Commercial Voice (2:23)

Ceasefire agreement and will respond firmly to.

Akhtar McCoy (2:25)

Any violation of it.

Roland Oliphant (2:29)

I'm Venetia Rainey. I'm Roland Olifan and this is Battle lines. It's Monday, January 12, 2026. Since the end of December, protests have been building in Iran. What started in the bazaars of Tehran as a sign of discontent over the appalling economic situation has since split spread to almost every corner of the country. At first, the Islamic Republic tried to calm things down by offering up cash handouts, but it didn't work. Last week saw thousands and thousands of people across Iran taking to the streets, demanding the end of the regime. And over the weekend, the regime fell back on Its familiar playbook, brutal violence and an Internet blackout. According to the US based Human Rights Activist News Agency, more than 500 people have now been killed and over 10,000 arrested. So the big question on everyone's is this the end of the decades long Iranian regime? To answer that question, I'm in the studio with Roland, our foreign correspondent Akhtar McCoy and chief foreign affairs commentator David Blair. Welcome to Battlelines, guys. Okay, Akhtar, I've given a very brief overview there of the last two weeks, but can you just tell us in more detail about what caused this round of protests? Because it's a bit different from previous rounds.

Akhtar McCoy (3:35)

The protest started in one small market where if you are living in Tehran, you would go there to buy a phone. So on December 28, they just shut their shops because the Iranian currency just collapsed. One pound was about 2 million riyals. So they shut their shops and then a big escalation happened. Just half an hour later when the Grand Bazaar of Tehran, Poland has been there, they also joined the protesters. That is a big moment in the entire Iranian history. Like for centuries, when the Grand Bazaar of Tehran is against any regime in Tehran, whether the person in charge is a shah who wears a tie and a suit or it's an ayatollah with a beard and a turban, doesn't matter. They would be in very deep trouble. And that's why Khamenei tried to please them during the first stages of the protest. He said, okay, the bazaar, shopkeepers, merchants, they are our friends. We don't have any problem with them. But that didn't help and the protests escalated quickly to a small cities. On the third day, the protesters came out in the city of Qom, the holiest city in one of the holiest cities in Iran. And it's the center for Shia scholarship. That's where Anayatullah would be trained.

Roland Oliphant (4:46)

Just south of Tehran.

Akhtar McCoy (4:47)

Yeah. And a day later in Mashhad in northeast, where Khamenei was born. And now the spread is just across the country, hundreds of cities. And the main difference between this protest and the previous ones are like, previous ones were just concentrated mainly in Tehran and big cities, but the current ones are just in the small cities, unprivileged, which would be mainly generally supporters of the regime. But that makes a difference because they are angry too, and they're coming out.

Roland Oliphant (5:14)

Roland, what did you make of the protests as they continued to grow last week?

Roland Oliphant (5:18)

When you hear the news that there is a wave of protests in Tehran, you get a bit of Deja vu. I've been losing count. Act I might correct me, maybe four waves in eight years.

Akhtar McCoy (5:27)

Yeah, 70. It first started in 80 when students in Tehran protested. And then there was 2009, 2017, 1922.

Roland Oliphant (5:34)

Exactly. So since 2009, and the green movement, which was really, really close, that came close to bringing regime or changing it, they keep coming back. In the last eight years, it's been pretty much a biannual process. And there was 2017, 2018. There was women, life, freedom. And now we have this one. Each time Iranians kind of say to each other and to people like me who speak to them, this time feels different. And so each time we end up writing articles saying this kind of feels different. It's not like last time, because this and that goes on really well. This time it's different because it's outside Tehran and so on. And each time there is a sense that maybe this is the straw that breaks the camel's back. The thousandth cut, if it's death by a thousandth cut for the regime. And once again, sure enough, in my conversations with Iranians, it was this time it's different partly because of what Akhtar said about it being in other cities outside Tehran, all over the place. One person said to me, these are towns I've never even heard of, and I live in Iran. It's like little places. The other thing that's been said to me is that it's different because it's much more violent than it has been before. We've seen people burning down mosques. There have been reports of people fighting against the IRGC hitting back. I was on the phone to one person today who has recently been in touch with her relatives inside Tehran. He said, look, you know, there are a lot of weapons around in Iran. People have weapons. You know, relatives have like one or two guns at home or whatever. Like, you'd be surprised this person saying, you'd be surprised how many weapons are available.

