YouSaid · the spoken record

Arash Azizi

lines on the record: 46
first: 2024-04-23
most recent: 2024-04-23
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

“Iranian writers, they arrest them every time they meet at someone's home, right? As soon as 20 Iranian writers gather together, they might be just having tea. Someone will follow them and will break them down. Obviously these are not the conditions that organizers face around the world. So it would be important to use the freedoms that they have to organize for the changes that you want and also remember that these democratic rights, rule of law and all the rest of them are important and they can be taken away. And you shouldn't take them for granted. And they're not just for the people of the law or whatever. Quite opposite. They're for the masses of the people who would use this freedoms to advance and fight for what they want.”
2024-04-23 · Intelligence Squared · Arash Azizi on Iran's Turbulent Past and its Uncertain Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Cliche, but I would say, you know, the fact that you can organize without the police repression to get the changes that you want, right-wingers usually like to use this to say, well, Iranians don't have freedom, we should appreciate our freedoms here, but they don't seem to be excited when people actually use these freedoms in any way. So obviously that's not the sort of lessons I want to draw. But I want to say that Tehran is an example of, you know, when they give you political freedom, you can use it to achieve the changes that you want. The feminist groups in Iran used even a slide opening that opened in late 90s to push for amazing changes in law and to organize and bring out people. So I think a lot of Iranians are sort of disappointed when they see, oh, okay, in a condition, and when I'm talking repression in Iran, you have a group, let's say, and a writer's group, association.”
2024-04-23 · Intelligence Squared · Arash Azizi on Iran's Turbulent Past and its Uncertain Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly, exactly. It's fundamentally different. And I think we need to, like, you know, they can have a role. Of course, media has always had a role. But I think perhaps we need to be humble a little bit and think about all the grand movements of the 20th century that brought all the great changes that did African National Congress brought Dunaparthe, the Indian National Congress brought down British colonialism and all the other achievements in the 20th century. And they had all these big bad old centralized political parties that we've all learned to dissect in so many ways and they didn't have social media either. So perhaps we need to learn something about that from them and use those lessons actually as we try to change our world for a better place. And the last thing I'd say in this regard, as an Iranian, is perhaps a bit.”
2024-04-23 · Intelligence Squared · Arash Azizi on Iran's Turbulent Past and its Uncertain Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Temptation of wanting to end things with one big explosion on the streets or thinking that if we get this obsession with awareness and with public opinion it all boils down to sort of obsession with media and with being seen, which is sort of a lot now in social media as well, which is different”
2024-04-23 · Intelligence Squared · Arash Azizi on Iran's Turbulent Past and its Uncertain Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Would have been impossible had that opening had not been made. And in fact, perhaps some of the mistakes of these groups was that they went faster than this opportunity allowed and very easy. They would say, okay, now we're beyond this, you know, now we go to the next phase without sort of patiently trying to look at the reality of politics and see what is it that they can do at every case. So as I said, after this decade of mass protests of 2010s, I hope everywhere we realize that change, political change comes through patient work and it comes through organization and it comes through people coming together to unite on specific things, which means they'll, of course, they'll disagree on many things, but they'll agree on specific things. And these temptation of, you know,”
2024-04-23 · Intelligence Squared · Arash Azizi on Iran's Turbulent Past and its Uncertain Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Have to work with people who you disagree on with many other things and sort of boycotting the process and not going through it, you know, certainly not voting or things like that will never bring you change. I think what Iranians have shown in their better moments, actually, is that they can be quite flexible in sort of trying different tactics to gain certain things. After all, President Khatami that people voted for in 1997 did not stand for any of our demands. If anybody thinks, I don't know, Kira Stommer or Joe Biden doesn't represent for all that they want, try voting for people like Khatami or President Rohani, as many of us did in 2017. But we understood that supporting one side against the other can open up the political space and it did open up political space. All the trade unions, feminist groups, all the groups that I write about in the book.”
