 Ladies and gentlemen, friends, colleagues, good evening. Welcome to everybody to this director's lecture series on women, life, and freedom achieving political change in Iran. My name is Adem Abib, and I am the director of SOAS, University of London. And you are in the director's lecture series. The director's lecture series really focuses on big global questions of our time. It asks difficult questions about how we can create a better world. And so this is something that we're beginning to reflect on. We've had multiple debates over the last year, and we will continue to do so in the coming year or two. But the idea is to pose the big questions of our time and to ask the kinds of questions and introduce to the public discourse globally the perspectives that predominate in the majoritarian world in parts of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Joining me tonight is Iranian activist, entrepreneur, and a former broadcaster for the BBC World Service, Nagin Shiragahi. Emeritus professor at the SOAS Center for Global Media and Communications, Annabelle Srebreni, whose research has been in the broad field of international communication and globalization with a strong focus on international news, diasporas and feminism, and co-founder and director of the Siamak Purzan Foundation, an organization which promotes freedom of expression and works towards the empowerment of marginalized groups interested in more systematic documentation of human rights violations in Iran. Azadeh Purzan, who is also a PhD researcher in SOAS in digital media and human rights. So it's lovely to have one of our doctoral students, Azadeh, as part of the conversation. A very warm welcome to all of you and to all of our guests who have joined us virtually tonight from around the world and from around the UK. Tonight's event, Women, Life and Freedom, has been named after the rallying cry at the protests which were sparked by the death of a young woman, Mahsa Amini, in mid-September, 2022. Mahsa died in custody after being arrested by Iran's morality police for allegedly breaching the Islamic regime's strict dress code, which requires all women to wear the hijab. Despite over 200 deaths, estimated since the demonstrations began, the protests continue across the country over seven weeks later, with Iranians of all genders, ages and professions, expressing outrage and resistance to the regime. Most recently, we have seen fresh protests erupt in Iran's universities with no sign of this ending anytime soon. Arguably, it represents one of the single largest challenges to Iranian leadership since the 1979 revolution. Tonight, we will be discussing, what does this all mean for Iran's place in the world? Have these protests further isolated the Islamic regime? Will the regime's aggressive reaction to the progress provoke further international sanctions? Will the mobilization of women and young people be stopped? But perhaps most importantly, the question that we will be asking, what is the future of Iran? What is the future? What are the possibilities for freedom, for Iraq's young people, for Iraq's women, for Iraq's general population? And can Iraq be, can the conditions emerge for an inclusive democratic Iran to emerge in the future? That's the fundamental question of our time. And it seems to me that that's always what we'll be looking at. So let me stop there and ask, I'm gonna ask each of my colleagues, Nagin and Abel and Azadeh, to take 10 minutes each to tell us from their perspective, what is happening on the ground in Iran? What's going on? Why do you believe these protests have taken the form that they have? What do they represent? And what possibility is their future? I'll kick off with Nagin, go to Annabelle and then come back to Azadeh. Nagin, the floor is yours. Thank you so much. And thank you everyone for joining us. I am for the misrepresentation of my presentation. If I can move this one, then you can see my page. Am I correct? We can see it. Okay, perfect. So what I'm gonna talk about tonight is mostly trying to give you a background of why we are standing in this moment. Our Iranian woman defining the point of no return for the government and what has led to the situation that made mass of this a momentum that took a lot of young girls and boys to the streets bravely defying the government on the streets. To tell you the background of the story, the truth is mass is not the first woman to lose her life simply because there won't a woman in Iran. Mandatory hijab is only one aspect of the patriarchal system and oppression in the country. Countless women have lost their lives somewhere victims of anarchy, like Monahe, daddy. Others died because escaping, they wanted to escape rape. Shilir Rasuli, her death was only two weeks before Matta's and others took their own lives because they simply wanted to watch a football game and they couldn't in the stadium. And like blue girl, which she became a symbol of a lot of protest back in the days. Or someone, you know, another woman being imprisoned and to be executed only because of their sexual orientation. So this is a long story of the dictatorship that's trying to own and control the body of women. But the mandatory hijab is the most important tool in the dictator's toolkit to control the society. Half of the population's bodies are controlled by it and the other half would be busy either with controlling their woman or fighting the consequences of disobedience. The first protest against the mandatory hijab do happened in Iran three months after the Islamic revolution. And as you can see in the pictures, there are not that many men participating in this protest. Women, they lost this battle and they had to veil since that early days of Islamic revolution in Iran, but they started a daily resistance inside the society that showed itself in the under streets of Iran by the way they dress. So it started with black chaudours and then we change it little by little to the way it is today. And when women started taking off their hijab under street some years ago and campaigns started around it. But the truth about at this time, at the same time women's right activists used every little opportunity to raise awareness about women's rights and educate and campaign for rights like divorce and the right to inheritance. But by 2009 and after the disputed presidential election in Iran and the green movement, Iranian women were highly educated. Half of the university students were women and mostly in a STEM in science, technology, engineering and math. And the aftermath of the election led to the use of social media as well as more audience for TV channels and new platforms outside, news platforms outside Iran. The flow of information expanded massively during this time and especially with the help of social media. And it is around exactly the same time that the effect of systematic corruption, mismanagement of the government is started to show. And as a result, the traditional ecosystem of the regime's cronies started to change. Some lost their stake in the game and turned to opposition. Some parts of the reformist movement started doing that. Some moved to the outside. They accumulated a lot of wealth during these years and they moved to Europe or they moved their families to Europe and North America. Images of their children leaving the lives both in Iran and outside that is contradictory to the values of their parents as spread it on social media as well as their luxury lives they have. So I give you an example in 2012, in nine months 200 Porsche was imported to Iran. And this is the highest number of imports of Porsche in Middle East. You can imagine how big that number is. And Porsche is not the same price as you buy it here. It's $320,000 back in the days would cost someone to buy a Porsche in Iran. And that's a time that the family would earn around $6,000 in a year. All of these started to show itself in the society and created the feeling of this connection between the poor and rich and the gap has started to widening. At the same time, a growing number of intellectuals have become, as I mentioned, a little bit disillusioned with the reformist agenda and have to come to the realization that the reform is not possible or meaningful within the framework of a religious dictatorship. Then unemployment rate was a staggeringly high among the educated women and it's still it is. In 2020, nearly 70% of unemployment in the educated population were amongst the women. And at the same time, women started losing their rights with the new governments and new laws. They lost the right to access, easy access to contraception. They lost their seats in the university because of the quota for women. And a lot of laws like that was passed day by day and they weren't especially in the work sector, in the labor sector, the