Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Thanks for listening to The Rest Is Politics. To support the podcast, listen without the adverts and get early access to episodes and live show tickets, go to therestispolitics.com. That's therestispolitics.com. What we're seeing now is some very significant protests and very, very significant crackdown.
You had 200 separate protests taking place in almost all the provinces of Iran. And the regime then has responded with blackouts. People have started to be killed in large numbers.
I think it's gone in a pretty grim direction.
These regimes are completely secure, totally in place, until in an instant, they're suddenly out.
This will only lead to regime change and the collapse of the regime if it goes on for months and months and months.
boy, is it something that could literally collapse in the next hour, or they could still be in place in a year's time.
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Chapter 2: What are the reasons behind the recent protests in Iran?
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Chapter 3: How has the Iranian regime responded to the protests?
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Welcome to the Restless Politics with me, Rory Stewart. And with me, Alistair Campbell. And we're going to have a bit of a Middle Eastern day, I think, today, Rory. We're going to talk about Iran and we're going to talk about Yemen. I feel bad, actually, we haven't talked about Iran more before this because you sort of sense something really big was happening.
But it's so hard actually to find out the truth about what's happening inside Iran. But I think what we're seeing now is some very significant protests and especially today, I think, and yesterday, very, very significant crackdown.
Absolutely. For people who have not been concentrating minute by minute on what's happening in Iran, essentially on the 28th of December, a series of protests began in the bazaars of Tehran, essentially around the fact that the gas prices had gone up. and the currency had collapsed. Bank governor resigned.
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Chapter 4: What factors could lead to regime change in Iran?
And then from the 2nd of January onwards, it began to really spread. So by about the 6th, you had 200 separate protests taking place in almost all the provinces of Iran. And the regime then has responded with blackouts. people have started to be killed in large numbers. Trump has now said repeatedly that if the regime continues to kill, he will be intervening with military strikes.
And a lot of this is now associated with the figurehead of the son of the previous Shah of Iran, the Crown Prince from the United States, who to many people's astonishment, particularly mine, is now appearing on more and more signs of young Iranians, particularly protesting against the regime. And the question, I guess, that we're going to be getting into is what does this mean?
What's going to happen? I'm speaking to this slightly anonymous hotel room that I'm in. In fact, I'm in Damascus in Syria where you and I were last year. So I'm in a way thinking a lot about this because the reason we were here last year is is that the Bashar al-Assad regime, he and his father had been in place since the 1970s, collapsed.
And the question, I guess, in Iran is, is the same going to happen there? So to remind people, the Shah of Iran, who was a pretty autocratic human rights abusing ruler, but who was on the American side, was toppled by an Iranian revolution in 1979. Ayatollah Khomeini came in. Big Iran-Iraq war, Khomeini goes, Khamenei takes over as the new Grand Ayatollah.
And almost for as long as I can remember, people have been expecting the regime to fall because it's an unbelievably unpopular with so many parts of Iranian society, and in many ways, this extremely conservative regime. theocracy is at odds with a culture where, particularly in urban areas, has a very, very quite liberal, educated, middle class, more nationalist and religious.
However, if you go back to the different uprisings, so there was 199, there was a big one in 2005 that I remember. There was another one that people remember, 2009, which was the Green Revolution. And we, of course, covered 2022 to 23, which was Masa Amini, which was the huge demonstration after the killing of a woman who refused to wear a headscarf.
All of those times, Iranians outside the country have assumed this was the end of the regime. And on none of those occasions was it. However, this time it may be,
I suspect that even on the last, at least two of those previous, almost a half a dozen now, sort of waves of protests, I think people have said this probably is going to be the end. And lots of people are saying it now. I think it's probably wise to be fairly cautious about that because the regime still does have phenomenal powers of repression. And I think we're seeing this.
I've got a friend who's Iranian who just sent me a video that's circulating on Instagram of protests families looking in a morgue, just all these zipped bodies where they've unzipped the face and people just going around trying to see if it's their relative. And it's pretty horrible. So there's some very, very horrible stuff going on. I think what makes this different maybe to the previous one.
