Loading summary
Transcript35 lines
- [00:00]
A
Jeremy I'm Jeremy Scahill from DropSiteNews. DropSiteNews.com it is Tuesday, July 7th. Welcome to our regular Tuesday livestream. We're going to be discussing both Palestine and Iran on the program today. Coming up a bit later, we're going to be joined by Vali Nasser of Johns Hopkins University to discuss the life and legacy of the slain late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of Iran. As we speak right now, there are millions upon millions of people in the streets in Iran, as well as large crowds of people in Iraq as well. This is a two country funeral procession because of the deep historical ties that Ali Khamenei had in Iraq, in particular the holy city of Karbala. There is also a massive, massive crowd that hours before the procession is set to begin in Qom in Iran that has amassed for this remembrance. And many people in the Western world, I think, were very, very stunned to see the size of the crowds, the passion of the crowds honoring the life and legacy of the late supreme leader who of course, was assassinated in the opening moments on February 28th of the US Israeli war against Iran. So we're going to be speaking to Vali about the life and legacy of Khamenei as well as what is going to happen next in Iran because the threats are continuing. There are suspicions among Iranian officials and political analysts that the United States and Israel are once again just using this period to try to buy time to restock their munitions and rejigger their war machines to continue the war. Will there ultimately be a deal? Both sides have said they have red lines that if they continue to be crossed, it's going to preclude any serious deal. But for now, we're going to focus on Palestine. There is an enormous amount of action going on regarding the Israeli war against Gaza. And in fact, as Benjamin Netanyahu, who really ratchets up his campaign for re election to remain prime minister of Israel, there's a lot of reporting in the Hebrew language media in Israel indicating that there is serious consideration being given to launching a much larger scale operation, military operation again inside of Gaza. And, and as we're watching all of this unfold, I think it's important to see step back and look in the bigger context of what we're witnessing. Yes, in the aftermath of October 7th, we saw the launch of the Israeli genocide against Gaza, which was accompanied by an unprecedented military assault and onslaught on the occupied west bank, unprecedented in its scope since 1967. And then you had the expansion of the Israeli war into Lebanon. And right now at this moment, Israeli forces continue to remain entrenched deep inside of southern Lebanon. And the US and Israel are working with the Lebanese government in a framework, as the Lebanese government says it is, that will keep Israeli forces inside of Lebanon indefinitely and puts the entire onus on, quote, unquote, demilitarizing or disbanding Hezbollah on the Lebanese government. This has been a long standing Israeli project to try to co opt the Lebanese armed forces into serving as the US Israeli localized so called counterterrorism force. But in the, in the bigger picture, what we're seeing is that the US and Israel have manufactured a reality in the region where ceasefires or the claiming of a ceasefire or the signing of a ceasefire, it's being used as a tool aimed at incapacitating or delegitimizing in a more formal way resistance to primarily Israel's wars by redefining the term ceasefire as effectively a cudgel or a hammer for surrender under a diplomatic framework, a surrender that the Israelis couldn't achieve on the battlefield. And the, the redefinition of the term ceasefire is that Israel can continue its attacks and they claim self defense, if they even claim any justification. By the way, parenthetically, Israel continues to kill leaders of Hamas and the Qassam Brigades in Gaza. Those are the very forces they signed a ceasefire deal with. That's not how ceasefires work. You don't say, well, they're still alive and they're still Hamas and therefore we get to kill them. Israel signed a ceasefire deal with Hamas. They continue to burn Palestinians alive in tents who are not necessarily members of Hamas or affiliated with any Palestinian faction. Clearly those are violations of the ceasefire, but it's also a violation of the ceasefire to kill the very people you signed the so called ceasefire with. But Israel has forever claimed that ceasefires mean it can continue to attack. But they really have kind of produced this on an exportable scale to all of these other wars going on. And so nowhere is this more pronounced than in the case of Gaza where the Palestinian side is not only expected to not fire a rocket, not fight back when Israeli forces attack, but they're also supposed to comply with an evolving list of demands. You know, just to give one example, phase one of this so called ceasefire that was signed in October of 2025 in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt didn't say anything about the Palestinians disarming. What it did say was that Israeli forces needed to begin repositioning and ultimately withdrawing. It provided for an exchange of captives The Palestinians had released all of the living and deceased Israeli captives. It provided for a resumption of aid at the levels of the January 2025 agreement, which would have been 600 trucks at least coming in with life essentials. Israel has not complied with any aspect in reality of the deal that it signed and instead has deepened its occupation of, of Gaza. It's not pulling back, it's moving further in. And Netanyahu recently said, let's move towards 70%, you know, they're a little over 60% right now of control of Gaza's territory. Let's move towards 70 on our way to 100%. And so no, in a, in a, in a sane situation that actually was concerned with the rule of law or the text that was signed, this so called Board of Peace, you know, set up by Trump, which is also kind of a scam, you know, pay billion dollars and then you get lifetime membership in this thing. They would be saying to the Israelis, you're violating the ceasefire, you need to comply with the terms. But instead they've changed the rules entirely and now they're saying that in order for Israel to comply with the deal that it signed with the Palestinians, you have to agree to all of these other terms. And by the way, we're not going to say a word when Israel continues to kill Palestinians every day. 2 a day, 3 a day, 20 a day, 25 a day. As we were coming on today, the Israelis claim that they killed another set of people inside of Gaza. They brag about it, they don't hide from it. We're very honored to have a dear friend of Dropsite news here and one of the sharpest analysts that there is on the issue of Palestine. I'm talking about Diana Butu, Palestinian human rights lawyer, former legal advisor and negotiator for the Palestine Liberation Organization. Primarily working in the early 2000s and formal capacity, but continues to work on an advocacy level on a wide range of issues in Palestine. Diana, great to see you again. Thanks for being here.
