Abbas Amanat

So just to give you one example, last Saturday, there was a mass demonstrations in Berlin by the Iranians from Germany and all over Europe, Western Europe.

And it was at least, I think probably the conservative estimate was about 100,000.

So 100,000 Iranians showed up in Berlin demonstrating against the treatment of the women in Iran or the movement in Iran.

The government thinks obviously this must have been some

instigation by foreign powers and they want to destroy the Islamic Republic.

And not only that, but their propaganda is kind of ridiculous because I listened actually to how they portrayed it in the newspapers.

I listened to the Iranian news that is officially controlled, government controlled news.

And in the papers, much of the papers that are in the control of the government.

One of them, or actually the major news program, portrayed the demonstrations that 10,000 people showed up in Berlin and protested against the rising prices, rising rates for gas and oil in Germany.

So that's how they mislead in a very rather stupid fashion because

probably 95%, if not 100% of the Iranians are listening to Persian-speaking media outside Iran.

So it's a BBC Persian, there is Iran International, there are at least five or six of them.

Probably more than I feel sometimes when I compare myself to what they are doing.

Since 1979, the earlier years, for a decade or two,

They tried in a very crude fashion to restrict access to media outside Iran because this is all through dishes, okay?

And satellite dishes are everywhere.

If you look at the buildings of small towns and villages in Iran, there's always a...

And they watch all kinds of things through this.

And particularly because of what's happening now,

they listen to all the news broadcasts from all this media and they're extremely active.