Iran's underground missile city masks a regime 'on brink of collapse'
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I'm Venetia Rainey and this is Battle Lines. It's Monday, 3rd February 2025.

Today, amid news of Iran developing new ballistic missiles and unveiling an underground missile city, we'll be looking at the truth behind this show of force. With its axis of resistance across the Middle East in tatters and ongoing internal issues over women's rights, the economy and the environment, we ask, can the Iranian regime survive 2025?

Plus, I caught up with legendary Iranian director Mohammad Rasalof, who fled the country shortly after making his hugely political new film, The Seed of the Sacred Fig. He told me about what it's like to work with censors in Iran, why he decided to make this film now, and what he thinks and hopes will happen to the Iranian regime.

But first, let's start here in the studio. And I'm joined by my co-host Roland Oliphant and The Telegraph's foreign correspondent Akhtar McCoy. Akhtar, let's start with you because there was some quite striking news over the weekend. Iran unveiled its third underground ballistic missile facility. What do we know? The Islamic Republic is celebrating its 46th anniversary this week. And it's a routine like they would be unveiling missiles and underground missiles. It is what they would call them for

for propaganda purposes mainly. So they did it again this week. They unveiled one underground missile city, and then they said there are some new missiles involved in this facility. They unveiled new missiles, which some of them can reach a target in 1,500 kilometers.

So that's enough, obviously, to reach Israel, Iran's number one enemy in the region. We also had a story over the weekend, which seems related, but I think is about a slightly different development, about Iran secretly building nuclear missiles that can hit Europe. What are the claims here and what do we know about where that information is coming from? Right, so the claim is that Iran is developing missiles with a range of 3,000 kilometres based on designs handled by North Korea,

At the moment, we don't have information about how far along they are in the development of these weapons. It's not necessarily that surprising because Iran has always been working on long-range missiles. And the obsession with long-range missiles goes everywhere.

all the way back to the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s when Saddam Hussein started firing Scud missiles into Tehran. And ever since then, the missile as a thing, whether it's got a nuclear warhead or not,

Having missiles and long-range missiles has always been seen as key to Iranian securities. The source of this, so this is interesting. So this is a claim from the National Council of Resistance of Iran, who periodically put stuff out. Now, the thing to know about the National Council of Resistance of Iran is that it's effectively...

rebranded version of the MEK, the Mujahideen of Iran, who are still listed as a terrorist group in Iran until I think about 2008 they were listed as a terrorist group in the United States and Britain as well. They're a very controversial group. They're exiled from Iran. They have a very smooth PR operation which makes them quite prominent in the West and they kind of position themselves as the voice of anti-regime, pro-democratic sentiment. The caveat is that

They're really unpopular inside Iran. So most ordinary Iranians you speak to cannot stand them. In fact, in my experience inside Iran and speaking to ordinary Iranians, I would say if there's one thing that unifies pro-regime and anti-regime Iranians inside Iran, it's kind of a hatred for this group because they are still largely viewed as a terrorist organization there. Where did they get that information?

not entirely clear, but they have in the past been sources. They have in the past announced stuff that has turned out to be true. Akhtar, anything you want to add? Yeah, the missiles they have, they unveiled this week. The IRGC's command, they said one of them is a new, brand new cruise missile with 1,000 kilometre range and it will join the Iranian Navy.

In Tehran, they were parading the missiles on state television over the weekend and over this week because it's the anniversary revolution. There have been propaganda footage of these missile cities. They call them underground missile cities. But much of that would be for propaganda purposes and just to show because the Islamic Republic has never been as weak as it is now. So it's just to have a counter-propaganda against the Western countries.

Well, that leads me nicely on to your next point, because the reason I want to talk about these stories is that it depicts a very strong Iran, right? An Iran with cutting edge research that's developing new weapons that can take on the West that's still powerful. But things have changed enormously for Iran over the last few years. And I think we should go right back to the women life story.

freedom movement protests in 2022. Because that's when I think, at least from a Western perspective, cracks started to really publicly appear in Iran. So Akhtar, maybe you can take us back and explain a bit about what that movement was and how much popular support it had within Iran and how the Iranian regime dealt with it.

The Islamic Republic's current problem all started in September 2022 when they arrested a young woman for wearing her hijab improperly. It was just looking like a routine arrest, but her death in custody later sparked a nationwide protest which went on for months and the Islamic Republic suppressed that very violently.

It was a very big movement in Iran. It was the biggest challenge for the Islamic Republic since it was established in 1979. And it used all sorts of force and they started shooting people in their eyes with pellets. More than 500 people, according to human rights organizations, were killed, 20,000 arrested. And we know at least 10 of those protesters have so far been executed.

