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The following is a conversation with Abbas Amanat, a historian at Yale University specializing in the modern history of Iran.
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My love and my heart goes out to the Iranian people in their current struggle for freedom.
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I hope that this conversation helps folks who listen understand the nature and the importance of this struggle.
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I just saw Duncan Strussel pop up on the Joe Rogan Experience.
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And both of them I associate with Onnit.
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No, well actually yes.
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but also deep profound insights of the like I haven t heard from anybody else.
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He must be using Alphabrain.
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And now, dear friends, here s Abbas Aminat.
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Let s start with the current situation in Iran.
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On September 16th, protests broke out in Tehran and quickly spread over the death of a 22-year-old Mahsa Amini.
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Eyewitnesses saw her beaten to death by the morality police.
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This is a heavy topic, but it s a really important topic.
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Can you explain what happened?
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The protests are now in their sixth week.
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The death of that young woman, a Kurd, who was visiting Tehran as a tourist, sparked
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something very deep that s particularly concerned the younger generations.
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That is what you would call the equivalent of the Z generation in this country.
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They call themselves Dahaye Hashtadi in Persian, because Iran follows the solar calendar of its own.
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It s an ancient solar calendar.
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And the time that they were born, they were in the,
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1380s, that s what they call themselves, 80s, for the 80s.
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And the, well, the circumstances that surrounds the unfortunate death of this young, beautiful Kurdish woman is really tragic.
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She was arrested by the, what is referred to as the Morality Police, Morality Patrol, called the Gashteh Ershad, Guidance Police, that is.
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Presumably there were two women fully clad, that is officers serving on that force, and two men.
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And nobody exactly knows what had happened.
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She had been beaten up.
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And apparently there was no sign of any wrongdoing on her side.
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She was fully covered.
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It seems that there was some altercation in the process.
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And the outcome was that she was unconscious.
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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.
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And she apparently collapsed.
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And maybe my sense is that she must have had some kind of a
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problem because of the skull being broken or something had happened and she died in the hospital the next day and that through the social media was widely spread throughout Iran and almost the next day surprisingly you could see this outburst
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of sympathy for her.
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People are in the streets weeping because she was seen as such an innocent young woman, 22 years old.
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And the family, the mother and the father, also mourning for her.
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And being a Kurd, visiting Tehran, this all added up to really turn her into some kind of a martyr of this cause.
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And that s what it is.
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And her picture, graphics that were artistically produced based on her portrait has now dominates basically as the symbol of this protest movement.
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And the protest movement goes on.
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Everybody was thinking, or at least the authorities were thinking that it s going to die out in a matter of a few days.
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but it became more intense, first in the streets of Tehran by young women, mostly probably between, I would say, 17, 18 teenagers to 22, 23, or thereabouts, and then to university campuses all around the country, and then even to high schools.
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And that also made it a very remarkable protest movement because, first of all, it involves the youth,
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and not necessarily the older generations.
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You see them around, but not as many.
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Also, you see men and women together, young, girls and boys.
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And, you know,
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They are adamant.
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They are desperate in the sense of the tone of their protest.
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And they are extremely courageous because they stand against the security forces that were immediately
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were sent off to the streets.
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And in full gear, that is.
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So what are the currents of pain, emotion, what is this turmoil that rose to the surface that resulted in these big protests?
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What are the different feelings, ideas that came to the surface here that resulted in such quick scaling of this protest?
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Well, if you listen to the main slogan, which is the message of this movement, it s called Women, Life, Freedom, Zan, Zendegi, Azadi, which is a translation of actually the Kurdish equivalent, which is close to Persian being in the European language.
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and it s apparently initiated first in the Syrian Kurdistan.
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where they were fighting against the Islamic Daesh forces because they were attacking the Yazidis there and the women being enslaved.
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But the message as it moved, historians are interested in this kind of trends.
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So it has moved to Kurdistan and from Kurdistan now being the message of this movement reflects pretty much
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sums up what this movement is all about.
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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 past 43 years.
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And they would think that
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These all basically symbolized or represented by the wearing, the mandatory wearing of the hijab, which is at the core of this protest.
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You see the young women, if you look at many of these clips that comes through in the past six weeks,
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Women in streets take off their mandatory scarves, which is a young shawl or some kind of a head covering, that s all.
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And they throw it into the bonfire in the middle of the street and they dance around it.
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and slogans.
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So there is a sense of complete rejection of what this regime for 42 years, 43 years, have been imposing on women.
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It s not, as it s sometimes been portrayed, a movement
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against hijab through and through.
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But it basically says there has to be a choice for those who want to wear hijab and those who want to remain without hijab.
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Yeah, the hijab is a symbol of something much deeper.
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Much deeper.
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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.
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young women with hijab, or next to those have to remove their hijab and they re together basically protesting.
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That s the most interesting feature of these demonstrations.
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And then men and women together against the segregation that the regime has imposed upon them all these years.
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Now, in terms of what it represents,
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As I pointed out, one is the question of the whole series of, one might say, civil and legal discriminations against women.
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You are considered as a kind of a second-class citizen.
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You depend on your men.
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There s a kind of a patriarchy that has been institutionalized in the Islamic Republic in a very profound fashion.
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And that means that probably in matters of divorce, marriage and divorce, in matters of custody of your children, in 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 son.
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could be the case.
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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 does, probably sometimes more.
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They re very, very curious.
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from what I hear or sometimes that I met a few of them outside Iran, you ll see that Hadi, this new generation is completely different from what the Islamic Republic wanted to create in its social engineering.
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It s basically the failure of 43 years of the Islamic Republic s act of imposition of a certain so-called Islamic values on women.
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Then it s a matter of education.
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you would see that there is segregation in the schools.
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One of the issues that now, right now, is at the heart of this demonstration is that self-services in many of the campuses of the Iranian universities are segregated, male and female, to different rooms, to different halls.
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Now they are breaking through the walls virtually everywhere and sit together.
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in order to basically resist the authoritarianism.
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who wants to impose segregation.
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In matters of appearance in the public, of course, it may seem to us as kind of trivial and secondary, but appearance is important.
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Clothing is important.
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How you would imagine yourself is important.
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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,
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fully covered and is fully protected.
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The idea of a male member of the family protects the female.
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That is what you would see at the heart of this rebellion.
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And of course, that goes with everything.
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There s the second part of this message, the idea of life.
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basically means, if you like to use the American equivalent of this, the pursuit of the happiness.
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That s what they want.
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They want fun.
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They want music.
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They want dancing.
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They want to be free in the street.
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They want to have 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 not to do.
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So that is, that they share virtually with the entire Iranian society as a whole.
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Although the older generations, that s a big puzzle.
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But you would see that the older generation don t, so far at least, don t take part
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as extensively as one might imagine.
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And this is variety of reasons.
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Perhaps we can get to that later on, if you like.
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But as far as this younger generation, they don t care.
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They don t listen even as much to their parents as the older generations did.
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So one might say even the nature of the relationship between the parents and the youth has changed.
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It s not the concept of, again, a patriarchy, that a father or even a mother would tell the daughter or son what to do.
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That s basically they have to negotiate.
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It s fundamentally a rejection of the power of authority.
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Parents, government, it s that every person can decide their own fate and there s no lessening of value of the wisdom of old age and old institutions.
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Precisely, that s what it is.
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And they are surprisingly aware
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that s where they are as a generation.
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So it s a sense of pride as we are different from the older generation.
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From your parents who compromised and lived with the restrictions that the Islamic regime put on you, your grandparents, who was the generation that actually involved in the revolution of 79,
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the parents, which were the middle generation, and these are the third generation after the revolution of 1979.
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And therefore they differentiate themselves in terms of their identity from the older generation.
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So that s the life part of it.
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One can go more and more, they want to access, and they see on social media what happens in the rest of the world.
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They re well aware.
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They re much better digitally skilled.
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than my generation, for instance.
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And they know about all the personalities.
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They know about all the celebrities.
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They know about all the trends that goes out outside Iran.
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So that s a second part of this message.
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And then, of course, the third part is the word azadi, meaning freedom or liberty, which is this long-standing demand of the
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Iranians, I would say for the whole century, ever since the Constitutional Revolution of 1906, Iran has witnessed this problem of authorities that usually emerged at the end of a revolution to basically impose its own image on the population, on the youth.
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and create authoritarian regimes of which, over the course of time, I would say that the Islamic Republic is the worst, in the sense that its intrusion is not only in the political sense, for instance, banning the freedom of speech,
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you know, meddling with the elections, 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 an authority that basically dominates your life or monitors your life.
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So, and they do it in a kind of a very consistent fashion, which makes this idea of freedom so important as part of the message of this new movement.
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You would see that in today s Iran, there are no independent political parties.
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There is very little
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probably freedom of the press.
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I wouldn t say that it s entirely gone, but it s fairly limited.
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There s enormous amount of propaganda machine which dominates the entire radio and TV system in Iran.
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It s completely in the hands of the government.
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And of course, you would see this variety of other tools
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for trying to indoctrinate Iranian population across the board.
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So that s another sign of this kind of a sense of, a sense of being,
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totally left out, you re not belonging to what s going on in terms of empowerment and disempowerment.
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So that s the situation as far as the idea of a freedom is concerned.
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And this free, somewhat miraculously, and perhaps unintentionally,
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the three parts of this message complement each other.
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Because perhaps for the first time we see that women are in the forefront of a movement.
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I hesitate to say revolution because I m not particularly happy with revolutions.
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The 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 revolution again.
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So that s where it stands now.
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And the regime was thinking that, well, these are kids.
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They re going to go away.
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And then, of course, they re completely conspiratorial in their thinking.
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They constantly think that
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These are all the instigations and provocations of foreign powers.
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These are the great Satan, the United States, this is Israel, or these are the, it s actually the Supreme Leader says in so many words, his only response so far that he had,
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in the past six weeks with regard to these demonstrations is that these are the children of the SAVAK, SAVAK being the security forces of the Shah s time.
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That s 43 years later, he claims that the children, 16, 17 years, 20 years old,
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kids in the street or the grandchildren or children of some imaginary survival of the Shah s security force.
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So there s, the idea is that these protests are internal and external saboteurs, so people trying to sabotage the government.
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Yes.
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and they are misled as far as they can go.
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And then there s the great Satan, United States and other places are controlling, sort of either controlling the narrative, feeding propaganda, or literally sending people to instigate.
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I don t think even they have that kind of imagination.
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precise to say what you have said, that they would say that they re controlling the narrative.
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They basically say, no, these are agents.
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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 so 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 about the response of the government, but
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One major factor which seems to add to the anxiety of, well, the regime is extremely anxious now because they re in a position, this 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
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that kind of confidence to allow this message or the movement to be aired.
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But the one element which corresponds to that is that there is an expatriate population of Iranians worldwide.
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There are probably now, according to some estimates, close to 4 million, even more, Iranians abroad.
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And they re all over the world, from Australia and New Zealand, Japan,
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Western Europe, Turkey, and United States and Canada.
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So just to give you one example, last Saturday, there was a mass demonstrations in Berlin by the Iranians from Germany and all over Europe, Western Europe.
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And it was at least, I think probably the conservative estimate was about 100,000.
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So 100,000 Iranians showed up in Berlin demonstrating against the treatment of the women in Iran or the movement in Iran.
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The government thinks obviously this must have been some,
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instigation by foreign powers, and they want to destroy the Islamic Republic.
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And not only that, but their propaganda is kind of ridiculous.
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Because I listened actually to how they portrayed it in the newspapers.
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I listened to the Iranian news, that is officially controlled, government controlled news.
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and in the papers, much of the papers that are in the control of the government.
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One of them or actually the major news program portrayed the demonstrations that 10,000 people
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showed up in Berlin and protested against the rising prices, rising rates for gas and oil in Germany.
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So that s how they mislead in a very rather stupid fashion because
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probably 95%, if not 100% of the Iranians are listening to Persian-speaking media outside Iran.
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So there s a BBC Persian, there is Iran International, there are at least five or six of them.
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That s probably really important to highlight that Iran is a very modern and tech-savvy nation.
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not just in young people.
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Probably more than I feel sometimes when I compare myself to what they are doing.
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Since 1979, the earlier years, for a decade or two,
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they tried in a very crude fashion to restrict access to media outside Iran, because it s all through dishes, okay?
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And satellite dishes are everywhere.
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If you look at the buildings, small towns and villages in Iran, there s always it.
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a dish and they watch all kinds of things through this and particularly because of what s happening now
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they listen to all the news broadcasts from all this media and they re extremely active.
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There are probably some of them even 24 hours or close, very extensive coverage of every clip that comes through.
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So what the government is doing now, the Islamic Republic, is that they restrict
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the entire internet.
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They shut down the internet.
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They shut down the internet, but they cannot afford shutting down the internet because much of the business, much of the everyday life, much of the government affairs depends on the internet, like everywhere else.
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And Iran is extremely,
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If I hear from many of the colleagues and friends, it s like, in certain respects, it s like Sweden.
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Where you go there, there s no more currency, and for a very good reason, because there s so much inflation, that the banknotes are worthless, in a sense.
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So everything is through sweeping your card.
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And that entire system is in a standstill because people cannot buy food.
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You go to the supermarket, that s how you would do it.
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You order food to come to your house, which Iranians, at least the middle classes, the more prosperous middle classes, doing all the time.
