Abbas Amanat

When you see them talking about women,

They are very, of course, politically incorrect.

They are very looking down towards women.

As I said, they have to be inside, they have to be protected, they have not to be seen and so forth.

But if they have a young person

a young daughter in their family, you see that their discourse changes.

They no longer seem to be referring to women as second-class citizens.

So that's very important.

That's precisely that point, that when you have this younger generation, no matter how privileged they are, and many of them are privileged, and there is also...

the regime has created its own privilege class that are not necessarily

directly paid by the regime, but they benefit from contractors, certain professions that benefit from what the state provides for them.

And Iran is, I mean, the past 40 years, you can see Iran has developed in terms of material culture remarkably well.

Iran has good communication, has roads all over the place.

It's not like a, it's more like, I don't know whether you have ever visited Turkey, for instance.

In certain respects, even more advanced than Turkey, but it's closer to that rather than if you travel, I don't want to bring particular names, in North Africa or parts of the Middle East or other parts of the Islamic world.

It's much, much different.

So in this respect, you would see certain contrast or paradoxes here.

On the certain respect, there is the growth, there is urbanization, there is modern economy.

On the other hand, you see this superimposed

ideological, doctrinal aspect that has driven the regime over all these years.