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On this episode, Saman Askari reads a piece he wrote on his Substack called Iran’s Radicalized Opposition and the Cycle of Ruin. The essay examines the current state of the Iranian opposition in light of the recent regime crackdown and growing fears of war. It traces how the trauma of what has happened recently has reshaped opposition discourse, fueling polarization, purity tests, and the concentration of authority around individuals rather than institutions. The piece argues that without protecting dissent, constraining power, and grounding any transition in enforceable democratic norms, the opposition risks reproducing the same cycles of repression it seeks to escape. 

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