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So they deliver everything.
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And because of the COVID, it became even more.
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And they have to pay all through this.
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system.
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So what happens is that now they re estimating that every day, $50 million, the Iranian government or the Iranian economy is losing because of slowing the internet.
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Plus the frustration is growing because you can t order food.
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among other things.
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I mean, they are in touch with WhatsApp, every Iranian, virtually every Iranian that has education, and education in the sense that has gone through,
1
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the high schools and universities knows how to use the WhatsApp.
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So there s a big middle class, like you said, secular middle class in Iran.
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And there, there s a lot of at least capacity for, if not revolution, then political, ideological turmoil.
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And a huge amount of hatred.
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So the hatred has grown.
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Yes, hatred of the policies of the regime, of isolation.
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That s a huge point that you hear a great deal about.
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We don t want to be isolated.
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We don t want to be humiliated.
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Iran is not about this miserable regime that is ruling over us.
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We have a great culture.
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So there s a sense of pride
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in their own culture, some of it Islamic, some of it pre-Islamic.
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So there s a huge sense of pride in that.
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And they see that they cannot communicate with the outside world.
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They want to travel abroad, which they do.
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I mean, for one thing, the Iranian regime never actually
1
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for majority of the population, never put restrictions.
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It s not like, what is it, Soviet Union, where you have to have a, you used to have a permission to move from one place to another.
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And then, of course, the Islamic regime, since 1979, basically chased away or destroyed the old middle class.
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That s my generation, basically, or my parents  generation.
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These are the secular middle class of the Pahlavi era, in the hope that they can do this social engineering and create this Islamic society of their own.
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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,
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than what it was, because there was, of course, the demographic revolution.
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That s the very foundation of it, is the demographic revolution.
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Population in Iran, I ve written an article about it, actually.
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Population in Iran, since the turn of the century, last century, 20th century, population of Iran was about nine million or so.
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It s now 83 million.
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And that is, since 1979, the population was 35 million.
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Between the past 40 years, it s basically doubled.
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So it s 83 million.
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Although, one of the great successes, I don t want to bore you with the details about the demography, but it s important.
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Demographics is not boring.
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You can see that the birth rate was very high, otherwise you wouldn t have doubled your population in a matter of four decades.
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But Iranians, because of the urban shift to an urban population, because of the growth of the middle class, because of the education,
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they basically, the pattern of growth, population growth changed.
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Iran used to be 2.8 or 3% birth rate in around 1980s, I would say, 1970s, 1980s.
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Now, it is 1.1.
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And it s probably the most successful country in the Middle East in terms of the population control.
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Despite the government, a consistent attempt to try to encourage people to have more kids.
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Middle class refuses to do that.
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And this is middle class not only anymore in the capital,
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but this is very smaller towns and cities, places that used to be villages.
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Now you look at them, they have a decent population, 50,000, 100,000, and they live an urban life, and they don t want to be.
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subjected to that old pattern of agrarian society when you had 10 children or eight children.
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And of course, it s much more advanced in terms of health and medicine.
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So you don t lose children as they used to.
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The antibiotics, there s all ways of kids to survive.
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And therefore, if you have 10 kids, you re sick with 10 kids.
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You don t end up with four as it used to be in the past.
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Six of them would have died up to the age of five, actually.
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But now, because of that, you see that this urban population in the cities have completely different demands.
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And of course, the education is important.
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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.
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Now, Iran, in my time, probably had
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in the 1970s, probably by the time of the revolution, had 10, 12 universities.
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Now it has 56 universities all across the country, and there is something referred to as the free university, Azad, which has campuses all over the country.
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It has 321 campuses all around Iran.
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What does that mean?
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In many respects, this youth,
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that are brought up in these families, even in small towns, in very traditional families, in families that belong to that kind of a more religious, loyal to the clergy or to the clerical classes, their children,
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can now move on, particularly women.
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Because 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, Yazd, or in Southeastern Iran, to move on elsewhere for education, as you do in this country, okay?
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Now, it s completely accepted that a woman wears hijab because he s forced to wear hijab to go to a university completely on the other side of the country.
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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,
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all over the country.
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That is an Azerbaijani-Turkish accent from the northwest of the country.
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You can hear it in the Far East province in the South, and vice versa.
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and Kurdish, for instance, or even more marginal regions, such as Sistan 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.
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SPEAKER_00
So this movement of the population
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this creation of a larger middle class, the better educated middle class, much better educated.
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Iran has 86% 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.
2
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And it sounds like that s quickly increasing.
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So because of the movement, because of the growth of the education system, that s- Precisely.
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Iran has one million school teachers, which may not seem as much if you re in the United States, but it s a fairly big number.
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SPEAKER_00
Can you linger on the massacre?
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What happened there?
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, the Sistan province is a Baluch ethnicity, of Baluch ethnicity.
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Baluch is a...
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particular ethnic group in southern Iran, which is Sunni rather than Shi i, majority.
2
SPEAKER_01
And we should say that most of Iran is Shi i, and that s a branch of Islam.
2
SPEAKER_01
Shi ism, yes.
2
SPEAKER_01
Let s maybe just briefly linger Shi ism and Sunni.
2
SPEAKER_01
Let s not get into it.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I don t want to.
2
SPEAKER_01
Let s do a one sentence summary and that maybe which is what most of Iran is.
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Majority of the population of the Muslim world are Sunnis.
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These are mainstream, if you like to call it that.
2
SPEAKER_00
Actually, sunnah means that kind of a mainstream.
2
SPEAKER_00
Can you actually linger on the sunni, sunnah, shia?
2
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Shia means party.
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means those that belongs to a party of Ali, which was, goes back to the early Islamic history of seventh century.
2
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I mean, I m almost lingering to the silly notion of pronunciation and stuff like that.
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SPEAKER_01
So, ah, ah means part, like what, what does the extra I at the end do?
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, she, he means,
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belonging to the Shi i community.
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Shi am is a person of a Shi a.
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SPEAKER_00
If you say, are you a Shi a?
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Yes, I am a Shi a.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and Shi i is the community.
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And in English, when it was Anglicized, it becomes Shi ite.
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So if you say Shi ite in today, it s perfectly acceptable.
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And of course, I myself, in my writings, I always,
2
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a switch between one and the other.
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One of my books is always Shiite, the other book s always Shiite.
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And that hasn t been settled.
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But the Shiite population is smaller compared to the Sunni population in the world.
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In the world.
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In the world.
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But in Iran, it s the opposite.
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Iran and Iraq, and possibly now Lebanon,
2
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are the three countries who barely, Iraq and Lebanon, have barely majority Shi i population.
2
SPEAKER_00
Whereas Iran is a large Shi i population due to its history of conversion to Shi ism, that by itself is another story.
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But in the sense that the way that historically it evolved, the center became more Shi i,
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And the peripheries remained Sunni.
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So you have communities of the Baluch in the Southeast.
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You have the Kurds.
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A large portion of the Kurds are Sunnis.
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They have Shias as well.
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Then they have the indigenous religion of their own, what s called Ahle Haqq, which is the religion of indigenous to Kurdistan.
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There are Turkmens in the northeast of Iran, who are also Sunnis.
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There are other communities in Khorasan region.
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in the peripheries of Afghanistan.
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They are also Sudanese.
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And you have some Arab population, Arab-speaking population in the Khuzestan province, in the southwest of Iran, which is also, or across the Persian Gulf.
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SPEAKER_01
Is there a lot of conflict between these regions?
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And also, like if I blindfolded you and dropped you off in one of the regions, would you quickly recognize the region?
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Like by the food, by the music, by the accents, by so on?
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SPEAKER_00
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.
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But different food, most important, different accents.
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Or different languages, since they have dialects.
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Baluch is a different language altogether.
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But
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Or so for that matter, Kurdish, which is closer to Persian because they re all Indo-European languages.
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But Turkish, Azeri Turkish, which is probably closer to the Turkish of Turkey, Republic of Turkey, or to the Republic of Azerbaijan in the north.
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They are the same, basically.
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Actually, if you would have looked, that s a fascinating picture.
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If you have looked at the, let s say even 19th century, early 20th century linguistic map of Iran, you would have been amazed.
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in the number of dialects, in the number of languages that have survived.
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This is an ancient country.
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It s an ancient land.
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And it s a lot of mountains all around it, or big deserts.
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So there s a sense of isolation.
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So you would say here and there you see a different community that speaks differently.
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All ancient traditions and languages.
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Yeah, and because of the great number of invasions that Iran witnessed over
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more than two and a half millennia.
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Of course, there are all kinds of cultures were introduced into Iran.
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Ethnicities were introduced to Iran, mostly coming from the northeast of Iran, from the Middle East.
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lowlands of Central Asia and beyond, and continued into Iran proper.
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But now, what has happened, that s my point that I wanted to make, a century of modernity or modernization,
2
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has produced a national culture of great strength, in a sense, I would say.
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I ended my book, the book on Iran, Iran in Modern History, basically saying that despite everything else that has created so much trouble for today s Iran, there is a sense of a cultural identity that is very strong.
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And I think I can say with some confidence that despite these regional identities that are still there and they are great and they should be celebrated, today if you go to Kurdistan or if you go to
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Sistan, they all can speak Persian.
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They all have an education in Persian.
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So they all basically are becoming part of whether they like it, whether they like the regime in power or not.
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They have a sense of belonging to a culture and an identity with the center.
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And of course, the idea of a center versus periphery in Iran is very old.
2
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goes back to ancient times because even the name of the country was the guarded domains of Iran.
2
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This is the official name, Mamalek-e-Mahroseh-e-Iran.
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namely that it was recognized that this is not just one entity, but it s a collection of entities.
2
SPEAKER_00
Like the United States of America.
2
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Exactly, exactly.
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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.
2
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To be continued.
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That was basically invented, created.
2
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you would have this sense of it.
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In the case of an old nation, which has been on the map of the world for 3,000 years, 2,500 years, this is not an exaggeration, I am not a nationalist per se, but I mean, if you look Persia on the map of the world in ancient times, it is still there as it is today.
2
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Very few countries in the world are like that.
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that they would have that kind of a continuity over a course of time.
2
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And that s not without a reason, because there was this sense of a center versus periphery that had found some, there s a huge amount of tension, but there is also a sense of belonging to something.
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And state is very much at the center of it.
2
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I mean, that s why the concept of a state matters for the creation, for the shaping.
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of this culture.
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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 people share.
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SPEAKER_00
And in terms of, I just give you one anecdote.
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In 1968, I believe, must have been,
2
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I traveled to Azerbaijan.
2
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I used to travel and actually photograph.
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SPEAKER_01
Not blindfolded, mostly.
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, yeah, not blindfolded, no, no, not blindfolded.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I went to a bazaar in the city of Khoi, which is in the northwestern Iran, on the border with what is today the Republic of Turkey.
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And I went to the bazaar and I was interested in the kind of leather work that they produce.
2
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So I tried to buy some stuff and I was surprised to see that how few people knew Persian.
2
SPEAKER_00
So they could not communicate in Persian with you.
2
SPEAKER_00
Either they have to ask somebody from some other store to come and translate for you.
2
SPEAKER_00
This is 1968.
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SPEAKER_00
So even though it s the official language
2
SPEAKER_01
of the country, they re still, so what are they teaching in school?
2
SPEAKER_01
So it doesn t matter.
3
SPEAKER_00
He doesn t go to school.
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He hasn t been to the school, or he was not fully exposed to it, and bazaars usually are very conservative places.
3
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So it stuck in my mind.
3
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Now, recently in 2004, I was traveling to the same area, not to the same city, but to the same area.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I was amazed to see how the youth, as soon as they would know that you re coming from somewhere,
3
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opening conversation with you, talking about the latest movies that was produced in the West, and it s not only Hollywood.
3
SPEAKER_00
Of course, there s a huge amount of fascination with Hollywood and Western cinema.
3
SPEAKER_00
Cinema is a major thing.
3
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Filmmaking is a major thing.
3
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So these kids in the city of Ahar were asking me, we were having lunch.
3
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They re asking me, okay, then what do you think about this producer, not producer, this director or that actor?
3
SPEAKER_01
American.
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American, European as well, but mostly American.
3
SPEAKER_01
Were they speaking Persian?
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SPEAKER_00
There s a complete Persian that I would converse with them.
3
SPEAKER_00
Do they speak English too?
3
SPEAKER_01
Interesting.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
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SPEAKER_00
Actually, you would be surprised to see what percentage of the Iranian youth, at least in big cities, are fascinated with learning language.
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And for a reason.
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SPEAKER_00
Because they think that s the way to get access either on social media or eventually leave Iran.
3
SPEAKER_00
Unfortunately.
3
SPEAKER_00
And because they don t see a future for themselves in the country, either you have to be part of this regime,
3
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or if you hate them and you don t like the way of their life, you look up outside.
3
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I was having drivers to drive me around the country in the cities around Tehran.
3
SPEAKER_00
And the guy was 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.
3
SPEAKER_00
And his major concern, knowing that I m from outside,
3
SPEAKER_00
Major concern is, well, tell me which would be a better place for me to go.
3
SPEAKER_00
What s wrong with the place that you re in right now?
3
SPEAKER_00
You are in your own country, you speak your own language.
