Kamran Bokhari, PhD is Senior Director of the Eurasian Security & Prosperity Portfolio at the New Lines Institute for Strategy & Policy. Previously, he was Director of Analytical Development at New Lines Institute. Dr. Bokhari is also a national security and foreign policy specialist at the University of Ottawa’s Professional Development Institute. Bokhari has served as the Central Asia Studies Course Coordinator at U.S. Department of State’s Foreign Service Institute. He was a Fellow with the Program on Extremism at George Washington University. Dr. Bokhari has also been a Senior Consultant with The World Bank. He has 15 years of experience in the private sector intelligence space during which he provided intellectual leadership in the publishing of cutting-edge geopolitical analysis & forecasts. Bokhari is the author of Political Islam in the Age of Democratization (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). He has also contributed chapters to edited volumes: Wars of Ideas: Theology, Interpretation and Power in the Muslim World (Rowman Littlefield, 2021); Strategic Analysis in Support of International Policy Making (Rowman Littlefield, 2017), Reassessing Order and Disorder in the Middle East: Regional Imbalance or Disintegration? (Rowman Littlefield, 2017), Oxford Handbook on Islam & Politics (Oxford University, 2013) & Debating Moderate Islam: The Geopolitics of Islam and the West (University of Utah, 2007). His core areas of expertise are: Geopolitical/Intelligence Analysis of the Middle East, South Asia, & Central Asia, Governance, Democratization, Civil-Military Relations, & Comparative Political Systems, Geosectarianism, Countering Violent Extremism. Counterterrorism, Deradicalization, and Islamist & Muslim Moderation. Dr. Bokhari has briefed various US, Canadian & UK government agencies, published thousands of analytical/theoretical/op-ed articles, presented papers in int’l academic/policy forums & given hundreds of interviews to leading global media organizations. Bokhari earned his doctorate from the University of Westminster after successfully defending his thesis ‘Moderations Among Salafists & Jihadists’. He tweets at @KamranBokhari.
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Episode 459
Kamran Bokhari
Iran’s Counterrevolution & the Future of the Greater Middle East | Kamran Bokhari
Kamran Bokhari, PhD is Senior Director of the Eurasian Security & Prosperity Portfolio at the New Lines Institute for Strategy & Policy. Previously, he was Director of Analytical Development at New Lines Institute. Dr. Bokhari is also a national security and foreign policy specialist at the University of Ottawa’s Professional Development Institute. Bokhari has served as the Central Asia Studies Course Coordinator at U.S. Department of State’s Foreign Service Institute. He was a Fellow with the Program on Extremism at George Washington University. Dr. Bokhari has also been a Senior Consultant with The World Bank. He has 15 years of experience in the private sector intelligence space during which he provided intellectual leadership in the publishing of cutting-edge geopolitical analysis & forecasts. Bokhari is the author of Political Islam in the Age of Democratization (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). He has also contributed chapters to edited volumes: Wars of Ideas: Theology, Interpretation and Power in the Muslim World (Rowman Littlefield, 2021); Strategic Analysis in Support of International Policy Making (Rowman Littlefield, 2017), Reassessing Order and Disorder in the Middle East: Regional Imbalance or Disintegration? (Rowman Littlefield, 2017), Oxford Handbook on Islam & Politics (Oxford University, 2013) & Debating Moderate Islam: The Geopolitics of Islam and the West (University of Utah, 2007). His core areas of expertise are: Geopolitical/Intelligence Analysis of the Middle East, South Asia, & Central Asia, Governance, Democratization, Civil-Military Relations, & Comparative Political Systems, Geosectarianism, Countering Violent Extremism. Counterterrorism, Deradicalization, and Islamist & Muslim Moderation. Dr. Bokhari has briefed various US, Canadian & UK government agencies, published thousands of analytical/theoretical/op-ed articles, presented papers in int’l academic/policy forums & given hundreds of interviews to leading global media organizations. Bokhari earned his doctorate from the University of Westminster after successfully defending his thesis ‘Moderations Among Salafists & Jihadists’. He tweets at @KamranBokhari.
Episode 459 of Hidden Forces is the twelfth episode in the Hundred Year Pivot podcast series. In it, Demetri Kofinas and Grant Williams speak with Kamran Bokhari, a strategic forecaster and geopolitical analyst who specializes on the Middle Eastern and Eurasia, about Iran’s nationwide protests, what they reveal about the power and stability of the Iranian regime, and what the state of Iranian affairs portends for Iran’s future, the region’s geopolitics, and the strategic considerations and objectives of the United States.
The conversation’s opening hour traces Iran’s modern formation—beginning in the early 1900s with the Constitutional Revolution, moving through the 1953 coup and the Shah’s rule, and culminating in the 1979 Islamic Revolution and its aftermath.
