Abbas Amanat

It was monopoly of the state during the Pahlavi era, from the start, basically.

So what does that mean?

That means that the regime in power no longer is particularly accountable to the majority population because it extracts wealth from underground.

and it uses it for its own purposes in order to make it more powerful, in order to make it more repressive than what it is the regime today.

So it feeds a small, or I wouldn't say, but a fair number of its own supporters.

I mean, the Revolutionary Guard in Iran is probably about 350,000 or something like that.

It's a very big force.

And this is not the regular army.

The Revolutionary Guards are independent from the army.

Yes, the same as the army.

But these are more ideologically tied up with the state.

Well, from day one, when the revolution succeeded, the regime in power, the Islamic regime in power, was vulnerable to all kinds of forces of opposition within Iran itself.

Yeah, that's the Revolutionary Guards, and they dropped...

was to try to make sure that the regime stays in power.

And of course, over the course of 40 years, they became more powerful, more organized, better funded, better trained.

Well, at least we think they're better trained, but we don't know because the level of incompetence perhaps can be seen through the rank and file as well.

But...

You know, they developed their own military industry.

I mean, those drones that you see now, Putin's regime are throwing on Ukrainians, poor Ukrainians.

Those are all built by the Revolutionary Guards, by the military industry under the control of the Revolutionary Guards.