Since September 2022, when the 22-year-old woman Mahsa Amini died at the hands of “religion police,” Iran has been shaken by massive anti-regime demonstrations. The protestors demand freedom from an authoritarian regime that has ruled in the name of religion since 1979. Do they have a chance? Or is the Islamic republic strong enough to survive for the foreseeable future? And what are the lessons from Iran for other Muslim-majority nations, where the role of religion in public life keeps being contested?

Cato fellow Sahar Khan will moderate and Mustafa Akyol will discuss these questions with Mohamad Machine-Chian, an Iranian intellectual who has been on the forefront of the freedom movement within the Islamic republic and who only recently moved to the United States. He has personally experienced the regime’s brutality and has studied both its structure and also its critics. Come join us on January 25 for this important conversation.