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ALI ANSARI: The talk I want to give you today really is a product of a very long time thinking and writing about Iran, working not only as an academic, as a historian, and I'm going to make a case today, really, for what we term, or what is growing-- and in Stanford, there's quite a strong strand of this-- is what we term "applied history." And I want to talk about this, not as a discipline, in a sense, but as a sort of a subdiscipline or a subject area where we can look at history, and how we can use history better for policymaking and, you know, in a sense, horizon-scanning and planning. One of the frustrations I've had, really, about our study and understanding of Iran-- and this is the problem, in a sense, the problematique, if you will-- is that I feel over the time that even I've been studying, and I know discussing with Abbas earlier, you know, I think we share this in some ways-- a bit of a frustration is that some of our understanding and certainly the understanding among policymakers about Iran-- or the Islamic Republic of Iran, to be specific, at the moment, tend to be one-dimensional, somewhat static, a little bit too descriptive, I think, rather than analytical. I always use this description with my students, actually. I say, you know, what is the job of a historian, or an analyst or a scholar? It's really to understand the inner workings of a system, a political system, how it works, where it's going, what we think the trajectory is, what the direction of travel is. Far too much, or far too much of the analysis that I see-- and I use "analysis" in inverted commas here, by the way-- is really a description of what people see at any given time. And the description of what people see at any given time, I think, is an insufficient, insufficient and inadequate use of scholarship or investigation. And it doesn't provide you with a sort of a sufficient understanding of what a particular state or a polity is. And the description I tend to use is that, you know, we have far too many analysts that can describe what a particular vehicle looks like. And it may look very nice on the outside. But fewer of us are actually lifting up the bonnet, and looking at the engine, and seeing how it works. And what I want to try and argue is what we need to be doing is really looking at states and state systems as evolving, changing institutions, organisms, whatever you want to call it. I know these terms are probably going to offend people in some extent, but I'm trying to give you this impression of what I want to say, is that, you know, there are no static things, even in politics. I mean, far too much, for instance, now, when you look at the Islamic Republic of Iran, or you look at the Islamic Revolution, they look at things as if everything from 1979 to the present has not changed a bit. Even worse, there are many people who think that Iran came into existence in 1979, by the way. Yeah, I mean, you talk to people, they say suddenly, in 1979, bingo, in came the Islamic Republic of Iran out of the ether, yeah? And this is what it is. This is how existence-- they deal with it almost as a sort of a static, a static polity, without any sense that, for instance, the Islamic Revolution or the Islamic Republic of the 1980s is different from the Islamic Revolution of the 1990s, and further on, OK? So that notion of understanding the motion, if you will, of the state is something which I think is quite important, and something which I think that, actually, historians can do better. And by the way, I'm going to be unashamedly-- I'm unashamedly biased here. And I'm going to tell you now, if there's any of you here that are radical, if I may say so, international relations aficionados, or people who are radical empiricists in the economic sense, I am going to be critical, so brace yourself. It is because I think that we have become too fetishized, in a sense. We've become too fetishized with a sort of a radical empiricism that doesn't work when we're dealing with authoritarian states. And I'll try and explain that as I'm going forward, I'm going to limit some of the more sort of theoretical or abstract or conceptual ideas that I have here. And they're going to be a little bit more abridged, if you will, because time is limited, because I also, then, want to explain what my own ideas about the Islamic Republic are, and where it's going, and what it's doing. First of all, I ought to be very clear also in what I'm talking about when I talk about the state and I talk about the Islamic Republic I'm not talking about Iran as a country, OK? Don't confuse it, please. We're not talking about Iran as a country. I'm talking about the Islamic Republic as a state. And by "state," I mean as a political system. Even in Iran, by the way, when you talk to members of the Islamic Republic, or those who operate within it-- the civil servants and others-- they always talk about the concept of the "nizam"-- you know, the order, if you will. But that's sort of equivalent in our English language, really, to the notion of the state. And they all say themselves, by the way, that nizams or orders come and go, but Iran stays constant. That actually, historically, is not true either, by the way. But I want to be clear that today, when I'm talking about the changing nature of the state, I'm not talking about the existence or otherwise of Iran as a political culture, OK? Certain things will be consistent, constant, or whatever, certainly within the frame of reference that we're looking at in terms of the modern period. But the state itself is something which I think is much more fluid. And one of the things I want us to think about is the Islamic Republic as yet another dynasty, in a sense-- another dynasty that has existed in Iran. And what does that mean in terms of its development and process? So that, I want to be very clear, is the area of operation that I'm talking about. And we mustn't confuse that, because I think far too many people tend to confuse it. And when we confuse our terms like this, we're talking at cross purposes. Now, Roma was very kind when she listed some of the things I'd written in the past. One of the things I did write, and one of my first publications, was this book called Iran, Islam, and Democracy, subtitled, The Politics of Managing Change. So I've been looking at this notion of the concept of change in political systems for a very long time. And in those days, when I first wrote the book, by the way, I was looking at the concept of a Democratic transition. OK, we all work within paradigms, by the way. And paradigms is one of the things I want to talk about. And in those days, in the 1990s, we were working under the paradigm of the Third Wave. It was post the Fall of the Berlin Wall. Everyone was very excited. Francis Fukuyama, of course, had written his excellent book, and we were all anticipating that the world was going to become democratic. So in that genre, I wrote this text-- young, perhaps a bit naive, but there you are, full of enthusiasm. And I tried to provide a model for that transition. Like a good academic, I wanted to caveat