- [07:59]
B
It's nice to see you too. Jeremy, how are you?
- [08:02]
A
Well, I want to begin by asking you about the latest development with these so called negotiations. Now as you and I both know, the Palestinian side has been trying to navigate how to respond to this framework where there's just constant new demands. You know, the Israelis don't even abide by what was signed. And now the Palestinians are constantly being told, you have to respond to this, respond to this. And one of the things that Hamas has said from the very beginning, even before they signed the deal is we're willing to relinquish governance of Gaza. And they agreed, even though it wasn't in the deal that they signed. But they formally agreed with President Trump's proposal that a committee of Palestinian technocrats not affiliated with any party would come in and assume governing authority in Gaza. Despite the fact that Hamas has agreed to this, the Israelis have been blocking that committee from coming in, which means the Israelis have kept the Hamas government in power, whether they want to be or not, inside of Gaza. Yesterday, the official spokesperson for Hamas in Gaza, as well as the spokesperson for the Gaza government, held a press briefing in which they said, we are dissolving this government and we want this NCAG to this national committee of technocrats to come into Gaza. And, you know, some sources in the Palestinian resistance I talked to said, look, we did this because it's been our position for more than, you know, you know, for all these months, since before the ceasefire, but nothing is happening. So we felt like we would just tell the world we're doing this now. You know, we're, we're dissolving this governing entity. Give us your sense of what, what's happening here, the significance of what we saw yesterday in this announcement in Gaza.
- [09:42]
B
So, Jeremy, you know, the Hamas government actually announced, even well before the ceasefire, within a couple of months after October of 2023, that they didn't want to be part of ruling Gaza any longer. So the obstacle has not been Hamas in this at all. But what instead we've seen happen is the same thing that we saw happen in the 90s, the same thing that we saw happen in the year 2000, which is that the goalpost is constantly changing. So as you recall, we're now today, today exactly 10 months since, or nine months, excuse me, since the signing of this agreement. And nine months ago, when this agreement was signed, as you already mentioned in your intro, there was nothing there mentioned about the, all of the issues that the Israelis have now placed on the table. And so what we're seeing instead is that, is that rather than this group, this board of peace, pushing through and making sure that Palestinians are allowed to survive, especially after two and a half years of genocide, that instead they're putting more and more and more conditions on Palestinians to be able to survive with the aim of attempting to squeeze Hamas, and the form that this is taking is primarily through humanitarian issues. They've effectively said to, to the government that we're not going to allow in any major humanitarian supplies, we're not going to allow the reconstruction of hospitals, we're not going to allow the reconstruction of schools, we're not going to allow in certain medicines, we're not going to allow in medical equipment, we're not going to allow in food in any major quantity or clean water or even reconstruction equipment. None of that stuff is going to be allowed in until you meet our demands. And what's astonishing in all of this is that you'll recall back in January of this year that Trump himself said that we had already entered into phase two and that the Israelis should be abiding by this agreement. And here we see that they are not. So once again, what we're seeing is that instead of Israel being the one that calls the shots, we have this Board of Peace calling the shots on Israel's behalf. They're doing the bidding on Israel's behalf. And rather than putting the brakes on Israel and saying to Israel, enough is enough and we have to keep moving forward, they're instead moving along with this. And so with yesterday's announcement, the aim was effectively to say, if you think that we're the problem, we're not the problem. Let this be handed over to this, to this, to this, to ncag, let this be handed over to another body, let them be the one that's doing the ruling, and you're still going to see that the same thing is going to happen. And indeed, Laden off yesterday, in one of on acts on Twitter, said that, oh, this is a great move, but this isn't enough to be able to meet the next phase and to be able to go ahead and move forward. So, again, the whole thing is that they want to see a surrender agreement. That's all that they're looking for, is a surrender agreement with the ability of Israel to continually go in and continue to bomb Palestinians. We've seen over a thousand Palestinians killed just over the course of the past nine months without a single Israeli being killed, without even a single anything being shot in Israel's direction. That's definitely not ceasefire. They're just looking for a surrender agreement.
- [13:01]
A
Yeah, and you know, Diana, my colleague Jawah Ahmad and I recently did a story and we interviewed you for this. We obtained the latest drafts. There's been this exchange of drafts on a framework that is supposedly aimed at, like, moving forward to the next phase. And one of the documents is Nikolai Mladinov, the, for all practical purposes, the head of the Board of Peace on these matters. His draft to the Palestinian side and also the Palestinian draft. And, and if you were to sort of drill down and look at what, what is at the center of this, it's that Mladinov has framed the entire thing as though the October agreement wasn't signed, as though the Palestinians had made sweeping concessions and effectively surrendered, and that now Hamas is going back on it because they're not engaging in a public ritual to like hand over Kalashnikovs and to do it as a kind of surrender routine. And, you know, I feel like I'm losing my mind sometimes because I keep repeating this. Again, the Palestinian resistance took a position. This is very important for people to understand. When Hamas and Islamic Jihad and other factions that were engaged in the armed struggle against Israel post October 7th signed that agreement in October, what they said so clearly was we do not represent the entirety of the Palestinian people. The Palestinian people believe in a democratic process. As the combatants in this war, as those who are holding captives, Israeli captives, we can negotiate on a limited number of issues, including the exchange of captives, the official declaration of the end of combat, the withdrawal of Israeli forces, and the providing or the resumption of deliveries of life essentials that are often referred to as humanitarian aid, although they're actually life essentials, they shouldn't be called aid. And that's it. And they said on all these other issues that Donald Trump talks about his 20 point plan, we need to consult with all Palestinian factions and political parties. I want people to keep that in mind. So what Nikolai Mladinov and this so called Board of Peace have done is they have said, you made all these agreements. You said you were going to disarm all Palestinians. You said you were going to allow the Israeli forces to remain occupying huge swaths of Gaza until you've essentially surrendered. In order for us to actually guarantee that any of these terms that were mentioned in October are going to be committed to, you now have to abide by this new set of demands. And it's by acting as though it's like Hamas disarming, it sounds like it's like some foreign militia that has come into Gaza and it's like it's ISIS or something. We need to just get rid of these people and then everything is going to be okay. The reality is it's not even about Hamas. What Israel wants is for Palestinians not to be able to defend themselves against what Israel openly says it's going to do, which is to continue this war. So what I want to ask you, Diana, is how, in your assessment, how are the Palestinians who are negotiating this, navigating this situation? Because my understanding from speaking to them is that they've put about as flexible of a plan on the table as they could. They look at the Northern Ireland process, for instance. They have talked about submitting to one rule in terms of one law in Gaza, that they would abide by agreements that no weapons can be on the street that are not authorized by this technocratic committee empowered by the board, that they're willing to store their weapons under international monitoring, but that they won't hand their weapons over to the Israelis or any other foreigners. They're essentially saying, we will play ball with all of this, but we know that the Israelis will attack us again. And the Palestinians, like every other people in the world, have a right to defend themselves. So how do they navigate this when you also have Netanyahu and others implying that they're going to just come into Gaza again in a much larger scale way?