3
SPEAKER_00
No, this is no good.
3
SPEAKER_00
I have to have a better future.
3
SPEAKER_00
This has no future for me.
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, it s really interesting because the thing I feel about the protests right now,
3
SPEAKER_01
is there s a large number of people that instead of giving into cynicism about this government is no good, they re actually getting this energy, this desire for revolution.
3
SPEAKER_01
in a sort of non-violent, in the democratic sense of that.
3
SPEAKER_01
Let s actually find the ideas, let s build a great nation here.
3
SPEAKER_01
This is a great nation, this is my nation, let s build something great here.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s my hope.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s what I m hoping for.
3
SPEAKER_00
I share your aspiration, but I m fearing that, I hope it s not a wishful thinking.
3
SPEAKER_00
Certainly that s what they want.
3
SPEAKER_00
Certainly that s what they want to create.
3
SPEAKER_00
But a historian always tells you from where they start to where they finish.
3
SPEAKER_00
there is going to be a huge kind of a change.
3
SPEAKER_00
And in this particular case, I wouldn t be, I would very much hope that it s not going to be a revolution like 1979, Islamic revolution.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I have my hopes in that.
3
SPEAKER_00
For one thing, this is a revolution that doesn t have a leader, okay?
3
SPEAKER_00
And it seems that they re comfortable with that.
3
SPEAKER_00
at least so far, because we are in the sixth week of this movement.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I hope it s not going to be actually a revolution, as I pointed out before.
3
SPEAKER_00
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.
3
SPEAKER_00
regime and replacement with what?
3
SPEAKER_01
So the anxiety of the regime, you hope, will turn into a kind of realization that you have to modernize, you have to make progress, you actually have to make certain compromises, or constitutional changes, all those kind of stuff.
3
SPEAKER_01
So the basic process of government and lawmaking.
3
SPEAKER_00
The problem is,
3
SPEAKER_00
that they say we have it all, you know?
3
SPEAKER_00
We have our parliament, we have our constitution, we have our elections, which has all been, of course, fake.
3
SPEAKER_00
But they claim they have all of that.
3
SPEAKER_00
But the problem for them is that they try to superimpose a certain ideology
3
SPEAKER_00
like all other ideological autocracies or autarchies, as in this case, that tend to dominate all these institution buildings that they have.
3
SPEAKER_00
They constantly claim, we have this, we have that.
3
SPEAKER_00
Of course, it s a generational thing.
3
SPEAKER_00
The upper echelons of this regime are mostly older people, turbaned, they are the clergy, that are afraid of the fact that they may lose their control over their whole system, that it was a sophisticated, huge system of government.
3
SPEAKER_00
And they rely on certain tools of control, which is the revolutionary guards,
3
SPEAKER_00
and other
3
SPEAKER_00
other institutions that are loyal to the state.
3
SPEAKER_00
And they spend enormous amount of funds that is available to them, at least before the sanctions.
3
SPEAKER_00
But even during the sanctions, they still have enough funds to do so.
3
SPEAKER_00
And in order to remain in power.
3
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And they re extremely ruthless in that regard.
3
SPEAKER_00
This is not a nice Islamic fatherly
3
SPEAKER_00
regime.
3
SPEAKER_00
This is a regime that I would see easily in it.
3
SPEAKER_00
Clear signs of fascism.
3
SPEAKER_00
Clear signs of the state s control and pay any price to stay in power.
3
SPEAKER_01
So even violence?
3
SPEAKER_01
Extreme violence.
3
SPEAKER_01
to return to the massacre.
3
SPEAKER_01
What were the uses of violence to suppress protests?
3
SPEAKER_00
Well, yes, it was actually quite remarkable to see that from the first or the second day of the protest, you see out in the streets this riot police, okay, which comes out in large numbers, fully geared up,
3
SPEAKER_00
Their appearance are rather terrifying, like any other riot police, probably more than any other riot police.
3
SPEAKER_00
They re violent.
3
SPEAKER_00
They stand in the streets when the students are demonstrating, even in smaller number.
3
SPEAKER_00
Because before I go to that, I should point this out to you as well, that these demonstrations are not
3
SPEAKER_00
large ones in one place.
3
SPEAKER_00
You don t see 100,000 people in one place.
3
SPEAKER_00
But you see in every neighborhood, couple of thousand of kids are demonstrating.
3
SPEAKER_00
All over Iran.
3
SPEAKER_00
All over Iran.
3
SPEAKER_00
Now all over the world in different parts.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yes, yes, yes.
3
SPEAKER_00
Actually, during the demonstrations three weeks ago, as I said, they had people in
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Sydney, Australia, New Zealand, Tokyo, all over the world.
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All protesting high gas prices, it s funny.
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SPEAKER_01
Everywhere.
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Everywhere.
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To the extent that they could be ignored, nothing but if they could not be ignored.
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And it s actually quite remarkable that this is very embarrassing to them.
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But somehow they think that this propaganda machine of them is working.
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SPEAKER_01
So you think they don t have a good even sense.
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SPEAKER_01
I mean, so there s an incompetence within the propaganda machine.
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SPEAKER_00
Yes, it is.
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SPEAKER_00
There s an incompetence across the board.
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SPEAKER_00
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 inefficiency and incompetence.
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that is associated with every action that you see, even in their suppression of this street movement.
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SPEAKER_00
But in answer to that question, you would see that this riot police,
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very, it s quite obvious that they were trained for the purpose.
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So their appearance, everything, these are not just regular army forces or soldiers, conscripts.
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They are professional forces.
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And they come not only on foot number, but they come on motorbikes.
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So there are, you would see in any of these demonstrations, there are 10, 12, 15, 20 motorbikes.
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with two passengers, one in front riding, one in the back, fully equipped with a baton, with paint guns, with pellet guns, and with bullets.
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SPEAKER_00
So they are very fully equipped, and they are terrifying.
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They go through the demonstrations and hit and beat people.
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And then they arrest.
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And then you see behind the first line,
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of these riot police, you would see all these latest models of these special armored trucks for
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moving to the demonstrations and arresting people, throwing them into this.
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And then behind that, water cannons, you see.
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And I was looking at that, I was saying, okay, this is Tehran probably, they have this.
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But then you look at the smaller cities, they still have the same thing.
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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.
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So this shows that how afraid this regime is.
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SPEAKER_01
But that also shows that there s an infrastructure that can implement violence at scale.
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SPEAKER_00
Yes, very much so.
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SPEAKER_00
And it s probably part and parcel of this regime from day one.
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The number of prisons that they have, according to perhaps an exaggerated version, they said that about 12,000 or so arrested that are in jails today, since past six weeks.
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They were 230 or 240 people were killed, including children, under 18.
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They beat up women in the street, which is extremely actually disturbing when you see these scenes.
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SPEAKER_00
So there s a lot of this is on video too, right?
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SPEAKER_00
Everything is on video.
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Everybody has a camera.
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And everybody sends to major news outlets outside Iran.
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And they immediately showed every night, if you look at BBC Persia, or Iran International, I think there are six of them actually.
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all over the Earth, in England, they are in Deutsche Welle in Germany, 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.
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SPEAKER_00
There is another one, Radio Fado, which is also funded by the American government, also fully covers all of these events.
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So there is no way that these people can, that Iran 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.
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SPEAKER_00
But they do, and this is an Islamic regime that supposedly have to have a certain sense of concern and protection.
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SPEAKER_01
Well, like a protection, 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.
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SPEAKER_00
Exactly, or fear that these women are not any longer the girls that we thought we are bringing up in this society.
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SPEAKER_01
The source of you losing your power will be these women.
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SPEAKER_00
That s the fear.
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SPEAKER_00
Yes, yeah.
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SPEAKER_00
And you see, of course, this government
3
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do have a support base.
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SPEAKER_00
I mean, it would be totally wrong to think that the Islamic Republic has not created its own power base.
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It does.
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SPEAKER_00
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.
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SPEAKER_00
But quite frankly, I don t think it s more than probably 10% of the population.
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SPEAKER_00
Be very generous.
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SPEAKER_01
I would be surprised if it s that low.
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SPEAKER_01
I would say, so if my understanding, because I ve been very deeply paying attention to the war in Ukraine, to Ukraine, to Russia, and to support in Russia for Putin, 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
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SPEAKER_01
don t see this as a battle of human rights, but see it as a battle of conservatism, like tradition versus modernization, and they value tradition.
3
SPEAKER_01
What they fear from the throwing away of the hijab is not the loss of power and the women getting human rights.
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SPEAKER_01
What they fear is the same stuff you fear when you re sitting on a porch and saying, kids these days have no respect.
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SPEAKER_01
basically that there s a large number of Iranians that probably value tradition and the beauty of the culture.
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SPEAKER_01
And they fear that kids with their internet and their videos and their revolution will throw away everything that made this country hold together for millennia, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
Yes, I know, I would agree with you in the sense that probably like everywhere else in the world, this is a generational thing.
3
SPEAKER_00
Every generation thinks differently about the younger generation, no doubt.
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And in Iran is the same.
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SPEAKER_00
But there is another factor here is involved.
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Those that we would consider them as traditional, no longer seem to have their loyalties to this regime.
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SPEAKER_00
That s powerful.
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meaning that they consider it as a brutal regime that is prepared to kill children in the streets and does a lot of things wrong.
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SPEAKER_00
Of course, it tries to take care of its own power base.
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SPEAKER_00
There s a very strong sense of, if we start here, there s a very strong sense in this regime
3
SPEAKER_00
that there are people that is theirs and there are others which are not theirs.
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SPEAKER_00
There s a word for it in Persian.
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SPEAKER_00
They call it khodi, one of us.
3
SPEAKER_00
Okay?
3
SPEAKER_00
Oh, so it s a, well, it s very, that s very fascistic.
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SPEAKER_00
It s like- Yes, yes.
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SPEAKER_00
It s all for that matter.
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SPEAKER_00
I suppose Soviet Union, if you were a member of the party and your children would have received a special kind of treatment yourself as well.
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This sense of us versus them for a while worked because the younger people coming from the countryside to the cities
4
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certain sector of them would have found protection and support from the government.
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They wanted to belong to something, and the mosques and the mourning associations in the neighborhoods and so forth would have given them.
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There s actually a term for it, it s called basiji.
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Those have been recruited
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by the state.
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SPEAKER_00
And this is the youth kind of vigilante, if you like, that you can see them also in these demonstrations.
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Sometimes thugs, they re called the civil cloth.
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SPEAKER_00
So the people that come to these demonstrations that start beating up
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these young people, and they are not in security police uniforms, but they are just regular clothes.
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SPEAKER_00
And these people, yes, they still support, and they still benefit, because they get jobs, they get privileges, and these are very important for a state.
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SPEAKER_00
that basically monopolizes most of the resources.
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SPEAKER_00
You see, even during the sanction, let alone before the sanction, the oil revenue of Iran, which is the major source of the state government, was the monopoly of the state.
4
SPEAKER_00
It was monopoly of the state during the Pahlavi era, from the start, basically.
4
SPEAKER_00
So what does that mean?
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SPEAKER_00
That means that the regime in power no longer is particularly accountable to the majority population because it extracts wealth from underground.
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SPEAKER_00
And it uses it for its own purposes, in order to make it more powerful, in order to make it more repressive than what it is the regime today.
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SPEAKER_00
So it feeds a small, or I wouldn t say, but a fair number of its own supporters.
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SPEAKER_00
I mean, the Revolutionary Guard in Iran is probably about 350,000 or something like that.
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SPEAKER_00
It s a very big force.
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SPEAKER_00
And this is not the regular army.
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SPEAKER_00
The Revolutionary Guards are independent from the army.
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SPEAKER_00
The Revolutionary Guard is armed forces controlled by the state.
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SPEAKER_00
Yes, the same as the army.
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SPEAKER_00
But these are more ideologically tied up with the state.
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SPEAKER_01
and they re also in-facing, internal-facing?
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SPEAKER_01
What s the stated purpose of the revolution?
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SPEAKER_00
Well, from day one, when the revolution succeeded, the regime in power, the Islamic regime in power, was vulnerable to all kinds of forces of opposition within Iran itself during the revolution.
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SPEAKER_00
Prevent further revolution.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, that s the revolutionary guards, and their job was to try to make sure that the regime stays in power.
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SPEAKER_00
And of course, over the course of 40 years, they became more powerful, more organized, better funded, better trained.
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SPEAKER_00
Well, at least we think they re better trained, but we don t know because the level of incompetence perhaps can be seen through their rank and file as well.
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SPEAKER_00
But, you know, they developed their own military industry.
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SPEAKER_00
I mean, those drones that you see now,
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Putin s regime are throwing on Ukrainians, poor Ukrainians.
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Those are all built by the revolutionary guards, by the military industry under the control of the revolutionary guards.
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SPEAKER_00
And like similar regimes in the Middle East, at least, these are military industrial complexes.
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SPEAKER_00
You can find them in Egypt, of course, which is very powerful, very traditional, has been in power and still is in power.
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SPEAKER_00
You find them in Pakistan, which is extremely powerful, and they can change the prime ministers as they did in the case of the last one.
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SPEAKER_00
You can find them probably in Myanmar, is the same phenomenon.
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And I can, if you look around, you can find quite a number of them.
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SPEAKER_00
And the Revolutionary Guards is equivalent of that.
