 All right, good morning everybody. It's great to see you all here. I think we're going to get started with our first formal panel presentation today. My name is Miri Kim. I am an associate professor here in the history and political science department. And I'm very happy to be able to be part of this great event. So let me get started with introducing our panel, our panelists, first panelist is Dr. Said Gokar who is UC Foundation Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science in University of Tennessee, Chattanooga. His work at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and Tony Blair Institute for Global Change in the United Kingdom also focuses on Middle East policy with a policy focused approach centered on Iran. He's the author of a book on the Basij, the paramilitary militia of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which was awarded the Washington Institute Silver Medal Prize. And today, he'll be speaking to us about the personalization of power in Iran. And we're looking forward to his talk. Our second panelist, Dr. Valentin Mogadon is Professor of International Affairs and Sociology and the director of the International Affairs Program at Northeastern University in Boston. She's author of Modernizing Women, Gender and Social Change in the Middle East. Her research focuses on globalization and development, revolutions, and citizenship. Unfortunately, Dr. Mogadon could not join us today. But we'll be able to learn more about her work, her paper, a bit, Women, Peace, and Security in the Middle East later in the panel. So that's just a brief introduction of our panelists. I'm just going to turn it over to Dr. Gokar. I'll ask that you keep your presentation to under 20 minutes. And we'll have a few minutes for our discussion. And then hopefully a good amount of time for a Q&A at the end of the formal presentation period too. So without further ado, please join me in welcoming our panel. Thank you very much, Mary. And thank you very much for inviting me. It's a pleasure to be here. To be honest, being the first presenter is not an easy job. And I was thinking myself, why do we have to start with Iran? Courier Walker actually makes my job much more easier, that why we are starting with Iran? Iran is in the center of attention for many policymakers in the West. Like it or not, many believe that Iran is the biggest troublemaker in the region. Recently, I was playing with the chat, with the IE, chats, T4, playing with artificial intelligence and asked this website that what are the main concerns or political instability caused in the region? And in any question I asked, artificial intelligence to answer, one of the answers was Iran. So we know artificial intelligence don't lie. So that's why we start from Iran. The Islamic Republic since 1979, that the revolution happened, always had been a challenge, especially for the American after taking over the embassy and taking the hostage, the American diplomat. And recently, if you read the news, if you watch the website based on your political leaning from the Fox News to CNN, every day there is a news about Iran. There is something happening. Even in the Middle East, if it's not related to Iran directly, there is something about Iran in the new. So you want to understand it. You want to understand why Iranians are engaged in the region, why they are in Syria, in Iraq, why, for example, they are supporting the Shia militia in the region. What about the Iran nuclear program? What about your regional involvement? What about your missile program? There are a lot of questions right now, especially if you're talking at the military academy and you have to think about it. So how can I understand these issues? In my opinion, as a political scientist, without understanding the Islamic Republic of Iran and the political system, you are not be able to understand its domestic and regional policies. The regime types matter. In comparative politics, if you don't know what kind of regime you're talking to, you cannot understand the policy. And you cannot respond to that policy. So if you think about the regime type of the Islamic Republic, if you talk to the Iranian who are supporting the regime, most of them will tell you that the Islamic Republic is a religious democracy, or Islamic democracy. But as a political scientist, if you talk with the report or listen to the political scientists, usually they will tell you the Islamic Republic is authoritarian regime, is a dictatorship. But what kind of a dictatorship we are talking about? We talk about the Russia, we talk about China, we talk about the UAE, Saudi Arabia. And they are all dictatorship. But there are a lot of differences between UAE, for example, and the relationship they have with America, and the Iranian, or the Chinese, and with Russia. My argument in this paper is Islamic Republic since 2021 has shifted completely to a personalistic regime. And I'm going to talk about it. Why does it mean? And why is it important to understand that? Islamic Republic is a dictatorship, but is a specific form of dictatorship, is form of the dictatorship we call it the personalistic regime. If you think about the Russia, they have the same regime right now. China is moving toward a personalistic regime. They had a one-party hegemonic political system, but they are after President Xi, the third-time election, they are moving to this fall. So let's dive a little bit about Iran. And I will talk about why it's important in terms of