Angry Planet - Iran's Cycle of Protest and Suppression

Episode Date: October 6, 2022

There’s unrest in Iran right now. People have taken to the streets, the internet has been restricted for “security reasons” authorities say, and there’s been clashes with police. This all started after a young woman, Mahsa Amini, was arrested by Iranian moral police. She died while in custody. Her death and the circumstances around it kicked off the current protests, but the unrest is part of a long continuum of uprising and suppression in Iran that’s as old as the Islamic Revolution of 1979.With us today is Maral Karimi. Karimi is a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto and the author of The Iranian Green Movement of 2009, Reverberating Echoes of Resistance.Angry Planet has a substack! Join the Information War to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict.https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribeYou can listen to Angry Planet on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is angryplanetpod.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/angryplanetpodcast/; and on Twitter: @angryplanetpod.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast. Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. People live in a world and their own making. Frankly, that seems to be the problem. Welcome to Angry Planet. Hello, welcome to Angry Planet. I'm Matthew Galt. Jason Fields is out of pocket today. There's unrest in Iran right now. People have taken to the streets. The internet has been restricted for security reasons, authorities say, and there's been clashes with police. This all started after a young woman, Masha Amini was arrested by Iranian moral police. She died while in custody. Her death and the circumstances around it kicked off the current protests.

But the unrest is part of a long continuum of uprising and suppression in Iran. It's as old as the Islamic Revolution of 1979. With us today to talk about it is Moral Karimi. Kareemi is a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto and the author of the Iranian Green Movement of 2009 Reverberating Echoes of Resistance. Thank you so much for coming onto the show and walking us through this. Thanks for having me.

So we'd like to get basic information out of the way first here for people that kind of come in and kind of don't know what's going on. They just know that something's happening in Iran. Can you tell me more about the death of Amin and why this was the spark? So I'll start by telling you, Mahsa Amini, that's her legal name, but her real name, the name family and friends call her boy is Jina. Jina is a Kurdish-Iranian name, and it means life, ironically.

And the reason she has a legal name, many people have a legal name and a name, you know, like a nickname or name the family and friends call is, it's not your typical nickname in the Western sense. It's that in many instances, people are not allowed by government officials to name their children certain names. If the person recording the birth and issuing the birth certificate doesn't agree with, you know, the root of the name, in many instances for the ethnic nationalities like the Kurdish, the Turks, et cetera, et cetera, they're not allowed to have certain names. this is specifically true for the courts because the government tries very hard to erase that kind of that identity.

So what happened with her, so that's an important, you know, aspect of this to have to understand to what extent citizens are being, their private spheres are being kind of pride into and interfered with. And so what happened with Gina or Massa is that she was visiting, Tehran, the capital, from her native Saqiz, which is a smaller city in Kordistan, than the Kurdish area of Iran. And obviously, she was adhering by the dress code and she had everything gone, except that her hair was showing.

And in the recent months, the morality police, for one reason or another, have ramped up their attacks on women. And so they patrol the streets. And so they got her into a van and they were taking, they all. arrested her. She was under temporary arrest. The account goes, and, you know, there are different unofficial accounts that were piecing together here is that she told them that she wasn't familiar with the city. She was visiting. She wasn't from there. And, but they started hurling obscenities at her. They were insulting her. And so she, she replied back, these are, these are accounts by

eyewitnesses and other women in the same van with her, saying that she said, you can't talk to me that way, that's, you know, that's unacceptable and that's when they hit her. Repeatedly, another account has it that her head hit the side of the road or a wall, something concrete and heart. And she was begging to go to the hospital for a few, for a number of hours, even after they took her to the detention center. And the video that we've seen, which is released by the state and but heavily edited, is that she's talking to a woman that, you know, one of the morality police officers,

and all of a sudden she collapses. And by the time she gets to the hospital, she was already dead, but they keep her alive for a few days just to, you know, calm the population. But since she was from Kortistan, and because of a couple of, of really courageous reporters. Her story was publicized. And in Kordistan, they issued the different parties and political organizations and women rights groups all got together and issued a call for a call to action, street protests, general strikes and so on and so forth. And the rest of the country followed suit, not just in Korda, in Kordaston. And here we are now.

Can you tell me a little bit more about these guidance patrols and the morality police? This has been a feature of Iranian life for decades now, right? It has been. It's, I mean, in different, different eras of the Islamic Republic since the 79 revolution, they've been called different things, and they've gone by different names. Right now, they're called the morality police. Back in the day, when I was very young, they used to be called guidance patrols or all sorts of, all sorts of names.

