The Contemporary History of Iran - Part 17: “The Triumph of the Green Wave”

“The Triumph of the Green Wave” - Part 17 of the Roqe Media series, The Contemporary History of Iran. In June of 2009, Iran witnessed a massive mobilization of protestors in its cities that became the largest demonstration of people power in the country since the revolution of 1979, triggered by fraudulent results in that year’s presidential election. The demonstrations reverberated around the world, but, in the aftermath, the regime remained in place, the election fraud was never overturned, and a fierce crackdown on the protestors ensued. So how do we assess the efficacy of the Green Movement, as it came to be known, in the decade and a half since? Dr. Pouya Alimagham, an Iranian-American historian, scholar, professor at MIT, and author of the recent book, “Contesting the Iranian Revolution: The Green Uprisings,” joins Jian Ghomeshi from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to make the unorthodox case that the Green Wave - using the tools of the 1979 revolution, itself - was not a failure at all, but a triumph that would pollinate future protest movements in Iran, and remains resonant today.