Iran's Counterrevolution & the Future of the Greater Middle East | Kamran Bokhari

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Jan 19, 2026

Kamran Bokhari, a strategic forecaster on the Middle East and Eurasia, provides a concise historical lens on modern Iran. He traces state formation, explains the IRGC’s rise and internal fractures. He analyzes the drivers of the current nationwide protests, possible pathways for regime decay or chaos, and the likely regional ripple effects across neighboring states.

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INSIGHT

Historical Roots Shape Iran's Strategy

Iran's modern borders and political fractures stem from 19th–20th century losses and foreign influence during the Qajar and Pahlavi eras.
These historical wounds shape Iran's security mindset and persistent Western-facing threat perception.

INSIGHT

Why Iran Has Two Militaries

The ARTEŞ (regular army) and the IRGC evolved from post-revolution purges and the Iran–Iraq war into a parallel military state.
The IRGC gained political, economic, and internal-security roles, creating institutional rivalry and overlap.

ANECDOTE

1979 Army Refusal Shaped The Revolution

Kamran recounts how the Arteş refused to fire on protesters in 1979, forcing the Shah to flee.
That pivotal military decision enabled the Islamic Republic's establishment and shaped future civil–military relations.

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Episode 459 of Hidden Forces is the twelfth episode in the Hundred Year Pivot podcast series. In it, Demetri Kofinas and Grant Williams speak with Kamran Bokhari, a strategic forecaster and geopolitical analyst who specializes on the Middle Eastern and Eurasia, about Iran's nationwide protests, what they reveal about the power and stability of the Iranian regime, and what the state of Iranian affairs portends for Iran's future, the region's geopolitics, and the strategic considerations and objectives of the United States.

The conversation's opening hour traces Iran's modern formation—beginning in the early 1900s with the Constitutional Revolution, moving through the 1953 coup and the Shah's rule, and culminating in the 1979 Islamic Revolution and its aftermath.

Kamran walks the audience through the evolution of Iran's dual military structure, explaining the critical distinction between the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the regular armed forces (Artesh), and how the IRGC grew from an ideological militia into an oversized parallel state controlling everything from telecommunications to Iran's nuclear program, while becoming increasingly corrupt and internally divided.

The second hour is devoted to analyzing the current protests engulfing Iran, how they differ from previous uprisings, and the implications for a severely weakened IRGC following Israel's dismantling of its proxy network, the relentless targeting of its commanders, and its failure to secure the safety of its own citizens from Israeli reprisals. They explore the regime's internal factionalization, the role of the merchant class in these protests, the potential pathways forward—from managed regime decay to military intervention to outright chaos—and the cascading effects that Iran's instability could have on its neighbors, from Turkey and Azerbaijan to Iraq, Afghanistan, and beyond.

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Episode Recorded on 01/15/2026