2024-04-23 · Intelligence Squared · Arash Azizi on Iran's Turbulent Past and its Uncertain Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We always feel that political choices are so limited, and you know, we can have good reasons to after all, I'm an old time member of the Labour Party in Britain, and I sometimes struggle to find out what exactly different it is in its agenda today than some parts of the conservatives. The change is not always what people want to see, especially now, for example, when we see in relation to Israel's war on Gaza. And we'll see how different parties of center-right and center-left effectively have sort of similar lines. Although I think there is stark differences in the United States, obviously between Biden and Trump on this issue. But I think it's sort of important to realize that, yes, we have limited political choices, but that after all, politics is about working with other people and in a country of millions of people, you know, you will always have to.”
2024-04-23 · Intelligence Squared · Arash Azizi on Iran's Turbulent Past and its Uncertain Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, in the United States, for example, there is now a fight for reproductive rights, for the right to abortion that is being banned. Well, there are people with stark differences on pretty much everything else. But I think, thankfully, they're learning that we need to come together to fight on this one issue that we agree about. And after all, that's how politics has always worked and will always work. So I think the idea that Organization really matters that there's no alternative to the groundwork of meeting regularly, joining a group, accepting that you need to be a part of a group, there's no pride in just saying, you know, I'm an individual, I'm so different, I'm beyond all politics. I don't want to join any group. They're all the same. And this sort of brings me to the other issue. I mean, I already sort of talked about it into coming together with different people. You know, the idea.”
2024-04-23 · Intelligence Squared · Arash Azizi on Iran's Turbulent Past and its Uncertain Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of course, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think that really are lessons. There are always lessons in failure as well as in success, right? I think, okay, so let me talk about some of the lessons. First of all, I think it's the idea that you need organization, that we need to get over this sort of almost narcissistic obsession that we have with individual expressionism. Politics is not a realm of just individual expressionism, right? Yes, it's great to find yourself. It's great to have a way of wanting to express yourself. But perhaps we've gone too far following the 1960s and sort of this rise of this kind of politics. Perhaps we've gone too far in that direction. After all, politics needs to be a collective effort that, you know, Arash and Mightily will have many differences. But maybe we agree on something together and we need to come together to work for it.”
2024-04-23 · Intelligence Squared · Arash Azizi on Iran's Turbulent Past and its Uncertain Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Said that we can learn the lessons from the failures that we have, which has to start by us accepting that they were failures. And then there are lessons to be learned. And we don't sort of keep doing the same thing again and again.”
2024-04-23 · Intelligence Squared · Arash Azizi on Iran's Turbulent Past and its Uncertain Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is this all achievements of the movements like 2022 and those that fought before? They would not have been in vain and they'll, you know, in order to sort of the new rulers will have to, in order to calm things down and get a hold on Iran, will have to bring about these changes. But then even then our struggle will continue ever since at least 1905 where the constitutional revolution launched in Iran with a demand for rule of law and a parliament. We have fought for this universal values of democracy, of fairness in relation to law and all that. And that is a fight that will have to continue. And I have no doubt that it will continue. And I hope as I said,”
2024-04-23 · Intelligence Squared · Arash Azizi on Iran's Turbulent Past and its Uncertain Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Keeps fighting the fight. Now, I do think there will be grand judges in Iran. I think the fact is that this regime is really ideologically bankrupt. I think it sort of suffers from not just a crisis of legitimacy, but a crisis of representation. But most importantly, a crisis of competence. It's just, as Ran, Iranian economy to the ground, it's foreign policy has put the country in danger of war. So I do believe that Ayatollah Khamenei is 84 turning 85 in about a month. And I think when his time is over, he's the only thing that's really holding the regime to get a prediction, as I just outlined in an article I published this week in the New York Times, is that the Iranian rulers will bring about some changes. Now, this will not be democratizing changes, but they will probably get rid of mandatory hijab, they'll relax some politics.”
2024-04-23 · Intelligence Squared · Arash Azizi on Iran's Turbulent Past and its Uncertain Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Political alternatives. And the struggle continues. What gives me hope is the fact that, as I said, this amazing energy and relentlessness of Iranians, I mean, just the thing that I told you about the civil disobedience of women not wearing their hijab, I mean, it's absolutely awesome to me. And it's not just not wearing their hijab. It's the kind of fights that they do every day if you just sort of follow the news in Iran every day. I think a lot of Iranian men are always speaking about how they are in awe to sort of our Iranian women, but also just, I mean, other Iranian men as well, of how they keep, the fact that they don't give up, it's kind of amazing, right? If they tow your car, maybe you'll just cover your hair. But my friend who they towed hair, she's not covering hair now either. And she's just.”
