 So she's a little late, so I'm filming it. So, before I read you, Dr. Parsa's background, I will let you know that next week we'll have a talk by Rick Winston, and it will be downstairs again. And most of you know if you've come, that Rick usually does three films at the end of our series. Well, this time around he's doing two films, and next week instead of a film he'll be talking about what the films are about. So next week is about Blacklisting in the Red Scare Era, and then the following two will be the films about it. Oh, I'll just announce also that the program committee will be meeting, I believe it's for 26, it's Friday, and I'll get an email about it if you remember, and anyone is welcome to come at 1.30 in the afternoon. And if you can't come, but you have ideas about subjects or speakers that you would like us to consider, you can tell me or you can tell Michelle or Bob. We had a list last week, but Michelle still has the list, so she's right here in the red top if you want to tell her your ideas. Then we'll be glad to consider them. Okay, today we are honored to have with us Nisa Fossa, professor of sociology at Dartmouth College. Dr. Carson did his undergraduate work at Queens College in New York City before completing his master's in Ph.D. at University of Michigan. He's written a number of books focusing on social revolutions in Iran, Nicaragua, and the Philippines. And the most recent book, Democracy in Iran, Why It Failed, and How It Might Succeed, was published by Harvard University in 2016. The Middle East has always been a critical area of the world as we know and remains today key but very problematic. Today Dr. Carson will discuss the causes of the 1979 revolution and its social, economic, and political outcomes. He'll analyze the ongoing challenges against the Islamic regime. Dr. Carson will also suggest a lengthy path for Iran's democratization. So please welcome Dr. Carson. Thank you. Unfortunately, we couldn't get the computer to work with the screen, with the projector, so this will be a little different than he had planned. By the way, copies of the book that Harvard published we have. They're available, okay. In the back there? There are a few copies right there. Right over there. Thank you. Thank you. Well, I think it's better you hold this because... Well, I'm going to be sitting right here. I'll try. I'll try, see if I need this. I doubt it because my classrooms are... Microphones, if you could put it up a little bit. So can you hear me now? Yes. Okay, that's the way it's going to be. So we hold this here in case when people are asking questions. So academic professors have a microphone in their necks. And so in their throat somewhere it's built in. And so we shout often. Okay, unfortunately, we don't have the PowerPoint. So I will just tell you from my memory and instead of using the PowerPoint, and I will be talking briefly about three different periods. Okay, so the 1970s and 1980s, 1990s, and the current, the new century and millennium and about the conflicts and the processes that Iranians have been going through and experiencing. Okay, so first we want to talk about the issue of democratization and revolution. The 1979 revolution. So democratization I define as a political process that empowers the civilian population vis-a-vis the state, the government. So democratization doesn't mean all social, economic and political problems would be solved immediately. But at least it gives a voice to the underlying population in any society to control the state power. So we have a blackboard but it's all written here. Let me just, can you see this side if I write something? Okay, we don't have any. Yeah, we don't need that anymore. Can I erase this? I did it without. Actually this works fine. Okay, so the way I think of society is made up of state and we have the rural population, urban population. In rural population we have landlords and we have peasants at the bottom. Depending on the society that you're looking at. Here we have the upper class or the bourgeoisie, bourgeoisie, the bourgeois class and here the middle class and the working class. And here I usually put intellectuals, clergy and students. So democracy is talking about this population down here controlling those that control the guns can be very dangerous. If you don't control the guns. And so Brits ruled America for a few centuries and no taxation, no representation and so those kind of conflicts emerged and ultimately the American Revolution came. It was actually an anti-colonial rebellion that was successful and Americans finally got a constitution, the Bill of Rights and so the state ultimately was checked by the civilian population. Doesn't mean that the state always helps everybody in here. Often there is alliances between upper classes with the state so I tell my students those who often control the gold. So the upper classes, they often end up forming an alliance with the ones that control the guns. So you have guns, gold and sometimes like in Iran, God also comes in, guns, gold, God and then these end up recruiting the goons and checking the population and so that's very unfortunate coalition. And this is what has happened actually in Iran but I will tell you a little more about it. So the Iranian Revolution begins in about the revolutionary struggles begins in 1977 and President Jimmy Carter talked about human rights and so forth so the Shah of Iran decided that we are going to reduce political repression and let some of the political prisoners come out and some of them to be tried in civilian courts instead of military courts and that gave the population some courage that, yeah, there is some liberalization and there is human rights and all that so people started speaking and speaking and ultimately two major conflicts emerged. One was political conflict for controlling the guns and the other was the Shah and his Savak, Savak, the secret police that had been organized, trained by the CIA and I'm sorry, I forgot your