Reza Aslan and Assal Rad on the Protests
in Iran

This podcast episode includes references to the Eurasia Group Foundation, now known as the Institute for Global Affairs.

Archival:

“Why Are So Many Young Women Protesting In Iran?” (CBS Miami, October 10, 2022)
“Iran Protests Intensify As Women Burn Headscarves In Defiance Of Police,” (NBC News, September 21, 2022)
“How Iran’s Gen Z is leading protests in the streets and online,” (PBS NewsHour, October 1, 2022)
“OLD NEWS: The Iranian Revolution,” (ABC News, March 12, 2015)
“The 1979 Iran Revolution: How It Happened,” (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, February 11, 2019)
“Iran's massive protests, explained in 4 minutes,” (Vox, January 5, 2018)
“Iran Protests Ends in Death,” (CBS News, June 16, 2009)
“Chaos In Iran,” (CBS News, June 15, 2009)
“Iran 2018 protest,” (Rana Rahimpour, April 30, 2020)
“Is the Iran nuclear deal dead?” (i24NEWS English, October 20, 2022)
“Sadjadpour: A 'Representative Government In Tehran' Would Be A 'Geopolitical Game Changer' For US,” (MSNBC, October 17, 2022)
“VOA Interview: John Kirby,” (Voice of America, October 14, 2022)

Transcript:

ASSAL RAD: When you say there's protests that go to the core of the system, to your point, when they're saying, “Death to the dictator. Death to Khamenei,” they're going directly at the heart of the entire thing. And it's because the entire thing is failing to serve these people.

MARK HANNAH: Welcome to None of the Above, a podcast of the Eurasia Group Foundation. My name is Mark Hannah. This week we tackle a big question: When does an uprising become a revolution?

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HANNAH: Iranians from all walks of life have taken to the streets after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died while in police custody on September 16. Masa had been arrested for allegedly wearing her headscarf improperly.

RAD: What that killing sparked was a protest movement that has gone beyond women's rights. Even though the women's rights and the mandatory hijab are at the center of these protests or were the center of these protests, they have clearly evolved in the last several weeks into protests that go to the very core of the system, a system that doesn't serve the will of the Iranian people and has long been that issue. This has been an ongoing struggle of the Iranian people for over a century. A government that is democratic, where they have freedoms—political, social freedoms—and that represents their will.

HANNAH: That's Assal Rad. Assal is the director of research at the National Iranian American Council and the author of the book, The State of Resistance: Politics, Culture, and Identity in Modern Iran. And that state of resistance she alludes to? Well, it's pretty multifaceted.

RAD: It's called The State of Resistance, because it's the double meaning I was referring to. The state itself, the Islamic Republic, has this narrative of being a state of resistance, of promoting resistance culture. But Iranian people themselves have been—not only under this theocracy but under the monarchy—in a constant state of resistance, resisting their oppressors, whoever they are.

HANNAH: Iran is no stranger to uprisings or revolutions. There was the overthrow of the Pahlavi dynasty in 1979.

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HANNAH: And the Green Revolution in 2009.

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HANNAH: And recent protests in 2019, in which at least 300 people were killed.

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RAD: Every protest movement—you can find parallels, right? There's always people who think, “Well, this is like 1979, or this is like 2009.” And yes, because there are parallels. But every single one is also unique. What sparked protests in 2009 was a political issue. What sparked them in 2019 was an economic issue. What sparked them now is a social issue. It's an issue of freedom. But in every iteration, even though what sparks it might be different, that in and of itself shows you the level of grievances. And that's why they tend to evolve into protests that go to the core of the system.

So, you have the difference of what sparked them. You have the difference of who is involved. And I think you have the difference of the way they're going about protesting. Acts of civil disobedience, women burning their hijabs, women walking around without their hijabs. This would have been unimaginable two months ago. Two months ago, if we were having this conversation and somebody said, “Do you think Iranian women would just take their hijabs off?” Nobody would have thought, “Yeah, they'll probably do that.” These acts of defiance against the state—the courage it takes, but beyond that, just the sheer volume in which we're seeing them—that, I think, is also what makes it different. And I think in part that's because of the generational shift.