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Chapter 5: What role does external intervention play in Iran's situation?
There are a lot of opposition people who've been wiped out. And it's very, very hard to organize any kind of opposition. So until you know, from our perspective, until you know, well, where might this go if the regime does collapse? And who are the people that you imagine being in charge? It's very hard to see where it goes.
I remember feeling, so I walked across Iran, I guess, in 2000. And my strong sense then, so that's about sort of halfway between the revolution and now, is that you had this massive class split.
So you had many people saying to me, oh, if you go to Isfahan or Tehran, it's very liberal and everybody's drinking alcohol and nobody's wearing headscarves and these amazing parties and everybody's very decadent. But in the rural villages where I was staying, people were very, very conservative. It was a sort of village working class environment.
They were all the kind of people who would eventually vote for Ahmadinejad. I was being stopped by the Basij militia all the time. There were huge images of the martyrs of the Iran-Iraq war. Big, big focus on Shia martyrdom, on the regime. And the regime had delivered, they felt, for these villages.
These people who'd felt marginalized under the Shah, who felt under the Shah it had all been about money and oil and glamour in the cities. Electrification had come, roads had come, there'd been a big push on rural development.
And so, I guess if you were trying to explain why these revolutions didn't work, say, in 99, or even three years ago with Massa Amini, you probably would have said, look, this is still a society where people are divided. where either you have a rebellion of the working class or you have a rebellion of more progressive women about headscarves, but the two things don't come together.
And you also would have said that Iranians are very proud nationalists, so that it was noticeable when Israel and the US bombed Iran and the Shah's son and Netanyahu called for everybody to rise up, they didn't rise up. So you would have said, actually, Iranians, when push comes to shove, are quite nationalistic.
What's changing here, Chris DeBlake, who has written really well about this in Unheard, he was saying to me that he thinks it's young people. It's a completely new generation, which in a very sort of way that would sort of shock older Iranians.
don't really have a beef with Trump, can't remember what the Shah was like, perfectly happy to endorse Pahlavi without necessarily the Crown Prince not knowing so much about him, and much more violent, much more prepared to, it seems as though police officers have been killed, places have been stormed. And some of that driven by social media. That's another strange thing about Iran.
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Chapter 6: How do the protests in Iran compare to past uprisings?
I think that part of this defection strategy is to say, look, if you make the right choice now, wherever you may be at this moment working with the regime, then you have a future within Iran.
Also, just to warn listeners that because of the media blackout, it is unbelievably difficult to know what's actually going on on the ground.
Yeah, exactly.
There is a real danger that there is an echo chamber, particularly of people outside the country, particularly people who are on the anti-regime side, spinning stories. It's very difficult to verify. We know for sure a lot of people have been killed. We know for sure the regime is evil.
But when it comes to the questions like these defections, I'm very doubtful that we have any real information on that at all that's reliable.
I agree with that. And I think we should be very wary. But the other thing to say is they, as I said earlier, they have kept the internet insofar as it is useful to the regime.
But the other thing they are, for obvious reasons, given how very, very, very well penetrated by Mossad they have been, and they now know that from what happened in the recent attacks, is that there is media manipulation and disinformation going on from every which way. So it is very, very hard to work out what's going on. But what is absolutely clear is these protests are real.
They are right across the country. That's maybe another difference with some of the ones that we've had before. And they are finding it very, very hard to shut them down until the last 24 hours, where I think it's gone in a pretty grim direction. Right, should we take a break and then come back and talk about Yemen? Very good.
Welcome back to The Rest is Politics with me, Alistair Campbell. And with me, Rory Stewart. The other thing going on in the Middle East is Yemen. And that's an unbelievable story. So let me just summarize that for listeners. In fact, we got rather a nice email from a Trip Plus member who'd been stranded on a small Yemeni island asking for an explanation of what's going on.
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