name. He and I were talking a bit earlier. The CIA organized the Savak and Savak became very, very successful in controlling the population and repressing dissent and eliminating any opposition that emerged for decades. From 1957 when this was, after the 1953 coup d'etat in 1957 the Savak was constructed with the help of the CIA. Anyway, make the long story short, two conflicts I was going to talk about two conflicts emerged in Iran by 1979. One conflict, issues of human rights, political freedoms, controlling the state and so forth the second conflict had to do with rising inequalities and this was economic conflicts. So it was one political conflict, the second one became economic conflict. The two conflicts produced against the state and against economic policies produced a third conflict that was ideological, ideological conflict. The ideological conflict was resolved against the monarchy in favor of an Islamic republic. So political inequality, economic inequality resulted, people say oh yeah by the time you get to Feb 1979 the vast majority of the Iranian population won an Islamic republic. So in this process everybody hoped that an Islamic republic would solve their problems with the guns, would solve their problems with issues of economic inequality and everybody will be happy. So about 3,000 people were killed, 3,000 close to 3,000 died during the revolutionary struggle that the Shah's army and the Savak were engaged in shooting people killing them in demonstrations and strikes and so forth. So the revolution takes place on Feb 1979 and Ayatollah Khomeini becomes the leader of the revolution. So why Khomeini? Well Khomeini becomes the leader of the revolution because he's protected from the Savak because he's not living inside Iran, he lived in Iraq where he had been sent to exile. So he becomes the leader of the revolution and he says very nice things. He talks about political freedom, even democracy. In Paris when he was forced out of Iraq he went to Paris. There he talked about genuine democracy that's better than yours and so big huge claims everybody will be free. Even the communists would have freedom as long as they don't get engaged in conspiracy. So everybody will be free to speak their minds and we have equality for men and women and women would be free and all that. So everything looks so nice and beautiful. He came back and for a few weeks everything was fine and he was saying good things. On the fifth day of his arrival he came up with the new idea that he hadn't talked about for the 14 years he had been out of Iran or close to 15 years out of Iran in exile. He never said anything about the poor. Suddenly he came up with the idea that the Islamic Republic on the fifth day when he returned to Iran. He said the Islamic Republic is going to serve the interests of the poor the most as a fin. This is what most as a fin. This is what the Islamic Republic is going to be about. On April 1st and 2nd, which is a couple of days ago, there was a referendum and the referendum asked two questions. Do you support the monarchy which they had already overthrown or you support the Islamic Republic? There was no mention of whether you support democracy. Everybody assumed that we had a revolution and everybody talked about democracy, political freedom. So Islamic Republic is the same as democracy and the vast majority came out and voted for an Islamic Republic. Who wants a monarchy? 3,000 people have given their lives to get rid of the monarchy and so now it's time to have Islamic Republic. And to most people, Islamic Republic meant you get political freedom but also it's not just political freedom but you also have economic equality and social justice. That's what Islamic Republic meant to the vast majority of the people particularly to the middle class and the working class that had come into the revolutionary struggles in the final stages of the revolution. Then comes the time to write a constitution. So conflicts start beginning. What kind of constitution? And so the liberals are in charge of the government headed by Prime Minister, his dad now, who was an engineer. His name was Mehdi Bazergan. He was a very liberal guy. He had been with Mossadegh in the 1950s. And so they wanted a liberal kind of constitution like the Western European or North American constitution to have political freedom, liberties and such. And so Khomeini said that, well, you need to introduce two clauses in the constitution. First, that the country is going to be Islamic but Shiite Islamic, not just all Islam. It's Shiite Islam. It has to be everything compatible with Shiite Islam. And the second element that you need to introduce into the constitution was the fact that women cannot become judges. So the liberal government said this wasn't supposed to be part of the conversation. Women could not be judges, so they rejected it. They rejected it and conflict was going on between the provisional revolutionary government and Khomeini and his supporters. And something very lucky happened for Khomeini. This was on November 4th. Khomeini became very lucky. Thank you. The hostages were taken by students. Nobody had any clue what was going on. Khomeini realized that this seems to be mobilizing the population. Anti-Americanism is on the rise. And he threw his support behind the students who took the American Embassy as hostage. As soon as the hostages were taken, the liberal government said, what the hell is going on? Students are now in new government and they're doing, they're anarchists and whatever they're doing, they resigned. As soon as they resigned, a few weeks later, the clergy, parts of the clergy, members of the clergy started becoming very active. They had been active during the revolution, but they were really the late comers. They weren't in the front, forefront of the revolutionary struggles, which were students and were basically largely leftist students and were socialists or Marxists of different kinds. And so the liberal government is out