HANNAH: Assal is not the only one who sees it this way either.

REZA ASLAN: The current uprisings—I will say, in all honesty, I've never seen anything like this before.

HANNAH: Reza Aslan is an Iranian-American scholar who has been writing about religion and politics in Iran for decades.

ASLAN: An uprising rises to the level of revolution if it can bring in a large and diverse coalition of interests and grievances. It is absolutely true that this began as a feminist uprising, and it is still very much led by women. But what we're seeing now is old people and young people, conservatives and progressives. We're seeing more traditionally religious people and very aggressively secular people all coming together under a singular banner—that the regime must fall. We're seeing business interests now take part in this—strikes and closures. And I think most vitally and probably the biggest difference between what we're seeing today and what we saw, say, in 2009 with the Green Revolution, is that this isn't just an urbanized movement. This is a movement which has expanded to the majority of the provinces in Iran, including some very conservative places. We are seeing massive uprisings, for instance, in the city of Qom, which is the religious capital of Iran. And when I say uprisings, I'm talking about calls for the death of the supreme leader in the supreme leader's backyard. And when you see something like that taking place, then you know you're seeing something completely new, something we haven't seen in Iran in the last four decades.

HANNAH: As unifying as these protests have been, however, schisms have formed even among those with the same goal of toppling the regime. Among the Iranian diaspora, divisions run deep, and this moment has sharply deepened them.

ASLAN: The Iranian community is a very disjointed community, especially here in the United States. A lot of different political leanings and ideologies. And I've been somewhat surprised and saddened by the way in which the fractures within this community have—far from coming together and unifying in this incredible moment of opportunity—instead been widened.

RAD: There are different dissident groups in the Iranian diaspora. It's not just former monarchists. There are there are others—like the MEK represents another dissident group which, arguably, is universally hated in Iran, but yet they have lobbying power within the United States, which is one of the reasons why they were taken off of the US terrorist list. So, there are groups who have different interests in terms of, if this movement continued and we saw a change, what that change would look like—what a future Iran would look like.

ASLAN: At the University of Chicago, there was a bomb threat because a speaker was coming that this particular faction disagreed with. As I have just said, I have had to essentially cancel a number of my speaking events because of credible threats made to the venues. Just five minutes ago before we got on and started talking, I had the venue which I'm about to speak at tomorrow get credible threats from people who said they were going to show up and violently disrupt the talk. And so, as an abundance of caution, they had to cancel that event.

So, it's real. It's very real. This isn't just social media death threats. I've got plenty of those. I'm not sure who benefits from all this infighting and slander and these dangerous accusations being passed around deliberately to create disunity among the Iranian diaspora. But I know who's not benefiting from it, and that is the revolutionaries on the ground who are dying in order to achieve their most basic rights.

HANNAH: And these divisions arrive alongside a complicated geopolitical moment. The Biden administration has pressed pause on trying to bring Iran back into compliance with the nuclear deal, which was brokered by the Obama administration and then scrapped by the Trump administration.

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HANNAH: The deal would provide Tehran with billions of dollars in sanctions relief in exchange for the country agreeing to roll back its nuclear program to the limits set by the original deal in 2015. It's complicated because amid these protests, some in the diaspora think continuing to pursue diplomacy with the Islamic Republic means apologizing for and condoning the regime's brutality. They, like our guest Reza Aslan, think the deal right now should be off the table.

ASLAN: We're at a place right now where any kind of negotiations with this regime: (A) would be a violation of the demands of the people on the ground right now who overwhelmingly supported the JCPOA back then, but who are now very united in the call to say there can be no negotiations with this regime. And (B) you rightly said—what regime? There isn't a partner on the other side that has the legitimacy to actually come to the table and discuss any kind of diplomacy, let alone something as complex as nuclear diplomacy. And so, I fully support the Biden administration's decision to essentially push pause on these negotiations and to right now put their full focus on figuring out a way by relying on allies in the United Nations and in the European Union in order to make sure the government in Iran faces severe consequences for its overt human rights violations and for its violations of international laws. You're talking about a regime that is, right now, rounding up children and sending them to reeducation camps and, by the way, being vocal and explicit about that. There is no negotiation. There is no diplomacy with a regime that has lost any kind of legitimacy right now. So, yeah, I don't think there's any room for getting back to the JCPOA. Certainly not in the immediate future.

