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- [00:00]
Nagme Sohrabi
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Nagme Sohrabi
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Martin DeCaro
$25@Weightwatchers.Com history as it happens January 23, 2026 Wrath of the Ayatollahs the tearful.
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Narrator/Reporter
Shah of Iran left his country today.
- [00:40]
Nagme Sohrabi
On a vacation from which he may never return.
- [00:43]
Narrator/Reporter
Since there have been no opposition political.
- [00:45]
Historical Commentator
Figures to whom the masses could turn.
- [00:47]
Narrator/Reporter
They looked instead to their holy men for political leadership.
- [00:50]
Historical Commentator
For Khomeini, the flight from Paris to Tehran marked the end of 15 years in exile.
- [00:56]
Interviewee/Expert
Iranians continue to vote today on the new Islamic constitution, a document that legitimize the power of the religious leaders and invests in one of them supreme powers.
- [01:06]
Historical Commentator
Whereas back in the days of the Shah there was little suspense at election.
- [01:10]
Narrator/Reporter
Time, the imposition of Islamic law here has started with an order to women to cover their heads in government offices. Several of the women who stood their ground with considerable courage were stabbed as they chanted slogans for equal rights. This restaurant under threat has stopped serving alcohol.
- [01:25]
Interviewee/Expert
There's little question who that one supreme power will be. The Ayatollah Khomeini.
- [01:30]
Martin DeCaro
Iran's leaders are clinging to power through British brute force. The security forces turned their guns on the people, killing thousands in a few days. A half century after the Iranian revolution, the ideals that inspired it to overthrow a corrupt and cruel monarchy are dead and buried along with the bodies of the clerical regime's victims. How Iran got here Next, as we report history as it happens, I'm Martin DeCaro.
- [01:55]
Nagme Sohrabi
Protests in Iran continued to grow today and over the weekend, as has the death toll 67 cities across Iran where protests have been taking, including the capital Tehran. One man described treating his own gunshot wounds because he was too afraid to seek medical help. The opposition are the civil rights groups, women's rights people, the labor unionists, the environmental activists, the students who have been from inside Iran opposing the regime, have been calling for reform, have been calling for change, and have paid a price with their lives, not dying but being in prison.
- [02:46]
Martin DeCaro
In the spring of 1963, the bazaars of Tehran and other cities began to fill with posters depicting the face of a 60 year old Ayatollah named Ruhollah Khomeini. At a theological college in the holy city of Qom. Khomeini was delivering lectures on ethics and Islamic philosophy that were harshly critical of the direction the country was going in. And his popularity was climbing rapidly. So writes the historian John Ghazvinian in his book America and Iran. From these obscure origins, few outside Iran had ever heard his name. Khomeini would become, less than 20 years later, an international celebrity.
- [03:29]
Narrator/Reporter
Returns to a country teetering on the brink of civil war. Khomeini was being held down the steps of his chartered Air France jet to set foot on Iranian ground for the first time in 15 years.
- [03:42]
Martin DeCaro
A leader of a revolution from his exile, first in Iraq, but then in France, where reporters could easily reach him and try to have Khomeini explain his motivations and aims when it wasn't entirely clear that he would become the supreme leader of the world's first Islamic republic.
- [03:58]
Historical Commentator
A victory for the people was how Ayatollah Khomeini described it, his friends and followers clearly agreeing as the 78 year old exiled Muslim leader emerged from his cottage near Paris after learning the Shah had left Iran. It was Khomeini, more than any other person who helped bring about the Shah's downfall, who today called the monarch's departure a first step towards ending 50 years of tyrannical rule in Iran.
- [04:22]
Martin DeCaro
A diverse revolutionary coalition that challenged the Shah's rule in 1978 would splinter, and those who wanted to establish a repressive theocracy gain the upper hand.
- [04:33]
Narrator/Reporter
It's not exactly clear what an Islamic republic would mean for Iran and her relations with the West. Many here see it in simple terms as a return to traditional justice and strict morality. But some details are clear. Women, like these students, have been promised by Khomeini that they would have equal rights with men. Although Chidor, the traditional shroud of modesty, would not be compulsory, there would clearly be strong pressures to adopt it.
- [05:01]
Martin DeCaro
Khomeini's regime utilized systematic violence to consolidate power throughout the 1980s while fighting an existential war against Iraq.
- [05:10]
Narrator/Reporter
Despite the vast weight of Iraqi artillery that is pounding at Iranian positions daily, Iran is gradually organizing the defense of what is left.
- [05:24]
Martin DeCaro
Today under Khomeini's successor, the Ayatollah Khamenei, who assumed power in 1989. Staggering levels of state violence in a country of 90 million people might signal the beginning of the end of the clerical regime. That is, if you accept the argument that spilling so much blood is simply not sustainable, that Iran's government must reform or die.
