I spoke with Julia Hartley-Brewer of London’s talkRADIO on Wednesday about the protests across Iran over economic and political issues.

The conversation begins with an explanation of the causes of the demonstrations:

What we are looking at over the next few days is whether the protests remain on economic issues and the Government says, “OK, we hear you. We’re going to something about it”, or whether the political demands are so entrenched that we see something bigger as in 2009 when the message was “we don’t think this system is legitimate”.

Then we discuss the violence — “I don’t think we are looking at a systematic use of force yet to quell the protests” — knock back the regime pretext of a foreign-instigated protest (“It’s nonsense), and consider the question, “What should we outside Iran do?”

What is important is not Donald Trump’s interests or American interests or our interests in the UK — it’s the interests of Iranians. When we say “Do it this way” or “Do it that way”, when we say, “You need this kind of ‘democracy'”, we cross the line.

What I believe we should do is always uphold the right of Iranians to be able to talk to their government.

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