fulfilled those anticipations but beyond that I just give you one example I know that you may have other concerns but when I say elimination at the end of the iran-iraq war by the direct order of Ayatollah Khomeini a fatwa that he wrote a group of prisoners who belong to a variety of uh political parties the left religious left majority of them the left and the the Marxist left and the religious left in a matter of a few weeks or perhaps a few months I'm not actually quite sure about the times that uh in a series of these were people who have already been tried and they were given uh sentences they were brought back before the uh summary Trials of three judges or more three four of them one of them is now the new president of the Islamic Republic and they were given a a quick summary sentences which meant execution so something between probably six to eight thousand were executed in matter of a month or two months something like that mostly in Tehran but also in provinces and that's remained an extraordinary trauma for the families for those who had these kids in they're all young all young so this remains very much uh kind of uh original sin of the Islamic Republic that cannot get rid of and it's in people's memories they didn't allow them even the families to go and mourn their dead in a an official symmetry which they created for them now the latest thing is that they put a huge a concrete wall around it so nobody would be able to get into it so these all part of this extraordinary level of level of atrocity brutality that you see that the regime claimed that it comes with the morality of religion and Islam to bring back the justice and and and be more uh in a sense kind to people ended up with what it is in the memory of many of the people in Iraq so developing these fascistic Tendencies very much destroying minorities Baha'is one of them hundreds of bahais were without any reason without any involvement we picked up and uh executed the properties were taken over their rights were taken away from them even up to this day this is the largest by the very religious minority in Iran so you would see that in many areas this is a ax very much as an Beyond authoritarian it's a kind of really fascistic regime foreign held power for 10 years and then took power the next Supreme All Right leader who is still the leader today for over 30 years who is he well he was one of the this is one day perhaps no well they hesitated to use the term Imam for him but in any other respect he was given all of that adulation yes that they did to how many he is the guardian jurist that's what's important because the guardian jurist in the constitution of the Islamic Republic is an authority that is above this state he is not elected quote-unquote because this is a Divine Authority although he has been designated by the group of the terror and mullah's like himself and uh he has the full power over all uh institutions of the state the Army the media the economy every aspect of the acts like you show it's like this authoritarian Authority did that gradually develop or was that very early on well that's part of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic the first constitution um in the first draft of the Constitution did not have the authority of the Guardian Judas but then it was added by Khomeini and his supporters are there actual in the Constitution any limits to his power yes there is a council of the experts so to say that would remove him from Power I think theoretically but there is so much restrictions to that that I don't think it would have ever happened in reality in his case at least but in terms of executive to make decisions and all that kind of stuff does he need to check with anybody no boy he does check with his own advisors but he's he doesn't have any he doesn't have any constitutional obligation to check on the decisions that he's making so that's the supreme leader but there's been presidents yes and what's the role of the president the president in a sense is the executive power under the Islamic Republic there are three heads of powers this is the president that presumably has the executive power there is the head of the judiciary and there is the head of the uh the speaker of the parliament much less Islamic which is the uh the legislative so the legislative Judiciary and executive who is now the president is the uh the head of the Executive above them is the supremely there or the guardian jurist can you give me some insight because I especially I'm not exactly sure why but uh the president Ahmadinejad is somebody I'm as an American really familiar with why is that exactly but why was why was the president the public-facing person to the world versus the supreme leader uh is that just a accident of a particular humans involved or is this by Design no because the supreme leader tries to keep himself out of issues of everyday politics supposedly yeah but therefore he is not coming to United Nations to give a speech during the uh session uh but Mr ahmadines at the time was the president uh would come and make outrageous statements that's why you probably know something about him so all of them make public statements but he had a proclivity for outrageous statements and it does all kinds of things he makes all kinds of statements but he is somewhat above the everyday politics in theory but of course he is pulling all the strings with without doubt in every last respect and it seems that you were asked I thought you're going to ask me this question almost without a an exception since the Inception of the Islamic Republic in 1979 up to the last of the presidents of the Islamic Republic Rouhani before the guy that is last year or a year and a half ago was in a phony election uh uh got into the position of the president all of them on the long list all of them eventually fell out with the regime mm-hmm so there is no president except perhaps to some extent through a honey but we'll wait and see what is going to happen to him but prior to him all of them including ahmadine Azad fell out with the regime with the current regime in Iraq who's Johannes he was officially president for eight years yeah prior to raisy Ibrahimovic