Iran on the Brink of Revolution? A Conversation with Jack Goldstone

In this wide-ranging conversation, recorded in 2023, during the “Women, Life, Freedom” uprising in Iran, political sociologist Jack Goldstone considers what makes a mass movement successful and reflects on Iran’s protests.

Jack Goldstone is a historian of revolutions, although history is not really his primary field. He is more of a sociologist, or perhaps a demographer. His official title is “Professor of Public Policy.” So, he does not fit neatly into the standard academic taxonomies. Yet if you look across his extensive body of work, several themes stand out clearly: social movements, demographic transformations, development, and revolution. You could say Jack Goldstone is a “revolution buff.” He spends a great deal of time studying them, whether it is sixteenth-century Europe or the twenty-first-century Middle East. His central preoccupation is fundamental change in human societies.

When I first wrote to him, I did not know that three translations of his work had been published in Iran just within the past few years (2018, 2020, and 2021). On my way to our meeting, I finally searched his name in Persian. During the small talk before the interview began, I asked him, “Did you know?” He replied, “No, but I’m not surprised. The dream of revolution feeds the desire to understand revolutions.”

When I first wrote to him, I did not know that three translations of his work had been published in Iran just within the past few years (2018, 2020, and 2021). On my way to our meeting, I finally searched his name in Persian. During the small talk before the interview began, I asked him, “Did you know?” He replied, “No—but I’m not surprised. The dream of revolution deepens the desire to understand revolutions.”

Mehrad Vaezinejad: I want to start with a rather silly question: can you predict revolutions? If anybody could, it would be you!

Jack Goldstone: We cannot predict revolutions anymore than we can predict earthquakes. We can't predict revolutions, for example, as well as we can predict the weather. Now, with earthquakes we can identify fault zones, or with a hurricane, we can see if there's stormy weather. But with hurricanes we have a measure of barometric pressure. And we know if the barometric pressure is dropping, that means a storm is building to a hurricane, it's very likely to occur. 

There's no simple metric like that. I mean, it would be good if you could say the size of participants - the more people, the more likely of success; and the longer the campaign, the greater the likelihood of success. And I have a student in fact who's looking at these relationships, but they're very uncertain. And sometimes you don't know what is the cause and what is the effect. For example, we find that there's a negative backward relationship between the length of a campaign and the frequency of success in overturning the government. And that doesn't seem to be because long campaigns are bad. It means if you have a tough government and people come out and protest and the government survives, the protests will go on and on and on, but eventually fail. Whereas if you have a government that's very weak, it may fall within a few weeks. So, there's a lot that we can identify as things that increase the risk or the likelihood of revolution. If you have a government that seems to be losing legitimacy, if you have large protests, all of these are necessary, but they're certainly not sufficient. What is necessary and sufficient is to have a government in crisis, economic, military, corruption, scandal. Something that undermines people's belief that the government can do its job. You need protests, but you also need some leadership from within the elite. Someone who can signal to the people that even those in power are not fully supporting the regime. So, you need allies on the inside and you need the military to become unreliable. That might mean it refuses to fire on civilians. It might mean actual defections. And you also need an international situation that is tolerant or favorable. 

So, for example, in Syria, it looked like Assad was on the ropes. He was suffering defections, protests were spreading. But Russia came in and said, no, we don't want you to fall. We're going to bail you out. So, you need at least these five different conditions to all come together. And it's very hard to predict when all of them will. You never know how much a foreign power is going to commit to supporting an ally or not. It's very hard to look inside the minds of military leaders. You don't know how much of the elite is willing to back away from the regime until there's pressure. So, there are many times in history where we see protests, but whether that actually means a revolution is beginning or not, usually not! 

MV: You speak of five conditions. Can we say a revolution is likely if we have all five together? 

Goldstone: If you have all five conditions, you'll have a revolutionary crisis. But whether the revolution succeeds depends on how effective the revolutionary leadership is in providing direction and unity. You can have a crisis, but without good leadership, the revolutionary movement may fall apart or turn to fighting internally and get overturned. So, in order to succeed, you need a skilled team of revolutionary leaders to provide vision, unity, and organisation. 

