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Ask Haviv Anything
Episode 75: Power, fear, and the survival of the Iranian regime, with Roya Hakakian
00:52:42
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- [00:05]
A
Hi everybody. Welcome to a new episode of Ask Khaviv Anything. We are recording on December 31st in the middle of some of the most amazing and terrifying news coming out of Iran right now of mass protests driven by a whole different host of it began with small shopkeepers in the bazaar, apparently specifically importers of gadgets and people, people who are very dependent on currency exchanges because the Iranian currency collapsed again in the last week and in the end of December. But then we've seen elderly people come out to protest, people whose pensions are fixed income and the collapse of the currency is actually hurting them very much. Iran is going through terrible collapse of infrastructures, electricity, water. The regime has mismanaged this country into the dirt. One of the wealthiest countries in the world in terms of natural resources, gas and oil especially, is among the poorest and worst managed countries in the world. We are used to talking about Iran as a great adversary of Israel, as a builder of proxies, as a regime with an ideology to destroy the Jewish state. I think too few people shine the spotlight on Iranian civilians and on their experience and on the lives they've lived. And under a regime that really thinks that its own sort of redemptive struggle and funding with billions upon billions upon billions for decades that it doesn't have of proxy systems and revolutions throughout the Middle east and advancing the great revolutionary agenda, the terrible cost that that has exacted from Iranians. And so our guest today is Roya Hakkakian, or Hakkakian, that was an Israeli pronunciation, a writer, a poet, a human rights advocate who grew up in Tehran, fled with her family to the US at the age of 18 a few years after the 1979 revolution. Her books like Assassin of the Turquoise palace, trace the Islamic Republic's decades long war on dissent, both inside Iran and also outside it, across the world. And Royal's earlier books like Journey from the Land of no shares her personal journey from a hopeful 12 year old during the 1979 revolution to a refugee, a writer, a fierce advocate for democracy. In addition to her books, she's written essays, opinion pieces for leading journals and newspapers and media platforms of various kinds. You'll recognize them, the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, the Atlantic, to name just a few. She is a fellow at Yale University's Davenport College and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Really excited to have her on. We're going to get into what's happening in Iran. Before we do that, I want to just tell you very briefly. This episode is sponsored and we're very grateful for the sponsors by Max and Susan Reichenthal. In honor of the work of the friends of the IDF FIDF who work to ensure that the soldiers of the IDF have the support they need while they serve, Max and Susan asked to dedicate this episode in honor of the IDF soldiers who put their lives on the line to protect the people of Israel. Thank you for that dedication and thank you for your support. And I want to invite everybody also to join our Patreon community if you want to ask the questions that guide the topics we choose to talk about. It is lively, it is active, people are debating each other, but it stays civil, it stays informative. I read a lot of things that some of our wonderful members post there and learn a lot. Once a month there is a live stream where you ask me anything you want to ask me. You could join us at patreon.com askhavivenything the link is in the show notes. Let's get into it. Laia, how are you?
- [03:46]
B
I'm okay. It's. It's tense. It's. I feel like we have been at this moment when big things are happening in Iran and everybody gets very excited thinking that this is the end and, and we've been proven wrong. So I'm trying not to get too excited. But it is certainly a very important moment in the half century history of Iraq.
- [04:16]
A
I think that's the key. That's the core of it. We've seen this again and again and again and again. We had the Green revolution during the Obama years, just since 2019, there have been multiple people have been killed facing down the Iranian regime and police.
- [04:30]
B
But in a way we haven't been here. A lot has changed in the way that people have presented their demands on the streets, especially since the Green revolution, because if you remember in 2009, when people took to the streets, they said, where is my vote? You ask where is my vote? When you're still in conversation with the government, when you're still. When you still believe that the system has some legitimacy. But in 2025, they're saying the dictator must go death to the Islamic Republic. And some people are chanting in favor of the son of the former Shah. So this is a huge transition because I just wanted to make that correction that even though we say we've been here, this is the evolution of the slogans, the evolution of the demands of are vastly different from what we saw in 2009 and what we are seeing now.