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This is a powerful establishment force, which militarily is powerful, industrially is powerful, and
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SPEAKER_00
Since the start of the revolution, they have been given projects.
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SPEAKER_00
So you want to build dams, which they did a major disaster, environmental disaster.
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SPEAKER_00
They built 100 and something dams all across the country.
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SPEAKER_00
This is the revolution they regard to, does it?
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SPEAKER_00
So they have all kinds of tentacles all around the country controlling various things.
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SPEAKER_01
And because it s their job and they have power, they have prestige, there s a huge incentive to... Join them.
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SPEAKER_01
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 join the protests, sort of.
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SPEAKER_00
Well, that is the point.
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SPEAKER_00
I think, and the evolutionary guys may be an extreme, but many of the people who depend on this state for their support, now the younger generation are telling their parents, you were wrong.
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SPEAKER_00
you don t provide for us, this society, this state does not provide what we want.
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SPEAKER_00
So there is a dissent within the family, it seems to me.
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SPEAKER_00
I hope it s not a wishful thinking.
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SPEAKER_00
You know, there is a kind of a joke going around.
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You see these determined guys, the clergy, bearded, traditional clerical appearance.
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SPEAKER_00
When you see them talking about women,
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SPEAKER_00
They are very, of course, politically incorrect.
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SPEAKER_00
They are very looking down towards women.
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SPEAKER_00
As I said, you know, they have to be inside, they have to be protected, they have not to be seen, and so forth.
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SPEAKER_00
But if they have a young person, a young daughter in their family, you see that they re, you know,
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discourse changes, they no longer seem to be referring to women as second-class citizens.
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SPEAKER_00
So that s very important.
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SPEAKER_00
That s precisely that point, that when you have this younger generation, no matter how privileged they are, and many of them are privileged, and there is also
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SPEAKER_00
The regime has created its own privilege class that are not necessarily
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directly paid by the regime, but they benefit from contractors, certain professions that benefit from what the state provides for them.
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SPEAKER_00
And Iran is a, I mean, the past 40 years, you can see Iran has developed in terms of material culture remarkably.
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Iran has good communication, has roads all over the place.
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SPEAKER_00
It s not like a, it s more like, I don t know whether you have ever visited Turkey, for instance.
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SPEAKER_00
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.
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SPEAKER_00
It s much, much different.
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SPEAKER_00
So in this respect, you would see certain contrast or paradoxes here.
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SPEAKER_00
On the certain respect, there is the growth, there is urbanization, there is modern economy.
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SPEAKER_00
On the other hand, you see this superimposed ideological doctrinal aspect that has driven the regime over all these years.
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SPEAKER_00
And they cannot get rid of it.
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SPEAKER_00
They cannot, in this respect, they cannot modernize themselves.
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SPEAKER_00
They think that they are already perfect in ideological sense.
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SPEAKER_00
This is the best solution for the world, not only for Iran, but for the Muslim world and for the world as a whole.
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SPEAKER_00
We are anti-imperialist.
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SPEAKER_00
We have managed to survive either under sanctions, this is all part of the rhetoric, but of course at the huge expense, the huge expense for their own population.
4
SPEAKER_00
And the point that you have raised is the fact that we now witness there is not only a generation gap between the youth and their parents,
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SPEAKER_00
but there is a break, in a sense, from the older generations.
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SPEAKER_00
And they are very distinctly the youth that has a different view of the world.
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SPEAKER_00
And it does not want to compromise.
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SPEAKER_00
Whether they would be able to succeed or not remains to be seen.
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SPEAKER_00
Whether this regime is going to suppress it, maybe.
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SPEAKER_00
But it actually brought to surface many of aspects of the weaknesses of this regime in power.
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SPEAKER_01
Well, I hear from a lot of people that are in these protests now, and so my love goes to them, and stay strong, because it s inspiring to see people fighting for those things, the women, life, and freedom, especially freedom, because that can only lead to a good thing in the long term, at least.
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SPEAKER_01
And if possible, to avoid a violent revolution,
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SPEAKER_01
Of course, that is something that we all want to see.
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SPEAKER_01
Before we return to the present, let s jump around, let s go to the past.
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SPEAKER_01
We mentioned 1979.
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SPEAKER_01
What happened in 1979 in Iran?
4
SPEAKER_01
Well, in 1979, there was,
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SPEAKER_00
a revolution that eventually came to be known as the Islamic revolution.
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SPEAKER_00
And even up to this day, many of the observers or those who have strong views would not like to refer to it as an Islamic revolution or even a revolution.
4
SPEAKER_00
Because the nature of it in the earlier stages of it started really probably around 1977.
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SPEAKER_00
It took two years.
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SPEAKER_00
was much more all-embracing.
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SPEAKER_00
It was not Islamic in a particular fashion or at all in a sense.
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SPEAKER_00
It started with a kind of a very liberal democrat agenda.
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SPEAKER_00
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 Pahlavi period.
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SPEAKER_00
It s a period of the Shah became increasingly authoritarian.
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SPEAKER_00
increasingly suppressive, and therefore basically leaving no space, no political space, open for any kind of a give and take, any kind of a conversation or participation.
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SPEAKER_00
That was in the 70s.
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SPEAKER_00
70s, 70s, particularly in the 70s.
4
SPEAKER_01
Can we actually even just do a whirlwind review from 1906 to 1979?
4
SPEAKER_00
Yes, okay, sure.
4
SPEAKER_00
In 1906, there was a period, actually, as you might know, the first decade or so of the 20th century witnessed numerous, what we refer to as constitutional revolutions, including Russia in 1905, the first revolution.
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SPEAKER_00
including the Chinese Revolution in 19, Constitutional Revolution in 1910, the Young Turks Revolution in 1908, and the Iranian Revolution in 1906.
4
SPEAKER_00
Do you understand why the synchronicity of all of it?
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SPEAKER_01
Why in so many different places, very different cultures, very different governments?
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SPEAKER_00
Very different cultures, but all of them, in a sense, were coming out of regimes that became progressively powerful.
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SPEAKER_00
without having any kind of a legal system that would protect the individual vis-a-vis the state.
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SPEAKER_00
So the idea of law and the constitution according to which there should be a certain protection, a certain civil society, became very common.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, but I wonder where that,
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SPEAKER_01
because that s been that way for a very, very long time.
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SPEAKER_01
And so I wonder, you know, it s funny, certain ideas, just their time comes.
4
SPEAKER_00
Exactly, it s like 1848, when you would see that there s a whole range of revolutions across Europe.
4
SPEAKER_00
Or you would see, for instance, the Arab Spring.
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SPEAKER_00
You see all these revolutions in the Arab world, which unfortunately, nearly all of them failed.
4
SPEAKER_00
So yes, these are very contagious ideas that moves across frontiers from one culture to another.
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SPEAKER_00
And I presume we can add to that there are two elements which one can say there was a greater communication, there is a greater sense of a world economy.
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SPEAKER_00
And the turn of the century witnessed, the first decade of the century witnessed a period of volatility.
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SPEAKER_00
particularly in currency.
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SPEAKER_00
So many of the countries of the world, particularly non-West, suffered, particularly the businesses suffered.
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SPEAKER_00
And not surprisingly, the business class were in the forefront of many of these constitutional movements requiring the state
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SPEAKER_00
to give the kind of a created the right kind of institutions to listen to their voices to their concerns and the creation of a democratic system parliamentary and system with which there would be representation
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SPEAKER_00
popular representation, proper elections, and so forth, and constitutions.
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SPEAKER_00
And this very much is a kind of a French idea of the constitution going back all the way, perhaps, to 1789 revolution.
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SPEAKER_00
Montesquieu, all this kind of philosophes were greatly appreciated, particularly the French system.
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SPEAKER_00
So what were the ideas in the 1906 Iranian constitution?
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SPEAKER_00
They were precisely the same.
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SPEAKER_00
They were demanding a creation of a legal system with division of power between the three, executive, legislative, and the judiciary.
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SPEAKER_00
Not unlike the American system.
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SPEAKER_00
and they requested basically a certain public space to be created between the two sources of power.
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SPEAKER_00
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
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SPEAKER_00
full control over the religious aspects.
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SPEAKER_00
And both of them, from the perspective of the constitution, it is considered as repressive.
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SPEAKER_00
And therefore, there has to be a new space open between these two.
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SPEAKER_00
And that was the idea of a constitutional revolution.
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SPEAKER_00
By its very nature, it was an idea of modernity.
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SPEAKER_00
They wanted a modern society.
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SPEAKER_00
They wanted a better material life.
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SPEAKER_00
They wanted more representation and so forth.
5
SPEAKER_01
The constitutional revolution, as I always would say, is much more of an innocent revolution.
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SPEAKER_01
It s a revolution that did not particularly have much violence in it, contrary to many other revolutions.
5
SPEAKER_01
I did not have a centralized leadership, per se.
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SPEAKER_01
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.
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SPEAKER_01
Are there any echoes?
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SPEAKER_01
Yes, yes, there are.
5
SPEAKER_01
Because that was a movement that started without
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SPEAKER_01
without a centralized leadership, but actually various voices that emerged in various, among the merchants or the businessmen in the economic community, among the representatives who came to the first parliament, the press, the new generation of the privileged aristocracy,
5
SPEAKER_01
who were educated and believed in the constitutional values, all of these voices emerged at the same time.
5
SPEAKER_01
And somehow they managed to coexist in the first and the second parliaments that were created between 1906 and 1910 or 1911.
5
SPEAKER_01
But they all faced huge problems, in the sense that Iran was in a dire economic situation.
5
SPEAKER_01
This is before the days of the discovery of oil, which actually coincides with the discovery.
5
SPEAKER_01
There are two important coincidences.
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SPEAKER_01
One is that the oil was discovered in the South in 1909, during the course of the constitutional revolution.
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SPEAKER_01
The second is that in 1907,
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SPEAKER_01
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.
5
SPEAKER_01
basically came to an agreement facing the fear of the rise of the German Empire.
5
SPEAKER_01
So this is the period of Entente, as you might know in European history, whereby the French, the British, and the Russians all create a
5
SPEAKER_01
alliance that ultimately leads to the First World War against Germany.
5
SPEAKER_00
And at the same time, the discovery of oil, the oil industry being a very powerful defining factor of the 20th century for Iran.
5
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
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SPEAKER_00
A source of a lot of money.
5
SPEAKER_01
A lot of money, but not all of it in the hands of the Iranians.
5
SPEAKER_01
Only one fifth of it, by way of royalties, came to Iran.
5
SPEAKER_01
Much of it went to the Anglo
5
SPEAKER_01
Persian oil company which they actually discovered the oil in the province Khuzestan province in the southwest of Iran where is the major oil industries today right now and this is an extremely profitable
5
SPEAKER_01
enterprise for that company and for the British government.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s actually purchased by the British government.
5
SPEAKER_01
Churchill purchased Anglo-Iranian oil company for the British government.
5
SPEAKER_01
So it was not anymore a private company.
5
SPEAKER_01
It was a British interest as a matter of fact.
5
SPEAKER_01
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, a more strong state, if you like to call it.
5
SPEAKER_01
that 19th century Iran never had that kind of a power, never had that kind of resources.
5
SPEAKER_01
Is it 20th century?
5
SPEAKER_01
Even that one-fifth of the income that reached the Iranian state gave it a greater power.
5
SPEAKER_00
That s another coincidence.
5
SPEAKER_00
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
5
SPEAKER_00
have dictators with power unlike anything else in human history.
5
SPEAKER_00
That s weird, too.
5
SPEAKER_01
Precisely.
5
SPEAKER_01
And you know, you can name them from the beginning of the century with people like, I don t know, Lenin, Stalin, of course, Hitler, even Mao, of course.
5
SPEAKER_01
You can name them, and probably, as I would say, the last of them is Khomeini in that century, that you would see this strong man.
5
SPEAKER_01
with a sense of either artificial or real, or a sense of a so-called charisma, and with this total power over the regime that they create.
5
SPEAKER_01
Some of them do, Nasser, he 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.
5
SPEAKER_01
So it necessarily does not tie up to economic resources underground.
5
SPEAKER_01
But in the Iranian case, unfortunately it did.
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And it created more than one issue for Iran.
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It s created a strong state, which is the Pahlavi state from 1921 onward.
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Because in 1921, at the end of the First World War, Iran was in almost a state of total bankruptcy.
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And the British...
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had a desire to try to bring Iran to the system that they created in the Middle East in the post-war era, the mandate system.
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Palestine, Iraq, and then, of course, French mandate of Lebanon and Syria, all of this.
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And Iran was separate because Iran was an independent country.
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It wasn t part of the Ottoman Empire that collapsed.
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So they had to somehow handle it.
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And what they tried to do didn t work.
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As a result, partly domestic, partly international issues brought about a regime which is headed by the founder of the Pahlavi dynasty, Reza Shah.
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SPEAKER_01
Okay, the first military officer called Reza Khan, actually a military officer of the Cossack forces.
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And the Cossack forces was the force that was created in the 19th century model of the Russian Cossacks.
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When the ruler in the 19th century visited Russia in a royal tour, and the czar showed the great Cossack forces, he said, I like this.
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SPEAKER_01
And he created one for himself with Russian officers, actually.
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So Russian officers served in Iran from Rade.