MV: Let me turn to Iran, because the issue of leadership is much debated these days. It’s safe to say, I think, that no individual is leading the movement. And many believed in the early days and weeks that this was a good thing because actions were more spontaneous and harder to suppress. But my understanding of your points is that a visionary leader is necessary if a revolutionary movement is to succeed.

JG: It is. Let me give you one bit of new research that is somewhat distressing if you're hoping for change. About ten years ago, Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stefan published a book on non-violent protest, in which they looked at the data over the last fifty years and said non-violent protest is actually more effective in bringing about regime change than violent protest. Now they've looked at that again more recently. And although they found that's still true, that non-violent mass protest is more effective in leading to regime change than guerrilla war or violent attacks, the success rate for both kinds of protests has dropped dramatically in the last 10 years. The success rate for violent protests has fallen by about three quarters. The success rate for non-violent protest has fallen by over half. So, it appears that the idea that non-violent protest will more often than not pay off is no longer true. Now she says this could be because of two things. One, regimes are probably better responding to mass protests. They're getting more careful about cultivating the loyalty of the military and elites. They're more alert to not doing things that are ineffective but damaging. So, they tell their troops don't just fire randomly into crowds; use tear gas and rubber bullets on crowds, instead, and then at night go to the homes of the most notable protestors and arrest them in the dark and take them off to prison where they can't do any harm. So that's part of it. But part of it, they say, is also that protest campaigns that are organised online and that do not have leaders and don't have a grassroots organisation are easier to break apart. And this kind of spontaneous, leaderless protest, is effective for getting a protest started, but it's not good for resisting repression. Now, it's true that if you have a revolutionary leader, they could be arrested or killed. But even someone like Nelson Mandela who was in prison for decades was still an effective focus for the opposition. And even if you have martyrs, they often inspire a bigger outpouring of protest. So, it's necessary to have leaders. In the long run, just having spontaneous, unorganised, no-leadership protests will not do you much good against a fairly strong regime. 

MV: And based on this study, it seems that authoritarian regimes are indeed getting stronger.

JG: Yes, they are. There’s some work on the dictators’ learning curve. The dictators are sharing surveillance methods, arrest methods, crowd control methods, surveillance technologies, etc. Now the bottom line is that even if their tactics of repression are better, they still need people to carry them out. So, if a significant portion of the military or police says, we won't do that, we don't think you're worth saving, then the government is still in trouble. 

MV: But is this something you can plan or campaign for? I mean to try and bring about that change in the military or police. Or is it one of those things the dynamics of which we can’t understand let alone influence –a magical moment that you can only hope and perhaps be ready for?

JG: This is where leadership is important because you have to seize an opportunity, but only when the opportunity is there. If you can identify reasons why some people in the military might desert the regime, that is, are there people in the military who have grievances against the government? Are there people who are not getting promoted or not getting paid or getting otherwise squeezed out? Sometimes this happens when you have a leader who rewards loyalty but not competence. And then you have professional officers who are angry at the regime for not recognising their merits. Sometimes, if you have ordinary soldiers, if they identify with the crowds, if they think these people are my sisters and mothers and brothers, I'm not confident that I should shoot them. If you can build that sense of identity and promote an information campaign that says, Hey, we're your family, we're like you, we're not against the country, we're just against the leaders, come join us. Sometimes that can work. So, you need a leadership that can assess what are the weaknesses or vulnerabilities. Do we have potential allies in the military, in the police, in the government? How can we bring them over to support us? 

That's one step. And the other thing I have to say, and this is important for Iran, revolutions succeed when the initial protestors gain support from beyond their own group. That is a coalition with other groups, with other grievances. So, for example, in the Tahrir square protests in Egypt, the initial protestors were young people who were concerned about police brutality. They were concerned about declining opportunities and very high unemployment for the young. But their movement became decisive when the Muslim Brotherhood leadership said we're going to join this. We think the time has come to support them. And it was when the Muslim Brotherhood brought their extensive grassroots organisation with strong leadership to reinforce the protestors in Tahrir Square, that they were able to stand up to some of the government thugs. And then eventually the army supported them because the army had a grievance against Mubarak. They did not like the idea that he was going to make his son, who was not a military person, his successor. So, the military thought, if the protests force Mubarak out and we get to choose the successor fine by us. The military, kind of took advantage. It went a little further than they expected. They didn't want to see a brotherhood politician elected president and they fixed that too. But anyway, that's the kind of thing that's necessary. 