That was a big challenge for the Islamic Republic. You mentioned this is the biggest challenge internally within Iran, but there have been other protests over the years, right? Just give us a sort of potted history of that. Yeah, first anti-regime protests happened in 1999 when the regime shut down a very popular and reformist newspaper, Salam. Students protested that decision of the regime. And a few days later, they stormed the University of Tehran's dormitory, killed one student.

For days, there was national and nationwide protests. First, the Islamic Republic ever faced, and then they could suppress that again with force. And then later on, there were also some other short, like small, small protests. And then the next major one was the 2009 presidential election protest, which was against the results of the election. And then the Green Revolution. Yeah, the Green Revolution, which is its leaders are still under house arrest for the past 11 years.

And then we had the 2019 November protests, which were against the spike in fuel prices. Again, like many people were killed, like...

any sort of defiance against the Islamic Republic would be met with force. And were there any cracks appearing in the regime? It's obviously a sprawling organisation with lots of different levels, political, judiciary, economic, all of this. Were there any dissenting voices that were saying we should be dealing with these 2022 protests and Masa Amini protests differently? There was some, like the reformists, who currently they have a president. They were pressuring the government to be more soft with the protesters.

But the hardliners' voice is always the dominant one. Okay, and we'll get more into that sort of split between the reformists and the hardliners throughout this episode. So, Roland, they managed to pretty much quash these protests and get it under control. And then October 7th happens in 2023. Hamas invades Israel. They kill 1,200 people. They take 250 hostages. And it changes absolutely everything.

Can you talk us through how Iran reacts to October 7th and how things then start to heat up between Israel and Iran over the following year or so? Yes, so October 7th is, in retrospect, it's really a bit of a watershed moment for Iran, this foreign policy. Just to give you the context, so for two decades, quite a few years before this, Iran has been running this policy. They've got various names for it. One of the names is Ford Defence Policy.

which sounds a little bit like cricket, playing down the pitch, as it were. Let's take that cricket analogy. The other word for it is the axis of resistance. And the idea is that Iran needs to project its power across the Middle East. So if the threat isn't right on its borders, the threat can be combated away from Iran itself. That's the defensive part of it. The other way of looking at this, and this is how you look at it if you're sitting in Tel Aviv or something, is it's more like forward aggression.

and that Iran is trying to build a network of allies to surround Israel with the ultimate goal of destroying it. So the architect, the real architect, the real guy who was kind of credited with running this whole thing was a guy called Qasem Soleimani, who was head of the Quds Force. The Quds Force is the expeditionary wing of the IRGC, the group that fights abroad. So he was instrumental in building this alliance with Iran

Hezbollah is the big one, the jewel in the crown, and Iran's always had close ties there ever since the 1980s. Bashar Assad's Syria is another one. So IRGC and Quds Forces were sent and Hezbollah was sent to support Bashar Assad during the Syrian civil war. The Houthis in Yemen are another group. And of course, in Iraq, the Iranians have been deeply involved with sponsoring militias and different political groups there. So from Tehran's point of view, either you call this kind of forward defense and where we're confronting our enemies further abroad with this network or...

But the other way of looking at it is that the Supreme Leader has talked about way down the line, I think, Agto will correct me, but I think by 2040, he says, Israel will cease to exist. And the idea seems to be that this is all preparing the ground with this network of resistance for eventually this big battle. And from the Western Israeli point of view, essentially, Hezbollah in particular, but this network generally, is...

acts as a deterrent. Iran doesn't have a nuclear deterrent yet, but the idea was that if you attack Iran, Iran has this answer and it can threaten Israel's very survival, particularly with Hezbollah perched there with millions of rockets. Hamas is part of this. So when Hamas attacks Israel, Israel goes in hard against Hamas in Gaza. Essentially, this is the axis of resistance being tested.

The thing with deterrence is it's not meant to be tested. It's meant to be this kind of thing. But suddenly it is tested. And suddenly Iran and Hezbollah have a big decision to make. Do you do what they've been saying all the time and act as a network of resistance, stand up for Hamas? Well, if you do that, then you're using your ace. You can only use that card once. That card's meant to be held in reserve for an attack on the Iranian homeland anyway. So they decide to sit it out.

at first and at the beginning of the war Hezbollah fire a few rockets into northern Israel of course escalates over the next several months and so on but you could see a distinct reluctance

in Tehran to let that war turn into the full confrontation because they just weren't ready for it yet. They took flak on the Arab street for this. They took flak at home in their own hardline newspapers for this. Why aren't you standing up for Hamas and so on? And then things begin to unravel until several things happened. And I'm not going to go into the deep history because it's all quite recently. First of all, Israel and Iran end up exchanging direct exchanges of fire for the first time.