the 221 the year what you're saying is a phony election yesterday what happened because the process of actually candidacy for presidency is completely controlled by a a cancer that is under the control of the uh supreme leader so they have to approve who is going to be the candidate so why does everybody can enter and say I would like to be a candidate so did Rouhani follow out of favor you're saying there's something yeah well he is kind of out of favor now because he was more moderate than this this most recent regime what the point is that if you look this is something almost institutional constitutional to the regime this is the regime that rejects all of the executive powers because it's because the division between the supreme authority as the place of a supreme authority versus the presidency has problematic it is as if there would be a a a supreme leader in the United States above all these three sources of power I mean that's the kind of any view that we can see in today's Iran and of course he is at the focus of all the criticism that he receives from the demonstrators in today's Iran so on top of all this recently and throughout the last several years U.S and Iran are in the midst of nuclear deal negotiations this is another part of the story of Iran is uh the development of nuclear weapons the nuclear program they're looking to restore the nuclear deal known as The Joint comprehensive plan of action jcpoa what is the history the present and the future of these negotiations over nuclear weapons what is interesting to you in this full context from the 16th century of the Messianic um yeah Journey uh what's interesting to you here you can argue that for a long time even under the shaw but much more expressively and decisively under the Islamic Republic there was a determination to have a nuclear power or nuclear weapon in a sense I think the bottom line of all the negotiations everything else is that Iran of the Islamic Republic had the tendency of having its own nuclear weapon the reason for that is that Iran was the subject of nearly nine years eight and a half years of uh Iran Iraq War when uh not only Iran faced an aggressor Iraq that actually attacked Iran at a very critical time at the very beginning of the Iranian Revolution but the fact that Iran felt kind of a helpless in the course of this war and has to make great sacrifices actually which supported the Islamic regime and Consolidated the Islamic regime because of this war and most of the time the support of the United States was behind Iraq Visa of Iran and Iran felt that it's been isolated and has to protect itself so there is some argument for having a nuclear capabilities but in reality this has resulted in as a completely mindless crazy a wasteful attempt on the side of the Iranian regime to try to develop a nuclear power and therefore the rest of the world particularly in this region were very worried that if Iran would get access to a nuclear weapon then the entire region of the Persian Gulf might particularly Saudi Arabia possibly turkey possibly Egypt all of them may require uh may may demand to have also nuclear weapon given the fact that Pakistan and India has already have it so there was a determined attempt as you might know on the side of the western communities or now gradually World communities to try to as much as possible to control Iran from getting access to a nuclear capability or actually limit Iran's nuclear capabilities to what was defined usually in a euphemism as a peaceful fashion okay uh that being said there was also Israel which viewed the Islamic Republic as a arch enemy and some of it might be due to the israeli's own exaggeration of Iran's threat and some of it is because Iran has developed a fairly strong military as we see today and as such this attempt to try to prevent Iran from Ever Getting access to nuclear weapon which resulted as you might know in this massive sanctions that were imposed upon Iran ever since the beginning of the revolution in 1979 and of course more intensively since 2015 2016 even prior to that probably a little bit earlier this this agreement the nuclear agreement was supposed to control or monitor Iranian nuclear industry or nuclear setup in exchange for removing the sanctions what this never worked in a matter of fact in a very successful satisfactory way for the Iranians or for the Americans particularly under Trump Administration which I think foolishly decided to scrap the agreement that was reached under President Obama like many other policies that was implemented under Trump Administration this created a major problem that is how to under Biden how to try to come up with a new nuclear agreement with Iran in this process since 2016 where the United States withdrew from the agreement Iran felt comfortable to try to go and do whatever they want without any kind of monitor being monitored by the International Community and that's the situation now we don't know whether Iran is really sincere under the present regime to negotiate a deal we don't know that the United States is willing to do so and it seems that now what is happening in terms of the protests in the Iranian streets makes it even harder in a public eye to try to negotiate a deal with Iran because that means in the minds of many and with some justification that uh if the nuclear agreement would result in the removal of many of these sanctions millions billions uh as the result of the removal of the sanctions and Iran's ability to sell it it's all in the international market without any restrictions means that the Iranian government is going to become even more powerful more financially secure in order to suppress its own people so that's the agreement that goes against coming to terms with with uh Iran but the problem is that there is no clear alternative even I'm not particularly personally favorable for this agreement to be uh to to be ratified but the alternative is very difficult there is no way to try to see what can be done geopolitics where every alternative is terrible let me ask you about one of the most complex geopolitical situations in history um one aspect of it is the cold war between Iran and Israel the bigger picture