And right now, I read 40% of the people arrested in the protests in Iran are under age 20. So, it's young people that are dominant and that's fine to start, but they need to be joined by the much larger population that's 25 to 45. And unless that generation is willing to say, we're going to leave our jobs and take risks and go out in the street, it's not going to take off. They know how fierce the military can be in torture, arrest, repression. They also have jobs, families, they have more at risk right now than the young. So, what would it take to bring that older group into the streets? Some evidence that the military is weakening. If they see some signs that the military will not do in 2023 what it did in 2009, they will probably want to join the protest because they're still angry and want change too. But as long as they are kind of cowed by their experience in 2009 and see that the military is very determined and effective, they probably will still wait until they see signs of weakness.

MV: From what you say, it seems to me that if you are a revolutionary, that you're not just up against the regime and the security forces. I don't want to say you’re up against the whole society, but there is an ‘order’ there. You want to break that order and a lot of people have a lot to lose. They might think there is a chance that things will get better for me after the revolution, but there’s also a chance that I lose a lot in the process and not gain much after it. In a way there's no guarantee. Right?

JG: You want better odds before you risk everything. 

MV: Exactly. So does that mean that discontent, however widespread and deep and enduring, may not be enough for revolutionary change?

JG: Discontent is never enough. The first chapter of my little book, A Very Short Introduction to Revolutions, starts out saying, many people think revolutions occur when people have had enough. Well enough of what? Poverty, corruption, repression. Unfortunately, that's what people in poor countries live with all their lives, often generation after generation. So, it's not as if people reach a boiling point and then it explodes. Often if things are very bad, people end up in depression, they abuse their families themselves. Yes, discontent is what drives people to oppose the status quo and say we need change. But that's never enough. There's almost always reason for some people to feel they're not getting their fair share under the status quo. What is critical is that some of those people who want to change the status quo are in positions of power from which they can have an impact. But those are the people who stand to lose most if it fails. Elites may oppose a government if they feel that government is betraying the nation. For example, under the Shah, a lot of people, clergy, bazaar merchants, workers, students, they felt the Shah was taking orders from the United States and really had no interest in the welfare of his own people. Now, that was an argument that Ayatollah Khomeini was broadcasting and making, but he convinced people that the Shah was essentially not the protector of the people of Iran, but the enemy of the people of Iran. And if that's true, then elites have just as much to lose from that as anyone else. 

The other reason elites may turn against the government is if the ruler favours a small group within the elite and starts squeezing others out. So, you might have a family or ethnic group where elites that are successful in business or junior military officers feel that, well, I'm doing okay, but what happens if these people come after my business? Or as long as these people are in charge, I'll never have a chance to achieve what I deserve. Usually that builds over time. If a regime has been in power for a long time and gets more and more reliant on a smaller and smaller group of loyalists that can lead to elite grumbling, but then it usually takes something dramatic, some kind of enormous event, exposure of corruption or incompetence or failures, economic or military crisis that leaves the elite to go from, well, I'm not happy, I think this is bad, to, this leadership has really got to go because they're wrecking the country and we will do better with someone else in charge. And that is rare. I mean, revolutions are rare precisely because it takes a lot for people in positions of some prosperity or power to come to the conclusion that they would be much better off with someone else in charge. But once they come to that conclusion, they are more likely to support or even encourage popular protest as a way of achieving the change that they desire. 

MV: I feel like the ‘grumbling’ that you say already exists in Iran. Not least because the circle has shrunk so much that only the most obsequious can get in. You might have noted that in the last election, Larijani was disqualified. So, no more room in the tent even for someone like him.