maternity leave that was given to the women actually worked against them and women started losing their jobs. This is the time that the young women are more informed about their basic human rights and building on the capacity of international farce speaking media and social media platforms. Iranian activists have circumvented the censorship of the government and reached to the almost every corner of the society. They spread information, educational material and women and men this time became more aware of women's right. And it wasn't only the highly educated one this time. Social economic pressure have been felt by many if not all the strata of the society. And it is unintentionally itself as a bonding lived experience. The shared pain and pressure coupled with the raised awareness about the utter disregard and regular violation of women's right at legal and societal levels have led to a strong desire for change. And we've seen that in the numerous small protests that were happening throughout the years in the society. With the help of information and education Iranian society has started to understand that women's rights are human rights. And if they want to have these rights they need to change the system and give the woman the rights. This is clear from the slogans that people are chanting on the streets and the very day protests and maybe we can go more deeper into that later on. But the demand is much bigger than women's right. The demand is that the government is not legitimate and it needs to go. The Iranian woman are innately compassionate. Years of oppression have taught them to be more inclusive. They care about child marriage as many of them have either been or are closely related to one. They believe in the rights of others because they have experienced firsthand how it feels when you take someone's most basic rights away. And women seems to have this unifying magic dust that across different parts of the society is extended. They're from every ethnic group and backgrounds. They are from every religious group or even non-religious groups. They're Turk, Azeris, lords, Jews, Baha'is, Kurds and even more. Basically they are Iran. And that's why this is only the start of what is coming now and the change that I see inevitable. And I believe that the Iranian society would not go back from where they're standing today. Thank you. All right, well, thank you very much, Nadine. I'm going to immediately go to Annabelle. Annabelle, you've got 10 minutes. The floor is yours. Thank you and thank you, Saras and Adam, for staging such an important and interesting discussion. I'm sure there are going to be lots of echoes across the three of our presentations. And Nagin's already said a lot of things that I have noted down. I'm the old guard, the old guard at Saras and the old guard in terms of making revolutions. So I was there, married into Iran in 1979, demonstrating mar-bashah. These were some of the earliest words of my baby carried in a mother care. Carrier on our back and her fist up there. And within one month, Nagin, we were on the streets again. So the revolution is successful and Khomeini comes back in February 79. And March the 8th, 1979, women and I are already back again on the streets of Iran. And I would actually argue that what's happening in 2022 is in many ways a missing piece of 1979, both in terms of women's rights and in terms of general democratic institutions and processes that have never been fully established. March 8th, 1979, the slogan was already at the time of freedom, the place of freedom lies empty, translated then by women at the dawn of freedom, women's place lies empty. So already, first month of 1979, New Islamic Republic, we've got this problem. We've seen the instrumentalization. I'm gonna try and make four quick points. One around women, one around what is democracy and rights, one around the other crises that Iran is facing and one about the reinvention of politics, which Iran seems to do very, very quick, frequently. So from 1979 and the Islamic Republic, we had an instrumentalization of Islam. We have a masculine constitution with gendered notions of citizenship, patriarchal social laws, some of this is mentioned around the guardianship of children, around divorce. There's no gender equality. And this continues for a while, but very quickly, 1980 to 1988, the Iran-Iraq war, women are forced into the economy. And as women come into public life in a new way, they begin to see many of the economic difficulties facing everyday life. Nagin has presented, and I think it's absolutely right, women at some level as victims of the regime, but also women have been incredibly active, again, from the beginning. There was an active women's press. There have been huge debates about the varieties of feminism inside Iran, including, can there be an Islamic feminism? And most recently, again, I think 2009 is an important moment, but even before that, that probably posts, hard to me, the one million signatures campaign 2006 for equal rights in marriage, in inheritance, an end to polygamy, stricter punishments for honor killings. After Ahmadinejad's presidency, campaign against stoning, the white scarves campaign to get into football studio, which Nagin has mentioned. And I think, importantly, controversially, but important, the Facebook page of My Selfie Freedom in 2014, which began to show ordinary women taking photographs of themselves, unveiling. So there was a slow unveiling, as well as increased pressure about all these other elements of inequality and gender discrimination inside Iran. I think it's important to say most recently, and quite unexpectedly, Khomeini, about two years ago, has suddenly suggested that he wants to push the Iranian population to 150 million people, although the 85 million people in Iran are suffering quite difficult economic circumstances. This has triggered new pressures against women and against gender rights. There are new pressures, Nagin mentioned some of these, against abortion, against contraception, their pressures against the medical establishment that try and help women. And Raisi, the newly elected president in June, 2021, a very disputed election with very, very low turnout, has put out, I like this, 119 pages, it bothers me. Why not 120 pages? But 119 pages, a document from the headquarters for the promotion of vice and virtues a new head job and chastity project. So that is part of the very immediate new pressures that women are feeling, not only in terms of head job, but general gender rights. A second point about democracy, very early on, and this was taken up as a public slogan, but it's become very much the mantra of the Islamic Republic. 1979 was a third world revolution and it embodied third worldism. The slogans were not East, not West, an independent, indigenously conceived Islamic Republic. And of course, early on, we saw how that language was also used to eliminate so many different elements from the revolutionary movement. There was a brief tear around spring for a few months and then there was censorship. Ayandegon newspaper, a liberal newspaper was closed down and there was very little dispute. And as part of the new Islamic hegemony, anti-Western sentiment, democratic rights were seen to be a Western plot. Liberal became a term of disparagement. Thai wearers were mocked, men who wore ties, everyone took their shirts off and Adam is wearing a wonderfully non-Thai related shirt right now. And being Westra, Rabzadi was again a term of disparagement and slowly a more Islamic language, being ta-ruti, being ka-fair in league with the devil. And worst of all, Zed-en-Railab against the revolution. So attempts to open that revolutionary moment to democratic practices, to a free media, to a vocal press and journals, to debates on the media were very, very quickly closed down. And from that 1979 moment, I think it's important that Iran has had this very idiosyncratic mixed system of politics. Velayat Afarir, the rule of the supreme jurist and we've had two of them, Khomeini and now Khomeini, elderly religious figures acclaimed by their peers. That's no democratic process there, but also building on the public mandate that the revolution got in 1979 from the public. And there are occasional democratic processes. Now we could say they're performative. The Guardian Council vets very carefully who can stand in elections. Women often throw their hat in the ring to stand for president. Not one woman has been even allowed to run. The Ray C election was highly disputed and many reformists and perhaps more moderate voices refused to participate in that election. But the public mandate is part and parcel of the rhetoric of the Islamic Republic, which in some ways makes it hard for them to act against the public. We can pick this up, but it's a problem for them. So