Ben Rhodes
π€ SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
Maybe just a comical hate watching.
Yeah.
Maybe her staff.
Maybe her staff has got a bot farm in China.
I'm going to keep this going, guys.
I'm going to keep it going.
Okay.
Let's start with the biggest story in the world right now, Ben, which is Iran.
So these protests, we've been covering this for a couple of weeks now, and the protests have only gotten bigger since we last recorded.
Just quickly on the backstory, the protests started in late December when shopkeepers in Tehran, they took to the streets to express their anger after Iran's currency, the rial, plunged in value.
So the rial has lost half of its value since September.
So it's been brutal for anyone, any Iranian citizen.
The protests, though, they quickly snowballed into these countrywide anti-government protests in all of Iran's 31 provinces.
And what makes these protests so powerful and such a threat to the regime is that they are broad based.
It is not just women and people in cities like 2022.
It is people in every part of the country, including like working class, traditionally conservative Iranians.
They are all just pissed off.
They're pissed off about the economy.
Now, I do think we should note.
It's really hard to know what's actually going on inside of Iran right now.