JG: In 2009, even though Mousavi and the others were willing to say maybe the election results should be examined, they shrank from saying this regime needs to be taken down. They still supported the revolution. Whatever argument they had with the election results in 2009 was not enough to turn them into leaders of a true revolutionary movement. Up until very recently, the supreme leader had kind of given both reformers and hardliners opportunities, he tried to keep them all in the family. I was surprised that in the election before the last, the supreme leader allowed a relative moderate like Rohani to run. And then when Khatami and others threw their support behind him he actually won. I didn't expect that at all. But, of course the result was that in the most recent election, the supreme leader basically said, nobody's is going to run except my hard line guy. Now that's a more extreme position. And if people like Larijani say we are no longer going to have an opportunity to be in the positions of power, maybe we're going to get squeezed out altogether or end up like Bani-Sadr, then they could do something about it. But I think they're just waiting for Khamenei to die, and they're not going to upset the apple cart until then, because when Khamenei passes away, there's no clear successor yet. So, anything can happen. And then they'll have a new opportunity to press their claims. I think if Khamenei were to die tomorrow, you might see those frustrated reformers in Iran's political elite join with the protestors and say, look, we need a new leader; we need a leader who has the confidence and support of the people and the hardliners don't, so we're going to try and take over. But it's not clear whether they have the influence and effectiveness for taking over. And then again, we don't know what the Revolutionary Guards will do either. The Revolutionary Guards is a force with a lot of economic interests, and so far, have been very loyal to the hardline regime. 

MV: So this then leads me to the next question, which is even if all these conditions were to be met, that the current regime were to be overthrown, what is it that will happen next? There’s this phrase, farda-ye barandazi, which can be translated as ‘the day after the overthrow’. You hear it a lot these days, often light-heartedly, as people express their hopes for a brighter future. You smile! Is it wishful thinking? 

JG: The day after will be a happy day. No doubt. But the month after? Well, you look at what happened in Tunisia, which was everybody's hope for the best democratic outcome in the Muslim world. Tunisia seemed like they were overcoming their problems. They even got a Nobel Prize, they got the Islamists to sign a deal and take a moderate stance. And even so, the economic problems continued and that provided an excuse for Kais Saied to simply say, I'm going to dissolve parliament and take over because the country is not going to manage without a strong leader. And the hopes of democracy seem now to have faded. So, after the Islamic regime, if it falls, what's most likely to happen is that all of the divisions in Iran, ethnic, regional, religious, will come to the surface. Now, if you have a strong revolutionary leadership that has brought groups together and worked out some kind of national program beforehand, then your chances are better for having a peaceful, maybe even democratic outcome. But if you have a lot of different groups who are just all protesting against the government and may not have a lot in common, then what do you do with the religious conservatives? What do you do with the claims of the Kurds? Will the younger generation and the older generation see eye to eye on future relations with the United States or Russia? What will Russia do if they see a revolution in Iran that they think threatens their influence? So, there are many risks of unpleasant things happening.

MV: I agree. But what gives me some hope is that it seems many activists and protesters are at least somewhat aware of these risks. You can see these themes being debated here and there. They may not have clear answer yet, but we can perhaps hope that over time, something like the national program you mentioned could take shape - so that we don’t move from one darkness straight into another. There’s one more point I wanted to make, more as an observation than a question. You referred earlier to the reformist–hardliner divide. It seems to me that many Iranians have moved beyond this binary. It no longer feels relevant, especially after the November 2019 protests. I could be wrong, but it’s hard for me to imagine today’s protesters welcoming anyone they see as having been part of this system.

JG: I think that's certainly true of the younger generation. They grew up hearing all these great things about how the revolution was going to make for a stronger and prouder Iran. But the reality is a country that seems to be getting poorer and more isolated every day. Even the university educated youth in Iran are struggling to make a living. So yes, there's a huge disappointment among the young because of what they were promised, but the people who are a little bit older, say in their forties, they grew up in the early years of the revolution, not the later years. And they absorbed a lot of the government's propaganda. They're in more of a wait and see mode. I don't think they've given up on the regime the way the younger under 25 have.

