Interview| Iran’s envoy in Cairo on protests, sanctions, and why “we are not Venezuela or Iraq”
“Democracy is not imposed by force, and it is not imported from abroad. Legitimacy is built through dialogue and the ballot box,” Mojtaba Ferdosipour, head of Iran’s Interests Section in Cairo, told Al Manassa in an exclusive interview, summing up Tehran’s view of the protests that swept the country, starting late December.
Iran’s most recent protests erupted late last month when shopkeepers and traders in Tehran's bustling mobile phone and electronics markets shuttered their stalls over skyrocketing inflation and the rial's nosedive to historic lows. They then spread to students and citizens, who took to the streets in the tens of thousands, as the protests widened beyond the capital to other provinces.
A legitimate start infiltrated
The protests has revived questions about the Iranian regime’s legitimacy, while US and Israeli threats to topple the government have escalated.
Iran’s Envoy in Cairo said those threats go beyond conventional political pressure and amount to “an attempt to re-engineer the balance of power in the Middle East,” as part of “a broader project to redraw maps of influence and weaken the concept of the nation-state in the region.”
Ferdosipour’s talk of a “conspiracy” behind the latest protests did not stop him from acknowledging the “legitimacy” of the protesters’ economic and social demands during the first three days.
Those early protests, he said, included segments of civil society, alongside businessmen and investors harmed by structural imbalances in Iran’s economy, especially multiple exchange rates for foreign currency and the resulting inflationary pressures that undermined the investment climate and consumers’ purchasing power.
But the Iranian diplomat insisted the “legitimate” protests turned into “chaos” after the first three days. “Foreign intelligence services, foremost among them Mossad and the CIA, penetrated the protesters’ movement through infiltrators and armed elements that opened fire on protesters and security forces, vandalized property,” and created “a chaotic situation that stoked anger and threatened internal stability.”
Citing that shift, Ferdosipour justified Tehran’s decision to cut off internet access, say the move was meant “to confront armed infiltration backed from abroad, aimed at fueling violence and burning down mosques and banks,” he said.
He drew a distinction between what he termed “the true national opposition,” which, he said, “operates within the constitution and the law, calls for justice, fighting economic corruption, development, social cohesion, and the ballot box.” This, he added, is an opposition that “the regime has no problem with,” and, on the contrary, “seeks to open an institutional dialogue with it.” By contrast, he described a second kind of opposition as “saboteurs and promoters of foreign agendas... These have another story... We deal with them through security measures and the law.”
Iranian authorities have blocked internet services since Jan. 8, as the protests expanded across the country. About two weeks later, on Jan. 23, Iran’s Fars News Agency reported that internet service would return within two days after the Supreme National Security Council approved its restoration.
But as of Jan. 27, the internet still had not returned, with the agency citing “technical complications.”
A “Zio-American” war of attrition
Iran and the United States were not always in a state of permanent hostility. In 2016, The Guardian published documents showing that the administration of former US President Jimmy Carter paved the way for Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s return from France to Iran, including messages in which Khomeini wrote, “You will see we are not in any particular animosity with the Americans.”
Things changed after Khomeini came to power and began describing America as “the Great Satan.” Then came the takeover of the US Embassy in Tehran, ushering in a new chapter in Iran’s relationship with the United States. Economic sanctions were imposed in November 1979 and remain in effect to this day.
In 1984, the United States designated Iran a “state sponsor of terrorism,” after accusing it of involvement in the 1983 bombing of the US Marine barracks in Beirut. Washington escalated sanctions through successive measures, and in 2006, the international community joined sanctions over Tehran’s nuclear program.
Ferdosipour placed the latest protests within the West’s long conflict with Iran since the Iran-Iraq War, through attempts at military intervention such as Operation Eagle Claw in the Tabas Desert to free US hostages in Tehran, and up to the 12-day war that witnessed the first direct military confrontation between Tehran and Tel Aviv. These steps “strengthened internal cohesion and bolstered the regime in moments of crisis,” he stressed.
“Since the victory of the Islamic Revolution, Iran has never been absent from the crosshairs of Zio-American targeting through a long-term attrition strategy,” he said, citing “blending economic and political pressure, international isolation, mobilizing opposition figures abroad, and repeated talk of regime change.”
In recent years, sanctions have taken a mounting toll on Iran’s economy. Before the 2015 nuclear deal, the dollar was worth about 32,000 Iranian rials. With the return of US sanctions in 2018, it rose to 55,000, then kept sliding until the dollar reached 1.25 million rials at the beginning of last December and about 1.4 million rials per dollar as protests escalated late that month.
Despite sanctions’ clear impact on living conditions prices, Ferdosipour said Iran remains “strong.” He argued that if those sanctions were imposed on any European country for a single day, it would collapse, yet they “did not achieve their central goal of toppling the Iranian Revolution.” Instead, he said, they “strengthened internal cohesion and reproduced the system in moments of crisis.”
He linked “this sustained conflict with the Islamic Republic to a broader antipathy toward a state model that seeks political and economic independence and rejects dependency,” seen by major powers as “a danger and a structural challenge to a system of hegemony that has entrenched its influence in the Middle East and tightened its grip on the international order for decades.”