Kamran walks the audience through the evolution of Iran’s dual military structure, explaining the critical distinction between the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the regular armed forces (Artesh), and how the IRGC grew from an ideological militia into an oversized parallel state controlling everything from telecommunications to Iran’s nuclear program, while becoming increasingly corrupt and internally divided.
The second hour is devoted to analyzing the current protests engulfing Iran, how they differ from previous uprisings, and the implications for a severely weakened IRGC following Israel’s dismantling of its proxy network, the relentless targeting of its commanders, and its failure to secure the safety of its own citizens from Israeli reprisals. They explore the regime’s internal factionalization, the role of the merchant class in these protests, the potential pathways forward—from managed regime decay to military intervention to outright chaos—and the cascading effects that Iran’s instability could have on its neighbors, from Turkey and Azerbaijan to Iraq, Afghanistan, and beyond.
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Kamran Bokhari, PhD is Senior Director of the Eurasian Security & Prosperity Portfolio at the New Lines Institute for Strategy & Policy. Previously, he was Director of Analytical Development at New Lines Institute. Dr. Bokhari is also a national security and foreign policy specialist at the University of Ottawa’s Professional Development Institute. Bokhari has served as the Central Asia Studies Course Coordinator at U.S. Department of State’s Foreign Service Institute. He was a Fellow with the Program on Extremism at George Washington University. Dr. Bokhari has also been a Senior Consultant with The World Bank. He has 15 years of experience in the private sector intelligence space during which he provided intellectual leadership in the publishing of cutting-edge geopolitical analysis & forecasts. Bokhari is the author of Political Islam in the Age of Democratization (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). He has also contributed chapters to edited volumes: Wars of Ideas: Theology, Interpretation and Power in the Muslim World (Rowman Littlefield, 2021); Strategic Analysis in Support of International Policy Making (Rowman Littlefield, 2017), Reassessing Order and Disorder in the Middle East: Regional Imbalance or Disintegration? (Rowman Littlefield, 2017), Oxford Handbook on Islam & Politics (Oxford University, 2013) & Debating Moderate Islam: The Geopolitics of Islam and the West (University of Utah, 2007). His core areas of expertise are: Geopolitical/Intelligence Analysis of the Middle East, South Asia, & Central Asia, Governance, Democratization, Civil-Military Relations, & Comparative Political Systems, Geosectarianism, Countering Violent Extremism. Counterterrorism, Deradicalization, and Islamist & Muslim Moderation. Dr. Bokhari has briefed various US, Canadian & UK government agencies, published thousands of analytical/theoretical/op-ed articles, presented papers in int’l academic/policy forums & given hundreds of interviews to leading global media organizations. Bokhari earned his doctorate from the University of Westminster after successfully defending his thesis ‘Moderations Among Salafists & Jihadists’. He tweets at @KamranBokhari.
Demetri Kofinas is a media entrepreneur and financial analyst whose mission is to help uncover the hidden forces and pivotal patterns shaping our lives. His contrarian perspective and critical-thinking approach has helped hundreds of thousands of people make smarter, informed decisions. This same methodology has helped guide Demetri’s decision-making as an early-stage investor and as a creator of several innovative media properties and live events.
Demetri Kofinas is a media entrepreneur and financial analyst whose mission is to help uncover the hidden forces and pivotal patterns shaping our lives. His contrarian perspective and critical-thinking approach has helped hundreds of thousands of people make smarter, informed decisions. This same methodology has helped guide Demetri’s decision-making as an early-stage investor and as a creator of several innovative media properties and live events.
Demetri Kofinas is a media entrepreneur and financial analyst whose mission is to help uncover the hidden forces and pivotal patterns shaping our lives. His contrarian perspective and critical-thinking approach has helped hundreds of thousands of people make smarter, informed decisions. This same methodology has helped guide Demetri’s decision-making as an early-stage investor and as a creator of several innovative media properties and live events.
Demetri Kofinas is a media entrepreneur and financial analyst whose mission is to help uncover the hidden forces and pivotal patterns shaping our lives. His contrarian perspective and critical-thinking approach has helped hundreds of thousands of people make smarter, informed decisions. This same methodology has helped guide Demetri’s decision-making as an early-stage investor and as a creator of several innovative media properties and live events.
Demetri Kofinas is a media entrepreneur and financial analyst whose mission is to help uncover the hidden forces and pivotal patterns shaping our lives. His contrarian perspective and critical-thinking approach has helped hundreds of thousands of people make smarter, informed decisions. This same methodology has helped guide Demetri’s decision-making as an early-stage investor and as a creator of several innovative media properties and live events.