we have a hybrid political system. My third point is, and lots of media have talked about the death of Masih Amini as the trigger point. Nagin has already said there were many other trigger points and many other women have, many, many women have died under the Islamic Republic. I think it's a trigger point because it falls on the dry tinder of frustration, anger and disappointment inside Iran and it falls on other big crises. The environmental crisis is massive. Lake Orumia is dried out. The wonderful Zayanda rule that runs under the historic bridges of Iran is dried out. There is terrible air pollution. There are dust storms. Farmers have great problems. There's the economy, both at the sanctions regime that has hurt ordinary people very badly, including the inability to deal with international banking and buy purchase things from outside, but also massive inflation. In Britain, we're worried about 6%, 10% inflation. Iran has probably been running a 50%, 60% inflation for a long time. And of course, the two months has collapsed in relation to the pound. It's an oil rent economy which always produces a skewed class structure. It requires very small group of people to work in the oil industry. And although agricultural products and services are also an important part of Iran's economy, it's still very much an oil rent economy. And we've seen the ethnic tensions, which again, in a sense, this moment, this regime has brought upon itself. So Baluchis who were demonstrating in Baluchistan in September because of rape and a brutal killing were brutally repressed. About 80 Baluch were killed just this September. And Amini, it's important to note, is occurred and there were rocket attacks into Iranian Kurdistan in early October trying to blame Iranian Kurds for what is happening. I'll move on very quickly, Adam, two more minutes. Niggins mentioned it's an urban society, 75% of 86 million people living in cities. It's a very youthful population and it's a highly educated population. And if ever there was proof that a powerful educational system will create a population that will demand their rights in all areas and demand greater equality, I think Iran is it. And of course, Iran has faced one of the worst brain drains in the world. And the last point is about the digital explosion, but one moment of this digital explosion is an utterly beautiful song that has become the anthem of the Iranian movement called Baraya. Everybody knows this, you can find it on YouTube, it's been covered, it was played by Coldplay in Buenos Aires, that's the global solidarity jackpot. I think if you get Coldplay to play your song in Buenos Aires, you've made it. And Baraya means for or because of and he makes the points that I've just made. He talks about the drying up of the trees in a major street in Iran. He talks about the cheetah that's becoming extinct. He talks about the shame of poverty as well as the difficulties of dancing in the alleyways and kissing on the street. And my last point, Iran is always reinventing its political processes, its forms of political communication. In 1979, I've written about this small media big revolution. It was cassette tapes, Khomeini talking on the tape and tapes being smuggled into Iran from, he spoke in Paris. It was leaflets on car windows in classrooms. It was graffiti. 2009, we began to see color green for the dissent and blood, but until now, the Iranian haven't created such a new vocabulary of symbols and iconography that people are sand behind. And I think later on, let's talk about this massive digital explosion of song, of music, of dance, of graffiti produced inside Iran and produced outside Iran that is connecting the four million people in diaspora with what is happening inside. 79, I already said, I've argued, we always make history under circumstances not of our own choosing. And then as now, history doesn't come with any guarantees. Thank you. Well, thank you very much, Annabel. I'm going to immediately go to Azadeh. Azadeh, the floor is yours for 10 minutes. And I then want to start opening up into an engagement between the three of you and then hopefully with the audience. So Azadeh, the floor is yours. Thank you so much. I'm just asking for a second to share my screen. Sorry, does it show or no? Can you do so? Yeah, I'm trying. Sorry, it's, you don't see it still, no? I don't see it, no. Okay. Just give me a second, let me try it one more time. I don't want to take up the time. So just give me, it's not working out, it's a pity. I had lots of nice paintings. Okay, well, I'll just maybe we'll be looking at it, but I apologize that I cannot seem to share it with you. As my colleagues have mentioned, a lot of what we say has overlap. So I'll try to kind of go rather fast through some of the points that were mentioned. And before I start, I just really want to thank So Az and everyone involved for putting this panel together. I think it's crucial at this moment that universities and prominent universities like So Az give voice to what is happening inside the country. Many university students have their eyes on universities like So Az for solidarity. So I'm very grateful for that. I would like to sort of invite you to come back to again what's happening inside the country today. I think we got an incredible wealth of knowledge regarding context, regarding history, and regarding some of the key points. Going back to Masa Amini, sort of I have used hashtags for basically all my slides because I think in a way it is a hashtag revolution. And these hashtags really play a very important role in the way we now as Iranians see ourselves and they really define our days in recent months. I think it's really important as I believe Anaval also mentioned to really think about who Masa Amini was. And I think it's appropriate to actually use her Kurdish name. Masa was a name that her family had to give her because in Iran people are not allowed to be given Kurdish names. Her preferred name is Gina. So I will try to refer to her as Gina just to honor the family's wishes. Gina was a young Kurdish woman who was visiting Tehran just right before the university begin the university season begins. And she was in Tehran according to her father because she wanted to buy some new clothes just before she goes back to school. I think it's important to note that she was young. She was Kurdish and she was a non-activist woman. I think here really her identity matters when we look at how this movement has evolved and where we are today. And I will get back to this. And I also think that the role of her family in courageously using the social media in taking us into the hospital room when she was in a coma, brain dead. She became one of our loved ones in the last three days of her lives. All of us were looking at photos, statements of the family, trying to see what's happening next. And also the role of a journalist, Niloufar Ha-Medid, who is currently in jail. And I think her life is basically at a risk in covering this story in a newspaper inside around sharp news. So again, as also both, I think Negin and Annabel mentioned the role of social media and the fact that we were taken into the life and life and death of Massa in such an intimate way. In my opinion, women's life freedom is a paradigm shift. It's a paradigm shift as I think both speakers mentioned because those of us who followed Iran, we knew that women are at the center of activism. We knew that despite all the repression, women have made strides in all sorts of fields in Iran. But the centrality, I think of the role in terms of a political shift, in terms of a demand that is beyond women's rights was not as mainstream as it has to come today. And I think that this slogan alone, which is originally a Kurdish slogan, has changed Iran to a before and after. To me, that's what matters. Like the change for me is the way that the collective demand of the Iranian women and the people have sort of shifted to a much more inclusive, but also macro level. I like a quote by Asif Bayot, a sociologist who I think is a familiar name when we follow countries like Iran, who said that the people demand to take back their lost youth, their unlived lives, their oppressed happiness and are wishful for an ordinary and a dignified life. I think here, ordinary is really important. What I see is that new generation doesn't seem to have a particular ideology. I think that's really freedom and a dignified ordinary life is what they're really seeking. You don't even hear the word democracy as much in the slogans. It's about freedom. It's about dignity. And I think that's probably also the power of it as we see today. In terms of, I also wanna highlight here, if you follow things that, for example, on Twitter and the hashtags, we have kind of gradually transitioned from the hashtag Iran