HANNAH: But whether you support diplomacy with Iran's rulers or not, Reza made one interesting point very clear, one American policymakers and citizens aren't really comfortable with. It may be a bit of a hard pill to swallow, but according to Reza, the best way for the United States to get involved might just simply be to pay attention.

ASLAN: When you ask the people on the ground what they need from America, they all say the same thing, “Pay attention. That's what we need. We need your attention. We need to make sure our voices are being heard, that you are elevating our calls for an end to this regime.” And that may, from the American perspective, seem like a very small thing. We even dismiss it sometimes as just slacktivism. But I cannot emphasize enough how valuable—quote unquote—“slacktivism” is to these people on the ground in Iran who are being told by their government that no one hears them and no one sees them. And the more we prove that to be a lie, the more we shine a light upon the atrocities of this government and the aspirations of these revolutionaries, the better chance they have of actually succeeding in their fundamental goal of bringing this government down.

HANNAH: Because ultimately, as Assal was quick to remind us, Iranians know their way around uprisings and revolutions.

RAD: If we look at the hijab itself as an example—if you look at how the style of the hijab has evolved since the revolution over these decades and how many, many women who clearly don't want to actually wear it are wearing it loosely, or the way they have tried to wear it differently—not wear it as someone who is pious but as somebody who's forced to wear it. That's an everyday act of resistance. The law says you can't do this, but you push against it. They push against these things in public spaces. So, I think they're always agents of change. But this notion of resistance—when the state promotes this idea, it's a double edged sword for them, because then you have people who appropriate that language for themselves. And so, sometimes, as we saw in 2009, slogans from the revolution in 1979 are inverted and used by Iranian protesters, as if to—to your point—use that kind of discourse for themselves. If they're calling what they're doing now a revolution that is using the same discourse.

HANNAH: Can you give an example of a slogan that's been inverted off the top of your head?

RAD: That they've used for themselves? So, the phrase “Allahu Akbar”—God is great—was used during the 1979 revolution. And then, for instance, in 2009, people would get on their balconies or the rooftops and use the same chants. But it was to protest the very system that came out of that revolution. So, they used it against it. What was used to create it was now used against it, because what was created in the post-revolutionary era wasn't what people believed would be the system—wasn't what was promised. They believed in the idea that this was going to be a democratic state. And in its very early, early stages, it looked like it could take that shape.

It was in February of 1979 when the revolution happened. When the first sort of constitution is drafted, it looks very much like the constitutions we have, like the French Fifth Republic—separation of powers. You have elections. You have an executive branch, a judiciary branch, and a legislative branch. But what happens by the end of that year, by December of 1979, is the actual—and this happens, by the way, under the crisis of the US embassy seizure in the hostage crisis. Under the sort of shadow of the crisis that has been created, that's when the constitution is ratified a month later in December. And what it is—what's been laid on top of what would be a democratic system—is the idea of jurisprudence. The experts who are supposed to be the supreme leader—that authoritarian state is overlaid on top of what is supposed to be a democratic apparatus.

There were hopes for freedom and for democracy, but those were dashed by infighting. And really what ends up happening is one party, the Islamic Republic Party, consolidating power around itself and taking over what was the revolution which involved all these other groups.

HANNAH: And is that the main grievance? If you had to give expression to the protesters or rank their grievances, what would that look like?

RAD: I think it's about all of it. And that's why when you say there's protests that go to the core of the system—to your point—when they're saying, “Death to the dictator. Death to Khamenei,” they're going directly at the heart of the entire thing. And it's because the entire thing is failing to serve these people. But what does that mean? What does that look like? What are the actual grievances—economic grievances, corruption, mismanagement, inequality and laws?

