Abbas Amanat

And they cannot get rid of it.

They cannot, in this respect, they cannot modernize themselves.

They think that they are already perfect in ideological sense.

This is the best solution for the world.

Not only for Iran, but for the Muslim world and for the world as a whole.

We are anti-imperialist,

We have managed to survive either under sanctions.

This is all part of the rhetoric.

But of course, at the huge expense, the huge expense for their own population.

And the point that you have raised is the fact that we now witness there is not only a generation gap between the youth and their parents,

but there is a break in a sense from the older generations.

And they are very distinctly the youth that has a different view of the world and does not want to compromise.

Whether they would be able to succeed or not remains to be seen.

Whether this regime is going to suppress it, maybe.

But it actually brought to surface many of aspects of the weaknesses of this regime in power.

Well, in 1979, there was...

a revolution that eventually came to be known as the Islamic Revolution.

And even up to this day, many of the observers or those who have strong views would not like to refer to it as an Islamic Revolution or even a revolution.

Because the nature of it in the earlier stages of it started really probably around 1977.

It took two years.