Akhtar McCoy (7:07)

Yeah. So in the west and southwest Iran, where there are Arab and Kurdish families are living and there are, like, tribal areas. Most of those tribal areas, like, traditionally have a gun in their houses. They use it in their, like, morning times in the weddings. So I would assume much of the way the guns are coming from that side of the country. And the second place where they get the guns are like, they storm a number of police stations across the country. And the state TV is releasing footages of protesters shooting directly at security forces. So that's where the weapons would be coming. There is no supply of weapons that would be arming the protesters from outside. It's not Syria.

Roland Oliphant (7:48)

And I want to come on to the violence and some of the stories of the murdered victims in a minute because you've been doing some fantastic reporting about that. Akhtar. I just want to bring in David because I think there's a third thing that's different that we need to quickly mark, and that's the geopolitical situation. We've had Israel striking Iran. We had us striking Iran. Hezbollah has almost sort of collapsed in Lebanon. Assad is gone in Syria. So the geopolitical picture for Iran is different right now. Right. The level of support that the regime might feel it has in terms of cushioning around it.

David Blair (8:15)

That's right. And there's big difference between now and in 2009 when during those mass protests, you had a president of the United States, Obama, who wasn't even really willing to comment in public about what was happening, was very reticent about saying anything in public. And there was absolutely no question of him intervening militarily. But now you've got a president of the United States who's commenting all the time on what's happening in Iran and has publicly threatened to intervene militarily if the regime kills demonstrators, which of course, it is doing. And we know that tomorrow, Tuesday, the president is expected to be briefed on his military options. So that changes a great deal. We have to focus on what we've learned just in the last few days. Khamenei's speech on Friday is the kind of speech that he always gives during episodes of this kind, where he describes the demonstrators as his phrase was foreign hirelings. And he says there are people bent on destruction. And he said that they were causing destruction, in his phrase, just to please the president of the United States. So that speech on Friday was the trigger for the security forces to do their worst over the weekend. And that's exactly what has now happened. And the scenes that are visible now are horrendous. So I think that teaches us two things. First, Khamenei is absolutely determined to ride this out and see it off, just as he always has in the past. And secondly, there are still plenty of people prepared to obey his orders and do horrendous things to keep the regime in power.

Roland Oliphant (9:54)

Akhtar, you've been speaking or you've been looking at some of the people who've been killed. Can you tell us some of those stories and also talk about how you report during an Internet blackout?

Akhtar McCoy (10:02)

Internet blackout, like people, some people are using a Starlink but. And the regime started to disrupt that thing too, like this morning. And human rights organization, as you said reported, more than 500 people have so far been killed, including security forces. And most of those killed were like young people from as we earlier said, from unprivileged remote areas. One person who was killed on Thursday and her identity was revealed yesterday was Robina Aminian, a 23 years old student from western Kirmansha, from the Kurdish minority areas. She was studying at University of Tehran. And then one night on Talzina she decided to go after protests she was shot. And then she was moved to a hospital. Her mother, her family had to come from Kirmanshah in the west, around 600, 700 kilometers to Tehran. They did not give her the body. So they were forced to steal her daughter's body from the hospital and move it to Kirmanshah. There she was met. The family was with a heavy presence of IRGC intelligence officers. They did not let her let the family to bury the girl in their hometown. So they had to move to another, to a remote village and bury her. And they are not allowed to have a mourning ceremony or anything similar to that, which is a big thing in Kurdish areas. The regime is concerned that these funerals would spark, would gather more people, which has happened before in the early days of the protest in the south, in Isfahan, in the center of the country where people burying the protesters body and then those burial services would again become another protest rallies and there would be clashes between protesters and security forces. And as I said, most of those were killed so far like around 30. I think the only considered old person I saw yet so far was a 40 years old mother of two. But the majority are young Iranians who are frustrated with the economic situation of the region, with their suppression, with the mismanagement, with the corruption. And then they decided to come out instead of just sitting in their homes and seeing no future ahead of them. And most of them. The day two, day three of the protests, students at universities, especially new University of Tehran joined the protests. Many were arrested, some are killed. Universities are a big. Universities are very political in Iran. They can't overthrow a regime. They can bring a regime in power as they played a part in bringing the Islamic Republic in power. So it's just mainly young people who are losing their lives. And on the security forces side as well. The regime is saying dozens of being killed. Human rights forces said at least 50 security forces, members of Basij paramilitary forces. State media broadcasted footage via protesters. They call them rioters or whatever they are shooting guns at security forces. So it's like a mix of both and it's the highest dead toll of officials of any round of protests.

