YouSaid · the spoken record

Abbas Amanat

lines on the record: 188
first: 2022-11-02
most recent: 2022-11-02
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Iran has a million school teachers. Which may not seem as much if you are in the United States, but it's a fairly big number, actually.”
2022-11-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #334 – Abbas Amanat: Iran Protests, Mahsa Amini, History, CIA & Nuclear Weapons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You hear accents, local accents, provincial accents all over the country. That is Azerbaijani Turkish accent from the northwest of the country. You can hear it in the far province in the south, and vice versa. And Kurdish, for instance, or even more marginal regions such as Istan province in the southeast of Iran, which has been the subject of this recent massacre when they actually attacked the population, when demonstrating and killed a fair number of at least 60 people. So, this movement of the population, this creation of a larger middle class, the better educated middle class, much better educated. Iran has 86% literacy. Which I think probably I haven't checked that, but probably is better than Turkey even, is probably better than anywhere else in the Middle East.”
2022-11-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #334 – Abbas Amanat: Iran Protests, Mahsa Amini, History, CIA & Nuclear Weapons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Were brought up in these families, even in small towns, in very traditional families, in families that belong to that kind of a more religious, loyal to the clergy or to the clerical classes. Their children can now move on, particularly women. Because in my times it would have been unheard of that you would have a young woman of 18 or 17, 18, 19. From a traditional city such as, for instance, Yazd and Southeast and Iran. To move on elsewhere for education, as you do in this country. Now it's completely accepted that a woman wears hijab because he's forced to wear her hijab, to go to a university completely on the other side of the country. And this movement of the population not only because of the universities, but in general. If you now visit Iran,”
2022-11-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #334 – Abbas Amanat: Iran Protests, Mahsa Amini, History, CIA & Nuclear Weapons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Six of them would have died after the age of five actually. But now because of that, you see that this urban population in the cities have completely different demands. And of course, the education is important. That's another area of how the social engineering of the Islamic Republic went away because they were thinking that the growth of the population, the growth of the educated, higher educated middle classes in their benefit, or they could not even control it in a sense. Now, Iran, in my time, probably had In the 1970s, probably by the time of the Revolution, I've had 10, 12 universities. Now it has 56 universities all across the country. And there is something referred to as the free university, Azad, which has campuses all over the country. It has 320 campuses all around Iran. Does that mean in many respects this youth”
2022-11-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #334 – Abbas Amanat: Iran Protests, Mahsa Amini, History, CIA & Nuclear Weapons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Encourage people to have more kids. Middle class refuses to do that. And this is middle class not only more in the capital, but this is when smaller towns and cities, places that used to be villages. Now you look at them, they have a decent population, 50,000, 100,000, and they live an urban life, and they don't want to be subjected to that old pattern of agrarian society when you had 10 children or eight children. And of course, it's much more advanced in terms of health and medicine. So you don't lose children as they used to. The antibiotics, there's always kids to survive. And therefore, if you have 10 kids, you stick with 10 kids. You don't end up with four as it used to be.”
2022-11-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #334 – Abbas Amanat: Iran Protests, Mahsa Amini, History, CIA & Nuclear Weapons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You can see that the birth rate was very high. Otherwise, you wouldn't have doubled your population in matter of four decades. But Iranians, because of the urban Shift to an Airbrand population because of the growth of the middle class, because of the education. Basically, the pattern of growth, population growth changed. Iran used to be 2.8 or 3% birth rate in around 1980s, I would say 1970s, 1980s. Now it is 1.1 And it's probably the most successful country in the Middle East in terms of the population control. Despite the government. Consistent attempt to try to”
2022-11-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #334 – Abbas Amanat: Iran Protests, Mahsa Amini, History, CIA & Nuclear Weapons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There was, of course, the demographic revolution. That's a very foundation of it. It's the demographic revolution. Population in Iran, I've written an article about it, actually. Population in Iran since the turn of the century, last century, 20th century, population of Iran was about 9 million or so. Is now 83 million. And that is since 1979, the population was 35 million. Between the past 40 years, it basically doubled. So it's 83 million. Although one of the great successes, I don't want to bore you with the details about the demography, but it's important. Please.”
