S8 Ep630: 10. Jonatyn Sayeh and Bill Roggioexamine Iran’s ethnic landscape and prospects for regime collapse. Sayeh argues that while local actors might occupy territory, a unified national uprising is more likely than total Balkanization,,. (10)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 24 March 2026
⏱️ 5 minutes
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Summary
10. Jonatyn Sayeh and Bill Roggioexamine Iran’s ethnic landscape and prospects for regime collapse. Sayeh argues that while local actors might occupy territory, a unified national uprising is more likely than total Balkanization,,. (10)
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| 0:00.0 | I'm John Batchett with my colleague Bill Rajo, my colleague from the Foundation for |
| 0:20.0 | Defense of Democracy, |
| 0:21.1 | he keeps a long word journal as a senior fellow. |
| 0:23.8 | And we're speaking with his colleague, Jonathan Saya, who's lived in Tehran, who is Persian, Iranian, |
| 0:31.3 | and understands the many faces of Iran here in the 21st century from thousands of years of conflict and moving and home |
| 0:42.2 | basing. And I note that the significant minorities are hardly minorities in Iran. They're the |
| 0:48.7 | Azeris, they're the Arabs, they're the Baluch, they're the Kurds, and that's just the beginning. |
| 0:53.4 | They're the subsets of worship. |
| 0:56.0 | So I come to you, Jonathan, A, with a story that unites them all, |
| 1:00.0 | according to the Financial Times, immediately after the bombing stops in Tehran, |
| 1:05.2 | people have a craving for sweets, especially pastry, |
| 1:09.9 | especially the famous Iranian flatbread, Persian flatbread |
| 1:14.2 | with jam spread on the top or marmalade, something recognizably childlike, but comforting. |
| 1:22.2 | And I note that it's happening in America as well. Not Iranians, real Americans are eating up |
| 1:27.3 | everything that's on a pastry |
| 1:29.0 | shelf. I mean it to be completely at odds with violence at the same time. Your comments, though, |
| 1:37.0 | about everybody in Iran comes from different parts of the, in Tehran comes from different parts |
| 1:42.2 | of the country, and they learn to live together. |
| 1:50.5 | Are they all eating sweets, Jonathan? Are we watching a country come together over violence and pastry? They are probably all eating sweets in celebration of the demise of the Islamic |
| 1:57.7 | Republic. Every regime official that's being taken out is being celebrated |
| 2:01.6 | by every sector of society, of course, except the regime's support base. Now, talking about the ethnic |
| 2:07.7 | composition of Iran, I would really focus that mostly on the linguistic side of things. I don't think |
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