protest 2020 to Iran revolution. And there were even some conversations on social media, people sort of bullying each other to change the hashtag from Iran protest to Iran revolution. Why don't you dare to now call it a revolution? And personally, I was one of the ones who was hesitant to just maybe to protect my own heart, to hesitant to call it a revolution. But as I have sort of followed the discourses, I think that we can consider what has happened in Iran at least the beginning of a revolutionary stage. And again, as Osafiyat has recently put it, that the uprisings of the people have entered a revolutionary stage. So if not an overnight revolution, which I believe it will not be possible, it is definitely of a different kind than the protests that we have seen before in terms of, again, the progress that it has made in confronting the authorities and their forceful clashes. It's a leaderless movement in terms of the singularity of them leader, but then you see collective, for example, collective calls for actions for protest by pupils or by university students, by youth of a certain neighborhood. So we see these kinds of rather anonymous collective calls, but it does not have a leader per se. And I think here also the unity is very important. I think it was hinted by my colleagues, but the Iranian Islamic Republic is one of those governments that has ruled by divide and rule. It has really scared the people away from the potential disintegration of the country in case the different ethnic groups rise up for their rights and has tried to really, to the extent possible, control the situation, where at least different groups of people only advocate for their own rights. This is a moment where you see people are advocating also for each other's rights, when you see people chanting in Tehran slogans in support of Baluchistan and Baluchistan for Kurdistan and Kurdistan for the South. So this I think is a very serious threat to the strategy of the Islamic Republic. And also, as I think we know by now, it's not about women and women alone anymore. While they are at the center of what's happening, I believe that we can now really refer to it as the Iranian people and their demands. I want to also quickly go through the crackdowns because I was asked to kind of highlight some of the patterns of human rights violations that are happening. I think the patterns of crackdowns are not dissimilar to what we saw in November 2019 nationwide protests in December 2017, January 2018 protests and so on in terms of the fact that there are intimidations, the use of lethal force, the use of gunshots and bird pallets and detentions, intimidation of the family, of the victims and so on. As of four days ago when I checked Iran Human Rights, which is a Norway-based organization, there are 304 persons reported killed as part of the protests with at least 41 of them as children. So this government is at the moment essentially raging a war against children, which is that Gen Z that we refer to. There are over 13,000 people reported and detained as part of the protests. Some were the protesters, but also some were detained from their home as people who were identified as potentially influential in the progress of this movement. I've heard from colleagues who are doing a very close documentation that because prisons are overcrowded, there are worries of sort of home-based or unofficial-based sort of prison situations. There are fears of sexual harassment, rape and reports of torture and so on. And at the same time, Iran is a violator of human rights of all sorts. So many are worried that a lot of these other violations of human rights, for example, like the situation of ordinary prisoners, the Baha'is, others who are in prison is as bad if it's not worse than before. And also there's also a narrative war. I mean, the Islamic Republic is trying very hard to call this very much homegrown movement something that the United States has, for example, or the West have staged. We are really worried about the fate of some of the both known and unknown prisoners and the kinds of, for example, securitized crimes that they're gonna be facing all the way to the death penalty. And this is really as much of a confrontation, a war on the street as it is in the media, in social media. It's truly a narrative war, in my opinion. Azadah, we have to come to an end. So I'll give you a minute to finish up. Yes, sure. I had some points, but I just wanna, I think we didn't maybe talk enough about the role of the Gen Z, the younger people and the role of essentially what we call the children, people under 18. And the way that the different crises, including the climate crisis, the socioeconomic crisis, the political legitimacy crisis, the isolation from the world has brought them to a point where unfortunately they don't see, many of them don't see value in living and they believe that they really need their freedom and they need it now, even if it means that they're going to die. And that is, I think, something that I hope we can discuss more. Thank you. Okay, thank you, Azadah. So this has been a really useful set of information. You've really indicated in quite some detail what is going on. If I can summarize, it seems to me we've picked up on the issue of the kind of structural conditions in Iranian society, the inequality, the disillusionment with the reformist agenda, the fact that this is a youthful population, really the issues associated with the digital explosion. And then, Azadah, you've picked up the issue of young people, the Gen Z, et cetera. And I think that all of that is very, very important. But the real issue I would like us to talk about, and I think it's important that we do this, is what's different about this? All of you have said this is not the first time we've had protests in Iran. We've had it in November, 2019. We've had it in January, 2018. We had it in December, 2017. Annabelle went back to 79 one month after we were back on the streets. But each time those protests were brought to an end, either by the force of security forces, the kind of repression of one kind or the other. What makes you think that this won't be different? That this time, this has a longevity? And I'd love to get your thoughts about this. Is this different? Is this going to likely be quietened down again after two or three months? Let's start, Annabelle, and then I'll come to you again and then Azadah. Adam, that is, I suppose, the $64,000 question. You know, what now? I think resilience, commitment is really important. Many of the other moments that we've spoken about, particularly the more recent ones, 2017, 18, 19, which were violently put down, I think 1,500 people killed in 2018, 19, and they only lasted a week or so. So it's also interesting to note that the regime has not, it's horribly violent, but it has not been able to quash this yet. And in some ways, it hasn't fully tried. I mean, here are women, you know, these are women. You've set up women as the center of your rhetoric about chastity and honor and family values. How can you kill so many women? This is 50% of the population. One of the slogans emerging now, the young are, of course, the generation, the children of the so-called burnt generation who felt they had no future. But, you know, this generation is perhaps even more burnt. And one of the slogans is for everyone that dies, a thousand will take our place. So there is enormous commitment to this and enormous bravery. I think we're beginning to see demands, we're beginning to see formulations of what this movement actually wants. Freedom is a very difficult demand. I was kind of amused. There was an Australian Iranian woman who wrote recently in The Guardian and her first, the beginning sentence was, I am free, which made me scratch my head and think, hmm, you're not a wage slave, a mortgage slave, you know, compelled by global capital to behave in certain ways, limited by your political environment, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So I think there needs to be a much more grounded discussion about what freedom would look like and demands become formulated. There are a few brave people within the regime daring to speak up about the level of violence, about ethnic groups and not making things even worse than they are, and about the need to listen. People are saying this is an entire generation here. On the street, we have to listen. How strong are those voices? Not very strong. How strong is the IRGC? Extremely strong. I might have some provocative arguments about what external and particularly Western powers might do, but I'll leave that for another moment. I'll come back to that, Nagin. So for me, there are four fundamental reasons that I see this one different and I see it continuing to lead to a change. One of the most important part is