Roland Oliphant (13:15)

Someone else we should talk about is Raza Pahlavi, the exiled self styled Crown Prince. Roland, you interviewed him last year. Tell us a bit about who he is and also why he's so controversial for so many Iranians.

Roland Oliphant (13:28)

So Reza Pahlavi is the Crown Prince of Iran. He is the son of the Shah who was overthrown in 1979. He's been outside Iran basically all his adult life. He was basically about 19 when his father's monarchy collapsed. He's lived in exile all that time for a very long time. He's generally been considered by most Iran watchers a bit of an irrelevance. But he's kind of become more relevant actually in this. So we have seen videos of people on the streets, on the ground, kind of chanting, Paklavi's coming back. We have had videos of people waving the old Iranian flag which has the, the royal on it instead of the kind of stylized, kind of onion, like stylized image of the word Allah on it. Iranian diaspora politics is really, really difficult, especially for outsiders to understand. A lot of people hate each other and a lot of people tell you that, oh, this guy's irrelevant. And I say, no, no, no, everyone loves me, and so on. I think that the most sober assessments I've had from Iranians who are very thoughtful and who I trust is that look, yes, Paqlovi has got some constituency inside the country, whether it's small or big or whatever, there's definitely some people there who want to see him come back. What is different, what a lot of people have said is that other people who are opposition minded, many of them, some of them who really don't like him, who think he's not up to it, that he's not a strong political leader, that he's surrounded by monarchist psychopaths who want to kill everybody who was involved in 1979, literally bring back the Shah's dictatorship. Lots of people are saying, well, we don't have another leader. I've had several of these conversations. Lots of people saying, look, there is no other leader. We've had no figurehead. And one of the problems with previous waves of mobilization is there has been no figurehead. At least we have a figurehead now. And okay, maybe I can deal with that. Maybe that least worst option in a way. And therefore there was a kind of test of his credibility on Friday, I think this is quite important if you look at the timing of when Jaimene gave his speech on Friday, basically telling the security services to go and crack down and kill everybody. That came the morning after Thursday night. Pakhlevi had put out a video which got a huge amount of retweets and views in Iran, saying, 8 o' clock Thursday night, everybody come out. If you don't want to come out, stay in your living room. Just chant something. Everybody I know, everyone I was speaking to, including Iranians who had no fans of him, were saying, this is really important because it's going to tell us, like, whether people respond to his voice or not. A lot of people seem to come out. Again, difficult to assess the actual numbers, but it was very successful. And so was the following night, on Friday night. And I think there's probably not a coincidence that it was that moment on that Friday morning, the morning after that, that Khamenei, who had seemed to be slightly more restrained than he had before in terms of dealing with his protests, gives the green light to just hit them hard. So the bottom line is Pakhlavi is playing a role here. Whether you think that he is the king across the water waiting for a glorious restoration and that the Iranian people welcome him with open arms or not, that's another question. But there's no doubt that he was once considered an irrelevance. I don't think he's an irrelevance anymore. How much clout does he really have? We don't know.

Akhtar McCoy (16:38)

There's a big propaganda push to push him forward as a leader, mainly coming from the Israeli side, as Haaretz reported, that I'm not avoiding them, I'm just being very cautious. And it's because it's been very chaotic days. Instead of trying to spend time verifying things coming from him or clips that are fake, chants in it, people chanting in his favor, I would just put them aside, just report on facts that I'm sure that things are happening, not that of being fooled by some propaganda stuff.

Roland Oliphant (17:10)

What's your sense from when you speak to friends, family, people you're speaking to as sources of their support for Reza Pahlavi?

Akhtar McCoy (17:17)

None. At least among the people I know, among the people I speak with.

