Harvard Professor Answers Questions About Iran's Government | Tech Support | WIRED

[00:00] I'm Professor Tarek Masoud from Harvard University. This is Tech Support, Iran. [upbeat music]

[00:14] "Is it wrong to call Iran a dictatorship?" The Islamic Republic of Iran absolutely is a dictatorship, but it also has some electoral features

[00:27] but they're not totally meaningless. says that the leadership of Iran must reside

[00:40] of great knowledge and virtue, the supreme leader. that the affairs of Iran will be governed And so they have an elected president

[00:57] and they even elect the body The supreme leader is definitely on top. He sets policy, he hires and fires

[01:13] the heads of the military apparatus. Everybody looks to him. The president gets to set things like social policy.

[01:26] It's a system that really does have these hybrid features. with the whole system was this man Ayatollah Khomeini, and he was the supreme leader until his death in 1989.

[01:40] He was replaced by this man, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. This guy, by the way, was the president under Khomeini. in February of this year.

[01:53] And he was replaced by his son Mojtaba. And many of the senior leadership Could we say that the political system in Iran

[02:08] They've managed to hold on so far, and some people might say that the regime is built precisely to withstand this kind of stress.

[02:20] is under the most serious strain that is ever faced in its nearly 50 years of history. MeganHasHemorrhoids asks, "Explain like I'm five.

[02:33] Sorry about the hemorrhoids, Megan. are what is known as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are one of two armed forces

[02:48] It's basically a full-fledged military. It also has a kind of special forces called the Quds Force or the Jerusalem Force.

[03:05] And it also has a group called the Basij-e Mostaz'afin that the Iranian regime relies on mainly for mobilization, And that IRGC sits alongside

[03:20] If you think about it, Their job is basically to defend Iran's borders. The job of the IRGC in contrast

[03:34] They are the ones who play a major role They're also the arm of the state across the Middle East like Hezbollah and like the Houthis.

[03:52] The IRGC, by the way, is not just a military force. and you can see estimates that they control anywhere from 20 and they're involved in all kinds of industries

[04:07] Part of the reason that this regime and so durable in the face of repeated public protest is that they have a very ideologically committed group

[04:22] to defend the regime even against their own citizens. "How was Khamenei chosen as supreme leader

[04:34] Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and it is true that when he was chosen to be supreme leader And Ayatollah is a very senior religious cleric

[04:51] Shia Islam differs a little bit from Sunni Islam you are supposed to pick a very senior Ayatollah and religious authority.

[05:06] actually wasn't widely thought of and he certainly wasn't thought of who has the status of what is called a marja' al-taqlid

[05:21] somebody who Shiites can choose to follow. because he'd been president for eight years They even changed the Iranian Constitution

[05:37] The rationale then was political and not religious. how come he was succeeded by his son? This was not like a monarchy or a dynastic succession.

[05:52] the selection of the son was political. Mojtaba Khamenei is very close to the IRGC, are the king makers in Iran today.

[06:08] "Iran has major protests every few years, Iranians do often protest their regime. you had something called the Green Revolution,

[06:22] took to the streets to protest an election that was rigged and in favor of a conservative presidential candidate Ever since 2017,

[06:37] and some of those protests are about economic issues, One of the big ones happened in 2022. and that was after a young Iranian woman named Mahsa Amini

[06:53] for not wearing her headscarf properly. The main thing is that they get repressed brutally It's difficult to exaggerate

[07:07] just how willing the Islamic Republic's regime is But another factor also that ends up maybe mitigating some of the protests is that Iran does have elections.

[07:21] And sometimes in these elections for the presidency, And so sometimes that soaks some of the energy for reform.

[07:34] that they think can change things. Masoud Pezeshkian, is just such a reformist candidate. Iranians are going to continue to protest,

[07:49] and when this war ends, protest in Iran will not. about the current Iran war One of the things about this war

[08:02] as it is a war on the battlefield. the battle space is actually a lot more level. The Iranians have access to all of the tools

[08:16] They can make glitzy AI videos that make it look like they are scoring dramatic battlefield victories. viral propaganda videos.

[08:30] in which they presented themselves of American aggression going all the way back and even to the genocide against Native Americans.

[08:47] is much more even is not just because the Iranians but that the soldiers in the information battlefield

[09:00] Basically anybody who's unhappy with this war and then get boosted by their networks. about believing what we see on the internet

[09:15] The second thing I would say is that the regime could survive this bombardment that would allow them to come out

[09:30] and say, "We survived a sustained bombing campaign the two greatest air forces in the world," but they could still lose because the Iranian people

[09:43] And it may be that the capabilities of the regime will have been so degraded after this war and the regime shifts in the people's favor.

[10:00] that people should pay a little bit more attention to by assassinating the supreme leader of Iran, And it remains to be seen

[10:15] for the United States by making our rivals more compliant and pliable or a bad thing by making our leaders less safe Ok_Breadfruit4005 asks,

[10:28] Americans typically think is for them to have a liberal, And after our experiments

[10:41] in building democracies in Iraq and Afghanistan, we become a little bit more modest about that view. that in Iran the best outcome is a democracy.

[10:55] it's something that I do think the Iranians It's a real tragedy that the images that we see with very stern faces, 'cause that is a very deep and rich

[11:13] It has a very high rate of literacy. There's a very high rate of education for women in Iran. women achieve more educational attainment than men in Iran.

[11:27] that if Iranians got the chance to lift the boot of the IRGC they'd be able to build a democracy and to keep a democracy.

[11:40] it would also be really good for the world. how extraordinary the Persian people are. have made enormous contributions.

[11:54] which is like the Nobel Prize for math, There are major Iranian engineers I mean, this is a society

[12:09] and technology and to human civilization. And you can't help but think that if somehow the Iranians and also from a situation

[12:24] that the benefits to them and to the world civilization would be incalculable. I've only read it in translation. I don't speak Persian.

[12:39] "Somewhere out there beyond ideas of right and wrong I will meet you there." and I really hope that sooner rather than later,

[12:53] 'cause I think only good things will happen. Thank you for watching Tech Support, Iran. [light upbeat music]