Does the regime in Tehran feel threatened?
Alfoneh: The Iranian leadership is extremely threatened not by foreign enemies, but by the Iranian people. They believe that the greatest threat to the survival of the regime does not emanate from the United States of America or Israel; they only use America and Israel as excuses to suppress internal opposition. It is no accident that every single time a political activist is arrested, that they confess being Israeli or American agents. This is not accidental. The Islamic Republic systematically uses the existence of so-called foreign enemies—these mythical enemies, unreal enemies—to suppress internal opposition. And therefore, this also tells me that the regime, in reality, feels threatened by the modernized population. NER: Is the fall of the Iranian regime inevitable? Alfoneh: In all revolutions, you see several tendencies leading to breakup of regimes—regardless if you look at the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution or the Iranian Revolution of ’79. One is those changes in so