Roland Oliphant (17:21)

Leaders in exile always have an interest in telling their potential sponsors abroad that they're much more popular at home than they are. Pahlavi's camp claimed they have a very large network on the ground in Iran and that they have a plan and there will be a transitional government and then there will be A referendum about whether you want a constitutional monarchy or democracy and so on and all of this. The problem, of course, as the Stuart dynasty found out in the 17th and 18th centuries here in the UK here in the UK or as the Americans found out when they invaded Iraq, that doesn't always correspond with reality. I think that's what Akhtar's getting at.

Roland Oliphant (18:04)

So in reality, are there other opposition figures that people are coalescing around or is it more just we want the fall of the regime and there is no sort of plan for day after?

Akhtar McCoy (18:11)

At the moment, one of the reasons why the Islamic Republic is a sterling power is because there is no opposition to it. You have Reza Pahlavi, you have Maryam Rajavi, you have, I don't know, Masih Alinejad, Mohamed Ismailun, and none of them likes each other. And that's why the Islamic republics keep going. And inside Iran, they just want a change and doesn't matter what that change means, they just want a better life.

Roland Oliphant (18:35)

This is also what Vladimir Putin has done in Russia. And if you go back and you read Aristotle's Politics, it's the advice that he, well, you know, it's his commentary on tyranny. They've systematically eliminated any potential rallying point or opposition leader in order to remove that credible thing. Some people said to me, well, actually a much more credible figure would be Mohsen Mousavi, who basically led the Green movement back in 2009. He's been under house arrest since 2011. So some people say, well, you know, he would have credibility on the street because he's not tainted by association with the past 10 years because he's been under house arrest. But he's under house arrest and no one's talking about him as a ringleader of what's happening right now. Some people talk about how perhaps regime insider is perhaps led by the so called reformist wing by the former President Rouhani, might basically stage an internal coup and push aside Ayaltalah Khamenei somehow or other. But the truth is no one really has any idea what would happen if this all came crashing down.

David Blair (19:38)

And this is the real danger. There is no consensus whatever on what might take over from the Islamic Republic. And resolving that is not something that would happen peacefully. It would happen violently. So I fear the danger of civil war in a country the size of Iran with almost 90 million people, not to mention its geopolitical importance and all the rest of it surrounded by neighbors that would all have an interest in pitching in and stirring things up and backing their respective champions. It's a pretty nightmarish scenario.

Roland Oliphant (20:09)

We're going to take a short pause on that note. And coming up after the break, we're going to discuss whether Trump could bomb Iran and whether that would actually help. Mom.

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Roland Oliphant (22:17)

See terms. Welcome back. I'm still in the studio with Akhtar McCoy, David Blair and Roland. So okay, let's move on to the geopolitical element of this because obviously what happens to the Iranian regime is of enormous interest regionally, internationally. You mentioned Trump earlier, David Blair, let's just hear a clip of Trump talking about what he's considering on Iran.

Akhtar McCoy (22:41)

They rule through violence, but we're looking.

Venetia Rainey (22:44)

At it very seriously. The military is looking at it, and.

Akhtar McCoy (22:48)

We'Re looking at some very strong options. We'll make a determination.

Roland Oliphant (22:53)

Trump is reported to be meeting senior advisers tomorrow, Tuesday to discuss options. What are those options available to him and how likely do we actually think it is? David, maybe you want to kick us off.

David Blair (23:04)

There's a whole range of options. They go from decapitating the regime right over to non kinetic cyber options to paralyze the regime's communications. We can speculate on what all those options might be, but I think broadly speaking, the objective of any military campaign would be to make it impossible for the regime to suppress the protests and demonstrations or make it as hard as possible for them to do that, while freeing up the protests by giving them communications and allowing them to overcome the Internet blackout and communications blackout to spur that unrest. So it would be designed to tip the balance, if you like. But even just describing it makes you realize just how dangerous this would be and the extraordinary possibility of totally unexpected and uncontrollable outcomes. So one would hope that the Americans will be weighing this very carefully indeed. And one guide might be what's just happened in Venezuela where the leader of the regime, Maduro, was lifted out of the country, but in fact the regime wasn't toppled at all. His deputy has taken over. Much the same people are running Venezuela today as before in much the same way as they were always running Venezuela. And I wonder whether if Trump has anything in mind at all, that's the sort of model that he would follow in Iran, where they would dispense with the supreme leader somehow and then replace him with somebody more amenable, but essentially leave the regime in place.

