December 11, 2024
Professor Meir Litvak, Tel Aviv University, for the Center for Israel Education
In this extraordinary review, Professor Meir Litvak unfolds the ideological origins and development of the Iranian regime’s stark hatred of Zionism and Israel. A sacrosanct core to the Islamic Republic’s beliefs is the destruction of Israel and the killing of Jews. Thousands of Israelis and Jews across the world have died or been wounded at the hands of the Iranian regime and its proxies, including Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Houthis. Israelis have lived for decades through Iranian-inspired words and actions aimed at degrading Jews and destroying Israel. Indeed, Israel’s military attacks on Iran in June 2025 aimed to roll back or remove Iran’s nuclear weapons production capabilities. Emotionally, Israelis remain almost unainimousl motivated to stop Iranian leaders who formulate and execute plans and provide funding to those opposed to Jewish survival.
Litvak’s incisive review of the Iranian regime’s hatred of Israel should be seen in the context of “Iran’s Relations With Israel and the Jewish People From Ancient Times to the Present Day,” a timeline of Iranian-Jewish/Israeli relations, which were largely positive before the Islamists overthrew the Shah’s secular regime during the Carter administration.
Litvak provided this assessment in the second session of a three-part CIE series on modern Israel presented in December 2024 in Atlanta. He is one of Israel’s and the world’s leading scholars on modern Iranian history and particularly on the politics, policies and ideologies of the Iranian Islamic Republic. The author of numerous books and scholarly articles, he presented “Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism in Modern Iran,” a one-hour webinar, in February 2025.
Meir Litvak: Good evening, everyone, and it’s really a great pleasure any time to be in one meeting with Ken and when he gives me the opportunity to speak and to talk to you. I will speak about the Iran-Israeli relations, go a little bit to the past.
Shia Iran has historically been, I would say, one of the most, one of the least hospitable states to Jews in the Middle East. Unlike the majority Sunnis, Shia Islam has one particular problem with the Jews, which is that the Jews are ritually unclean, what is called in Persian najasat or in Arabic najasa, which means, for instance, that in Shia Islam if a Jew touches any kind of food, a Muslim cannot eat this food. If a Jew touches a glass of water, a Muslim cannot drink this glass of water. It has to be rinsed and purified and washed, et cetera. It reached, say, a certain level of absurdity when in the 19th century Shia clerics issued the ruling saying that when it rains outside, Jews cannot walk in the street because there’s a danger that if the Jew walks in the street, the raindrops will fall on the Jew’s head, and from the Jew’s head to the ground, they will contaminate the ground, and then the Muslims will not be able to walk.
Ten years ago, I gave a lecture in the Israeli town Rishon LeZion, and I told about this story about the 19th century, and at the end of the lecture, a woman comes to me and said, “Mister, this is not the 19th century. I grew up in Iran in the 1970s, and we had the same problem in the 1970s.” But it’s not only this issue. The Jewish community in Iran was the only Jewish community in the past several centuries which faced not only discrimination, but what we call zeroshma, that is, they were forced to convert. About a third of the Jewish community converted to Islam in the 17th century under threat of death. As late as 1839, the entire Jewish community of the city of Mashhad in northeastern Iran was forced to convert to Islam or face massacre. What is phenomenal about this Jewish community is they remained crypto Jews for a hundred years. They resorted back to Judaism in the 1930s. By the way, they lived 200 years as crypto Jews, married among themselves so they would not be exposed to others. By the way, today this is the source of genetic problems because of these marriages. So this is the historical element, but with the 20th century, with the rise of the Pahlavi dynasty, things changed.
The last Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Shah, ruled from 1941 to 1979, and basically he was the real ruler from 1953, had a different policy toward Israel. Because Mohammad Reza Shah was afraid of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, and he was isolated very much in the Middle East, he established close relations with Israel. These were military relations, intelligence relations. Israel, by the way, helped the Iranians develop their agriculture. But what is interesting, what was important in these relations is that they were semiofficial. Iran recognized Israel officially in 1950. The two countries had no official diplomatic relations, although there was always an Israeli Embassy in Iran, which was never acknowledged.
There were Israeli advisers in Iran. There were Iranians who came to Israel, but it was never given, you can say, publicity. The Shah described the relations with Israel as love but not marriage, or it is when you have a lover on the side to keep her secretly from the rest of the community. Although, by the way, everyone in Iran knew about it. It was not a secret because the Israeli presence was too strong, but it was not official.