of it is sometimes referred to as uh israel-palestine conflict what are all the party's Nations involved what are the interests that are involved what's the rhetoric um can you understand make the case for each side of this conflict the European Union can of worms that it takes another three hours of of conversation just three hours at least what what I can tell you is this Iran prior to 1979 viewed itself under the Shah as a kind of a if not supporter of Israel was in very good terms with Israel they had an embassy in Iran or unofficial Embassy you know there are certain projects that's helping with the Agriculture and so forth you know but since 1979 that completely reversed part of it is that the issue of the Palestinian plights remained very much at the heart of the Revolutionary Iranians who would see that part of the United States is to support part of the United States guilt sin is to support Israel vis-a-vis it's very suppressive a very oppressive treatment of the Palestinians completely illegal taking over after territories which is not theirs since 1967. and therefore it is upon the Iranian regime Iranian Islamic Republic to support the cause of the Palestinians this came about at the time when the rest of the support for the Palestinians including Arab nationalism basically reached a stage of bankruptcy I mean much of the regimes of the Arab world either are now coming to terms with Israel or in one way or another because of their own contingencies because of their own concerns and interests are really nearly accepting Israel in the in the region now that all task of rhetorically supporting the Palestinians falls upon the Islamic Republic that sees itself as the champion of the Palestinians now without as a matter of fact having either the support of the Iranian people behind him if you ask if tomorrow there would be a poll or a referendum I would doubt that 80 of the Iranian people would approve of the policies of the Islamic Republic Visa with the issue of Palestine nor the Palestinians themselves because they're the Islamic Republic is only supporting those factions within the Palestinian movement which are Islamic quote-unquote and even within that they there is problems with Hamas for instance but nevertheless it's for the Islamic Republic some kind of a propaganda tool to be able to use it for its own sake and claim that we are the champions of the Palestinian people whether they have a solution if you look at the rhetoric if you listen to the rhetoric it's the destruction of the state of Israel and that's it seems to me creates a certain anxiety in the minds of the Israelis Israeli population and Israeli government particularly those who are now in power Netanyahu the likud and more kind of a right-wing politics of police polity of today's Israel that being said I think also the Israelis try to get an extra mileage out of a threat of Iran quote-unquote in order to present themselves a rightful to for terms of security and whatever else the way that they're treating the Palestinians which I think is extremely unjust I think it's extremely unwise for Israel to carry on with these policies as they did since the 67 at least and not to try to come to terms with it of course there are huge amount of I'm not denying that at all it's a huge amount of uh uh failures mistakes and stupidity on the side of the Palestinian leadership in various stages not to try to make a deal or try to come to terms in some fashion but it's a very complex picture and it's rather unfair to the Palestinians to accuse them for not coming to terms with Israel under a very uneven circumstances when they are not in a position to try to make a fair deal in terms of the territories or in terms of their security in future vis-a-visra so I think there is as you probably know quite a lot of people that would have a different perspective than you just stated in terms of you know taking the perspective of Israel and characterizing the situation Can you steal man that their side can you still man Israel's side that they're trying to be a Sovereign Nation trying to protect themselves against threats ultimately wanting to create a place of safety a place where people can pursue all all the things that you want to pursue in life including foremost happiness I tend to agree with you and I have all the respect for the fact that Israel would like to create security and happiness for its own people but there are two arguments is one is a moral argument to my mind as a historian a uh Jews across around the world for all through their history suffered and this is a history of suffering there is a memory of something and I find it enormously difficult to believe that a nation that's the product of so much uh sacrifice suffering loss of life and variety of Holocaust above all would find itself in a position not to give the proper Justice to a people who could be their neighbors and that is a moral argument which I cannot believe under any circumstances can be accepted second in real terms what do you want to you want to commit to genocide do you have a population there that you have to come to terms with it and you cannot just postpone as they did since 67 they are postponing and hoping that it goes away somehow I don't think it's going to go away and and it's going to get worse right and better it's a long nuanced discussion and I look forward to having it so just leave it um there for the moment uh but it is a stressful place in the world uh where the rhetoric is existential or Iran yeah it makes claims that he wants to wipe a country off the face of the Earth it's just the level of of intensity of rhetoric is unlike anywhere else in the world and extremely dangerous and in in both directions so one the real danger of the rhetoric actually being acted upon and then the extreme political parties using the rhetoric to justify even a greater escalation so uh yeah if Iran is saying that this is it's saying that they're wanting to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth that justifies any response uh on the other side on the other side of course I tend to agree with you fully and unfortunately this is a very critical situation that uh this region