Roland Oliphant (24:34)

So I think it depends what the Americans want to achieve. Do you want to simply demonstrate that Donald Trump made a promise and he kept it to maintain credibility, or do you actually want to bring down this regime? And feeding into that question is how close do you really think the regime is to collapse? Do you think that a military campaign could be enough to push it over the edge or not? Because if you make a big intervention and it doesn't work well, that's not, that's not great either. So I think you're looking at a range of options from strikes along the lines of what we saw the Israelis doing during the 12 Day War. I think the Israelis would rather the Americans do this one. That's another conversation. But I don't think we're talking about Israeli strikes in this case. Who knows? So hitting Moist, the Intelligence Ministry, the irgc, the Basij bases, Basij being the militia, strikes on the infrastructure of the state and repression and the military and so on. As David said, the communications, jamming the state's communications and ability to coordinate while simultaneously supporting the protesters, smuggling in Starlink terminals, finding a way to help the opposition coordinate inside the country, as well as get their message out. And I do think one temptation will certainly be this question about Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Is he the stopper in the bottle? And when I say stopper in the bottle, when David talked about the Venezuelan option where they took out Maduro and they have basically left the regime in place, I think the Trump administration probably, actually, to be honest, a lot of European governments and others would be perfectly happy with the regime remaining in place if they just renounced their nuclear program and finally got rid of it. And that nuclear program, as far as we understand, the intransigence on that comes from the top. It comes from Ali Khamenei, and it's been really disastrous for Iran. You ask the Iranian system, why are you so intransigent on this? Well, because it's our sovereign right. You know, we should have a sovereign right to do this. We shouldn't be intimidated. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We haven't said we're going to build a nuclear bomb. In reality, what they've done is they've kept the option open, which has brought all this pressure, all these economic sanctions, which is basically driving this kind of slow collapse of the economy in the state, which is leading to all these waves of protest. They can't fix anything. As a result, they haven't gone for a bomb, so they didn't have a bomb. To have that ultimate leverage. If you were entirely, I don't know, from a utilitarian point of view, if you were in charge of the Iranian government, me personally, I would ditch that program. I would do the deal. It would be a massive win for Trump and lift the sanctions regime. If you think that the supreme leader is the problem there, then the temptation to find out where he is and put a smart bomb into his bunker would be very strong indeed. But again, is he really the stopper in the system? What would be the actual outcome of that? I don't know.

Akhtar McCoy (27:26)

Yeah, any attack, any strike, whether it's coming from the United States or Israel, as we have seen in June, it would rally people who are even against the regime behind it. They would be supporting the regime. And it's happened historically throughout Iran history, from Darius the Great until now. So when there is a foreign invader, it doesn't matter who is in charge. And the regime would use that, like that foreign attack, foreign strike as a rallying force to collect, to raise its support, as we have seen in June, when Khamenei came out for the first time after the war, he asked one of the guys, just sing, Iran is a nationalist song. So foreign intervention would increase that feeling of being nationalists among Iranians and it would even help the regime, I would assume.

Roland Oliphant (28:12)

So. That's exactly. I think that's exactly a calculation that will be running through people's heads in the White House while they consider this. Is the risk of foreign contamination of the movement worse than the benefits of taking them out? Or do you know it's a really difficult calculation. Do you think you're actually going to stimulate support for the regime or rally around the flag effect, or do you think the disillusion is so much that we just have to do this and we'll push things over the edge? Very difficult call to make.

Roland Oliphant (28:39)

You interviewed Reza Pahlavi, the crown prince we mentioned in the first half last year, and you asked him about this issue and he gave quite an interesting answer which essentially says foreign intervention would not be welcomed. Let's hear that.

Venetia Rainey (28:49)

Getting back to the issue of maximum pressure and why it's important. Yes, maximum pressure is, of course, important, but it's not sufficient. We've been asking the world to understand that the solution is ultimately regime change in Iran and not behavior change. But in order for regime change to occur, you have to have another component parallel to the maximum pressure, and that is maximum support. And what we've been talking to the Americans, to the Europeans, is the importance of if you really want to avoid military escalation and conflict where diplomacy has failed. Let's not jump directly from failed diplomacy to contemplating conflict and war. There's a third option, and the best option are the Iranian people. And unlike other scenarios of regime change, we were poorly implemented and executed. Example Iraq and the fall of Saddam Hussein and the Ba'. Atification. The change of regime in Iran's scenario has nothing to do with what the west in particular and America specifically has experienced since 911 in Afghanistan and Iraq. Because the minute you invoke the concept, they say, oh my God, will that mean we have to commit boots on the ground. And American taxpayers say we have to fund yet another campaign. And we have an answer to that. They said the scenario of change in Iran does not have to implicate any foreign forces or any kind of occupation or military invasion, because our army on the ground, our boots on the ground, are the Iranian people in the first place, except for they are fighting the fight totally unsupported by the Western free world.