the regional activities, in terms of the issue of the taxation and the process that is going on in the Islamic Republic. The Islamic Republic came to the power in 1979, replaced a monarchy regime with a talkerotic regime under the Ayatollah Khomeini as a supreme leader. They created Islamic countries based on the idea of the guardianship of the Jewish. So if you think about the political system, you have a democracy. The separation of power. And the people are choosing the leader. In the Islamic Republic, the political system is different. The leader should be Shi'a clergy or the jurist. The jurist should rule the country. The first supreme leader, the Ayatollah Khomeini. And under his leadership, he created three pillars for the regime. The IRGC, you are very familiar with, the clergy who provide legitimacy for the system and the bureaucracy. Fast forward to Ayatollah Khomeini, the new leader, who came to the power in 1989 after Khomeini passed away. Ayatollah Khomeini came to the power as a middle-ranked clergy without any charisma. And for 33 years, he was, he still is, a Iran supreme leader. You have to remember that Ayatollah Khomeini was one of the radical Islamists. One of the followers of the Sayyeda Ghout. If you are familiar with the Middle East and with the Islamist extremism, Sayyeda Ghout was the father of the Islamist jihadism. And Ayatollah Khomeini was somebody who translated his book. So he came to the power as a radical clergy with this idea that I'm going to talk about it. And became the supreme leader for 33 years. And under his rulership, we have five administrations. My argument is he has started the process of personalization of power from 1989, but he finished the whole project in 2021. Since 2021, we are dealing with another animal. We are dealing with another political system. And that change will bring a lot of consequences. The first one, IRGC, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. When Ayatollah Khomeini came to the power, the first institution, he tried to personalize and slash ideologicalize. Why? Because he was a ideology clergy. He was part of the Islamic radical clergy. He came to the idea. He came to the power. And he tried to control the revolutionary guard. And give them some of the space, some of his idea. Try to ideologically. The IRGC have been purged three times. We are right now. We are working with a different IRGC that we see during Iran-Iraq war. There are the fifth generation who have been recruited in the Guard. To make it more personal security force and military force, not only they purged the IRGC, the IRGC went through a massive indoctrination process. 50% of the IRGC military training are related to the political and ideological. So 50% of their course is related to indoctrinate this force. They changed the recruitment of the Guard. Nobody can apply for the Guard, you know, unlike the US military. If you decide to go, you can go. Here, you have to be picked up after 2009. So you're gradually trying to indoctrinate, personalize a security force, and then they expand their power through all aspects of Iranian politics and society and culture and economy. They are everywhere. Some scholars believe that the Islamic Republic is a military regime. I disagree. I think the IRGC, still as long as Ayatollah Khamenei is alive, is a royal personal force of Ayatollah Khamenei. It's not a military regime, it's a personalistic regime. And these two different views will come with the different consequences. We have studied the IRGC indoctrination for several years, and there are very dominated with the idea of ruling of the clergy, the guardianship of the jurists, the idea of the creation of the Islamic ummah, the idea of the jihad and martyrdom. You cannot find any nationalistic or even any civil education or content in this education. The second pillar that Ayatollah Khamenei has sought to personalize, it was a clerical or seminary school. You know, if you remember, one of the pillars of the regime is a clerical establishment trying to legitimize. The 1979 Islamic Revolution was a cultural revolution as a political revolution. The clergy have been used to legitimize the ruling of the clergy or the guardianship of the jurists. So if you want to personalize the power, this is the second pillar that you have to think about it. You have to get rid of all of the critical clergy or independent clergy trying to bring all of the seminary school under your own control and then picking a new generation of clergy among of your personal students. This is a case from 2009, almost in every position for the head of any organization that is related to the Ayatollah Khamenei is not under control of the state bureaucracy. We see the personal student of Ayatollah Khamenei, including Al-Giomital Mustafa, a university related to the IRGC God's force that is very active in the region, including the Islamic ideological propaganda, all of the seminary school, et cetera, et cetera. The last pillar that Ayatollah Khamenei tried to control and personalize is bureaucracy. He has started to personalize bureaucracy under the Ahmadinejad, our beloved president, in 2005. But because of the problem, because of the personality of Ahmadinejad as a populist and displayed between the president and the leader, the project was not finished under his administration. After 2021, when Raisi became the president in a very manipulative election, he find this time and these opportunities to bring a new generation of indoctrinated