- [05:45]
Nagme Sohrabi
Tehran is facing an unprecedented water crisis. That was the warning from the country's president, as reservoirs that supply Iran's capital have plunged to their lowest levels.
- [05:55]
Martin DeCaro
Writing for the Times of London, historian Simon Sebag Montefiore says the Islamic regime may have bankrupted Iran, but it has consistently invested in its repressive organs 190,000 Revolutionary Guards and 600,000 militiamen who revere Khamenei as a sacred monarch. Most Iranians, he says, despise the clergy and their Myrmidons. But a strong 20%, 10 million people are devotees. He goes on to say, a despotism that retains the loyalty of its security forces is not impregnable. No regime is impregnable, and this one is fatally damaged. But it will not fall until those forces either fraternize, fracture or run. Writing for the New Statesman, historian Ali Ansari points out that between 2017 and 2026, the disenfranchised Iranian majority erupted into protest four times, three had economic triggers, all rapidly became political, and all experienced the full force of state violence. He goes on to say that other than prayer and doubling down on an ideology that cannot deliver, the Islamic Republic has few options that don't include its own demise. Fear is dissipating, anger is growing, and the public no longer have much to lose. Even the apathetic are becoming exasperated with a system that seems to offer little but blood. In writing for the Middle East Institute, Siamek Namazi, who spent eight years in an Iranian prison, says Iran is running out of water. Its electricity grid is failing. The state struggles to provide basic goods, let alone repair its international isolation or bring down inflation. For years, he says, the regime defended these failures by pointing to one remaining pillar of legitimacy, security. That pillar is now collapsed, he says. The humiliating outcome of the Recent Israeli Iranian 12 day war shattered the last vest of the regime's implicit social contract. I will share links to these and other articles in the show Notes for this episode and in my weekly newsletter, which is free. Just go to Substack and search for history as it happens.
- [08:06]
Narrator/Reporter
And those who've become Westernized under the Shah are already finding another restriction. This restaurant under threat has stopped serving alcohol. There'd be complete prohibition in an Islamic republic and pornography in the cinema for.
- [08:22]
Martin DeCaro
So the Islamic republic was never a liberal democracy, but its current government seems to have confirmed what some skeptics said way back in 1979 that the clerics would not be able to run a country and that Khomeini's rule would collapse. Well, they were wrong. In 1979. Today, those critics would be closer to the mark. But we're not here to predict the future, but rather to investigate the past and see what it can teach us about the horrendous situation in Iran. Right now with historian Nagme Sora B. She is a professor of Middle east history and the director of research at the Crown center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University. She is an expert on Iran. Our conversation next, Keep the narrative flow going. Tap. Subscribe now in the show Notes or go to historyasithappens.com to enjoy ad free listening. Nagme Sohrabi, welcome to the podcast.
- [09:13]
Nagme Sohrabi
Thank you, Martin, and thank you for having me.
- [09:15]
Martin DeCaro
I can say with confidence that specialists in Iranian history are the busiest scholars in the country right now. For once, yes, maybe we should start in 1979 or even a little bit before that. In the years the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini emerged, that was the early 1960s, he was delivering lectures on ethics and Islamic philosophy. He was critical of Iran's direction under the monarchy of the Shah. Again, this is the early 1960s, almost 20 years before the revolution. Prior to this, Iranian clerics usually stayed out of political commentary. Right. What changed? What led to Khomeini having a platform, to use a modern term.
- [09:57]
Nagme Sohrabi
Thank you for that question, Martin. Well, it's not true that clerics, Shiite clerics in Iran at least, had stayed out of politics. The most famous time in which the clerical body, parts of the clerical body and parts of the merchant class came together in late 19th century, when there was a massive boycott of the use of tobacco for actually reasons that are quite similar to why Khomeini gave his famous speech in 1964, which is that the tobacco rights had been sold to the Brits. It was a concession that was given, and it was given so that the government could fill in some of its coffers. It was having financial difficulties and the clerical body, parts of the clerical body basically came out and declared that the use of tobacco products will be illegal and not illegal, but be un Islamic as a way of creating a boycott. And it was quite an effective boycott in reaction to a belief that the government has given, given away parts of Iranian sovereignty and Iranian rights. So, no, it's not the case at all. But every period, as a historian, you'll hear me say over and over again that the time and the place and the people have specificity. This is why it's very hard to talk about the Iranian regime as if the government that was in charge in 1979 or 1980 is exactly the same that it's in charge now. It's not. But we all understand that because we would never say that about our own government. Government. Right. We would never say that Washington was running the same country in the same manner with the same government as President Trump is today. And I think it's a good thing for us to keep that specificity of time and place in mind. With that said, I think I'll tweak your question a little and say, how did Khomeini, who was a cleric sitting in the holy city of Qom, which is not the capital, and he was a scholar and he had his classes, how did he come to national prominence? And he did so because two things happen, one after another. The monarchy. The Muhammad, who's the father of the current person, who sees himself as a leader of the opposition, let's call him.