- [05:32]
A
It feels like a different moment for a couple different reasons. One is this is a regime that in June went through the 12 day war, and in that 12 day war turned out to be ridiculously incompetent. It's not even that Israel defeated their air force. Their air force never flew. This regime's story of itself is lost, and it turns out to be very weak and on the defensive. And one of the things that has amazed me, and I want to ask you if this is if I'm understanding what I'm seeing, is that they've responded very gently. President Pezeshkian has literally said, I want a dialogue with the protesters. I am with you. You are saying things that are true about inflation and the collapse of the currency and all the terrible troubles. We didn't see that in the past, did we? I mean, this is a regime reacting very gently because it is really and truly scared. Because their own story of why it is that they've made the people suffer has been undermined by recent events.
- [06:30]
B
Yes. So let's unpack because there is a lot that's different this time than all the previous protests. And I think the most important component here is the fact that the regime's own constituency has lost faith in its own leadership. That the 12 Day War was a huge blow. Not just that showed that the blow really revealed how weak the system was, but it also showed that everything that the Supreme Leader had been saying all along how valorous he is and how he's going to, you know, gift to the last drop of his blood to resist against the Zionists and all that was BS because what did he do? He hunkered down. He was invisible. Nobody knew where he was. And even after the war had ended, he was nowhere to be found. And so that, I mean, that sort of cowardice, the fact that, you know, he wasn't Volodymyr Zelensky, you know, in the middle of Kyiv with his camera saying, we are here, everybody's here, nobody's gone anywhere. He was nowhere to be seen. And that really was a major blow to his constituency. And I want to identify his constituency, because the rest of the country, especially after the Woman Life freedom Movement in 2022, the rest of the people who weren't in their camp to begin with had washed their hands off of this regime. So it isn't that they lost a group of people that they already had. They had lost the majority of people after the 2022.
- [08:26]
A
Can you tell us that story? The regime was never. It was always a dictatorship. That was very clear to Iranians, but there were very serious, large significant maybe 20% of the population that were deeply supportive of the regime. Where do things stand now? And can you just sort of tell us that arc very briefly for people who are unfamiliar with Iran?
- [08:43]
B
Yeah. So let's go through some pinnacles of the regime's evolution. So the revolution occurred in 1979, and then it was followed by a ten year war between, or a nine year war between Iran and Iraq. And Ayatollah Khomeini, who brought the revolution into Iran or led the revolution, still was acknowledged as sort of the spiritual leader of the nation. And so after his death, people really were grieving. But after 1989 and after his death, then the regime really recognized that first it needed to rebuild the country and then secondly that it needed to restore its relationship with the West. And then you had sort of a series of reform looking presidents who, who came to power in 1997. There was Mohammad Reza Khatami who showed up as sort of the smiling ayatollah. I don't know if you remember this, but the world was wild about Khatami. Khatami was the reformist president. And then he started at the UN talking about the dark dialogue of civilizations that he was there because he wanted to start, you know, Iran as this ancient civilization. And this is also incredibly ironic because they're Islamists, Islamists. Islamists, Islamists. And then they get into trouble and then they remember that Iran is a great civilization. And then they become patriotic and then they go back to kind of their own powerful. You know, they restore sort of their sense of confidence in who they are and where they are, and then they become Islamists. Islamist Islamists. So in 1997, Khatami begins to speak exactly in the same way that Peter Schian is speaking now, because, well, there was an incident which my second book is all about, which is that Europe completely cuts its ties with Iran. So Iran is hugely isolated, much in the same way that Iran is isolated now. So they push this, you know, happy looking, you know, moderate mullah who talks about these niceties globally and on the global stage. And everybody starts to get really excited about the reformist Iran and then nothing happens. You know, students take to the streets and Khatami quashes those protests in 1999 with as much brutality as everybody else who came before. Right. And then that leads us to 2009, which is the next round of hopeful, optimistic Iranians going to the polls to choose another reformist president. But what happens, you know, the election has been subverted and the results are, are faked. And so Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who didn't have the votes, ends up becoming the president. And so people take to the streets and say, where