technocrats. Replace them with western educated technocrats under the Rohani, for example, between 2013 to 2020. The Rohani administration has more PhD graduate from American University compared to the Obama administration. But by the Raisi, completely this story has changed. All of these new technocrats are ideological technocrats who have been groomed, trained by the hardliner and came to the power. To understand a personalistic regime, you have to understand the personality of the dictator or the ruler. You know, this is a manifesto of Aitolah Khamenei. He, for the first time, we talk about it in 1989 when he came to the power and gradually developed. If you think about it, let's talk about the continuous revolution that our work has not been done. We created, we did the revolution in 1979. We create and consolidate the power in 1982. But we still are working on creation of Islamic administration government and Islamic society and later on an Islamic utopia or Islamic umma. For 13 years, this was the idea of the Aitolah Khamenei has pushed. Talk about it. But in the West, we usually don't hear this kind of stuff. We try to ignore that. We believe this is for domestic group, domestic youth. They don't mean it. If you think about the Putin, for example, in 2021, if you read the Putin writing and listen to his speech, you talk about the Ukraine issue. And there was a few people who actually believe that he's going to invade Ukraine again. We didn't listen to Putin. So we have to listen to what these people said. And he's talking about creation of Islamic administration, creation of Islamic society and then creation of Islamic umma or Islamic civilization. Unfortunately, since 1989, when the Soviet Union collapsed, the personalistic power are in the rise. You know, among of the monarchy, among of the military regime, military regime is in decline, the monarchy is in decline. The only form of the political regime, authoritarian regime, not hybrid regime, that isn't rise, is personalistic regime. Compared to the 1989, the 23% of the regime was personalistic rule. Right now, there are 40% of countries from Venezuela under the modern to China to Russia. In the Middle East, you have a very different form of the personalistic rule. You are familiar with the idea of the Sheikh or Sultan or King, King Abdullah or King Salman in Saudi Arabia. The Sheikh are in Kuwait, in Qatar and you have Sultan in Sultanate of Oman and recently Rajat Tayyub Erdogan tried to be a new Sultan. Among the Iranian version of it or the Islamic Republic version of it is part of this idea of the personalistic rule. But in this case, is a little bit more ideologic. You know, Sheikh, Sultan or King are political rulers. They respect the religion, but they don't get into it. But the Imam is a guy, is a guardianship of the jurist, is a Islamic scholar, who not only has a religious superiority, has a political superiority. What does it mean? As I told you, unfortunately, the personalistic rule is a false autocracy form among of the hegemonic political parties or monarchy regime or military regime. It's most corrupted. They are going to the war more offensively compared to the other political system. Process of democratization is much difficult in personalistic rule. They are all based on the academic research for years. So if regime is moving toward the personalistic regime, even China, you have to think about it. What are the consequences of this transformation? It's not only domestic in terms of the corruption, in terms of the appointing of your loyalties to the political position. They have regional and international consequences. I will talk later on. But I really believe to understand why Russia invades Ukraine or the possibility of China invades Taiwan. This framework will help us to calculate the possibilities of, in terms of domestic politics. As I told you, a personalistic rule are the worst case because they are very corrupt. Why they are corrupt? Because as a ruler, you need to bring the people who believe and loyal to you, regardless of their expertise. There is no meritocracy. You have to fill out all of the position, even in the security and military and economy. It will lead to the massive corruption and corruptocracy. And the massive corruption is one of the reasons that the Iranians came to this several times. The last round is right now. The 2022-2023 Mahsa Purotes, who started six months ago because one Iranian Kurdish daughter, Gher, had been killed under police custody. And it continued. They killed more than 530 people. As we know it, 2,000 people blinded because they shoot directly to the eyes. 23,000 people have been arrested. Again, this is official and statistic. If you think about this protest, this is not a unique protest. In 2019, Iranian Revolt and Islamic Republic killed 1,502 days. In 2017-18, they revolted. In 2009, in 1999, in 1991, 1992, 1993. But year by year, the scope of the protests has increased. Why? Because of the corruption. One of the reason, economic reason, there are a massive inflation, more than 50% inflation compared to the last year. Economic stagnation, environmental degradation, pollution, air pollution, water scarcity. Islamic Republic is a proto-totalitarian regime in terms that they want to control even your private life. You know, if you go to the China or Russia, what you are eating, what you are wearing, doesn't really care. The dictator doesn't care about your personal life. Islamic Republic has concern. And