None of which do too much damage except the second Israeli strike really badly damaged the Iranian air defenses, which kind of sent a message that Israel can come back and do more if it wants to. But the really big thing was then Israel decided they're going to deal with Hezbollah decisively. They invaded southern Lebanon late last year. By all accounts, they dealt Hezbollah a really, really serious blow. They killed Hassan Nasrallah. Vast numbers of their fighters were basically put out of action.

Almost as a result of that, because Hezbollah was basically neutered, Bashar Assad then falls in Syria. So by the time you get to this point, Iran's regional policy of the past two decades is now in massive tatters. And essentially, they've suffered a very serious military defeat abroad. And that's just the external stuff. So Akhtar will be able to tell us about what that means back inside Iran. But that is where they are. They're quite vulnerable at the moment for that reason.

Yeah, and as you say, with the fall of Bashar al-Assad, the new leader, Ahmad al-Sharaa, is a Sunni, a former Islamist, and he's made it quite clear that he wants to create ties, better ties with Saudi Arabia, traditionally Iran's foe within the region. So we can see that sort of still very fluid relationship

realigning of all these different powers, Turkey taking a more prominent role. And we should also mention, of course, that Russia, Iran's sort of broader backer, particularly in Syria, is very preoccupied with Ukraine and has not been able to offer Iran that same support that it might usually.

So, Akhtar, take us inside Iran. How have they been reacting and responding to these seismic shifts to their power? Yeah, the Islamic Republic has been getting some hit by its regional allies are all in tatters, as Roland said. And inside Iran since last year, since October the 7th, most of the comments from the hardline newspapers or like the government officials said,

At the time it was Ebrahim Raisi, a hotline president when Israel was attacked. And then the atmosphere was very supportive towards Hamas. But since the war dragged on and then many more of Iran's regional allies just vanished,

Inside the IRGC, inside Iran, Hamas has not much support. We had a story a couple of weeks ago, like a senior Iranian official told us, Yahya Sinwar, the former leader of Hamas, is no longer a celebrity within the IRGC.

And later on, they also lost Nasrallah in Lebanon and then Bashar Assad in Syria. They even abandoned Assad. Ten years ago, in 2013, when Assad was on the verge of collapse, Iran was first to send troops there to defend the Assad regime from falling. And for the past decade, the Islamic Republic has had this propaganda of defending the holy shrines, the holy religious sites of Iran.

Shia Islam. But overnight, they just abandoned Assad. So how did the Iranian government or the IRGC, how does the propaganda machine try to explain to Iranian people these huge losses, the loss of Nasrallah, the loss of Assad? For them, that's not a loss. They are celebrating it as a victory. The Supreme Leader Khamenei, they don't acknowledge it as a loss. They say that's a great victory. So there is no loss within the propaganda machine. They're just celebrating a victory.

Coming up after the break, we look at why the IRGC is so powerful, what Trump might do to Iran, and hear from Iranian filmmaker Mohamed Rasalof about his time in prison. Welcome back. Before we go any further, let's maybe explain some of the component parts of the Iranian regime. We're talking about it as if it's a monolith. You've mentioned the IRGC. Ibrahim Rahisi was obviously the president but died last year, another sort of factor that leads into all of this. And we've got Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Akhtar and Roland, can you sort of talk us through the key players in the Iranian regime and if they have conflicting interests, how we sort of puzzle that together? Akhtar will correct me on this, but I think the first thing to understand is that the absolute key player is Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader. Everyone I've spoken to says that he is, because he doesn't give interviews to The Telegraph, sadly, he's not just a figurehead. There's...

Aqta will know a lot more about this than I do. Essentially, his predecessor, Ruhollahomani, the guy who founded the Islamic Republic, came up with quite a novel concept of Islamic government. And in a way, if you looked at that, in a way, before it's put into practice...

You know, it sounds a bit like he would be a constitutional monarch kind of offering kind of a little bit of advice and caution, just making sure that things are properly kind of Islamic and the Islamic state. But he should be above politics. In reality, it means that he has a veto on absolutely everything.

especially foreign policy, especially nuclear policy, especially military policy. He doesn't get involved in day-to-day politics. So he's not going to kind of sully himself by, you know, intervening in day-to-day debates and so on. But ultimately, things have to go before him. Ultimately, he has the veto on things that happen. I did some reporting around this last year at

As I understand, he is viewed as being, although he's 85 years old now, he's frail, but he's still quite with it. He's meant to be very much his own man.