of power. Khomeini brings in his own constitution and the clergy, and he keeps shouting. The entire coalition, Khomeini's coalition, we are going to serve the most as a fin, the oppressed, the poor. And a lot of poor people already, because inequalities had been rising during the Shah's time. And with a lot of oil money coming in and going to wealthy people, the people at the bottom weren't getting much of anything. So inequalities were rising, Khomeini recognized that this is his winning card, at least one of his winning cards. So he promoted the working class and some of the middle class came in support. And so before the year was over, 1979, the constitution was approved by, again, majority of the population. There were some dissent, but not much. Once the constitution was passed, Khomeini started repressing everybody. And so in the following years, because it's a long story, I'm going to make it short, between 1981 and 1985, that four-year period, Khomeini's regime executed more than 11,000, more than 11,000 people. This is 81 to 85. And then 1988, once the Iraq War ended, executed more than 5,000 political prisoners. Most of these were Muslims, were Islamists, who had supported the Islamic Revolution. These were mixed. They were liberals, they were socialists, leftists, Marxists, and some Islamic. But most of these were Islamists. Now they are called the Mujahideen, that the Trump administration has been supporting. They used to be in Iraq, but now they are in Albany. They were forced out of Iraq. There were a few thousand of them left there. So Khomeini's regime, in the first few years, the first decade of the revolution, killed at least just executions and killing people in armed struggle. They killed about 16,000. The Shah's regime had only killed during the last couple of years of the revolution. He had killed about 3,000. So Khomeini's regime became more repressive than the regime they had already gotten. And plus Khomeini's regime introduced. So remember the Shah's regime, during the Shah's regime there were two conflicts, economic and political. Then became economic. With Khomeini's regime you had several more conflicts. You had the political conflicts because in the end with the new constitution, this became God's rule, they called it. So God came over here, not just guns, but also God's rule. So not only they control the guns and they can shoot you, execute you, but also they represent God and God's will and nobody can challenge. And so it became problematic. So the political problems even intensified more than they had existed during the Shah's time. So the conflicts became political, then economic conflicts. Economic conflicts started emerging during the war, but then it intensified after the war ended and all that. So to give you just a couple of statistics to compare the situation. In 1976, when you were probably in Ahvaz in Iran, 1976, Iran had its highest GDP per capita in history. At that time Iran's GDP per capita was 13,300 something. This is $2,005, denominated in $2,005. So $13,300 something, let's say $50. By 2009, more than three decades after this date, 1976, Iran's per capita GDP, again $2,005, was anybody wants to take a guess? Do you see which direction it went? Down. So it was $9,450. So more than three decades after the revolution, Iranians had lost. By today Iran's population per capita GDP has to increase by about 75% approximately to become what it was in 1976. What is the population? The size of the population. At the time of the revolution in 1970, about a few years, 1976 actually, that year, it's about 36,000, 36 million people. The population of the country by now is about 80 million people. So Khomeini came when he came, he said reprocreate and reproduce. Because of the war people got killed, but he thought birth control wasn't accepted. So you have to reprocreate and this is good for Islam and it's great. Then that was the economic conflict. So situation worst from here to here. Then there was a third conflict that emerged and that conflict I called cultural and social conflicts. Cultural and social conflicts which he hadn't talked about at all during the revolutionary struggle. Now suddenly the revolution came and he said first they attacked the women. We had the veil and the first group that in Iran rebelled against Khomeini were the women. So the first thing happened, February 11th the revolution come and March 8th. Remember what the March 8th is supposed to be? International women's day. Thank you. We have highly educated people here. International women's day. On March 8th, few days earlier Khomeini said something. Women started protesting on March 8th. Said we are not going to put this and we are not going to put up with your thing. And you are another dictator and you are another fascist and we don't want it. So that was the first go. But they lost. So they forced women who were working in the government or in offices. You either wear the veil or you're out. So they attacked their economic interests. So women were forced, those who worked for the government. They are highly educated women. They had to wear. And eventually of course the laws and the rules, everything that went along with the constitution and Islamic constitution, they lost most of their rights. So by now women are basically second class citizens. Women who had been getting more and more rights during the Shah's time now became second class. So that's another conflict. And then of course there are all these other conflicts that don't drink alcohol. Persians, Iranians have been drinking alcohol for thousands of years. At least as far back as 7,000 years ago archeologists have found evidence that these people have been drinking for several thousand years. And now how many kinds of don't drink. And so a lot of people stopped drinking but then people started smuggling beer and wine and alcohol from outside of the country bringing in. Every year you have like 12, 13 billion, billion, billion dollars that the Iranians