Roland Oliphant (30:23)

You're talking about a revolution in Iran?

Venetia Rainey (30:25)

Well, it is a revolutionary, or at least, to say the very least, a pre revolutionary fervor. It's escalating every day.

Roland Oliphant (30:31)

Are there other players who might be able to help things here in the uk We've got that age old conversation about prescribing the IRGC coming up again. Would that be helpful? If not, why not? And why does it keep getting bounced around?

David Blair (30:42)

Well, it may or may not be right in its own terms, but I don't think it would make any difference to events unfolding in Iran at the moment. I think the truth is that the ability of all outsiders, with the sole exception of America, to influence the course of events is basically zero. And we should be very clear about that. Another point about Khamenei's speech on Friday, which is worth noting, he gave it in the venue where he often speaks on Fridays. He gave it live on national television and in front of a big audience. So it was a statement of confidence. And this all coincided with President Trump and some unnamed sources claiming that Khamenei was actually preparing to flee the country. So he clearly wanted to demonstrate that he's absolutely determined to tough this out and he's not going anywhere. And he delivered that message. And alas, over the weekend, plenty of people saw what that meant in reality.

Akhtar McCoy (31:41)

I mean, the only way out of this situation for Khamenei, I think would be just like, he doesn't have lots of options, but he could just do some changes, some reforms. He could release political prisoners. He could say, okay, let's investigate who killed whom, let's do some economic changes. Or like go more harsher, fire President Massouz Pozestkian, which is more like a moderate, considered moderate person. The ultimate option that Khamenei has at the moment to survive the regime is to go nuclear, which is also unlikely. And as David said, fleeing to Moscow is also very, very unlikely. Because throughout his life, Khamenei lived like in a, as he claims, a revolutionary life, that his life is a sacrifice for the Islamic Republic. He was imprisoned during the Shah's administration and for the past over three decades. He is the face of the Islamic Republic. And his character, as I spoke with analysts, is not like a kind of person. He would flee and he is not an asset in Moscow, Putin wouldn't.

Roland Oliphant (32:42)

I completely agree with that assessment. And I think, just to be absolutely explicit, I think that story that was going around at the beginning of the week and over the weekend that he's considering flying to Moscow is complete nonsense.

Akhtar McCoy (32:52)

Yeah. And that's what I keep insisting. Just ignore that story.

Roland Oliphant (32:56)

Yeah. I don't know where that came from. We would be very shocked if that turned out to be the case because it just doesn't sound like him. I think he's someone who would, he would rather die in Iran than flee to Moscow. And you know, he's, he's stubborn. He's steeped in the notion of kind of, you know, sheer martyrdom. The idea that an 86 year old man with his record, with his character, everything we know about him, that he is considering doing an Assad and going to live in, in Bavika next to Viktor Yanukovych and Bashar Assad, what's he going to do? Like he's going to go down to that. That BMW dealership on Rublovka is a driving past. Like, you know, all the big billboards of like plastic surgery and use. Oh my God.

Akhtar McCoy (33:37)

I mean, yeah, I mean there is, as I said, there is a big, big Israeli propaganda push to move these things forward.

Roland Oliphant (33:44)

It doesn't make any sense at all. He's going to stay. So it's either he is pushed aside or he is killed.

Roland Oliphant (33:50)

So let's cut through some of this propaganda. What are the actual signs to look for that the regime might be about to fall in some form? Roland, you wrote a piece for us over the weekend and I thought you made some really interesting points. Can you just walk us through some of the signs that you would look for?

Roland Oliphant (34:02)

These are the signs you look for in pretty much any revolutionary situation. Okay. One is when the security services stop firing on protesters or begin to refuse orders, begin to like, stay at home.