And I was told, look, forget the idea that he's a figurehead or he's controlled by people who kind of control what kind of information he gets. He's very good at playing off other people against each other and deciding which way things are going to go. So he's really at the top of everything. But he's very old and he's going to die. The question of the succession is a live one in Iran today.

And it's not how it's supposed to be. When he was elected by the Assembly of Experts as Supreme Leader, first he was very reluctant to accept it. And then the idea was it would be just a temporary rule until a referendum. Then people would decide whether the job of the Supreme Leader would exist or it would be a council.

But since for the past three and a half decades, he has just captured all of the power and there is no one. I mean, even if some critic come and come up and talk about like any referendum, they would be in prison. We had this very well-known activist, Fatemeh Sepehri. She signed a letter in 2018, asked Khamenei to resign. She has been in prison since then.

So he has great in power, it's just everywhere. So the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, let's explain who they are and why they stand separately from the Iranian army. The IRGC was founded by Rualláh Khomeini as the founder of the Islamic Republic.

as an armed group, different from the regular army. Throughout the Iranian history, the army always stood with people, whether it was during the revolution in 1979 or anywhere else. The army is standing with the people when it's like a deciding, decisive moment. But then Khomeini and his people came with this idea of the IRGC, which is loyal to the regime. And we have similar groups like elsewhere. It's like Bolshevik Red Guards, in a way. Right?

Right, so they're the armed wing of the revolution.

separate to the army because of course a lot of the army hierarchy were loyal to the Shah or it's sworn allegiance to the Shah. Yeah, now the IRGC isn't just the army or armed forces. They control everything. They control like even in a single like in a small office in a remote place, no single admission like a job or anything would be given to any person without the IRGC's approval. And it goes to like several bases like economic bases. They are literally everywhere.

And they have foreign branches, units as well, right? It's the IRGC present in Syria, in Lebanon. So that's the Quds Force. So that Qasem Soleimani's outfit, the Quds Force, that's the overseas expeditionary wing of the IRGC. He was, of course, killed by Donald Trump in his last presidency. Yes, that's the expeditionary wing. And then you have, do they run the Navy as well? Yeah, they have the Navy. They have Navy forces, ground forces, air forces.

I mean, and also like lots of economic bases, they are involved in construction sites, like whether it's constructing a bridge in a small remote village or it's like a big building somewhere in the capital. And how does that fit into the political landscape within Iran? So you've mentioned the reformists and the hardliners. IRGC, I assume, aligns with the hardliners. Is that why the hardliners' voice is always more prominent? Do the reformists have their own sort of counter-reform?

narrative or forces that are able to put their voice out there as well? They only have media, the reformists. I mean, first, to be clear, when we say reformists, they are not looking for any reform to the Islamic Republic or to the Supreme Leader. They are just day-to-day politics or, I don't know, prices or such kind of things. But whether they are hardliners or super hardliners or, I don't know, reformists or moderates, they are all aligned to the Supreme Leader. They are all loyal to the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, to the regime. That's something to be clear about it.

The hardliners have the IRGC, they have like big media organizations and the state TV. And the reformers, if even they speak about anything, they would be in trouble. Like this week, Mohammad Javad Zarif, the vice president in Iran, they call him whitewasher-in-chief.

He doesn't have much fun in the state television and radio, so this week a state television presenter was referring to him as the guy. The reporter was not mentioning his name.

And there was also a reformist politician on the desk. He protested, like, why are you not even mentioning this guy's name? He's a vice president. And Mahmoud Pazashkian, the guy who's president now, how do we fit him into all of this? In terms of foreign policy, whether it's Massoud Pazashkian or the Supreme Council of National Security or any of these organization institutions, they actually have no say in this.

Sometimes, like in terms of, we were last year, we were waiting if Iran is going to attack or if Israel is going to attack. And then we would see these comments from Foreign Minister Abbas Arakhchi or Peshkian. The fact is, we would know, we at The Telegraph would know much sooner than the president or Abbas Arakhchi or anyone else if they were supposed to attack Iran.

Israel, because that's all done by the IRGC and they don't give much information to the president, to the administration. The administration is just doing day-to-day jam, but he's also not doing very much. The economic situation is getting worse. There is air pollution. The Iranian real is losing its value rapidly. So when we think about the idea of the Iranian regime being weaker than ever, and you've started to mention some of those other points, the economy, pollution, we've talked about social unrest. What

What other things should we be thinking about and how weak is it really? Roland? The consensus seems to be at the moment that it really is in a very vulnerable position and possibly the most vulnerable it's been since 1979. And the reason for that is basically a crisis of legitimacy.