is my vote? At which point we recognize that even though there is at least a million, if not more people on the streets, they are still in conversation with their leadership. They're still saying, we believe in your legitimacy, so let's do a recount. And so There was a 1 million signature campaign where women were gathering signatures in order to get the permission to go into the football stadiums. So I mention this because it's important to remember that while there were these spikes of big protests, there was also always underneath the subterranean feminist movement that has always, always been going on. And then in 2022, when a young Kurdish girl named Mahsa Amini was stopped at a subway station and questioned for her improper hijab, was arrested and then beaten up and then died three days later, which in September of 2022, gave rise to the Woman Life freedom movement. That's when the slogans were entirely different. We weren't hearing, where is my vote? You know, dear Leader, please help us. It was none of that. It was death to the leader, Death to the Islamic Republic. There was also this very angry set of slogans that were in your face against the regime's sort of global or foreign policy priorities that was there on the streets specifically to say that whatever you try to, whatever propaganda you tried to sell us, we're not buying it. What has happened this time around is that rather than young people taking to the streets, rather than, you know, a series of students out of universities and high schools, we are saying middle class Iranians, especially Bazaaris, begin these round of protests. And that's the major difference. And that's where, first of all, that's where everybody, especially in the west and in the media, was suspicious or expressed disbelief in the movement in 2022 because they started saying they're just a bunch of young people. In fact, I, you know, on Twitter had a big head to head with, with a correspondent, with a, you know, renowned Iran correspondent who said, they're just a bunch of little girls who are, who are, you know, playing with fire. And I'm like, only someone who's never had to, you know, face the barrel of a gun, you know, on, on streets can call this, you know, just a bunch of little girls. But, but the reason this seems very different on one level is that you have a different age range, you have a different class of people, and you have a bunch of older people who are Showing up. And that is an addition or a major shift to what was happening in 2022. WHO supports the regime?
- [15:48]
A
Who clings to the regime when the regime sends the Basij into the streets? Who are the Basij? Where do they come from? Who will defend this regime? Why does it survive? One of the reasons that the bazaaris came out, the people of the bazaar, just to clarify, we're talking about literally the merchants, you know, small shopkeepers up to significant importers coming out and protesting, meaning people who the regime has every interest in keeping them happy and prosperous and paying taxes. Right. They're the ones driving these protests. And every possible arm and branch of Iranian society is joining them. Who supports this regime against this growing dissatisfaction that's now crossing all of these new boundaries?
- [16:30]
B
So you have a small constituency, whether it's in Basij or I think the Revolutionary Guard Corps is different because the Revolutionary Guard Corps actually runs the economic machinery of Iran. But the Basejis and a group of their own inner circle are the people who they have been economically supporting for decades and decades.
- [17:00]
A
But I mean more at a social level. In other words, Iranian society is multi ethnic. There are a lot of Arabs and Azeris and Persians are half the population, give or take, of Iran. And one of the big points or one of the interesting facts about Khamenei is that he is in fact Azeri and not Persian. And the regime has to think about these ethnic divides as a dictatorship. And there's always been disquiet among the Arabs in the south and things like that. Is there a core, let's say a Persian conservative Muslim core that they can draw support on, like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, for example? Does anybody. Or is this more like North Korea or a KGB state that Putin has built out, which is to say just literally a tiny group of oligarchs who run the place, plus everyone who works for them and benefits from the system. How should we understand the Iranian regiment?
- [17:56]
B
Whatever else they have failed at the economy, the running of the country. There's one thing they've succeeded at on a major level and that's controlling the global anti domestic narrative. The global narrative even more than the domestic narrative. So the story of their own victimization, you know, we're not evil for the sake of being evil. We're evil because we have to resist evil powers that have been trying to dominate us. And then, you know, within that sort of narrative of victimization, you know, there is, there are sort of some subplots, like the 1953 coup, where outsider Interference.
- [18:39]
A
American interference helped topple a democratically elected Iran and usher in the dictatorship of the Shah.