Roland Oliphant (34:14)

Hasn't happened in Iran yet. Let's just take them off.

Roland Oliphant (34:15)

Well, let's just take that off. So until Friday, when Ayatollah gave his fiery speech and the killing started, there seemed to be a question about that. It seems like, no, they're obviously, as David said earlier, it's now clear there are plenty of people still willing to do the killing and to come out. The other thing that you look for is when high ranking officials begin to phone in sick, you know, suddenly they're staying at their country house, somewhere else in the country or, or maybe suddenly they're abroad or they're not seen or anything. When people begin to disassociate themselves from, from the leadership and begin to kind of ensure their future with the opposition, that kind of thing. I spoke to somebody who represents the Pakhlavi's team the other day and I asked him. There were some rumours going around that high ranking officials had been in touch with that team. Doesn't seem like it's true. There was a suggestion going around that Arakchi, the Foreign Minister had moved his family to Beirut under cover of an official visit. I can't say if it's true or not, I have no idea. But he's back into Iran today, so I don't know. So those are the two things you want to look for. Security services beginning to just give up, fade away and also the key kind of people in the regime. And eventually you'll be left with this. Whether it's Gaddafi, whether it's the Ayatollah where you are left with only a hardcore of your supporters around you and you are then crushed by the overwhelming numbers in front of you. That's where you'll end up. But I'm not seeing either of those play out yet.

Roland Oliphant (35:45)

Akhtaz, anything you want to add in terms of what you would look for to tell you that this time might actually lead to the fall of the regime?

Akhtar McCoy (35:52)

It all depends on whether the IRGC would defect, which the answer is absolutely no, absolutely not. Because the IRGC is the face of this. The police may defect as they did in 1979, the army may do that because they could see a face, they could see a life in the post Shah regime or whoever comes in power, they say okay, we are coming pledging loyalty to Khomeini and then we will have our jobs the next day. But for the IRGC it's different. They are the Islamic Republic and they see no life in any regime. Who would come after the Islamic republics and they are around 200,000 people with hundreds of thousands of missiles and underground missile cities. And I assume until the IRGC fractures or something happens within it, the Islamic Republic would be in power.

David Blair (36:42)

I completely agree with Actar Rowland. You know, until and unless the IRGC stops killing protesters and starts to fracture, then the odds must be that this regime will survive.

Roland Oliphant (36:54)

I want to end on a slightly gentler note. You have all been to Iran, you all have a lot of experience with Iran. What's it actually like on the ground, beyond these headlines of ayatollahs and nuclear weapons and women being forced to wear the hijab and beaten if they don't? What's it actually like when you walk around Tehran or Isfahan? Roland, kick us off.

Roland Oliphant (37:11)

I was last in Tehran for the. For the presidential election that Raisi, who later died in a helicopter crash, won. That was in 2021. So it's a few years now. So what's it like? It's incredibly busy. I mean, Tehran is a megapolis, right? I mean, I think there's something like 17 million. I don't know. I mean, like, there's Tehran and there's greater Tehran and it has. I think it's something like tripled in size since the revolution of 1979. So it used to be a relatively small place. The shahs had their palace kind of up in the. It's built on a slope, so there's this incredible ridge of mountains to the north, almost always got snow on them. You can look up there. It's wonderful. And that kind of slopes down towards the desert plain and rather like London, if you live in the north, that's your Islington and Hampstead and Highgate.

Akhtar McCoy (38:05)

Right.

Roland Oliphant (38:05)

It's rather well to do and rather pleasant because of the climate. The further down you get, the more polluted it gets, the more working class it gets. And there are these huge long streets that run down through the kind of like a grid system that runs, you know, north to south.

Akhtar McCoy (38:19)

Yeah, that's Valias.

Roland Oliphant (38:20)

Valhassa, which I believe is the longest street in the world. Yeah, Valhassa Street. I've taken a tram street. It's really busy, is quite polluted. They could do with a few more catalytic converters in the cars, I think. I mean, the general impression I got was kind of. It just looks a bit tired and a bit. What's the word?

Roland Oliphant (38:39)

Neglectful.

Roland Oliphant (38:40)

Kind of 1970s ish. A bit like it's stuck in a bit of an economic time warp. Just the feeling of the place. It's very dusty. The other thing about Iran is it's very arid. And that. I just want to mention that because we've talked about multiple crises. One of the crises is the water crisis, which you did an episode for us a couple of weeks ago.