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1880s up to the revolution of 1917, the collapse of the Rezaist regime.
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SPEAKER_01
So many revolutions.
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SPEAKER_01
So many revolutions.
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And Reza Shah was an officer in that, Reza Khan was an officer in that force.
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And he created a new monarchy for reasons that we need not to go to it.
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And it s called the Pahlavi regime.
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Pahlavi regime was a modernizing regime.
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Okay?
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That brought, in effect, fulfilled many of the ambitions of the Constitution, many of the aspirations of the Constitutional Revolution.
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Better communication.
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secular education, centralized state, centralized army, better contact with the outside world, greater urbanization.
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That s what a modern state is all about.
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And in that regard, in a sense, for the first 20 years up to the Second World War, was successful.
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despite, and more significant of all, it managed to keep the European powers, which was always interfering in the local affairs of Iran, in an arm s length.
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SPEAKER_01
So they were there in an arm s length, but they were also respecting the power of the state, power of the Pahlavi state.
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During the Second World War, the same phenomenon as earlier interference led to the occupation of Iran by the Allied forces.
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The British from the south, the Russians from the north.
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the Red Army, they took over Iran.
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And of course, they said World War.
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SPEAKER_01
Yes, from 1941, up to 1945.
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And of course, when the when the Red Army refused to withdraw from Iranian Azerbaijan, and with some
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thought of possible annexation of that province, there was a big issue in the post-war Iran.
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SPEAKER_01
So after 1945?
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Yes, 1945 to 1946, there was a big... Soviet Union getting greedy.
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SPEAKER_01
Yes, but eventually they agreed.
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Eventually Stalin agreed to leave
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the Azerbaijan province in the hope that it would get some concessions from Iran, which in the oil of the Caspian area, which didn t work, and it s a different story altogether.
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But what happened is that in the post-war era, between 1944, 45, and 1953, is a period of greater
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democratization was that Reza Shah s dictatorship basically disappeared.
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And this is where you would see political parties, free press, a lot of chaotic really.
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as democracies often are.
5
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So something like, was it officially a democracy?
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Yes, it was a democracy.
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Was there elections?
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There were elections, yes, of course, yes, of course.
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And there were very diverse political tendencies came to the picture, including the Tudeh Party of Iran, which is Communist Party of Iran.
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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.
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SPEAKER_01
Did the Soviet Union have a significant influence on the... Of course, they were basically following orders from the Soviets, although they denied it, but in reality, that s the case.
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But what happened, they were seen by the Americans during the Cold War as if
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as a threat, and Iran was going through a period of demanding nationalization of its oil resources.
5
SPEAKER_01
That s a very important episode with Mossadegh, whom you might have heard about his name, Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh, who was the prime minister and the national charismatic leader from 1951 to 1953.
5
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Prior to that, he was a famous parliamentarian.
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SPEAKER_01
but this period he 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 coup
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which at least partly was supported by the funding and by the moral support of the British and the Americans, particularly by the Americans.
5
SPEAKER_01
It was always seen as one of the earliest and the most successful CIA operations during the Cold War.
5
SPEAKER_01
So CIA had something to do with it?
5
SPEAKER_00
Yes, of course, that s one of the earliest operations of the CIA.
5
SPEAKER_00
Wait a minute, what was, yes, of course, what was the CIA doing?
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SPEAKER_00
CIA, this is the time at the post-war era.
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SPEAKER_01
In the 50s.
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SPEAKER_01
In the 50s, 40s and 50s.
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The British Empire, which was really the major superpower of the region after the collapse of the Tzarist Empire,
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gradually took the second seat to the Americans, who were the newcomers and the great power and the victors of the Second World War.
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SPEAKER_01
And the Americans viewed Iran as an important, as an important country, since it has the largest common borders with the Soviet Union.
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And it was, did the South,
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was the Persian Gulf, which at the time was the greatest supplier of oil to the outside world.
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And therefore, the Americans had a particular interest in Iran.
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SPEAKER_01
And in the earlier stages, their interest was in the interest of the Iranian government, because they wanted to get rid of both
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SPEAKER_01
the Soviet Union, which made a return in the post-war era, and, of course, the British that were gradually withdrawing from Iran.
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SPEAKER_01
But they had full control over the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.
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They changed the name to Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.
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SPEAKER_01
When the name of the country officially changed from Persia to Iran, in the West, the name of the company changed.
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SPEAKER_01
And they got into a huge dispute with the other government that eventually led to the coup of 1953, which eventually created a very, very distressful memory in the minds of many of the Iranian nationalists.
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SPEAKER_01
that this was the betrayal of the great powers, the British and Americans.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yes, CIA played a part because CIA feared, contrary to the British, that they were afraid of their own oil in Iran.
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SPEAKER_01
The CIA was afraid of the Soviet penetration in the South, and particularly because there was a very powerful Communist Party in Iran, the Tudeh Party of Iran.
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SPEAKER_01
So they
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gradually shifted between the Truman administration and our Eisenhower administration.
5
SPEAKER_01
These are early days of the CIA.
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SPEAKER_01
And then they actually did participate to send their agents.
5
SPEAKER_01
There s a long story to that.
5
SPEAKER_01
And it eventually resulted in a successful coup that removed Mossadegh from power.
5
SPEAKER_00
What s the United States interest here?
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SPEAKER_00
Why are they using CIA?
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SPEAKER_00
Are they trying to make sure
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SPEAKER_00
There s not too much centralization of power in this region.
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SPEAKER_01
They were afraid of the fact that the, that of the Soviet Union and during the Cold War, that was their concern.
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SPEAKER_00
The only concern.
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SPEAKER_00
They actually almost want to protect Iran and its own sovereign processes from the influence of the Soviets.
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SPEAKER_01
Yes, because they were afraid of the fact
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SPEAKER_01
if Iran, or at least this is part of the, I m simplifying a very complex picture, but the Americans basically were thinking that if Iran is going to be lost to Soviet influence, then eventually basically all the oil resources in the Persian Gulf are going to be threatened.
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SPEAKER_01
And this would basically is the national security of the United States and all of the Western allies, European allies.
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SPEAKER_01
So in a sense, this was the long arm of the CIA to try to
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SPEAKER_01
try to make sure that that s not going to happen.
5
SPEAKER_01
And then, of course, they were persuaded by the British, because British were the old hand, which were in Iran since the beginning of the 19th century.
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SPEAKER_01
They always had relations with Iran and so forth.
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SPEAKER_01
So they gradually replaced.
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SPEAKER_01
And of course, I don t want to give them this kind of a satanic view that the Americans was a bad influence because they had also some very good influences in Iraq.
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SPEAKER_01
But this particular episode somehow shed a dark light.
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on the American presence and was used and abused time and again, particularly the revolution in 1979, which was this great Satan idea that Khomeini created.
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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.
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SPEAKER_00
Khomeini had no respect for the secular, national liberals, including Mohammad Mossadegh, but he was using it as a rhetorical tool for his own purposes.
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SPEAKER_00
But what happened is that after 1953,
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we see again the rise of authoritarian Mohammad Reza Shah s power.
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SPEAKER_01
And then he s, that s the Shah?
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SPEAKER_00
That s the Shah, that we know as Shah.
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SPEAKER_00
This is son of Reza Shah.
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SPEAKER_00
And technically, what is Shah?
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SPEAKER_00
Shah is an old term in Persian that comes from a pre-Islamic Persian of ancient times.
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SPEAKER_01
So in the context of democracy, should it be seen as like a supreme leader, king,
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SPEAKER_00
is the head of the executive power, according to the Constitution of 1906.
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SPEAKER_01
Oh, that s in the Constitution, the actual term shah.
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SPEAKER_01
Of course, he has a place in the Constitution.
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SPEAKER_01
But the actual term shah, okay, interesting.
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SPEAKER_00
But the shah is a very old term.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it s almost like a monarchic term, like a king.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it actually is a term peculiar to Iran.
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I ve written about it somewhere.
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SPEAKER_00
But because the term, the Western word in the ancient times has been rex,
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for royalty and the king.
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In the Eastern world, in India, is Raj, is the same origin, the same root.
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Iran never shared that.
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SPEAKER_00
They had the idea of, because Rex and Raj, I don t want to get into too much of a etymology, but this is an interesting one.
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SPEAKER_00
Rex and Raj both means the one that opens the road for basically enforcer of religion.
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SPEAKER_00
Okay?
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Enforcer of the right religion.
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Because Rex and Raj both have the, of the etymological origin of right, you see?
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SPEAKER_00
And right means the right religion.
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basically.
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SPEAKER_01
By the way, there s so much beautiful language here.
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I m just looking at the Persian constitution in 1906, and it says it s the constitution of the sublime state of Persia, Qajar Iran.
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SPEAKER_01
I mean, just the extra adjectives on top of this stuff is beautiful.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, because that was actually
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SPEAKER_00
The change that came about, I don t want to go too much into it, but it was called, as I pointed out before, the guarded domains of Iran.
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They changed that to the sublime state of Iran during the constitutional revolution.
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Because they wanted to give a greater sense of centrality of this state.
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SPEAKER_00
And sublime was the term we used.
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But also, what permeates all of this is a poetic,
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I mean, there is a history of poetry to the culture, which is fascinating.
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SPEAKER_01
So I mean, of course, I don t speak the language, but even 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 English-speaking world.
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SPEAKER_01
I don t know what that is.
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SPEAKER_00
Yes, there s a romantic side to it almost.
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SPEAKER_00
Romantic side, that s right.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I agree with you.
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SPEAKER_00
In Iran, of course, you know, there s a time of the constitutional revolution, there s a time of great poetry.
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This kind of patriotic sentiments that comes through poetry plays a very important part.
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Of course, these days, poetry has kind of declined.
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and instead you see the visual image that is at the center.
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SPEAKER_00
That s why cinema is so important.
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SPEAKER_00
Kids these days with their TikTok.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, let me finish this about the period of Muhammad Reza Shah.
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He built up because he received a greater income.
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from the oil revenue, and he built up a very strong state with a strong security force, a strong security apparatus, which is the SAVAK, which is an acronym for the security force in security organization.
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SPEAKER_00
And he, of course, unfortunately, in the 1960s and 70s, particularly in 1970s,
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basically suppress the voices of or possibility of any kind of a mass participation in the political process.
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SPEAKER_00
It became very much an authoritarian regime with its own technocrats
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SPEAKER_00
very much a modernist vision of Iran s future, and almost kind of messianic, that he was hoping that Iran, in a decade, would become the fifth most powerful state in the world, and reaches, as he would have said, the gates of the great civilization, very much in the mind, had this image of ancient Iran of the Achaemenid Empire.
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and we want to go back to that greatness of the Achaemenid Empire.
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Somewhat rather naive and very nationalistic in a crude fashion.
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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.
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SPEAKER_00
Then, of course, the question that comes to mind, and that probably you would like to know about, is the fact that white becomes religious, white become Islamic, if it s the popular nationalist, liberal tendency of opening up the political space.
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SPEAKER_00
and allowing 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?
6
SPEAKER_00
The reason for that, at least in a concise fashion, is the fact that on one area, that after the greater suppression of all the other voices remained,
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SPEAKER_00
Open was religion.
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SPEAKER_00
Mosques, the mullahs on the pulpit, and the message that gradually shifted from all the traditional message of the sharia of Islam, I mean all the rules and regulations of how one has to live, into something very political.
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and not only political, but also radical political.
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So.
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In the whole period from the Constitutional Revolution to the Revolution of 1979, basically the religious establishment gradually was pushed to the opposition.
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SPEAKER_00
They were not originally very conservative supporters of the state, as the Catholic Church, for instance, was a supporter of the majority of the authoritarian governments around the world.
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SPEAKER_00
But the politicization was the result of isolation, because they were left out of the system.
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SPEAKER_00
And while in isolation, they did not, they were not successful in
6
SPEAKER_00
trying to reform themselves, to try to become, to try to find answers to many of the questions of modern times.
6
SPEAKER_00
What happens to women?
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What happens to civil rights?
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SPEAKER_00
What happens to a civil society?
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SPEAKER_00
How modern law and individual freedoms have to be
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defined in Islamic terms.
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SPEAKER_00
How to separate religion and state.
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SPEAKER_00
Or how to separate the religion and state.
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SPEAKER_00
These issues were never addressed.
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SPEAKER_00
What happened is that there was this bypass through political Islam and revolutionary Islam, as it gradually they learned, you know.
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SPEAKER_00
that this is the bypass, bypass to power, basically, to become again a voice in the society, and eventually a prominent voice, and eventually a monolithic voice in the society.
6
SPEAKER_00
That s the process that led into the revolution of 1979, basically.
6
SPEAKER_00
This period, greater attention was paid to religion, even among the secular middle classes, who were alienated
6
SPEAKER_00
For a very long time, because of this extensive modernization of the Pahlavi period, they didn t have a sense of that old mullahs with their turbans.
6
SPEAKER_00
But they had a kind of aura in this period.
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SPEAKER_00
Yes, they are those who remained not corrupted.
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SPEAKER_00
They are the people who basically went against the suppression of the Pahlavi regime.
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SPEAKER_00
And Khomeini became a leader, a symbol of that.
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SPEAKER_00
Nobody ever thought in the earlier stages.