spend on all these alcohol that are smuggled into this country. But something else happened new that everybody producing alcohol in their own basement. So a lot of people are now... Now you look at the situation before the revolution, you know, middle class people and wealthy, well off people drank and all that. You know, the population that was addicted to alcohol was not very large. By now you go to elementary school, elementary schools and kids in elementary school walk into their classroom drunk. And the other cultural revolution was that so many said put on the scarf because that way you will be protected and you wouldn't be stimulating the guys or the men to think of you as sex objects and so forth, so cover up and all that. Today, unlike the thousands of years of Persian and Iranian history 80% of high school girls have boyfriend. And which I don't know what percentage it is in the United States is huge compared to prior to the revolution during the Shah's time you get boyfriend and girlfriend when you get to the university and college. Before that you don't have anything like that. So they tried to bring sort of Islamic morality and it backfired. So every aspect of society you look at the Islamic Republic ended up producing conflicts and failing to resolve those conflicts. And so the other problem is that they generated, they pushed for an Islamic Republic they made the university, they closed the universities from for several years well at least two years all universities were closed some were closed for several years. Half the university faculty were kicked out and were fired because they were either too liberal, pro-western, pro-Shah, socialist, communist, whatever they got rid of all those people and they said well the university has to become Islamic. And they killed about 5,000 figures I have given to you, this figure over here but 5,000 of those were students who were arrested and executed and finished just like that. Now in Iranian universities about 76% of students who are supposed to be good Muslims and pray every day, 76% of the students do not say their obligatory daily prayers so they don't pray at all. And 75% of all adults that are supposed to be going to the mosque and all that don't pray at all. And as of 2001, today it's even worse. So when Khomeini came to office the first year about four months after the revolution he called upon all students and intellectuals come to the mosque and go to the mosque and come to the mosque and this is the place you defend the revolution intellectuals and the students were the first among the first to say well if this is Islam we don't have anything to do with it. So this year, not even two years after the revolution in June of 1980 he said the lewd ones have emptied the mosques. And so this another problem that emerged with the Islamic Revolution was that in Iran most Islamic countries people don't change their religion and prior to the revolution here and there somebody becomes Christian or somebody becomes Bahá'í and it's just very limited. The number is not very huge, very large for people to change their religion in a society that is not fully developed. And so a developed society some people become maybe atheists or agnostic and you know America people a lot of people change their religion all the time a lot increasingly. In Iran that wasn't the case. Today Christianity is one of the most favorite religions by those who convert. So increasingly large number of Iranians changing their religion from Islam to Christianity or Bahá'í or Zoroastrianism which is an ancient Persian religion. So they created another problem in addition to social problem which has to do with the women and ethnic minorities you have problem with religion. So every aspect of society that the Islamic Republic has created is generating conflict. So there are the Kurds, there are the Turks, there are the Turkmen, there are the Arabs, there are the Baluchis and all of these groups most of them are Sunnis and they have problems with the Islamic regime, the Islamic Republic. So there is nobody that is really completely satisfied with any of the things that they do. There is a very small less than 10% of the population that is really satisfied and those people are some of the clergy, ruling clergy, not all the clergy because a lot of the clerics now are non-political, they don't intervene, they are afraid of intervening in politics. The ruling clergy, the revolutionary guard and their relatives. So about 50% of Iran's GDP is controlled by the top Ayatollah, the supreme leader is called Khomeini established that institution, the supreme leader who represents the hidden Imam, the 12th Imam and everybody has to abide by his command and his order. So they control about 50%. The revolutionary guard probably controls about 20% of Iran's economy, some people go as high as 25% and the vast majority of the people are living in destitute. So that's the economic dimension of what they have today. Now, a couple of conflicts I'll talk about then. How much time was I supposed to be talking first? Half an hour. Half an hour? With the questions. So I'll speak a little bit longer then about those conflicts and then I stop for the questions you might have. So once the revolution came, the universities and colleges some of them had supported Khomeini, suddenly they all shifted to the left. Some kind of socialist, some were in favor of Swedish socialism or Scandinavian socialism, some were in favor of Soviet kind of communism and some were nationalist and wanted liberalism to come and they had no interest in Islamic theocracy and so forth. So Khomeini decided, well, we closed down the university which I talked about and killing people and then getting rid of a lot of the students, he reopened the university. The universities then they thought, okay, we cleaned up all the liberals and the monarchists and the socialists or communists, all of them are gone now, we are going to be safe. 1999 comes in and there is a