- [17:08]
B
This is the problem, Jeremy, is that it's so flawed from the beginning look, when even in the agreement itself is flawed, because they're ignoring the context of occupation, of military occupation. And when there's military occupation, there's going to be resistance. That's just the way that nature is. It's the way human nature is with military occupation, there's going to be resistance. And it's also ignoring the ruling of the International Court of Justice, which also says that Israel's occupation is illegal. And it also says that Israel doesn't have a right to claim self defense when it's continuing a military occupation. The other problem, of course, is that Palestinians are being asked to negotiate an end to their genocide, which again, we've never seen happen in history. So the whole thing has been flawed from the very beginning. And given that it was flawed from the very beginning, and given that everybody wanted to see some type of an agreement come and take shape back in October, I would have expected that one, because they kept saying this is all about the Israeli captives. I would have expected that instead they would be pushing forward to make sure that Palestinians live, rather than pushing to make sure that Palestinians are under the thumb of the very entity that has committed genocide against them, which is Israel. So what they've now done is they've turned everything on its head. So how do these negotiators navigate it? I don't know how they're going to do it. Because without that sustained international effort to put pressure to end Israel's attacks, there's going to be no way. This is why genocide is labeled as one of these crimes, above all crimes, where it doesn't just require one party to put pressure on the other, it requires the entire world to get involved and to put an end to genocide. And yet, because they're ignoring the context of genocide, because the world's ignoring the context of, of occupation, we're going to be in this for a very, very long time until I'm afraid, it's far too late. And I think we've already effectively reached that point. And what do I mean by reach that point? If you look around at Gaza and you see that more than 90% of Gaza has been flattened, that people are surviving on a thread in terms of health care, that people are, their health is actually deteriorating at a very rapid pace. I'm not sure if there's a, a quick turnaround for that. And as you said, with this life saving, this isn't humanitarian life saving food that's supposed to be coming in that Israel's blocking, unless there is sustained pressure on Israel to, to end that, to, to allow that food and those supplies to come in. I just don't know how longer, how much longer people are going to be able to sustain this. Plus, you have, we're in election season now with the Israelis. Each one of the Israeli candidates showing their bravado about how much more they can beat up on Palestinians. That's what this election is about. There isn't a single candidate so far who's come forward and said, you know, we should really be looking at ourselves and look ourselves in the mirror and ask what is it that we did to Palestinians since October of 2023. Instead, they're all talking about how they haven't done enough against Palestinians. So unless there is some sustained international intervention to stop Israel, which is always what has been needed, then I'm afraid that Israel is just going to continue to go full steam ahead with the Board of Peace being the frontman for them.
- [20:41]
A
You know, I want to ask you about the political election campaign in Israel that's now kicking into high gear. But you know, this morning, a researcher, colleague of mine who very closely monitors the Hebrew media, we were, we were messaging back and forth about this question of is it, do we really believe that the Israelis are going to launch a large scale military operation? Because that, that is part of the messaging here. And there's, you know, there's good reason to believe that it could be legitimate. But I just want to run down a few of the stories that he highlighted this morning for me. He was saying he was just running down just sort of facts and he wasn't saying, I think it is or isn't going to happen. He was just sort of giving an overview of some of what's the discourse has been like lately. But he said the Minister of Energy and Infrastructure, Eli Cohen, is vowing that Israel will get 100% of Gaza, and other Likud ministers are advocating the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the reestablishment of settlements. That's one point he said. He said Channel 12 is reporting that Israel expects the Board of Peace will declare Hamas to be in violation of the ceasefire in approximately two months, at which point Israel, quote, unquote, may relaunch the genocide. Channel 13 reporting that although the IDF finalized preparations for a renewed assault, for now the political echelon conveyed to the military that the focus should remain on Iran and Lebanon, adding that Netanyahu has put Gaza off the table due to an understanding that there will be low tolerance for a renewed war there. In Washington, the report also asserts that Hamas in Gaza is suffering from major financial issues leading to the resignation of officials, but claims that Al Qassam Brigades have nevertheless finalized their plans in case Israel attacks and distributed the plan among fighters. And then in Haaretz and I saw that this morning, Amos Harel claims that Netanyahu might renew the assault on Gaza for electoral purposes. So this is sort of just a brief cross section of some of the discourse. What's your sense of all these issues?