But what they do is they basically drive on the streets, especially the busy areas or areas where they know, especially young people hang out or hang out spots, cool places, coffee shops, anywhere and everywhere, people of all ages, but particularly young people hang out, parks, anything. And they basically police people's, especially women's clothing. Hair must not be showing the long attire, the covers that they wear over their pants should not be short or skin must not be showing, all sorts of things. And depending on the geographical region, depending on the mood, depending on so many different things, this is an arbitrary practice at times because there are so many people that are arrested, but they don't know why. And it's just, you know, mostly focused on women, but there are some instances where men are also arrested for, you know, a variety of reasons. But mostly it's focused on women and mostly on hair and, you know, their attire.

So is it fair to say then that almost from the moment you're born in Iran, you have an interaction with the state that is negative? Like I'm thinking about this young woman is born and they change her name immediately, right? And then when you were a young person, an early interaction with the state, it sounds like is going to be interacting, like being harassed, possibly beaten and detained by morality police. And it sounds like the laws aren't always clear, like what's okay and what's not, and that it shifts. Is that accurate? It is accurate. I would say more accurate for some than others, obviously. So if you're of an ethnic background, I hesitate to say ethnic minorities because they're 49% of the population.

And so they're not a minority. But like if you're a court or an Arab or, you know, Turkish, Balochistan, you know, any of those, there's more pressure because of what I mentioned, because of the. that Persian-centric policy of the regime. And obviously there are certain factions of the population that are aligned with the government, though that is shrinking considerably over the past, over 10 years, I would say. But for a majority of people, that interaction with the state, as you mentioned, is negative. It's what I always say is that as an Iranian, you're not a full citizen. You're never a citizen.

You're mostly a subject. Iran is a country that has not, despite over 100 years of struggle for democracy and self-determination, the population has not converted into full citizens with rights and responsibilities. There are still subjects of the realm. And that's why, you know, even bodies are being policed. Your thoughts are being policed. just about every sphere of life in that country is policed. Can you tell me about, you said early on in your explanation that for several different reasons,

things have gotten worse in the past few months, the morality police, the guidance patrols have gotten worse. Do we know why? I mean, the Islamic Republic is not a transparent state, you know, as it is often the case with authoritarian States, it's not. So what we can do is we can make educated conjectures based on what we see. So one of the off the top of my head, some of the, one of the reasons is that over the past few years protest, Iran has been protest heavy, heavier than before. Every year or a year and a half or so, there is a new protest cycle. And also the sanctions, not that I'm solely blaming the sanctions, but the sanctions that have been placed in Iran, especially since 2018 by the Trump administration,

has kind of put a lot of economic pressure on the population. So that middle class is increasingly shrinking. I know we talk about, you know, shrinking middle class all over the Western countries, but this is a very different phenomenon. The population is losing their economic and buying power. very fast. And they cannot adjust to that. There is incredible inflation. And so every time their economic issues, the regime tends to put more pressure on its ideological aspect. Tends to be more strict with their ideological agenda, i.e., and I mean, the majority of that ideological agenda

as policing women's body, make sure that they stick to the house, even policing their controlling their reproductive rights and all sorts of, you know, issues, which ironically is somewhat similar in the United States right now. And another issue is the new president, President where you see, is a heartliner. He's a heartliner. He is, as you might have heard, his unofficial name is the butcher of Evan. He, in during the massacre of the 80s, he was, one of the, he was a member of the death committees. That's what they were called. They would, you know, ask political prisoners, many of whom had already served their sentences, three questions. And depending on the answers, you know, they might be sent to gallows. And thousands and thousands

of people lost their lives that way. So he is of that. And he's a cleric. He's a heartliner clerk. So, you know, all of these reasons come together. and kind of put more pressure on women. What does it mean to be a hardliner in Iran? And me ask an ignorant Western question. There are elections in Iran. How, like, what is his, what was his pitch and how, how fair are the elections? I mean, there is a pseudo-democracy going on in Iran.