2024-04-23 · Intelligence Squared · Arash Azizi on Iran's Turbulent Past and its Uncertain Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Everyone wants to be themselves. Everyone wants to have a voice. Well, you know, it's kind of harder to do politics because if you want to join a political group and if you want to, especially if you're not joining a broad political coalition, you have to accept that there will be Muslims and non-Muslims. There will be people who are devout Muslims and those who are not. There will be those who have radically different ideas about Iranian history, about economy. There will be leftists, there will be right-wingers, right? And the idea is that, okay, you agree on some sort of democratic vision. This is the minimum of what we would need to bring down this government, and we were not able to get it last year. The good news is, I think it was sort of a moment of truth. So I think it showed a lot of bad actors to everybody. I think it led to people realizing that, okay, maybe hopefully I am hoping now we understand that's horizontalism doesn't work. We understand that we need political organization.”
2024-04-23 · Intelligence Squared · Arash Azizi on Iran's Turbulent Past and its Uncertain Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. It's not in a great shape. Not only does it have a clear pathway, but it's not in a great shape. Now, I'm generally an optimistic person, and I'll tell you what are the optimistic things. In the last year, it was sort of a moment of truth. We, Iranians, failed to put up a political opposition that could offer a real alternative to the Iranian regime. Disagreements between ourselves, by ourselves, I mean, majority of Iranians that are opposed and sort of political representations of them were more than what they could bring them together. That's the reality. Because if you want the reality is if you want to bring together a diverse coalition to bring down the government, you need to be able to put your differences aside for the purpose of uniting and bringing down the regime. And this is not an easy thing, especially because we live in sort of an age of individualist expression.”
2024-04-23 · Intelligence Squared · Arash Azizi on Iran's Turbulent Past and its Uncertain Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is an excellent question. Social struggles, civic struggles are optimistic by their nature. You have this beautiful slogans like Venceremos, you know, we will win, we will overcome. We are on the right side of history. The arch of history bends to our justice. Unfortunately, the arch of history doesn't always bend to our justice. And we don't always win. And if you're honest, the reality is that the movement against the Islamic When you and I are speaking doesn't have clear”
2024-04-23 · Intelligence Squared · Arash Azizi on Iran's Turbulent Past and its Uncertain Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Their own street administration is just a demonstration of your power, unless you don't have theories of change and strategies for change, you're not going to get there. And I think that's sort of a lessons that Iranians have learned very bitterly.”
2024-04-23 · Intelligence Squared · Arash Azizi on Iran's Turbulent Past and its Uncertain Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the striking thing about it was how women went all over the country. I remember they were my friends going all over the country to villages, cities, talking to women and telling them, you know, these are our rights and these are rights we should fight for and getting their signature. And so this grant work of organizing and building groups and going through what are the usual difficulties of a group, agreements, disagreements, when are we too radical, when are we not radical? stuff that is that really builds political groups. And I think the, you know, if any young person reads this book or is interested in change, I think what we should remember is that there is no shortcut there. Building these groups is how, you know, it's how you can get to political change. Unfortunately, not through sort of hashtags and even a street protest, which”
2024-04-23 · Intelligence Squared · Arash Azizi on Iran's Turbulent Past and its Uncertain Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A hunger for that kind of. Exactly. There was a hunger. Yeah. And this led to tons of new trade unions, feminist groups, right opening up here and there. And they did this grant work, right? I think to this day, I'm 36. And I've organized in many different countries, lived in many different countries. I think the most fascinating movement that I've ever seen was a movement called Campaign for One Million Signature that I think I mentioned in the book. And this was a feminist campaign to get one million signatures to change discriminatory laws against women in Iran.”
2024-04-23 · Intelligence Squared · Arash Azizi on Iran's Turbulent Past and its Uncertain Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“First time I remember Marx and Lenin, you know, their books was published openly in Iran. I was happy for the leftists, but there were tons of also books by liberal theorists that were published. Just to give you a sense of that era, famous liberal philosopher, when he came to Iran, I remember newspapers on the headlines would say, you know, Roti's second day in Iran. So he was like a global celebrity in Iran. It was sort of strange for him. He never expected to face that. My point is that it was a very...”