- [22:38]
B
The Israeli public believes that they won when it came to Gaza. And for them, victory is just a military. They don't think past tomorrow. When it comes to Iran, 90% of them say that they believe that the Iranians have won. And when it comes to the Israeli elections, there's always, almost always the case where the Israelis have to show how much they can beat up on somebody, because we're in this pattern and have been in this pattern now, so since 1948 of endless wars, forever wars, forever wars, forever wars. And so each one tries to set the stage to show the Israeli public just how strong they are and to audition for the role of being the strongest candidate. And that's why we're seeing what we're seeing now. Do I think that they're going to attack us? I think they're going to continue to attack us as they have all of this time. The question still remains whether they are going to continue and renew the attacks on Iran. A lot of that will depend on the United States and whether they're going to continue to continue the attacks on Lebanon. I think that they will, because for them, Lebanon, the land grab in Syria, hitting Gaza, those are all very, very easy for them, and those are enough for them. To audition how much they can kill Palestinians and kill Arabs. The issue of Iran remains to be seen.
- [24:06]
C
Yeah.
- [24:07]
A
Well, Dan and Bhuttu, I want to thank you so much for your continued work and your really vital analysis. And we'll be sure to always get analysis from you as we continue to report on this. Thanks so much for joining us.
- [24:19]
B
Thank you, Jeremy.
- [24:20]
D
Thank you.
- [24:21]
A
Thank you. Well, I want to bring in my colleague Murtaza Hussain, as we shift gears now, although it's in the same realm and the same arena, but shift gears to a more concise focus on the situation in Iran. In a moment, we're going to be joined by Vali Nasser. But first, Murtaza, good to see you this morning. What are your thoughts as you listen to Diana Bhutto there talking about what I think is going to be a continued fight that the Palestinians are going to have to wage on multiple fronts against the diplomatic onslaught, the attempt to redefine ceasefire and the prospect of renewed war against Gaza. Give us first your sense of how you see things regionally right now before we really zero in on Iran.
- [25:07]
C
Well, it seems like it's an interregnum or maybe the eye of the storm, you could say, because there are all these sort of half measures, diplomatic half measures, to prevent the emergence of a new conflict in theory, or to at least put a pin in them some period for Trump's political purposes. But none of the underlying issues have really been addressed either in Iran or in Gaza. So you have these half ceasefires or half measures or interim measures which are now coming undone gradually because the underlying political conflict was always deferred both in Gaza and in Iran. The question of the future administration of the Gaza Strip, the question of Palestinian statehood, all these things were sort of deferred later on to achieve an immediate short term goal of putting a pause to the fighting. And likewise, in Iran, there was a strong incentive of the US Part to stabilize global oil markets and so forth. And the really difficult questions of the relationship between Iran and the US in the wake of the war have not really been answered. So I think that both situations were always, inevitably going to result in a resumption of conflict on some scale at some point. And we may be coming to the precipice of that both in Gaza and in Iran very soon.
- [26:22]
A
Maaz, I want to bring in Vali Nasser, professor of International affairs and Middle East Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International studies in Washington, D.C. his latest book is Iran's Grand A Political History. Vali, thanks so much for being with us this morning.
- [26:39]
D
Good to be with you. Thank you.
- [26:41]
A
I want to begin by, you know, as we're speaking, there are millions upon millions of people gathered in Iran and huge crowds as well gathered in Iraq ahead of the late Supreme Leader's coffin being brought through Karbala and elsewhere in Iraq. And given the. There's so much I want to ask you that we want to ask you about the political situation. But I. I also think it would be really fascinating if. If we got your reflections on who Ali Khamenei was, his legacy, and a bit about his biography and why he would inspire such massive response to his martyrdom, not just in Iran, but around the world.
- [27:27]
D
Well, within an Iranian context, Ali Khamenei is probably the third longest ruling ruler of Iran since the middle of the 19th century. 36 years at the helm of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Khomeini brought about the Iranian revolution. But the Islamic Republic is really the product of Ali Khamenei. Its foreign policy, the shape of the state, its main institutions, the Revolutionary Guards, the varieties of sort of foundational institutions of that country are his brainchild. Now, there was a lot of Iranians who also were very unhappy with him towards the end. We saw massive protests in Iran in January, but his passing has come at the hand of Israel and the United States. He was killed in a direct attack in a very large war on Iran that has been transformative for the country. So the commemoration of his funeral should be put in that context. It is not that the country has just lost a really popular leader because he was not popular with many Iranians, but it is a moment in which the millions that go to his funeral are basically protesting the manner in which he was killed, the devastating attack on the country, and the ongoing threat that Israel and the United States are posing towards the country. And also it's a moment in which the Iranians are literally celebrating resistance, having survived the war. And the size of the crowd and the nature of the funeral is also a show of strength, not just by the regime, but also by the population at some level. So his funeral would have been very different had he died in the different circumstances, had there not been war, had he died in his bed of an ailment, yes, there would have been a state funeral, but it would not have had the kind of energy and numbers and symbolism that is attached to it right now.
- [29:33]
C
Dr. Nasser, I was comparing the funeral for Ali Khamenei to that of his predecessor, Ruhollah Khomeini, the original, the first supreme leader of the Iran. And his death also came shortly after much longer and more devastating war with Iraq. And it seemed that at that time there was also a very large outpouring of public support, probably comparable in number on some scale. But also it seemed to help reify the foundations of the government ideologically because of the fact that it was coming at the end of this period of pronounced suffering. How do you see the change potentially in the government's relationship with the population or the population's view of the government as a result of his death in this manner and the war and the current commemorations taking place? And I asked, because it seems like before the war it's the legitimacy of the government had maybe reached a nether, especially its relationship with the population following to place in January and the deteriorating economic situation in the country.