Yes, we have a parliament. yes, they're elected members. But as I explained this in my book, every elected member, every elected institution is essentially, it reports, and it's under the guidance and under the rule of the supreme leader, which is currently Ali Khanini, who succeeded after Khomeini,

who kind of established the regime. So essentially, yes, there is a president. There is a, you know, there's separation of powers. There's a judiciary, executive, and legislative powers. But at the end of the day, everybody is reporting their legal institutions and also the constitution is set in a way that they all kind of, everyone reports to the leader, basically.

So let's say there are candidates for presidency. A few people run, and every time, obviously, the Supreme Leader has his choice and is, you know, favorite. And lo and behold, they get elected. So a few people get to run, but a lot of people apply. But there is a council, the Guardian Council, that ironically kind of watches over the parliament. Anything and everything that passes by the parliament has to go through them and be approved for above all kind of, what's the the word I forget, to be aligned with the Islamic rules. Most of them are clerics. And also,

they get to choose who gets to run for the parliament, who gets to run to be a president. So many people, funny enough, get rejected by that council. So many former presidents, when they want to run again, you know, in eight or ten years, they get rejected by the same council. So it's basically a mechanism of control. So, yes, there are elections, but do people have a choice? No. Not really. I mean, I would say they have a choice if anyone and everyone with certain qualifications, of course, could run. All right, we're going to pause there for a break. Angry Planet listeners, we will be right back after these messages. All right, welcome back, Angry Planet listeners. We're talking about the unrest in Iran. All right, so I think kind of the narrative in the Western

media and the thing that I'm really seeing on social media is women leading these protests. Can you talk a little bit more? I know we've already touched on it, but the role of women in Iranian society and the importance of the hijab as a symbol in these protests. That's a great question. I'm going to answer you in three parts. First, I'm going to talk about how Western media and Western societies kind of frame that part of the world, especially world, especially when it comes to women. Two, I'm going to talk about what hijab symbolizes in Iran specifically compared to all the other Middle Eastern or Muslim nations, particularly in the Middle East.

And lastly, I'll all talk about, you know, the leadership of these movements, what they're about and what I think about that. So firstly, what I would like your listeners to understand is particularly in North America, Iran is usually framed via its relationship with the United States. So depending who's in power, depending how we, who's kind of making policy on Iran, the narrative is different. It defares. So if there is a Republican, usually, and this is, you know, the general rule.

of thumb, obviously, they're exceptions. They're terrorists. They're a bad regime. And they must be, you know, George Bush said they're the axis of evil. Access of evil, great evils, you know, they're bad Muslim men, beat their women and, you know, oppress them. Blah, blah, blah. If there is a Democrat in power, generally speaking, and Obama is as guilty as that as anyone, There is this orientalist reductive view of Iran is that, you know, those hijabs or, you know, covers that they wear is their culture. We should be understanding, we should be respectful of their culture. In 2009, when people were on streets very similar, very similar kind of mechanisms and tendencies as right now, where people, millions of people came to streets shouting, where's my vote, protesting to,

it became known as the Green Movement and protesting, you know, the presidential election results. What Obama came out and said is we respect Iran's sovereignty, essentially leaving protesters, those people looking to establish a more democratic state high and dry. And so what I want your listeners to understand is Iran is neither nor. It's a little bit of everything. Plus, there is another aspect to this. Some, Iran is a country of 88 million. Some people like to wear the hijab.

My grandmother wore a loose headscarp sometimes. That was her, that was part of her belief. But there are a lot of people specifically about hijab that don't believe in it, don't want to wear it. And also, Iran is home to so many religious, other religions than Shiite Muslims. There are Christians who are forced to wear the hijab, even though their religion doesn't dictate that. There's the largest Jewish population outside of Israel in the Middle East historically have lived in Iran for thousands of years. Assyrians, Baha'is who are extremely persecuted, Zoroastrians, which is the kind of historical religion. And there are so many secular, Sunnis, you know, you name it.

And all of these people are forced to abide by the regime ideology. So when I hear people saying this is, you know, this is a, this is their culture. Like, is there such a thing as, you know, overall, all encompassing culture for 88 million people? Can we say a certain thing, certain trait is American culture? Can we say that with scientific accuracy? Absolutely. No way. Yeah.