- [12:29]
Martin DeCaro
His oldest son, is still around wanting to return to the country, but go ahead. Yeah.
- [12:32]
Nagme Sohrabi
Muhammad was basically the king who was in charge in Iran when the 1979 revolution happened. In 1963, there was this thing called the White Revolution. And the White Revolution had six points. We're not interested in all six points for the purposes of this conversation. Of the six points, two were very important. The first one was that it, top down, gave women the right to vote. But even more importantly, it instituted a series of land reforms. Now, I'm sorry for putting my professorial hat on, but what is land reform? Right. Very simply put, it is a redistribution of land. What that means is that you take land from the people who have it. In this case, large landowners. And the idea of the land reform was to then distribute it among peasants who were landless. And here the idea was that you would take power away from large landowners, which the Shah at the time saw as a threat to his power, and you would give it to people who did not have land, and in doing so, you would create grateful citizens. So he would simultaneously get rid of a bunch of people that he saw was a threat to himself, but create a bunch of people who he thought would be then loyal to him. In Iran, the clerical class and the merchant class at the time, in the 1960s, this has changed. But the clerical class, the merchant class and the landowning class actually were mixed. Some clerics were landowners. Different groups of people married into each other. So these were very connected. So the land reform was a form of assault against their livelihood. And so Khomeini came out in 1963, and he gave a speech and he came not one, but he gave multiple speeches and he came out against the White Revolution.
- [14:18]
Martin DeCaro
And he continues to give speeches and remains very politically active. Right.
- [14:22]
Nagme Sohrabi
In November of 1964, Khomeini gave a very, very important speech. What had happened was that the parliament at the time, the Majlis, which often rubber stamped basically what the monarchy wanted, had rubber stamped a capitulation agreement between the United States and Iran, which very basically said Americans who were in Iran, who were living in Iran, if they committed a crime, they would not be held, they would not be basically tried in Iranian courts. Right. So they were above the laws of the country. And Khomeini gave a very important speech in which he said, what does it mean? Why has this, our parliament, which is supposed to be the House of the People, agreed to the Americans being able to come in and do whatever they want? It's really important to remember that the capitulation rights happens only roughly 10 years after the 1953 CIA led coup.
- [15:18]
Martin DeCaro
That's right.
- [15:18]
Nagme Sohrabi
I was going to ask that if we want.
- [15:20]
Martin DeCaro
Yeah, I was going to ask about whether the capitulations that smacked of historical humiliations. So it didn't sit well.
- [15:27]
Nagme Sohrabi
For some it did. But Khomeini was the person who really articulated that.
- [15:31]
Martin DeCaro
Because this is your first time on the show, you're not used to my style. I often will cite books and read a passage or two since I'm not a historian myself. But I do have John Ghazvinian's book America and Iran in front of me about the issue of clerics getting involved in politics. He does Note here In 1961, the death of the Grand Ayatollah Hussein Borujerdi, who is the most senior cleric in Iran and a longtime ally of the monarchy. For nearly 20 years, he had dissuaded his fellow ayatollahs from taking activist positions in political matters. His death cleared the path for a more radical generation of clerics. Khomeini in the 1960, was a fierce critic of the monarchy. Why did that begin to resonate in the Iran of the 1970s?
- [16:17]
Nagme Sohrabi
There's a lot to say about that. If I could just go. You don't have to keep it in. But I do want to say if you read what John said, he does not disagree. Because the only way you can persuade people not to do something is if a bunch of people do want to do something. Right. So when Bruji persuades them not to do it, it means that the wanting to do it was there already in Qom I just want to make sure that that's very clear.
- [16:39]
Martin DeCaro
No more context, the better. Go ahead.
- [16:41]
Nagme Sohrabi
It took a long time for the dissatisfaction that people had with the monarchy to translate to the Shah must go. Right. Even with Khomeini and others, for the longest time, what they were saying is that the system must be reformed and Khomeini had ideas like the ulema must be brought into the running of the country. But he wasn't saying the Shah must go. The Shah must go becomes. There's different timelines, there's no moment. And you can put your finger on it and be like, this was the moment where before that nobody said after did. But it is roughly in the latter part of the 1970s. And that has to do with post 1960s and mostly post 1950 CIA coup. But particularly in the 60s and onwards, a bunch of things happened. The first thing that happened was that the Shah's pretty modern investment in higher education and educating young people came to fruition. So you began developing a modern middle class. A modern middle class past that with the money of the monarchy, which is the country's money, if you think about it, it's oil money, was getting educated both inside Iran, but also outside of Iran, and was coming back to the country. But when you get educated, right, your demands are not going to be limited to what your patron told you should be. People were coming in, were getting jobs, but they were also like, wait, I want to have a chance to express my political views. Sure. But while there were job opportunities and perhaps even social freedoms, there was no political freedom. But you had created a demand for political freedom by creating an educated middle class of mostly young people. And, you know, anybody listening knows, if you try to tell young people, don't say anything, they'll want to say things even louder than they had before.