2022-11-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #334 – Abbas Amanat: Iran Protests, Mahsa Amini, History, CIA & Nuclear Weapons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Never put restrictions. It's not like Soviet Union where you have to have a, you used to have a permission to move from one place to another. And then, of course, the Islamic regime since 1979 basically chased away or destroyed the old middle class. That's my generation basically, or my parents generation. These are the secular middle class of the Pahlaviera in the hope that they can do this social engineering and create this Islamic society of their own. The bad news for them was that that didn't happen and that memory persisted and the middle class that was created since past 40 years is much larger in size than what it was because”
2022-11-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #334 – Abbas Amanat: Iran Protests, Mahsa Amini, History, CIA & Nuclear Weapons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hatred of the policies of the regime, of isolation, that's a huge point that you hear a great deal about. We don't want to be isolated. We don't want to be humiliated. Iran is not about this miserable regime that is ruling over us. We have a great culture. So there's a sense of a pride in their own culture some of it, you know, Islamic, some of it pre-Islamic. So there is a huge sense of a pride in that. And they see that they cannot communicate with the outside world. They want to travel abroad, which they do. I mean, for one thing, the Iranian regime never actually, for majority of the population,”
2022-11-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #334 – Abbas Amanat: Iran Protests, Mahsa Amini, History, CIA & Nuclear Weapons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Mongo. I mean, they are in touch with WhatsApp. Every Iranian, virtually every Iranian. That has the education and education in the sense that has gone through the high schools and universities knows how to use the WhatsApp.”
2022-11-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #334 – Abbas Amanat: Iran Protests, Mahsa Amini, History, CIA & Nuclear Weapons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Machirani is at least the middle classes, the more prosperous middle classes doing all the time. So they deliver everything. And because of the COVID, it became even more. And they have to pay all through this system. So what happens is that now they're estimating that every day $50 million, the Iranian government or the Iranian economy is losing because of slowing the internet.”
2022-11-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #334 – Abbas Amanat: Iran Protests, Mahsa Amini, History, CIA & Nuclear Weapons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Shut that internet, but they cannot afford shutting the internet because much of the business, much of the everyday life, much of the government affairs depends on the internet, like everywhere else. And Iran is extremely, if I hear from many of the colleagues and friends, you know, it's like in certain respects like Sweden, where you go there is no more currency and for very good reason because there is so much inflation that the banknotes are worthless in a sense. So everything is true sweeping your card. The entire system is in a standstill because people cannot buy food. You go to the supermarket, that's how you would do it. You order food to come to your house.”
2022-11-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #334 – Abbas Amanat: Iran Protests, Mahsa Amini, History, CIA & Nuclear Weapons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Since 1979, the earlier years, for a decade or two, they tried in a very crude fashion to restrict access to media outside Iran, because this is all through dishes. And satellite dishes are everywhere. If you look at the buildings, small And they watch all kinds of things through this, and particularly because of what's happening now, they listen to all the news broadcasts from all this media and they're extremely active. There are probably some of them even 24 hours or close, very extensive coverage of every clip that comes through. So what the government is doing now, the Islamic Republic, is that they restrict the entire internet.”
2022-11-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #334 – Abbas Amanat: Iran Protests, Mahsa Amini, History, CIA & Nuclear Weapons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So that's how they mislead. In a very stupid fashion, because probably 95%, if not 100%, of the Iranians are listening to Persian speaking media outside Iran. So it's a BBC Persian. There is Iran International. There are at least five or six of them.”
2022-11-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #334 – Abbas Amanat: Iran Protests, Mahsa Amini, History, CIA & Nuclear Weapons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Berlin demonstrating against the treatment of the women in Iran or the movement in Iran. The government thinks obviously this must have been some instigation by foreign powers and they want to destroy the Islamic Republic. And not only that, but their propaganda is kind of ridiculous because I listened actually to how they portrayed it in the newspapers. I listened to the Iranian news that is officially controlled, government controlled news. And in the papers, much of the papers that are in the control of the government. One of them, or actually the major news program portrayed the demonstrations that 10,000 people showed up in Berlin and protested. Against the rising prices, rising rates for gas and oil.”
2022-11-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #334 – Abbas Amanat: Iran Protests, Mahsa Amini, History, CIA & Nuclear Weapons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This message or the movement to be aired. But one element which corresponds to that is that there is an expatriate population of Iranians worldwide. There are probably now, according to some estimates, close to 4 million even more, Iranians abroad, and they are all over the world, from Australia and New Zealand, Japan, Western Europe, Turkey and United States and Canada. So, just to give you one example, last Saturday, there was mass demonstrations in Berlin. The Iranians from Germany and all over Europe, Western Europe. And it was at least, I think probably conservative estimate was about 100,000. So 100,000 Iranians showed up.”