everything I said, and said, it might not happen. It might this. But, of course, you know, the marketing team decided that one had to be a little bit more emphatic about one's conclusions. But in any case, that was the genre. And the fundamental aspect of it was not necessarily the conclusion of the book. The fundamental aspect really was what I was trying to argue about the mechanics and the possibilities of change within a political system. And what I was looking for then was this change from an authoritarian system, or autocratic system, towards a democratic system-- how that could work. In the early noughties, that shifted. My own views began to shift. As you begin to see the evidence, as a good historian, once the evidence changes, your views should change. And once the evidence was changing, basically, I began to look at a question of authoritarian consolidation, the inability of the state to reform, and the sort of status. But I did think, actually, I have to say-- and I'm going to say this. I go back a long way. I think we've had lots of discussions about this. But even in the noughties, even-- it was ahead of me, actually, I have to say on this. But at that time, I was sort of thinking, well, you know, things can be managed. It's not going anywhere particularly, but it can muddle along. I was part of that group of people who said it would muddle along because, you know, it would cope. The economy seemed to function-- not well, but it seemed to function-- and, you know, people didn't want another revolution, so on, and so forth. But really, since 2009 onwards, I have been of the conviction, really, that the direction of travel of the Islamic Republic is one towards increasing dysfunction. And what I want to argue here, and what I'm trying to say here, looking at what I would term "applied history"-- and I'll explain what I mean by that in a little more detail in a minute-- is that I'm not arguing here, by the way, for the notion of state collapse, OK? I don't want to be hyperbolic about it. I don't want to be dramatic about it. And I'm not arguing for revolution or anything like that. What I'm arguing, really, here is that the state has become so autocratic, it's almost like from a Weberian system of the Paradox of Sultanism, for those of you who know Weber-- that what, basically, is happening is the state has become so autocratic in its direction, so authoritarian in its direction, that it's becoming increasingly brittle. And here, I will discuss this notion, this other paradigm-- which is really a reaction to the Third Wave, by the way-- which is this new thesis-- I'm not going to flatter it by calling it a theory-- of authoritarian resilience. And authoritarian resilience basically argues that these systems can sustain themselves almost indefinitely-- although, as I keep pointing out to people, it says "resilience." It doesn't say "permanence." But it's amazing the number of people who will take the term "resilience" and argue as some sort of permanent settlement, partly because the concept of change-- again, I just want to emphasize that the concept of change and the concept of transition does not feature in that sort of analytical framework. OK, so what I'm arguing really here is that ultimately, what we're seeing-- as you'll see when I go through the details of my understanding and my reading-- and, I also want to emphasize something here as well. We must all accept the humility of the subject that I'm not telling you that I know what's going to happen. I'm not telling you that I definitively have a sense about it. This is my reading and my understanding that I have developed over many years with discussion with colleagues-- obviously, sometimes against them, more often than not with them, but also in terms of my own reading and understanding and things I've done over the years. So it's not a definitive statement by any stretch of imagination-- any stretch of the imagination. All I'm trying to do is to help us to challenge the way in which we're thinking about Iran, because I seriously think even now, if we were to go into the hallways of Washington and others, you'd find a very, very static and rather one-dimensional understanding of the country. And I think there are reasons for that. And as I said, the reasons for it, I think, are because the approach is wrong. So just to emphasize, what I'm arguing here for is the brittleness of the authoritarian state, its ability to absorb or withstand shocks, and what that means for the stability of the state going forward. If there are no shocks to the system, then the system can sustain itself. But the ability to absorb shocks is one of the characteristics of a sound or stable institutional-based society. I mean, you can see that in the United States, you see that in the United Kingdom and others. If you have a sort of a historical institutional basis, you can take a fair amount of abuse, and you can still survive it. If you don't have that institutional basis or that historical pedigree in terms of political institutions, that level of absorption that you can take shocks to the system, it becomes more and more difficult to sustain. And then, you start to get state failure in a sense, OK? Again, I emphasize again, I'm not talking about a country's failure or the failure of a political culture. I'm simply talking about the failure of a particular political system. I also want to emphasize here and throw into the equation that there are books, by the way. There are studies. There's a very good study about why nations fail, which is-- largely, it's driven from an economic argument about the poor economic organization, and how you get developed an extractive state. And it's a good model, by the way. It's a good model about how the extractive state-- basically as a result of corruption, kleptocracy, whatever-- eventually delivers a sort of a depreciating cycle. And most people talk about it simply in economic terms. I want to add two further dimensions to it, which are less easy to ascertain, by the way. And this is for those of you who are much more on the empirical side of the argument, would very happily criticize me for this, but I'm still going to make the case-- which is that we also have to look at the question of political and moral capital. OK, I don't want you to just look at the economic infrastructure, although what I'm going to argue with you here is really that the Islamic Republic of Iran is failing not only on its economic model, its inability to invest, if you will, but also in terms of political capital and moral capital-- the inability to basically invest in its political structures, its political institutions, and its political ideology. These are much more difficult to measure. And for those of us who like our metrics, my ideas are not going to go down well at all, because what I'm talking about, again, is a means of analysis, which draws from a historical perspective. applied history, and the lessons we learn as a historian in studying the state and looking at the historical trajectory of the state. I'll emphasize again that historians don't predict, OK? I'm not going to make the case I'm predicting. We