Jason Rezaian

And she said, yeah, that was something.

I said, you're telling me that the two most influential Muslims in America have called for my release?

She said, Muhammad Ali and Keith Ellison?

And I said, no, Muhammad Ali and Obama.

So you've got to keep laughing in those situations.

It's not easy.

Yeah, I think what we've seen over the last 17 years since 2009 was...

the rate of protests picking up.

You know, for the last 47 years of the existence of the Islamic Republic, there's always been protests, but sporadic, fewer and farther between.

And in the last five or six years, it's almost been annually and spread across the entire country.

And this time around, people all over the country in vast numbers

And, you know, it's a kind of feat of nature.

It's organic, because all opposition leadership has been snuffed out, executed, imprisoned, exiled.

So, you know, this is just mass discontent at a level that we've never seen before, people calling for the end of the system.

You'll remember, in 2009, they wanted their vote

Even in this very restricted system, they still felt as though every four years they had the opportunity to go out within a tightly managed situation and say, hey, look, these are eight terrible guys.

This is the least terrible as far as we're concerned.

And that was taken away from them that time around.

Now it's let's just break this whole thing down.

This is not working.