Roland Oliphant (38:58)

We'll link to that to the show notes.

Roland Oliphant (38:59)

Every time I've been to Tehran, a conversation that's happened in the background. You know, we could park the politics and whatever else everybody's talked about. The water crisis is really bad. We've got massive dust storms down in the southwest. People have been mining the water. And this is something people, this is, this is a non political, non partisan kind of thing. Everybody knew that. It was, it was a nightmare. And the country was being hit hard by climate change that's been exacerbated by the drilling of the groundwater. So on those lovely kind of sloping north south avenues in Tehran, there are these big ditches on either side of the road. And in the ditches there, these trees are meant to grow. Those are meant to be like kind of streams coming off the glacier melt, and they're generally dry.

Akhtar McCoy (39:38)

Now I'm homesick. Now you describe in a great way.

Roland Oliphant (39:41)

David, I'm going to go to you next and then we'll end with. Akhtar knows Iran better than the rest of us.

David Blair (39:45)

I went to Iran five or six times, but I should say the last time was 10 years ago. But the first time I went there, which was in 2004, I met Ayatollah Montesseri. I went down to Qom and there he had a very modest little brown house. There was the grand ayatollah in a brown cloak and very simply dressed. And this is a man who, but for one of those whimsical features of history, would have become supreme leader of Iran. But in his final years, he ended up having a cup of tea with me.

Roland Oliphant (40:16)

Poor man.

Roland Oliphant (40:18)

Akhtar, what do you think of when you think of Iran? How do you explain the country to people?

Akhtar McCoy (40:21)

So I would take you from Mashhad the north in northeast to Chalus in the north by the Caspian Sea, through these very narrow roads with trees all like very big tall trees around it. And everything is so green. You just stop the car and then you go out, you get a picnic. You had cooked gourmet sabzi the night before, and then you would just heat it up.

Roland Oliphant (40:42)

What's that?

Akhtar McCoy (40:43)

That's the dish. That's the food. That's the food.

Roland Oliphant (40:47)

What is it? Describe it to us.

Akhtar McCoy (40:48)

Let us taste is meat, vegetables and lots of, lots of. I mean, I can't cook it, but it's delicious. And with bread. And you would set a small fire to make some tea. And then you, when you had the picnic, you would go straight to Chalus or Mahmoud Abad or any of those cities that are next to the Caspian Sea. And then you'd go there and swim. Things have changed since 2022, after Mahsa Amini's protests. Before that, women were very much under pressure to wear a headscarf. Or like a chador or like not show their parts of their body. But things have changed. Women are very defiant now. They are on the streets of Tehran or in those coastal cities in the north. Women are walking on the streets without a headscarf and the regime is too scared. And they are not arresting them for now, no, that's not their concern at the moment before the protest, the current protest as well. So you would just need to go to the north and have a swim.

Roland Oliphant (41:54)

We'll end on that note and I think that's a really nice note to end on as well, Akhtar, because it reminds us that things do change and maybe that's not a headline change, but women feeling more able to walk around without hijabs. That is a change from the previous round of protests. Change might not be a big headline. Regime falls overnight, but might be more gradual. So that's maybe an optimistic note to end on. Thanks very much for joining us on Battlelines. Roland Oliphant, my co host on Battle Lines, and our chief foreign affairs analyst, David Blair, our chief foreign affairs commentator and Achtar McCoy, foreign correspondent. That's all for today's episode of Battlelines. We'll be back again on Wednesday with our Global Health Security strand where we'll be looking at what's happening inside Iran hospitals. Until then, goodbye. Battlelines is an original podcast from the Telegraph, created by David Knowles and hosted by me, Venetia Rainey and Roland Olyphant. If you appreciated this podcast, please consider following Battlelines on your preferred podcast app. And if you have a moment, leave a review as it really helps others find the show. To stay on top of all of our news, subscribe to the Telegraph, sign up to our Dispatch, his newsletter or listen to our sister podcast Ukraine, the latest. You can get in touch directly by emailing battle linestelegraph.co.uk or contact us on X. You can find our handles in the show Notes the producer is Peter Shevlin. The executive producer is Louisa Wells.

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