2024-04-23 · Intelligence Squared · Arash Azizi on Iran's Turbulent Past and its Uncertain Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Change. No one has explained to me how, right? No one has said to me, Why is it that people in New York caring a lot about the movement in Iran, how is this going to lead to change, right? If they spell it out, let's do a foreign intervention, which we need to want, nor do we think it sort of works in a straight way. So I think that there's a lot of illusions here. But the kind of grant work that you mentioned is really the result of the fact that I mentioned very briefly in the beginning, I was nine years old when Khatami got elected. So what happened really was that Iran opened up a little. It opened up a little. The terrible repressive 80s and the 90s in the late 90s and early 2000s gave way to a situation that, okay, you could open a book club. You could open an association. You could write a newspapers. You could, for the”
2024-04-23 · Intelligence Squared · Arash Azizi on Iran's Turbulent Past and its Uncertain Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, the age of revolutions is over. This will be a this movement doesn't have parties, doesn't have its horizontal, this worship of the fact that it's horizontalism. Oh, and you know, both left and the right did this. There's some sort of cruel irony of that, you know, sort of anarchism or sort of anti-Stalinism of the left sort of led to this promotion of horizontalism and of course on the right, as I said, sort of Silicon Valley tech optimism, they all met in this celebration of some sort of horizontalism. So, you know, so I think basically one of the issues in Iran in the movements have been these beliefs that if you're loud enough and this obsession, can I just also say this obsession with public opinion in the West, right? You know, this idea that if only enough people in America and Britain and Germany knew about the movement in Iran, surely this somehow translates to”
2024-04-23 · Intelligence Squared · Arash Azizi on Iran's Turbulent Past and its Uncertain Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Do it can get information to people very quickly and bring them out. But then what happens, right? You need organization. And unfortunately, I'm very bitter about this as you can tell because I've also lived through this, right? I remember in January, February, March, April of 2011 discussing with different friends in Egypt, in Syria, in Tunisia, they said, no, you won't get the change you want by staying in the square. You know, you can't be the change you want to be in the world just because you have a cool tent in Tahrir Square in Cairo, where you have established egalitarianism or whatever will not lead to a change in the country of 80 million that you need to watch out for Muslim Brotherhood and Army, which are organized forces. But unfortunately, it was a tough period, I think, to withdraw. And the same in Iran, 2009, you know, I was sort of a young leftist in 2009, but to read Oped after Oped saying that”
2024-04-23 · Intelligence Squared · Arash Azizi on Iran's Turbulent Past and its Uncertain Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. That's exactly right. And 2009 was Iran. Of course, then we had the Arab Spring in 2011, which was spectacular and led to all these places. And unfortunately, it fit the kind of exact biases that are dominant in the West and through the West and Silicon Valley can travel the world. After all, wouldn't it be really nice if you had this way where this cool supposedly cool, I don't know Twitter connected whatever it's in the sort of imagination of the liberal middle class in these countries could just change decades of repressive rule by coming together and a few people dying. And it would be great if it can happen. The problem is that, of course, it doesn't happen. The normal rules of politics don't get suspended because you have a shiny new toy. And sure, the best social media can...”
2024-04-23 · Intelligence Squared · Arash Azizi on Iran's Turbulent Past and its Uncertain Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This abused of these illusions enough. I think they had a big role in 2009 already. You know, 2009 was one of the first revolutions where people sort of called the Twitter revolution.”
2024-04-23 · Intelligence Squared · Arash Azizi on Iran's Turbulent Past and its Uncertain Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's this idea that people come out and they're on the streets, and if they somehow stay on the street long enough, magically they'll lead some political change. And magically, also this will be the political change that somehow meets what the majority of the protesters want. I think the lessons of the 2010s is that this is not what you get. There's a couple of great new books on this, you know, Vincent Bevins' book about what he calls a decade of mass protest in 2010. Not only it's not like this, but it's actually a pernicious illusion that you can sort of not do politics as usual in some ways and organize political parties, political platforms, fight over different demands, and somehow get things done by capturing public opinion or coming out on the streets alone and using hashtags and all that. So, you know, I think this has hurt Iranians as well and their movements. And I hope that we can.”