The problem was these were close relations with the government, with the elite, not with the people. From the 1960s onward, we could see growing hostility toward Israel among large segments of the Iran population. By the way, the culmination was a soccer game in 1974, the Asian championship in soccer. And it had Israel, who played against the Iranian team. A day before the game, leaders of the Jewish community in Iran came to the Israeli team and begged them not to win because they feared the pogrom. When they entered the stadium, the hostility of the public was horrible. There were signs of, you know, go to Auschwitz and a donkey with the Israeli flag, et cetera. Fortunately, the Israeli team lost.
Now the change in Iran came because Iranians became increasingly closer to, returned to Islam and became also increasingly anti-Western. And the man who I would say typified or exemplified this change was Ayatollah Khomeini, the future leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Now, Khomeini was in the 1960s and ‘70s a midlevel cleric. Khomeini was a rabid antisemite, and in 1970 he published his most important ideological book, it’s called “Islamic Government: Rule of the Jurist.”
In this book, on Page 1 of this book, Khomeini writes that Islam from its inception was afflicted by the Jews because the Jews conspired against Islam. The Jews conspired against Islam. The Jews tried to foil the mission of the Prophet Muhammad. Then, three pages later, he goes on and explains that in modern times the Jews have allied with groups that were even more satanic than them. That is, it has to be something foreign. That is the West.
And since In the modern period, there has been a Jewish-Western conspiracy against Islam because the Jews and the West understand that Islam, thanks to its morality, its system of law and its ideology is the major obstacle to their designs or schemes to take over the world.
Furthermore, the Jews and the West want to prevent Islam from fulfilling its historical mission to spread all over the world. For Khomeini, Zionism is the culmination of the two Jewish wars against Islam, the one that has started from the time of the Prophet Muhammad, and the second is this Jewish-Western conspiracy against Islam.
Zionism is the peak of this offensive against Islam, with the attempt to implant a Western imperialist base in the middle of the Muslim world in order to dominate the Muslim world. Now, once the revolution took place in Iran in 1978-79, once the Islamic Republic established itself or consolidated itself, of course they severed all ties with Israel.
The Israelis, the last Israelis who remained in Iran were able to flee by various means. Khomeini declared the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan as Jerusalem’s Day. That is, to remember Jerusalem, and, most importantly, Khomeini set the idea, the slogan or the goal Israel must be wiped out. Israel should not exist. This was Khomeini’s ideology, and it became the official policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran. By the way, according to Islamic Iran and penal law, support of Zionism deserves the death punishment.
When, after Khomeini died and he was succeeded by the current leader, Khamenei, Khamenei added two elements to this idea. That in addition to what I mentioned, Zionism is basically a satanic plan by the West to split and subjugate the Muslims by planting this imperialist space in the Middle East, in addition, Zionism is the worst case of moral injustice in the 20th century.
To give an example of Khamenei’s obsession with Zionism, there was an interesting study carried out by the Tony Blair Institute in Britain four years ago. They carried out the content analysis of the speeches by Khomeini and Khamenei, and whereas Israel or Jews or Zionism appear only in 40% of Khomeini’s speeches, they appear in 90% of Khamenei’s speeches. Basically there is almost no speech that Khamenei gives, and he gives, by the way, two or three speeches a week usually, in which Zionism does not appear. And the idea of, again, of destroying Israel has become a sacrosanct principle of the Islamic Republic. The Iranian scholar Karim Sadjadpour said that there are three immutable principles, sacrosanct principles, of the Islamic Republic: hatred of the U.S., hatred of Zionism, and the idea that women should wear their scarf. The Islamic Republic, compromised on everything else, not on these three principles. And as long as Khamenei is alive, I would guess that they would not compromise on the first two.
Now this has been the ideological element. If I look at Iranian policies, not only ideology — let me say two things before discussing actual policies. And let me say two things about Iran which I think are necessary in order to understand Iran. First of all is what I call the two paradoxes of Iran’s psyche or personality. One element is contradiction between their self-perception. They are: Iran is a great power. Iran had been a great civilization, a great empire. That is, we had a glorious past. But we have been humiliated by the West during the past 200 years. So there’s this dichotomy: self-perception of greatness and reality of humiliation by the West. This is one element.
