BENSON BYTE: "This Is A Regime That Survives On fear" - Dr. Abbas Milani On The Iranian Government

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Now it's time for another Guy Benson Show, Benson Bite, where we bring you the day's most interesting interviews in a bite-sized package. For the full episode, visit guybensonshow.com or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Guy Benson (0:47)

Dr. Abbas Milani, research fellow and co-director of the Iran Democracy Project here at Hoover. He's also the director of Iranian studies at Stanford as well. Doctor, it's great to have you here.

Abbas Milani (1:00)

My pleasure, as always.

Guy Benson (1:02)

So I just want to get a broad picture from you about what you're hearing about what's happening inside Iran right now. We're months and months into this conflict. You had the military aspect of it as well. You had the brutal repression and murders of protests in the streets from the regime. You now have these very significant sanctions imposed by the United States.

What are you hearing?

Abbas Milani (1:27)

Well, the suppression continues. Virtually every day somebody is executed in Iran. The regime makes it very clear that they are going to kill anybody who opposes them. They make threats and they sometimes occasionally to the tune of, I think, 370 people in the last three, four months, execute them. So the repression is there, but there is dire economic reality. There is almost 100 percent inflation. There is at least 50 percent unemployment amongst the youth. The regime itself claims that there is virtually no investment, even from within Iran. People are unsure about the future, those who have the money.

The shortage is of medicine. There is increasing shortage of energy. The regime is giving 60 gallon of gasoline at a virtual free price. The rest is almost 2 million per gas, for a liter of gas. So it is absolutely impossible to manage.

So virtually everybody except the very, very, very rich, which is a very small slither of the Iranian society, are under economic pressure. The regime is under economic pressure. The sanctions have virtually stopped their ability to sell any oil, which is a source of income and what enables them to feed their oppressive apparatus at home and their proxies in the region.

Guy Benson (3:13)

How much is it you're able to be in contact with people, and you know a lot of this stuff, how much in terms of the population, the general population, there's a lot of anger, of course, toward the regime. How much is it anger? How much is it fear?

Obviously regime wants the fear side to win, so they don't have a full uprising. They quell it violently whenever there's an attempt. So they want the fear to win, but there's this real simmering anger and dissatisfaction with the status quo. How's that tug of war going on the ground?

Abbas Milani (3:48)

I think that's in a sense the determining tug of war. The regime wants the fear factor to win, and the people are fearless virtually.

And I say virtually because the regime constantly attacks them. The Iranian women are at the forefront of the effort to break the regime's fear factor, that they continue to defy the regime, they appear in public without the veil, the regime keeps threatening them, and women keep appearing in public without the veil. And they know, the women know, and the regime knows, that once that fear is broken, then the dam will break. This is a regime that survives in fear.

Guy Benson (4:33)

How much longer could this go on? Because I know there was hope that they would topple and fall months ago, and yet here they are clinging on, although in this enfeebled state, and they're lashing out, they're killing, they're arresting, they're doing all that, they're failing badly at basic governance, and in all these choices that they've made for years, pursuing fanatically the nuclear program, pursuing all of their support for terrorism, and I think everyday Iranians are like, well, what about us? And they're seething.

It feels unsustainable, but sometimes unsustainable things somehow get sustained for a long time.

Abbas Milani (5:10)

They do, and I think that this regime, so long as, like all authoritarian regimes, authoritarian regimes fall when they lose the ability to suppress and kill. And so long as that machinery of oppression continues, they continue, and the people pay the price.