2024-04-23 · Intelligence Squared · Arash Azizi on Iran's Turbulent Past and its Uncertain Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it's fair to say that it had a lot to do with how the movement sort of found a global audience and this and sort of previous rounds of it. But I think it's also the case that, as I said, there were tons of other protest movements that happened in Iran throughout this period. And as you mentioned, I'll speak a little bit more about that as well, you know, there were tons of less glamorous work of these groups that had civil society had been keeping up for a while. So it wasn't quite an online explosion only, right? It relied on sort of pent of anger in society and people who were not on the internet at all as well would have joined it. But there is definitely a similarity to other movements around the world in that”
2024-04-23 · Intelligence Squared · Arash Azizi on Iran's Turbulent Past and its Uncertain Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it's an excellent question. I'm part of a global conversation. I think what we have to come to realize from the perspective of 2024 is that this illusions in online activism, this sort of hashtag field explosions that are supposed to be sort of post-ideologic.”
2024-04-23 · Intelligence Squared · Arash Azizi on Iran's Turbulent Past and its Uncertain Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Have to explain what is your relationship to that woman. So, all the ways in which life is abnormal in Iran, all the things that makes our government abnormal, the way it also spends our resources on sort of going on adventures around the world, all the things that makes it unique and abnormal are why Iranians are asking for a normal life, frankly, is the minimum of our demands is to have a life that is a little bit more normal, a little bit like other countries in the region and the world even before we even get to democratization.”
2024-04-23 · Intelligence Squared · Arash Azizi on Iran's Turbulent Past and its Uncertain Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Random restrictions on life are there, especially for women who form half of the society. You know, it's not just a mandatory hijab. Think about things like, you know, getting on a motorcycle is banned for women, smoking publicly in many places are banned for women. Women need the permission of their husbands or their fathers to travel. I remember my mom, you know, very successful filmmaker in Iran. She would travel to a city to shoot and she couldn't stay in a hotel room without having sort of a permit from my father. Let on leaving the country, which was sort of daily humiliations that are imposed on Iranian women. And for the rest of us, you could be walking down with a girl in a street in Tehran as a man. And this could be a friend. This could be your cousin. This could be your sister. And you could get arrested. And then you'd have.”
2024-04-23 · Intelligence Squared · Arash Azizi on Iran's Turbulent Past and its Uncertain Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Meets the sort of national part of this movement. It's been hard to sort of understand sometimes for us Iranians ourselves how to navigate this. But I think it's certainly a sort of a national renaissance or rejuvenation movement because it's an idea that our country can be better than this. It can provide a better life for its citizens and normal life. You mentioned normal life. It became a slogan for a normal life. It's one of those tweets also, but it has also been discussed in the past few years. And it's a very striking slogan when you think about it. Because what do we mean by normal life? Well, just think of how the very basic ways in which life is abnormal in Iran in a way that it's not like even in the many repressive dictatorships after all, Middle East is full of dictatorships, you know, but in none of them this sort of...”
2024-04-23 · Intelligence Squared · Arash Azizi on Iran's Turbulent Past and its Uncertain Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This led into thousands of tweets of people really imagining this new Iran. And Shervin Hajipur, a singer, young singer who is in prison now as we speak, came up with a song that later on the Grammy, of course, sort of came up with a ballad, if you will, a song of anthem for the movement, which string through brought together some of this sort of tweets to mention some of these demands. And these demands are for, as I said, they're for gender justice, therefore environmental justice, therefore a better economic situation. But more than anything really, they are for democracy and democratization. But for us, it's not just a slogan or empty word. It's about taking back our country, basically. It's the idea that Iranians, and that's why this is also a very national movement. That's where democracy meets.”
2024-04-23 · Intelligence Squared · Arash Azizi on Iran's Turbulent Past and its Uncertain Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Best ways to answer this is early on a trend started on social media using a hashtag called Baroya, which means for the sake of or for. And just random people started basically talking about their dreams using these hashtag. You know, you can compare it to sort of imagine of John Lennon. They started saying, you know, imagine Iran in which are...”