- [18:44]
B
Exactly, exactly. And then they, you know, when you come to the 1979 and the takeover of the American Embassy, you talk to the hostage takers and you say, so why did you take the hostages? And then they say, well, because. Because in 1953 there was a coup and we thought that if we let the American Embassy stay and operate that they were going to organize another coup. And then you would say, so why did you go around the world and start nabbing and assassinating your various dissidents, writers, artists, singers? And they say, whoa, because they were on the CIA's payroll. And so somehow they have been just promoting this narrative of victimization that even though when you think about it, you know, they've been selling for 50 years, the narrative still seems valid, especially in the west and especially to academics. The one thing they have not failed at and they've done really well, and that kind of folds in the Palestinian story and the Lebanese story and all those other things is their story of we are here because we've been victimized and we are here to defend the downtrodden. And so within that narrative, the one thing that they have, they can no longer sell to the local population is that they are defenders of, of anything or anyone, or they're trying to lift the nation. So the west forgets that they've been in power for 50 years, but the Iranians don't. So, and that's a big difference. So when you think that they've been in power for 50 years, you compare them to, I don't know, Russia, the former Soviet Union. This is not the era of Lenin or even Stalin. This is Iran, of Brezhnev time. In other words, you know, this is a regime that made huge promises about a utopia that they clearly not only didn't deliver on, but they also led everyone into hell.
- [21:11]
A
Does that explain the weakness? Because the conciliatory tone of me, I read a piece of yours in the Free Press where you have argued that they are no longer enforcing hijab laws. They're no longer being as oppressive domestically into the intimate day to day lives of people. They're trying to be a lot more hands off. And you date the beginning of that to the June war. In other words, they really are on their back feet. They really feel weakened. The economic situation has gotten more and more dire and we'll get into that in a moment. But so they're no longer really seriously carrying out sort of an Islamic revolution of Iranian society. They've lost the culture war, and now they're just trying to survive as a ruling regime.
- [21:59]
B
I think that the global narrative that they were promoting for a long time, up until the June war, was really selling, especially after October 7th, you know, when we saw these. Students across the United States and in Europe supporting Hamas. Iran was sort of, you know, revived as far as its, you know, foreign campaign of media campaign was concerned. You know, Khamenei was always on Twitter saying, way to go, you know, students, you know, you understand what your leadership doesn't understand and all that. So they had kept up the selling of the narrative, which I think has been fundamentally important to the survival of the regime, especially within the eyes of the West. But within Iran, they have the narrative lost. Khomeini came with the promise in 1979 of making utilities free, making transportation free, you know, and all these things. So, you know, he promised the same utopia that Lenin had promised, that communism had promised. And now Iran is in. Is in tatters, both economically, socially. You know, the creme de la creme of the Iranian society is outside of Iran. It's the hugest, biggest departure of, you know, exile of Iranians, diaspora Iranians at any time throughout history. So inside the country, it's very hard now to try to sell, you know, an Islamist ideology or Islamic ambition in 2025. And they have a disadvantage that actually the Soviets didn't have since I made that comparison, which is the social media. So. So, you know, there's all sorts of videos of the heads of the Revolutionary Guard Corps or, you know, leadership of the regime whose kids are in the west, you know, in Canada and the United States and Europe, you know, out shopping without the hijab or getting married, in the case of one general, Iranian general, I don't know if you saw, but this was a big story about two months ago when one of the chief chiefs of the Revolutionary Guard Corps was at the wedding walking his daughter down the aisle. But by the way, these are all sort of Western traditions that they've now adopted. So the father is walking the bride down the aisle, and the bride had this, you know, first of all, obviously wasn't covered at all, but then had. Was showing, you know, her chest. And it was definitely not the sort of bridal gown that a good, you know, the daughter of a good, you know, pious Muslim would be dressed in.
