One of the biggest mistakes people make when trying to make sense of politics is misunderstanding who the intended audience of certain actions is. Example # 1: Many secular, ordinary Iranians scoffed at the Islamic Republic putting a greater emphasis on nationalist symbols, even in religious contexts, after the war. They kept saying that this is transparently a hoax, no one cares, and it would be an obvious failure. The problem here is thinking that messaging was aimed towards them. No the messaging isn't going to convince them. No one thought it would. It wasn't intended to. As I argued in my rally around the flag effect piece, this was aimed for a specific group that had lost hope in the IR in the past 10 years ... but previously supported them. The nationalist-religious language is extremely powerful to them. And their support does matter. You don't need the support of the entire or even majority of the population to stay in power. But there are some stakeholders who matter & the state is going to appeal to them. Example # 2: Basically everyone who isn't a monarchist is dunking on Team Reza Pahlavi for their recent conference. They attack stuff like it not actually being representative of opposition groups or someone doing something weird there or that much of the final statements and advertising was in English. Again, these people are misunderstanding the purpose of this. It's not meant towards being at any of them. It's not aimed at attracting other opposition groups or convincing a critical mass of people inside Iran to rise up or anything like this. Team Reza Pahlavi has concluded for some time that it is impossible for them to organically overthrow the Islamic Republic. The only way for them to gain power is through the extensive assistance of foreign powers. They don't explicitly state it in these terms publicly, but it's pretty evident reading between the lines as well as in the direction they're pushing public discourse. Their problem is that the foreign powers that may have the ability to do this (the US & Israel) don't take them seriously. Both countries are willing to have some lower level people take pictures with Reza Pahlavi & give some vague platitudes, but not much in action. So Team Reza Pahlavi wants to change this (in their view) misconception. They want to be taken seriously. As a group that is serious, that is representative, and that deserves support. That was the entire point of this conference. It doesn't matter if Hamed Esmaeilion or you or I believes this was the biggest coalition of opposition leaders or not. What matters is they can make this claim, in English, to key figures in Washington DC and Tel Aviv. The selection of speakers, the way it was advertised, everything makes sense in this lens. Sure they'll still broadcast it in Farsi and also appeal to Iranians, but that's all secondary, cherry on top stuff. In a way, this parallels what the MKO does with their annual conference. Which does get them some level of support in DC and some European capitals. And is the same basic talking point ("we are the only true opposition and you should invest in us") This is also why they were pushing hard to take credit for trucker strikes (which were actually organized by labor unions) a few months ago. Or why they were so adamant in English to push out the message that *they have a plan* (what they call the Phoenix Project). Everything they do makes sense in this light. Whether it's a good or bad strategy I can't comment on here, but time will tell.