- [18:40]
Martin DeCaro
Sure, yeah. Revolutions happen when people's expectations are raised and not met. Yes, that too.
- [18:46]
Nagme Sohrabi
Because if you raise it and then you meet it, you're good. And so you have a pressure building up through that class. Khomeini, it's important to remember that after he gave his capitulation speech in 1964, is then exiled, he first goes to Turkey and then he's in Iraq.
- [19:04]
Martin DeCaro
Yeah, he spent some time in prison as well. But as you say, the Shah wanted to get rid of this troublemaker, goes to Turkey, but he then migrates to Iraq where he's doing his sermons that are smuggled in in written form on audio cassette tapes. And he's becoming such a problem that the Shah has Him sent to France, which backfires even worse from the Shah's point of view. Before we get to 78 and 79 though, let's just stay on this thread about what Khomeini was saying and what he believed in, what kind of government he envisioned Iran having, because we're going to try to talk about how this government, there's a regime and then there are individual governments over time, how this has all evolved for the worse over the decades. There's a term, and you will correct my pronunciation, veliat e faqi. What does this mean? What did this mean to Khomeini as far as his vision for Iran?
- [19:57]
Nagme Sohrabi
Well, velayat literally means the rule of the jurist, but not just any jurist. You have to be a faqi. To put it very simply, it meant that a jurist, an Islamic judge, for lack of a better word, would be not running things, but would basically have a supervisory role over the governance of the country. And he, he put that in a series of lectures that he gave when he was in exile in 1970 that is published then under the title Hukumati Islami, which means Islamic government.
- [20:33]
Martin DeCaro
So there was no question that he envisioned having an Islamic republic, not an Islamic monarchy.
- [20:39]
Nagme Sohrabi
Oh, there is a ton of questions because he did not envision in having an Islamic republic, there is no such thing. Until the Iranian post revolution came up with an Islamic republic. So there was a lot of debates about what should be the form of government. Khomeini and some people around him were like, well, democracy is a Western term, anti Westernism as a colonial and imperial power. An imperial idea was very strong. And so people were like, is it going to be a republic? Everybody knew it's not going to be a monarchy because they had just overthrown a monarchy. What was it going to be? It's a constitutional assembly was basically created in which we haven't gotten into talking about the revolution. But the revolution was not one political strand. So the multiple political strands of the revolution are taking part in this debate about creating a constitution. But before that had happened, there had been a referendum. And the referendum basically said, do you want an Islamic republic? Yes or no? Again, go back to the fact that nobody had an idea of what an Islamic republic looked like. So a month after one of the biggest revolutions of the 20th century, there is a referendum that says do you want an Islamic republic, yes or no? And nobody knew what it looked like. But what people thought was that to say no meant that they wanted the monarchy back. And so an overwhelming majority voted yes and they voted yes for not having a monarchy.
- [22:15]
Martin DeCaro
So in the 70s, why was Islam becoming a growing channel for political opposition? I mean, there was also a communist movement in Iran. They were the people you might call liberal, nationalist or a technocratic class, holdovers from the Mossadic days. Obviously, Khomeini became an international celebrity. He had a receptive audience in his home country for what he was saying. Why was that the case?