The other element, complementing element, is, on the one hand, tremendous fear of what they call Western influence. That is, the fear that the West is waging a cultural offensive against Iran, or the West is waging a soft war against Iran and against Islam. That is, the West insists on spreading its culture, its ideas, its values, its materialism and godlessness to the Muslim world. So there’s tremendous fear of this Western soft war against Islam in the short term with complete confidence that the long-term future belongs to Iran. Iran is destined to be a great nation and a leader of the Muslim world. That’s destined. They live with this paradox. OK, now this is one thing.
Another point to look at Iran is that Iran as a state or the Islamic Republic, if you look at its foreign policy priority, it has very clear foreign policy priorities, which are essential to understand its policy toward Israel. One is the preservation of the Islamic system, of the regime, while maintaining its Islamic revolutionary identity. Second is Iran’s national interest as a state. Third comes the principle, the Islamic ideology. And in the past 40 years, in most cases, whenever Iran had to make a choice between state interest and Islamic ideology, it gave priority to state interest with two exceptions, unfortunately.
One is hatred of the U.S. because for them, the compromise with the U.S. will threaten the Islamic system. It will threaten the regime itself, so it therefore has higher priority than state priority interest. Iran has been willing to pay a very high price economically, socially, politically, in order not to compromise with the U.S. Because for Iran, the U.S. and what — they describe the U.S. as the Great Satan — the U.S. represents, it is the epitome of everything that is opposed to Islam. The U.S. or Western culture is the epitome of godlessness, excessive materialism, excessive individualism, excessive moral promiscuity, and therefore it poses the worst threat to the Islamic system.
We, the Israelis, we are only Little Satan, and unlike animosity toward the U.S., animosity told Israel, not only they did not cost Iran anything, but in fact Iran benefited from it. So they can, I would say, combine business and pleasure together by their animosity toward Israel. I would say until most recently.
Now, I would add one more point. I think Iran is what I call a pragmatic state, but not a moderate state. I think there’s a confusion between these two terms, which I think are very important. Pragmatic state means that Iran — Iran, by the way, is also a rational state. That is, it is not a suicidal state. They conduct their policy very much on a basis of cost-benefit analysis.
Ken Stein: What is the price that Iran might pay in order to back off of its toxic ideology? Is there a price that it would pay? Would it give up its nuclear option?
Meir Litvak: If the regime’s existence would be in danger, then Iran may change its policy. I’ll give you an example. Iran has been subject to very harsh American sanctions. Khamenei authorized or permitted to hold nuclear negotiations with the U.S. because the sanctions threatened the survival of the regime. But he rejected any normalization with the U.S. He said, OK, nuclear compromise, yes. Does it mean that we’ll open Iran to American investments? Absolutely not. Does it mean that we will agree to any kind of cultural rapprochement with the U.S.? Absolutely not.
Now, to give you another example, Iran’s oil industry suffers from what you can call aging oil wells. OK? Their productivity is declining. The U.S. has the equipment to rejuvenate these oil wells. Iran refused to buy this equipment from the U.S. So they’re willing to pay a price in declining oil production but not compromise with the U.S.
Ken Stein: Would the Iranian regime, if it felt that the United States was willing to end the regime, would Iran then make a compromise? I’m thinking about Obama in September 2013, when he said at the U.N., “We want you to limit your nuclear production, but we’re not interested in ending the regime.” If someone came to power and said, “If you don’t behave and if you don’t do X, Y and Z, we will come after you,” would that cause the Iranian regime to consider backing off?
Meir Litvak: In 2014, Iran went to negotiate with the U.S., and Iran was willing to postpone or maybe even more than postpone, suspend its nuclear activities because Khamenei feared that the very existence of the Iranian system was at stake. I would say, unfortunately, that the U.S. was a bad negotiator and did not get a very good deal in 2014 and 2015. The U.S. could have gotten a much better deal had it been a tougher negotiator, or I would say a better merchant in the Middle Eastern bazaar.
The Iranians, I would say, sadly outwitted the U.S. Still, the agreement, as bad as it was, was better than no agreement. But, again, for Khamenei, compromise with the U.S. threatens the very existence of the regime. By the way, for Khamenei. President Rouhani, for instance, believed that negotiating with the U.S. was essential to save the system. That is, he was willing to make compromises with the U.S. because he believed that the alternative was much worse. Rouhani was less afraid of negotiating with the U.S. Same thing with President Khatami in the early 21st century.