all do it. By the way, media loves it, so we all give our predictions. But I do think that a proper, thorough historical understanding allows us to see trends. OK, I think I'm saying, OK, far too much. I do-- this is jet lag. So I'm sorry if that irritates. I get this a lot on podcasting, by the way. I get lots of rude comments afterwards, the podcasting. But anyway, so I'm sorry about that. Hopefully, they'll edit it out on the video, but we'll see what happens. So again, I'm not offering a prediction here, but I am hopefully saying to you that what you can do with a sound critical understanding, critical historical understanding, you can outline trends. So again, applied history-- and, what do I mean by applied history? In a sense, it's that concept of being able to use our understanding of history, language, culture and understanding of the trajectories that might go back hundreds of years-- 100 years, 50 years, whatever-- but look at those trends, projecting backwards and then projecting forwards, and seeing what that means. And by the way, I should emphasize here very, very emphatically, what I am talking about is an appreciation of that history based on an understanding of language and culture. So we have to be linguistically and culturally literate. I always say to students-- I'm sure it's said here-- there's no point learning Persian so you can order tea, OK? You learn Persian to understand the mindset, to understand the idioms, to understand when someone's telling you the truth or not. Far too many people are used to a different mindset, a different language set, a different linguistic set. You know, there is a reason why-- I'm going to say something that some people won't like-- but the Persians are known as the Frenchmen of the East. Probably the Frenchman won't like it, but there you are. But it's this idea that the language is very mellifluous. It can be very vague. It can be very ambiguous-- deliberately so. I've written about this, by the way. There are very sound reasons for it to be so. It makes for great poetry, by the way. But it can make for great ambiguity in politics. Unless you appreciate that, for instance, unless you understand the political culture and the framework of that, it makes it much more difficult to understand things. The number of times I will talk to colleagues in the West who say, "So-and-so has said this," explicitly said something. I said-- and the more explicitly they say it, what's the context? How did they say it? What were they talking about? If you want to see an excellent example of this in action, go and have a look at the video, if you want, of Ahmadinejad at Columbia when he was giving his lecture, so-called, yeah? And ask yourself, when he was speaking, what was he actually saying? How did you understand it? Do you understand it literally, or do you understand it metaphorically? OK, I'm not saying one side or the other is right, but I am saying that you need to have a broader understanding of how that works. I'm going to come into this wonderful quote from the Princeton economist Angus Deaton, who came out and had some reflections of his own. This is in Defense of History, by the way. I'm going to use his quote because I think it's quite useful quote. Nobody, actually, else has quoted this section of his reflections, but it's an interesting one, where he's talking about the failures in some senses of his own discipline to provide a good analytical account of various things, what the weaknesses are. And in some ways, what he's saying is that there's an over-reliance on empirical and data-driven sort of analysis, which doesn't always work. Overly mechanistic, overly what I would call a sort of reliance on what I would call "scientism," a fetish for scientism. And I use that term deliberately, by the way. It's the thing that also, in some ways, affects the development of political science in the United States, in particular-- political science in the United States, with that emphasis on the "science." The more mathematical equations you can get into anything, the better it is. For me, I have to say, the idea that you can predict human behavior on the basis of mathematical equations is a complete mystery, but it's amazing the number of people who try and do it. I think this is an error. I'll be very blunt about it. I think this is an error. Sir Angus Deaton says, "Historians, who understand about contingency and about multiple and multidirectional causality, often do a better job than economists of identifying important mechanisms that are plausible, interesting, and worth thinking about, even if they do not meet the inferential standards of contemporary applied economics." And when we're talking about the mechanics, we're not talking about a mechanistic reading, OK? Not a scientific reading. We're not applying Newtonian physics to the state or the Newtonian physics to character behavior. But we are looking at the way in which things work. So one of the reasons why I feel, by the way, that some of the more scientific approaches to the study of Iran, in particular, or any authoritarian state, is problematic is because it's so data-driven. But where does the data come from? Any historian worth their salt will always question sources. We rigorously go through our sources over-- I'm not saying, by the way, historians don't make mistakes. We all make mistakes, by the way. Don't assume that at any moment. But I think in terms of the historian's craft, to quote, paraphrase Mark Bloch, "It's this idea of being able to be critically self-aware and understanding of our sources and to rigorously pursue them and see what's going on." But far too many, I think, of the political science, international relations, broader, they draw these vast comparative frames of reference, trying to produce theories that cover everything, by the way. And they do so by collecting data. And where does this data come from? Often, it comes from secondary sources that are not terribly reliable if you know the field. Occasionally, it comes from the government they're investigating. How reliable do we think that the data coming out of the Islamic Republic is? It's extraordinary when you think about it. And I talk about this to people all the time. They say, inflation in Iran is such and such. Unemployment is such and such. The unemployment figures are great, except when you realize that the unemployment figures in Iran, you're fully employed if you work one hour a week. Unless you know that, you would think everyone in Iran is full employment. If you look at the inflation figures, do you trust what the government is putting out in terms of its inflation figures? Iranians don't trust the figures coming out of Iran. Why should we? And yet, I have to say I get extremely frustrated and very irritated when I find bona fide scholars of quite good repute, actually, accepting some of this stuff for face value. Why? Because one of the other things we do wrong is we have this sort of tendency for a teleological argument. We have our conclusion. Iran is strong and stable. Iran is powerful. We can chuck a few missiles and drones around. Therefore, I will find the evidence to