Hamid Dabashi is Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York.His book Iran, The Green Movement and the USA: The Fox and the Paradox (Zed Books, 2010) was published in 2010.

There is a chronic lack of transparency and a dizzying complexity of power relations within the Iranian state. This labyrinthine form of networks that together make up Iranian politics is in my view no coincidence.

Iran is one of the few places in the world where the East European experience is still relevant. What can Iranian dissidents learn from the East European dissidents in Soviet time? What are the basic questions the leaders of the Green Movement or any other opposition group need to find an answer for at the moment and “the day after” – the moment of a possible overthrow of the Islamic Republic? What should they be prepared for and try to find and create a compromise on before they would possibly come to power?