Cartoon by Shahab Jafarnejad

Where does Iran go now?

NPR: Iran's government has barely given an inch after months of widespread protests. NPR's Mary Louise Kelly asks Ali Vaez, the Iran Project's director at the International Crisis Group, what happens next

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

So many questions raised by that young woman and the many other people we interviewed during our time in Iran. We're going to talk through some of them now with Ali Vaez, who's director of the Iran Project at the International Crisis Group. He has been listening along with us. I want to welcome you, and I want you to start with that point she made, that the dissent does not go away. As you know, many Iranians, both inside and outside Iran, wanted these protests to be different from ones that have come before, wanted them to become more than protests, to be a revolution. Have they? Are they?

ALI VAEZ: You know, my view is that what happened in Iran was a revolution in the mindset of the Iranian people, not a revolution on the streets. The numbers did not reach critical mass. We're talking about tens of thousands of people on the streets, not hundreds of thousands and not millions. But again, as I said, it was not a revolution on the streets, but it was a revolution in the mindset of the Iranian people because I think now there is critical mass within the society in understanding that this is a regime that is not open to reforms, that is not able to meet the underlying grievances that gave rise to these protests. This is going to turn into a - almost a continuous cycle of protest. And there might be ebbs and flows. But it's not going to go away. And eventually, this stalemate will have to be broken in the interest of the Iranian people because of the simple fact that it's now the majority of the people who want fundamental change.

KELLY: What role, if any, should the U.S. play here? Because we interviewed some people who said, why isn't the U.S. doing more to help my country, to help democracy? We talked to plenty of other people who were very skeptical about American motives. They point back to 1953 and the U.S. helping to overthrow a democratically elected government in Iran. What, in your view, should the U.S. do?

VAEZ: Look, I think that we have to accept the inconvenient truth, that its record of regime change, especially in that part of the world, is nothing but abject failure >>> Listen here