conflict within the government closing one of the newspapers in the country, liberal newspaper, relatively liberal or Islamic liberal. So the students protested and why are you closing this newspaper? Why are you picking on this liberal newspaper? So the students protested about a week or so throughout the country in all university cities and towns and one of the important things that Khomeini's regime did was to expand the colleges and universities which weren't really huge in numbers during the Shah's time. Khomeini to their credit, they expanded the university. Once they expanded the university, the students became more rebellious because of the conditions. They would graduate from the university, there is no job and so once that newspaper was closed, the student rose up and they targeted the economic and political foundation of the Islamic Republic. The slogan, the most interesting. Now Elaine Shalino who was the New York Times reporter, I think you remember her? So she is retired I believe now. She wrote about it and one of the greatest slogans they came up with was said, the people are miserable. The mullahs are acting like God and so they targeted the economic, the people who are miserable, the political, the clergy and their power and acting like God that we have everything. You people have nothing. It's okay for you to be in misery. We control all power and we tell you what to do. So that was one of the most interesting slogans there. Then in 2003 again they came back to students, the government, there was a rumor actually, it didn't materialize. There was rumor that the government was going to privatize all universities and colleges. In Iran, private colleges and universities do not have a great deal of prestige. So once you privatize them, that means your university or college is nothing. It doesn't really count and so they, like Dartmouth doesn't count very much. If you have a private university, that was a joke. So private universities and colleges don't count in Iran. If you have a Dartmouth in Iran, it's really not a big deal. So students rose up again and for about a couple of weeks and they were repressed. So the people didn't come to jail. Then comes 2009, what we call the Green Movement. The Green Movement started, probably many of you remember, it dispute over the vote. So there's Ahmadinejad who ran on the conservative side and then there's Mirhose Mousavi who was former prime minister of the 1980s during the war. He also ran on the liberal side. So the vote took place and both sides claimed victory. So the public opinion showed that Mousavi had much greater support. So it was to the vast majority of Iranians Mousavi had won. And so the government said no. And then Ayatollah, the election was on a Friday. The next day, before the election results were completely done, Ayatollah, the Supreme Leader, Khamenei, he said that Ahmadinejad has won and his views are closer to mine and thanks, I thank the nation to have voted for him and that's it. A few days later, 3 million people showed up in Tehran city and silent. They had banners and slogans and placards. Where is my vote? They just asked, where is my vote? And it took Ayatollah a few days to figure out what to do. Next Friday, a week from the election, next Friday he showed up on television and he said this is it, the election was correct because votes all have been counted and I was right and the protesters should go home and if they don't go home, their leaders and they themselves would be responsible, if any bloodshed. People didn't pay attention. As soon as Khamenei's speech ended, the whole issue up to this, the whole one week was where is my vote? As soon as the speech ended, death to dictator. So death to Khamenei and death to dictator. So they became more and more radical. The protests lasted for about exactly, exactly to the day 20 months lasted. So in February on February 11, 2011, February 11, 2011 something important happened in Egypt. February 11 is the anniversary of Iranian Revolution, right? February 11, 1979. But February 11, 2011, Mubarak was overthrown in Egypt and Ayatollah Khamenei showed up on television. Islamic movement is expanding. So a little bit earlier in Tunisia, Ben Ali had been overthrown. So Khamenei taking credit. Islamic ideologies expanding. Pro-American governments are collapsing one after another. As soon as he said it, the opposition said Musa of his group, they said, we want to have a solidarity march with the people of Tunisia and Egypt. They overthrew their governments. They were tyrannical and repressive dictatorships and they succeeded. So we want to have a march in support because Khamenei had already supported them and we support them too. So as soon as this was announced, Khamenei said, no way, you're not going to bring millions of people and embarrass me. So quickly, the secret police arrested two of the opposition leaders, Mousavi and Karubi, who had been working together all along from 2009, put them under house arrest. The two of them are still today as we speak here are under house arrest. Mousavi's wife, who was also very outspoken, she was actually much more charismatic than him. She brought a lot of people into his camp and she is under house arrest with him and Karubi himself under house arrest, his wife can go out of the house and come back. They can't leave the house. So this was the story of the Green Movement and so after the 20 months, 20 months it lasted for 20 months and the movement ended. So my book was published in November 2016, my latest book, the Harvard book. And so in the book I predicted that the Islamic regime has a structure itself in a way that is going to be the target of constant conflict. The government controls the guns. The government controls the gold, oil and various things and all the 50% of the GDP I told you about, GNP and ORGDP, that is controlled by the Supplementary. They control the economy. They control the political system, the state. They control the cultural