support that conclusion. That's the wrong way to do it. But we get it. We get it a lot. We get people describing what they see, and then plundering the historical record-- and I do mean "plundering"-- plundering the historical record to support that case. And often, it's a dreadful pick-and-mix history, by the way. As a historian, I have to say one of the most appalling things I find is, again, social scientists of one hue or another dipping back into Safavid history, or 18th century, or, God forbid, Ancient Iran to tell us about consistent patterns-- the foreign policy of Cyrus the Great and why it impacts modern Iran's behavior. What a lot of rubbish! You know, that sort of notion that history is not something that is perceived, or changing, or interpreted, or modeled. It's something that somehow is consistent. That says to me that this person doesn't understand process, doesn't understand change. So data in authoritarian systems I would not trust. Teleological arguments, where we tend to populate a theory with evidence that we pick and choose. I'm not against theory, by the way. I'm very much in favor of theory, as you'll see from some of the stuff that I've written. But I think theory should work for us and that we shouldn't be slaves to it. We shouldn't be slaves to post-colonial theory, but post-colonial theory has interesting things to say. But it doesn't mean that we should be slaves to it. We shouldn't be slaves to any type of theory. Those are ideas that are there to help us understand the world better. But there always needs to be this sort of reciprocal and dialectical relationship between the evidence as we understand it and get it, and the concepts that help shape it. And these need to have a relationship together. And often, we don't get that. The question of authoritarian resilience, as I said, is one that is now the current trend and the current fad. I don't want to go into a huge amount of detail about it because time is a bit limiting. But let me say a couple of things about it, because it is one of the arguments that seems to be persistent now and is very fashionable, I have to say, in international relations circles. I'm all in favor, by the way, of the notion that authoritarian states can be what they call "fungible," OK? There's a flexibility within authoritarian systems that allows sometimes, you know, dissent to come out, releases that tension. These things, I think, work. I think you can understand that. What I'm against, really, is this notion of an authoritarian resilience, a model of authoritarian resilience, that, A., is defined on a highly mathematical or mechanistic way, which tends to acquire the evidence to suit the argument, which is completely ahistorical. It doesn't see, as I said, the notion of the Islamic Republic, or the Islamic Revolution, as having inherited a state system that was already quite well-established, quite well-established, but certainly quite powerful, in that, the Pahlavi state that it inherited. The origins of the Islamic Republic and the Islamic Revolution or the state system did not come out, as I said, of the ether in 1979. I think here, a number of theorists of authoritarian resilience really are simply trying to describe what they see. And they say, well, we had this paradigm of Third Wave. And the Third Wave was meant to democratize everyone. And it didn't happen. So let's revise our paradigm and have one of authoritarian resilience, and now use that to dominate the argument and to lead the argument. But I would caution you, really, to think very carefully about how those arguments are put together and what the sources are there. The final thing I really want just to think about in terms of when we look at this is to be very wary of all ideologies-- and particularly, in the Iranian case, by the way, nationalism. I'm a student of Iranian nationalism. I'm very fond of Iranian nationalism, but I'm aware of the perils of Iranian nationalism, by the way. And it's amazing, I have to say, the number of people who find their views, I think, somewhat influenced-- I won't go stronger than that, "influenced"-- by national or what they might call "patriotic" sentiment. This could be people abroad. It could be people in Iran. You can see it very clearly in the recent events. There's a sort of an alpha male nationalism that goes around that gets very excited when they see a few missiles being set off. And they don't like to be told that maybe some of them didn't go off very well, yeah? But that's the nationalist sentiment. I think we need, again, to be very wary of that. Nationalism, to my mind-- and I wrote about this back in 2012-- I think is the most dominant, is the most dominant, pervasive ideology of modern Iran. And it's a testament, actually, to the achievement of the early ideologues in the early 20th century, that they could impress that upon every generation of Iranians to this day, including in the Islamic Republic. One of the most astounding things to come out of the recent events over the last week is the comparison-- wait for it-- the comparison made by a number of regime loyalists of Ayatollah Khomeini with Cyrus the Great. That's historically illiterate on many different levels, obviously. But it's amazing. It's stunning. And why do they do it? Why Because they're trying to tap into an underlying nationalist sentiment, abroad as well as at home. But I would suggest, by the way, a lot of it is to do with tapping into the diaspora. Even worse, as Abbas will quite enjoy, I think [INAUDIBLE], they even used the Shah, the late Shah's own words, and say, "Sleep easy, Cyrus, because Khamenei is awake." [LAUGHTER] Great stuff. I'm happy to know it. I'm very relieved. Does that mean that Iran is strong? I don't read it that way. If you're desperate enough to go for an ideology like that, it tells you, to me, that you're quite nervous. But it's interesting, and nationalism has a very critical effect on that. The notion of change-- of course, I don't think I need to impress upon you on this-- but the notion of change, which for some people is very difficult to comprehend when we deal with Iran, it's very easy to comprehend when we deal with the idea or the decline of the West or any other country or political system that we are closer to. In the United kingdom, obviously, the notion of the decline of Great Britain has been very, very, very, very widely spoken of over the last number of years. Certainly, nobody has a problem with that. But it's amazing when I talk about, say, the decline, or decay, or decadence, or whatever in Iran, nobody wants to talk about it. I mean, it just doesn't work. OK, again, I'm just simply talking about the notion of change. And I think here is where applied history is important. Applied history, the notion of history, the understanding of history, the understanding of history as studying the nature of change and that change does happen. It's not a difficult concept, actually, but I find it amazing, the number of people who don't want to take, to grip it. So let me talk about, now, really in more in the last part of the-- I have talked a little bit longer than I wanted about the conceptual