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Breaking History

Why Iran’s Reform Movement Failed

Breaking History

The Free Press

History

4.81.1K Ratings

🗓️ 9 April 2026

⏱️ 53 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Arash Azizi lived through the democracy movement in Iran before he wrote about it. Now a historian at Yale, he joins Eli Lake to trace the arc from former president Mohammad Khatami’s unlikely rise to the crushed hopes of the Green Movement—and what it tells us about whether reform from within the Islamic Republic was ever really possible. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

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0:20.0

We're going to have a little baby.

0:21.8

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0:27.3

18 plus subscription required T's and T supply.

0:30.0

Welcome back, Breaking History listeners.

0:32.0

Today we have a great guest for these sort of interim episodes as we work on our season.

0:36.6

He is a Yale historian and lecturer, Arash Azizi,

0:42.2

an Iranian national, somebody who has both participated in

0:46.6

and chronicled the Iranian democracy movement.

0:50.6

So we are really fortunate to have him.

0:52.2

Thank you so much for coming on, Arash.

0:54.2

Of course, thank you for having me, Lai. It's Good to be with you. Absolutely. So let me just start,

0:58.5

let me sort of tell me your story. Where were you born in Iran? When did you come to the United States and

1:03.4

sort of your connection to the Iranian democracy movement? So I'm from Tehran. I was born in Tehran in 1988,

...

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