i'm joined now by abbas milani he is the director of iranian studies at the hoover institution . stanford university professor milani thank you for joining our program now just how significant are these protests underway in tehran and are they any different from previous ones. i think they are different than the previous than stray sions it's if you look at the previous those situations 2 months ago were sent to the dispossess well the poor marginalized these elites in society. are going to that. many of the wrong means in. recent. there. and they're objecting to the. law about its complicity try to i guess has since been up should be building here in the street. people who are more link or the loved ones well right after the united states assassinated iran's top general silliman there were wise fred anti american protests there was an outpouring of nationalist pride and now it's just a few days later we're seeing these protests against the iranian regime professor what do you make of this shift. i'm not very surprised because i think people are wise people they were trying to sh

tomorrow morning at 8 o'clock vicki and i spoke earlier to doctor abbas milani he's the director of iraniananford university, he says iran really had no choice but to act after the death of qassem soleimani who was the second most powerful person and iran the us taking him out yesterday. but he says that the move today was strategic. clearly they have tried to show. this sense of resolve in responding day has picked a a chance to build a 2 bases. >>that are not in action bases to to to quote interim president trump makes that very clear that not an american base there might have been match a loss of ice. there were some tense warnings. some of last moments might have come from antimissile defense system might have come from rockies and what has come from allies. the might have told you about because i think they wanted to show some resolve in retaliating but they didn't want to just come in they can't full frontal war and i hope that the united states takes this opportunity and also >>and then unclear if this is in any way related to the conflicts. but a stunning development just hours afte

professor abbas milani is director of the iranian studies programme at stanford university. he clear that the groups that were directly involved in these attack are very, very close to iran. they would not do anything like this without abbas milani's prior approval. i think there is a direct link. a paper in iran, which is a spokesman for them, in october. he said the way out these demonstrations, that they thought was instigated by the us, is the occupation of the us embassy. and said the same way we got rid of the us by occupying their embassy a0 years ago, the young fighters in iraq should do the same. it is a complicated picture that's led up to this point. we've had a few incidents in the last week or so. but at its core, is this essentially a proxy war that's developing between iran and the us in iraq? or is it still very much at the diplomatic stage? i think it is a proxy war. and i think iran needed this confrontation because the headlines, both in iraq and around the world in the last few weeks have been very much detrimental to iran. in iraq, there were massive demons