If you look at the gendered part of it—the women's rights part of it which sparks it—the fact that you have the mandatory hijab. The mandatory hijab is not the only way women are discriminated against. The entire legal system is built in a way in which women are at a disadvantage. There's no equality, whether it's in divorce, in child custody, in the value they bring as a witness to something, how property is inherited. In so many ways, it is codified. These discriminatory policies are codified within the system. Or religious minorities—there's so many reasons for Iranians to have grievances. It's hard to list it. Imagine, when you get fed up with an entire system, and you think about what the issues are within it.

We also have to consider, obviously, the economic grievances, because that's the central concern almost everyone has everywhere. When you are struggling financially, when you cannot make ends meet, this is where pressure builds up. And while we can talk about the role of US sanctions, because, it wasn't called maximum pressure as a joke. It's a pressure policy. It was intended to create pressure. But at the same time, Iranians themselves are blaming their own government. They are blaming their own government for its corruption, for its mismanagement, which has had economic impacts as well as environmental impacts. You see lakes and rivers which are drying up. There are just so many levels in which they have grievances; it's difficult to package it into one thing. And I think that's why the chant is just death to whatever is at the very top of this.

HANNAH: What should the US response be? And is it egocentric to think we should have an official US policy response? What do you think is not just appropriate but beneficial both to the United States and to people seeking freedom in Iran?

RAD: You bring up a good point. When the US government comes up with policies, those policies are always seen through a domestic lens as well—does this serve the purpose of US national interests? The second level of looking at something is through the international lens. Does this serve global security interest? What does it mean within these two different realms, both domestic and international? And it has levers of power within both of those—within its own policies—that affect things.

So, for instance, the fact that GLD-1, the general license which allows certain technology to not be sanctioned, was updated to GLD-2, a new general license, during these protests by the Biden administration. I think that's a very important step. Making sure US policies and US sanctions are not inadvertently helping Iranian authorities prevent Iranians from having access to the Internet because it's vitally important they do so. If Internet freedom is important, we need to make sure our policies are not hindering their access to the Internet. Those are things we can do. Publicly speaking about what's going on, showing solidarity and support—these are things we can do. Pushing now on the international stage, helping urge the international community, the United Nations, to have an investigation into human rights violations—these are the levers we have available to us in order to affect or impact the current situation. But there's also the reality that there is a limit to how much we can do in terms of what we can do in another country. And that's just the reality of every situation. If we simply had the power to fix things, we probably would have gotten Russia out of Ukraine by now. But it's not as simple as that. And I think that's sometimes lost in these conversations. So, that's the way the US is going to look at it. But they certainly should be urging the international community to investigate the human rights violations happening on the ground as we speak.

HANNAH: Yeah, that kind of expansive premise about what American power can do and the role for the United States and whether it has any kind of limits to what it's able to achieve politically through its economic and military might is interesting.

RAD: But can I say something? That's part of the conversation. Part of the conversation has to be: What are those limits? What are the limits of US power? When we say the US should do whatever action we want it to do—help resolve a problem, help the situation—what are the limits of what it actually can do? Was the goal in Afghanistan to have the Taliban stay in power 20 years later? I'm going to say, no, that wasn't the goal, but that's what ended up happening. Was the goal in Iraq for 20 years of war to still have a fairly unstable state? No. These aren’t the goals we had in mind. But there's a limitation to what we can do, even if that is our objective, which is arguably so, by the way. You could argue about what the objectives are in these situations. But even if you take the most positive view and say our objective was to do these things, then we failed at doing those things.

HANNAH: Unless they say the objective was to destabilize Iraq, in which case we succeeded.

RAD: Exactly. So, like I said, that part of it is debatable in and of itself. But what's not debatable, what is clear, for instance—this is a fact—is that the Taliban is now in power in Afghanistan after 20 years of war. That's fact. So, did we fail in our objective? Did we not really care if that was going to happen? The point it draws is that there are clear limitations. We don't actually have the power to affect change in the exact way that especially the people on the ground who are in those countries necessarily want it.