- [22:38]
Nagme Sohrabi
Because primarily, what he was saying had nothing to do with Islam. Primarily what he was saying is that Iranians have the right to determine their own future. And this government, the monarchy, is not doing that. It's selling people's rights, selling people's oil. A puppet of the West. He had an anti imperialist critique of the way in which the Pahlavi regime was running things, but also it was religious. Religion as a political language is very different than what we mean when we say religious. Nowadays, when we say religious, we mean a certain set of things. But in 1970s Iran, let's just say, but that extends past Iran, religion became the language of politics, and it became a language of radical politics. And I hear radical, I don't mean good or bad. I mean radical as in a kind of politics that was creating, if not a revolutionary movement, but a sentiment of revolt against the Pahlavi monarchy here. But there are a couple of things about Islam at that moment that were very important to why Khomeini could become the leader of the movement. Number one was that he. He used a lot the notion of social justice. And the notion of social justice was the perfect concept that dovetails into leftist ideas, which are the other really big idea in Iran and globally in the 1960s and 70s. In the 1940s, Iran has the largest Communist party in the Middle east, is the Iranian Communist Party, the Tudor. But young people felt that the Tude had let them down. And so what that springs up in the 1960s, of course, is the kind of revolutionary thought that is best embodied by Che Guevara, which is the notion of armed struggle and a very particular kind of revolution. What do all of these things, from Khomeini to Che Guevara, have in common? They do talk about social justice, right? And social justice becomes a very important notion in a country that is increasingly becoming modernized. Westernized oil money is pumping into it. And I want to go back to something you said, Martin, which is when you raise people's expectations and not meeting it. And here the raising of people's expectations is that your life is going to be great. All this oil money is Coming in, in the reality for quite a large number of people who eventually joined the revolutionary movement is that their life did not feel that way. The urban poor, let's say, were not seeing that promise happen. So that's the number one thing that religion did for the revolution. The second thing it did is that it did create this notion of what is the authentic self. The authentic self, because you are again going through rapid modernization, there's a sense that you are losing your identity. And what is the authentic self here? Interestingly, the answer to what is the authentic self was given by this guy named Aliye Shariati who was not a cleric, he was a son of a cleric, but he himself was French educated. And he became pretty much one of the most important ideologues of the revolution. And he came out and said that Shiism has revolutionary language into it, that we do not need Lenin and Marx because we have she characters that he'll mention like Hussein and all of those people in the story of Karbala and all of that, but that it is at the end of the day a revolutionary thinking that is for justice. Right? And he really attracted young people who felt like in his language they could meet the multiple ideas and factors that were going around. Both a leftist notion, but also the notion of a return to self and the authentic she self.
- [26:35]
Martin DeCaro
From today's vantage, we see what has happened. It's been a repressive, anti liberal, anti democratic system from the beginning. Maybe at certain points more reformist than at others. But as you say, Iranians were hoping for a better life. They're hoping for liberation after being under the Shah's iron fist for a long time. I know you can always get in trouble by generalizing, but I think it's correct to say that Iranians were progressive thinking, Western leaning, modern society of talented, educated people who then welcome Khomeini with open arms. Additionally, it seems like there's a disconnect there. I spent about an hour watching old news reports from the late seventies about the revolution. It's really striking to see how no one really knew what Khomeini wanted to do upon returning to Iran.
- [27:20]
Nagme Sohrabi
So it's a revolution. Sure, Khomeini is the leader, but Khomeini really becomes leader in a sense of a multi stranded revolution in the fall of 1978 until the fall of 1978, various groups are involved in the kind of anti Shah activity which culminates eventually in the revolution. I can't think of any revolutionary leaders who say instead of inspiring people to come together and overthrow the system. I'm going to give a six point lesson in what I'm going to do afterwards. That just doesn't happen. It's not the nature of revolutions are sweeping, they're inspiring, they're about feelings, are about emotions. They are not about a five year plan. After the revolution is when the five year plan happens. And so it's not surprising. I do have to say, you know, the problem with these kinds of journalistic English language or French language reports that are now everywhere on the Internet and they're great because they capture videos and you'll see life in there, is that if you parachute into a country that it's in the midst of a massive moment and you don't speak the language, everything is going to seem confusing to you. But just because something is confusing to you doesn't mean it's confusing to the people who are doing it.
- [28:48]
Interviewee/Expert
Tashi Tafrashi, a 29 year old student said he read the Islamic Constitution very carefully. He doesn't like a great deal of it, but he believes it's a good start. He said it is his opportunity to support the Imam, the Ayatollah Homini, for his leadership in overthrowing the Shah.
- [29:06]
Nagme Sohrabi
But I'm just vote for Imam because he said yes and I'm. I should follow him. That's my only thing. Yes, you trust just.
- [29:15]
Martin DeCaro
I trust him. Yes. The conversation will continue. Tap. Subscribe now in the show notes or go to history as it happens.com to enjoy adding free listening. The constitution that came about was a mixed constitution. So yes, Khomeini was the supreme leader, but there was a presidential election, open elections and a parliament. But he still had the final say on these things.
- [29:42]
Nagme Sohrabi
Yes.
- [29:43]
Martin DeCaro
So how ruthless and violent was the regime in its early years? Because today that's the headline. They're maintaining power by shooting down thousands of people. What was the situation like after 1979?