But, again, they were not ultimate decision-makers. The ultimate decision-maker was Khamenei. And Khamenei is, I would say, is completely inflexible at this point. …
In 2003, after the American invasion of Iraq, when, for a while, the invasion seemed to be a success story, and Iran was afraid that it was next in line, they proposed to the Americans what they call the major bargain. We will normalize relations with you, and we’ll stop calling for Israel’s extermination.
Now we don’t know how serious it was. There’s no indication. It is obvious that within a few months they understood that Iraq was not a great success, and therefore they had no longer a need to make such an offer. But you could see that when they were scared for their very existence, they were willing to make major concessions. Again, when their existence was at stake as a regime.
Again, I think that in 2003 when Iran was scared, they were ready to make concessions. Unfortunately, because the U.S. suffered the major setbacks and the casualties, and I cannot blame the U.S., the Iranians are no longer afraid of any American military action against them, and therefore they are more audacious. Again, unless they would fear economic collapse. The sanctions in 2013 threatened them with economic collapse. They were simply able to snatch a good agreement from the predicament.
Ken Stein: Meir, is there anything short of military action that would cause the Iranian regime to step back from either its philosophy, ideology or its commitment to spread its philosophy throughout the Middle East?
Meir Litvak: I would make a distinction. The regime is not going to give up its ideology or beliefs. The most that they can do is suspend them. “So, OK, we will not do it now. We’ll wait for another 10, 15 years. OK.” I don’t think they’re going to change their ideology. They’re not going to change belief system. Otherwise, it will not exist as an Islamic system. But they can certainly say, “Yes. OK.”
Now, again, I’ll give you an example, OK? I think there’s a problem as long as Khamenei is alive. Change is very unlikely. Again, he’s 85. No offense to such elderly people, but usually people at the age of 85 don’t change their belief system and the way they behaved all their lives.
I don’t know what will happen after his death, by the way, because I’m afraid that his son may be even worse than him. But there were other people in Iran, like, again, like President Rouhani, who had different beliefs. Now, Rouhani was not a Zionist, OK? He was not pro-America. But he thought Iran — Rouhani had a major statement in 2015. I’ll give an example, OK?
When Rouhani was president in 2015, he made this very important statement. He said, “Look, the real enemies of Iran are not the U.S. It is not even Israel. The real enemies of Iran are poverty, corruption and a lack of water.” That was a very brave statement. By the way, he was accused of being a traitor after he made the statement.
Rouhani had another important statement. He said it is very important that the centrifuges will continue to turn around or cooperate, but it is equally important that the rules of the Iran economy will continue to turn around. And, by the way, current President Pezeshkian, who is weak — he doesn’t determine policy, but at least he sets a certain option. Pezeshkian said, “I want to remove American sanctions in order to save the Iranian economy,” meaning “I’m willing to make some compromises.”
The big issue is what leeway would Khamenei give him to make what compromises? I will not accumulate more uranium. Certainly I will not go back, by the way; that’s not going to happen. I promise you not to build the bomb or whatever, I don’t know. But you can see that there are elements within the Iranian elite that understand the predicament of the Iranian system, of the Iranian economy, understand, by the way, the growing gap between the people and the state and therefore are looking for a compromise again.
The problem is that there are other elements in Iran — Khamenei, the Revolutionary Guards, who are very powerful, and other conservative elements — who believe that being pure is better than compromising with the U.S. And, again, the question is who will prevail?
Ken Stein: Does Iran benefit from the polarization of American politics?
Meir Litvak: I guess so because for them it means that the U.S. is less capable of making any decisions or taking great action against us. Now the Iranians are afraid of Trump on the one hand because he’s completely unpredictable, and therefore they may be willing to negotiate. At the same time, they may believe that Trump is an isolationist; therefore, they have nothing to fear from him. So their position, I would say, right now is wait and see. But, yeah, certainly the polarization helps them.
Audience question: Is it possible for Iran to have an ideology without an enemy? Why can’t they just do what they do without having the Satan?