And so I think it's very important to understand those nuances, the diversity in Iran, in terms of, obviously, gender, sexual orientation, religion, language. There are so many different languages in Iran, so many different ethnicities. And these people have lived together for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. I myself am half Persian, half Turk. Iranian Turk. My name is Moral. You can't get any Turkish than that. So, but it's important to understand

how a centrist government, and by centrist, I don't mean in terms of political spectrums, I mean a geography. It's a government that wants to centralize power in the capital, in the hands of a few, that a few Shiite men that abide by their ideology and also are either Farsi speaking, like purely a Farsi heritage, or are willing to kind of subordinate their own identity

to the hegemony of the farce. I hope I'm not getting too technical, but, you know, that's their archetype. That's who they want in power. So everybody else gets marginalized. So what I'm trying to say is Iran is very diverse. And we have to bring that into our understanding. There are so many people that never wanted the forced hijab. From the first moment, Ayifullah Khomeini issued a decree at the beginning of revolution.

In February of 79, so many women, millions of them came to streets on March 8,78. This is only merely weeks after and protested. But, you know, events unfolded the way they did. Excuse me. And that's, you know, another story for another time. And here we are right now. So that's part one. Two, what hijab symbolizes right now in Iran is not simply covering a woman's body,

which is, you know, policing women's bodies, controlling and regulating it, you know, the most external manifestations of womanhood in being a female. The regime goes way beyond that, and you hear that in the chants. Many women and men chant hijab is only an excuse. We were targeting the base of the regime, this regime in its entirety. So they never stop. The lawmakers, the legislators, the legislators never stopped at just covering a woman's body.

So as you can see, women are beaten to death by that meeting and that murder is sanctioned by a state. We're not talking simply about honor killings. We're not talking about, you know, the off chance a murderer happens to, you know, We're not talking about femicide in the honor-killing sense of the matter. We're talking about state-sanctioned murders. When it comes to petitioning for divorce, women can only do that under very strict circumstances going through so many hurdles and oftentimes they're not successful. But men can do it basically fairly easily.

child custody, their physical movements. Married women have so many restrictions put on them for their physical movements if they're going to leave the country. There are so many instances of athletes, team leaders that have been banned by their husbands to leave the country and they couldn't join their team. And the officials just shrug and they call it a man's right. So what I'm trying to say is this is an apartheid regime that has all these laws and rules kind of institutionalized. They're in the constitution.

Subjugating women and turning them into second-class citizens is legislated. We know patriarchy exists everywhere. We know sexism and misogyny exists everywhere. Again, look at what's going on in some states in the United States. Women's reproductive rights are in danger. But, and, you know, just so you know, for your American listeners, all you have to do is look at Iran and see what's going on there. If you think it's a good thing and it's, you know, fair to place those kind of restrictions on women and with the right to abortion and so on and so forth. It doesn't stop at one thing, right?

Absolutely not. And so there is, what I'm trying to say is there's, you know, women are almost second-class citizens, almost everywhere. However, in the case of Iran and certain other countries like Afghanistan, in some other countries, it's legislated. So it's institutionalized. That's what I'm trying to say. And lastly, when it comes, and I'm sorry, this is a very long answer. But lastly, what's going on right now, it started, I do think, of course, there's strong indications of gender equality issues coming to the fore again. And, you know, we hear the chance, the woman life, liberties, which is very progressive, and we inherited that from our Kurdish citizens who brought it to us from Rojava and, you know, the courts from the other side of the border.

And so, however, I'm hesitant to call this a feminist revolution for a variety of reasons. I think as someone who has spent their career focusing on social movements, calling a phenomenon and event unfolding revolution from, you know, at the beginning of the events, is premature. sure. We have to wait and see where this is going. If we mean, that's if we mean revolution in the technical sense. But if we mean revolutionary in that, you know, it's upending all of our and addressing our core beliefs and kind of trying to turn it on its head. Yes, it is revolutionary. As to whether it's feminist, again, I'm not sure. I still see the way I observe social movements is I listen to the chants.

I look at videos on the street, the bodies, at the body languages, at the signage, and a lot of other indicators. To this point, I'm extremely, I'm delighted as a feminist to see that there are so many, that that chant of woman life liberties is coming to the board, that people are talking about it and, you know, kind of promoting it. And that promotes the discourse about gender equality. But I still see far more male bodies on the street than women. I still see that's from what I, from what I've seen,

maybe two or three, and I'm not even sure, but maybe two chants so far are, you know, specifically addressing gender issues or ethnic issues and the diversity of the country. Mostly, and I'm not faulting them for this. This is absolutely the right. Mostly the chance, the regime and its legitimacy and the supreme leaders' dictatorial rule,

which on the other hand shows that the protesters quite understand that this regime cannot last. They understand for as long as this regime lives, there is not going to be gender equality. There is not going to be that many. There is not going to be liberties and freedoms and democracy and self-determination in general, which is, I would say, a great leap forward, a progress from the 2009 movement.