- [30:35]
D
Yes, absolutely. I mean, when Ayatollah Khomeini died in 1989, the revolution was very, very, very well entrenched among the majority of Iranian population. And there was an extremely strong bond between him as a person and a charismatic leader and his followers. And therefore there was a spontaneous outpouring of mourning for him. But his death was not symbolic of a moment in Iran's history the way that this one is. I think the leaders of the Islamic Republic wanted a very large funeral for Ayatollah Khamenei for a number of reasons. One is that they wanted to elevate him to the same status as Khomeini had by having similarly large people in the streets, because that shows continuity, that shows stability, that shows resilience. They also very well understand that the millions of people who go to these funerals over a seven day period across the country, they go in with one set of beliefs and values and they come back out of that emotional communal experience very differently. They come back with much more committed, if you would, to the state, to the mission of the state. And it has. So the funeral in of itself has an impact on the population, and I expect that it will. In fact, one of the signals that I see coming out of this funeral is that the large number of crowds are sort of signaling to the leadership that they don't want compromise, they don't want surrender, they have not sacrificed in this war or seen Ali Khamenei killed in the manner that he was for Iran to give a lot at the table to the United States. They want victory and they want revenge. And these are going to become shackles around the ankles of Iranian diplomats and the new supreme leader, et cetera, as they try to engage the United States. Very importantly also, the Islamic Republic wants to send a signal to President Trump, to Prime Minister Netanyahu, to the global media, that they were wrong to think that the Islamic Republic was isolated, that it was on its last legs, that the majority of the Iranian population was opposed to them. President Trump apparently said yesterday or the day before that he was shocked at the size of the crowds in Tehran because he thought everybody hated Ayatollah Khamenei. If that is true, if President Trump said that, which I think he did, that's a huge victory for the organizers of this funeral because they actually have achieved, signaling to President Trump that this is not an easy country for you to defeat. Don't think about invading it, because you're going to be facing stiff resistance from this population. The population is far more radical than its leadership. The leadership may be pragmatic and be willing to talk to you, but the population actually is not in that mood. And after this funeral, they are even less so. And so, in a way, it's telling President Trump that he has to temper his expectations of how far he can bully Iran and what he can get from Iran at the negotiating table. So, in a very interesting way, I think this funeral, everybody knew there was going to be a funeral, but nobody expected what it would look like and what it would mean. Now that it's happened in of itself is a major event in this 100 plus days of war between the United States, Iran and Israel. I think these four, five days would be as important in shaping the future as anything else that has happened over the past number of months, going Back to February.
- [34:31]
A
Dr. Nasser, I mean, it's interesting you mentioned that the Donald Trump comments about saying that he thought that everybody hated Khomeini. Trump is obsessed with numbers, with crowds. Remember the whole thing about his own inauguration. And I'm sure that Trump is sitting there because he's just flipping constantly around the channels and he's watching this massive crowd that is, is a moving crowd from city to city. I mean, it's, I mean, the scenes out of POM are surreal. Like, when you, when you look at the, at the size of the crowd, that actually does speak to Donald Trump. It speaks to his ego. It speaks to his obsession with, you know, Barack Obama and whose inauguration was, was bigger. So I think that that is real. But also the fact that it does seem that the Israelis were able to dramatically impact the intelligence assessment that was embraced by the United States when the decision was made to launch this war on February 28, particularly on the issue of what happens if you do leadership strikes, what happens if we assassinate the Supreme Leader and we take out some of the upper echelon of the IRGC and we take out some of the upper political and military and intelligence echelon, then you are going to see a rapid state collapse. It, it seems quite clear that very significant figures in the Trump administration believed that to be the case, in large part because that was the intelligence that Netanyahu was claiming was from Mossad, this vaunted intelligence agency. And so time and again, because Trump is so unorthodox, because he's so bad at keeping official secrets, he says the quiet part out loud. And so these pronouncements of being stunned, for instance, to see millions and millions of people in the streets for Khamenei's funeral, or no one expected the Iranians to attack all of these GCC countries in the Persian Gulf, or no one expected that the Iranians were going to go on, you know, for six weeks and, and, you know, constantly saying these things. And I think genuinely, it's an indication of, of how contaminated, in an intentional way the intelligence pipeline was. And it's not exclusively Israel, but I would, I would bet almost everything I have on the idea that the Israelis knew exactly what they were doing when they, when they contaminated that intelligence pipeline. So the question I put before you is, given that none of that happened, oh, you assassinate the Supreme Leader and the state's going to collapse, the Iranian people are going to rise up. I want to ask you, though, about the non cartoonized version of Ali Khamenei and how he built Iranian foreign policy during his time as the Supreme Leader, with a particular focus on the period from the 2015 JCPOA through Donald Trump abandoning it in 2018 in his first term, through the 12 day war and to the moment that he was assassinated on, on that opening night. Give us an overview of his impact and philosophy when it came to foreign policy as it related to dealing with the US And Israel.