Meir Litvak: I will say two things. One is revolutions always need enemies, and, equally important, radical religious movements have a dichotomous view of human reality. Radical religious movements, or you can call it fundamental movements, perceive human reality as a constant war. There is a war in the soul of every believer between, let’s say, his conscience or his desires and whims. And there’s equal war, bigger war, between the forces of good and the forces of evil, between God’s representatives and God’s enemies.
The self-perception of all modern Islamic movements is that human society today is divided between the party of God, Hezbollah, and the party of Satan, Hezb-ash-Shaitan. We, the radical Muslims, represent the absolute and the sole truth. We represent the only one true divine truth. Therefore, whoever disagrees with us is not only our rival. Whoever disagrees with us is an enemy of God because we represent God’s words on Earth. Therefore, you cannot be a radical Muslim without an enemy.
And for radical Muslims, again, their belief is that they represent God. The ultimate enemy is the West because since the Enlightenment, the West has put humanity above God. Equally problematic, capitalism has given liberty to human beings’ worst materialistic, basest traits.
And, again, Western culture, with its stress on the individual, on accomplish what you want or what you are, you choose self, is the complete opposite of Islam because Islam means that you voluntarily subjugate yourself to God. Therefore, from their point of view, the modern West is the ultimate enemy.
Our problem here as Jews is for them Jews represent the West at its worst.
Now, there’s another problem, that for Islamism and Iran, by the way, the Jews are the perceived enemies of Islam because not only does the Koran have too many anti-Jewish passages, but because they have to settle accounts which go back to the early days of Islam.
And most important for Muslims, for Islamists, radical Islamists, Jews have been destined by God to be humiliated and dispersed among the nations. The very claim of the Jews to be a people and a nation, the very claim of the Jews that they deserve sovereignty and the establishing a state is an affront against God. It is defiance of God’s orders or of the correct cosmic order, and the correct cosmic order is that Islam should be on top.
There’s a saying in Arabic — I’ll say it in Arabic and can convey that I’m not distorting it — [Arabic phrase]. Islam should be on top. Islam should reign supreme. Nothing can be above Islam. The Jews are supposed to be down below. Jewish sovereignty — even worse, Jewish victories over Muslims are a direct challenge to the correct cosmic order and direct challenge to God. Therefore, there are impossible to accept it.
You have to be either secular, or you have to say, OK, Jewish sovereignty is horrible, but you know, let God solve the problem, which is what Anwar Sadat said. Sadat was not a Zionist. Sadat did not recognize our legitimate rights, but he was smart enough to understand that we are there. But for Islamists, it’s against the very grain of their identity. And, yes, if you’re an Islamist, you need enemies.
With Islamists, peace is impossible. With Islamists, with movements like Hamas, like Hezbollah, like Iran, like all these nice guys, peace is impossible.
What you can have at the most is cease-fire, armistice for a limited period of time. If the Muslims feel that they are weak, it is legitimate for them to sign an armistice with the enemy for a limited period of time. And, by the way, can, they can violate the armistice any time they want. So you can have cease-fire, armistice, with such movements, not full-fledged peace. Again, with Islamists, not Muslims. The Egyptians, Jordanians, Emiratis, Bahrainis, Moroccans are different because they don’t adhere to this Islamist, fundamentalist ideology.
Ken Stein: Meir, to reaffirm what you just said, Sinwar was willing to have a cease-fire so he could rearm, refurbish, remake his army so he could then fight again. And he says many times, “We can have a truce, but we’re not going to recognize the state. We have to wipe the state off the map.”
Meir Litvak: Absolutely. More than that, they devised a doctrine which they call the Muqawima Doctrine, or the Resistance Doctrine, which means that we are waging a long-term war of attrition against Israel until we destroy Israel. Now because of the disparity in numbers, population, territory, et cetera, we, the Muslims or the Arabs, can sustain unlimited numbers of defeats. We can lose territory, and we can lose an unlimited number of people, of men. As long as we survive, we will defeat the enemy because the Israelis cannot sustain casualties for eternity.
Now, in this long-term war attrition, our goal is to bleed the other side, to destroy it. This is a long-term process. Therefore, there will be periods of armistice, cease-fire. During this period, we will build our force. We’ll train ourselves, acquire weapons, then we’ll wage a war. We’ll wage a struggle. Then after another round, there could be another time of, again, cease-fire, and this will go on until we defeat the enemy 50, 100 years from now. This is the perception of the Islamist movements. Again, I emphasize not of Muslims, of Islamists.