2022-11-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #334 – Abbas Amanat: Iran Protests, Mahsa Amini, History, CIA & Nuclear Weapons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The foreign powers and their families are all sold out and they basically lost their loyalties to the great Islamic Republic. And therefore they can be treated so brutally, they can be suppressed so brutally, which I haven't actually said what they are doing because I thought perhaps first we should talk about who these kids are in the streets before we move on about the response of the government. One major factor which seems to add to the anxiety of, well, the regime is extremely anxious now because they are in a position. This shows that they don't have the lack of confidence in a sense that they would see them reacting in a very forceful way because basically they don't seem to have that kind of confidence to allow this”
2022-11-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #334 – Abbas Amanat: Iran Protests, Mahsa Amini, History, CIA & Nuclear Weapons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Noticed that they have, I don't think even they have that kind of imagination precisely to say what you have said. That they would say that they're controlling the narrative. They basically say, no, these are agents.”
2022-11-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #334 – Abbas Amanat: Iran Protests, Mahsa Amini, History, CIA & Nuclear Weapons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Constantly think that these are all the instigations and provocations of foreign powers. These are the great Satan United States. This is Israel. Or these are actually the supreme data states in so many words. His only response so far, that he had in the past six weeks with regard to these demonstrations is that these are the children of the SAVAC. SAVAC being the security forces of the Shahstai. 43 years later, he claims that the children 16, 17 years, 20 years old, kids in the street are the grandchildren or children of some imaginary survival of the child security force.”
2022-11-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #334 – Abbas Amanat: Iran Protests, Mahsa Amini, History, CIA & Nuclear Weapons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“of a movement. I hesitate to say the revolution because I'm not particularly happy with revolutions worldwide in Iran have always been so miserable in terms of their outcome that we have to be careful not to use the word Revolutionary, yeah. So that's where it stands now. And the regime was thinking that, well, these are kids. They're going to go away. And then, of course, they're completely conspicuorial in their thinking.”
2022-11-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #334 – Abbas Amanat: Iran Protests, Mahsa Amini, History, CIA & Nuclear Weapons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Probably freedom of the press. But it's fairly limited. There's enormous amount of propaganda machine which dominates the entire radio and TV system in Iran. It's completely in the hands of the government. And of course, you would see this variety of other tools for trying to indoctrinate Iranian population across the board. So that's another sign of this kind of a sense of being totally left out. You're not belonging to what's going on in terms of empowerment and disempowerment. So that's the situation as far as the idea of a freedom is concerned. And the three somewhat miraculously and perhaps unintentionally the three parts of this message complements each other because perhaps for the first time we see that women are in the forefront”
2022-11-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #334 – Abbas Amanat: Iran Protests, Mahsa Amini, History, CIA & Nuclear Weapons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And create authoritarian regimes of which over the course of time, I would say that the Islamic Republic is the worst in the sense that its intrusion is not only in the political sense, for instance, banning the freedom of speech, you know, meddling with the elections, banning political parties, all kinds of that things, which are the political or civil freedoms, but its intrusion into the personal life of the individual, which is the worst kind, in a sense as you would see that there is always that authority that basically dominates your life or monitors your life. So, and they do it in a kind of a very consistent fashion, which makes this idea of freedom so important. As part of the message of this new movement, you would see that in today's Iran there are no independent political parties. There is very little”
2022-11-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #334 – Abbas Amanat: Iran Protests, Mahsa Amini, History, CIA & Nuclear Weapons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They're much better digitally skilled than my generation, for instance. And they know about all the personalities. They know about all the celebrities. They know about all the trends that goes out outside Iran. So that's a second part of this message. And then, of course, the third part is the word Azadi, meaning freedom or liberty, which is this long standing demand of the Iranians, I would say for the whole century ever since the constitutional revolution of 1906. Iran has witnessed this problem of authorities that usually emerged at the end of a revolution to basically impose its own image on the population, on the youth.”
