Скачать или смотреть Iran's Counterrevolution & the Future of the Greater Middle East | Kamran Bokhari

Episode 459 of Hidden Forces is the twelfth episode in the Hundred Year Pivot podcast series. In it, Demetri Kofinas and Grant Williams speak with Kamran Bokhari, a strategic forecaster and geopolitical analyst who specializes on the Middle Eastern and Eurasia, about Iran's nationwide protests, what they reveal about the power and stability of the Iranian regime, and what the state of Iranian affairs portends for Iran’s future, the region’s geopolitics, and the strategic considerations and objectives of the United States.

The conversation's opening hour traces Iran's modern formation—beginning in the early 1900s with the Constitutional Revolution, moving through the 1953 coup and the Shah's rule, and culminating in the 1979 Islamic Revolution and its aftermath.

Kamran walks the audience through the evolution of Iran's dual military structure, explaining the critical distinction between the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the regular armed forces (Artesh), and how the IRGC grew from an ideological militia into an oversized parallel state controlling everything from telecommunications to Iran’s nuclear program, while becoming increasingly corrupt and internally divided.

The second hour is devoted to analyzing the current protests engulfing Iran, how they differ from previous uprisings, and the implications for a severely weakened IRGC following Israel's dismantling of its proxy network, the relentless targeting of its commanders, and its failure to secure the safety of its own citizens from Israeli reprisals. They explore the regime's internal factionalization, the role of the merchant class in these protests, the potential pathways forward—from managed regime decay to military intervention to outright chaos—and the cascading effects that Iran's instability could have on its neighbors, from Turkey and Azerbaijan to Iraq, Afghanistan, and beyond.

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00:00 Introduction
05:01 Iran's Geopolitical Dynamics
18:21 The Role of the IRGC
41:41 The 2015 Nuclear Deal and Its Aftermath
47:36 Recent Protests and Economic Struggles
55:37 Regime's Struggle with Election Fraud
55:43 Economic Pain and Protests
56:52 The Spark of Merchant Protests
57:02 Currency Devaluation Crisis
57:31 Nationwide Protests and Regime's Response
58:03 Comparing Past and Present Protests
58:44 Regime's Survival vs. Collapse
01:00:23 Potential US Intervention
01:02:09 Military Dynamics in Iran
01:18:42 Ethnic Complexity and Regional Impact
01:20:02 Neighboring Countries' Concerns
01:31:20 Conspiracy Theories and Speculations
01:34:23 Final Thoughts

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Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas

Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou

Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas

Episode Recorded on 01/15/2026