that's why the massamini has been arrested and killed because of the hijab. So the life in the Islamic Republic, under the Islamic Republic, is much more difficult compared living in Russia or China. I don't know about the North Korea. I've never been there, but I think that's the most worst-case scenario you can imagine. So there are a lot of reason, and most of this reason come from the idea of the personalization of power, gradually marginalizing elite or expert, bringing all of these loyalties to the power, stay trying to stay in the power. You created a very incompetent political system that is not able to deliver any goods. You know, if you think about the Emirate, Emirate is a authoritarian regime. Some scholars believe it has moved to a personal system by the NBZ or in the Saudi by NBS. But at least in both cases, they are able to provide to create the societies that the people want to live and stay and even invigorate and work there. They close the political space by the liberal, socially and economically. In the Islamic Republic, they close all aspects of your life, literally control all aspects of the life and that's why people are losing their hope and that's why they are revolting against Ayatollah Khamenei and his regime. You know, they asked me to talk about this event because it's ongoing and it's very important to understand if this revolt that I will call the revolution and I will tell you I will use that, is successful, we will see a very different scenario. The next Iran, if the Islamic Republic collapse, I'm not sure if it will be a liberal democracy but I'm sure it will be a secular political system and very pro-Western, pro-American allies. That's that I'm sure for that. So a lot of problem that you are working, it's complicated with vanish in a few days if the regime collapsed and that's a big if. But this protest is a very clear manifestation of what Iranian wants, they want to live normally. The Iranian girls are the main engine of this protest. For the first time we saw the higher school female student at the street protesting. We saw the social media playing very important role unlike 2009 that some people call it the Twitter revolution. This is really a Twitter social media revolution for somebody who is talking on the social media and new technologies. To what extent the possibility of the regime collapse? I don't know, still we don't see too much gap among of the elite and so far we know that the IRGC is repressing and the Basij and I work on both of these, repressing the protest very brutally. But what I can tell you that 2023 is a defeat of the Islamism in Iran. 1979, Islamists came to the power, replace the monarchy with the political Islamist sister. Islamism is not a new phenomenon. It was from 1928 that Hassan al-Bandak created even later, even earlier by Jamaluddin al-Afqani. But the modern Islamism is a product of 1917 after the defeat of the Arab countries from the Israel and the establishment of Israel in 1948. But Iranian was the only Islamists who were able to create a country, a regime in 1979. 43 years later, nobody believed the idea anymore in Iran. Islamism was based on three pillars, anti-Semitism, anti-Americanism and morality, control or hijab. The Iranian society is the most poor American society I know, among of the Middle Eastern countries and Islamic world and it's surprising for many of you. Even there is not too much enmity toward Israel. From 2009, we are listening to this slogan that no Kazan or Lebanon just focus on us and nobody believed the idea of hijab or Islamic rule. Islamism has been defeated. Islamic Republic is only ruling based on the pure, pure fault. The last discussion, what does it mean in terms of the taxation? Unfortunately, or fortunately, I don't know, based on what you are thinking, the personality regime has always a problem of the taxation because the ruler, the dictator usually undermined the political institution and then it's very unpredictable who will be the next Supreme Leader. Some countries have been managed to fix a problem like North Korea, they have so far till the taxation and they are grooming another one for the fort and they didn't have any problem. But as we know in compared to politics, the personalistic regime are the most prone to the crisis during the taxation. Ayatollah Khamenei is 83 years old and the next Supreme Leader can actually change the Iran to a different direction, in theory, in theory. In reality, we know that gradually Ayatollah Khamenei, the next Supreme Leader is appointed or selected by the assembly of experts, consisted of 88 clergy and gradually Ayatollah Khamenei have personalized this institution. In the last election, 2017, completely dominated by the hardliner, by the Ayatollah Khamenei close allies and the students. The next election will be next year and we can assume that this process will continue. So even from the taxation of the Supreme Leader, if you are waiting for the Supreme Leader to die and something happened, I'm not very optimistic to be honest. I think the next Supreme Leader, we have right now two candidates, the Ayatollah Raisi as the president and Ayatollah Khamenei's son as here sitting here. Both have the same view of Ayatollah Khamenei, both belong to the radical political Islam. But the taxation is a moment that the regime, personalistic regime are usually on the weakest moment of their role. And if this moment continue or coincide with the mass protests, we will see another Iran. We will see