HANNAH: I think it's hard for a lot of people in Washington to accept because, the US has been such a beacon of—I don't want to minimize the really important international role the US played after World War II in the rebuilding of Europe. But I do think it has a kind of triumphal posture and a righteous posture that thinks what's happening in Iran is despicable. And then I think, by my standards, it is. But what good is solidarity? What good is “standing with Iran,” which is one of these vague phrases which drives me crazy? What does it mean to stand with these protesters if you can't do something about it? And then if you do something about it, are you playing into the narrative by the Iranian government that this is all about the West, and it's being cheered on by or inspired by or provoked by or financially backed by the West?

RAD: I would say this is sort of an idealistic take, to be honest. But at the same time, it's also realistic because it’s the only way an international system will work. One of the issues with the notion of accountability is—I absolutely think we should hold Iranian authorities accountable for their abuses, but I also think that only has meaning if we hold everybody accountable for their abuses. And the way the US has used the international system—again, this is just the reality of the situation on the ground—is selectively. If its allies and friends are doing things, then we're fine with it. We use our veto power at the United Nations in order to avert accountability for our allies and our friends. When the International Criminal Court wants to investigate war crimes of one of our allies, we undermine it. We undermine its legitimacy in doing so. But then we want to use those same international bodies when we want to hold someone accountable who is also guilty of human rights abuses, of war crimes, of whatever it is we're saying we need accountability for. But that system of accountability has already been undermined. And so, there has to be a conversation that goes beyond just whatever instance a particular group is concerned about and recognize the fact that until we have a real system of accountability, it makes it extremely difficult to hold anyone accountable under it.

HANNAH: That makes a lot of sense. And people might understandably think the US is calling out Iran specifically and has certain kind of views about Iran because it has been a traditional bogeyman or adversary when it comes to its interests in the Middle East and its partnership with Saudi Arabia. But let's talk for a minute about what US vital interests are in Iran right now. There is an attempt to get the nuclear negotiations back on track. And there is broad bipartisan support that we found at the Eurasia Group Foundation—as we found in our survey of Americans—that they want the US to attempt to renegotiate the Iranian nuclear deal or get back to negotiations that would prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapon. What are US interests there?

RAD: I think when you say US interests in Iran, you could look at it in two ways: the current situation that exists. And what is the potential if the situation were different? Obviously, for instance, there would be economic interests if the state of affairs was not what it is. Iran is a country with over 80 million people. And it is not integrated into the international economic system. There are no American companies in Iran, which is rare. This is like an untapped market of tens of millions of people. It's a large country. And so, it has these unique possible interests for those who might be interested in those things, but not its current state. So, what is the current concern? To your point, the central concern is the idea of Iran becoming a nuclear state, having a nuclear weapon, versus what it's had up until now, which is a civilian nuclear program.

Now, something to keep in mind, Iran has to make the political decision to weaponize its program, which up until now—that could change, but up until right now—it has not made the political decision to do so. And when we talk about Iran being a threshold state, which means even if they have enough nuclear material in order to have a weapon, that doesn't mean you have a weapon. You have to actually build the weapon, be capable of delivering that weapon. And that, according to arms experts and proliferation experts, is another process that would take one to two years to do. Of course, that is not the US stance. They don't want to wait until we basically get to that stage. So, how do you prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapon, if that is a concern not only the United States but the international community has? Well, what are the options?

One of the options was a diplomatic option, and that's what the push for the Obama administration was. And that's why we got the Iran nuclear deal, otherwise known as JCPOA, in 2015. It basically created limits. It was the largest oversight of the international community on any nuclear program, and it put limitations on Iran's program so it could not acquire the materials it needed for a weapon. Obviously, it was the United States who left that deal in 2018. And now this is the situation we exist in. The situation has changed. Iran of 2022 is not Iran of 2015. The United States of 2022 is not the United States of 2015. Things have changed. So, it's a complicated question because there's a clear interest in why the US doesn't want Iran to have a nuclear weapon. But then if we decide—and this is what the Biden administration has decided right now, and I agree—at this moment—and there are no negotiations going on right now, by the way. That's something to keep in mind. There are no negotiations, currently. But the fact that the Biden administration has said, “We're focusing on the protests, not on the JCPOA,” I think is a fair stance to take because you have things unfolding on the ground, and we have to see how these events unfold. Right now, the focus should be on the fact that there are protesters being killed in the streets, many of which are basically kids. There are teenagers being killed. So, I agree with the stance of the Biden administration to say, “Right now this is the priority,” because that should be the priority.