- [25:14]
A
Want to quote from your piece in the fp? Just to try and. To try and get at the hollowing out of this regime and of its own sense of its own self. You write on the streets of the nation's major cities, where the regime murdered hundreds of protesters and imprisoned more than 20,000 Iranians in 2022. Many girls and women are now walking without hijabs. You can see it for yourself in videos on social media. They're doing what anywhere else in the world is the most normal thing imaginable. But in Iran is something revolutionary. As recently as April 2024, the United nations was warning that there was a violent crackdown on women and girls, with mass arrests and harassment of anyone not adhering to the draconian laws. But now something has changed. The once menacing white vans of the morality police make far less frequent appearances. Some women are even doubling down on dissent, swapping their headscarves for helmets. They ride motorcycles, a right and a pleasure long denied to Iranian women. What was once unthinkable has become ordinary in ways no one would have predicted, and also without announcing it. The hijab laws are still on the books. Nothing has changed in the formal structures of anything. But they don't dare to enforce it, because what is this regime on its way out?
- [26:29]
B
They don't want to provoke another 2022. They don't want the sort of footage that leaked out of Iran after the killing of Mahsa Amini in 2022. They can't afford it. I think for all intents and purposes, it has fallen. So, you know, if, yes, supreme Leader is still in office, and yes, they're there, you know, the same leadership is still in power. But they are. But the fact that they are incapable of exercising their own power because they are afraid of the backlash means that they're not so in power. Right. But there's also something really important that I think I have been trying to make a point of for years, and people haven't been listening, which is that, you know, the clerical disguise is only a disguise, that, you know, there is no ideological belief system behind the regime anymore, that it's just a mafia, you know, another Soprano team operating in Iran with the same degree of corruption, ruthlessness, and everything else that goes with a mafia, with the exception that they put on these turbans and robes. And the turbans and the robes just throw the Europeans and the Westerners off. And I think that has been their major advantage, because if you took the turbans and the robes off, the Westerners would see them for who they are. They're mismanaging the country. They are beating women. They are, you know, how many reports of major financial Corruptions have come out of Iran by their own inspectors, not by, you know, some UN body or Western body, by their own inspectors showing that, you know, billions of dollars have gone missing from the national treasury.
- [28:41]
A
So let me ask you from the perspective of an Israeli, right? What the heck is Iran looking for in a country 2000km away with absolutely no shared interest? We compete over nothing. They have no interest in us in Israel. They have no border with Israel. The only explanation for the unbelievable, by the way, in Shia Islam, Al Quds isn't even Jerusalem. It's a Sunni thing. There's literally Al Quds is in Iraq somewhere. There is literally nothing that they are looking for in Israel. What are they looking for with us if the ideology has collapsed?
- [29:22]
B
Because Israel has been the winning card for the clerics. And I wrote about this in a piece for Sapir a couple of years ago saying that when Khomeini was a young cleric and he was trying to gather political momentum in the early 60s, nothing was working for him. Because all he was saying when he first started delivering big sermons was about his complaint about the size of women's skirts. He really, really was offended by the miniskirts and by the fact that women were going to work. And he was talking about, you know, how women going to the workplace would stop men from working because they were such major distraction. And so these were his sermons. They brought nobody to his side. And then at some point he delivered a speech about. Against the immunity laws in Iran. So Iran passed a law that every American in Iran had immunity, whether they were with the military or they were diplomats. Even if they were here in Iran without diplomatic protection or military protection, if they committed any sort of crime, they could be tried in the United States. And then Khomeini delivers a speech. And in that speech he says, an American dog has more dignity than Iranian. And we have become subservient to the imperialist, blood sucking Zionists and American imperialists. And after that he was off to the races. Why? Because all of a sudden you had all the leftists, all the communists, all the sort of, you know, non conservative Iranians who were always looking for a national figure who could bring everybody together, had a figure in him because they could, they could consolidate behind him over his anti imperialist, imperialist and anti Zionist message. In fact, if Iran was going to have a major, major enemy with real, you know, hostilities towards it would be Russia. Because, you know, do you realize that, you know, in the beginning of the 19th century, Iran had, was one third larger than what it is today, but lost about 1 1/2 million kilometers, square kilometers to Russia in two separate deals. So you know, Tajikistan and Armenia and part Azerbaijan. I mean all of these places where Persian by the way is still spoken, Uzbekistan. These were all the Iranian territories which Iran had to give up. So I always say that, you know, they're worried about the 39,000 square kilometers of Israel, whereas in reality they gave up one and a half million square kilometers to Russia. And by the way, Russia in 1906 bombed the first Iranian parliament that the constitutionalist movement of Iran ended up gaining and building.
