Chapter 1: What historical context is relevant to understanding the Iranian revolution?
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Protests in Iran and a violent crackdown. But can the regime survive?
And how effective are intelligence agencies at predicting what might come next? Well, welcome to The Rest Is Classified. I'm David McCloskey.
And I'm Gordon Carrera, and welcome to this second episode where we're looking at Iran through the lens of how intelligence agencies might understand it. David, of course, a former CIA analyst looking at the Middle East. And we've been trying in the first episode to understand
what the pillars are for regime stability, how you might assess whether a country like Iran was stable or was on the brink of change. We ended really with an exploration of some of the challenges that intelligence analysts might face in doing that.
Now, in this episode, I think we're going to look at some of the historical examples, some of the context for that, of when intelligence agencies have tried to understand whether a revolution, whether an uprising might be about to take place and whether it might lead to a change of regime and then apply that to the Iran of today. But before we get to that, let's hear a word from our sponsors, HP.
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Chapter 2: How did intelligence agencies fail to predict the 1979 Iranian revolution?
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So David, let's go back, I guess, to Iran itself, because the revolution which brought this regime to power in 1979 is very interesting in itself as a case of a popular uprising and intelligence agencies pretty much failing to predict it, I think.
As we dug into this, Gordon, I actually feel like it's that charge, which I had always heard absorbed and felt like it was largely true, I feel like it's maybe less true.
Well, you're going to try and defend the CIA.
I know you are. But quickly, some context on 1979. And I'll note, I'm very angry, Gordon, because we need to do this very quickly. But the rest is history, guys. They get four whole episodes on the revolution. We're going to do it in a minute. We're going to do it in a minute. So here we go. 1979, the Iranian revolution.
It is, I guess, the result of a really broad-based uprising against the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who... was sitting atop a government that in the late 1970s was sort of increasingly unpopular for a whole host of reasons that will probably sound like they kind of are similar to today.
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Chapter 3: What lessons can be learned from the Iranian revolution for today's protests?
Khomeini returns from exile. And the government essentially collapses shortly thereafter. The military kind of sits on the sidelines. And there is, in the I guess, competition between the various revolutionary factions and opposition factions, which culminates in the establishment of the Islamic Republic after a national referendum. How did I do? That was more than a minute.
It was more than a minute.
It felt like we had to give some context here for how this happened.
But let's get to the crucial question, which is that it is widely seen as an intelligence failure. Now, you can get into all the details of this. There is one crucial quote, which I think sums it up, which is from... none other than the CIA's analytic division in August of 1978. These are not the mini McCloskeys. These are the pre-McCloskeys. The pre-grandfather?
I don't know what the- McCloskey senior. McCloskey seniors. But they wrote August 1978, Iran is not in a revolutionary or even a pre-revolutionary situation. They missed it.
It didn't age well. It didn't age well.
That doesn't age well. I mean, but it's a very interesting example, isn't it, of a failure to see it. And I think, you know, we could spend quite a lot of time arguing, you know, there are other reports which suggest some people didn't see it. And we will. We don't. We can if you want. But I think the more interesting question is fundamentally, you know, some people saw something happening.
You know, there's some debate about that. But I think the interesting thing is why didn't they see it? Because I think it is true that on the whole they didn't. Do you think so? Yeah, I think so. I think, look, you're going to pull out some other examples. You can easily find other examples of analysts going, something could happen. You can always find those. And I think that's fine.
It is more complicated than a simple failure. And there are people who said there were problems and there were weaknesses. All of that's true. But I still think it's a failure.
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Chapter 4: How do the protests in Iran compare to the Arab Spring?
is that it's an intelligence failure, Iran's 79, because the CIA did not anticipate the course of events. That makes me smile because we talked about this a bit and teed it up in the first episode. Is that even possible in revolutionary situations? Is it even possible to anticipate the course of events.
And I think maybe there, Gordon, before we get to our next lens for evaluating Iran, which will be 1989 and the kind of revolutions across Central and Eastern Europe, maybe we take a break. When we come back, we'll see how looking into the past can help us understand what might happen next in Iran. Well, welcome back.
We are continuing our journey into understanding how intelligence agencies look at these kind of highly dynamic revolutionary situations. And next up is 1989, Gordon, which you should lead this section, Gordon, because I was a young thing.
I remember it vividly.
You had long hair.
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Chapter 5: What parallels exist between the Iranian and Syrian uprisings?
It wasn't grey back then.
It was quite long, actually, in my rock days. Let's not get into that. That's definitely a diversion. As I can see here, you had the French Revolution of 1789, the Russian Revolution of 1917. I'm not old enough to get to those ones as examples of where revolutions came, perhaps with surprise. But I think 1989 is one I do remember. when famously the Berlin Wall falls.
And I remember incredibly vividly, I actually kept all the newspapers from that time because you just felt the headlines were so important. And I think it's also a really good case study for why some revolutions are not seen coming and why some get crushed and some succeed in overthrowing the regimes. So if you look at Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union under communism in that period, you
And I think Western intelligence could see that communism was decaying. It was failing to keep up economically with the West. There were these increasing problems with legitimacy. Some of the pillars were a bit weaker. The pillars we talked about last time, dissent growing.
But no one predicted the sudden collapse across Eastern Europe in 1989 of all those communist regimes and then eventually the collapse of the Soviet Union. I think, worth saying, different in different countries. For instance, Poland, it was driven through the 80s, particularly by the trade union solidarity and civil society. I actually went on a slight sidebar.
I went to Gdansk last year and I went to the Solidarity Museum in Gdansk. Anyone who's interested in the end of the Cold War, it is absolutely fantastic. Go to Gdansk and go to the museum because it just gives you an understanding of what happened in Poland. But I think
So one of the things I'd say is, you know, we talked a bit about the bandwagon effect, the revolutionary bandwagon, and what you saw in Eastern Europe that year was a revolutionary bandwagon across countries. So you saw one country rise up and to some extent succeed, and then others would follow. in its footsteps. So I think that is part of it across what happened.
East Germany, though, is the one I think worth focusing on because it famously leads to the fall of the Berlin Wall, which was the symbolic moment for the collapse of communism. And I think it's also interesting because we talked about authoritarian states. Well, famously, the Stasi, the East German Security Service, were incredibly effective in many ways.
I mean, per person, they had more informants in the population than any other regime in history. It was incredibly surveilled. And yet it still collapsed. And I think that is interesting. And a parallel with Iran, it's people power. It's people going out on the streets, people protesting. There's a great line from the time where a writer said, fear changed sides.
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Chapter 6: What factors contributed to the stability of the Iranian regime?
Yeah. And I think ending on a note of humility is the right one about the ability to forecast these things because a lot of people have tried, and as we've talked about with previous revolutions and uprisings, have tried to predict those. And it is, I think, for reasons we've really explored, hard. And there are reasons why it's hard.
And there are reasons why it's hard to see cracks in a regime or in the elite or how the security forces are going to act. And it can come down to very interesting individual decisions. So there, David, I think let's leave this exploration of Iran and predicting revolutions.
Just a reminder, if you're a member of the Declassified Club, you're going to be able to hear an interview with Arash Azizi talking about some of these issues. Do join at therestisclassified.com. But we hope you've enjoyed it and we will see you next time. We'll see you next time.