- [29:57]
Nagme Sohrabi
So after 1979, so the revolution happens in February of 1979 and then you have a period called Spring of Freedom. All the censorship and restrictions and all the things that people had rebelled against go away. Any book you want, it gets published. People are out in the streets and they are debating what will be the future of the country. The Spring of Freedom begins to go away once they shut down one of the most important newspapers of the period called Ayan Dagon for basically criticizing the direction in which things were going. And if I may, I'd like to stop for a second and say it's really, really important because otherwise we create Untruths to say that there's two things. There's the revolution and then there's the post revolutionary period. And it was absolutely not foreclosed when the revolution was happening that the post revolutionary period would look like it does. The post revolutionary period came to look the way it did. Going back to the question that you asked, which is a violent, for lack of a better word, civil war ensues once the spring of freedom has gone away between the various strands of the revolutionary coalition, at the top of which is the group connected, the Islamists that are connected to Khomeini. I'm going to open up, I'm so sorry for being so specific, but I want to open up another parenthesis and say this is why the whole word the ayatollahs, it's an incorrect way of talking about things. A, because ayatollah is a word for someone who is at the top of the clerical pyramid. There are other clerics who are not ayatollahs, they're Hojatul Islams and what have you. So when we say ayatollah, we just mean like the top, top, top. It's like saying archbishop instead of saying priest. But it's important for another reason, which is that one of the things that happens in the civil war that breaks down is that Khomeini and his supporters turn against the other clerics who do not agree with the direction that they are taking the country. They believe that they are taking the country towards another dictatorship. And they don't believe that they inspired people and fought for this revolution in order to have yet another tyrannical rule. And I think it's really interesting to remember that this violent period that we're talking about included clerical dissidents who did not like how things were happening. And very quickly they were neutralized, eliminated, they weren't killed. And various things happened to various ones of them. But it wasn't like a foregone conclusion.
- [32:44]
Martin DeCaro
And in 1979 there was a provisional government headed by Bazar Gan and they were doing the day to day operations of government. But there was also an Islamic Council, I can't remember the exact formal name.
- [32:57]
Nagme Sohrabi
The revolutionary.
- [32:58]
Martin DeCaro
Yeah, the Revolutionary Council, or thinking about more austere and religious ideas and how to steer society in a more Islamic way. And they eventually got the upper hands, I think that's safe to say because Bazar gone was driven out of power. I guess we could pick up the story into the 1980s, mass executions in 1988. What brought about that? What happened There, when we talked about.
- [33:21]
Nagme Sohrabi
The brutal, very violent tug of war, basically civil war that breaks out, one of the things that happens is that the Khomanius basically began to systematically suppress and kill various groups. The Communists, they come last. But there is this group, the Marxist Islamists, the Mujahide Nikhar, there's the Fadais, who are secular guerrillas, there's the secularists and all these people, and they imprison them. There is execution, for sure, but nothing like what happens in 1988. What is happening at the same time that they're doing internal consolidation of power is that a war has broken in 1980 between Iran and Iraq. It becomes the bloodiest conventional war of the 20th century. Eventually, Iraq uses chemical weapons. It is a very, very important and often forgotten war. In that period in the 1980s, as the war is going on, these former revolutionaries that were against the direction that the revolution was going are now in prison. Many of them are the group that currently is the Mujahid Nikhal organization, mko. And they really got the brunt of the brutality of the state. The prisons are full of various leftists and the MKO people. And what happens, which is that in the later stages of the war, at this point, the MKO is in Iraq, their headquarters are in Iraq, and they basically open up a new front near the end of the war against Iran. That is the excuse for this. That is the trigger, let's say, for this in an operation they are fighting on the Iraqi side. They get squashed on the war front, and this idea develops that they are in prison. They are an internal enemy, for lack of a better word. There are many other reasons. There's a very complicated story there. I did not even begin to scratch the surface of why 1988 happened. But. But that is an element of that story and is the trigger of that story, which leads to basically purging by killing of the prisoners that had been languishing in the prisons in Iran in the 1980s, almost all of them political prisoners.
- [35:46]
Martin DeCaro
So Ali Ansari wrote a column for TheNewStatesman.com where he says, the Islamic Republic of today is not the Islamic Republic of 1979, or indeed 1999. In those days, the public still had hope for the future and a belief that reform from within, even if slow, was feasible. But after the crushing of the green movement in 2009, he says, this belief dissipated. It was under Ahmadinejad that the authoritarian tendency took a decided turn towards what the political theorist Hannah Arendt would describe as totalitarianism. Would you agree with what he said here that as time has gone on, public hope for better economic life, political freedom, has slowly and steadily dissipated, but it really accelerated after the crushing of the Green Movement.