is facing Iran in particular I would say that um I hope that in the minds of the people of Israel there is a enough or common sense to realize that probably escalation on the Israeli side is not in the favor of anybody and try to let the Iranians to go on with their empty rhetoric as they do so far but at the same time I cannot deny the fact that you know there is a danger on the side of this regime and what it says it cannot be denied nobody can justify that uh particularly because the Iranian population is not behind this regime certainly in the case of the Palestinians or for that matter it's not Palestine it's the the the Islamic Republic's involvement in Lebanon with Hezbollah it's the Islamic Republic's involvement in Syria with pasture Assad its involvement in other parts of the World perhaps even Yemen that all of them creates extra territorial responsibilities or interventions unnecessary interventions that ultimately is not in favor of best interests of the Iranian people or Iran as a country Iran has never been involved in this kind of politics before after the Islamic Republic so in a sense the Iranian regime it seems to me by going to the extreme try to create for itself a pace that it did not have or did not deserve to have within the politics of the region he said so in other words that has become part of the tool a kind of an instrument for if you like to call it some kind of an expansionism of of the regime uh in parts of the world where it can see there is a possibility for for its presence for its expansion of course historically speaking Iran Everest's 15th century I think that's the earliest example I can see in mother in alibade times has always a tendency of moving in the direction of not only what is today the state of Iraq but further into the eastern coast of mediterranea so that's a long-term ambition that has been in the cards as far as Iran as a strategic unit is cancer but by no means Justified and by no means could be a reasonable could be a sane policy of a nation state as today's Iran but the second point is that also regimes are always victims of their own rhetoric so it's I once you keep repeating something then you become more and more committed to it and it cannot remain anymore in the level of a rhetoric you have to do something about it says something compelling pressure to try to uh to uh to materialize what you've been saying in your rhetoric and that is even extremely more dangerous as far as Iran is concerned and it brings it to some Unholy alliances that today we are witnessing Iran is getting involved even more dangerous than this rhetoric uh in in terms of the visible Israel is its involvement with uh Russia and to some extent with China which we can't talk about what do you think about the meeting between Harmony and Vladimir Putin in July what's that Alliance what's that partnership is its surface level geopolitics is there a deep growing connection I cannot see the difference between geopolitics and these deep connections I see this one and the same why because I think the experience 40 Years of distancing from the West in terms of the Islamic Republic and the fact that there is a shelf life to Imperial presence yeah for any Empire anywhere in the world so after the terrible experience of of the United States in Iraq and in Afghanistan pretty much like the British Empire that after destroys the experience in 56 decided to withdraw from east of Suez maybe there is a moment here that we are witnessing or it may come that a great power like the United States sees in its benefits not to get too much involved into nitty-gritty things in other parts of the world that it's not its immediate cancer and I think that's part of the reason not the entire reason part of the reason why we see the emergence of a new geopolitical environments in this part of the world of which China Russia possibly Iran possibly turkey possibly both of them are going to be part perhaps Saudis also but I doubt that the Saudis under the presidency circumstances although we have witnessed some remarkable issue in the course of the past few weeks where the Saudis giving assurances to American Administration and then shifting and getting along with Putin in terms of the oil production I think it's more than that event and it's not only them but also the Emirates are doing the same thing so what does that just tell us and that's another many hour conversation about the the world industry in in Iran and the the whole region in emerging this kind of a world which was perhaps even 10 years ago unimaginable yeah that you see now a great power China that it's going to remain from what we see around us as a great power and Russia adventurous foolish but nevertheless would remain a criminal I would say as far as the Its Behavior in Ukraine but actually it's a rogue nation that it attracts another Rogue Nation so Iran finds itself now in a greater place of security in Alliance with Russia in the hope that this would give Iran a greatest Security in this part of the world whether this is whether this is uh realistic or a illusion I think remains to be seen I think Iran China relation makes more sense uh although if you ask ordinary Iranians they don't like it they will tell why should we be tied up with uh with China as the only uh trade party with with America because of the I foolish isolations that you have created for us because of all the sanctions that you have created for us the Islamic Republic so in a sense it's a very difficult question to answer probably Iranians also like to be more on the other camp but what happens is that in real term so what surprises me most is not this alliance with China but it's kind of becoming a lucky or subservient to Putin's regime in in Russia since if you look at it Iran ever since at least the 19th century not going further back the beginning of the 19th century always viewed Russia as the greatest threat strategically because it was sitting right at the top of Iran it was uh it was uh infinitely more powerful than Iran has ever been and Iran for two rounds of War at the beginning of the century lost the entire caucuses to Russia and led its lesson that you have to be mindful of