Alistair Campbell

In fact, I'm in Damascus in Syria where you and I were last year.

So I'm in a way thinking a lot about this because the reason we were here last year is

is that the Bashar al-Assad regime, he and his father had been in place since the 1970s, collapsed.

And the question, I guess, in Iran is, is the same going to happen there?

So to remind people, the Shah of Iran, who was a pretty autocratic human rights abusing ruler, but who was on the American side, was toppled by an Iranian revolution in 1979.

Ayatollah Khomeini came in.

Big Iran-Iraq war, Khomeini goes, Khamenei takes over as the new Grand Ayatollah.

And almost for as long as I can remember, people have been expecting the regime to fall because it's an unbelievably unpopular with so many parts of Iranian society, and in many ways, this extremely conservative regime.

theocracy is at odds with a culture where, particularly in urban areas, has a very, very quite liberal, educated, middle class, more nationalist and religious.

However, if you go back to the different uprisings, so there was 199, there was a

big one in 2005 that I remember.

There was another one that people remember, 2009, which was the Green Revolution.

And we, of course, covered 2022 to 23, which was Masa Amini, which was the huge demonstration after the killing of a woman who refused to wear a headscarf.

All of those times, Iranians outside the country have assumed this was the end of the regime.

And on none of those occasions was it.

However, this time it may be,

One of the amazing things we're talking about here, I guess, which we almost might want to get our colleagues and the rest is history involved, is this question of revolutions and when a regime falls and when it doesn't.

And basically, the story often is these regimes are completely secure.

totally in place until in an instant, they suddenly aren't.

Bashar al-Assad is a good example.