the possibilities of the Iranian people who are able to change the Islamic Republic. Thank you very much for your listening. Dr. Gokar, thank you so much for your presentation. We'll now turn it over to Mr. Sherman Patrick as our discussant, he'll have about eight minutes or so. He is the vice president of strategy at NUARA, which is a Norwich University of Applied Research Institute. And over his career, he's worked with five U.S. senators, that's right, five, including Patrick Leahy and the now president, Joe Biden, when he was serving as chairman of the Foreign Relations Council, sorry, Committee on National Security Issues. And he brings a range of expertise that covers AI, machine learning, industrial policy, advanced development, and really sort of focus on that techie, right? Technology sort of side of our current lives and the future. And I think given that a lot of the things that have been going on in Iran in the past few months have been so focused around this new aspect of our lives around technology, he'll have a lot of really interesting comments and insights to provide for us. So let me just take it, turn it over to Mr. Patrick and please welcome him to the front. Thank you, it's a pleasure to be here this morning and it's a great topic, I agree with you for the first panel here to begin discussing this. Iran, as we heard from SENTCOM as one of the major destabilizing factors in the regime or in the region and your analysis of the regime, I believe, is one that we need to ask ourselves at the very beginning when, as you say, when we want to relate to them, when we want to figure out how we're going to respond, we need to know what sort of regime we're dealing with. And international theory, we build these models, we build analytical frameworks to understand what's going on and the ones we pick oftentimes do influence policymakers. Having advised policymakers for many years, none of them think that they're using analytical frameworks developed in academia, none of them think that they're going back to their theory, but they are, in fact, those assumptions are always there. And you can sit in the room and you can hear people discuss what's going on and you can pick out the strains of realist theory or you can hear Graham Allison coming through in the way they're discussing it. And I think it's important to understand that. And what you've put forward in this paper, I think fairly convincingly points out that transition from Iran as a cultural theoretical model thinking of it as a theocracy to the personalization of Khamenei and the way he has built the state around him. You lay out steps very well for how he did that and how he controlled the key institutions. You know, if I ever want to take over a nuwari, I've got a good model here for how to build up things. Don't tell Phil Seussman. But also, you used a phrase in the paper that you didn't use this morning that I liked in particular, the dumbification of the state. And I think it's a very apt description of the tradeoff that has been made in this personalization of the need to undermine the efficacy and use it particularly towards the bureaucracy to undermine their efficacy in delivering goods in order to ensure commitment to him. I believe that it could also be applied to the IRGC as well. And we have not yet, you know, I can't point myself to a concrete example, but I think the idea of the dumbification for achieving personalized control was one that can be applied to all institutions and makes regimes like Vladimir Putin's in Russia makes them ineffective or North Korea. You know, you briefly mentioned North Korea. That's another model that I think or another example that should loom large here as we think about this. Now, I do want to caveat that, that it has an assumption that both you and I share what I can tell is that people do want goods and services declared to them or delivered to them more than they want the loyalty to their supreme leader. I think that's accurate, but that is something that we have to keep in mind. It's possible that there are motivations other than receiving effective government aid, for example. At a certain point, you run into a hierarchy of needs issue and I firmly believe that there is a point where services could become so bad or the basic security could become so bad that and we may be there already that the people of Iran will be opposed to the personalization of this regime. But we've been saying the same thing about North Korea for a very long time and we have yet to see any real crack there. So as a policymaker advisor, I was advising senators in 2009, 2019, 2022, all of the big uprisings. And each time we always said, this is the time. This is the time when we're really gonna see a crack here. I worked on a bill with the McCain's, so I was working for Chris Coons at the time, worked with the McCain's staff. It was called the Victims of Iranians Censorship Act, the voice act. We put it together in order to provide the ability, U.S. funds and support to try to give Iranians access to outside news so they could organize, so they could understand. The idea was with just a little more information, with just a little more connection, like this will be it, this will finally happen. It didn't happen back then. We did not have that breakthrough. And I noticed that one of the things that your paper points out here is that was right before the last final stage of this transition, you talk about it being completed in 2021. So at the time we