Russia and you have to keep it as an arms length and that's what was the Iran's policy throughout the course of the 20th century 19th and 20th Century up to what we see now around us which is a very strange situation um whether the balance has changed in terms of if this if Russia is purchasing weapons from from Iran which was unheard of it means that there is a new balance is emerging a new relationship is emerging perhaps remains to be seen but uh if you look at the Historical precedence it would have been enormously unwise to be an ally of Russia given its long history of aggression in Iraq see Russians part of the reason why it's actually Iran Allied itself with British Empire was the fact that it was so much afraid of the Russian expansion and as such I don't know what's going to be the future of this relationship there is a big disconnect between uh governments and the people and I think ultimately I have faith that there's a love across the different cultures across the different religions amongst the people and the governments are the source of the division and the conflict and the wars and all the geopolitics that isn't part grounded in the battle for resources and all that kind of stuff nevertheless this is the world we live in so you've looked at the modern history of Iran the past few centuries if you look into the future of this region Now you kind of implied that historian has a bit of a cynical View of protests and things like this um that are fueled at least in the minds of young people with hope if you were to just for a while have a bit of Hope in your heart and your mind what is a hopeful future for the next 10 20 30 years of Iran I'm not cynical I'm trying to be realistic and I actually may be critical but I have Great Hopes uh in Iran's future for a variety of reasons I actually did write an article only if the last version of it is going to go out today in which the title of it is the time of fear and women of Hope which in a sense is this whole coverage but what this movement means like that we see today pin May fizzle in a few weeks time or it may just go on and create a new Dynamics in Iranian society that would hopefully resolve in a peaceful process of Greater accommodation and the greater tolerance within the Iranian society and with the outside world and I think majority of the Iranian people don't want tension don't run confrontation don't want crisis day if 40 years they have suffered from a regime that have dictated an ideology that it's uh regressive and impractical they want to go back to a life in which they don't They Don't Really create trouble for their neighbors or for the world and therefore I would see a better future for Iran that's for one reason it's strategically or geopolitically maybe in Iran's advantage in a peaceful fashion to negotiate as it's the fate of all the nations rather than commit itself or sworn to a particular course of a policy so there's a give and take as the nature of politics is the art of possible as it's been said so probably Iran is going to be hopefully moving that direction I think there is a generational thing that's the third reason no matter how much the Islamic Republic tried to islamicize the Iranian Society in its own image of kind of radical ideological indoctrination it has failed it has failed up to what we see today in the Iranian streets and the Iranian population said no to it and I think if there would have been and they very much hope there will be a possibility for a more open environment more open space where they would be able to speak them their views out Iranians are not on the side of moving in the extreme directions they are in the side of Greater accommodation and the greater interest in the outside world and if you look at every aspect of today's beside the government every aspect of life in today's Iran we can see that from the way that people dress to the way that they try to live their lives to the way that you're educating themselves or by educated in the institutions do you see a desire an intention to move forward and I'm optimistic well in that struggle for Freedom like I told you offline I want my close childhood friends is Iranian just beautiful person as families is a wonderful family and on a personal level is one of the deeper Windows into the Iranian spirit and soul that I've gotten a chance to witness so I really appreciate it but in the recent times I've gotten to hear from a lot of people that are currently living in Iran that are currently have that burning hope for the future of the country and so my love goes out to them and the struggle for freedom I ask it's so nice of you to say so and I very much hope so uh there are moments of spare and there are moments that that you would think that there is no hope and uh but but then again something triggers and you see hundred thousand people in the streets of Berlin uh that are hoping for a better future for you and I very much hope it eventually emerges even I'm hoping at the same time that it's not going to be a very strong leadership as it was the case in the past we started with hope we ended with hope this was a real honor this is an incredible conversation thank you for um thank you for giving such a a deep and uh wide story of this great nation one of the great nations in history well that's the kind of used to say so thank you for sitting down today well a history that as I've said in the start of my book I States the history of a nation which has learned a huge amount from from the outside world by force of its geography it was always located somewhere that people would invade yeah or come for trade or something happened to it that is this diffused culture continue to and they were not afraid of learning or adopting as they do right now today this is a very different society never a boring moment in its history as you write about thank you so much this is awesome thank you thanks for listening to this conversation with abasamana to support this podcast please check out our sponsors in the description and now let me leave you with a few words from Martin Luther King Jr from every Mountainside Let Freedom Ring thank you for listening I hope to see you next time\n"