- [36:34]
Nagme Sohrabi
I think it's very important to remember how incredibly everything changed. And I say, I have a reason why I say everything. I mean to say there are three, at least three big spheres that we have to keep in mind when we look at Iran from 2009 until today. The first one is the Iranian government, absolutely the biggest actor on this stage. The second thing is the Iranian people and its interactions with the state that keeps changing. And the third thing is the global background. Right. What did the world feel and look like in 2009 and what does it look and feel like today? If you think about how these three, each of them have their own vector. They intersect these vectors. Absolutely. And then they create a new condition so that the next set of protests lead to a different kind of reaction. You add to that also the fact that you have had a pretty brutal sanctions plan in place since, well, since 1979, but it's gotten more and more brutal in the last, let's say, 15 years or so. So you have that. So you have sanctions almost like every problem. You have twinsies with them, internal and external. Right. You have economic mismanagement and corruption internally and you have sanctions externally. It's a chicken and egg kind of situation. You cannot say which one is the main thing that is affecting the other one because they're sitting there together and every time one of them moves, things tighten up a little bit more and make things worse for the population who are stuck in them. I don't disagree at all, but I think that's the first sentence of a much more complicated picture. It's not like the regime just was, you know. No, I mean, they also didn't want to share any power. But as they kept failing, they kept failing for multiple factors, their own reasons and external ones, then they kept getting more and more brutal, because every time they failed at basically governance, the Iranian system became a little less about governance and a little bit more about survival. So another way of Putting it is 2009 to today, you have had governance and survival side by side. But every single time that something happens inside Iran or outside of Iran, the survival aspects of the government eats a little bit of the governance aspect of it. So that today we're left with no governance, just survival.
- [39:07]
Martin DeCaro
The survival of authoritarian states is a hot topic today for most people who aren't specialists in Iran, who will be listening to this, myself included, might ask, why hasn't the regime, why haven't the leaders moved in a more progressive direction over time? Because that would make them more popular with their own people. Now the Soviet Union reformed itself out of existence when Gorbachev's political and economic reforms failed to take hold. I don't know if Iran's leaders look at that example. I know that the Chinese leaders have looked at the Soviet Union and said, okay, we're not going there. We're going to keep the grip on the population. You can have economic liberation, but not political liberalization.
- [39:46]
Nagme Sohrabi
That's a very good question. The Iranian government, the Iranian not government, the Iranian system doesn't have to actually look that far. Because right or wrong, one of the understandings they have of why they were successful in making a revolution was that the Shah conceded too much to the revolutionaries. Again, this is all conjecture because we do not know, because I agree with you. I think the rational response at some point has to be, well, let me give a little to get a little. But one of the explanations that people have come up with which makes sense to me is that their lesson from the revolution is that the Shah was overthrown by the revolution because he was. He gave in. He left when he should have stayed. There was a shooting into the crowds and the protests, but not as much as he could have. You know, he freed political prisoners in the fall of 1978 and all of that. And so their lesson is, if you give in, it's going to come and devour you.
- [40:52]
Martin DeCaro
So what is the current government's purpose then? Maybe you can tell us a little bit about the current supreme leader to Haman A. What is his purpose here other than to hold on to power?
- [41:02]
Nagme Sohrabi
I think we live in a world in which your listeners would totally understand that. For some political leaders, holding on to power for the sake of holding on to power becomes about you. He's 86. He might in his head be connected to the divine, but you know, we're all mortal.
- [41:19]
Martin DeCaro
Sure. You know, I mentioned the Soviet example before. After a certain amount of time, and it wasn't that long, even the Soviet leaders understood they were not moving toward the utopia anymore, towards socialism.
- [41:29]
Nagme Sohrabi
Right.
- [41:30]
Martin DeCaro
They'd given up on that dream. No, no. Revolution can last forever. You can't have a permanent revolutionary society.
- [41:36]
Nagme Sohrabi
I would say these guys are not revolutionaries. The revolution died. Basically. It's over. On some level. On some level it's not, because you have to ask yourself, why do Iranians keep pushing in these social movement formations? And that's because there is a revolutionary tradition that generation after generation of Iranians have been born into. But in many ways, the current government, in every way possible to think about it, the current government does not represent the ideals of the revolution. It is not a government in which distribution of goods and social justice is a value in it. It is not a government in which being against tyranny is in any shape or form a value in it. They verbally say these things, right, but they don't actually enact it. And going back to the quote you read by Anne Sari, like, it's important to remember that after the 2009 Green Movement Movement, the people, the Ahmadinejad and Khamenei side, attacked Rafsanjani, who was also one of the people closest to Khomeini. They attacked him because he came out and he said, I mean, what's going on here? Right? That this is not okay. Karu B, who was the other candidate that was, has been under house arrest since 2009, is also a cleric. He was also a part of the revolution. So I would say that Khamenei, among his many accomplishments, is that he's just killed the revolution that gave birth to the system that he is sitting on top of and clinging to. I don't know, the future. I'm a historian for a reason. But it does feel that his. His attitude is, you know, let it burn. I don't know. I don't know why he thinks that. And I don't want to know because I don't want to think like him.