- [33:14]
A
So you're describing the Red Green alliance, those communists and socialists and various anti Western ideologues were part of of Khamenei's coming to power in the revolution in 79. And then he kicks them and massacres them and arrests them immediately after coming to power. But they rode to power together.
- [33:31]
B
That formula was invented by Khomeini in 1962.
- [33:36]
A
What we're seeing today in the Red Green alliance and some activist groups and the anti Israel Gaza protests.
- [33:42]
B
I think people forget what a huge service, disservice to the rest of us, but what a huge service he performed by, by really shifting the message of his sermons. And you know, it was all anti feminist and then it turned into anti imperialist and anti Zionist and boom, everything changed. And I think it all began with him and this world that we live in, this sort of anti colonial, you know, the post October 7th, strange sort of bedfellows that we have witnessed. It's all Khomeini's invention.
- [34:23]
A
This regime came to power in 1979 and began to build out genuinely what you just said, one of the most corrupt regimes on earth. Transparency International ranks Iran, I believe 151st out of 180 countries on the list. There is almost no institution. It's almost impossible to imagine an interaction between an ordinary Iranian and the state that doesn't include corruption. And you know, we're now watching a 45%, 46% inflation just this year and that's caused the immediate spike that the merchants coming out to protest. But Iran has four different currency exchange rates set by the government. One of them is for government agencies basically. And the closer you are to government agencies, the more you can have that, that patronage and get that better government set exchange rate where the dollar is more valuable or the dollar is weaker and your currency is more valuable, whatever it is you need it to be. And it has a special goods exchange rate set by the government for importers of special things. Now in fact, because if you're closer to the regime and the IRGC owns a lot of these importing industries, it's just a different exchange rate for the people who are close to the plate. And then it has the floating exchange rate, the actual market rate, which keeps collapsing. And one of the reasons it keeps collapsing is that there's this whole dizzying array of exchange rates where access to a better government set exchange rate is part of how the government patronizes, gives patronage to industries, to individuals that government officials want to keep close or want to favor or their own families, etc. Almost nothing in Iran isn't corrupt. Vast swaths of the oil industry are owned literally by the irgc. That's not corruption, it's the system. The system itself is ownership of all state resources and all natural resources and all national resources. Every problem Iran has, and it has a lot of problems. Chronic water Scarcity. I'm reading France 24 is now a national emergency, not a seasonal problem. Multiple reports describe dried out reservoirs near Tehran and worsening shortages across provinces driven by long running drought and governance failures, including allocation, bad planning and insufficient maintenance. Groundwater over extraction is leading to land subsidence and long term damage. Mismanagement is compounding climate stress. Overbuilding, poorly planned dams, unsustainable agriculture, weak enforcement on illegal wells, electricity shortages and blackouts everywhere. Despite having one of the largest hydrocarbon reserves in the world. Recurring power shortfalls because generation and grid infrastructure are aging, investment has lagged and demand is distorted by heavy subsidies. Why does nobody build new grids, new generators, new infrastructures? Because the state subsidizes so much, so heavily that the system doesn't make money. IMF data puts Iran's 2025 average consumer price increase inflation at 40% plus the rial's slide. The currency slide is a daily lived crisis. It's now worth 1.3 million rial per US dollar. And the multiple exchange rate that I mentioned, energy shortages drag on growth and the social pressure is now exploding in the streets. Iran has a glowing future if they just have people who don't think that the entire state exists for them to rob it blind. This is a mafia state in a profound sense. Is it falling?
- [38:06]
B
Of course, we all want it to. And I think since, you know, since you put yourself in the picture, we should think about the role that Israel can play. First of all, you know, Netanyahu and Trump met in Mar a Lago in the past few days and, and Netanyahu was given the go ahead to feel free to bomb Iran. If. If it needs to. If he needs to. Because they're developing X, Y and Z again.