that people don't feel they're alone anymore. One of the major things that for a generation like me or my parents' generation who wanted to live a different life was that they felt they're alone in their thinking, they weren't connected with each other, and since I'm going back to 2009 because that massive three million protest in Azadi and Esquare let people to see each other and realize, oh, there are three million people who are thinking like me, so we have something. But for years, people didn't have that. And since then, gradually more people felt that the demands they have for their normal life is something that is shared by other people. The other part is the crack in the system. So when you see the children, and even themselves, there was a footage of Rostam Ghassani, one of the ministers of Iran, who's like head of, used to be an IRGC commander before in Malaysia, going out with his wife. The wife doesn't have, not covering her hair. It's disgusting to see that. And then at the same time, therefore, people is like saying why you're acting like this, but you're forcing women, and people are killed on the streets because of that. And their children are standing against them as well. One of the things that I've heard from my friends in Iran recently, that in this round of protest, the argument argue between the parents became in a high level of cleric system in Ghom and in Tehran, their children are actually standing against them in this, in the household and saying, why did you cut the internet? My business is down. Why are you forcing everyone? Because their daughters been in hiding or outside their faces, they didn't wear a job or obliged to the law as they were. But for the first time, they dared to stand in front of their dads and say that. The other part of it is hope for change. I see hope and I see dream in that slogan. I see the generation and that's why that generation can come up with that because our generation was disillusioned with change. Like we never felt it's possible to change that system. And that's a lot of us decided to leave the country. But for this generation, they still have a dream. Their dreams hasn't been crashed and they want to act upon it before their dreams crashed. And the other factor for me is how they're educating themselves. Like even in the last two months, there are a number of books that are about political systems, change-making, revolutions, when higher up and they're the best selling in the country. So that gives me hope and they're highly educated. They're debating amazingly. Okay, Azadeh, I'm going to give you two or three minutes to come in and then I want to go to a couple of other questions because I've got series of questions coming in from the audience, but Azadeh. Thank you so much. Yeah, echoing all that was said, I think that what is different about this time, I think first of all, it's the climactic moment of decades of resilience and resistance. So it has really reached the climactic moment and that's what makes it as powerful as it is today. The continuity as Annabel mentioned, I think it's really gone beyond the few days. We are now entering the eighth week. We see like strategies that were used during the 1979 revolution. For example, the 40th anniversary of someone's death, someone who has been killed by the Islamic Republic is now sort of an occasion for yet another protest, which are also as a, and this is a Shia ceremony and they're being violently cracked down on by the Islamic Republic. So any occasion is yet another occasion for protest and I think that's important. It's a nation having run out of patience, a very patient nation who has tried incremental change, the reform movement, waiting for JCPOA this and that, having run out of patience. So you really see that. And that was not maybe as present before. And then lastly, I wanna talk about unity as I mentioned in my talk. I think this is, in my experience is unprecedented. Green movement was mostly the affluent middle class educated on the street. November, 2019 was the protest of the hungry of the struggling class and the middle class didn't join them. And I think here we see maybe not the upper class, but we see definitely the middle class and the lower socioeconomic classes together as well as different sectors, educated and the labor as well as provinces as well as men and others joining women on the street. That's useful. Can I ask you one other question and then I wanna pick up the questions at the audience. No revolution, if you would like to use the term has ever succeeded without the regime dividing. No protest is ever successful without a split in the ruling elite. And the question that I wanna pose and it's something that Annabel touched on is what is the likelihood of there being a split either within the ruling political elite or in the military or in parts of the security forces because that's the element that changes the game if you like in the social struggle. And I'd love to get your thoughts. Let's start this time with Nagin and I'll come to you at the end then Annabel. So for me, I've been looking into how the structure of corruption in Iran works and how IRGC as a revolutionary guard is participating in that. And it's fair to say that from the beginning they've been really good at creating networks and these networks can be like a small smuggling groups of fuel from Iran to Pakistan to a massive international cooperation with other smugglers around the world. But since the tensions in 2010, it became much more relying on these sort of groups inside the country. And what that led to is the economical structure of the country changed massively. IRGC got hold of most of the economy of the country. It's fair to say definitely more than 50% of the economy is directly in their hand and the rest of it isn't directly connected to them. But, and that makes it really difficult to change and crack that system. But at the same time, they had to rely on these other groups that are not necessarily, it's not hierarchical system. So they're not part of the system. It's a group that works and operate in one part of the country or one part of the world and they have to work with them. And these people, as you can see on the internet and the images, they can be anyone. They can be ordinary people who just are after money. And that's, I think that's the structure can be targeted by the people to be able to shed down these kind of people. And if they cannot go around the sanctions and laundry money for the Iranian oppressive being of the, you know, for the IRGC, then they cannot continue this level of operation. And at some point, because they have to pay a lot of money to the vestiges who are going on the streets every night to crack down people and buying equipment. So at some point that would crack the system. Okay, Azadeh? I think I rather skip this question and I would, I'm eager to ask you, Annabel. Okay, Annabel? I have to say I'm worried. I'm worried by the youthful idealism and the context in which this is happening. And I want to put forward, I think a very counterintuitive and provocative idea because I would just like to hear this argued against, in a sense, Iran has many enemies. And one of the reasons it has enemies and one of the reasons it's had such a difficult history since 1979 with the US particularly, but also with Europe is in a sense, it's sense of not being respected as an important actor in the global political environment. And I think a lot of its hostility to the West is based on not being recognized. So, and therefore it can also blame the West and it's endlessly doing it. All of this is now blamed on the US, on Britain, on Zionists, blah, blah, blah, all sorts. But the enemies are lurking. So what would happen if these enemies, instead of threatening the Islamic Republic further, reached out and made life easier for ordinary people and for the Islamic Republic so that that blame game could not be continued by the Islamic Republic. So what would happen now? Let's think about it counterfactually. If Europe and the US came back to the table and said, we will sign the JCPOA. And what would happen if the United States recognizing that its sanctions regime, the collapse of the Iranian Tuman has a lot to do with the impoverishment and the crises that people are feeling in Iran and started to remove some of the sanctions. Can I jump in? I, I- I know you don't let you come in a minute. Let me just finish at about. Yeah. Let me come in there. So it seems to me, and it actually neatly comes to a question that one of our students has posed is how do you see the role of the international community in sanctioning the current regime? What Annabelle is saying is, is it better if we start unraveling that in, in particular ways because that takes away the threat, the excuse that the political