- [43:27]
Martin DeCaro
Well, there are speculation now among all historians like Ali Ansari and others I've read, who believe that the regime is now on borrowed time. How would you respond to someone who says, well, they're. They're using violence because this is what their sect or their interpretation of Shia Islam, this extreme interpretation requires of them.
- [43:47]
Nagme Sohrabi
Show me where it says that and give me historical evidence or political or any kind of evidence, because how many people are in the Iranian government? Let's take a number. Shall we say 100,000? Should we say 200,000? There are far more Shiites out there than that number. By that logic, all of them should be committing violent crimes against other people. So, I mean, it's just empirically untrue. What is true is that. And by the way, it's very important to remember that most of the people committing these. This massacre against the Iranian people in January, they're men with arms. You know, they're just armed men. They are not clerics. They are Not Shiites. That identity just doesn't matter. There they are, armed men.
- [44:33]
Martin DeCaro
Why does Iran have a water shortage? A big driving factor behind these waves of protest. Four major protest movements since 2017. Currency deflation, economic problems, but also a water shortage.
- [44:47]
Nagme Sohrabi
In this path towards becoming more and more authoritarian, one of the things that they did is that they basically securitized the question of the environment. Right? Economic mismanagement, mismanagement of governance. One of the effects that it had was not that a drought was created, but that they were not dealing with the drought correctly. And they made all these experts and people who raised concerns with how the government was managing its environmental crisis, they put them in prison. And in fact, one environmental activist died in prison and became a big story several years ago. So, number one is that in foreclosing any space of opposition and debate, they also foreclosed any ability for people to talk about the kind of environmental crisis that Iran was going in. The second one is, weirdly, the water crisis itself. Partly, not entirely. Partly comes from the mismanagement, partly because they basically started building a lot of dams in an unthinking, unplanned way to meet the consumption needs of this growing population. And so when you build a lot of dams, you get a situation like you got this summer where some of them entirely dry out. You still have more dams going. You need to create more electricity, and you just can't.
- [46:14]
Martin DeCaro
The current president, Masoud Pezeshkian, suggested that because of the absence of water, the capital, where 15 million people live, may need to be evacuated.
- [46:25]
Nagme Sohrabi
Who is that? But then it rained and it snowed. Just so.
- [46:28]
Martin DeCaro
You good? Yeah. It would be some evacuation. Who is the opposition? The Crown Prince, the former shah's oldest son. He is trying to rally Iranians from a distance to oppose the regime. I mean, is there a viable opposition? Right now?
- [46:42]
Nagme Sohrabi
The opposition are the civil rights groups, women's rights people, the labor unionists, the environmental activists, the students who have been from inside Iran opposing the regime, have been calling for reform, have been calling for change, and have paid a price with their lives not dying, but being in prison. So there is actually, if allowed, there is a lot of people that we can point to inside Iran who would be able to organize again if given the right, given the chance to. Would be able to organize and lead a viable opposition against the current government. But of course, they're inside. They're languishing inside prisons or don't have the means to do that inside of Iran. Outside of Iran, the son of the deposed shah, his name is has emerged since the 2022 Women Life Freedom movement as seemingly the most viable figure. I think that's just kind of a talking point that people use in the press. I'm not saying he's. He doesn't believe he's viable and I'm not saying even that people in Iran aren't shouting his name. But I am saying that he has over time become more and more of a voice that is loudest and is heard. But it remains to be seen as things change, how viable he could be this time around. And the protests that happened in Iran happened in December of 2025. It was December 28, 2025, in which the first round of protests happened. Those protests were economic for the most part, and the government actually did not react to them with bullets. What happened was that Reza Pahlavi called for all Iranians to come out into the streets on January 9th, on Thursday, I think January 9th. Until then it was sectors and was all over the country, but it remained kind of had a form of an economic protest. So when he made the call, he made the call on the anniversary of the IRGC mistaking a passenger plane, a Ukrainian flight that had a lot of Iranian citizens on it mistaking it for an U. S missile and shooting it down and killing everybody on board. And that is very, very, very painful moment. It's an open wound for many Iranians. And so he called for people to come out on the anniversary of that day. And people absolutely did respond to that. And the price that they paid, as you said, is thousands and thousands of debt. I say all of that to say I think at this point, many people think he's the most viable opposition outside of Iran. But that story has not been fully written yet. And so I think it remains to be seen how things go on.
- [49:51]
Martin DeCaro
The next episode of history as it happens. What is realism? What does the Trump administration mean when it says flexible realism will guide its foreign policy? We'll speak to Linda Kinsler and Stephen Wertheim next as we report history as it happens. Make sure you sign up for my free newsletter. Just go to substack insert Watch for history as it happens.
- [50:13]
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