- [38:43]
A
I think you'll agree with me. That would be foolish right now. Right?
- [38:46]
B
Oh, my God.
- [38:47]
A
In their own failures. Yeah. Let's hope he doesn't do that now.
- [38:50]
B
Right, Right. So people have finally taken to the streets, and the last thing that Israel should do is to try to get in the way of the unfolding events, which, of course, missiles and bombs can do. The next thing I think is Israel has to remember you mentioned a whole bunch of statistics, but the one statistic you didn't mention is the rates of antisemitism in Iran as compared to the rest of the Middle east and North Africa. For the past 20 years, Iran has been lowest on anti Israel and anti Semitic sentiments by far, by far. From all its neighboring countries and the entire region. And North Africa in the MENA region. Why did that happen? It didn't happen because Iranians started to educate themselves on, you know, the history of Israel or the history of Jews. It happened because the regime that was most avidly against Israel proved to be their number one enemy. And so the nation started to recognize that the enemy of their enemy may well be their friend. And they began to then cast suspicion on all of the regime's propaganda, which was anti Jewish, anti Israel, anti Semitic and all that. So it seems to me that in a world that's burning, that's aflame with antisemitism, the fact that Iran is in this unique position is a huge achievement. And so rather than lose it and compromise it, Israel and the rest of us need to build on it. So it means, you know, obviously not bombing, but it also means that, you know, Bennett and Netanyahu and all these Israeli leaders who show up and say, people of Iran, take to the streets, just keep your mouth shut. You know, Iranians don't need Israeli leaders to tell them when to show up on the streets. You know, Iranians know what's happening. They've been giving their youth up, you know, sacrificing their children for the sake of overthrowing these people. So I think Israel needs to remember.
- [41:32]
A
That.
- [41:35]
B
What has brought Giron to this stage of being least anti Semitic, least anti Israel, actually actively anti Hamas and anti, you know, Palestinian to some degree, has nothing to do with what Israel has done, and it has everything to do with all the wrongs that the regime has done.
- [41:59]
A
What's happening inside Iran.
- [42:01]
B
Exactly. So just do what you need to do as a nation to protect yourself, and that gives you legitimacy and anything else beyond that, anything where, you know, Israeli leadership tries to provide, you know, political guidance to Iran as a nation or conduct some kind of, you know, overthrow activity will, will, will undo all the gains that have been made in Iran. So I think that's, that's a major thing to do now. Are they going to fall or not? I think, I think this is the closest Iran has come to falling in the past 48 years. And much of that is due to the 12 day war and to the complete obliteration of Hezbollah, or I shouldn't say complete, but semi complete obliteration of Hezbollah, Hamas and its proxies and the events in Syria and all right, so I think there will be change in Iran, and this isn't. And the way people are looking at this is that, you know, whereas 1979 people took to the streets because they wanted greater liberties and greater freedoms and, you know, a democratic future or whatever. They're not out on the streets because they want these luxuries. They're out on the streets because they need to survive and survival is what's driving people. That wasn't the case in the past in 1979. And so something has got to give. But I think the thing that's got to give and the thing that's most reliable as far as predicting a change is something from within the country that will shift.
- [44:12]
A
Iran's regime has done a wonderful job over 48 years of getting rid of all possible power centers from which the opposition can coalesce into something that could threaten the regime. It's not so much that the people like the regime that it survives. It's that who else is there? Where else is that other center around which anything can coalesce? And that question remains now. And so people who talk and try to game out the fall of the regime, their hopes are basically pinned on the regular Iranian army being willing to face down the irgc. I can't imagine the Iranian regime hasn't done anything for 50 years except ensure the people leading the army are incapable of doing that. Is there anybody, any power structure within Iran who can replace the regime even from within the regime? A liberal democracy would be a breathtaking breath of fresh air in the middle of that particular region. But even just, you know, a non insane, not mafia, non, you know, robber baron regime by some other element of Iranian society or politics, is there anybody who can step into the breach?