So people are moving away or losing interest in or any faith in the system, you know, writ large. This is not an overnight thing. So in 2021, when Ibrahim Raisi was elected president, it was the lowest turnout in an election, I think, since the Islamic Republic came into being. Part of that was a lot of people who would have voted reformist just stayed home because they had no faith in the supposed reformist candidate.

I was in Tehran at the time. It was not difficult at all to end up talking to people who had a very, very dim view of Ibrahim Raisi and everything he stood for. And they were very well informed. You shouldn't get this idea that Iran is like North Korea, right? Where like no one can say anything or, you know, you're going to get carted off to the gulag or something. And the complaints are...

I think a lot of it is what, you know, what ACTAR has been talking about. It's those basic things that undermine any state. OK, so the economy is really in adulterous, has been for years. The real is it's always had a problem for years. It's had a problem with massive inflation. It's worse than ever. So life isn't getting better. The IRGC's control of the economy, which has really ballooned over the past decade or so, means that corruption is completely out of control.

That's a legitimacy problem for any government. Now you have the added element of military defeat abroad, which undermines anybody's legitimacy. And the other thing that I would point to is a massive environmental crisis. It doesn't get talked about very much at all. But Iran's basically been suffering from this absolutely enormous, basically a climate change-induced drought.

for I think the best part of a decade now and they're affected by the rest of the region so there are these huge dust storms that kind of kick up in Iraq and come across the border it's really really devastating the groundwater is running out they've got a crisis providing irrigation and if you're

go into the very long two and a half thousand year history of Iranian empires and kingdoms and so on, being able to irrigate the Iranian plateau has always been a key point of legitimacy. But the whole point is if you put that in with the economy, you put that in with the foreign policy, put it in with military defeat, they're dealing with an omnicrisis and they're not really in a position

to deal with that crisis. And as a result, the public is turning away from the regime. And I think you can see that

in everybody's comments, including comments of kind of pro-regime people. Everyone understands that there is a crisis of legitimacy going on. As Roland said, people are struggling with the economic situation. We spoke with people inside Iran this week. We spoke with a bookseller in Tehran who said like many of those people who were previously supporting the regime are now actually turning away. And we also spoke with another student in Tehran. She said like she and her friends are having drinks and

they are drinking alcohol, they are having boyfriends, they don't wear a headscarf, anything that angers the Islamic Republic, one of them told us, like it's an act of resistance and they're doing it. So this resisting, like disobedience or anything that makes the Islamic Republic angry

is intensifying, especially over the last year, especially since the Women, Life, Freedom movement. And the point to make, though, is that Agar said that bookseller, he remembers 1979, he took part in 1979, and he said, I can feel the same kind of thing going on. People are turning away from the regime the same way they turned away from the Shah. So that's the question I want to ask. I mean, with all of these crises bubbling, some of them for years and some of them more immediate,

What are the prospects for the Iranian regime? I mean, could they fall this year in the next few years? Or are we thinking it's a sort of process that will take longer over a decade? For the answer to that question, we should be looking at the Iranian universities and on the streets in Tehran, in Iranian cities and women's headscarves. So the universities in Iran are very political universities.

First major protest against the Islamic Republic was also started from the university. So any movement at Iranian universities should be watched very carefully because that's where any revolution or any sign of the regime's fall would start from universities. And the other thing is like women, they have been very defiant recently over the past two years and I

either universities or women would bring the regime down. Like we already have reported that the Islamic Republic has already told its proxy forces across the Middle East because they're to exercise caution.

because they are very afraid of Trump's any, they also told the report their militia forces across the region to be, to not provoke Trump, because they are, I was told by one of our sources inside Iran that the Islamic Republic with Trump's free presidency is now fearing an existential threat. Big question, isn't that the wild card in all of this, Trump, and I guess Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been largely emboldened with his taking on of Iran across the region. Roland,

Do you think there's a chance that Trump, Israel, some kind of combination might attack Iran more directly and try to bring about the regime's collapse? So it's absolutely possible. I think Donald Trump's been in the Oval Office for two weeks-ish now. He hasn't really done anything about Iran.

