Omid Memarian

But Can you just flesh out a little bit more about what you argue in that piece and what you feel like U.S. pressure on Iran, how does it relate to domestic movements against the very real repression of the regime?

Yeah, so what I was trying to argue in that piece in Foreign Affairs was to reflect upon the domestic consequences for the internal struggle for democracy in Iran that this war is producing.

And if you study the academic literature on democratic transitions, internal struggles for democracy, Scholars agree that there are a set of internal preconditions for democracy that overlap with a certain level of modernization, a certain level of education level, sizable middle class, the existence of an administrative state, a suitable political culture where most of the participants agree to the rules and procedures of democracy.

And I argued in my piece that if you go through all of those preconditions internally, most of them are actually in place in Iraq.

I listed sort of six internal preconditions.