elites have in Iran to say that we are not to blame, that it's the others that are to blame, et cetera. I'd like to get other people's thoughts. Let's come with Nagin and then I'll come to Azadeh. So I wanna ask a couple of questions. Are political elites in Iran connected to the real people on the streets? They're not. How, like this notion that this political, that opening up and giving legitimacy to the government is actually helping the society and has an effect on the ongoing protests and the demands that people are asking. I think it's the illusion that the Iranian regime has been creating for the last 20 years and it's been spending money on creating that momentum outside Iran. But the reality on the ground is none of the slogans on the streets is related to the sanctions or the effect of the sanctions on the Iranian people. None of the Iranian people on social media like using the hashtags related to Mahtza are asking any of the governments in the West to actually go under the nuclear deal with Iran. They're actually asking against it. They're signing petitions asking the governments in different countries around the world to break the diplomatic ties with Iran. They're not, that's not the demand coming from the ground. I think if international community wants to do something to help the Iranian people, first of all, they have to listen and understand what happens from the people on the grassroots level and try to help them and accommodate that and facilitate that. Okay. So, Anabelle, it seems to me that Nagin is raising an interesting question. Your question does apply if the Iranian government and the Iranian political elite are succeeding in winning the population over on the grounds that the West is the danger and it's not us. But what Nagin is saying as I understand it is that message is now lost. The population no longer believed that. They may have believed that in the 80s and the 90s. They no longer believe that and to actually unravel the sanctions actually plays into the agenda of the regime. It provides them with the resources to oppress. It provides them with the resources to exploit. The question that poses itself to Nagin is what then are you suggesting? Are you suggesting a more targeted sanctions regime? One that where it benefits the broader population, where it benefits the ability to get information going, then we allow that to happen. But you target individual politicians and individual members of the Iranian guard and target them on the side. Is that what you're looking at? And I'd like you to think about that. I want Azadeh to come back in here and then I'll come back to you Nagin and then Janabel. Yes, thank you very much. Well, I believe that sanctions alone have not been the only cause of socioeconomic misery in Iran. We're talking about a highly corrupt, repressive government. We're talking about climate crisis, which is not just because of climate change. This is because of the mismanagement and corruption of the Islamic Republic that people don't have access to drinking water today that can barely breathe. There's not sufficient data to be able to, because also of the repressive environment to be able to say what percentage of, what people are suffering from economically has to do with sanctions, what percentage of it has to do with corruption. And I'm not even sure this can be separated. I'm not an economist, but as far as I know, this would be a very difficult thing to do. The Iranian people, I think have been very patient. I mean, they for at least 25 years of reform, they have given chances to the Iranian government to reform itself. They have also given the chances to the West to figure out a way where human rights does not get compromised over a deal or a deal doesn't get compromised over human rights. And so this dichotomy is something that they're very familiar with. And I don't think that the people that are in the streets are at the moment seeking a deal. And I believe that such shaking hands with the Islamic Republic would essentially be a slap in the face of the Iranian people today. Okay, Nagin, I'll come back to you and then I'll come to Annabelle. Yeah, so on the point you asked about, I believe targeted sanctions on the individuals who are actually active and in human rights abuse in Iran is really important and it needs to widen as well as tracking down the mechanisms that the Iranian courts force has been using to laundering money, weapons inside and outside Iran. It's well documented throughout the last 15 years how they've been reaching out to different corners of the world. For example, how they are active in Venezuela and using Venezuela as a hop for the money laundering bringing gold to Iran and mining golds in Venezuela and funding their operation by that. I think it's really important to find those sort of pain points for the Iranian government by the international society as well as listening to the activists and human rights activists that are putting aside. So for example, right now in the commission of women's rights in the UN also they can explain it much better but Iran is part of that. And why should be Iran have that seat? Or listening to the activists that when they're talking about the abuse of human rights in Iran? Okay, I'm about. I don't disagree. I put forward something as a point of argument. My concern is even targeted sanctions I don't think is a terribly effective tool. This isn't the great Russian, I've forgotten the term, the Russian billionaires who are jetting everywhere and don't want access to many parts of the world. I, RGC commanders are not doing that. I think it's very hard. I mean, a few, but there are plenty of other places in the world they can go to. I think the problem, I think that one of the core problems is we're facing globally a shift from an American hegemon to a multipolar environment. And we see Iranian drones being bought by Putin's Russia and used against Ukrainians. It doesn't bring Iran a lot of money but it shows their new role in a sort of global military industrial environment. And it seems to me to take these things seriously and try and think creatively about how to limit this is one line of thinking. I think the problem, even the radical line on Iran our own narratives get a little bit stuck and sometimes a bit of provocation is important. If targeted sanctions would work, I mean, let's try them, I'm all for it. Sometimes a little bit of provocations I think is important. So I think that that's right. But I do think that it's also, we need to be clear about what strategies will work under what conditions and nothing on its own is going to work. Let me ask, pose another question coming from one of our panel, from one of our audience. What would you say, what should the Iranian diaspora do? What should Nagin be doing or Azadar or Annabelle? What can you do that assists the protestors on the streets of Iran in a way that protects them? And I'd love to get your thoughts. Let me start with Azadar. How would you recommend? Yes, I can speak from personal experience as a member of a family who's justice seeking. Both my parents have been political prisoners in Iran as a human rights lawyer and a journalist. I believe those of us like me who are in the diaspora, not because of our own willingness, essentially in exile, have also a justice seeking story. And I think the power of today is the coalescence of justice seeking groups. And I believe that the brilliant example of what diaspora can do is what the association of the families of the victims of the Ukrainian flight based in Canada, that is a flight that was shut down by the IRGC after Qasem Soleimani's death, assassination, have taken essentially a very effective leadership role from Canada onto all these other cities in the world in mobilizing protest and solidarity with Iranian people, trying to be inclusive as much as possible of the multiplicity of colors in terms of political views, in terms of backgrounds, in terms of whatever, in the Iranian diaspora, but still keep the message as we are here in solidarity with the people inside Iran and with their demand inside Iran. I think that most effective thing we can do is to avoid putting any kind of agenda that we may have as the diaspora outside and to learn to listen to what's going on in Iran. We have a powerful tool like Twitter, like Instagram, despite internet shutdowns, the Iranian people are talking to us from inside Iran and to be the messenger. And to also think that just because we're in exile, it does not mean that we should remove ourselves from the scene. We also have a story and many of us have been, we are where we are because of the atrocities of the Islamic Republic. Okay, and again, do you have a thought on this? Yeah, I think I'll be quick. I think there are a couple of things that, like as