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SPEAKER_00
Among this very excited multitudes that came to the streets of the Iranian cities in 1979, or 1978 actually,
6
SPEAKER_00
really thought that this this old Mullah in the 70s that all of a sudden has appeared from the najaf
6
SPEAKER_00
through Paris to Tehran, is going to take over and create a autocracy, a religious autocracy.
6
SPEAKER_01
We have to back up for just a second.
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SPEAKER_01
Who is Khomeini?
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SPEAKER_01
You just mentioned a few disparate facts about the man.
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SPEAKER_01
Yes.
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SPEAKER_01
He was the person that took power in 1979, the Supreme Leader of Iran.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
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SPEAKER_01
You mentioned something about Paris, something about being in the 70s.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
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SPEAKER_00
What should we know about the guy?
6
SPEAKER_00
Ayatollah Khomeini, who eventually was known as Imam Khomeini, he was kind of promoted to an even more sublime position.
6
SPEAKER_01
Okay, can we, just a million tangents.
6
SPEAKER_01
Ayatollah, Imam, what do these terms mean?
6
SPEAKER_00
Well, Ayatollah means the sign of God.
6
SPEAKER_00
in the course of the 19th century or early 20th century, as the religious establishment gradually lost its greater presence in the society and its prominent places in society, they had some kind of an inflation in titles.
6
SPEAKER_00
So they gave themselves more grand titles.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, more adjectives.
6
SPEAKER_00
More adjectives, more grand titles, such as Ayatollah.
6
SPEAKER_00
that became a kind of a highest rank of the religious hierarchy.
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SPEAKER_00
Which incidentally was in unofficial hierarchy.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s not like Catholic Church that you have bishops and federal.
6
SPEAKER_00
It was very unofficial model.
6
SPEAKER_00
And he was an ayatollah.
6
SPEAKER_00
Was eventually recognized as an ayatollah.
6
SPEAKER_00
He was in the first ayatollah?
6
SPEAKER_00
No, no, no, not at all.
6
SPEAKER_00
The Ayatollahs were before him ever since the beginning of the century.
6
SPEAKER_00
But he was eventually recognized as an Ayatollah.
6
SPEAKER_00
And if I want to start it this way, Ayatollah Khomeini was born in 1900.
6
SPEAKER_00
And in a sense, all this tremendous
6
SPEAKER_00
change that Iran witnessed in the course of the 20th century was, in a sense, materializing this person.
6
SPEAKER_00
He become a mullah of a lower rank, went to the traditional madrasas, to the traditional centers for the education of the seminarians, never had a secular education,
6
SPEAKER_00
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 jurists, for the faqih, as they call them, these religious scholars or legal scholars of Islam.
6
SPEAKER_00
And then he, in the 1960s, when he was residing in Tehran and gradually becoming more important,
6
SPEAKER_00
He became a voice of opposition against the Shah.
6
SPEAKER_00
And the reason for opposition in the 1960s, early 1960s, was the fact that the Shah carried through a series of extensive modernization policies, of which the most important was the land reform.
6
SPEAKER_00
So in effect, the land distribution that took place in the early 60s removed or weakened greatly that class of landowners from the 19th century.
6
SPEAKER_00
And he, Khomeini, saw himself as a voice of that old class.
6
SPEAKER_00
that actually declared that this land redistribution is un-Islamic according to the Islamic law, property is honored, and you cannot just
6
SPEAKER_00
no matter how much and how large are these estates that the landowning class has, the government has no right to redistribute it, even among the peasants, among the people who are tilling the land.
6
SPEAKER_00
So that was a major issue.
6
SPEAKER_00
Shah also gave the right of vote to women.
6
SPEAKER_00
And that also he objected.
6
SPEAKER_00
He said women should not have a right.
6
SPEAKER_01
Can we just linger on the Islamic law?
6
SPEAKER_01
How firm and clear is the Islamic law that he was representing and embodying?
6
SPEAKER_01
Is this- Codified?
6
SPEAKER_01
Codified, yes, that s a good term.
6
SPEAKER_00
That s another issue.
6
SPEAKER_00
Not only the hierarchy was unofficial,
6
SPEAKER_00
informal, but also Islamic law, particularly Shi i law, did not have any codified system, because these religious authorities always resisted
6
SPEAKER_00
becoming under a umbrella of a more codified system of Islamic law.
6
SPEAKER_00
Because they were outside the state, in a sense.
6
SPEAKER_00
Civil law was in the hand of the religious establishment.
6
SPEAKER_00
They had their own courts, independent of the state.
6
SPEAKER_00
But other matters, legal matters, was in the hand of the government.
6
SPEAKER_00
There was a kind of de facto division between these two institutions, state versus the religious establishment.
6
SPEAKER_00
Therefore, it was not codified.
6
SPEAKER_00
So he could declare that this is unofficial, or sorry, illegal, according to the Islamic law, that you would distribute the land to the peasants.
6
SPEAKER_00
And another mujtahid or another religious authority would say, no, no, it is perfectly fine, because he has a different reading of the law.
6
SPEAKER_00
So that being in mind, that adds to the complexity of the picture.
6
SPEAKER_00
He, in 1963, there was a period of uprising of the supporters of Ayatollah Khomeini.
6
SPEAKER_00
That was a turning point, in a sense, to try to politicize the religious
6
SPEAKER_00
supporters of Ayatollah, who were loyal to Ayatollah Khomeini.
6
SPEAKER_00
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 Shah.
6
SPEAKER_00
So that s where the religious movement became a political party.
6
SPEAKER_00
In 1963 is the first moment, it s a huge uprising, and the government suppressed it.
6
SPEAKER_00
But then,
7
SPEAKER_00
the suppression would start to build.
7
SPEAKER_00
Of course, and he was sent to exile.
7
SPEAKER_00
He went to Najaf, which is this great center in southern.
7
SPEAKER_00
So he became a martyr on top of this.
7
SPEAKER_00
A martyr, he was probably even forgotten to some extent, but not, he was forgotten for the secular middle class, but not to those supporters of his who were paying him
7
SPEAKER_00
their dues, because in Islam you would pay dues to religious leaders.
7
SPEAKER_00
You know, there s religious dues and alms that you could pay to the clerical authorities, and they redistribute them among their own students and so forth.
7
SPEAKER_00
So they built actually a network of loyalty based on this
7
SPEAKER_00
And these donations that received by Ayatollah Khomeini was very effectively through his network was distributed, even if he was in exile at Sadira.
7
SPEAKER_00
So the 1977, 1978, when the situation changed and there was a little bit of opening in the political climate,
7
SPEAKER_00
Then you saw that Ayatollah Khomeini started sending cassette messages.
7
SPEAKER_00
That was his mean of communication.
7
SPEAKER_00
He was sending cassettes and cassettes were sent through the country by his network.
7
SPEAKER_00
So all declarations and saying first
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that we would like to see a greater democratization, and the Shah has to abide by the Constitution of 1907.
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This is a constitution, this is a democratic system, and so forth.
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Was he charismatic?
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Well, it depends who would call, what do you call charismatic?
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He had a long beard, he was kind of a man in turban and the gown, which was,
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a very unusual leadership.
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for people who were much more accustomed to the civilian clothing or to the equipments of the Shah s military uniforms that he used to wear.
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But I also mean like, he is a man that was able to take power to become popular, sufficiently popular.
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So like, 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?
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basically changing the tide of history in this part of the world in a way that was unexpected.
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All the above that you mentioned.
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Or was it just the beard?
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No, I think no, it s beyond the appearance.
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The appearance greatly helps, as you know.
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In the 20th century, appearance is helpful.
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Pictures for propaganda, for messaging.
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Yeah, that s an important factor.
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And he was a kind of adamant,
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and very severe in his own positions.
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He could appear very uncompromising.
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And he had a sense of confidence, self-confidence, that virtually everybody else lacked.
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And he was a man of opportunity.
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As soon as he would see that
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a chance, an opportunity would open up, he would jump on it.
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And that s what he did, basically.
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As more the political space opened, the weaknesses of the Shah s government became more evident.
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His indecision became more evident.
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His lack of confidence became more evident.
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Khomeini managed to move further into the center of the movement because he was the only authority
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that had this network of support through the mosques, through the people who paid homage to him, who followed him, because there s a sense of following of the religious leader in Shi ism.
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You are a follower of this authority, you re a follower of that authority.
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And he s basically created
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an environment in which people looked upon him as a kind of a messianic figure that came to save Iran from what they considered at the time the problems of dictatorship under the Shah.
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So there s not a suspicion about Islamic law being the primary law of the land?
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Not at all.
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People had very little sense that what Islamic law is all about, because the secular education has left that into the old religious schools.
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This is not something that ordinary educated Iranian who goes to the universities.
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is going to learn, therefore there is a sense of idealization, that there is something great there.
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And there were quite a number of intellectuals who also viewed this kind of an idea of, they would refer to as West Toxication, that is this civilization of the West that has brought with it
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all the modernity that we see around ourselves has enormous sinister features into it.
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And it has taken away from us our authenticity.
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That was the thing, that there is something authentic that should be protected.
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And therefore, a man in that kind of a garb and appearance,
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seemed as a source for return to this originality of their own culture, authenticity of their own culture.
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And it perfectly
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took advantage of that, that is Khomeini, took advantage of it and the circle around him at the expense of everybody else, which he managed in the course of 1979 to 1989, which he passed away, he died in the 10 years during this period, managed to basically transform
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the Iranian society to create institutions of the Islamic Republic, and to acquire himself the position of the guardian jurist.
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That was something completely new.
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It didn t ever exist before.
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As a matter of fact, as you might know, the model of government that a religious establishment takes over the states
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is unprecedented throughout the course of Iranian history, throughout the course of the Islamic history, I would say.
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This is the first example, and probably the only example, of a regime that the religious establishment that has always, in the course of Iranian history, ever since, I would say, probably at this 16th century, if not earlier, has been always
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separate from the state and always kind of collaborating with the state with certain tensions in between the two of them.
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They were two, basically as they would call themselves, the two pillars of stability in the society.
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That situation changed.
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For the first time, the religious establishment took over.
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the power of the state.
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And that s at the core of what we see today as a major issue for Iranian society.
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Because these are basically that old balance between the religion and the state, which was kind of a de facto separation of the authorities of the two.
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has been violated, and now you have in power a theocracy in effect, which of course only in its appearance is theocracy.
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Deep down, it s a, in my opinion, it s a brutal fascist regime that stays in power, but it has the appearance of religion into it.
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So this is really the story of the revolution.
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And as a result of that, the Iranian middle class has greatly suffered.
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It s not without a reason that you see 4 million Iranians abroad, because basically the emergence of this new power gradually isolated or marginalized the secular middle class, who could not survive under that regime, and gradually moved out.
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in the course of perhaps 30, 40 years.
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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.
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So fascinating that, how much of a weird quirk of history is it that religion
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would take hold in a country?
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Like, does it have to do with the individual?
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It seems like if we re-ran the 20th century a thousand times, we would get the 79 revolution resulting in Islamic law, like, less than, you know, 1% of the time, it feels like.
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Or no, which percentage would you put?
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Well, I think it has something to do
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with the very complex nature of how Iran evolved.
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over a long period of time, since the 16th century.
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That s why, if I would for a moment talk about what I have written, I ve written a book that s called Iran, A Modern History, and it does not start in the 20th century.
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It starts in the 16th century.
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Because that s what I ve argued, that this complex process, that at the end of the day resulted in what we see around us today,
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is something that was in making for a very long time.
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And religion was a big part of it.
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She and the Messiah complex, the longing for this great vision of a great nation that somehow is
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the sublime nation that can only be fully sublime through religion.
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Or at the time, it was thought that is through religion.
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Ever since then, it s disillusionment with that image, or at least a process of disillusionment.
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The outcome of it is what we see today.
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Basically, that process of 40 years is a process of readjusting to the realities of the world.
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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 greatness led into this great disappointment.
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So it s a movement of the great disappointment in a sense.
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Like most messianic movements, by the way.
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Messianic movements in general are always leading into great disappointments.
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But what I have here that perhaps should be added to it, that yes, it was a peculiarity of Iran as a society that had to experience
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this eventual encounter between religion and state.
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That s something to do with the nature of Shi ism.
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That s just one point that should be pointed out.
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Most of Sunni Islam don t have that kind of, I say most because there is something there.
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But Sunni Islam in general does not have that kind of an aspiration for the coming of a messianic leader.
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Shi ism does.
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Shi ism in its 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.
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Of course, I mean, between parentheses, all societies look for
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messianic leaders, I mean, just look around us.
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But some societies more than others.
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There s certain culture, it might have to do with the romantic poetry that we mentioned earlier.
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I mean, surely, I mean, not to draw too many parallels, but with the Soviet Union, there was romanticism too.
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I mean, I don t know, it does, maybe idealism?
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a sense of a savior who would bring you out of the misery that you re in.
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And always looking for a third party.
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to solve your issues.
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That s why probably this movement has a particular significance, because it probably doesn t look for a messiah.
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Although I was talking to my brother, who is a historian also, and he was saying perhaps the messiah of this movement is that Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old girl.
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that was killed.
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It s a martyred messiah who is now leading a movement which no longer has that charismatic leadership with it.
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But yes, I would say that Iran has been the birthplace, if I might say that, of messianic aspirations.
