Interviews

Sazegara says Khamenei no longer trusts even his closest protection team.

During the June 2025 war, Sazegara criticises the government's inability to manage the crisis.

Sazegara argues that Khamenei's regime has become a bargaining chip for Putin's Russia.

A wide-ranging interview with Alex Winston covering his role in the 1979 revolution, his relationship with Khomeini, the founding of the IRGC, how his views turned against the union of state and religion, his disqualification from the 2001 presidential election, and the internal conflicts and problems facing Khamenei.

After the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, Sazegara points to deep intelligence penetration.

An interview for the IRGC's 45th anniversary, when he was a non-resident scholar in MEI's Iran Program. He traces the idea of the Guards to his student years in the U.S. with the Liberation Movement of Iran, and discusses the early factions, Khomeini's and Khamenei's different handling of the force, the second…

Sazegara analyses Israel's retaliatory strike on targets inside Iran in April 2024.

After the strike on Iran's consulate in Damascus, Sazegara explains that hostility to Israel is built into the regime's ideology.

Sazegara assesses a major Israeli strike on IRGC personnel.

Sazegara says the IRGC intelligence organisation is thoroughly corrupt.

An interview-based profile by Amber French-Griette for the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict. It describes his YouTube talks on news and nonviolent resistance, broadcast since June 2009, and his path from IRGC founder to dissident. It covers his reading of the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising after Mahsa…

Sazegara describes how Khamenei and the IRGC's Sarallah headquarters directed the crackdown.