Gordon Carrera

This is an interesting one, isn't it?

Because on the one hand, I think what struck me about the protests was they started with the bizarres as we talk, the merchants, the businessmen.

This wasn't just kind of liberal students and reformers.

It was across the country.

It wasn't just Tehran.

It was a wide grouping of people and that was quite challenging, but there wasn't a single organised opposition voice in the way that might make it more likely to be able to overthrow a regime.

It wasn't quite coherent in that way, was it?

You've got the son of the former Shah, Reza Pahlavi, as being a kind of figurehead, but I'm slightly unconvinced that he really has the width and the depth of support, other than as maybe a transitional figure, to really...

coalesce people around a single point which could challenge the regime.

So I think it's interesting, but surprising.

And that's the one where I think

Iran is in real trouble.

If I was an analyst, if I was a mini-Mikoski now, I'd be like, this is the one where Iran might have got through this very acute crisis in the last few days.

But the underlying problem, the socio-economic contract, that contract is broken and it's very hard to see it fixable for this Iranian regime.

That is the kind of, I think, one of the weakest pillars for it, isn't it?

They were looking at providing some subsidies and they were so kind of flimsy and pathetic that I think that was one of the things which set off the problem.

So I think we can agree that pillar is fundamentally weak.

Next pillar, getting onto I think our fifth, the legitimacy narrative.

I think this one is a really interesting one because the government has portrayed itself as this great kind of revolutionary power underlined by, of course, religion and the sheer religion.

They've tried to claim that the people who are protesting are terrorists backed by foreign powers.