- [45:20]
B
Did you see the photo or the video of the demonstrator? The protester who sat, who was seated in the street and then facing it was it was sort of Tiananmen, like the riot police. Yeah. So that protester who was sitting in the middle of the street was beaten later on by the riot police. And so what's very interesting is that within 24 hours, the identity of those who beat him had been revealed. So it was very clear that, you.
- [46:00]
A
Know, it's no longer safe to be part of the oppressive system.
- [46:03]
B
Exactly. So, and this has hardly ever happened. I mean, people have crowdsource and try to identify in previous, you know, incidents, you know, in 2022 and before. But this time around, within 24 hours, somebody from inside the security system, the intelligence system, must have leaked the identity. So that means.
- [46:32]
A
That'S the big takeaway.
- [46:33]
B
Yes.
- [46:34]
A
Inside the system isn't uniform, is cracking, is turning on itself. They don't know who they themselves can trust in the besiege, in the police, in the irgc.
- [46:44]
B
Exactly. So, you know, can we name names and say, you know, this person within the army or that person within the irgc? I don't know their names, but I think what's clear is that the Iranian president is clearly saying, we are not going to confront people. He's not saying no one right now in Iran is saying that the protesters are being supported by the CIA or the Mossad, which is what they have said every time, every other time in every other protest. So they're not saying that this is some foreign coordinated protest, but it is something legitimate because the nation has some legitimate demands. And I think there will certainly be the elements that will peel away from within the regime. And I think there are politically figures who have been associated with the reform movement in Iran, some of whom have been in prison, in and out of prison in the past 10, 15 years, who can politically step into the limelight, the political limelight in Iran. And then, you know, they will create some kind of coalition with, you know, those who are peeling away from the military or irgc. But I don't see anybody from outside of Iran, anybody in diaspora playing a meaningful role. And I don't see.
- [48:28]
A
Including the son of the Shah. That's not something that's serious.
- [48:33]
B
No, I don't think so. And I also don't think that this first round of transition in Iran will be a transition to democracy. I think the most this round can do is to prevent chaos, and that will be a major gain. A lot of Iranians, as we know, from sort of the rates of departure from Iran, especially by the elite and by average Iranians, you know, we forget that, you know, Donald Trump keeps talking about the southern border in the United States, there have been Iranians who've been going to Latin America in order to cross the borders through, you know, in the way Latin Americans have been pouring in. So, you know, a lot of the, or at least some of the refugees who have been trying to enter the United States states are Iranians who have taken pains and put themselves through processes that no Iranian has done in the past in order to get away from Iran. So a lot of people have left, a lot of people are simply suffering. And then there's a group, and I was somewhat part of that milieu when I lived there, have created an alternative universe for themselves. So it's people who get together, whether in cafes or each other's homes, and they have, you know, artistic, literary and political sort of gatherings and exchanges. There was a group of Iranians who reached out to me and a couple of other writers in the United States about two months ago. They have started this literary online magazine and they wanted to talk to us, they wanted to get to know us. The idea that I left Iran nearly 40 years ago and then 40 years later, these young people somehow read me how I have no clue and reach out to me and want to have a webinar with me is just really mind blowing. I ended up in an anthology of poetry that came out in Iran two years ago. How I haven't even been translated. So part of the piece that you quoted from the Free Press, my main effort was to say if you see anything occurring in Iran today, it's because there's been a precedence, an enlightenment era that began in Iran in the beginning of the 19th century. I think it's hugely important for everybody to understand that Iranians are not trying to imitate people in the west because they think that, you know, what they see on Instagram is so attractive that Iranians have been on the path to secularize, to liberalize for over 150 years. And just like 1979 brought misery to the entire region by allowing Khomeini to rise to power, the success of this 150 plus year old movement in Iran can fundamentally shift the region as well. And as far as I'm concerned, I may not complete the task, but I damn sure will keep at it for as long as I can.
- [52:32]
A
Roya Hakakian, thank you so much for joining me.
- [52:35]
B
It was such a pleasure. Habib. I'm a fan.