general, we can do. And one of the things that I see have been really effective is creating the momentum and awareness around the world. Whenever there's someone, even like a music band or artist, anyone shows solidarity, it reflects much deeper in the Iranian society. People are seeking out that kind of solidarity because it gives them hope that they're doing the right thing. As well as they're not asking for any action against Iran, but they want to know if the world understands them and then when they decide what they want to do, they can ask it and people would listen to. I think that's really important. As well as like these are small things that we are doing. I think part of the things that the Iranian women are doing and men and women on the streets is raising this awareness about human rights and the importance of it and women's rights. And that's not something that only Iran is suffering from. And our sisters in Afghanistan, as well as other countries around the world are suffering the same. And I think if everyone takes a step and talks about these kind of atrocities, that would resonate a lot with everyone. And then that movement can create something that lasts long for humanity, not just Iran. I do want to go to other questions because there's a number of questions coming in and I'm just sifting through them. But let me go to another one and I'll start with you, Anabel. A number of people have spoken and asked about what do you think is the role of social media in fueling the protests? And I know that Azadah has raised this. And I want to put it more provocatively, Azadah. I think there's no doubt that social media can popularize a cause, this can be a very valuable instrument in communicating and getting information out and mobilizing people. But there's also true that regimes are not broken simply by social media. The world of Twitter is not the world of the streets of Iran. As somebody who sits on Twitter, I'm aware about how distinctive it is in some ways and how counterproductive it is in some ways as useful as it can be in the mobilization of the population. And so I'd like to ask a question about both the benefits of social media, but also the negatives of solely focusing on a revolution in Twitter sphere or a revolution only, okay, occurring in the online. And I want to get an understanding of how we could use social media for the advancement of social justice. And I want to start with Annabelle, come back to Azadah and then I'll come to you again. Annabelle. One of the reasons that social media has been so important is there, as far as I know, no Western media at least or external media allowed to function inside Iran at the moment. And the only Iranian media functioning are the media of the Islamic Republic. So what social media does is it creates a citizen journalism. It's allowed people on the streets. And I think it's absolutely vital as Azadah has mentioned, this is about the street as much as it is about social media. People are photographing, videoing, getting snippets of what's happening inside Iran and getting it out. And I think as we've said, one of the roles of the diaspora is to make sure that what is happening is seen and heard. And I made the point that Iran is always having to reinvent its forms of political communication because the Pahlavi's were repressive in one way. The Islamic Republic has been repressive in another way. There is no freedom of speech. So citizen journalism gets the word out. Can it also mobilize people? People are using various platforms to tell people where to go, what's happening? Of course it's an organizational tool. But as we've rehearsed, it alone cannot make revolution. It provides a very important information context in which we're all functioning. And in some level, when we come and talk about Iran like this, I also wonder as I've been glued to social media for weeks now, is there anything new to say? Because it's all in a sense out there. But as my friends have said, and I hope my provocation has not annoyed people, everybody, the Iranian diaspora and the world is waiting to see how demands are formulated inside Iran, what people inside Iran wants to happen. And social media remains their best tool for telling us that. Okay, Azadeh. Yes, thank you so much. Well, at the points that Annabelle so eloquently put, I want to say that, just to remind us that this is not a merely a social media revolution. Gina did not die on Twitter. Serena did not die on Twitter. Fodonur did not die on Twitter. Protests did not happen on Twitter. Strikes are not happening on Twitter. What's happening is I think one of the unique things about this movement that maybe we didn't talk about is that we have the benefit of a generation that seems to meet our geniuses and communication. They are very effective communicators. I think my generation did not do as good of a job in communicating our struggle and our demands. And that's where Twitter comes in. If Twitter or if social media was not effective, the Iranian government would not shut down the internet every time there was a protest. That by itself speaks volume about the effectiveness of this space and this space in the amid repression and amid situation where speaking out can risk your life and not only your freedom, but also just the resilience of the Iranian people again. We have grown up with VPNs with circumvention tools in an environment of sanction, where a lot of these circumvention tools would actually are not conventionally available exactly because of sanctions. And so every grandmother in Iran can use VPN. They have multiple different kinds of VPNs to use. And this is a technologically savvy population because of the repression that has put on them in the offline and the online space. So I just leave it at that. Okay, before Nagin comes in again, I want you to tackle that question, but I want you to tackle something else that somebody's just written in. And Iranians have been following the case of Amid Nuri in Sweden. And the fact that an official can be charged elsewhere for really atrocities committed in another country, in their home country. Do you think that there is something there to contain the behavior of the regime, to put them on terms about what they can do and what they can't do as much as? So I'd love you to think about that as somebody who's been working in the world of journalism, but simultaneously also answer the question on the social media, Nagin. Okay, on the social media, I'll be quick because it's been told by Annabel and Azadeh perfectly explain why it's important and why it's been working as a glue. I guess, and a lot of other Iranians who have like a presence in social media, a lot of calls for action and protests and things like that from inside Iran, from communities that are like a small groups of people collectively gathering together with no link to organizations because it's been suppressed for years. So that has been facilitating the access to the rest of the country. I think it plays an important role. But then the question, I love that question of Amid Nuri because it became a momentum in Iranian life to understand that justice is reachable. We can actually ask, the international community care about it and we can actually use the mechanisms existing outside to do something. It was the high point for that but it has started even before that as someone who was born three years after the revolution. Even though I was born in a small town in northern Iran with a lot of leftist and people from different fractions of the political aspects from other than the religious part in a labor centered society. So when I was growing up, even my uncle was destined to execution at the beginning of revolution. And I didn't know that until years later. And it was a taboo to talk about these sort of things. It was taboo to talk about what happened in the prisons in the 80s. Even though everyone around me had an experience with that and we knew about it, but we didn't care as that generation because we didn't have the information. But in recent years, the massive efforts done by the activists to talk about the massacres in the prisons in the 80s to bring someone like Amid Nuri to the justice being served for him. It created that awareness that the pain is something that everyone is suffering. That oppression has been affecting people's life in different generations, different parts of the country. And now I think that played a role in this unified shared pain experience that people are looking at each other and understanding that we suffered as well. We all suffered so we can gather around the same goal. So we haven't got too much time. So I'm going to come back to all three of you. I want to pose a question to you. As somebody who all my life has been involved in struggles for social justice, I come from