Iran War Exacerbates Energy Crisis

Summary

Podcast Summary: Amanpour — "Iran War Exacerbates Energy Crisis"

Date: March 27, 2026
Host: Christiane Amanpour (CNN International)

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Overview

This episode of Amanpour centers on the cascading effects of the Iran war: a spiraling global energy crisis, its implications for climate change, and the urgent debate about fossil fuel dependency and the role of renewables. The episode features a powerful conversation with environmentalist Bill McKibben on energy geopolitics, climate urgency, and U.S. policy. It also includes deeply moving segments: an interview with Hamidreza Mohammadi on the plight of Iranian political prisoners, a harrowing report on drug-facilitated sexual abuse, and cultural critic Chuck Klosterman’s reflection on American football’s cultural grip.

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Main Segment 1: The Iran War, Energy Geopolitics & Climate Catastrophe

With: Bill McKibben (Environmentalist, Author)
Timestamps: [01:06] – [19:49]

Key Discussion Points

• The War’s Consequences:

  • Massive carbon emissions: “Just two weeks of this war has released 5 million tons of carbon emissions.” – Amanpour [01:30]
  • Iran’s role in oil and gas supply disruption: prices spiking globally; several Asian countries declare energy emergencies.
  • Comparison: “The crisis is worse than the oil shocks of the 1970s and the gas emergency after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine combined.” – Amanpour [01:30]

• The ‘Addiction’ to Fossil Fuels:

  • Amanpour posits, “Is this the proof positive, needed… that renewables potentially would have avoided this crisis?” [04:18]
  • McKibben draws the analogy to addiction: “Maybe, maybe this is something like a bottom.” [04:44]
  • High prices and instability are driving global consumer interest in EVs and renewables.

• Global Trends & U.S. Policy Regression:

  • China and much of Asia/Europe are accelerating renewable adoption: “They've built so much clean energy so fast… it's a story of the last 36 months.” [06:06]
  • U.S. curveball: Trump administration is scrapping wind projects and doubling down on fossil fuels despite economic and climate logic. [03:46, 11:47]
  • McKibben: “The fossil fuel industry has been fighting a kind of rear guard action to prevent it from happening in the US.” [06:06]
  • Notable: “If you have to rely on Donald Trump for your energy supply… wouldn't you rather rely on the sun, which is a pretty good record of coming up more mornings than not?” – McKibben [05:24]

• Economic Reality of Renewables:

  • “Sun, wind, and batteries are the new holy trinity… They produce extraordinary amounts of very cheap energy that runs all day and all night.” – McKibben [08:42]
  • 95% of new global electricity generation in the past year: clean energy [08:49]
  • Solar costs continue to fall: “Every time we double the number of solar panels on the planet, we drop the cost another 25%.” [09:23]

• Political Sabotage & Missed Opportunity:

  • Wind projects halted for political reasons: “The President has, for instance, shut down wind farms that were 95% complete…” [11:47]
  • U.S invented key renewables tech but “handed lock, stock and barrel” to China. [12:22]
  • “I don't think there's really a kind of economic self-destruction like that… in the historical record.” – McKibben [13:12]

• Europe’s Response and EU’s Position:

  • European response: shocks from both Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Iran war drive acceleration toward renewables [14:11]
  • Strength of interconnection and leadership in Denmark, Spain, Germany [15:02]
  • EU’s urgency: “Do we want to be a petro state or a Petro union or Petro continent without petro resources? It's totally ridiculous.” – Amanpour quoting Bulgarian Minister [13:28]

• Public Anger and Political Mobilization:

  • “There'll be three or four thousand demonstrations across America. It'll be the biggest public protest since Earth Day in 1970.” [16:52]
  • McKibben: The move to renewables now a kitchen-table issue as millions can’t afford high gas prices.

• Prospective Futures:

  • U.S. would be in a much better place “economically and politically” if renewables were embraced earlier. [18:57]
  • “The quick transition to clean energy is also the thing we need… to stabilize the politics of an increasingly violent and dangerous world.” [19:36]

Memorable Quotes

• “Maybe, maybe this is something like a bottom. Clearly, Trump and the Gulf states are very worried that it is. The reason that they're backing off now from this war as desperately as they can is because they're suddenly realizing that $100 barrel oil is convincing people all over the world that they want an EV in the garage and that they'd a lot rather have a solar farm than a gas fired power plant.” — Bill McKibben [04:44]

• “The only question is, can we reach that future before we fully wreck the planet's climate?” — Bill McKibben [09:12]

• “The place that's in big trouble is the US because we simply refuse to grapple with the fact that we now have a super expensive energy system.” — Bill McKibben [15:40]

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Main Segment 2: Human Rights Crisis — Iran’s Political Prisoners

With: Hamidreza Mohammadi (Brother of Nobel Laureate Nargis Mohammadi)
Timestamps: [21:00] – [29:15]

Key Discussion Points

• Condition of Political Prisoners:

  • Contact completely cut off after Zanjan Prison transfer; calls and updates blocked. [21:13]
  • Political prisoners under more pressure than ever: “They are kept in the dark… the situation in the prisons are really worrying.” [21:30]
  • Guards replaced by Revolutionary Guard crackdown forces; basic needs like food and medicine not met. [22:30]

• Nargis Mohammadi’s Ordeal:

  • Severe abuse highlighted by the Nobel Committee; history of beatings, especially after peaceful protests. [23:57]
  • Heart problems, high blood pressure, returned quickly to prison after brief hospital checkup, deeply unsafe conditions. [25:20]
  • “She was beaten repeatedly… after being transferred into the car… beaten in the car also.” — Hamidreza Mohammadi [25:20]

• Risks Under War Conditions:

  • War compounds repression — now, regime likely to target dissidents more brutally if it survives. [28:00]
  • “If the regime survives, they will go after their most dangerous enemies. That's the Iranian people...” [28:00]

• Message of Defiance:

  • Nargis’ words, read by her children at her Nobel Peace Prize: “The Iranian people, with perseverance, will overcome repression and authoritarianism.” [29:15]

Memorable Quotes

• “Political prisoners are in fact the most vulnerable people in Iran now because on the one side, they don't know what's going on. Outside the prison, they are worried. On the other hand, they are not getting even food and water. That was meager even before the war and now it's become worse.” — Hamidreza Mohammadi [22:30]

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Main Segment 3: Exposé — Drug-Facilitated Sexual Abuse Epidemic

Reporter: Saskia Van Dorn
Timestamps: [30:43] – [38:32]

Key Points

• High-profile survivor cases, like Giselle Pellico, are fueling broader exposure of a widespread, organized online abuse epidemic.
• Drug-facilitated sexual abuse (“sleep content”) is rampant on unmoderated websites like motherless.com.
  • “Last year we began investigating a porn site that gets over 60 million visits a month, focusing on the thousands of videos featuring women who appear unconscious during sex acts.” [32:39]
• Law enforcement struggles: Most drugs leave no trace within 12 hours; videos rarely qualify as "clear evidence." [33:39]
• Efforts by survivors to speak out are often thwarted by shame, legal obstacles, and lack of platform accountability.
• “Some insanities are acceptable. This one is mine.” — Chuck Klosterman, about his football obsession (see next segment).

Memorable Moments

• “With astonishing dignity, [Giselle Pellico] has taken hold of her own harrowing experience… many of them see you as a source of strength.” [37:57]

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Main Segment 4: The Power & Paradox of American Football

With: Chuck Klosterman (Author), Michelle Martin (Interviewer)
Timestamps: [39:42] – [53:09]

Key Discussion Points

• Football’s Pervasive Dominance:

  • "93 of the hundred most watched broadcasts in the United States were pro football games, and then three more were college games.” — Klosterman [40:01]

• Mirror & Contradiction of American Values:

  • Football as “the clearest projection of how people of the United States think and what those people value.” [41:20]
  • Subverts ideals we claim to cherish: democracy, creativity, individual expression; instead, values militaristic discipline, subordination of individual to collective. [42:51-43:15]
  • Football’s corporate and cartel-like structure, closed ownership: “That’s a cartel… a closed universe where the people who are already in it decide who else gets to be in it.” — Martin [44:23]

• Violence, Pain, and Social Space:

  • “Football is a socially sanctioned space where pain, domination, and physical sacrifice aren’t just tolerated but celebrated.” — Martin paraphrasing Klosterman [45:38]
  • Klosterman: Football keeps alive archaic values and physical confrontations no longer present in daily life: “Football says like, well, those things are still real…” [45:48]

• Future of Football — Inevitable Decline?:

  • With mounting awareness of brain trauma, interpersonal violence, and changing culture, Klosterman predicts football's cultural centrality will inevitably fade by 2060-2070:
  • “How many times in the history of the world has the most popular thing remained popular in perpetuity? The answer is none.” — Klosterman [50:12]

• Personal Reflection:

  • “There are parts of me sometimes I feel like, would I be better off if I didn't care about football... But…this is who I am. I love football.” — Klosterman [52:20]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• Energy Crisis & Renewables:

  • “If you have to rely on Donald Trump for your energy supply, someone as erratic and unstable as the current American leader, wouldn't you rather rely on the sun, which is a pretty good record of coming up more mornings than not?” — Bill McKibben [05:24]
  • “The only question is, can we reach that future before we fully wreck the planet's climate?” — McKibben [09:12]

• Human Rights in Iran:

  • “She was beaten and also this time she was dragged down by her hair. She was beaten repeatedly when she was being arrested. And… beaten in the car also.” — Hamidreza Mohammadi [25:20]
  • “[If the regime survives] the regime more than thinking about what would happen with Israel and the United States, they are planning on a kind of purification of the atmosphere in Iran that means killing all, all those who were arrested in January protests.” — Hamidreza Mohammadi [28:00]

• American Football:

  • “Football is probably the best choice [to explain American culture].” — Klosterman [41:20]
  • “How many times in the history of the world has the most popular thing remained popular in perpetuity? The answer is none.” — Klosterman [50:12]

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Timestamps Quick Guide

• Energy Crisis & McKibben Interview: [01:06] – [19:49]
• Iran Political Prisoners (Hamidreza Mohammadi): [21:00] – [29:15]
• Sexual Abuse Investigation (Saskia Van Dorn): [30:43] – [38:32]
• American Football with Chuck Klosterman: [39:42] – [53:09]

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Tone & Final Note

The episode weaves urgency, frustration, and empathy. Amanpour’s pressing dialogue with McKibben carries a tone of incredulity at U.S. policy decisions in the midst of catastrophic consequences. The segment on Iran’s prisoners is haunting and compassionate, emphasizing the human cost behind headlines. The football discussion is both analytical and confessional, highlighting America’s complex cultural fabric.

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This summary offers a comprehensive view of a landmark Amanpour episode: essential for anyone wanting the latest on the energy crisis, climate, Iran’s human rights tragedy, systemic sexual abuse, and what football tells us about America.

Transcript

[Narrator/Host (Various CNN Hosts)]

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[Chuck Klosterman]

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[Bill McKibben]

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[Narrator/Host (Various CNN Hosts)]

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[Christiane Amanpour]

Hello everyone and welcome to Amanpur. Here's what's coming up.

[Bill McKibben]

The little excursion of pretending that we didn't need to worry about climate change

[Christiane Amanpour]

is over as the war in Iran sparks a global energy emergency. Is the world finally waking up to the dangers of fossil fuel dependence? I ask environmentalist Bill McKibben. Then, trapped between a violent regime and falling bombs, Iran's political prisoners face grave risks. I speak to the brother of activist and Nobel laureate Nargis Mohammadi.

[Narrator/Host (Various CNN Hosts)]

We worry about going to our car late at night, but we don't worry about who we lie next to. I didn't realize I had to.

[Christiane Amanpour]

Two years after the abuse of Giselle Pellico made headlines, a special investigation on just how common these crimes are. We meet the brave women coming forward. Also ahead, the power and grip of American football. Chuck Klosterman speaks to Michelle Martin about his new book and how a country's obsession became part of its culture. Welcome to the program, everyone. I'm Christiane Amanpour in London. Even if America and Iran do find a diplomatic end to this war, the the long term costs to the climate are already clear. New analysis finds that just two weeks of this war has released 5 million tons of carbon emissions. That is a lot. It's According to the Climate and Community Institute, Iran's continuing chokehold on oil and gas supplies has sent prices skyrocketing. Some Asian nations have declared energy emergencies. The head of the IEA says the the crisis is worse than the oil shocks of the 1970s and the gas emergency after Russia's invasion of Ukraine combined. So surely the case for renewable energy is more urgent than ever. And yet, throughout his second administration, Trump and his cabinet have been pushing in the opposite direction.

[Chuck Klosterman]

All of these predictions, made by the United nations and many others, often for

[Christiane Amanpour]

bad reasons, were wrong.

[Chuck Klosterman]

They were made by stupid people that

[Christiane Amanpour]

have cost their country's fortunes and given those same countries no chance for success.

[Chuck Klosterman]

If you don't get away from this

[Christiane Amanpour]

green scam, your country is going to

[Chuck Klosterman]

fail to appease a climate cult. We have imposed energy policies on ourselves that are impoverishing our people, even as

[Christiane Amanpour]

our competitors exploit oil and coal and

[Chuck Klosterman]

natural gas and anything else, not just to power their economies, but to use as leverage against our own.

[Christiane Amanpour]

In the latest climate shock, the Trump administration says it'll pay nearly a billion dollars to scrap planned wind projects and invest in fossil fuel development instead. This as other countries look to accelerate a shift into renewables. Bill McKibben is a globally recognized author and environmentalist who says the Iran war is another reason to quit oil and worries about America's chief adversary, China, winning this race. Bill McKibben, welcome to the program.

[Bill McKibben]

Good to be with you as always.

[Christiane Amanpour]

You know, as I watch this unfolding and this massive spike on oil prices and gas prices and the danger to that infrastructure, I come back to this word addiction to fossil fuel. And I wonder if this is the proof positive, needed, if any was ever to happen in front of us, that renewables potentially would have avoided this crisis.

[Bill McKibben]

You know what they say about addicts hitting bottom, and that's what it takes to start getting out of a hole. Maybe, maybe this is something like a bottom. Clearly, Trump and the Gulf states are very worried that it is. The reason that they're backing off now from this war as desperately as they can is because they're suddenly realizing that $100 barrel oil is convincing people all over the world that they want an EV in the garage and that they'd a lot rather have a solar farm than a gas fired power plant. Look, if you have to rely on Donald Trump for your energy supply, someone as erratic and unstable as the current American leader, wouldn't you rather rely on the sun, which is a pretty good record of coming up more mornings than not?

[Christiane Amanpour]

So people will say, yes, that makes perfect sense. But how quickly can we get all these alternatives that we need? I mean, let's face it, Donald Trump and successive administrations have rolled back a lot of the progress, mostly Republican administrations. And you've got, you know, the European crisis where even the EU has had to sort of walk back some of its green, green economy. Talk to me about how one can actually make good like a, you know,

[Bill McKibben]

one can do this at speed as the Chinese are proven they've built so much clean energy so fast that they're sitting pretty. As this saga unfolds in the Middle east, it's really a story of the last 36 months, this explosion of renewable energy first in China, but also increasingly around much of Asia, large parts of Europe. Look at the Spaniards. They're the one part of Europe that feels free to flip Trump the bird because they have enough sunshine to power their economy. Everybody's figuring this out. It's not just that it's geopolitically sound, it's not geopolitical, just that it actually does something about the climate crisis, the biggest problem that we actually face. But it's also cheaper. That's the even, even when oil wasn't $120 a barrel, it was still cheaper to use sun and wind to produce energy than to use oil and gas. So it's really possible to do this. The fossil fuel industry has been fighting now a kind of rear guard action to prevent it from happening in the US They've because they were able to elect a climate denying idiot to the presidency. But that's not going to last. It's not even going to last in the US for we've just come through the most wicked heat wave, most anomalous heat wave probably in American history. The temperature hit 114 degrees Fahrenheit on Friday in March. It broke the old record for the hottest March temperature in America by 4 degrees. So look, this little excursion as Trump calls it in Iran, and the little excursion of pretending that we didn't need to worry about climate change is over. We're back where we were a few years ago. The only difference is we have cheap sun, wind and batteries that would allow us to make very rapid change.

[Christiane Amanpour]

I like the way you say cheap because most of the anti renewable group have said that it's way too expensive, that it impoverishes our economies. Rubio said it, you may have heard it in the lead in Trump has said you must get away from this green scam or your country is going to fail. Give me a reality check on that.

[Bill McKibben]

It's complete nonsense. I mean anybody beginning with the investment bankers who publish regular data on the levelized cost of energy will tell you that sun, wind and batteries are the new holy trinity that they produce Extraordinary amounts of very cheap energy that runs all day and all night. And that's why 95% of new electric generation around the planet last year came from. From clean, renewable energy. Oil and gas are old and expensive, and they're getting more expensive by the day. But even if we reopen the Straits of Hormuz, it's not like they're suddenly going to get really cheap. The thing that falls in price every year are sun, wind and batteries, because we get better at doing them. Every time we double the number of solar panels on the planet, we drop the cost another 25%. So this is clearly the future. The only question is, can we reach that future before we fully wreck the planet's climate? And that's why it's so important for people to be demanding action. We had this big Sun Day event across America in September with 500 demonstrations demanding more action. A lot of those people will be out again at no Kings Day this weekend. Climate will be one of the things that people are talking about. And we're actually making some progress at the state and local level. 28 states in America have this year introduced legislation that will allow Americans to start using the balcony or plug in solar that has become so common in Europe over the last 24 months or so. Virginia just approved plug in solar. Vermont is about to. Utah's already done it. So even with Washington in the hands of, as I say, idiots, it's possible to make real progress in the rest of the country.

[Christiane Amanpour]

So you've said idiots twice. I'm gonna let you have your own opinion. But of course, as you know, the MAGA faithful. No, hold on, hold on. MAGA faithful is like, doubling down. And even as you speak right now, the US Energy Secretary, Chris Wright, last week used the war in Iran to justify why BP should be allowed to drill deep down in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. As I said, MAGA continues to double down on fossil fuels. And Trump has always promised to, quote, unleash American oil and strengthen American dominance. So why are they so adamant? I mean, President Trump fancies himself as a transactional kind of guy who really wants to get the best deals and negotiate the best deals. So if, in fact it's cheaper for America and for the budget not to be paying all this money and all this crisis now, why not go renewable?

[Bill McKibben]

He's a deeply transactional guy. It's just Christian that the transactions are on behalf of him. When he was running for president, you'll recall that he told oil executives that if they donated a billion dollars to his campaign. He would give them anything that they wanted. They donated. Between actual donations, lobbying, advertising. In the last election cycle, about a half a billion dollars. And that turned out to be plenty. The President has, for instance, shut down wind farms that were 95% complete off the eastern seaboard. He's now proposing to spend a billion dollars in taxpayer money to buy out the leases of people who want to build new wind farms off the coast just to make sure they don't get built. These are favors for the fossil fuel industry and that's the transaction that he's engaged in while the rest of the world is busy heading in the other direction. The economic self sabotage that the US has engaged in over the last 14 months as we took technologies invented in the US first solar cell, 1954, Bell Labs in New Jersey, first industrial wind turbine, 1943, about 30 miles south of where I am at Midd College in Vermont in 1943. Technologies invented in America that we have now handed lock, stock and barrel to our theoretical main adversary, the Chinese. I don't think there's really a kind of economic self destruction like that that you can find anywhere in the historical record.

[Christiane Amanpour]

It's amazing the way you say it. And let's talk. You said our competitors and even adversaries like China, but the EU is now agreeing the renewables are the best investment in the future. Even, you know, nuclear funding and this and that. And of course the current crises just show how exposed the, you know, Europe and others are, including as you said, the Far East. But let me, let me just read what the Bulgarian environment Minister has said. Do we want to be a petro state or a Petro union or Petro continent without petro resources? It's totally ridiculous. We have to accelerate our electrification. But again, the Trump tariffs and, you know, all of this and the economic upheaval is putting pressure on this move towards renewables.

[Bill McKibben]

Oh absolutely. But the EU has had now two shocks in this decade. The first was the Russian invasion of Ukraine which cut off their easiest supply of natural gas. And the second is the closing of the Straits of Hormuz and this huge, huge jump in the price of energy and its availability. I think any leader with any kind of foresight has to conclude that the time has come to try and be as independent as you can. And the good news for Europe and everywhere else on the planet is that every country has ample wind and sun to do what they need to do. This is easiest in Europe because places are so close together that the links from one country to Another, so that you can get wind off the North Sea into much of Europe and so on. Much, much easier even than it is in a sprawling place like the U.S. so I think the EU is actually sitting pretty going forward. They have good engineers, they have experience in doing all of this. And they have places like Spain and Germany and Denmark that have really provided surpassing leadership here. The place that's in big trouble is the, the US because we simply refuse to grapple with the fact that we now have a super expensive energy system. And it's not just that we're paying more for gas at the pump, which, you know, I drove past a gas station today that was charging $4.19 a gallon for Americans. That's a huge amount of money. It's not just that, though. It's that every transaction in our economy now is carried out with more expensive energy than the rest. How do we think we're going to make that work?

[Christiane Amanpour]

So I guess my question to you is, what is going to change this? As you mentioned, the demand for EVs is growing across the United States because of the prices of gas. It's seen as a cheaper way out. But, you know, and even I remember listening on the radio when Trump was inaugurated, or maybe just after his election, they interviewed some renewable gas entrepreneurs, or rather renewable energy entrepreneurs, solar farm owners from the very red state energy rich state of Texas. And they said, oh, no, we don't want this renewable business of ours to be slashed and burned under a Trump administration. So what will it take? I mean, that's in the red state, the oil state of Texas. What will it take for people to tell their leaders what they need to do?

[Bill McKibben]

So Texas is a good example. It's installing more clean energy than any place in the United States even now. But Trump is successfully slowing it down for the moment. So what it takes in the long run will be getting Trump and his party out of office. That begins with the midterm elections. And in fact, the move towards the midterm elections begins Saturday in America at no King's Day. There'll be three or four thousand demonstrations across America. It'll be the biggest public protest since earth day in 1970. And it'll be one more signal that Americans are fed up with this. Lots of people are fed up with it for lots of good moral reasons. But there now are millions more people who are just angry at having to pay more for gas than they can possibly afford for no reason.

[Christiane Amanpour]

Trump is not up for election again. Could he not somehow spin this as his own Initiative, yes, I said this and this and blah, blah, blah. But now look at this crisis. Let's be the leaders in our, in the renewable energy to ensure America first, anything is possible.

[Bill McKibben]

But I gotta say, it feels more and more like Trump is one of those old people so stuck in their mindset that they just can't shift with the facts at all. That's not true of all old people. We organize millions of people@third ACT.org over the age of 60. They're coming out to try and stop Trump, not hope that he somehow has a last minute saul on the Damascus Road conversion. Because I think that it's going to take real political, real political protest to make the change we need.

[Christiane Amanpour]

And just let's say if this had all been taken on board and there'd been a relentless China like, you know, move towards renewables, you know, decades ago, when it was still possible, where would the US Be right now?

[Bill McKibben]

Well, the US Would obviously be in a much better place economically and politically. More to the point, the plaint would not be as hot as it is now. And against all the terrible things that are happening on the planet, that remains the really dangerous backdrop here that we absolutely have to deal with. That's the one thing that there's no coming back from after an election or something. Our job is to try and do whatever we can to hold the temperature down. And the good news is that whatever we can, the quick transition to clean energy is also the thing we need to do for our economic future and to stabilize the politics of an increasingly violent and dangerous world.

[Christiane Amanpour]

Really important last word. Bill McKibben, thank you so much indeed for joining us.

[Bill McKibben]

Thank you very much. Have a good day.

[Christiane Amanpour]

And this week, a UN Report confirmed the past decade has been the hottest since records began. Secretary General Antonio Guterres says the report should come with a warning label. Climate chaos is accelerating and delay is deadly. And we'll be right back after this short break. Now, as their fate is decided, thousands of miles away, the people of Iran are literally in the dark, grappling with the longest Internet shutdown in the country's history. Voices have been silenced. Executions are being carried out, according to human rights groups. And on top of it all, many have grave concerns for their imprisoned relatives, especially those held for their democracy activism. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Nargis Mohamedi has spent much of the past two decades behind bars. And just weeks ago, the Nobel committee said that she was being severely abused. Her brother, Hamidreza Mohammadi joins me from Oslo. Hamidreza Mohammadi, welcome to our program.

[Hamidreza Mohammadi]

Thank you. Thanks for the invitation.

[Christiane Amanpour]

This must be incredibly difficult for you and of course, for your sister and the other prisoners inside Iran. Have you heard anything from her recently or about her condition?

[Hamidreza Mohammadi]

The last time I could speak with my family was two weeks ago and after Nargis was transferred to Zanjong Prison. She has been able to call my sister and my brother and my brother when he wanted to talk about the situation in Iran, the attacks and other things that he's not been allowed to have any calls from areas. So I think it's the general situation in Iran. Political prisoners are under a lot of pressure. They are kept in the dark. And as you know, the situation in the prisons are really worrying.

[Christiane Amanpour]

She's obviously not a very healthy person. She's got issues. And I'll play something that she told me. But right now, who are the prison guards? We hear that Revolutionary Guards have been drafted in to keep control of the prison, that food is running out, water is not particularly healthy, no medical attention. Can you tell us any more about that? What does your family say about what's happening inside the prisons?

[Hamidreza Mohammadi]

I don't know exactly about the prison in Zanjan, but the reports coming from the families of the political prisoners in different situations in different cities, all of them say that the guards that used to work there, they are not there anymore. They are substituted by Revolutionary Guard, anti protests and crackdown forces. And it just shows that they are worried about any uprising, especially inside the prisons and under the conditions of war in the wartime, they are not giving any resources to the prisons, be it medical help or food and drinks. So political prisoners are in fact the most vulnerable people in Iran now because on the one side, they don't know what's going on. Outside the prison, they are worried. On the other hand, they are not getting even food and water. That was meager even before the war and now it's become worse.

[Christiane Amanpour]

So, Hamid Reza, let me ask you about her actual health as far as you know it, because she was reported by the Nobel Committee to have been badly kicked and bruised just recently, Kicked and beaten up just recently. And when I spoke to her when she was out of prison on furlough in December of 2024. So that's more than a year ago now. This is what she told me about her treatment back then. I was beaten up very badly. My whole body was covered in bruises and injuries. I asked, I urged them to send doctors in and there were 20, 34 bruises on my body. And as I was beaten up by the Guards, we started chanting loudly. They started hitting me on the chest, whereas I was supposed to go for an angiography and my arteries were blocked. Yet they were beating me on my chest. So that was not nothing accidental. It was deliberate on their. I mean it really just sounds awful. It must be very painful for you. Her husband Taghi Rahmani has said we've entered a dark tunnel. There's no telling when we'll come out of it.

[Hamidreza Mohammadi]

Yeah. It is not the first time Nargis has been beaten in the prison. When she had a sit in in the prison as a protest, she was thrown to the doors and windows. She had lots of cuts and as she said she was beaten and also this time she was dragged down by her hair. She was beaten repeatedly when she was being arrested. And then after being transferred into the car to take her to the Mashad Intelligence Agency, she was beaten in the car also. And one of the. She had only two contacts with my family at that time. One of them was at the very beginning and she talked with my family and told them to make an official complaint against the security forces. And after that she was not allowed to make any contact. But those who were with her in the prison and they got out, they urged the family to contact anyone possible to say that Nargis has had heart problems and her blood pressure was not stable. She was transferred to. To the hospital for just a checkup and she was returned back to the prison in the hospital without the supervision of the family or a lawyer. They have been known to inject political prisoners with suspicious drugs that have, that have called cause complications later. So Nargis didn't feel safe even in the.

[Christiane Amanpour]

Oh my God. And we know during the protest movement the authorities came into the hospitals and you know, pressured doctors and removed patients from bed. So I understand your concern there. In the 12 day war, so called Israel hit the Evin prison and now Israel and the US are hitting detention centers, police stations, intelligence officers to weaken the Iranian security apparatus. And human rights groups are saying that if the regime survives, the first people it'll turn against are, you know, activists, protesters. In other words, the people of Iran who may want change.

[Hamidreza Mohammadi]

I agree with this analysis that if the regime survives, they will go after their most dangerous enemies. That's the Iranian people, because the attacks might stop, but the Iranian people would not stop. They want change and they are frustrated, especially after the massacre that happened in January. They don't want this regime to remain. So the regime more than thinking about what would happen with Israel and the United States they are planning on a kind of purification of the atmosphere in Iran that means killing all, all those who were arrested in January protests and those who were somehow activists, leaders who are in the prison, who have been in the prison for a long time. So it's, I don't see a very good outcome if the regime stays in power. And that seems to be the case, at least for now.

[Christiane Amanpour]

Hamid Reza, thank you so much for being with us and to help really spread the word of your sister's plight. And we hope that people will understand what's happening inside Iran. And I just want to end by reading what her children read out. When she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2023, she wrote, I write this message from behind the high, cold walls of a prison. The Iranian people, with perseverance, will overcome repression and authoritarianism. Next. It was the case that shocked the world two years ago. Giselle Pellicaut waved her anonymity and put a global spotlight on the horror of being drugged and repeatedly raped for almost a decade by her husband and at least 50 other men he recruited. Going public made Pellico a global symbol of strength and survival. It also inspired other women to come forward with their own stories. And there are so many of them. This investigation by Saskia Van Dorn exposes what's emerged as an epidemic of drug facilitated sexual abuse powered by a global online network connecting abusers. And just a warning before we begin. It's a report that contains accounts from survivors of sexual assault and abuse which some viewers will find distressing. Those who appear on camera gave their consent and we respected the wishes of those who asked to remain anonymous.

[Narrator/Host (Various CNN Hosts)]

Emergency.

[Christiane Amanpour]

Go ahead, call her. What's your emergency? I've just heard from my daughter.

[Narrator/Host (Various CNN Hosts)]

She's on her own in a house with four children and has just learned she's been drugged with her son. Sleeping medicine. We worry about his coming behind us walking down the street. We worry about going to our car late at night, but we don't worry about who we lie next to. I didn't realize I had to. Zoe Watts may never know if the videos her husband made of her being raped were ever uploaded online. She met him when she was 17. He's now serving 11 years for rape, sexual assault by penetration and drugging. I knew that he wanted to have a conversation because we'd had a church service that Sunday. He, he reeled off a list of his wrongdoings to me as if it was, you know, a shopping list. I've done this, this, this, this, this, this and this. I've been using our sun sleeping medication to put in your last cup of tea at night to tie you down, take photographs and rape you. And. And I think I just went into shock. Zoe kept the abuse secret for a few months as she grappled with what had happened to her, speaking out only after a severe panic attack. Her mother then called the police. There were some times I thought, you know, this isn't right, but what would it mean? What would our. What would our family look like? Their children would. Would be without a dad and there would be a reputation and my boys would grow up having a reputation and they'd know what their dad would. Was doing. I've noticed you haven't used the word rape a lot in. Tell me, tell me why. It just doesn't. I don't know. It's. It's like one of those things really. I really. I struggle with that. To say that that's what's happened. It's like people can say it to me, but I just don't think,

[Chuck Klosterman]

You

[Narrator/Host (Various CNN Hosts)]

know, you're not alone. Yeah. Yeah. Sadly, huge numbers of explicit sleep videos are being uploaded online by users who claim it's non consensual. One website profiting from this is motherless dot com. Last year we began investigating a porn site that gets over 60 million visits a month, focusing on the thousands of videos featuring women who appear unconscious during sex acts. Most of its users are based in the us it's home to so called sleep content with hundreds of thousands of views. One popular hashtag is icheck, a way of proving a woman is asleep. We created a fake name and soon got into a private telegram group dedicated to sharing sleep content with almost a thousand members. One day, a man in the group we're calling Piotr, not his real name, DMed me. Piotr admitted to me that he had been crushing pills into his wife's drink to rape her in her sleep. Without encouraging him, I tried to find out how he was managing to do this. Who was he? Where was he? Even when women come forward, proving it can be nearly impossible. Some drugs leave the body within 12 hours. Survivors often only realize much later what happened. And even with the courage to speak out, there are still countless roadblocks when it comes to reporting to police or bringing a legal case. Amanda Stanhope didn't know her partner had been abusing her for five years. The police had to look through all these videos and what did they make of them? The one where I was absolutely, absolutely horrified and he'd performed a Sexual act on my face whilst I was unconscious. And it was completely clear. And the police looked at this one, and I thought, there's the evidence. And the police said to me, well, we can't use that. That isn't clear evidence because it looks like you're pretending to be asleep. Her former partner was charged with multiple counts of rape and sexual assault. He took his own life before the case could go to court. While talking to survivors, the man I was dming continued to message and send me videos. It's made me even more determined to try and meet him, to get him in person. So I'm going to send him a message now, and I'm going to see if he would meet with us. By now, we'd worked out he was in Poland, and we knew roughly where he lived, but he refused to meet. And then a tip, he let the slipped that he was planning to attend a party. That's him. I recognize him. We're inside the restaurant, and I've just seen him dancing with her. And at the start of this investigation, all of these men were faceless. And so seeing him tonight has just really brought home the fact that this is happening in real life. The man who had been messaging me day and night was only a few feet away, oblivious. I'd come to see if he was real, and there he was with his wife, the same people I saw in the videos. We couldn't approach pyot's wife without potentially putting her in danger. So we reached out to police about our findings. The telegram group we infiltrated eventually disappeared, but it's a pattern authorities know well. One goes offline, another soon resurfaces. We reached out to both motherless and telegram but did not receive a response. As campaigns by German journalists to shut down motherless and strengthen moderation on similar platforms continue. Videos of women who appeared to be abused while unconscious are still being uploaded, and US Safe harbor laws largely protect the site from liability. In the end, it all comes back to Giselle Pellico, the survivor whose trial shocked France and drew global attention. With astonishing dignity, she has taken hold of her own harrowing experience in reporting this case. We've spoken to multiple survivors who say they were drugged and raped by their husbands. And many of them see you as a source of strength. With your permission, I'd like to read you some of the messages that these survivors have sent to me to read to you one survivor. Her name is Amanda Stanhope. She lives in Wigan. Her strength inspired me to speak out. She broke the silence and shame so many survivors are forever grateful to her. I'd love to say thank you. If she can do it, then so can I.

[Christiane Amanpour]

The magnificent.

[Narrator/Host (Various CNN Hosts)]

CNN Paris,

[Christiane Amanpour]

a truly horrendous and criminal situation. And if you've been affected by any of the issues discussed in this important report, for help in the United States, call the National Sexual assault hotline at 800-656-4673 or [e-mail] internationally, UN Women and the Pixel Project provide a directory of agencies. And we'll be right back after this short break. Next, it's the game that has transcended sport, becoming central to many American relationships, traditions and holidays. But why does football hold such a powerful grip on the country? Our next guest has a theory which he's sharing in a new book appropriately titled Football Cultural critic and author Chuck Klosterman joins Michelle Martin to explain why it matters so much to America, although it may now have an expiry date.

[Michelle Martin]

Thanks, Christiane. Chuck Klosterman, thank you so much for joining us.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Thanks for having me on.

[Michelle Martin]

You've written, what, a dozen books now?

[Chuck Klosterman]

This is 13, I think this is

[Michelle Martin]

13 about like all kinds of things. Like there's sex, drugs and Cocoa Puffs. But what if we're wrong about all kinds of things? So why football?

[Chuck Klosterman]

Well, you know, I have been unconsciously thinking about football for about 45 years now. It's not just that football is the most popular sport. It is really more popular than all the other sports in America. I mean, it dominates television to really a nonsensical degree. Like in 2023, 93 of the hundred most watched broadcasts in the United States were pro football games, and then three more were college games. Like, there's no corollary to this in other countries, even in countries where there's a much of Europe, soccer is dominant in a way that it would seem to mirror our relationship to American football, but not really, not with this sort of, kind of all encompassing sort of magnitude. Where in the United States, even if you hate football, you somehow collide with it.

[Michelle Martin]

So let's get into the meat of your argument. You open the book with this claim. Football is the clearest projection of how people of the United States think and of what those people value. Even and perhaps especially when football is something they actively dislike, the role it plays in the shaping of our contemporary reality is both outsized and underrated. Say a little bit more.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Well, you know, on the surface, the reason I say like it's outsized, understood because nobody seems to be Arguing that football isn't the most popular sport or even the most popular kind of entity in the United States. Everyone accepts that. But what is underrated, maybe, is the gap of football and absolutely everything else, with the possible exception, I guess, of Taylor Swift. I mean, once you look at football being invented kind of post Civil War, and then it evolves sort of on its own in its own way for, you know, 50, 60, 70 years, and then intersects with the rise of television in the 1950s. This is purely by happenstance. I mean, obviously, the creators of football had no idea for this coming medium. The people inventing television did not have football at the front of their mind. But that marriage was so ideal that football in so many ways is the ideal product to experience the platform of television, the medium of television, that as television became sort of the dominant sort of shaper of the last half of the 20th century, football kind of just came along with that. And a lot of the language we use and just politics and everyday language comes out of football. The idea that football has this kind of militaristic base imbues a lot of its meaning. I don't know if this will be true for football moving through the 21st century, but if you were looking at the last half of the 20th century in the United States, you can only use one thing to sort of describe what has happened or what the ethos was. Football is probably the best choice. Yeah.

[Michelle Martin]

You argue that football pushes against ideas that we claim to value. Democracy, creativity, individual expression. And if you kind of think about it, you're like, yeah, you're right. I mean, discipline the team. You know, basically subsuming your own individual desires and interests for this, for the whole. It's almost militaristic, as you point out.

[Chuck Klosterman]

The contradiction is that when you explain it like that, or if I were to explain it like that seems real problematic in a way. Right? Seems almost. What we're saying is the qualities of football that people love are the things that they have been socialized to believe are antithetical to what you should want if you're an enlightened person. But that is to some degree true. I mean, when we watch basketball, for example, you watch the NBA, it's kind of almost a creative endeavor for the individuals actually seeing these guys, and you're seeing them use this sport to sort of reflect who they are. Football shuns that. Football shuns the individual. It's all about the collective, you know, the idea of athletes. You know, the. We're in the kind of the player empowerment age where the idea the players should have more say on sort of how the league operates, how the revenue is shared. But again, football is not really like that. Football has this hierarchy where a play comes from the press box down to the coach on the sideline, sent in through a radio in code. The quarterback looks at a wristband to decipher the code, tell the other 10 guys. It's like it is really a kind of a corporate structure in a sense.

[Michelle Martin]

Excuse me, it's a cartel. It's a cartel. The fact is it's a closed universe where the people who are already in it decide who else gets to be in it. I mean, they literally kind of vote the ownership in and can decide, for example, that there will never be another team like the Green Bay packers, which is owned by the community. That's a cartel. Sorry, I mean, it is, but.

[Chuck Klosterman]

And when we're accustomed to using a word like cartel to associate with like drug lords, right? Or when we say something is undemocratic, that football has in some ways, like, you know, it's always dangerous using words like fascist, right? Because there's different people, different ways of using the word. Well, that's not today's argument, but I'm saying that the literal definition of fascism, which is like an authoritarian situation where violence is part of it and all of these things, that is what football in many ways reflects, but it works in football. And this is sort of one of the ironies is this. These things that we're kind of told that we're supposed to see as problems, and we would see them as problems in almost every other walk of life, can be accessed through this simulation, through this game. And I think it allows people sort of to somehow in a weird way deal with reality by having this unreal world.

[Michelle Martin]

You describe football as a socially sanctioned space where pain, domination and physical sacrifice aren't just tolerated, but celebrated.

[Chuck Klosterman]

No sport sort of adopts forward thinking modernity as much as football. The idea of sending in plays through radio, that was a radical idea. Any technical or ideological innovation is immediately adopted by football. And yet in so many ways it is a sport mired in the past, at least from a value perspective. The way a football coach can act, for example, would not be acceptable in almost any other line of work. Guys, shoulder grabbing, put, you know, things that, that, that are kind of accepted, that we assume will happen. You know, the idea that, like that, well, you know, it's a real application of physicality and to some degree violence, which for the most part people are able to separate themselves in Life, not everybody, most people are able to live a life where physicality does not really confront them. And football says like, well, those things are still real. Like, like these things that we have managed to socially move away from the idea of sometimes the power relationship in sports where, where it is simply a matter of mass and speed against something else, technique and all these things come into play. What I'm saying is a lot of these ideas which used to be part of just day to day life for many, many Americans, the idea that physicality being part of their life and sort of the consequences of all this, that has been removed. So we have to. But we still hunger for this.

[Michelle Martin]

There's been in recent years, I'd say maybe the last decade, sort of along the rise of like the MeToo movement and other sort of scientific advances that allowed people to understand the cost, the toll of this on people. As we're understanding more about how the brain works, the impact on the brain, we're seeing more about stories about players in their personal lives behaving in a way that is unacceptable. Like the violence that we see on the field sometimes translating into interpersonal violence in a way that we find unacceptable. I'm just curious if you feel that this sort of movement to acknowledge these things is affecting the way people are receiving this.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Well, I mean, this is part of the reason why I sort of have this argument that I think probably in two generations from now, so I'm looking at the year, say 2060, 2070, I do think that football will probably recede. It won't disappear entirely, but it will recede from the center of the culture. The idea of it still being the monoculture will be over. Because I do think that as we have moved into this century, that the personal relationship that used to be part of football in a, in a more sort of tangible way, more people would have, you know, either played in high school or new people who played, or their father or all these things. I think that that relationship is sort of being almost kind of severed in some degree politicized in that now. Saying that you love football now has a meaning in this country that it may didn't have in the past, where it was almost saying that some of the things you were talking about, someone is saying like, well, yeah, I mean, I'll acknowledge those things are real or whatever. But I missed the world where that wasn't the conversation, you know, like, you know, the thing you said, like this new development. I remember when I was very young, they would. There was this urban myth that like, that Domestic violence sort of like decreased dramatically during the super bowl. That during the four hours of the super bowl, domestic violence just fell to the floor. That it turned not be true at all. But it was already this idea that was actually kind of a forward thinking idea that somehow that football was a way for people to sort of exercise their violent tendencies by consuming up and no one really knows. Is that true? There's certainly a higher rate of domestic violence among football players than the average public. That's also a little bit understandable. You reward someone for being violent for most of their life. The idea that that can carry over the rest of their life is not unthinkable.

[Michelle Martin]

So let me go to something that has actually gotten quite a lot of attention since your book has come out and that is your prediction that football is doomed. Not tomorrow, but eventually. Why is that?

[Chuck Klosterman]

Well, you know, that's a. I mentioned at the beginning of the book. It's a big chunk at the end of the book and it's the thing most people are. Because it's just, it's, it's so paradoxical to people. I'm saying that this thing that is clearly the most popular thing in the country is doomed. But you know, the fact of the matter is I think it's two things. I think one is, is going to be an economic issue. I think another is going to be sort of the lack of personal relationship people are going to add to the game forward. That's going to only be a mediated TV event. So when something catastrophic happens economically, the fan base won't care the way that we would care now. But you know, there are many people read that section and they point all the things like well, I don't think this is true. I don't think advertising to change that much. I don't think it's going to tease you. There's a million arguments you can make against what I said. I guess my central argument is how many times in the history of the world has the most popular thing remained popular in perpetuity? The answer is none. That has never happened. That has never happened. There hasn't been an art form, there hasn't been a sport. There hasn't been anything that has been that dominant that just exists forever. So something's going to happen to football. It's going to happen because of its size alone. As society changes, and obviously society will, big objects have a harder time changing than small objects. They're less like, they're more brittle. So I don't think it is in any way outrageous to argue that 50 years from now or 60 years from now, the way the world is will be different. But it just that in a way, it proves how popular football is, that just telling people that the thing you love won't be popular after you're dead. They're like, no way. I don't accept that.

[Michelle Martin]

You know, okay, well, before we let you go, you end the book by writing, some insanities are acceptable. This one is mine. It's normal for Americans to have an abnormal relationship to football, and I'm too normal to confront my simplicities. I want to be controlled. I like it. I don't care if it doesn't make sense. That's the best part.

[Chuck Klosterman]

You know, there are parts of me sometimes I feel like, would I be better off if I didn't care about football, if I had never played football? You know, all these things I sometimes think I would be. I would be. You know, it is. It consumes so much of my time and my thinking, so much effort I place into trying to see specific football games, which I then Forget about in 48 hours or whatever. But, like, the next event's coming, so I got to figure that out. And yet this is who I am, you know, I am someone who loves football. And I think there's going to be a time in the future when it won't be this way. And people are going to come up with explanations as to why it collapsed, and those are going to be wrong. So I'm like, I'm going to do a book now so that they can read this book in the future and be like, this is why they cared.

[Michelle Martin]

Okay, Chuck Klosterman, thank you so much for talking with us.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Thanks for having me on.

[Christiane Amanpour]

That's it for now. Thank you for watching and goodbye from London,

[Narrator/Host (Various CNN Hosts)]

Eva. I'm Eva Longoria and I'm setting out to really experience France, to savor its world celebrated cuisine and explore the country's rich history.

[Chuck Klosterman]

Searching For France premieres April 12th on CNN. And next day on the CNN app,

[Narrator/Host (Various CNN Hosts)]

I'm CNN tech reporter Claire Duffy. This week on the podcast Terms of Service, there's a growing category of products aimed specifically at addressing women's unique health needs. These tools and services are sometimes known as femtech. And they can provide big opportunities and benefits, but they can also come with some risks. To walk us through all of this, I spoke with Bethany Corbin. Bethany is an attorney and CEO of FEM Innovation, where she advises startups, clinicians, and healthcare organizations.

[Michelle Martin]

In my opinion, what it really does is gives us a collective language to talk about women's healthcare innovation and the tools that are out there so that we can take control of our healthcare experiences and know how to advocate for ourselves in a system that's probably not

[Narrator/Host (Various CNN Hosts)]

been designed to advocate for us. Listen to CNN's terms of service wherever you get your podcast.