material, but I do think it was important, really, to get that both off my chest, I have to say, but also to let you know where I'm coming from. And there are other things. I've abridged it, obviously, because there are different things I could talk about in more detail. But that's basically the ideas. So what is the Iranian experience, and why do I think that, in Iran, we are facing this particular crisis at the moment? In the Islamic Republic, by the way-- and let me be very specific about that. When I say "Iran," I'm using a very shorthand here. So do bear in mind. First of all, the critical thing is you have to look at the nature of change in Iran over, you know, at least 100 years, if not more, and what has been going on in the political system and the political ideas in the country. A longer-term understanding understands the notion of change. And actually, politics in Iran can be very volatile. Culture is not as volatile, I have to say. Culture can be a little bit more consistent. And political culture, society, and others, there are levels of consistency, even what I would call "conservatism" with a small c, that you don't see in the politics of the country. The politics of the country have been very movable, and they've been very movable because of the nature of the states. The states are, by and large, autocratic and arbitrary. And the absence of a rule of law and the absence of an institutional basis make them quite volatile and unstable, I would say. That's a standard form. It's amazing the number of people I talk to, and I say, I say, "Iran is moving now towards autocracy." "Moving" is a bit late, but, you know. And I say, it's very likely that Khamenei will be succeeded by his son. "What? But it's an Islamic Republic!" I say, "Well, you know, autocracy is not an alien concept in Iranian history." But it's amazing how what I'm saying here-- if I say that there's going to be a hereditary succession in Iran and the possibility is very high-- that a number of people think this can't be right because the constitution of the Islamic Republic tells you you can't do it. How many constitutions in modern Iran have actually been adhered to? I mean, you know, seriously thinking, if you had any concept of the history of Iran in the 20th century, you would understand that this is not an anomaly-- that, in fact, the Republic in some ways is an anomaly. We have been struggling in some ways, ever since 1906, to establish a constitutional system, and we're not there yet. The things are still very, very fragile. We've been struggling in Iran over the last 100 years to develop what we might term an industrial economy, an industrialized base. We're not quite there yet. I don't want to go too much into the conceptual or theoretical detail, but we can talk about the capital accumulation in Iran as being founded on mercantile capital, not industrial capital. This is something I tried to argue in my first book. And mercantile capital has certain characteristics-- short-term, volatile, with a built-in interest on that volatility and short-termism built in. Instability is a fact of life. Managing chaos is a fact of life. But every successive modern ruler-- and "modern ruler," I'm saying-- those who aspire to modern rulership have sought to transition the country away. You could say under the last Shah, there was a shift going in that direction-- a shift. I don't think it was achieved-- and that what you have in the revolution in 1979 is the inheritance of quite a powerful state. This is, again, where I disagree with those who talk about the Islamic Revolution and the Islamic Republic, as I said, as if it exists in isolation. It doesn't. It's not a new state. It inherited and built on the foundations of something that came before it. Just as you can't understand Reza Shah, and you can't understand the ideologues of the early 20th century if you don't look at the Qajar inheritance and where they were coming from-- both pros and cons, by the way-- you cannot understand the Islamic Revolution and the Islamic Republic without looking at its inheritance from the Pahlavi state. Yes, they eliminated whole tiers of officials, technocrats, bureaucrats, and others who are the functionaries of the Pahlavi state. But they kept many of the institutions of the Pahlavi state. They added to it. They embellished on it. And, in my view, they took what was best from it and ruined that bit, and took what was worst out of it and multiplied it. [LAUGHTER] I mean, that's the way I see they operate. And part of the reason for that is the failure to institution-build and the failure, basically, to complete the revolution, in a sense-- the real fundamental revolution that began at the beginning of this century. But this state that is founded on the back of the Pahlavi state inherits something that is fairly rich, institutionally based-- although not firmly institutionally based-- and moving in a certain direction, with powerful armed forces, a good economic-- generally, a good economic state. It's what allows it, ultimately, bear in mind, to survive the Iran-Iraq War. OK, for all the attacks the clerics had on the Shah's armed forces, you can bet your bottom dollar they were very pleased that the Shah's armed forces were fairly well-armed when the Iraqis invaded. And if there's a reason why the Islamic Republic emerged from the Iran-Iraq War in better shape than Iraq, it's because the foundations they inherited were relatively strong. But what they ended up doing was basically drawing down the resources that they'd inherited and not reinvesting. And I remind you again, this notion of moral, political, and economic capital-- the idea of investing in those. And the best example of this, by the way, for those of you who doubt, is one of the most serious crises that is facing the Islamic Republic today. And that is the ecological crisis. Iran faces one of the most serious fundamental crises in water supply of any country in the world. And why is this? Is it because of sanctions? It's because of poor planning. Yeah, it's because of the inability to think creatively that the plans that the Shah's technocrats and bureaucrats had in place in the 1970s was for a population of 38 million, possibly rising to 50 million, but not a population of 90 million, and not intensive agricultural farming for nuts and other things, and the building of dams in the wrong place that might end up with draining the water table. That, in a very serious sense is a lack of investment, by the way. And I say a lack of investment and a lack of planning that is emblematic for me of wider areas of problems. It, for me, shows, you know, when everyone says, ah, it's because of the sanctions, I say, no, the sanctions are the salt rubbed into a self-inflicted wound. And you have to recognize the self-inflicted wound to understand what is going on. Of course, the sanctions don't help. But you're fundamentally misunderstanding it if you perceive that everything that is problematic with the country originates from abroad. This is another fault of international relations theory, by the way, is that tendency to study Iran from the outside in. The belief-- which