All the great revolutions in history have produced famous leaders. They may not have all been terribly charismatic, but they were either good speakers or good organisers, and they molded the circumstances to create a new regime and inspired millions of people to follow them. So, without a Fidel Castro, without a Lenin or Trotsky, without a  powerful, capable leader, you don't get a post-revolutionary outcome that has any coherence. There was a revolution in Grenada that fell apart because the two leaders fought with each other. You had a revolution in Nicaragua that initially brought together leaders from the church, from business and from the radical left. But after they got in power, they fell out with each other and eventually ended up with the Marxist, Daniel Ortega, pushing everybody else out and turning himself into a dictator and shooting protestors in the street. So, it remains to be seen. Who would lead Iran in a post clerical regime? Sometimes leaders emerge from the process. Napoleon was just a corporal at one point. We didn't know he was going to be a leader. But, of course before Napoleon had his chance, you had leaders from the nobility and the clergy join the revolution and then make it happen. So remains to be seen. 

MV: In 1979, was Khomeini the kind of leader that you describe? 

JG: He certainly was. Khomeini was able to promise everybody everything. He didn't say, if we get rid of the Shah, we're going to have a hardline clerical regime that will push women to wear the hijab. He just said, we are going to have a new Iran and I'm welcoming everybody to my side. The Tudeh Party in the oil fields, the secular intellectuals, the bazaar merchants, the clergy, and people at large trusted and followed him. The main thing is that everybody has to be against the Shah. And he said, trust me, we're going to have this wonderful republic that blends the best of Iran's history, its religious tradition and modern democracy. That was effective leadership,. Because he brought together people who had never been able to work together. I don't know if there's anyone like that on the scene now.

MV: I don’t think there is. And I think the experience of 1979 was an exception, and can't be used as a template for another revolution. But the memory of 1979 seems to be informing, albeit unconsciously, the  idea of how revolutions come about. Because the immediate aftermath of ‘79 was not as chaotic as many other revolutions. Khomeini said "I will appoint the government" He did that immediately and very few people questioned its legitimacy. The consolidation of power seems to have been relatively swift. Because you write in your book that on average it takes 10 to 12 years before you have a stable government after a revolution. In Iran, we could argue that the new regime was fully established by 1982, and there were no credible opponents to its power.  And any power struggle was just within the regime. 

JG: Well, I would agree with you that Khomeini held things together and that he purged his opponents. But I wouldn't say that we can claim that Iran had a stable government until after the war with Iraq was over. Because if they had lost the war, things could have changed again. So, 1988 is when I would say, we knew that this government is here to stay. Now, it was a tough regime; it became tougher and more united under the pressure of the war. It was fairly ruthless in killing, imprisoning, exiling anyone who disagreed with Khomeini. But again, we have to remember that Khomeini was in charge of a country going through a war that they were unprepared for, and the US was helping the other side. But revolutionary regimes can usually count on popular nationalist enthusiasm to defend the revolution. So many revolutionary regimes have surprised people with how hard they're willing to fight. You can look at Ukraine today. The Ukrainian government today is the direct result of the Revolution of Dignity in 2014. Ukrainians know that if Putin wins this war, he will demand a change in the government and they will go back to the old Putin puppet system. And people are fighting for their freedom and their country, and they're fighting with much more energy, skill and courage than anyone expected. But actually, if you look at it as a post-revolutionary war, it shouldn't be that unexpected because revolutions mobilise people's hopes and belief that they have a future worth fighting for, and that they do not want to go back to the pre-revolutionary situation that they sacrificed to escape. 

So yes, Khomeini, I think, is among the major revolutionary leaders of history. And for his regime to be replaced will require another leader. If you think about someone like Boris Yeltsin in Russia, he was an embarrassment once he got into power. But before he took power, he was terrific at galvanizing people around a vision of Russia separate from the Soviet Union. He became the living symbol of the future that people were excited about and desired: of Russia as a normal nation. Not the abstract monstrosity of the Soviet Union - something people could not feel they belonged to.

So, for Iran to get out of this Islamic Republic, someone needs to create a vision of a future that will be different and you’d desire. All right, women won't have to wear the hijab. But how are you going to run the country? Who's going to be in charge? Are you going to be pro-western? What about the more religious, the more traditionally conservative? Are you going to be secular? Who's going to get the oil money? The bottom line is, without leadership, this whole thing could flounder and fall apart. You cannot simply say, we are unhappy with this government, so it has to change. That's wishful thinking; that's not making a revolution. 