institution. They control the media. They control the schools, the universities, colleges. Basically everything is controlled by them and they impose all these social restrictions, cultural restrictions, political restrictions. If you want to run for politics, you have to be vetted by the Guardian Assembly. Anything you do has to be controlled and checked by the regime, by the government. Because of all these controls, the government is going to be from social, political, cultural, ideological. All of those produce conflicts and the target of the conflict is going to be the state. And all these conflicts, in a way you can say, they overlap. There are multiple conflicts, several conflicts. They all overlap together and you can't really separate them. And all of them, the people see the government as responsible for all their problems. And so I predicted the government has to continue with what I called endless repression. To control the population, you have to constantly repress them. You cannot let them go. The Islamic Republic is basically identical with endless repression, that has to be. The people either will liberate themselves from the Islamic regime or experience endless repression. So I was just, my dream world, at the end of 2017, December 2017, suddenly I heard a few reports that, oh, they're uprising in more than 100 cities in Iran. And what were these people talking about? They came up with the slogans, like one of the again favorite, is there often students and poor people. There was an alliance between students and poorer segments of the population that rose up suddenly and went into, by mid January, and they were shouting, the people are miserable and the clergy are acting like gods or one of the things that I never thought I would be hearing was from the most conservative farmers in the most conservative part of the country, Isfahan. Isfahan farmers historically have been conservative and religious. They came into a mosque in front of the mosque demonstrating and shouting, saying that the slogan was that, I didn't say it in Persian. Duhshman-e-Maw Hamin Jast, Duhruh began on recast. The slogans that these political groups come up usually are rhyme and they're very poetic. It's not easy to translate them. They said, the clergy is over there giving a sermon. The farmers came by the mosque and started shouting and by the thousands shouting that our enemy is right here. They are lying, saying that America is our enemy. Conservative farmers shouting against their own Islamic regime and America is not our enemy and all that. And then students throughout the country shouting slogans like, along with the poor people that they are miserable and so forth. And then they had another slogan saying that telling the principal is the conservatives and the reformers. There's a group of reformers following former president Khatami. They were saying, principalist, the conservatives and then reformers, reformists, forget it. The whole incident is finished. You're going to be gone immediately soon. Soon you're going to be finished and all that. So they were calling basically for the overthrow regime. And lately, in the past several months, there's a new slogan that has shown up that says, we made a revolution. What a mistake we made. And the farmers going to the mosque, I was telling you, as soon as clerics started talking and they're looking at the clergy, as soon as the clergy starts talking, they turn around their backs and shout their own slogans against the clergy and the rulers of the Islamic Republic. Okay, I have gone a little bit over. I'm going to read you one of the one of the paragraphs, last paragraph in my first chapter. I took credit for what happened after my book was published. That's one of the greatest things that can happen to an academic that everybody was saying, oh, how is he predicting all of this to happen? Iranians don't want. I said the only way these people can have political freedom and democracy and what they were asking for would be would be through a revolution. So people, and some of the things I talked about was that women taking off the scarf and throwing it away or pushing it back, all kinds of things women are doing, people drinking, not going to the mosque. These were all part of the passive resistance that I was looking at and people not fasting, not praying, all of those things and converting to Christianity, I said this is going to be a lot of conflicts to come. So this is what I said in the last paragraph of the first chapter. More than three decades after the formation of the Islamic Republic, Iranian society is more polarized than ever before. On the one hand, the regime insists on the continuation of the theocratic structures. On the other hand, people are engaged in widespread passive resistance and refuse to live in accordance with the rules of the theocracy. The persisting conflicts have compelled the regime to resort to endless repression. More importantly, the contradictions have generated irreconcilable conflicts and set the stage for protests and clashes that have yet to reach a climax. Thank you for your patience. Okay, questions? Yes? I have been working as an editor for a writer in America. Absolutely. Sorry, I have been working as an editor for a writer in Iran who is increasingly desperate. He tells me he has been interrogated every couple of weeks he's been prevented from working. He's considered westernized because he's a filmmaker as well as a writer. He has spent time in the United Kingdom as well as he did by making films and studying. And he's quite desperate to get out because he has no income when they just interrogated him a couple of days ago. They told him they had seen people coming in and out of his house what was he doing and he said I keep some English lessons I have to be able to take it. And while I am editing his books we also talk on Skype every few days which he thinks is more secure. I don't think so. I'm told it's not. But anyway, he feels free to talk to me