- [37:49]
D
So whether one, whether you like or don't like Ali Khamenei, there's no question that he was a very sophisticated thinker. He read a lot, he knew a lot of Western literature, particularly anti imperialist literature. He had read Frantz Fanon. He was a deep thinker. He was not a politician in the style of, you know, somebody who only knows retail politics. And in fact, much of his worldview was shaped not by the realities of politics in Iran, but this sort of a grand vision he had. And the vision he had was that the United States is a sinister imperialist force. It had been in Vietnam. It was the heir to British and French colonial legacy in the Middle East. It was supporter of Israel. And it had had played a bad role in Iran in 1953 by supporting a military coup that had taken away Iran's independence by creating a puppet, quote, unquote, puppet regime, the way Khamenei saw it, that was beholden to the US and to Khamenei. One of the greatest achievements of the Iranian revolution was to liberate Iran from America's clutches. And he was steadfast in the fact that that liberation has to be protected at all costs and that the United States, ever since the Shah fell from power, has been determined to regain its foothold in Iran. It wants to be back. It wants to subjugate Iran again. And for KHAMENEI, the past 47 years has been a grand drama between Iran defending its independence and trying to push the United States back, and. And the US Steadily trying to find its foothold back in the region. So that the way he understood the US Containment of Iran, alliances with Arab dictatorships, arming Israel, building myriad of military bases all around Iran, putting an economic chokehold in the form of sanctions on Iran, all essentially as a grand plan of crushing the revolution and retaking what it had lost in, in 1979. Now, Khamenei assumed that Iran could survive this. I mean, he never had a great clear pathway of what the end game would be, what the end would look like. But he thought that Iran could maintain a no war, no peace with the US we're not going to let America back in Iran, but we're not going to end up in war with Iran. And you could say that vision failed. I mean, in some ways, he was not able to avoid war, and he ended up actually negotiating with the US Now, I think Khamenei's view of the United States became even darker when he took a risky step of allowing Iran to negotiate a nuclear deal with the US and international community as a way of at least expanding the zone in which US And Iran could maintain a cold peace. We give up certain things, and you give up certain things. We give up some of our nuclear program, you relax some of your sanctions on us. And he immediately became disenchanted, because even during President Obama's presidency, the United States did not really lift any sanctions at all. It didn't really abide by anything it had signed. And then Obama leaves Iran, does its part of the nuclear deal, Trump comes in, he pockets everything Iran had given up and then leaves the deal and actually puts even more sanctions on Iran than before the nuclear deal, almost like punishing Iran for signing the deal and abiding by the deal. And this really led Khamenei to believe that everything he had suspected about the US Was true and that the US Meant ill and talking to the United States was futile.
- [41:48]
C
And.
- [41:49]
D
And the US Would never, ever lift sanctions on Iran. It would never, ever abide by a deal. And in particular, he was extremely suspicious and distrustful of Trump personally. And after the United States killed Soleimani, after it bombed Iran twice in the middle of negotiations, Khamenei became convinced that ultimately there is no peace between Iran and the U.S. now, the problem that he faced was that this was not a formula that most Iranians would wanted to live with indefinitely. I mean, he famously once said that national security and defending Iran's independence is more important than bread and butter. A lot of Iranians began to not believe in that, believing that the first duty of a government is to feed its people, even if it means compromising with the US and the more Khamenei resisted that, the more, I think he began to lose a chunk of the Iranian people, which we saw in varieties of protests, very large protests throughout the past decade. And ultimately, Khamenei was not even able to protect Iran from a war. But what he managed to do, even after he was killed, is that the state that he had built for 40 years as a state that would resist and fight the United States not only proved resilient, but actually proved capable of taking the fight to the United States in a way that forced the United States to a memorandum of understanding and abandoning the war with Iran. And I think his legacy is that Iranians understand that what he was saying about us about fight with Israel, but they still are trying to grapple with how do they end this, how you do, how do sanctions end? How does Iran's economy begin to breed? What is the end game of this war? And so at this moment of his funeral, all of these issues are now on the table. And this is the challenge for his son and for his successors.
- [43:58]
C
You know, it's fascinating to your point. He actually, Ali Khamenei actually left behind an autobiography called cell number 14, which goes into some of the intellectual influences of how he designed to develop the state and what sort of life experiences inform that. It's very fascinating. It's kind of different from the other leaders in neighboring countries in some ways, culturally. I was kind of curious, your take about that as well too, because it seems that the US intended to trigger a succession crisis in Iran by assassinating the top leadership, especially Khamenei himself. And he was the lynchpin of the government. Many said he was a dictator of the Islamic Republic in some effect, and that didn't happen. When they assassinated him and several family members. The system itself somehow found a way to continue functioning. It seems to have been designed in some way to account for that. Why did that succession crisis not happen? And now that a new government of some form, new leadership's in place, what sort of policies do you think that they might take vis a vis the us? First, in terms of short term issues like how to deal with the current conflict and administration, administrative Hormuz and then more broadly, will there be a continuity of the sort of vision that Eli Khamenei had, or do you foresee a different path in some sense opening up vis a vis its relationship with the US and the rest of the world?
- [45:19]
A
You're muted there, Dr. Nasser. Sorry, just start over. You were muted for a moment. Yeah, go ahead.