South Africa. I grew up in the anti-apartheid struggle. But what the South African struggle has taught me is something completely different. On the one hand, you can break down a regime, but the revolution itself can eat itself. What you can have is victories, but you can win small battles, but never win the war. And for me, perhaps it's the cynicism of somebody who's been there, been at the height of success, saw a revolution happen, and then didn't see the kinds of inclusions and success that we want. Iran is in a part of the world where 11 years ago, the Arab Spring happened and everybody looked and said, a new world is emerging. And 10 years later, we have authoritarian regimes all over the place. Now, I don't think we should be defined by that cynicism, but I do think we need to heed the caution of that historical lesson. How do we go forward? What do we need to do this time around? So a democratic Iran that is in the interests of its women, that is in the interests of its young, is realized. And is there anything that we could, any lessons that those earlier experiences bring to the cross? I'd like you each to think about that and respond to that in the last few minutes that we have. Let's start with Annabelle. I'll come to Azadah and then again, Annabelle. Well, when I spoke earlier on, I made the point that in some ways, 2022 could be however long it takes, the culmination or the full evocation of some of the hopes of 1979. If ever there was a moment that history doesn't come with guarantees, it's 1979. I was part of a group of Democrats, of socialists, of liberals, of people who wanted to turn Iran into France, or turn Iran into the United States, or turn Iran into its own form of democracy. There were many, many different visions. And of course, in many, when people have used this language, the revolution of 79, the popular movement was hijacked by a very specific vision of Iran and a very specific coterie of people who have entrenched themselves against the then wishes of the bulk of the Iranian people. So in 2022, again, we've just been rehearsing the incredible difficulties of undermining the IRGC, which is a parastatal organization that in many ways props up the Islamic Republic. Can there be splits between the military and the police and the IRGC? Potentially, will the voices inside the regime, whose children and university student children and grandchildren are on the streets? And this is a movement of children and families and 50% of the population at the head of it. It's very hard to massacre everybody, but reasons to be hopeful is popular mobilization and popular will. Zan, Zendagi, Azadi. Okay, Azadah. Thank you so much. It's a hard act to follow. I start by just saying that like I'm also hopeful while worried. I think that while cautionary tales are important, lessons learned are important from the region, but also from Iran's own history. The Iranian women over a hundred years ago were one of the key engines of the constitutional revolutions and they were not the ones who gained from it. So, and then after that the Islamic, the 1979 revolution and so on. So, my hope and my hope is that those on the streets to a degree are aware of the risks of what they're doing. I think I see a level of maturity in this collective grassroots leadership that I have not seen before. And as, you know, as we see, for example, like there is no singular leader yet. Yes, that's I think risky and dangerous, but it also means that the people have not yet seen anyone who want to follow. And I personally, while like many say this is a danger, I also see it as a sign of maturity. I think they're cautious in followership and that's very important. I also think that it's very difficult to tell a people who cannot find a job, who when they have a job don't get their checks at the end of the month, who can't breathe the air, who don't have access to water, who can't get visas to go anywhere isolated from the world, get killed and get arrested when they go to jail. When one of their family members dies, then they, one of the other family members get arrested to caution them to stay with the status quo. So, you know, while really worried, I choose to be hopeful, but I also think there's only one force and one group that can contain this violence. And that's the Islamic Republic of Iran to stop being violent, to understand that it's time to accept some kind of defeat, whether it's by way of finding a genuine and sincere way of saying, I am wrong. I cannot be the leader and you are right and let's find a way, a legitimate and equal way to speak. It's only in the hands of one and only one force to end the violence. It's not in the hands of the people to be cautious at this point anymore. It's in the hands of the violator. Okay, Negi. Thank you for both of you. I really, really appreciate your point of view. It's been amazing. For me, I think one of the things I'm focusing on personally is keeping the slogan at the heart of it and woman's right at the heart of the movement and every step we are taking because if we manage to make sure that woman's right is the core ideology that brings about the change and for the society after that, I'm sure that society would thrive and give it being inclusive of the rights of LGBTQ plus and community rights of courts, Balooch and every portion of the society. It would be a tough act because for a patriarchal system to be able to understand these rights and change them to action, like that shift in the mindset needs a lot of practices, but I can see the signs of it and that makes me really happy. When the song came out and in the song, the portrait of the man was masculine. The backlash from the society and the grasswood was amazing. When the slogans of the Zanz and the Giyazadi tried to change to Mard and the rest of it, so they brought in the man to that slogan, there was a backlash for it. And I'm happy to see that. I know that the road is bumpy and a long way to go, but these gives me hope for a better future. So I think that's a lovely point to stop at, colleagues. Perhaps you'd say a couple of things that I think comes out of this conversation. It seems to me the murder of Mahsi Amini, Gina, as Azadah has pointed out, is outrageous. It's truly, truly tragic, as is the murder of so many of the others. And their pain should be all of our pain. Their hurt should be all of our hurt. There is no doubt that the Iranian regime has reached a point where it eats its own people. And it's something that has to be addressed. The real question is how do we build towards a more inclusive democratic Iran? And our political elites in the developing world have often used the threats of external intervention as an excuse to cover up their own exploitation, their own oppression of their own people. And it seems to me that that use of that threat is no longer possible in Iran. The political elite can no longer succeed by saying this is a problem of the United States or the UK or Western Europe. The population of Iran, its people, its young people in particular, are no longer accepting that. And that's a powerful wake-up call for them. But I do think, as we've discussed, we shouldn't assume victory. I think rage is important. I think anger is important. But so is the science of social change. We must learn from the history of resistance in other parts of the world. We must learn from the history of resistance in Iran itself and learn from the what works, what doesn't work. This example that was given of Nuri, particularly being challenged and arrested, sends shivers down the elites' spine. Because the one thing about elites is they like flying around the world. They like going and having holidays around the world. And if that closes up, they can be arrested. That's something that's going to be. And we need to look at other mechanisms like that. And I think the most important message I hear from all of you, we should be worried. We need to learn the lessons. But we mustn't forget and we mustn't ever, we mustn't lose hope. But when we lose hope, we have no future. When we retain hope, we create the possibilities for change. And I think that's the central message of this evening. I do want to thank Nageen and Abel and Azadeh for their generous sharing of their ideas, for their strength in the crucial time of a country and a nation in the throes of conflict. And so thank you for coming this evening. Thank you for sharing your ideas. Thank you for participating. Thank you to the audience for your participation, for asking the kinds of questions. It's only when we collectively, as a human community, come together to grapple with the challenges of our time and think through the challenges of our time will we create the possibilities for social justice in the future. Thank you very much. And all of you have a wonderful evening.