that way and I meanwhile have written in Canada and America I called Senator Lay's office there's someone I can talk to but I really need to know what are the chances of someone who does have a passport getting out of Iran and getting asylum. A Middle Eastern man in the Trump era but there's Canada so I can try to really hope am I being ridiculous? No you're not ridiculous at all that's very nice of you to help him with the book and all those things it's safer than a lot of other because there are so many people using Skype they just don't have the technology to control and check everything but people going in and out of his house students and so forth taking that's a bigger problem for him surveillance and all that if they haven't arrested him he has a chance to escape but he has to make sure that if he has a passport that he's not going to get detained at the airport but a lot of times that happens it might be easier for him to leave the border from Turkey across the border that's what he's hoping is to get to Turkey and I'm saying okay even in Turkey there's an American embassy you can get visa don't count a lot on the American embassy as you said yourself Trump administration Canada Australia all of them are also making it difficult for Middle Eastern this is one of the seven Muslim majority countries so it's not very easy and he is Zoroastrian he's Zoroastrian he might have become Zoroastrian who knows but if he is it's more difficult for people like him to but would be easier for him with Canada but more difficult for him dealing with the Iranian government because there are people who are converting to Zoroastrianism and so they're suspecting that he is preaching to those people to convert to my religion they are very frightened because it's very embarrassing the mosques are empty and Christian churches which are home churches there are some established Christian churches mostly Armenian and Assyrian but now in all our cities people who become priests or ministers and have turned their homes into churches and so they're suspecting a lot of people go into houses they say well you must be having a church or Zoroastrians have their own temple and so that's the danger he's some of the dangerous in a dangerous situation because Zoroastrianism is a Persian religion belonging to thousands of years ago and it's very appealing to a lot of people and so the poor guy would be a difficult situation for him if he can't get out oh no I can't even go close to Iran so please don't assume that one book I wrote in 1990 in 2000 Cambridge University Press published it and that book was translated also into Turkish and I was invited to go give a talk and autograph my book and all that I couldn't go because they have their own assassins in Turkey in Iraq in Pakistan in Jordan they are spread all over there they are even here in Vermont they are here in Vermont too they have their agents assassins that go around and kill people in the United States they have only killed one person so far there was an attempt last year but they do it usually in Europe or close by I didn't know for him the best thing would be to go to the Canadian embassy or Sweden would be another one and a lot of Europeans are you know with the populist policies and governments they are not very big so our industrial policies in the United States and in the West North America we are producing a big deal along with China and a few other countries big deal of climate change is happening and so Africa is undermined droughts everywhere desertification everywhere they can't cultivate the land because of the climate change floods and diseases and you know you have all these people who are living and the solution is to deal with the main problem they have climate changes rising inequalities which comes from Reagan all the way to Trump and everywhere inequalities are rising and climate change is producing problems so people live Honduras and so we are let's put the wall there that doesn't solve any problem go over there to Honduras poverty, inequality, drought you have to solve those problems which he denies they exist I'm talking about Mr. Trump and so this just the world is just in a very strange place and they don't understand the problem they deny what the problems are and so you expect another messiah to come hopefully to solve the problem yeah no it's a small minority the question was that Zoroastrian yeah Zoroastrian it's a small but where is the origin of it origin is Persia at the time was the entire huge part of the world known world at the time and so Zoroaster was the first prophet that brought the idea of a scatology there is one god and then there is heaven and hell you do good things you go to heaven bad things you go to hell Judaism, later on Judaism because ancient Judaism does not have a scatology there is no heaven or hell later on the Jews heard of the idea from the Persian and then Christianity and Islam picked up on the idea of a scatology so it's Zoroastrianism I'm neither Muslim nor Zoroastrian or none of the above basically and so it's one of it's a great religion everything is based on doing good thinking good and doing good for people in the world and so there are some very simple things in it and so in a way the Muslims because this was ancient Persian religion they don't repress Zoroastrian as much other religions they say all these came from other places and all that and so but there are about 25,000 or so maybe the population was Zoroastrian they moved out of Persia out of Iran and they went to some of them went to India and they became the Parsis over there known as Parsis very wealthy but their population is dwindling and so that's where they come from so any thoughts on whether it's always the case that in a country that installs a religious government whether it's Israel or Brunei Jerusalem that inevitably you're creating an experience of endless repression for the population of these countries so very great question so when the state when the state