2024-04-23 · Intelligence Squared · Arash Azizi on Iran's Turbulent Past and its Uncertain Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Then, so the fight has been going on now. So, the movement against this compulsory hijab was always there. But of course, it was not just the movement against compulsory hijab because, as I said, the root of it was this idea that this group of authoritarian certainly minority corrupt people who bring nothing to Iranian society and take everything from it have to be confronted. And this came on the back of previous movements in 2017, in 2019, before that in 2009. So really came at the end of a long streak of struggles against the regime. And sometimes people struggled and protested by a street protest. Sometimes they tried voting when it was possible to vote for a reformist or one candidate against the other. But they've always fought against the status quo basically throughout my entire life. Now, what were their demands?”
2024-04-23 · Intelligence Squared · Arash Azizi on Iran's Turbulent Past and its Uncertain Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And sort of many other issues. Someone on a state TV recently even claimed that they're going to use cameras to not only automatically find women. So if you're driving your car and your hair is out, you can see money taken out of your bank account immediately. And there is sort of no legal basis to what he said. But already I have a friend who just towed their car for two weeks. So yes, it's always been a side of a struggle and it changed a lot throughout my lifetime, right? From when I was a kid, how woman could dress outside to when I was a teenager, it drastically, very drastically changed.”
2024-04-23 · Intelligence Squared · Arash Azizi on Iran's Turbulent Past and its Uncertain Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, you know, technically there is that, as I said, the fullest one is that only your face and your hands can be out, right? But yeah, in effect, there's been a fight between people, and I should say there's been a fight between women and the authorities. I should say that as I speak now, the most important achievement of this movement is that as I speak to you now, millions of women, probably I can even say tens of millions of women are sort of engaging in this civil disobedience by disobeying these laws every day. If you just now call someone in Iran and look at an average restaurant in Tehran, in many other cities even, you'll see tons of women. Perhaps a majority of women not wearing their hijab. And they pay a very heavy price for that, by the way, right now. It's sort of a cat and mouse fight, as I said, within the government and the woman. Your car can be towed a restaurant that tons of restaurants or cafes that have served women like this have been closed down.”
2024-04-23 · Intelligence Squared · Arash Azizi on Iran's Turbulent Past and its Uncertain Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is an excellent question. Let me put it this way, the first demand was a fight against this compulsory hijab, the fact that Iran is the only country in the world where women are forced to cover their head no matter who they are, no matter how young or old, no matter whether they're Muslims or not, no matter whether they're citizens or foreigners, no matter whether they're sitting in their own car or they are in public places, everywhere they're supposed to cover their hair, and not just the hair basically to cover all their bodies except their face and their hands. So it's more than anything, you know, it's sort of an obscene regime of suppression, right? Because in order to do this, right, you need police forces all over the country that will try to enforce this.”
2024-04-23 · Intelligence Squared · Arash Azizi on Iran's Turbulent Past and its Uncertain Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That could have been killed like this. So it was this realization that this group of men, the Islamic Republic, who are a minority, who represent a minority, and are accountable to no one, can do whatever they want with us, with the rest of us. And in terms of this Demanos sense, I think really makes a lot of us angry and gave rise to the grand movement that came.”
2024-04-23 · Intelligence Squared · Arash Azizi on Iran's Turbulent Past and its Uncertain Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“She was from Kurdistan in western Iran. She was visiting Tehran for her sort of birthday weekend. She was doing some shopping where these vans that stand outside metro stations all over Tehran take Tehran, beat her up. And then sort of she dies from her injuries later. And the reason this was so enraging is that it's this feeling that this could be really, you know, it wasn't actually immediately not even about hijab. It was about a group of men who are answerable and accountable to no one. And they could do this to any of us. You know, because imagine, you know, when I say any of us, okay, so let's say some families are more religious. You know, my own grandmother or others, you know, they very seriously their hijab and it's their choice, right? But they have the rest of us, right? They all know someone. They know it could be their sister, their cousin, their granddaughter.”
