Interviews

He explains how the Shia clergy, once independent of rulers and funded by the people, split after the revolution. Because Khamenei lacked standing among senior clerics, he turned the Islamic Republic into a military and security regime resting on the Revolutionary Guard. He estimates that 80 to 90 percent of clerics…

He describes how the regime turned new technology against the Green Movement: Tehran's traffic cameras and control room used by the Revolutionary Guard to watch protests, internet filtering and slowdowns, and the IRGC's "cyber army," which attacked opposition websites, including his own, with help from hired hackers…

A clip on technology in the struggle between the Green Movement and the regime. The transcript the Bush Center shows for it is the same as for "Government and Technology": the regime's use of traffic cameras, filtering, internet slowdowns and the IRGC's cyber army against the movement's online activity.

He recounts the first days after the 2009 election: the silent march of some 3.5 million people on June 15, Khamenei's Friday-prayer threat, and the shootings the following day when Neda Agha-Soltan was killed. He estimates about 200 deaths and 15,000 arrests, and describes the movement's strategy: delegitimise the…

He says Iran's movement learned from nonviolent struggles from Gandhi and Mandela to Eastern Europe, Chile and the Philippines, and the writings of Gene Sharp, while adding its own tactics, such as rooftop chants of "Allahu Akbar" and slogans written on banknotes. He outlines a planned protest of buying less than a…

He recounts his 2003 arrests and 114 days in prison, with hunger strikes totalling 79 days. His demands were his own release, the release of some 800 students arrested with him, including his son, and an apology from Khamenei to the nation for the judiciary. He was released on $600,000 bail after the death of Zahra…

He describes his daily ten-minute video programme of news, analysis and lessons from other countries' nonviolent movements, posted on his website, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter with help from 14 volunteers. He also shares Persian translations of key texts, such as Gene Sharp's From Dictatorship to Democracy, and was…

He explains how the movement first used the regime's own ceremonial days, such as Quds Day, to protest, then moved from street protests to noncooperation, boycotts and strikes once those days were no longer safe. He argues that the main effect of the crackdown was to destroy the regime's legitimacy, citing polls in…

A short clip in which he describes how the regime refused him licences to publish a newspaper or run a book-publishing company, and how it tries to cut off critics' income, knowing that people who cannot support their families find it hard to stay politically active.

He calls Iranian women the real army of the freedom movement and suggests that the first president of a future secular Iran should be a woman. He attributes their leading role to three decades of discrimination as second-class citizens under religious rule, and to their education: women make up 62 percent of…

This interview-section page links to a segment of CBC Radio's The Current, aired December 31, 2009, titled "Iran Dissent." It notes a week of street turmoil in Iran unmatched since the 1979 revolution that toppled the Shah. Mohsen Sazegara, described as a founder of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, joined the program to…

A 20-page chapter in journalist Reese Erlich's book Conversations with Terrorists (first published 2010), built around his conversations with Sazegara. It opens in Tehran's streets days before the 2009 presidential election and places Sazegara's story, from IRGC founder to dissident, within Iran's democracy movement…