Losing bets
As protests intensified, the name Reza Pahlavi,the son of Iran’s former shah, resurfaced. Pahlavi wrote several posts on X in support of the protests and said he was ready to return from the US to “lead a new transitional phase based on democracy.”
Ferdosipour dismissed him as “having no impact on the Iranian street, or even among members of his own family.” Although Khomeini, the spiritual leader of the Islamic Revolution, was himself an opposition figure abroad, the Iranian diplomat said relying on exiled opposition groups, and drawing historical comparisons with fallen Middle Eastern regimes that lacked popular legitimacy, “does not reflect the social and political reality inside Iran.” That, he said, makes “attempts to topple the system closer to repeated losing political bets.”
Those he called “mercenaries and tools in the hands of the United States and the Zionist entity,” inside or outside Iran, “do not represent the voice of the people.”
“They have no real footprint in Iranian society, and they have no impact on the street, and Trump himself acknowledged this,” he said.
Iran, he added, “shattered the illusions of American coercion and exposed the falsity of imported models of political opposition from abroad, which do not reflect today’s Iran.”
Instead, they reflect “an external desire to forcefully imitate the Western model of democracy, or to summon a past that has ended, and try to revive it politically in a way that does not align with the will of the majority,” he said.
Not Iraq or Venezuela
Ferdosipour acknowledged that there is an opposition that calls for changing Iran’s regime and describes it as “dictatorial,” but he rejected “imitating the Western model of democracy,” arguing that “the political system is built on a clear ideology chosen by the majority, and that is the meaning of democracy.”
He said the system accommodates national, sectarian, ethnic, and racial currents, holds dialogues with them, and that this is “our own model of democracy that fits our identity, and we will not be forced to imitate the Western model.”
On pluralism, he said “America and Israel have made strategic mistakes because of their ignorance of Iranian society and its structure, which takes ethnic diversity and class disparities into account.”
He argued that “popular awareness means contradictions are managed within the national framework and do not turn into tools of fragmentation, as happened in other regional experiences.”
Ferdosipour said there is “a partial similarity” between Iran and what happened in Venezuela and Iraq, but insisted there are “major differences as well.”
Iran “does not resemble Iraq, Venezuela, or some Middle Eastern regimes that fell because they surrendered to American dependency and were not fortified by their peoples,” he said, predicting the “failure of bets on an explosion from within.”
There is “an ideological and political enmity,” he argued, since Iran is classified, in the US and Israeli view, as “an existential threat that cannot be easily contained, nor subdued through traditional tools of attrition.”
Grave risks and the regime’s solutions
The threats facing Tehran “are not incidental, but structural, combining ideology with geopolitical interest.” Ferdosipour said pointing to “the convergence of Christian Zionism with the Zionist project,” in attempts to subdue Iran, dismantle it, or reproduce it as a subordinate state.
He also bet on the regime’s capacity, which he said “turned sanctions into a factor for restructuring and redirecting supply chains, by diversifying partners, developing strategic local industries, and creating an economy of resistance, not an economy of isolation.”
The government is seeking “to contain anger through ongoing dialogues among high-level officials via parliament, the judiciary, the government, and various local officials from different sides,” he said. “There are efforts to launch a forum for dialogue that brings together the true peaceful opposition with national objectives.”
On the political track, Ferdosipour pointed to preparations for municipal council elections, saying registration began less than five months ago and “the ballot boxes will hold surprises, and will send a strong message to the republic’s enemies.”
Economically, dialogues are underway with marketers, businesspeople, and investors, the Iranian diplomat added. President Masoud Pezeshkian’s government “approved an urgent economic reform program, topped by unifying the exchange rate and strengthening domestic production,” to address the imbalances caused by sanctions and multiple currency rates. The governmet would also open institutional channels of dialogue with affected sectors to include their legitimate demands, he said.
Openness to the Arabs
Amid US and Israeli pressure and escalating protests, Ferdosipour said openness to Arab and Islamic countries “constitutes a fundamental pillar and a strategic option.”
He noted that Iran’s constitution prioritizes that approach “based on shared cultural and religious factors, and on the recognition that the greatest danger to everyone is the Israeli expansionist project.”
He stressed the need to strengthen security cooperation with countries in the region, especially after developments following Oct. 7 and the attacks and threats that affected several countries. “We are in one trench before a common enemy, and security cooperation has become necessary.”
Ferdosipour spoke specifically about Egypt, describing it as “a state alert to the scale of risks.”
He also said understandings with Saudi Arabia and gradual openness toward it “is not a tactical step, but part of a broader vision to build collective regional security based on partnership, not polarization,” noting that “even during periods of political rupture, channels of elite dialogue did not stop, and disputes can be managed if there is the will.”
Iran is pursuing a foreign policy toward Arab countries, especially Egypt and Saudi Arabia, based on “cautious balance and shared interests.” Tehran normalized ties with Riyadh after years of rupture in March 2023, under Chinese sponsorship.
At the same time, it is working to achieve gradual rapprochement with Cairo. Last June, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the last obstacle in relations with Egypt would be removed soon, possibly within weeks.
The ambassador closed his interview with Al Manassa by calling on world to “respect the will of peoples and the voice of the Iranian ballot box, and reject the instrumentalization of minorities and communities in service of hegemony projects.”