MV: That’s one reason I said I think the 1979 experience has shaped our idea of revolutions. Because as soon as we say ‘revolution’, the one in 1979 comes to mind; we imagine a similar course of events. It’s our reference, in other words. And in relative terms, it succeeded with relative ease.

JG: Correct. Many things came together in 1979. And people forget that it took a year of protests. The system didn't change overnight. It didn't happen overnight. There was also the US pressure, which curbed what Shah and the military would do. And then it took a kind of confusion on the part of both the Shah and the military. By the end of 1978, the Shah was, I think, literally stunned that so many Iranians wanted him to leave. I thought my people loved me, he’d probably say. But at that point he was getting sick and he was willing to give up. He said, I'm ill and I need to go to a hospital. I'm going to turn it over to Bakhtiar and others to sort this out. But the people he left behind didn't want to execute a hundred people and shoot people in the streets. They were not sure at all what to do. And so, they eventually backed down and said, okay, if the Iranian people really want change that much, why should we stop them, let's step down and see what happens. And they allowed Khomeini to come back. But it wasn't quick. It wasn't easy. It required foreign pressure. It required the leadership of Khomeini and it required the dispiriting and even giving up of the Shah and his immediate supporters.

MV: That's one of the major points of difference with the current regime. No one in this regime can go anywhere – not to the US or Egypt, for sure.

JG:  let me tell you a story. When I was in Egypt, I visited the Tomb of the Shah. It's a bittersweet moment. It's a very nice tomb, very well decorated, and nicely maintained by the Egyptian government. And you can say, here lies the last king of Iran. And yet he was disliked by his own people and he had to leave. And that's why he's buried here in Egypt.

MV: It's ironic that the Shah’s son has now become a figurehead of the opposition.

JG: It’s interesting, yes. And there are examples of this in history. There are some royal heads in Europe who want to come back and be king of Bulgaria or somewhere else. But they not taken seriously. And yet in the Philippines, the president of the Philippines today is Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The son of the man who was overthrown in the first non-violent revolution, the 1986 Yellow Revolution. Who would've thought that a Marcos would again be president? But what Marcos Jr did is he cultivated relationships. He didn't just walk in from the outside and say, I'm here. He got himself elected as a senator. He got into relations with the other presidents who had preceded him. He used his money to build a network of supporters, and he carried out a media campaign. He spent years getting ready to take advantage of the opportunity and has now done so. What ultimately makes something like this happen is lack of alternatives. Now, it's true that among the population at large, Pahlavi Jr has more name recognition. But unless there's some people in the Revolutionary Guards who would support him, it's unlikely to work.

MV:  I think what you say is really important. And I hope many people will read it. It may not be what we Iranians wish to hear. But it’s an eye-opener. Because the truth is that it's not going to be easy. We should stop thinking about 1979, I think, which was relatively easy. Yes, it took a year of protest, as you said. But if you think about how many years Mao was organizing, for example, then a year is not much. Also, we’re not dealing with the Shah here, who was terminally ill, depressed apparently, and unwilling to hold on to power at all costs. And of course, you had the American factor.  Rulers like Mubarak or the Shah were unsettled irreversibly when the US withheld its explicit support. That’s not the case now. Would the current regime fall if Putin were to tell them it’s time to go? I’m not sure.   