2022-11-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #334 – Abbas Amanat: Iran Protests, Mahsa Amini, History, CIA & Nuclear Weapons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Precisely that's what it is. Are surprisingly aware. That where they are as a generation. So it's a sense of pride as we are different from the older generation. From your parents to compromise and lived with the restrictions that the Islamic regime put on you. Their grandparents was the generation that actually involved in the revolution of 1979, the parents, which were the middle generation. And these are the third generation after the revolution of 1979. And therefore they differentiate themselves in terms of their identity from the older generation. That's the life part of it. One can go more and more. They want to access and they see on social media what happens in the rest of the world. They're well aware.”
2022-11-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #334 – Abbas Amanat: Iran Protests, Mahsa Amini, History, CIA & Nuclear Weapons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As extensively as one might imagine. And this is a variety of reasons. Perhaps you can get to that later on, if you like. But as far as this younger generation, they don't care. They don't listen even as much to their parents as the older generations did. Or one might say even the nature of the relationship between the parents and the youth has changed. It's not the concept of again a patriarchy that a father or even a mother would tell the daughter or son what to do. Basically, they have to negotiate.”
2022-11-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #334 – Abbas Amanat: Iran Protests, Mahsa Amini, History, CIA & Nuclear Weapons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They want music, they want dancing, they want to be free in the street, they want to have boyfriends and live freely and don't be constantly looked by the big brother to tell them what to do. And not to do or not to do. So they share virtually with the entire Iranian society as a whole. Although the older generations, that's a big puzzle. What you would see is that the older generation don't so far at least don't take part.”
2022-11-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #334 – Abbas Amanat: Iran Protests, Mahsa Amini, History, CIA & Nuclear Weapons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It may seem to us as kind of trivial and secondary, but appearance is important. Clothing is important. How you would imagine yourself is important. They don't want to be seen in the way that the authorities would like to impose upon them as this kind of an idea of a chaste Islamic woman who is fully covered and is fully protected the idea of a male member of the family protects The female, that is what you would say at the heart of this rebellion. And of course, that goes with everything else, the second part of this message, the idea of life. Basically means, if you like to use the American equivalent of this, the pursuit of the happiness. That's what they want. They want fun.”
2022-11-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #334 – Abbas Amanat: Iran Protests, Mahsa Amini, History, CIA & Nuclear Weapons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“43 years of the Islamic Republic's act of imposition of a certain so-called Islamic values on women. Then it's a matter of education. You would see that there is segregation in the schools. One of the issues that now, right now, is at the heart of these demonstrations is that self-services in many of the campuses of Iranian universities are segregated, male and female to different rooms, to different holes. Now they are breaking through the walls virtually everywhere and sit together in order to basically resist the authorities who want to impose segregation in matters of appearance in the public, of course.”
2022-11-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #334 – Abbas Amanat: Iran Protests, Mahsa Amini, History, CIA & Nuclear Weapons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that means that probably in matters of divorce, marriage and divorce, in matters of custody of your children, in matter of inheritance, in matter of freedom of movement, you depend on your husband, your father, your brother, a male member of your family, your child even, your son, could be the case. And because of that, obviously, a younger generation who is so well informed through social media knows about the world as much as an American does, American kid does, and probably sometimes more. They're very, very curious. From what I hear, or sometimes that I met a few of them outside Iran, you'll see that how this new journey. Is completely different from what the Islamic Republic wanted to create in its social engineering. It's basically the failure.”
2022-11-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #334 – Abbas Amanat: Iran Protests, Mahsa Amini, History, CIA & Nuclear Weapons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Much deeper and actually before we get into that, it's interesting to note that in many of these demonstrations we see in the university campuses or in the streets, you see women with hijab, young women with hijab are next to those who have to remove their hijab and they are together basically protesting. That's the most interesting feature of these demonstrations. And then men and women together against the segregation that the regime has imposed upon them all these years. Now, in terms of what it represents, as I pointed out, one is the question of the whole series of one might say civil and legal discriminations against women. You are considered as a kind of a second-class citizen. You depend on your men as a kind of a patriarchy Has been institutionalized in the Islamic Republic in a very”
2022-11-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #334 – Abbas Amanat: Iran Protests, Mahsa Amini, History, CIA & Nuclear Weapons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For the past 43 years, and they would think that these all basically symbolized or represented by varying the mandatory wearying of the hijab, which is at the core of this protest. You see the young women, if you look at many of these clips that comes through in the past six weeks, women in streets take off their mandatory scarves, which is a young shawl or some kind of a head covering, that's all. And they throw it into the bonfire in the middle of the street, and they dance around it. And slogans. So there is a sense of complete rejection of what this regime for 43 years, 43 years have been imposing on women. It's not as it's sometimes been portrayed, a movement against hijab through and through. But it basically says, you know, there has to be a choice for those who want to wear hijab and those who want to remain without a job.”