Ken Stein: Do the Iranian people agree with the ideology of the regime? And then the second part is, how does the regime keep itself in power domestically?
Meir Litvak: It’s difficult to say what 80, 85 million Iranians think, but I would say my guess is this: There’s probably 20, 25% plus/minus of the people of Iran support the regime, either for ideological reasons or because they benefit from the regime.
I think there is a large majority, large number of Iranians, who don’t care about Israel. They have very urgent socioeconomic problems. There is high inflation in Iran. There is poverty in Iran. There are many, many social problems in Iran. And they don’t understand why they have to spend so much money.
Now, by the way, to give an example, Iran wasted squandered $30 billion in supporting the Assad regime, which are now gone. Many Iranians don’t understand why, if there’s so much poverty in Iran, why do they have to give money to the Palestinians, to the Lebanese, to the Syrians? There was a slogan: “No Gaza, no Lebanon, we only die for Iran.” The regime changed it: “Yes Gaza, yes Lebanon, we die for Islam.”
There’s also another minority of Iranians who I would say are supportive of Israel because they hate the regime. And there’s an interesting anecdote, I can’t show it to you, but you’ll have to believe me. At the entry of every major institution in Iran, especially in Iran, the Iranians painted on the ground the American flag and the Israeli flag. So the people who enter, let’s say, a government office or the University of Iran, they will step over the American and Israeli flags. There are video clips showing students making an effort to go on the sidelines in order not to step on the American and Israeli flags. That is in defiance of the regime.
You can see another example, by the way, take the issue of the hijab, of the scarf. We now have Iranian women, I admire the courage, who defy the ban on removing the hijab. Some of them have been sentenced to 10 years in prison. Some of them have been sentenced to lashes. They continue to defy the regime.
So there’s clearly growing, I would say, alienation among large segments of the Iranian population from the regime. The problem is that the regime is still very powerful, I’m afraid. I hope I’m wrong, by the way.
Now the regime has resources. It has oil. It has other resources. The regime can maintain a huge patronage system to keep the support of, let’s say, again, 25, 30% of the population. The regime is brutal. It has proven its brutality and its efficiency in crushing opposition. And, unfortunately, the opposition, those who oppose the government, have no leadership. They have no resources. With all due respect to the internet, the regime has learned to neutralize the internet. I think also, among many events, there is fear that if they would rebel, either Iran would plunge into a civil war, or they will get a worst dictatorship, let’s say a military dictatorship of the Revolutionary Guards.
And these things keep people for the time being fearful of any mass protests. Again, I don’t know what will happen tomorrow, and maybe there will be a major revolution in Iran, or maybe the regime will again, somehow, I don’t know, let’s say, degenerate, ossify, which, by the way, it suffers certain stagnation in many, many fields. And eventually it will collapse. I don’t know.
Let me also say, by the way, that Iran faces today several major problems which could threaten not only the regime, but could threaten Iran itself. And I’ll give you three of them which I think are very, very important. One is global warming. The fear in Iran, and here I’m talking about government experts, that temperatures in the southern parts of Iran will rise to something like 55, 60 degrees centigrade. I don’t know how much it is, 150 degrees Fahrenheit [60 Celsius is 140 Fahrenheit]. Human beings cannot live under such conditions. And that will mean massive migration of people from southern Iran to northern Iran. One problem.
Second problem is water shortages, which are becoming worse partly because of droughts, partly because of water mismanagement. And there are already water shortages, which, again, could threaten life in Iran. Now the Iran government can solve the problem by investing billions of dollars in water desalination. But it doesn’t do it, either because Khamenei doesn’t understand it or because he doesn’t care, I don’t know why, or because they’re inefficient.
But these are things that will threaten Iran in 10, 20 years. They’re going to pose a major threat to Iran. Twenty years, it’s going to pose a major, almost existential threat. By the way, water shortage is also caused by ground subsidence, which is also a major problem. So they’re going to face huge problems in the future, not the very distant future.
And, again, the amazing thing is that they do very little to address these problems. Again, is it because Khamenei doesn’t understand it at his age, or because he’s obsessed with his ideology, or because it requires too many concessions again. But they’re going to face problems. There’s no question about it. And you can already see, by the way, that there’s growing anger, frustration of the population over these water shortages, over other problems.