JG: I don't think that there's any foreign power who has sufficient leverage over the clerical regime, partly because Iran has been quarreling with everyone, and under sanctions for so long, they've had to become self-sufficient. I do think that Russia would intervene if they saw a new pro-western regime coming to power. I don't think they would go as far as in Syria necessarily. I don't think they would use their Air Force in Iran. But I think they would try and give financial support and military advice if there were something like a civil conflict involving factions of the Revolutionary Guards. But beyond that, this clerical leadership has fought off threats from the United States for a long time. They have controlled their own destiny, and they will always want to do so. Now, let me say for myself, just to get it on record. I have a great fondness for the Iranian people. I've never been to Iran, but some of our best friends when our children were young were Iranians. Their daughter was our daughter's best friend. We would go to their house for feasts on Norouz. I have great respect for the Persian contribution to civilization, and I really abhor many of the things that the United States has done in regard to Iran since the revolution. I don't think that America has shown the respect for Iran as a nation and a people separate from our relations with the government, which of course has always treated us as an enemy. So, my hope is that Iran joins the community of nations and continues to make the contributions that Iranians and Iranian civilization have made. I don't like the current situation where Iran is isolated and hostile; that's bad for peace in the Middle East and in the world. I would hope to see Iran move toward a regime that while in control of its own destiny, is able to take a more even-handed approach both to the West and to Russia and to other countries in the Middle East. It would be nice to see a more pragmatic, less internationally extremist regime, but also it would be nice to see a regime that has the full support of its own people and that's able to restore a growing economy. I just don't know how you're going to get there. And I'm sorry that I have to say this: it seems we're a long way from that. The regime has invested heavily in the Revolutionary Guards and the military, giving them exceptional economic opportunities, and it's hard to see where those cracks in the strengths of the regime come from that could lead to change.

MV: I don't know if I can publish something so bleak! It’s almost entirely bad news.

JG: The good news in a long view of history is that it often takes more than one effort at revolution to create the change that a country desires. It took France a hundred years, 1789, 1830, 1848, 1870 before it created the Third Republic, which was the first lasting democratic republic in France. Before then, everything else was a back and forth mess. It will probably take Russia and China a future revolution to create countries where the government is again accountable to the people. Right now, both China and Russia have governments with a lot of popular support, but also a lot of anger. And as the Covid economic problems in China drag on and the Russian War Ukraine drags on, those governments may lose support. They may face popular protests and they may even be pushed aside. But then we'll look back and say, wow, it took a long time. I am confident that at some time in the lifetime of the young people who are protesting today, they will live in a freer, more prosperous Iran. It's not likely to happen in 2023, at least as long as Khamenei remains alive and at the controls. 

But the entire world right now is in a bad space. We have kind of angry right-wing populism, anti-immigrant feeling, strong racism, reviving even in the leading democratic countries. Politics in the United States are being held hostage to crazy conspiracy ideas. In Myanmar and Thailand, people are still facing military regimes despite having fought for democracy for some time. So, these happen to be tough times now, partly because the entire world is stuck. We're confused, we're polarized. The old things that used to work for our economies, building things and moving them around, that's now being replaced by high finance and digital products. And those things concentrate wealth among the few. They don't provide lots of middle-class jobs. Inequality has increased, social mobility has declined. People are angry. And in some ways, we're going back to the 1930s, a world where every country is more insecure. Populations have less confidence in the future, less confidence in their government. And until we get past this period, it's going to be a tough situation. But I would say this: the 1930s were really brutal. We had horrible depression, we had a world war. But when the fighting was over, the 1950s ushered in decades of peace and prosperity. So, it may take generational change. A younger generation that's maybe more tolerant and more hopeful come to the fore, some innovations in medicine, computing or transportation give people more opportunities to make a good living. 

I think we'll find our way out of it. But people, in Iran or elsewhere, who are hoping that simply by displaying their anger and protesting, that will somehow, immediately change things, that is somewhat naive, inspiring, but naive. And I would tell these people, it's good to show how you feel, but be smart about it. Try and get organized. Lay off groundwork. Find leaders who you think can sustain a movement and grow your followers. Try and understand your enemy. Don't just say, oh, I hate the Islamic regime. Try and figure out who in that regime might be sympathetic to change. And then try and think of what the future will look like. Can you even imagine a future that actually will bring together all the different groups in Iran around some common goal? If you can, then you have something to fight for. But without that vision, you only have anger and it's hard to build a desirable future on anger alone.

MV: I guess many of those who took to the streets in ‘79 would attest to this. One last question now that I referred to the revolution. It seems to me that the memory of ‘79 is affecting the leadership of the Islamic Republic too – in a different way. In the sense that they think giving in, even an inch, would put them on a slippery path of no return. They seem to view the Shah as an example not to follow. But then how far do you think a government can go on like this, ruling over a mostly unhappy populace, facing a multitude of crises inside, and cut off from meaningful relationships outside?

