The Islamic Republic vs. the Iranian People with Ali Siadatan

With thousands of Iranian civilians killed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in recent weeks, the will of the Iranian people is unmistakable: a nation seeking to liberate itself from an Islamic regime that devalues human life and has set Iran back decades.

On this episode of Don’t Know Much About, Naya sits down with Ali Siadatan, an Iranian who fled the country after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Drawing on both his personal experience and deep regional expertise, Ali helps make sense of this pivotal moment—and explains why earlier episodes of unrest in Iran, including the Green Movement of 2009, may not have constituted a true revolution at all.

One of Ali’s most compelling arguments is that both Western observers and many Iranians lack literacy in Islamic religious doctrine. As a result, they often misread the intentions of Islamic clerics, projecting secular assumptions onto a fundamentally theological system of power. This and more on this episode.

Clarifying the complex. Step into my classroom.