Let's think about the main kind of slogan of the 2009 movement. That was where is my vote? because the voters believed that the elections were rigged and the person they voted for, i.e., was disqualified or didn't win and somebody else won it in his place. So that's a political slogan. But it's also still playing into the, kind of like we discussed earlier, it's still playing into the regime's power games, right? Exactly. So when you ask a political apparatus, where is my vote? That means that that gives them power, that gives them legitimacy.

That means you still expect accountability. You still expect them to adhere at least by some of the democratic principles. But when you say the headscarf or the hijab is an excuse, our goal, the regime as at its entirety or when you say death to dictator or we don't want this regime, that's a very different orientation. So your book is in part about these kind of cycles of resistance and suppression in Iran. Can you talk to me about how dissent expresses itself, not just in Iran, but in the Middle East more broadly, and how we're seeing what's going on right now plays into these cycles

And a little bit more maybe about what happened in 2009 and how it feels different than what's going on now. Sure. So I'll talk about my own career over the past 10 years in that trajectory. And that kind of talks about all of these protests at the same time. So I started writing my master's dissertation right after the 2009 movement in which, as I alluded to a little bit earlier, there was a presidential election and people voted or they thought they voted for two reformist candidates. When the results came back, President Ahmadinejad was reelected. And so people were stunned by the results. They took out to the streets. The reformists, the two candidates that

presumably lost the election were reformists, kind of the official opposition, if we can call it that because a party's political parties are banned in Iran. And so they organized people and a lot of people came to streets and they were chanting all sorts of things. But largely it was, where's my vote? So I started, I decided to kind of study the discourse of that movement and why it faltered. So I focused on the two candidates, namely Musabi or Emir Hossein and Muslim, Kharubi. And also Musavi's wife. Why I also focused on her is because she was very active. She was the former chancellor of all girls' university.

And it was the first time in the history of, you know, presidential candidates in Iran where a candidate's wife was accompanying him and, you know, coming to public like that campaigning. So I studied their discourse through the videos, their official campaign videos and other videos of the movement. And I extracted all those discourses. They do what they talked about, economy, women's rights, democracy and all sorts and all that. And what I came to and the data kind of revealed itself, their, the reformist discourse is distortive, meaning that it was full of half like promises that kind of were, they had no way of fulfilling. a lot of half-truths, misrepresentations, so on and so forth.

And what my book suggests is that one of the reasons that that movement faltered was because the social actor, the protester on the street, kind of unraveled that, as they often do, unraveled that discourse. And so there are so many different theories about social movements. But there's one that talks about the critical point in a movement. You know, there's a, often in social movements, something critical happens. And at that moment, the protesters decide whether or not this is worth it for them to continue or should they demobilize. In the 2009, the statistics kind of suggest that if you remember, Nidhar Sultan was shot dead.

I saw those images all over Western media, CNN, BBC, everything. And so that was extremely shocking. It was painful. And it was, it kind of sent the violent response, sent a message to everyone that the government is willing to risk everything and engage in a really violent response. So what I'm suggesting is the protesters at that point realized that this is no longer. worth it because I can understand that although my certain circumstances might improve if so-and-so was elected instead of Ahmadinejad, there is no way, it is not possible for them to give me what I really want, which is democracy, which is self-determination. I mean, I'll give you

an example. For example, Zahra Raghnavaric, which is Musavi's wife and I looked at her discourse, she's talking about women's right and women should be free and all that. And she says all of that covered in full black Chaudor cover and everything. And so many women might look at her and think, what exactly do you mean by women's rights? Which women are we talking about? And can I take my headscarf off and go on the street? Are you, would the president even have the power, which, as I explained, they don't

to, you know, provide and to all the kind of grant me those rights and change the Constitution. They don't. So slowly the social actor kind of unraveled and understand that this is distorted communication. And I based a book on Habermasian theories of communication. And he calls this systematically distorted. communication, the discourse of the leaders. And which is, you know, it's not lies, but it's goal-oriented. It's not oriented towards building mutual understanding, building bridges and democratic,

you know, consensus. It's mostly geared towards, okay, elect me. I want power. Which, I mean, it's understandable when we, whenever there is a politician or anyone really campaigning for power. or that's what they mean. It's strategic. And they want you to go to vote for them.