JG: If you are willing to do whatever it takes, you can survive, as long as the army is behind you. Now, Machiavelli advised governments, if you make concessions, only make them from a position of strength. Because if you make them from the position of weakness, they will be considered desperate and forced and you don't gain any credit for it. So, if the government is confident, then they can make concessions and be okay. But if the government is already worried that it might make them appear weak and that it might unleash greater protest, then they would probably not make any concessions. And then if they have the military strength to be ruthless, then they would think, as Machiavelli says, it's better to be feared than to be loved.

MV: Well that seems to be the case, at least for now. I mean the regime doesn’t seem too concerned about legitimacy, about the turnout in elections, for instance. Disqualifying Larijani might be a case in point. No pretense of a competition anymore. They simply didn’t bother. 

JG: See, here's the thing. If it had been the case that after shooting at peaceful protestors and arresting and executing protestors, that some leaders in the Majles or religious leaders in Qom had said, this is horrible, you've gone too far, this discredits the regime, this discredits the revolution, these are not things that we stand for, that might have started to open opportunities for change. But we're not seeing that. We're not seeing any of that. All we're seeing is people led to the scaffold, people led to prison. And other than the protestors themselves, no objections.

MV: That’s true. Dissent is non-existent within the structure of power. You could see mild, vague complaints pointed at the Executive. But nothing that you’d call meaningful objection. 

JG:  And yet you see some Iranians say all countries in the world should withdraw their ambassadors from this illegitimate regime. And they should all seize Iranian assets abroad because this regime has forfeited its legitimacy by treating us like this. Well, I'm sorry. Other countries still see Iran as a big dangerous country and they're not going to do any such thing just because the regime is dealing with protestors in an abhorrent way. They are already imposing harsh sanctions on the regime for its pursuit of nuclear technology. To say, now you should go even further because they're shooting at protestors is unrealistic. Other countries are going to  calculate very carefully. They still want to have influence with Iran. It's still a big and powerful country. You can’t say we won’t deal with this government, because who do you deal with then? There's a government there in a crucial, strategic part of the world. And it seems to be in control. As long as that government is in power, we will deal with it. Now, if it looks like the government might slip out of power, and if Iranians can actually organize a government in exile that has enough support, then things might change. Although the United States tried that with Venezuela. The administration said, we don't recognize Maduro. We think he cheated in the election. We think he's a terrible ruler and so we're going to recognize the exiled head of the Parliament as the true leader of Venezuela. Now we did that for a few years. It got us nowhere, did nothing. And now we're kind of going back. So, you kind of hold your nose and say, well we hate this government and they hate us, but there's some things on which we have to deal with them.

MV: And my own questions is that even if such steps were taken, even if outside pressure were to increase, would it necessarily take us Iranians who are asking for such moves any closer to what we’re wishing for?

JG:  You know, the United States tried to identify who to support if we got rid of Saddam Hussein? And we ended up getting fooled by Ahmaad Chalabi. Or we tried making a deal with leaders of Syria for a government in exile and those guys couldn't agree with themselves to sit in the same room. So, the idea that the US should just recognize an Iranian government in exile as the legitimate opponent to the clerical regime is not so easy. Who do we choose? What would it do to the United States in its relations with those Iranians who may be opposed to that choice. So, it's not reasonable or rational for the United States or any other country to recognize an alternative to the current regime unless that alternative has a lot of organization and legitimacy and support behind it. And right now, there's nobody like that, I’m afraid. 

But the future isn’t written in advance; it’s something that gets made. Opportunities may come along, and new leaders may emerge who can build a better future. I don’t think that will happen today or tomorrow, but maybe in the next year or two a new movement will grow out of the movements of 2009, 2019, and the most recent one, and go beyond them. I’ve said this before: I think things will change with Khamenei’s death, which may not be far off, and new openings will appear. When that moment comes, the people who benefit most will be those who are more prepared than others, who have planned and organised for it.