2024-04-23 · Intelligence Squared · Arash Azizi on Iran's Turbulent Past and its Uncertain Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it's a fascinating question because I think a lot of us might, obviously, when it was happening first, we didn't know that it will spiral and become this grand movement, the Islamic Republic does so much cruelty on a daily basis that you don't know which one of them will spark a movement. But I remember a picture of her that I think I saw that was very, very shocking, a picture of her in a hospital bed, I think shortly before dying. And by the time the picture was circulating, I mean, there was already a news that she's in a coma. And then the news that she had unfortunately died. And I remember this picture being everywhere on Instagram and social media and people just sort of raw rage that overtook many of us. And I'll tell you why this raw rage. Because, you know, so Mahsa, as the pictures of her later showed,”
2024-04-23 · Intelligence Squared · Arash Azizi on Iran's Turbulent Past and its Uncertain Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Better environment. We want to sort of take back our country. We want trade unions, want workers to have better rights. We want it sort of thorough democratization of society. These were really demands that were coming out of the movement. And they had really been a subject my entire life. You know, we started talking about me growing up, but then that's really the story of my generation many ways. We've lived through many defeats and we've been sort of voicing the same demands for a very long time. So I wanted to. As you say, focus on the contemporary to give a view to readers as to what is it the Iranians want, but also just a little bit.”
2024-04-23 · Intelligence Squared · Arash Azizi on Iran's Turbulent Past and its Uncertain Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I started writing the book in early last year, like in January 2023. And my intention was to really give voice to this, you know, I said what Iranians want to these demands of Iranians that were coming out of the movement, that it wasn't just about getting rid of a dictator. It wasn't just about changing one ruler for the other. It certainly wasn't just about, oh, we don't want religious leaders. Is that, no, actually, what do we want?”
2024-04-23 · Intelligence Squared · Arash Azizi on Iran's Turbulent Past and its Uncertain Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, I think the reason is that In the last few years during 2022 and 2023 movement, the movement known as Woman Life Freedom, but also before that in the past few years, everyone around the world, they hear a lot of news about Iranians rising up against the government. They all know there's a terrible government, there's a repressive regime. Iranians rise up against it. But I think it's sort of a flattening occurs, is that, so you see people rising up. You know these are the bad guys. You know in some ways in what ways they're the bad guys, if you know a little bit more, you know that women are forced to wear the hijab, so they don't want to wear it and they're fighting against it. But I think what sometimes goes missing is this very sort of rich tapestry of all the different kind of movements that Iranians are involved in.”
2024-04-23 · Intelligence Squared · Arash Azizi on Iran's Turbulent Past and its Uncertain Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Lots of history one can talk about, but I have grown up on these repressive Islamic Republic, as I wrote about in my book where even some basic things in life are repressed. It can be pretty terrible in many ways. But I have very fond memories of growing up still, of course. It was an incredibly cultured upbringing, I would say. People my age in high school and around me, we were always into novels and theaters and movies. You know, I've lived in many countries since, I always say, I don't think I've ever really seen something like that that, you know, sort of everybody as a certain RH was always into this sort of cultural products. And of course, the sense that they were standing up against this regime that wanted to ban all of this culture things that we loved and sort of was enemy and freedom also gave a great sort of camaraderie.”
2024-04-23 · Intelligence Squared · Arash Azizi on Iran's Turbulent Past and its Uncertain Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Youth, I remember my family and almost everybody that you knew was really excited that Iran was going to see changes, it was going to democratize. It was a time where almost everybody read newspapers. You know, I remember my grandmother would ask me or I hear her talking about the different difference between democratic systems in Switzerland and France and the United States and which one would be better for Iran. So it was really this kind of a strange period perhaps in the late 90s early 2000s where Iranians really had an idea that they could see democratization very soon. And of course that's sort of not what came to pass. But one more thing I'd say about growing up in Iran is that so that was my younger years but then in my teenage years Ahmedine Hijab was elected president in 2005.”
2024-04-23 · Intelligence Squared · Arash Azizi on Iran's Turbulent Past and its Uncertain Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right. I was born in 1988 in the last closing months of the Iran Iraq war when my mom was pregnant with me and Shahwah says that she was in bomb shelters when Saddam Hussein was sort of attacking Iran. So it's almost a different era by now, I feel. Iran that I grew up in was obviously under the Tambud Islamic Republic as it is today. It sort of had that repressive measures. But I think my first real political memory is 1997. I was nine years old when Muhammad Khatami was elected president. And then I was 13, he was re-elected president. And this was a time was someone who was a reformist. He was a cleric. He was from inside the regime. He was not a radical by any way in any shape or form. But he was a reformist. And behind him was this massive force of millions of Iranians, mostly women.”
2024-04-23 · Intelligence Squared · Arash Azizi on Iran's Turbulent Past and its Uncertain Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT