I met Faisal Saeed Al Mutar, President of Ideas Beyond Borders in Bitcoin and @HRF circles and have always appreciated his decency, optimism, and commitment to human rights.
Faisal, an Iraqi-American who fled Iraq in the wake of the fall of Saddam Hussein, tends to see the best in people, despite the challenges he's had to confront in his life. (Or maybe because he's had to confront and overcome those challenges.)
So, I reached out to him to speak about Iran because I was hoping that he was seeing something, some sort of a silver lining, that I, and just about everyone else I've spoken with on the matter, can't see.
While he didn't necessarily offer said silver lining in our conversation, he did share a very nuanced view on the matter, which, as someone who's just trying to understand better what's happening, I very much appreciated.
In our conversation we discussed:
• The best and worst case scenarios for the Iran conflict
• An ethnic and religious overview of Iranians (not all Iranians are Persians)
• Why and how Iran isn't Venezuela
• Whether or not the majority of Iranians want regime change
• Important details about the Straight of Hormuz and who might control it moving forward
• Bitcoin adoption in the Middle East
plus more.
While some of the information in the conversation is out of date at this point since we recorded late last week, what Faisal offered in this conversation is still quite valuable for looking to learn more about how things work in Iran and the Middle Eastern region more broadly.