He hasn't really done anything about Russia and Ukraine either. It's quite interesting. He's been kind of preoccupied with domestic stuff and stuff in the Americas and tariffs and things. But he doesn't seem to be, his rhetoric is not that fiery at the moment. But Netanyahu is going to be his first foreign visit. Yes. But, you know, he was asked in the Oval Office the other day, are you going to bomb Iran? Are you going to let Israel bomb Iran? And he said, well, it would be bad.

better not to. Maybe we can do a deal. On the spectrum of Donald Trump-ish rhetoric, it was fairly dovish, actually. What we do know is that the Iranian regime is absolutely desperate for a deal. Just another bit of context. 2015, there was this thing called the JCPOA. The deal was basically Iran gets sanctions relief in exchange for putting curbs on its nuclear program. Trump walks out of that in 2018 saying that

the Iranian curbs aren't enough. Basically, he wants them to come back and rewrite the deal with more restrictions. Didn't work. Iran has enriched so much uranium. It's enriched uranium to about 90% now. And we think... And that's one step short of 99% or whatever you need to build a bomb. We think it's churning out about enough for two bombs a month if it's enriched further. It's all a bit complicated. Basically...

Donald Trump's last tactic was something called maximum pressure. So huge economic sanctions that caused the Iranians real problems. They're afraid of that happening again. They're absolutely terrified of it. That's why Javad Zarif was over in Davos kind of saying all these nice things and saying nice things about Donald Trump and trying to be the whitewasher in chief, right? Because they want a deal. They want sanctions relief. The problem is, from Donald Trump's perspective, is Iran now so close to a bomb that...

maximum pressure is not going to be enough to stop it. Because the other, the question being asked in Iran now is like, okay, do we have to go for a deal? Do we have to accept curbing our nuclear ambitions? Do we have to accept that we can't confront the West in the way we have just because the economic situation is so bad?

Or actually, does that mean, no, we need a bomb? We need a bomb more than ever because it's the only thing that's going to guarantee our security and therefore run for it. That's going to make a big difference. And we don't know what the decision they've made in Tehran is. But that debate supports hardliners in Israel who say this is our opportunity. Iran is weaker than ever. They're thinking about building a bomb. We need to just go in. But the question is, what are you going to bomb?

You see what I mean? So we were talking at the beginning about these underground cities. The theory there is that Israel or America, probably Israel using American bombs and American intelligence, would be able to deal enough damage to the Iranian nuclear program to basically take it off the table. And there are some people who talk about looking at regime change from the outside. That is a live debate. I don't really think it's that wise to get into it. But Netanyahu certainly kind of talked along those lines before.

But we don't know how many of these underground cities there are. We can be fairly sure that the Iranian nuclear program isn't in the obvious places like the towns where everybody knows that they've got nuclear facilities, right? So what if you drop the bomb? You don't get rid of the nuclear program and actually they go, bang, okay, we've got a bomb now. That's the tricky part.

line to walk I don't know what Donald Trump's going to do because I think he is he is instinctively hawkish and it's clear that Israeli hawks have his ear on the other hand he came to power talking about how I don't want to start any more wars that's his whole his whole raison d'etre and if you look at what he's done so far it's been a kind of disengagement from anything outside the western hemisphere really

Akhtar, any final thoughts? About nuclear bombs, Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has already been under pressure by hardliners to change his nuclear doctrines. He, like, legally, religiously has forbidden making a nuclear weapon on the paper. We don't know what's happening in those underground missile cities, but on the paper, what's on the television, he forbidden. And last year, dozens of MPs wrote him a letter saying, OK, please change the nuclear doctrine.

or we would just vanish. And one MP said the power is not balanced in the Middle East while one side has a nuclear weapon and the other side doesn't. So that's why Iran should also be making... Referring to Israel. Yeah, referring to Israel.

In terms of negotiations, Khamenei is sending mixed signals to his administration, to Pesachian's administration. Once he cautions them against talking with enemies who are not very faithful, and the other day he just bans it, like you can't talk with them at any level. So he's sending mixed signals. It's all because they are not really sure what would Trump do.

Let's leave it there. Akhtar McCoy, our foreign correspondent for The Telegraph, and Roland Oliphant, my co-host. Thanks so much for joining us on Battle Lines. Now, to end this episode, we've got an interview with Mohamed Rasalof, the Iranian filmmaker who fled Iran early last year after making a highly political film called The Seed of the Sacred Fig, which is out in the UK this Friday, February 7th.

The plot centres on an Iranian investigative judge's relationship with his family as they all struggle to reconcile their different reactions to the Women, Life, Freedom movement protests that followed the death of Mahsa Amini in September 2022, who we were speaking about earlier in this episode.

It's a really gripping watch and I hugely recommend you go out and see it in the cinemas. It is quite long, but it delves into the turmoil that swept Iran in the months following the death of Masa Amini and also how it exposed all these underlying fractures in Iranian society that we've been speaking about. Rasalof was already facing jail when he was making the movie and he knew he would be punished even further once the film was released, so he decided to preemptively free to Germany early last year before it came out.