passed that bill, at the time we were pushing that additional connection, within Iran Khomeini was personalizing the regime. And so I would hope at some point here, if I shut up and give you a chance to talk again, you can talk about the dynamic aspect of that and the way efforts changed through the personalization that undermined some of those things we had done. And that would give us, I hope, some insight going forward into how we can be hopeful that we are seeing something in Iran now that might be of value and we're not just seeing the next transition to when Iran becomes DPRK and does get in there, or whether there's structurally something about Iran that would prevent it from ever becoming DPRK. And I ask this because one of the tests of theory is not only can it make predictions, but in the case of political science theory, can it provide predictions that guide policymakers to make wise decisions? And it's extremely difficult to find a theory that can help with that. There are so many variables involved when you're making decisions, not to mention ones that are entirely outside the scope of best practice, such as what will your constituents support you doing? And I wondered if you could also speak in terms of what we might do, again, keeping with the information domain, Norwich and Noori work a lot on information dominance. We spend a lot of time thinking through ways that we can understand the world around us, understand information and also provide advice to policymakers on what they would do. And are there specific IO or information policies that a government that would like to see greater participation in Iran for its people, which would like to see a regime with a friendlier, more stable or sort of friendly attitude towards stability in the region, if there are things that we might do or might pursue in order to either undermine this personalization or shift the personalization in such a way that it increases regional stability. So I'm gonna stop there because I've been talking for a while and take the privilege of the first question here. And then I really look forward to hearing all the questions from out there. Yeah, so thank you so much for your commentary and the feedback. Dr. Gokar, if you could maybe respond to some of those points just for maybe a couple of minutes because we do wanna have some time for maybe shooting questions. I need one day. Yeah, so, and then maybe while those comments are being aired, any students who want to ask questions if you would like to line up, we'll just go first, come first served. Please feel free to do so. Yeah. Absolutely. You know, in terms of the demification of a state, is, you know, the whole idea is a personalist ruler because they are very unsecure about their position. Usually they pick up most loyalist people or the people who can't pretend they are loyalists. And that's why they gradually marginalize, you know, the elite or the expert gradually living the countries. Iran is one of the countries with the highest brain drain, you know, ratio in terms of the population. You asked about the demification of IRGC and I give you one example. In 2020, when the corona hit Iran, the IRGC revealed equipment called a corona finder. And the corona finder was only a, you know, a small piece without any function. They re-veiled it in a TV show that we discovered the corona finder. In 200 meters, we can find any corona viruses. And after one day, they realized it was, you know, not true. So they took it down the whole propaganda. When you put the IRGC commander general Salami, for example, right now that replaced general Azizi in 2018, is much more big mouse and less a strategic, you know, designer. You replace a general Soleimani, the IRGC quotes for, whoever was assassinated, with the general Esmaila Qahani that is less capable to mobilize and, you know, unified the Shesh militia in the Middle East. So even in the IRGC, you will see this process of demification. In some area, they are doing very well, like in terms of the missile and drones with the help of other countries, North Korea, China, Russia. And some people ask me if they are so dumb why they are developing a very good drone or missile program. You know, imagine you are bodybuilders and you inject all of the oil on your missiles, on your, you know, you have a very beautiful front missile, but your knee are very skinny and you see it among of the people who are doing bodybuilding through destroyed and out of this. IRGC is very similar to that. So if you look at the missiles on the, are very strong, very beautiful, but look at this, you know, the skinny feet. I'll never think of IRGC the same. Yeah, that, you know, you talk about the protests and the possibilities of the success. To be honest, a protest will be a revolt, will be a revolution. In political science, if you have a successful revolt, you will call it a revolution. If it's not successful, you will call it a revolt. There are a lot of conditions should be at the same time available. Even in terms of, they have to have leaders. The mass of protest doesn't have right now one leader. In terms of the gap among of the elite, we don't see too much split among of the Iranian elite. Because all of this elite are all their position to the supreme leader. The security forces still are royal to the Islamic Republic, to the Ayatollah Khomeini. And even in terms of the international context, you have to have a suitable international atmosphere. We don't have it. China, Russia, they