All right, Alexander, let's talk about the situation in Iran. What are your thoughts as to what

is happening in Iran? It looks like the government is starting to get a handle on these protesters

or insurgents or whatever they are. It started off as a protest over inflation and economic matters. And as was the case with Syria, it does remind me of

Syria around 2010 when you had similar types of protests and then they were infiltrated,

and you ended up with the conflict and this would eventually brought us to the regime change of Assad many, many years later.

So that's what Iran reminds me of in a way, but what do you think about everything that is happening in Iran?

You're absolutely right, and it reminded me of the same thing, and I followed the protests in Syria very, very closely.

So the parallels are indeed extremely strong. So there's a number of things to say.

Firstly, there are two aspects to this and they go alongside each other and that makes it, I think,

more complicated, more difficult in some ways to get a clear understanding of what is going on. Firstly, there is the

internal problems within Iran, the economic and social problems that exist there, that have

existed there for a long time, and which in some ways, in my opinion, the government of President Peskian has aggravated,

though I don't want to give the impression, you know, that I'm throwing everything on him.

Iran has never managed to run its economy in a particularly efficient and orderly way. You get problems with the currency. It

fluctuates wildly. Issues of inflation exist. That does create stresses for many people.

And of course, there are sanctions and the sanctions are very tough and a country like Iran obviously

is going to be affected, badly affected economically by the sanctions. But, and I have to say this,

I think an Iranian government that ran the affairs of Iran properly and well and had a more orderly and consistent approach

to economic policy would nonetheless have managed to handle the situation better. Iran is a very

big country. It has large economic resources. It's basically self-sufficient in energy and food, it's got

a large and fairly sophisticated industrial base.

Even despite the sanctions, you should not be getting this constant economic instability

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