The film went on to premiere at Cannes and it won the jury special prize last year. It's also just been nominated for an Oscar for Best International Feature. It can't come much more highly recommended than that. Rasloff and I spoke through a translator, so our conversation here has been revoiced. Welcome to Battlelines, Mohamed. Can you start by telling me a bit about the challenges of making this film? But...

So it's challenging on a daily basis. It's a constant battle to make a film in Iran as a filmmaker. But also, being yourself in a totalitarian controlling regime that wants to interfere with all your most private moments is a constant battle. Censorship doesn't just affect cinema, it affects every second of your gaze in the sense that this totalitarianism comes to dictate the way you look at things. For instance,

When a woman leaves the house in Iran, she has to think all the time about her dress code. It really is a way of transforming people's bodies into a topic for debate. By controlling your body, they keep reminding you where you are living and your situation. So in such circumstances,

Just being yourself becomes a revolutionary act. Choosing freely what clothes to wear becomes a revolutionary act. Expressing your opinions about personal rights becomes a quite big revolutionary act. And of course, if you make a film in open defiance of censorship, you're making more than a film. Since cinema has the ability to show all of this, it's easy to imagine how terrifying its power must be for those who seek to control everything.

And in order to try and control the narrative and what is shown, the regime tries in every way it can to punish as much as possible the filmmakers who choose to revolt openly against it, to defy it.

And I think what really frightens them is how independent cinema provides an alternative portrayal to the fake portrayal of Iran that the regime wants to share both with the Iranian population but also with the rest of the world. My films are historical reports documenting Iran for the future.

And what about in terms of the practical challenges when you were filming it? I know you had to film in another location, you were using someone else's internet connection. How did that change the way that you were able to direct the film, you know, your actual interaction with the process of filmmaking? Filming for me is

You know, I think all these restrictions actually brought us closer to one another and allowed us to proceed more lovingly, more kindly, and to really be very much united. And so all the pressure actually just made us more committed and more solid.

I'd already made many films underground, but this one was even more underground. I know you've said in the past that you've been thinking about this film for a long time, but that you only decided to finally make it while you were in prison and the Masa Amini protests were underway. What was it about that experience that made you suddenly think, I have to just do this, no matter how difficult it will be?

Yes. So for at least 15 years, I had constant interactions with the security and judiciary apparatus of the Iranian regime. I was dealing almost on a daily basis with interrogators, judges, prosecutors, you name it. And I was constantly asking myself, why are we unable to understand one another? Why can I not think like them? And why can they not think like me?

And so I was really keen to investigate this question in a film, but was waiting for the right story to come to me. And then, in 2022, I was arrested and imprisoned again. After a few months of being in prison, the Women, Life, Freedom movement revolt began. And you know, it's really bizarre to try and follow momentous events of that sort from behind prison walls. So you're sort of seeking out clues as to what's happening outside from the effect it has on what's happening inside.

And of course, the way that all the prison officials and the prison staff, their behavior changed in response to the revolt. And then I had this chance encounter in prison with a high-ranking prison official who told me in private how much he'd come to hate himself, that he was even thinking about taking his own life, that his family, and especially his children,

kept criticizing him and trying to get him to stop working there. Why are you working with the system? They were asking him. And that was the first spark. I thought, there's a very interesting story here to be told of such a deep rift in a family, which would also enable me to pursue those questions I mentioned earlier.

And what did you discover then on that journey into the other side of Iran, these regime officials and judges and prosecutors that you couldn't understand before? Did you come to understand them? There's an Iranian word that's untranslatable, but it literally means taking your head and handing it over to someone else who will think and take decisions for you. In simple terms, submission to power or ideology may lead to extremism and paranoia, and that may lead to violence.

OK, so that's what you came to understand. My next question, I just want to give an advance warning to listeners that it contains a spoiler, so please do skip ahead if you haven't seen the film and want to. But I really wanted to ask, why did you choose for Sana to be the one who stole the gun? So on the one hand, it was her Generation Z that perhaps more than all of the other generations really impressed us during the Women, Life, Freedom revolt. On the other hand, in terms of character development and character writing...

I think it was also a sort of childish decision to take the gun. And so it made sense that Sana, being the younger one, would take such an impetuous, childish decision, having witnessed what had happened to her and her sister's friend Sadaf, but also seeing and coming to understand her father's role in these events and his responsibility. And can you tell me a bit about the cast? I know Sahela Golestani was a protester herself, is that right? What about the others?