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Going back to ancient Zoroastrianism, which is really the whole system that you see in major religions, or at least so-called Western religions, Abrahamic religions, is parallel or perhaps influenced by Zoroastrianism, in which there is an idea of this world and the other world, there s a hereafter.
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There is an idea of a judgment at the end of the time,
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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.
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So it s a very old phenomenon in Iran, very old.
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And it s time and again repeated itself in the course of its history, but never as powerfully.
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as it happened in 1979, and never in the form of authority from within the religious establishment.
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It was always the dissent movements that were kind of antinomian.
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They were against the authority of the religious establishment.
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That changed in the 20th century.
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but the revolution in 1979, that change is still with us today.
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Can we just linger on, are there some practical
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games of power that occurred in the way that Stalin took power and held power in the early days?
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Was there something like this in terms of the establishment of the Revolutionary Guard and all those kinds of stuff?
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So it s the messianic figure that has some support from the people, but does he have to crush his enemies in competition?
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It certainly did.
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Probably not, certainly not as brutal in terms of the victims as you would see in Soviet Union under Stalin, who the bloodshed or the destruction of the population was far greater than what you would find in Iran of the Islamic Republic.
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It s uncomparable.
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Perhaps I would find a greater parallel with Mao Zedong and particularly because
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Because China has a very strong messianic tradition since the ancient times.
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So they have something, and Mao appeared as a kind of a messianic figure.
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There I can see there is a parallel.
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But also, you can see with any other authoritarian regime with a messianic fear at the head of it, that it destroys all the other forces.
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So during the course of the first 10 years of the Islamic Revolution, it destroyed the liberal nationalist secular, it destroyed
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The guerrilla movements, some of them Islamic, some of them Marxist, who turned into political parties or tendencies in the course of the post-revolution in 1979, they were completely destroyed, and in a very brutal fashion.
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And 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 now Imam Khomeini, meaning almost a sacred religious figure above the level of a religious authority.
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He s a saint kind of a figure.
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says Shi ism has this idea of imams.
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There were 11 of them.
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The 12th is hidden and would come back at the end of the time.
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This is a messianic figure.
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So the title that was always used for them only in Shi ism,
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never used for any other person.
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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.
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That s his official title.
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I love human beings so much.
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It s so beautiful.
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These titles that we give each other, it s marvelous to observe.
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SPEAKER_01
But you love it because you haven t been under that system.
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SPEAKER_00
No, I love it in the way, I love it in a very dark.
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Dark fashion.
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Kind of way.
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It caricatures itself.
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It s almost funny in its absurdity, if not for the evil that it has led to in human history.
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But also the fact that it s in fact fulfillment in a kind of completely
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unintended fashion.
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It s a fulfillment of that idea of a Messiah that they ve been waiting for.
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This Imam which is in a hidden for a thousand years is here and not here.
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And therefore Khomeini would have, in a sense, fulfilled those anticipations.
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But beyond that, I ll just give you one example.
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I know that you may have other concerns.
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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,
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who belong to variety of political parties, the left, religious left, majority of them, the Marxist left and the religious left.
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In a matter of a few weeks, or perhaps a few months, I m not actually quite sure about the time span, in a series of, these were people who have already been tried, and they were given sentences.
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They were brought back before the summary trials of three judges, or more, three, four of them.
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One of them is now the,
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a new president of the Islamic Republic, Raisi.
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And they were given quick summary sentences, which meant execution.
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So something between probably 6,000 to 8,000 were executed in a matter of a month or two months, something like that.
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Mostly in Tehran, but also in provinces.
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And that remained an extraordinary trauma for the families, for those who had these kids.
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They re all young, all young.
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So this remains very much a kind of original sin of the Islamic Republic that cannot get rid of.
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and it s in people s memories.
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They didn t allow them, even the families, to go and mourn their dead in an official symmetry which they created for them.
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Now the latest thing is that they put a huge concrete wall around it so nobody would be able to get into it.
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So these all part of this extraordinary level of, level of atrocity, brutality, that you see that the regime who claimed that it comes with the morality of religion and Islam to bring back the justice and be more,
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in a sense, kind to people, ended up with what it is in the memory of many of the people in Iran.
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So developing these fascistic tendencies.
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Very much so.
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Destroying minorities, Baha i is one of them.
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Hundreds of Baha is were, without any reason, without any involvement, were picked up and executed.
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Their properties were taken over.
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Their rights were taken away from them, even up to this day.
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This is the largest, by the way, religious minority in Iraq.
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So you would see that in many areas,
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This is a, acts very much as a, beyond authoritarian.
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It s a kind of really a fascistic regime.
8
SPEAKER_00
So Khomeini held power for 10 years, and then took power, the next supreme leader, who is still the leader today, for over 30 years, who is he?
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SPEAKER_02
Well, he was one of the, this is Ali Khamenei.
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Ayatollah.
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Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
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Imam one day, perhaps?
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SPEAKER_02
No, well, they hesitated to use the term Imam for him.
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But in any other respect, he was given all of that adulation that they did to Khomeini.
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He is the guardian jurist.
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That s what s important.
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Because the guardian jurist in the Constitution of the Islamic Republic is an authority that is above the state.
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He is not...
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elected, quote unquote, because this is a divine authority, although he s been designated by the group of determined mullahs like himself.
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SPEAKER_02
And he has the full power over all institutions of the state.
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the army, the media, the economy, every aspect of it.
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He acts like a Shah.
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He acts like this authority and authority.
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SPEAKER_02
Did that gradually develop or was that very early on?
8
SPEAKER_02
Well, that s part of the constitution of the Islamic Republic.
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SPEAKER_02
The first constitution,
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the first draft of the Constitution did not have the authority of the guardian jurist.
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But then it was added by Khomeini and his supporters.
8
SPEAKER_00
Are there actually in the Constitution any limits to his power?
8
SPEAKER_02
Yes, there is a council of the experts, so to say, that would remove him from power, I think theoretically.
8
SPEAKER_02
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.
8
SPEAKER_00
But in terms of executive, to make decisions and all that kind of stuff, does he need to check with anybody?
8
SPEAKER_00
No.
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SPEAKER_02
He does check with his own advisors, but he doesn t have any constitutional obligation to check on the decisions that he s making.
8
SPEAKER_00
So that s the supreme leader, but there s been presidents.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
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SPEAKER_00
And what s the role of the president?
8
SPEAKER_02
The president, in a sense, is the executive power.
8
SPEAKER_02
under the Islamic Republic.
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There are three heads of powers.
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There is the president that presumably has the executive power.
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There is the head of the judiciary.
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SPEAKER_02
and there is the head of the, the speaker of the parliament, majlis, Islamic majlis, which is the legislative.
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SPEAKER_02
So there s a legislative, judiciary, and executive.
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SPEAKER_02
Raisi, who is now the president, is the head of the executive.
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SPEAKER_02
Above them,
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is the supreme leader, or the guardian jurist.
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SPEAKER_00
Can you give me some insight, because I, especially, I m not exactly sure why, but the president, Ahmadinejad,
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SPEAKER_00
is somebody I m, as an American, really familiar with.
8
SPEAKER_00
Why is that exactly?
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SPEAKER_00
But why was the president the public-facing person to the world versus the supreme leader?
8
SPEAKER_00
Is that just an accident of a particular humans involved, or is this by design?
8
SPEAKER_02
No, because the supreme leader tries to keep himself out of issues of everyday politics, supposedly.
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SPEAKER_02
but therefore he is not coming to the United Nations to give a speech during the session.
8
SPEAKER_02
But Mr. Ahmadinejad, who at the time was the president, would come and make outrageous statements.
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SPEAKER_02
That s why you probably know something about him.
8
SPEAKER_00
So all of them make public statements, but he had a proclivity for outrageous statements.
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SPEAKER_02
He does all kinds of things, he makes all kinds of statements, but he is somewhat above the everyday politics, in theory.
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SPEAKER_02
But of course, he s pulling all the strings, without doubt, in every respect.
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SPEAKER_02
And it seems that you were asking, I thought you were going to ask me this question, almost without an exception,
8
SPEAKER_02
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, got into the position of the president, all of them, and it s a long list,
8
SPEAKER_02
all of them eventually fell out with the regime.
8
SPEAKER_02
So there is no president, except perhaps to some extent Rouhani, but we ll wait and see what s going to happen to him.
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SPEAKER_02
But prior to him, all of them, including Ahmadinejad,
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SPEAKER_02
fell out with the regime, with the current regime in Iran.
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SPEAKER_02
Who s Rouhani?
8
SPEAKER_00
He was officially president for eight years.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, prior to Raisi.
8
SPEAKER_00
Ibrahim Raisi, the 221, what you re saying is a phony election.
8
SPEAKER_02
Yes, it s a phony election.
8
SPEAKER_00
What happened?
8
SPEAKER_00
What s interesting?
8
SPEAKER_02
What happened?
8
SPEAKER_02
Because the process of actually candidacy for presidency is completely controlled
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SPEAKER_02
by a council that is under the control of the supreme leader.
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SPEAKER_02
So they have to approve who is going to be the candidate.
8
SPEAKER_02
So not everybody can enter and say, I would like to be a candidate.
8
SPEAKER_00
So did Rouhani fall out of favor?
8
SPEAKER_02
You re saying there s some... Well, he is kind of out of favor now, because he was more moderate than this most recent regime.
8
SPEAKER_02
But the point is that if you look, this is something almost institutional, constitutional to the regime.
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SPEAKER_02
This is a regime that rejects all of the executive powers.
8
SPEAKER_02
because the division between the supreme authority as the place of a supreme authority versus the presidency has problematic.
8
SPEAKER_02
It is as if there would be a supreme leader in the United States above all the three sources of power.
8
SPEAKER_02
I mean, that s the kind of view that you can see in today s Iran.
8
SPEAKER_02
And of course, he s at the focus of all the criticism that he receives from the demonstrators in today s Iran.
8
SPEAKER_00
So on top of all this,
8
SPEAKER_00
Recently, and throughout the last several years, US and Iran are in the midst of nuclear deal negotiations.
8
SPEAKER_00
This is another part of the story of Iran, is the development of nuclear weapons, the nuclear program.
8
SPEAKER_00
They re looking to restore the nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, JCPOA.
8
SPEAKER_00
What is the history?
8
SPEAKER_00
the present and the future of these negotiations over nuclear weapons.
8
SPEAKER_00
What is interesting to you in this full context from the 16th century of the messianic journey?
8
SPEAKER_00
What s interesting to you here?
8
SPEAKER_02
You can argue that for a long time, even under the Shah, but much more expressively and
8
SPEAKER_02
decisively under the Islamic Republic, there was a determination to have a nuclear power or nuclear weapon, in a sense.
8
SPEAKER_02
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.
8
SPEAKER_02
The reason for that is that Iran was subject of nearly nine years, eight and a half years of Iran-Iraq war, when not only Iran faced an aggressor, Iraq, that actually attacked Iran at a very critical time, at the very beginning of the Iranian Revolution,
8
SPEAKER_02
But the fact that Iran felt kind of 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.
8
SPEAKER_02
And most of the time, their support of the United States was behind Iraq vis-a-vis Iran.
8
SPEAKER_02
And Iran felt that it s been isolated and has to protect itself.
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So there is some argument for having a nuclear capabilities.
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But in reality, this has resulted in a completely mindless, crazy,
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a wasteful attempt on the side of the Iranian regime to try to develop a nuclear power.
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And therefore the rest of the world, particularly in this region, were very worried that if Iran
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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, may demand to have also nuclear weapon, given the fact that Pakistan and India has already have it.
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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?
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That being said, there was also Israel, which viewed the Islamic Republic as an archenemy.
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And some of it might be due to the Israelis  own exaggeration of Iran s threat.
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And some of it is because Iran has developed a fairly strong military, as we see today.
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And as such, this attempt to try to prevent Iran from ever getting access to a nuclear weapon, which resulted, as you might know, in these massive sanctions that were imposed upon Iran,
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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.
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This agreement, the nuclear agreement, was supposed to control or monitor Iranian nuclear industry or nuclear setup.
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in exchange for removing the sanctions.
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But this never worked, as 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 sanctions.
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the agreement that was reached under President Obama.
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Like many other policies that was implemented under Trump administration, this created a major problem.
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That is how to, under Biden, how to try to come up with a new nuclear agreement with Iran.
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In this process, since 2016,
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where the United States withdrew from the agreement, Iran felt comfortable to try to go and do whatever they want without any kind of being monitored by the international community.
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And that s the situation now.
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We don t know whether Iran is really sincere under the present regime,
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to negotiate a deal.
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We don t know that the United States is willing to do so.
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And it seems that now what is happening in terms of the protests in the Iranian streets makes it even harder in public eye to try to negotiate a deal with Iran.
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Because that means in the minds of many,
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and with some justification that if the nuclear agreement would result in the removal of many of these sanctions, millions, billions,
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as the result of the removal of the sanctions and Iran s ability to sell its oil 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.
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So that s the agreement that goes against
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coming to terms with Iran.
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But the problem is that there is no clear alternative, even I m not particularly personally favorable for this agreement to be ratified.
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But the alternative is very difficult.
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There s no way to try to see what can be done.
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Geopolitics where every alternative is terrible.
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Let me ask you about one of the most complex geopolitical situations in history.