- [45:24]
D
I said to, to Jeremy's point earlier on, that both Israel and the US may have cherry picked the intelligence, but I also think there is a level at which, despite all the kudos people give to Israeli intelligence because of what they carried out in Lebanon, et cetera, that they got Iran fantastically wrong. I mean, ultimately, even trying to create chaos in Iran, bring state collapse, the worst case scenarios were contingent on two things, which is if you assassinate 135 leaders of a country, including its supreme leader in two wars, you don't expect the state to continue to function. So their view of how Iranian state worked and what was the point at which it collapsed proved to be fantastically wrong. And secondly, at some point the expectation was that the Iranian public would rise up. But what we've seen is that the public in Iran is much more difficult to read. So the large protests like we saw in January or other protests that we have seen are real. So is the large funeral that took place for General Soleimani when the United States killed him, and so is this mega funeral today. All of these are real. And so you cannot sort of put the Iranian people in a box and say, well, you know, they all hate Ali Khamenei and they all hate the Islamic Republic. And during these two wars, we saw that the public didn't rise up. Not, we are seeing something very different, which is not only they didn't rise up, but at least an element of them. A large segment of them is now proactively engaging in support of the system, which is more than just being passively waiting for to see what the war does. So I think, you know, we have to approach Iran, or I would recommend to policymakers to approach Iran away from the Shibbolets that they have held for a very long time. We really don't understand Iran very well. This is a very sophisticated country which has shown capabilities that are shocking. Ali Khamenei designed the state that by nature would be its authority, would be distributed in varieties of organs and would not be held by one person. Even though he had the last word in every major decision, he never took decisions without hearing all the factions and then finding a common ground to create consensus among them. And that's why decision making in Iran took a very, very long time. But it also meant that he kept many, many nodes of power at the table. And these were not only just political. There was military, there was political, there was clerical, there were oligarchs, they were state institutions, there were para state institutions. All of them basically have a seat at the table and ultimately all of them have also responsibility, operation and otherwise. And one of the also I think most fascinating things about Iran is that in the eight months that separated the June 2025 Israel and then US attack on Iran and the February war under Ali Khamenei's leadership, and the way his top lieutenants like Ali Laurijani, who was later on killed or the current speaker of the parliament, they very rapidly reorganized the state and reorganized the the Revolutionary Guard in expectation of a war to come in a way that made the Islamic Republic incredibly resilient. So Islamic Republic today looks like nothing like any other state we know. It looks nothing like other Middle east states that much like the Shah's regime are top down one man dictatorships. It is a system in which anybody you kill, the next person rises up, knows exactly what to do. And in Iran they refer to this as mosaic government and mosaic military command, which is yes, there is a notion that this is a pyramid of top down command, but operational responsibility, decision making at various level has been delegated down and the system works in a sort of a malleable interaction of various nodes of power. And I think the US and Israel at some ways got this wrong. Israel may have cherry picked or accentuated certain, certain intelligence in order to get Donald Trump to go to war, but I think even its own estimations about the resilience of the Islamic Republic, the that fact fact that the United States could not defeat Islamic Republic, that Hezbollah has come back to life after Israel thought that he had left it for dead. And the strategic setbacks that both Israel and the United States have faced and now can only reverse at a cost of an even greater, more expensive and more risky war suggests that, you know, we were surprised by Iran and we were surprised by Ali Khamenei, and we held on too long in the United States to sort of very simplistic notions about Iran that came out of, well, these guys are clerics, they belong to the seventh century, they're all corrupt, their people hate them. This is another velvet revolution that's about to happen, and all it needs is that you push it in that direction and it's going to collapse. And I think all of those assumptions have been proven wrong. And this funeral, in a way, the size of the funeral, the messages that we're getting out of the funeral are again, shocking and surprising, even on top of everything else that has shocked and surprised us since February and myself included.
- [51:19]
A
Dr. Nasser, I know you have to go in a minute, but one final question, referring to something that you mentioned earlier. It seems as though I agree with you, by the way, that if it would be a total fool's errand if the United States and Israel were to resume any large scale military operations, the Iranians have made very clear that they are not only going to repeat how they responded the first time, but that they're going to expand even beyond the region and into other realms. They haven't gotten so specific, but I think they've earned the right to be believed at this point about how they intend to respond. But what if that doesn't happen? And what if, as it seems, is the kind of strategy that JD Vance was alluding to recently, that they're just going to allow some trickle of change to the situation, that they are opening up the Strait of Hormuz to the US Advantage. They're taking some heat off of the Trump administration because of the global economic situation. Yeah, they sort of muddied the waters about whether or not some of the Iranian money was unfrozen and repatriated. But they kind of have it both ways right now. And they're not lifting, with the exception of some tactical short term lifting of oil related and commerce related sanctions, that they're not really offering the kind of comprehensive sanctions relief that for Iran is really one of the central priorities. Let's say this stretches on for months and there is no comprehensive sanctions relief. And maybe sometimes Iran does military operations in the Strait of Hormuz, maybe Sometimes the US does it, but they kind of retreat back to that position where it's kind of calibrated and it's not going to risk a wider or broader conflict. It puts the Iranian state, which very much is thriving, being on a war footing, both on a domestic level and a global level. How then does Iran respond to that? Because the economic situation is going to continue to worsen. They're not going to be getting tangible benefit from having made this agreement. What you said is certainly true, that the domestic support that we're seeing right now could start to erode, and you could start to see the Bizaeris and others saying, our lives are just getting worse by the day. It seems as though that's part of the US Strategy here, is like, let's let the Iranians sit with this for a while because we're not in a hurry to make that deal because we know that we were lying about the danger of the enriched uranium anyway. So let it sit for months and months and months and see what happens. Meanwhile, the Israelis increase covert operations. They try to foment violent actions, maybe embedded within largely peaceful protests, as we saw before, as we close. What about that scenario? Because it seems to be the most likely.