are supporting the Islamic Republic. Just think about the Syria in 2011. The Syria witnessed a very massive revolution. The only thing that stopped the Syria to collapse was the support of Iran and the Russia from the Assad in 2012, 2013. And gradually, it took back all of the land. Part of the military was because where the Shia supported the Assad, but more importantly was Iran and the Russia supporting the Assad. So for a revolution to be successful, and that's why the revolution is very, very unique. You don't see too much revolution. The big revolution, the last one, was 1979 Iranian revolution from America, or France, China, Kubaian revolution. And that's the main reason, very difficult to do that. What's the rule of the social media? When I moved to the US, I got fired from Iranian university in 2009, and then I find a job here at the Stanford, working a project called Liberation Technologies. The cyber-utopian is that everybody was so fascinated by the information that the information is coming and liberating of all of us. But gradually we realized that the dictator has the upper hand in controlling the information, in controlling the social media. Right now, social media is actually helping them to stay in power. I'm not very optimistic about the rule of the social media. You know, I think, yes, they have to have the information, yes, they have to pass the internet, the filtering the internet. But more importantly is we're focusing on weakening the security forces and creating the gap among the elite, trying to co-opt some of the elite, buying off the royalties. That's the most important one. If you do it, the society is ready for a revolution. You don't need to do too much over there. You just need to think about how you can make sure next time that happens they are not going to repress brutally. I told you in 2018, it's only in two days 1,500 people have been killed. So you're talking about one of the most repressive authoritarian regime. Thank you so much. I think we have time for a question or two. So our students, if you wanna come up and ask your question. I can hear you. I'm afraid you're going to ask a question. That was the sanction. Oh, sorry. The sanction. You know, without a doubt, sanction is morally wrong and hurt more vulnerable people in the target society. There is no doubt about it. You know, the Iranian oligarch are safe from the sanction impact compared to the Iranian lower class or Iranian poor. This is no doubt. But let's put yourself in the position of the policy makers. You know, I'm always asking my students to think twice and put them in a different shoes. As a policy maker, what kind of the tools, state craft tools do you have to impact the other countries behavior? Think about the Russia. Okay, it's much easier for me to talk about the Russia. You have three tools. Diplomacy, public diplomacy, official diplomacy. You have economic state craft, revoke them or sanction them, and you have using force. That's enough. If they don't listen to your diplomacy, if you're asking them, okay, withdrawal or don't attack, they are coming after, they are attacking. You are going toward economic state craft before going to the military state craft because that's the worst case scenario. In economic state craft, you have two tools. Try to revoke them. Okay, please don't attack. We will give you this benefit. President Obama did the same. In 2015, they signed the Iran nuclear deal. And the whole idea was we coming and signing this deal and hopefully we will build a foundation and based on this foundation, we will work out. Immediately after signing the deal, Ayatollah Khamenei stopped Iranian to talk to the American. Iranian president talked with Obama by phone 15 minutes and then Ayatollah Khamenei humiliated him. So the revolt didn't work for the Islamic Republic in terms of changing the behavior. And then you have the military force. From the policy making, that's the only option you have, but you have to remember that option is going to hurt people most than the political elite. So what are other options? Some people believe a smart sanction, targeting individual and institution. In theory, it's good. In reality, it's difficult to implement it. Why? Because for example, think about the Iranian economy. The IRGC almost is penetrated the Iranian economy. Iranian economy, 80% is a state-owned or semi-state-owned. And then you cannot separate it. If you sanction this institution, ultimately you're sanctioning other institution as well. So I really don't know the answer. What is it? I can tell you that it's hurting Iranian people. And the lower class, Iranian economy are very bad right now. The inflation for the last year was 50% in the basic good, more than 70%. And day in day, more Iranian are moving from the middle class to the lower class. And this will bring another paradox because we believe for democratization, you need the middle class to push the democratization. If you make people pull, you're undermining your efforts. This is kind of the environment you are working. There are a lot of paradoxes. It's not easy, pick this one or pick that one. You have to think critically about all of the options that you have and then choose based on the possibilities. If I may add, on your three options, only one of those is available to Congress. So when Congress wants to get involved when you ask your representatives to do something, they go for sanctions because that's the only thing in their toolbox that they can add.