HANNAH: Getting back to what you were saying about the Iran nuclear deal, you seem to think, yes, the Biden administration should wait out these protests. It might be a different regime in three months or six months, or this attempt at a revolution might be actually successful, in which case you don't want to negotiate or even give credibility to or—you don't want to negotiate under this under these conditions, for sure. At the same time, you're very much pro-diplomacy when it comes to engaging with the regime. And there are others in the Iranian-American community who are not. And you've gotten flak for wanting to do negotiations and diplomacy. Can you talk a little bit about the other side? What is the counterargument to this?

RAD: When you ask about diplomacy specifically, I am personally pro-diplomacy because the way we see diplomacy—the idea of diplomacy in the international world, in the international community, why does it exist? What's the central ethos of the United Nations? It was created in the wake of World War II, like the League of Nations was created in the wake of World War I. The idea of internationalism was created to prevent wars. That's the bread and butter of why this exists. We're not all going to get along. Everyone in the world is not going to get along. We're not all going to have the same systems. But is there a way—and that's essentially the large-scale way the nation-states work. A nation-state which is democratic does not say we're all going to agree. It says we are going to have a certain standard that everybody has certain freedoms, but within that, people are allowed to disagree.

There's a couple things I think are important to unpack here. One, is the fact that the reason why people push diplomacy is because if the alternative course is war, that's precisely why we have diplomacy. We have diplomacy not for our friends, but specifically for our adversaries. One of the things Jake Sullivan talked about recently in an interview was at the height of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States, they still had arms agreements because there was an understanding that regardless of the ideological conflict which exists, there are interests everybody shares. Because if we have a nuclear war, everybody loses. So, why diplomacy is pushed is not in a specific case. It is a vision of how the world should operate. It should operate in a way in which we avoid conflicts and wars because they tend to make things worse, not better. I just wanted to point that part of it out.

And then, when you talk about different views within—whether it's the diaspora or the larger American populous—that's why we— Iranians in Iran are fighting for freedom and democracy. What that means—what it actually means, and I think this is extremely important to say—is the ability to disagree without the fear of reprisal, without the fear of violence, without the fear of silencing. That's the problem in the country. You can't criticize the state. If someone sings a song that's popular because it is a criticism of the state, they detain them. That's what happened to Shervin Hajipour. They detain them and put them in jail. That is the problem. So, if we outside of the country, whether it's our own community or the larger American populous—however these conversations are taking place––we have to be cognizant of the fact that the values we espouse can't just be things we say, can't just be discourse. We have to apply those values in the way we even have these discussions. And so, we should be able to have these discussions where people present their views—they present the differences in those views, and based on whatever is the popular will of the people who make those decisions, that's how decisions are made. And I think that's something that's sort of lost when people get very—it is a very difficult time for the diaspora. It is a very emotional time in very many ways. But if we're having a policy conversation, how do we think the US government should decide policies? You have discussions within the civil society space. People elect officials that, based on their conclusions and their opinions, represent their views, and they carry out the will of those people. That is how a democracy works. And so, if we want that for Iran, I think the first step is to participate in that where we live.

HANNAH: I'm Mark Hannah, and this has been another episode of None of the Above, a podcast of the Eurasia Group Foundation.

Thanks so much to Reza Aslan and Assal Rad for joining us today.

Thanks also go out to the entire None of the Above team. Our producer is Caroline Gray. Our associate producer and editor is Sarah Leeson. And Lucas Robinson helped with research, writing, and archival support. If you enjoyed what you've heard, we would appreciate you subscribing to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or anywhere else you find podcasts. Do rate and review us, and if there's a topic you want us to cover, send us an email at info@noneoftheabovepodcast.org. Thanks for joining us.

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