2022-11-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #334 – Abbas Amanat: Iran Protests, Mahsa Amini, History, CIA & Nuclear Weapons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it just moved to Kurdistan and from Kurdistan now being the message of this movement reflects pretty much sums up what this movement is all about. Women in the forefront because of all the, one might say discriminations, the treatment, the humiliation that this younger generation feels, well, not only the younger generations, but most of the Iranian secular middle classes since 1979 basically.”
2022-11-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #334 – Abbas Amanat: Iran Protests, Mahsa Amini, History, CIA & Nuclear Weapons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, if you listen to the main slogan, which is the message of this movement, it's called women life freedom, zan, which is a translation of actually the Kurdish equivalent, which is close to Persian being in the European language. And it's apparently initiated first in the Syrian Kurdistan where they were fighting against the Islamic Daesh forces because they were attacking the Yazidis there and the women were being enslaved. But the message as it moved, historians are interested in this kind of”
2022-11-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #334 – Abbas Amanat: Iran Protests, Mahsa Amini, History, CIA & Nuclear Weapons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All around the country and then even to high schools. And that also made it a very remarkable protest movement because, first of all, it involves the youth and not necessarily the older generations. You see them around, but not as many. Also, you see men and women together young girls and boys. And they are adamant, they are desperate in the sense of the tone of their protest. And they are extremely courageous because they stand against the security forces that were immediately Were sent off to the streets and in full gear, that is.”
2022-11-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #334 – Abbas Amanat: Iran Protests, Mahsa Amini, History, CIA & Nuclear Weapons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And being a Kurd visiting Tehran, this all added up to really turn her into some kind of a martyr of this cause. And that's what it is. And her picture, graphics that were artistically produced based on her portrait, has now dominates basically as the symbol of this protest movement. And the protest movement goes on, everybody was thinking, or at least the authorities were thinking that it's going to die out in a matter of a few days, but it became more intense, first in the streets of Tehran by young women, mostly probably between, I would say, 17, 18 teenagers to 22, 23 or thereabouts, and then to university campus.”
2022-11-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #334 – Abbas Amanat: Iran Protests, Mahsa Amini, History, CIA & Nuclear Weapons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that through the social media was widely spread throughout Iran. And almost the next day, surprisingly, you could see this outburst of sympathy for her. People are in the streets weeping. Because she was seen as such an innocent young woman, 22 years old And the family, the mother and the father, also mourning for her.”
2022-11-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #334 – Abbas Amanat: Iran Protests, Mahsa Amini, History, CIA & Nuclear Weapons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Presumably there were two women fully clad, that is officers serving on that force and two men. And nobody exactly knows what had happened. She had been beaten up and apparently there was no sign of any wrongdoing on her side. She was fully covered. It seems that there was some altercation in the process. And the outcome was that she was unconscious, not necessarily when she was arrested, but in the course of the detention, when they take them to a center, presumably to re-educate them. And she apparently collapsed. And maybe my sense is that she must have had some kind of a problem because of the skull being broken or something had happened. And she died in the hospital the next day.”
2022-11-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #334 – Abbas Amanat: Iran Protests, Mahsa Amini, History, CIA & Nuclear Weapons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The protests are now in their sixth The death of that young woman, a kurd who was visiting Tehran as a tourist, sparked Something very deep. That particularly concern the younger generations. That is what you would call the equivalent of the Z generation in this country. They call themselves Dahdi in Persian because Iran follows the solar calendar of its own. It's an ancient solar calendar. And the time that they were born, they were in the 1380s. That's what they call themselves hashtag. 80s, hashtag for the 80s. And the circumstances that surround the unfortunate death of this young, beautiful Kurdish woman is really tragic. She was arrested by what it's referred to as the morality police, morality patrol called guidance police, that is.”
2022-11-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #334 – Abbas Amanat: Iran Protests, Mahsa Amini, History, CIA & Nuclear Weapons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source