is a slightly-- I have to say, is a question of the Washington Beltway's vanity, I have to say, that whatever we do in Washington has massive repercussions in Tehran. Immediate, by the way-- immediate and massive. Possibly, but. Funnily enough, Iranians have agency. This comes as a shock to some people, by the way. Yes, Bush's "Axis of Evil" speech was not helpful to Khatami, but there were many opponents of Khatami within Iran who were busy building his coffin before Bush offered them an extra nail. And unless you understand the internal dynamics of the politics and the history, you won't see that. You'll constantly see everything as being blamed from abroad. Everything is a consequence of problems abroad. And don't even get me started on the coup of 1953 and Mosaddegh, by the way. Important historical event, something that we need to deal with, but it doesn't explain everything that the Islamic Republic does today. The joy of social media, by the way, is just to see how little, how little the impact of the work of any number of historians has on the popular historical consciousness, if I can call it that. By the way, I don't think it's a historical consciousness at all. It's more of a conspiracy theory, or mythological consciousness, or whatever. But it's interesting. In the popular-- in the popular sphere, the sort of determinism, the sort of belief, in a sense, in Western perfidy, original sin, and all this sort of thing, that is a problem. That seems to be the cause of everything. So basically, my understanding, if you're looking at the Islamic Republic, there's a series of crises that are facing the Islamic-- and I'll do this in a very simple way, actually. This is an abridgment, so please, do ask questions in the questions. But the way I see it is this. We have an Islamic Republic of Iran that is neither Islamic, Republican, or Iran. It's like the Holy Roman Empire, as Voltaire-- I think it was Voltaire, wasn't it-- Holy, nor Roman, nor any Empire. The basis, the political basis, on which the revolution was founded have largely all been squandered. And when did this process happen? How have we seen this process? For me, the process starts very emphatically. There are two phases in the life of the Islamic Republic. I mean, you can say three if you want, to be honest, but let's divide it into two, just to be easy. The first phase goes up to around 2005, OK? 2005 is an exaggeration, by the way. I mean, it would be earlier than that, but let's say to the end of the Khatami period. So you have a period, really-- let's ignore the war for the time being-- that eight years of the war is a separate, distinct period where the focus was on fighting the war. But then you have the Rafsanjani and Khatami years after that, from 1989 through to 2005. Those follow a certain pattern. And we can argue that those argued-- those followed a pattern where they emphasized the Republic, as opposed to the Islamic elements of the Constitution. Rafsanjani followed a very, very standard model of development, which argued that the economy will do it. Politics can wait. It didn't really work very well. It didn't work very well for the Shah, I have to say. It didn't work very well for Rafsanjani. Development has to go in tandem. If you're going to have economic development, you have to also have political development. You have to have a political frame of reference in order to frame the economic development. This is what I mean by political and moral capital. Khatami comes in and he tries. He tries. I have to say, had basically no impact on Western analysts. Librarian, wooly, dialogue of civilizations-- who cares? To my mind, I have to say, I thought it was a missed opportunity, but there you are. The attempt wasn't really made. But it's certainly true that those within the system were very much opposed to him. And really, the reaction sets in at the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the noughties already, the challenge to Khatami's position. And Khatami, every-- by the way, I mean, this is one of the great things. Every president of these-- they always say, the Islamic Republic is a stunningly successful system-- so successful that everyone who becomes President of the Islamic Republic is either under house arrest, or barred, or-- you know, I mean, it's actually not a career prospect I would encourage in anyone. Now, I mean, that tells you, I think, a little bit about the political inadequacies of what's going on. But there you are. So Khatami is under severe attack, and there is a reaction to that. The reaction to that is then really exhibited in the second period, which is essentially the sort of Ahmadinejad years and afterwards. And there you see an emphasis on the Revolutionary and Islamic elements of the republic, if I can put it that way-- the diminishment of the republic, the removal, the emasculation of the republic in favor of the Revolutionary institutions. Again, I use that term, "institutions," rather more qualified sense because they're not. They're highly personal in that sense. But it's focused around the cult of Khomeini. And Khomeini is defined-- and this is the interesting thing-- as the Ali of the Age. What does it mean to be called the Ali of the Age in a Shia establishment and a Shia polity? It gives you tremendous power and authority. And it also suggests that there's a hereditary succession in prospect. It's amazing, again, the number of people, when the evidence doesn't suit their argument, they dismiss it. It's like when people say-- you know, when they say, "Death to America," they don't really mean "Death to America." What they mean is, "We wish you would be nicer," or something. I mean, sometimes what you see is what you get. Sometimes, if you scrutinize and ask what's going on, you can find. But you have to be able to judge that. So that period, from 2005 onwards, sees a diminishment of what we might term the republican and popular basis of the revolution in favor of the autocratic, authoritarian and Islamic basis of the revolution. Now, when I call Islamic basis of the revolution, I have to say some of the additions and innovations to the Islamic elements of the revolution are innovations-- innovations in a way that most Orthodox Muslims would consider heretical or even blasphemous. And I think this came through in 2009. So where do we see the crisis afflicting the Islamic Republic? To my mind, the real start of this process is 2009. In the West, we don't see 2009, really, as a pivotal moment. The Green Movement is a bit of an irritation because we really would rather get on with nuclear negotiations, so please don't rise up-- an inconvenient truth. But 2009, to my mind, was the pivot. Not that I think, in 2009, people were really looking for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic. They were looking for the reform of the Islamic Republic. But I think by the end of the protests in 2009, people realized-- it began to dawn on them. Because, again, these things are processes. Things don't happen instantaneously. People don't suddenly abandon certain loyalties or affectations or affiliations. It takes time. I may see it clearer, but those