But sometimes it takes the direction of, you know, a Trumpian direction, where you basically distort facts and fabricate a lot of, you know, your stories. You say whatever you need to to get into the chair. Exactly. So one of the conclusions of that, that dissertation or the book was, that these protests are going to continue in Iran for as long as there is no democracy. And the reformist, which the West has put a lot of energy into,

a lot of stock into, is they're not going to get us or get anyone where they want. And I was right. Look at, you know, the JCPOA, look at the lobby. And so, and people of Iran, many of them have realized that. that movement was the strategic death of reformism in 2009. And that reformism is not going to provide a democratic alternative. It's incapable. And here are the reasons. And that these protests are cyclical.

So for my PhD, I decided to look at why. I developed a model looking back at what these cycles can tell us. So I went as far back as the beginning of the second. century, the 20th century with the first revolution, which was the constitutional revolution. Then I looked at the 53 oil nationalization and the American coup of 1953 and then the Islamic revolution and developed a model that kind of explains the interaction between the different forces and structures. What is it? I mean, when there are cycles of protests in a nation, surely there is something missing.

There are certain demands that are not fulfilled. If something systemic is going on that needs to be addressed or the protest will not stop, right? They may take different forms, but they're not going away until that underlying systemic issue is handled. Exactly. So, well, then I will, I need to get us out of here. I wish I could talk to you for another 30 minutes. Sure. But then what do you think is the... Say it's specifically for me. I think I know what the answer is. But what is that underlying systemic issue that's not being addressed? And do you think this time is different?

I do think this time is different. There are a few constellations of forces that are going on. I'll try to be as brief as possible. There is one constellation of forces I call oppressive structures, i.e. religion, authoritarian. patriotism, patriarchy, which is extremely deep-rooted in, I mean, all of the world, but specifically in the Middle East and what else? Imperialism and the empire and the foreign aggressions. And another constellation of forces impeding this, you know, quest for self-determination over the past century, is marginalization and dislocation. So marginalization of women, the working class, the, you know, the underclass and as well as

minorized ethnics. Because at some point they were not minorities. Now they're minorized. And so there's obviously the Islamic regime. That's another huge constellation. But there are two constellations of forces, kind of two driving forces. One is, the most important one is the quest for self-determination, wanting civil rights, liberties, that drive for equality. and I forget, I forget all the details, you know, that sort of democracy.

And that's what's driving these protests this time around. And I will say this, you know, the protests are quite progressive. They're democratic, but they cannot go on like the street protests cannot go on like this forever. What we need at this point is to see oil workers, bus driver, the, you know, were teachers that have already done this and other kind of key sectors of the society going on strike. How likely do you think that is? I mean, teachers have already declared two days last week, Monday and Wednesday. Some university students are kind of responding to the call the permanent oil workers in the province of Uzistan specifically. I would, my,

under my analysis is that they would be the last group to participate. It's very unlikely that they would for a variety of reasons. It's important that teachers have joined, but we need them to be more forceful. The bus drivers of Tehran that have a long history of protests and strikes and are also quite organized. Steel workers, so far I see very, little indication. There are calls for them, but so far there's little indication. But there is so much support throughout the world. But what we don't want to see is the protesters losing steam because of such widespread violence and suppression.

Right. regimes don't give up power ever and especially not without brutal violence and retaliation. Thank you so much for coming on to Angry Planet and walking us through this. Thank you for having me. The book is The Iranian Green Movement in 2009, reverberating echoes of resistance. If you want to know, if you want to have a good background on what's going on and how we got here, it's a great place to start.

That's all for this week. Angry Planet listeners, as always, Angry Planet is me, Matthew Golt, Jason Fields, and Kevin O'Dell. It was created by myself and Jason Fields. If you like us, please kick us $9.com. It's angry planet.substack.com or angry planetpod.com. It really helps us keep doing the show. We just released a bonus episode over there.

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Again, that's at angryplanetpod.com or angrypranet.substack.com. We are going to be back. We've got another one already in the can that's kind of about extremism in the Pacific Northwest. We're going to be talking to a journalist who interviewed Russian soldiers as they were fleeing into Belarus. Really looking forward to that conversation should be very interesting. We'll be covering more about the war in Ukraine as it continues on. We will be back next week with another conversation about conflict on an angry planet. Stay safe until

that.