- [53:56]
D
You're quite right, and I think it's a subject of major debate in Iran right now, because I think even the Iranians, from the minute that they took a look at the first draft of the MoU, till they signed it, they had intense debate about what every karma might mean, and that's why it took such a long time. So one thing I think is definitely the case is that everybody in Islamic Republic, pragmatics, hardliners, everybody, the Revolutionary Guards, believes that comprehensive sanctions relief will never happen. That unless there is a fundamental change in the nature of the regime, Israel, the United States Congress, et cetera, will never lift sanctions on Iran. The question is for them is that they know they won certain strategic victories in this war, but how do they translate them into a situation in which they don't get everything they want, but they get much more breathing room than they had before? And what they see right now happening is that the US is in this MoU period, is trying to erode Iran's leverages over the Strait of Hormuz, for instance, trying to get ships to go through the Omani side, which led to a clash, or the Israel Lebanon deal, which Tehran believes was deliberately pushed by the US And Secretary Rubio as a way of limiting Iran's leverage in Lebanon. So the Iranians basically think that The United States has agreed to the MoU as an interim measure during which to erode Iran's leverage at the table. So the key debate in Iran is how do they protect that leverage and how do they increase that leverage. That's why, for instance, today we saw that the IRGC shot rockets and missiles on a number of ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz. But the question you raise is really at the heart of the future for Iran. I mean, at some level, once this funeral is over, the reality is that Iran has a new ruler and there's a new leadership that has taken over Iran. They could bask in the fact that they managed the war very well, but now they have to manage the post war period. And Iran once went through this debate when the Iraq War ended, that the population is patriotic, is grateful to the Revolutionary Guards for defending the country, but now wants improvement in their livelihoods. Now the Islamic Republic has two choices here. One is that it is able to convince the United States that if it really doesn't want a big headache in the Middle east, it essentially has to give Iran a lot more than it has been willing to give before. More oil exports, more of its own assets, more waivers to other countries to invest Iran or do trade with Iran in as you don't lift everything on Iran, but you create a much more live and let live with Iran and that brings stability to Gulf. That's actually what most of the Gulf countries want. They don't, they're not Pollyannish about Iran becoming democratic or open, but they believe that there is a, there's a, there's a sort of a gray area in which Iran can be content to live with a status quo and they could live with that status quo and bring back normalcy. But to get there, the United States has to be less threatening towards Iran and give Iran more economic relief. Iranians may think that they need to escalate against the US in order to give the US only two choices. Either you do this or we go back to a much bigger war. So that's one scenario and it might get out of control. The other is that the new leadership in Iran will begin to calculate that okay, we won the war, we made our point. Now this is time for really doing something much bigger. Something like we saw happen in China after Mao died and that, it doesn't mean we give up on our nationalism, etc. But the Ali Khamenei strategy is no longer sustainable. It worked for 40 years. In the end, it didn't avert war and we really cannot sustain this war against the United States, given our resources, et cetera, indefinitely. And we need to come to a very different kind of a strategic arrangement that would actually allow things to open up the country. There are people in Iran who are arguing for that. I think even symbolically Iran's president or the speaker of the country parliament really stand for that kind of a view, that it is time for a major shift. And after the Iran Iraq War in 1989, the former, the late Iranian President Hashem Irafsanjani and his successor Mohammad Khatami stood for this. Iran needs reconstruction. My sense is that this won't happen in Iran overnight. And in China it didn't happen overnight. There was a seven year time period between Mao's death and Deng Xiaoping essentially redirecting China. And then you still had Tiananmen Square and the horror that happened there. So I think there is a big, big debate unfolding in Iran and this funeral is important part of that. As the group that is resistant to any kind of a realignment in a new direction are the ones that are basically using this funeral to say no compromise with the US but there is a segment within the Iranian leadership that ultimately understands that you gradually, yes, you definitely, at a minimum, need much more breathing room just to survive and avoid another popular eruption. But at maximum, you need to arrive at a sustainable status quo with the United States that you could, that could be in place for decades. If Ali Khamenei's no war, no peace with the US held for 40 years, you can't go back to that because that clearly was a. That strategic formula has outlived its expiration date. Iran became too poor, the population became too angry and the war happened anyways. So Iran must have a different kind of a strategic status quo with the United States. And that by definition means that there has to be less tension and Iran needs to get more economic goodies out of that, which means that it has to make major compromises, provided that the United States is also willing to do that. We often forget to mention that part. It takes two to tango. It's not just what Iran is willing to give, it's also what is the United States willing to give and then what it promises to give. Is it actually willing to implement it? That's a very, very big question. But let's say if these things arrive, I would say it would take a number of years to get there. This is not something that I think can quickly be done largely because we don't quite see the psychological toll that this war has taken on Iran and its leadership. We can see it in the emotion of this funeral, the anger of this funeral, at least that 20, 30% of the population, which is a sizable number, let's say 20, 30 million Iranians that are right now in the street. They are not sort of celebrating carnival like, okay, we won the war, now let's make peace. They are asking for revenge. They are angry. They don't want negotiations. They want the United States to be defeated. And so it's not as easy for the new Iranian supreme leader, even if he wanted to, to make sharp moves towards the United States. But the question is now very big. And I think the most important thing, Jeremy, is that everybody in Iran knows you cannot go back to Ali Khamenei's formula. You could basically commemorate him, you could celebrate him, you could mourn him, whatever you want to do. But then no war, no peace, in a circumstance where Iran could actually feed its population and pacify enough of them to create domestic stability, is no longer viable.
- [62:34]
A
Well, Dr. Nasser, I want to thank you so much for taking time. I know you're very much in demand these days and we really appreciate you sharing your analysis and insights with us.
- [62:43]
D
Thank you for inviting me. It was good being with you.
- [62:47]
A
Dr. Vali Nasser is professor of International affairs and Middle East Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International studies in Washington, D.C. latest book is Iran's Grand Strategy, Political History. Well, that does it for this live stream. Murtaza, I want to thank you as well. And I know you're on deadline for several stories. You're an incredibly hard working reporter. So thanks for taking the time this morning to do this.
- [63:17]
C
My pleasure, Jeremy. Great conversation.
- [63:20]
A
All right, and that does it for this week's livestream. I want to just emphasize again that all of the work that we're doing at Dropsite News is possible because of the support of our readers, our listeners, our viewers, the community of people that really have been at the heart of building Dropsite. In fact, this week, Dropsite has been around for two full years. And many of you listening or watching right now were among, I'm sure, the first to sign up to become subscribers to Dropsite. And as you know, we don't believe in putting any of our content behind a paywall. Instead, what we've done, and some people say, oh, this isn't the smartest model for how to sustain a news organization, is we've made it voluntary to be a paid subscriber to drop site news. But if you are not already a paid subscriber. This two year anniversary of Dropsite News being around may be an opportunity for you to say, I read their articles a lot, I watch their streams, I listen to their podcasts. I want to chip in and help keep this organization afloat and sustainable. You can do that by going to dropsitenews.com you also can make a 501c3 tax deductible one time donation or recurring donation to drop site as well. We have a small but hard working team of people and on behalf of the entire Dropsite News family, I want to thank everyone for your continued support, for tuning in, for reading, listening and watching all of our stories. Until next time, I'm Jeremy Scahill. Thanks so much for being here and for your support.
- [65:01]
C
Thank you.