Erica Chenoweth

The second observation I would have is that

What happens on the ground in Iran is so hard because there is not really a formal opposition or opposition groups that have the capacity to even connect with one another, much less organize a strategic mass movement.

spokespeople for sure, but also just strategy, right?

Like, thinking about beyond the just going to the streets and trying to amass large shows of force, but also, like, how to tap into the different sources of weakness in the government and begin to, you know, chip away at loyalties.

Like, those types of things are really important and necessary, particularly against an authoritarian regime as durable and as formidable as the Iranian regime.

And so...

what organizational capacity does exist is outside the country, right?

So you have people who are sort of more recent departures from Iran, from, say, the reform era, who have more ties to people on the ground, but fewer kind of resources to help mobilize.

And then you have people from the previous era, like the previous Iranian revolution, many of whom are kind of organizing around the crown prince and the like.

And

And so even the external opposition is quite divided.

And those who are rallying around Reza Pahlavi, like, don't have nearly as much legitimacy on the ground as the more recent departures, but they don't have the capacity that he has and the resources.

So it's just a very, very tricky situation that I think helps to illuminate a lot of the...

the fact that when people rise up anymore, it's not just against their own government.

Like, they're in this sort of global environment that's changing very quickly, and it's creating very challenging terrain.

So this is a really important issue.

It's not my primary area, but what I'll say is if you think about cases like South Africa, for example, this is a case where clearly the linchpin in the sustainability of apartheid ended up being the corporate and business elite.

And that was a case where the security forces were never gonna defect to, you know, the sort of United Democratic Front and the Black opposition.

But the sort of implication of that was that if the security force pillar is not available, then what about the business and economic elites that are upholding, you know, the apartheid state?

And so that is the way that apartheid ultimately fell, was by a variety of economic actions, whether those were boycotts of white-owned businesses, whether they were...