is ruled by God that basically creates a conflict because people the constitution of the Islamic Republic the constitution says that the people are the sovereign they are the ones to determine their own fate so once the constitution that parts of it are very progressive still once the constitution became a theocratic then that generated a conflict because these people were going to determine their own fate the civil society the constitution says oh yeah people can determine their fate but we also have this supreme leader it has contradiction within itself and that produces the reason for repression you are absolutely right once you give the power to a group that claims to be God's representative then you have set up the stage for conflict especially when you come to countries that have different groups different religious constituencies and so if Israel says the country is just for the Jews then there are all these Muslims who existed long before Israel was established so you generate conflict and if my God is the one to be dominant and your God is not respected then there's going to be fight there's going to be conflict over it so unfortunately that's why America adopted democratic institutions and kept God out of it and so once you bring God in then you have this heavy gorilla that can kill anybody that is against it and so yes you had a question it seems like the information that we get over here that Iran and Saudi Arabia are at odds because one Sunni and one G.I. and you can mention that at all do you have Sunnis in Iran too? Yes all the most of the Kurds Northwest the Arabs Southwest and then the Baluchis and Zabolis and then the Turkmen so they're all Sunnis so on the edges of Iran and the border are mostly those areas are Sunnis and so and there is a conflict in Saudi Arabia and the conflict is not over I'm talking about Iran's domestic issues so I didn't come speaking about Saudi Arabia because Iran is the issue and the issue is democracy but each each one wants to be having the hegemonic power in the Islamic world Saudi Arabia before the Islamic revolution in Iran claimed to be the holders of the holy spaces along with Iraq to some extent and so they had the claim the Islamic revolution came and these people say no we are now God's representative and we are the one so there is that conflict and neither one has anything progressive about it and so that's that part yes you have your hand The problem of course is that Saudi Arabia No I'm sorry Saudi Arabia is not my country of my interest but the future for Middle East in general is pretty much a tinderbox surprising it's lasted this long I can't say do you think that the Saudis regime will collapse in the next few years or are there any regime that will collapse in the future? I haven't studied in Saudi regime but a lot of the characteristics that you see in Iran you also see them in Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia could have experience intense conflict during the Arab Spring 2010-2011 it didn't come because Saudi Arabia came with on the one hand gave people lots of subsidies and then on the other hand arrested the liberals put them to jail some of them are still in jail so Saudi Arabia has the money and the resources to spend and by through buying resolve some of the conflicts at least but Iran has a higher chance of collapsing and being completely eliminated because Iran has all these conflicts and has very little resources to handle the problem because of sanctions and nobody is buying the oil but also Iranian population is especially the women they are among the most sophisticated in the world most educated in the world 57% of university students are women and girls and so and they are fighting they are fighting like no one don't have a fight to fight Iranian women do and they are really brave and courageous they are fighting even in jail despite the rape and despite the torture of their experience yes comment is ironic that when the revolution in Egypt and in Algeria took place that the Sunni sorry the Shia regime in Iran would take credit for Sunni revolutions in those two countries that was Tunisia Tunisia and Egypt the other question I was puzzled I had thought I'm not using the right terminology the Twelvers which is a I thought that was a small sect within Shia but you're saying that the the supreme leader is taking the place of the Twelfth Imam so could you explain very good point the credit that they were taking was that these people are fighting against American imperialism American imperialism controlling Mubarak and Tunisia Ben Ali and so forth and these other regimes and so they are on our side because we are against America and they are against America so they are seeing that oh we are against America and America is bad and so come and do what we did we overthrew that's the extent of the support and you're exactly right it's the Shia's population itself the Twelfth Imam this is a minority within the Islamic world Muslims constitute more than one billion the fifth of the world population and so one in fifth you see is Muslim the vast majority of those are Sunnis so taking credit was only political issue but then soon their own friend Mr. Assad in Syria was under attack so how come if they are all listening to you and they are against American Stooges and American puppets so Assad is your friend why are they attacking him so they totally misread and they supported all these movements Assad is going to be over front oh no we have to go support him now they are putting billions of dollars Iranians one of the slogans often in this demonstration is that let Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine and Assad in Syria go think about us and our problems that's one of the slogans that it comes out regularly I saw another hand up or maybe not confused all right the book is here and is only $30 there are few copies and so that's much cheaper than Amazon so please if you would like to read it let me know thank you thank you