Yes, yes. So, Sahela Golestani is an actress and also took part in the Women Live Freedom Revolt, during which she made a video that led to her arrest and imprisonment. She was freed and then, since acting in The Seed of the Sacred Fig, she's been under a great deal of pressure. She's been interrogated time and again and so on and so forth. She's free on bail at the moment.

A couple of weeks ago, not only Sahela, but every single person involved in the making of the film, some of us, like myself in absentia, and others like her inside Iran, were in court. Now we're waiting for the sentence of the court case against the film.

to be announced and to see what it means for everyone, and especially for Sahela, of course. What's the official charge that you're facing over the film? Propaganda against the Islamic Republic and spreading prostitution and corruption on earth. Because we're here, we're spreading corruption, you know, according to the Islamic Republic. Just to let our listeners know that you've pointed to your hair as you said prostitution, because the film includes multiple scenes of women at home without their hijabs on,

and obviously taking off the hijab was a central part of the Women's Life Freedom Movement, which you included lots of clips of in your film. How did you find the people to take part in this film, given how controversial it was? Was that difficult, or did your reputation precede you when actually everyone wanted to do something that might speak to this unique moment in Iran? I think after the Women's Life Movement, a lot of people wanted to work differently and wanted to confront censorship openly, and so I received a lot of messages from people telling me, please bear me in mind if you'd like to do a new film.

And I think the main reason for that was the totalitarianism and censorship and oppression and the scale of the violence. People really wanted to stand up to it, but also seek artistic freedom.

Disobeying censorship and oppression sort of gave people back their self-respect and their sense of self-dignity. And that's what really helped me, but also helped us to find one another and come together. As the film was being finished, I know you were facing a lengthy prison sentence for something different and you decided to escape Iran. That month-long escape, in part, I believe, by foot over the mountains, took you to Germany so that you could attend the movie's premiere at last year's Cannes Festival.

It's since become the stuff of legends. What were you thinking as you were leaving, and do you think you'll stay in exile? No. My being outside of Iran is a temporary act.

Act. While I was awaiting the result of an ongoing investigation against me, my lawyers predicted a long sentence. I reflected a lot upon what I should do if I were to receive it, and especially what is the significance, the importance of being a filmmaker in jail. You're therefore into this sacrificed artist, victim artist of totalitarianism, of oppression, of censorship. And with all my respect towards the many individuals who've made the very courageous choice of facing prison in Iran and undertaking long prison sentences,

I thought that what mattered the most to me was to be able to keep working as a filmmaker. And you know, the last seven years that I spent in Iran, I was banned from leaving the country. I was banned from working. And I tried in every possible way to stay, and I did make films underground. So all I can say now is I've decided to keep making films, and I'm here as long as it will take in order to make those films.

When I feel that I have accomplished this task, I shall return to Iran regardless of whether the circumstances are the same as they are now or we've got the same regime in place. Although if things were to change, I might be there even sooner.

How strong do you think that regime is? Obviously, a lot has happened to Iran, and particularly its standing in the Middle East over the last year or so as a result of Israel's actions. Do you think the regime can last much longer? And where do you sort of separate your hopes from the reality? So, yes, as you mentioned, Iran's regional ambitions, whereby it really had wrought all this chaos in the region, have really fallen to pieces over the last year. And this is an event of major significance.

At the same time, it is clearly apparent that there are huge divisions within the regime itself. There are those who believe that it's no longer possible to keep confronting the world this way. There are those who think that getting the nuclear bomb is an absolute must. There are those who think that we need much stronger relations, or if you like, maybe alliances with China and Russia. So there's all that going on. Personally, if I'm to be honest, I think that the path to democracy in Iran will be very long.

And the first step it requires is either for the Islamic Republic to collapse or for the Islamic Republic to submit itself to the will of the people. Either way, this long path will require major political shifts, but also major cultural changes. One last question. When you speak to friends and family in Iran, how do they feel right now? Are they hopeful, even after everything that's come and gone? The situation is very difficult.

But they believe the regime has never been as weak and incapable as it is now. It has become desperate and incapacitated. Hopefully the ground will collapse beneath it at some point, just like in your film. That is my hope, and that's why I filmed it. Mohamed Rasalouf, thank you very much for joining us on Battlelines.

That was Mohamed Rasalof talking about his new film, The Seed of the Sacred Fig, which is out in UK cinemas this Friday, February 7th. That's all from Bathlines this week. We'd love to know what you thought and what you would like to see us cover in the future. Please get in touch and let us know. Details in the credits and in our show notes. Until Friday, goodbye.

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