living within the country may want to give it yet one more go. But the fact is, I think by the end of 2009, people began to realize that reform within the system is almost impossible. Now, what happened in 2009, which was very striking, is in the midst of a crisis, you begin to see some of the ideological realities and zealousness of the system. And one of the things that came out in 2009 was the ideology of one particular Ayatollah called Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi. And Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi is occasionally known-- I have to say, rather interestingly-- as the Hegel of Iran, which is an interesting sort of connotation. But basically, what they're trying to say is he's very right-wing with a totalistic, totalitarian ideology. So I don't want to give Hegel a hard time there, but, you know, that's the way they were trying to flatter him. But what did Mesbah Yazdi say-- which is very striking? He said obedience to Ahmadinejad is the equivalent of obedience to God. Think about it. That was so embarrassing to the country's media, to the country's media, that a lot of his official media, they didn't want to print it. But what they were saying was that Ayatollah Khomeini, as the representative of the Hidden Imam, the representative of the Hidden Imam-- it's a distinct. He's not there by divine right. It's not the Fadi Zadi we're talking about here. He's the representative of the Hidden Imam with all his powers. When he grants the president the license, the confirmation of his presidency, the charisma is somehow transferred to the president. It's an astonishing thing to say, when you think about it. And it's the most emphatic example of the way in which the autocracy is consolidating itself, not simply in practice, but in theory as well. The absolutism of that authoritarianism is quite striking. There is a political crisis there that begins to emerge, and it becomes explicit. I wouldn't even say it "begins to emerge." I think it "becomes explicit," I think would be the better way to put it. But you have a series of crises that mount up with a slight interlude for the whole nuclear negotiations and what happened in 2015. But I have to say, that probably ran out of steam fairly very quickly-- and long before Trump, by the way. Trump's withdrawal from the nuclear negotiations allowed everyone to blame the United States for the failure of the JCPOA, but the problems with the JCPOA preceded that. OK, we could already see it. We could already see it in 2016 that it wasn't working as people wanted it to work. And I can explain that later if you wish, but it was there. The important point is that for Iranians-- and I want to take the perspective of Iranians. You know, I got fed up to the teeth of Western journalists going to Iran, talking to young people, and saying, are you excited about the nuclear program? And they'd go, no. What we'd like is more freedom. Ah, but you'll get more freedom now that the nuclear program-- but that's not the way they were thinking. What they were thinking was, in 2009, we were abandoned. In 2009, we were cut off. In 2009, the paranoid state and the security state began. And yes, the nuclear agreement might result in some amelioration of that, but the fact is, we saw pretty clearly, pretty quickly from a perspective of a young Iranian, that that was not the case. But the West, invested in that, refused to see it. I was very pleased to see Obama acknowledging that actually, recently, I think, during the Mahsa Amini uprising. He did make a claim. He did say that, "I slightly misread the 2009 Green Movement." Yeah, tell me about it. Yeah, but why? Because the imperatives were something else. So what have we seen in Iran over the last five, six years? We've seen a growing authoritarianism, certainly, a growing autocracy, a growing ideological rigor mortis, I would call it-- a very, very rigid ideology that doesn't promote people on merit, but promotes people on political loyalty, political loyalty to a very, very particularly narrow autocratic system based on the cult of Khomeini and the notion of him as the Ali of the Age. Mesbah Yazdi said that belief in a Velayat-e Faqih Fa is a pillar of Islam. If you want an innovation, that's an innovation, by the way. Yeah, if you don't believe in the Velayat-e Faqih, you are no longer a good Muslim. That's why I have to say many Arab brethren who visit Iran now and then, they say, this is not really a Muslim country as we know it-- not because of, by the way, these weird and wonderful ideas, but actually, because what's happening in Iran is a reaction to that is a great, great secularization of society. Society and the state are moving in very, very distinct and stark directions. But as the political and moral capital becomes dilapidated, and they're not investing in it, and they're concentrating on their own elite or their own select and elect-- which is really what happens after 2009 and the growth of the paranoid state-- you, obviously, get a social reaction. And the social reaction is pretty clear. And the social reaction comes in protests. And you get a series of protests-- not just the Mahsa Amini, Jina Amini protests of 2022. You get protests in 2017, 2019, 2022. The protests in 2019 were much more bloody in many ways than the protests of 2022. All three of them are related. And related to what? They're related to political dissatisfaction. They're related to economic dissatisfaction-- massive economic dissatisfaction. And they're related also to the ecological crisis-- the fact that, in many parts of the country, towns, rural areas are running out of water. What the Islamic Republic is fundamentally failing to do is to be able to govern in a very basic sense-- to deliver the things that an ordinary citizen might expect. Forget democracy. I'm not talking about that. Forget human rights. We're not even talking about that. We're talking about the ability to provide security, but also a decent livelihood and an ability to live your life in some sort of measure of contentment. Now, of course, people say to me-- and I've been [INAUDIBLE] they say ah, but Iran is doing relatively well compared to Afghanistan. [LAUGHTER] And I say, I hate to surprise you, but most Iranians are not comparing themselves to Afghanistan. And this is an important thing, by the way. If you want to understand some of the economic problems, yes, you can look at the broad economic statistics and say, actually, you know-- as I've been told this-- they say, well, economic growth in Iran, ing to the IMF, is going to be 2% a year. First of all, where does the IMF get its figures from? We'll leave that aside, but there you are. And they say, it's better than many countries in the region. I have to say, it's a fairly low bar. Yeah, but also, crucially, because it doesn't understand the political culture in Iran, It won't tell you that actually, what Iranians are comparing themselves to is something altogether different. What Iranians are comparing themselves with are they're saying, why is Qatar holding the World Cup? Shouldn't we be doing that? What's going on in the Persian Gulf. We find this