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One aspect of it is the Cold War between Iran and Israel.
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The bigger picture of it is sometimes referred to as Israel-Palestine conflict.
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What are all the parties, nations involved?
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What are the interests that are involved?
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What s the rhetoric?
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Can you understand, make the case for each side of this conflict?
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you re opening a new can of worms that it takes another three hours of conversation.
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Just three hours?
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At least.
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What I can tell you is this.
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Iran, prior to 1979, viewed itself under the Shah as a kind of a
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if not supporter of Israel, was in very good terms with Israel.
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They had an embassy in Iran, or unofficial embassy in Iran.
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They had certain projects that s helping with the agriculture and so forth in Iran.
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But since 1979, that completely reversed.
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Part of it is that the issue of the Palestinian plight
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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 its very suppressive, very oppressive,
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treatment of the Palestinians, completely illegal taking over of the territories which is not theirs since 1967.
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And therefore it is upon the Iranian regime, Iranian Islamic Republic, to support the cause of the Palestinians.
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This came about at a time when the rest of the support for the Palestinians, including Arab nationalism, basically reached a stage of bankruptcy.
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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 willy-nilly accepting Israel in the region.
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Now, that old task of rhetorically supporting the Palestinians falls upon the Islamic Republic.
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that sees itself as a champion of the Palestinians now, without, as a matter of fact, having either the support of the Iranian people behind him.
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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 vis-a-vis the issue of Palestine.
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nor the Palestinians themselves, because the Islamic Republic s only supporting those factions within the Palestinian movement which are Islamic, quote unquote.
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And even within that, there is problems with Hamas, for instance.
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But nevertheless, it s for the Islamic Republic some kind of a propaganda tool to be able to use it for its own sake.
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and claim that we are the champions of the Palestinian people.
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Whether they have a solution, if you look at their rhetoric, if you listen to their rhetoric, it s the destruction of the state of Israel.
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And that,
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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, polity of today s Israel.
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That being said, I think also the Israelis try to get an extra mileage out of threat of Iran, quote unquote, in order to present themselves a rightful to, for terms of security and whatever else.
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the way that they re treating the Palestinians, which I think is extremely unjust.
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I think it s extremely unwise for Israel to carry on with these policies as they did since 1967, at least, and not to try to come to terms with it.
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Of course, there are huge amount of, I m not denying that at all, there s a huge amount of failures, mistakes,
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and stupidity on the side of the Palestinian leadership in various stages, not to try to make a deal.
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or try to come to terms in some fashion.
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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 very uneven circumstances, when they are not in a position to try to make a fair deal in terms of the territories,
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or in terms of their security in future vis-a-vis Israel.
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So I think there s, as you probably know, quite a lot of people that would have a different perspective than you just stated in terms of
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taking the perspective of Israel and characterizing the situation, can you steelman their side?
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Can you steelman 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
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all the things that you want to pursue in life, including foremost happiness.
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I tend to agree with you.
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And I have all the respect for the fact that Israel would like to create security and happiness for its own people.
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But there are two arguments.
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One is a moral argument.
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To my mind as a historian,
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Jews across, around the world for all through their history suffered.
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And this is a history of suffering.
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It s a history, memory of suffering.
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And they find it enormously difficult to believe that a nation that s the product of so much sacrifice, suffering, loss of life,
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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.
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And that is a moral argument, which I cannot believe under any circumstances can be accepted.
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Second, in real terms, what do you want to, you want to commit a genocide?
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you have a population there that you have to come to terms with it.
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And you cannot just postpone as they did.
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Since 67 they are postponing and hoping that it goes away somehow.
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I don t think it s going to go away.
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And it s going to get worse rather than better.
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It s a long nuanced discussion and I look forward to having it.
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So we ll just leave it there for the moment.
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But it is...
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a stressful place in the world where the rhetoric is existential, where Iran makes claims that it wants to wipe a country off the face of the earth.
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It s just the level of intensity of rhetoric is unlike anywhere else in the world.
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And extremely dangerous.
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In both directions.
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So one, the real danger,
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of the rhetoric actually being acted upon, and then the extreme political parties using the rhetoric to justify even a greater escalation.
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So if Iran is saying that this is, saying that they re wanting to wipe Israel off the face of the earth, that justifies any response.
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On the other side.
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On the other side.
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Of course, I tend to agree with you fully, and unfortunately this is a very critical situation that this region is facing, Iran in particular.
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I would say that, I hope that in the minds of the people of Israel,
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there is enough or common sense to realize that probably escalation on the Israeli side is not in the favor of anybody.
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And try to let the Iranians to go on with their empty rhetoric as they do so far.
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But at the same time, I cannot deny the fact that
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you know, there is a danger on the side of this regime and what it says.
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It cannot be denied.
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Nobody can justify that.
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Particularly because the Iranian population is not behind this regime.
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Certainly in the case of the Palestinians.
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Or for that matter, it s not Palestine.
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It s the Islamic Republic s involvement in Lebanon with Hezbollah,
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It s the Islamic Republic s involvement in Syria with Bashar Assad, its involvement in other parts of the world, perhaps even Yemen, that all of them creates extraterritorial responsibilities or interventions, unnecessary interventions,
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that ultimately is not in favor of best interests of the Iranian people or Iran as a country.
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Iran has never been involved in this kind of politics before of the Islamic Republic.
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So in a sense, the Iranian regime,
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seems to me, by going to the extreme, try to create for itself a space that it did not have or did not deserve to have.
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within the politics of the region.
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In other words, that has become part of the tool, kind of an instrument for, if you like to call it, some kind of an expansionism of the regime.
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In parts of the world where it can see there is a possibility
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for its presence, for its expansion.
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Of course, historically speaking, Iran, ever since 15th century, I think that s the earliest example I can see.
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in early modern 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 Mediterranean.
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So that s a long-term ambition that has been in the cards as far as Iran as a strategic unit is concerned.
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But by no means justified and by no means
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could be a reasonable, could be a sane policy of a nation state as today s Iran.
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But the second point is that also regimes are always victims of their own rhetoric.
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So it s, once you keep repeating something, then you become more and more committed to it.
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And it cannot remain anymore in the level of a rhetoric.
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You have to do something about it.
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So it s a compelling pressure to try to materialize what you ve been saying in your rhetoric.
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And that is even extremely more dangerous as far as Iran is concerned.
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And it brings it to some unholy alliances.
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that today we are witnessing Iran is getting involved.
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Even more dangerous than this rhetoric in terms of the vis-a-vis Israel is its involvement with Russia and to some extent with China, which we can talk about.
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What do you think about the meeting between Khamenei and Vladimir Putin in July?
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What s that alliance?
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What s that partnership?
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Is it surface-level geopolitics, or is there a deep, growing connection?
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I cannot see the difference between geopolitics and these deep connections.
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I see it s one and the same.
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Why?
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Because I think the experience of 40 years of distancing from the West, in terms of the Islamic Republic,
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And the fact that there is a shelf life to imperial presence for any empire anywhere in the world.
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So after the terrible experience of the United States in Iraq and in Afghanistan, pretty much like the British Empire, that after the Suez experience in 56, decided to withdraw from east of Suez,
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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 benefit not to get too much involved into nitty-gritty things in other parts of the world, that it s not its immediate concern.
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And I think that s
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is part of the reason, not the entire reason.
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Part of the reason why we see the emergence of a new geopolitical environment in this part of the world, of which China, Russia, possibly Iran, possibly Turkey, possibly both of them, are going to be part.
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Perhaps Saudis also, but I doubt that the Saudis under the present circumstances, although we ve 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.
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in terms of the oil production, I think it s more than that even.
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And it s not only them, but also the Emirates are doing the same thing.
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So what does that tell us?
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And that s another many-hour conversation about the oil industry in Iran and the whole region.
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In emerging this kind of a world,
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which was perhaps even 10 years ago unimaginable.
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That you see now a great power, China, that is going to remain from what we see around us as a great power.
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And Russia, adventurous, foolish, but nevertheless would remain criminal, I would say, as far as its behavior in Ukraine.
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But actually, it s a rogue nation that attracts another rogue nation.
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So Iran finds itself now in a greater place of security in alliance with Russia in the hope that this would give Iran a greater security in this part of the world.
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Whether this is realistic or an illusion,
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I think remains to be seen.
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I think Iran-China relation makes more sense.
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Although, if you ask ordinary Iranians, they don t like it.
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They would tell, why should we be?
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tied up with China as the only trade party with America because of the foolish isolations that you have created for us, because of all the sanctions that you have created for us, the Islamic Republic.
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So in a sense, it s a very difficult question to answer.
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Probably Iranians also like to be more on the other camp.
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But what happens is that in real term, what surprises me most is not this alliance with China, but it s kind of becoming a lackey or subservient to Putin s regime in Russia.
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Since if you look at it, Iran,
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ever since at least the 19th century, not going further back.
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The beginning of the 19th century always viewed Russia as the greatest threat, strategically, because it was sitting right at the top of Iran.
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It was infinitely more powerful than Iran has ever been.
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and Iran fought two rounds of war at the beginning of the century, lost the entire Caucasus to Russia, and learned its lesson, that you have to be mindful of Russia, and you have to keep it as an arm s length.
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And that s what was Iran s policy throughout the course of the 20th century, 19th and 20th century.
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up to what we see now around us, which is a very strange situation.
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Whether the balance has changed in terms of if Russia is purchasing weapons from Iran, which was unheard of,
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It means that there is a new balance is emerging, a new relationship is emerging.
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perhaps remains to be seen.
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But 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 Iran.
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See, Russians, part of the reason why it s actually Iran allied itself with British Empire,
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was the fact that it was so much afraid of the Russian expansion.
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And as such, I don t know what s going to be the future of this relationship.
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There is a big disconnect between governments and the people.
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And I think ultimately, I have faith that there s a love across the different cultures, across the different religions, amongst the people.
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And the governments are the source of the division and the conflict and the wars and all the geopolitics.
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that is in part grounded in the battle for resources and all that kind of stuff.
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Nevertheless, this is the world we live in.
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So you looked at the modern history of Iran the past few centuries.
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If you look into the future of this region, now you kind of implied that a historian has a bit of a cynical view.
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of protests and things like this that are fueled, at least in the minds of young people, with hope.
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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?
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I m not cynical.
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I try to be realistic.
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And I actually may be critical, but I have great hopes.
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in Iran s future for a variety of reasons.
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I actually did write an article, only 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 about what this movement means that we see today.
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It may fizzle,
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in a few weeks time, or it may just go on and create a new dynamics in Iranian society that would hopefully result in a peaceful process of greater accommodation and a greater tolerance within the Iranian society and with the outside world.
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And I think majority of the Iranian people don t want tension, don t want confrontation, don t want crisis.
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They, if 40 years they have suffered from a regime that have dictated an ideology that it s regressive,
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and impractical, they want to go back to a life in which they don t really create trouble for their neighbors or for the world.
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And therefore, I would see a better future for Iran.
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That s for one reason.
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Strategically or geopolitically, it may be in Iran s advantage in a peaceful fashion to negotiate
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as it s the fate of all the nations, rather than commit itself or sworn to a particular course of policy.
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So there s a give and take as the nature of politics is art of possible, as it s been said.
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So probably Iran is going to be hopefully move in that direction.
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I think there is a generational thing.
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That s the third reason.
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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.
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It has failed up to what we see today in the Iranian streets.
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And the Iranian population said no to it.
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And I think if there would have been, and I very much hope there will be, a possibility for a more open environment, more open space, where they would be able to speak their views out.
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Iranians are not on the side of moving in the extreme directions.
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They are on the side of greater accommodation and a greater interest in the outside world.
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And if you look at every aspect of today s, beside the government, every aspect of life in today s Iran, you can see that.
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From the way that people dress,
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to the way that they try to live their lives, to the way that they re educating themselves or being educated in the institutions, do you see a desire, an intention to move forward?
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And I m optimistic.
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Well, in that struggle for freedom, like I told you offline, one of my close childhood friends is Iranian.
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Just a beautiful person.
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His family is a wonderful family.
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On a personal level, it 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.
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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.
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And so my love goes out to them in the struggle for freedom.
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I have to.
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That s so nice of you to say so.
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And I very much hope so.
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There are moments of despair, and there are moments that you would think that there is no hope.
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But then again, something triggers and you see 100,000 people in the streets of Berlin that are hoping for a better future for Iran.
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And I very much hope it eventually emerges, even, I m hoping at the same time, there s not going to be a very strong leadership, as it was the case in the past.
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We started with hope, we ended with hope.
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This was a real honor, this was an incredible conversation.
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Thank you for giving such a deep and wide,
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story of this great nation, one of the great nations in history.
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And thank you for sitting down today.
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This was amazing.
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Well, a history that s, as I ve said in the start of my book, I say it s the history of a nation which has learned a huge amount from the outside world by force of its geography.
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It was always located somewhere that people would invade, or come for trade, or something happened to it that this diffused culture continued to, and they were not afraid of learning or adopting, as they do right now today.
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This is a very different society.
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Never a boring moment in its history, as you write about.
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Thank you so much, this was awesome.
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Thanks for listening to this conversation with Abba Samana.
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To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.
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And now, let me leave you with a few words from Martin Luther King, Jr.
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From every mountainside.
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let freedom ring.
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Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.