Tori says:

I have a few questions: In the end, wasn’t the 1979 revolution in Iran in fact a velvet one? Perhaps even the first of the velvet revolutions? Question 2: do you think that maybe America’s sanctions have, in fact, propped up the regime and created a kind of mafia state in Iran with too much economic power in the hands of the Revolutionary Guards? If so, than maybe the opposite of American pressure could bring about change: the, albeit, unpopular lifting of nearly all sanctions and normalization of economic relations… I am just thinking out loud here in the comment box.