a bit depressing. They're not saying, oh, well, we're doing much better than Iraq. So again, you have to understand the relative values, and the relative aspirations, and what people want, and how that affects the political legitimacy and the crisis facing the country. So all these things mount-- as I said, an ecological crisis, the economic crisis, which is extremely severe, the political crisis, and the political crisis of legitimacy. But there's been a crisis of authority for some time. In my view, what's seriously hampering and weakening the country is the economic crisis. And with that, I tie in the ecological crisis as well. But it's the economic crisis that will be the tripwire for it. And this is what's diminishing the functionality, if you will, of the state. Think about what's happening now, by the way. Post the 2022 demonstrations, things have not returned to any sense of normality. Normally, the state is able to recoup its losses, to rebuild. A measure of repression, some bread and circuses on the other side to keep people happy. The economic crisis means that we're running out of bread and circuses, by the way. That option is no longer available. The authority means that people won't do as they're told. So hell, we'll need to beat people up to make sure they wear the hijab. When the Mahsa Amini demonstrations happened, I had a number of journalists saying to me, I thought Iranian women liked wearing the veil. Then I said, what gave you that impression? Well, I mean, we were told it's a liberating experience. Maybe it is. I don't want to make a comment on that. But if you have to beat up someone in order for them to understand their culture, I suggest you it's not their culture. Yeah? And yet, somehow, that was somehow difficult for people to understand. If you need to send people out in the streets today with bulletproof vests and abduct and beat up women in the streets to impose a particular reading of your ideology that large swathes of your population no longer adhere to, that suggests to me that your authority is waning. Someone made a very good point. Even in Iran today, they said, if you look at these morality police and the other elements, he said, how many women do you think in Iran today are not adhering to the hijab? Let's say 15% of adult women in Iran are no longer wearing the hijab. That's about 5 million women. How big is the police force that's meant to impose this, and beat them up, and drag them in? Maybe 100,000-- at a push, by the way. I don't think 100,000 are dealing with the morality-- maybe 20,000, 30,000. How are you going to beat all these women up? How are you going to do it? And what is the risk that you will provoke the population into another burst of protest? Now, it may not happen. I'm not arguing here at the end of the day that this is going to happen. I'm saying that the situation has become so serious in the Islamic Republic of Iran-- inverted commas again, ladies and gentlemen, because I don't think, as I said, it's either Islamic, Republic, or very much Iranian anymore-- that its ability to absorb shocks is diminishing. And the stupidity of the system is that it self-inflicts shocks onto itself. If you were sensible at this moment with the position which you find yourself in, you would not be sending police out to beat up women. And also, by the way, I should emphasize, one has already died. But of course, because we're looking at other matters, nobody's paying attention to this domestic environment. It's very, very interesting if you look into the situation internally. So my argument, really, in summation is really this. And I'll just quickly come to a conclusion, because I'm actually quite amazed at myself that I was able to talk for an hour, and I can see people are waiting. So I don't want you to get too exhausted-- as much as I seem to have been re-energized. I don't know what it is about talking about Iran, but anyway, there you go. My argument really is to say-- and I appreciate that what I've had to deliver to you today has been, in a sense, an abridgment of a much, much larger argument, but it's one that I'm trying to emphasize, one, about the critical methods that we approach these things, the failures, I think, of particular other disciplines in the way of dealing with Iran-- we can set that aside. Those are two aspects. But then, fundamentally, applying what I would term applied history to the situation in Iran, which looks at it from a critical distance, with a historical perspective, that can look at trajectories and look at transitions and say, where is it going? And, how the Islamic Republic fits in with the tradition of Iranian polities in the past-- what it has done, what it hasn't done? In my view, the Islamic Republic of Iran now has turned into the extractive state par excellence. And by "extractive state," I don't just mean that it's sucking the economic lifeblood out of the country. I think it's sucking the political and moral capital out of the country, too. And that makes it particularly brittle and particularly fragile. And because of that brittle and that fragility of the system, its ability to withstand shocks, I think, is less. It is diminished. And as a result of that, my argument to you, is that it is not, for all the bombast, and all the rhetoric, and all the hyperbole that you'll get from some of its leaders, it is not the strong and stable state that some within Western policymakers think. It is a state that is much more vulnerable, much more nervous, and much more anxious. And let me conclude with one thing, just to give you an example of that. The Iranian mission at the UN on Saturday night-- last Saturday-- issued a pronouncement. Quite well-written, actually, all told, apart from the final sentence-- in fact, two final sentences, I think. One was in capital letters. It sort of said something like, "US must stay out," which I thought was, obviously, something that people in Washington will pay attention to. But the best thing was this. It said, "We deem matters concluded." And one very good analyst and colleague in Washington actually pointed this out. He said, "I've never seen a more rapid attempt at de-escalation in my life." [LAUGHTER] The statement was issued as the drones and missiles were en route-- en route! Nothing had hit its target yet. And they said, "We consider the matter is concluded. Don't come after us!" You can interpret this in two ways, ladies and gentlemen. You can interpret it, as one group of people do, that this is a sign of the pragmatic and moderating influence of the Islamic Republic. You read it for yourself, it's there. I don't read it that way. I read it as someone who were between a rock and a hard place, and they stuck their heads above the parapet, and they didn't like what they saw. And they wanted to get their heads right behind the parapet as quickly as they possibly could. That, for me, is a reflection of the fact that they are much more nervous and much more anxious about their situation. I will leave it there. Thank you very much for your patience. Thank you very much for listening to me. I am very happy to answer any questions you may have. [APPLAUSE]