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A
Jeremy. I'm Jeremy Scahill From DropSite News, DropSiteNews.com and in a moment, we're going to be going directly to Tehran to speak with a very prominent academic and expert actually in US And Iranian relations. But first, just the latest news is that President Donald Trump has ratcheted up the belligerent rhetoric against Iran, even though he has indicated in recent days that he has sort of stepped back from what many people believed was an imminent threat that could be aimed at trying to kill senior leadership figures in Iran, potentially even Iran's supreme leader. But Trump yesterday said, quote, I've left notification, meaning with Iran, anything ever happens, the whole country is going to get blown up. That's a direct quote from Donald Trump. The Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Barrachi wrote in the Wall Street Journal over the last 24 hours, quote, our powerful armed forces have no qualms about firing back with everything we have if we come under renewed attack. This was not a, quote, threat, but a reality I feel I need to convey explicitly because as a diplomat and a veteran, I abhor war. He continues, an all out confrontation will certainly be ferocious and drag on far, far longer than the fantasy timelines that Israel and its proxies are trying to pedal to the White House. It will certainly engulf the wider region and have an impact on ordinary people around the globe. It's quite notable that that was an op ed published in the Wall Street Journal by the Iranian foreign minister. Now, many of Iran's neighbors in the region, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman and others, have reportedly been lobbying the Trump administration not to conduct military strikes on Iran. Of course, the US has military bases throughout the region. And in the past, when Iran has responded to attacks by the United States or involving the United States, it has targeted some US Military bases in the region. These have often been sort of coordinated strikes. And Iran has indicated that maybe the rules would change if the United States decided that it was going to go into a much more intense bombing. Of course, Iran was bombed by the US and Israel for 12 straight days in June, and we're going to be speaking about that soon. But just to zoom out and remind people, these are not new developments, this hostility of the United States toward Iran. This is not just a story about Donald Trump. The United States in the early 1950s overthrew the democratically elected government of Mohammad Mosaddegh in Iran. That was one of the first major actions of the newly created Central Intelligence Agency coming out of World War II. And of course, when the 1979 Islamic Revolution happened in Iran. The US backed tyrant that was ruling that country, the Shah of Iran, had to flee into exile. And now his descendant is now claiming that he should be the rightful ruler of Iran. And he has been making very open calls for the United States to wage war in Iran. He's been openly calling on Iranian people to use force in these demonstrations and during this period of riots. And of course, Israel has been threatening to take out the Iranian leadership, has been engaged in its own campaign of both overt and covert warfare. But what we've seen happen since late December, early January is that you had protests. We reported on these as well. At drop site in December. You had oil workers, for instance, who were striking. They weren't out in the streets calling for an overthrow of the government, but they were expressing their anger on a range of issues involving the financial situation in Iran. A huge factor in this is that the US has implemented merciless sanctions on Iran. And the people hit most hard by these sanctions have been ordinary Iranians, small business owners, merchants and others. In fact, Trump's Treasury Secretary said during the recent Davos meetings that the intent of the US Sanctions was to spur the very kinds of uprisings or protests or violence that we've been seeing over the past days inside of Iran. That's certainly not the whole story. The Iranian government has even acknowledged that protesters were expressing legitimate grievances. But there now is a very sharp divergence in narratives and that's why we're really happy that we're able to go to Iran to get a perspective that isn't often allowed in Western media. We're joined by Dr. Fouad Ezadi. He's professor of American Studies and International Relations at Tehran University. Also part of his education was in the United States. He's one of the leading experts in Iran on the US Dr. Fawad Izadi. I know the Internet has been shut down and difficult, so I'm very pleased to see you so clearly there, sitting out there in the streets of Tehran. Thank you for being back with us at dropsite.
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Thank you. Thank you for having me.
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A
So let's begin by just backing up. Give us the context of how the protests began, what the demands were, and how the Iranian state responded to these protests.
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B
Initially, you know, initially we had maybe about 200 shopkeepers in a sort of a mall that deals with mobile phones. They sell mobile phones. They were upset about this currency fluctuation. The day they demonstrated, Iran's currency experienced a record low rate, basically so that the value of dollar increased in A significant way. And this is a very legitimate concern. People rightly were upset because if you are selling mobiles, and generally mobiles in Iran come from Asia, East Asia, and, you know, they need to use dollars to import these mobiles. And when the value of the Iranian currency becomes low, it becomes difficult to buy new stock of mobiles when, you know, because of this fluctuation. So this was a very legitimate concern. They came to the streets, you know, police generally, when there are demonstrations are present, no problems, no confrontation, everything was okay. So this was the first couple of days that, the first day they came out, the second day they came out very quickly. On the third day, you had people that we believe are linked with the Israeli Musa basically infiltrated these peaceful demonstrations. And how do we know that? Some of the people that were arrested later on confessed. And then we have Mike Pompeo, former CIA director, Trump's first term Secretary of State, sending them New Year greetings. You have seen that probably sending New Year greetings to demonstrators and the Mossad agents walking with them. Gallant, the former Defense Minister of Israel, basically said the same thing. Jerusalem Post. Other Israeli media outlets more or less bragging about the influence of Mossad in these demonstrations. And so very quickly, these very peaceful demonstrations turned violent, Very violent. We had people shooting at the police, we had people throwing bombs at the police. We had stabbings of the police. We had people getting shot just walking, just walking. You know, on, on January 8th, we had the worst night. Unexpectedly, people, you know, Pahlavi was giving these calls for people to come to the streets, and generally very little people showed up. But on January 8, we had this huge, basically operation all over the country with armed men coming out, shooting, shooting at the police, shooting at ordinary citizens. They have been calling for shutdown of shops, sort of a strike, general strike. And many shop owners did not, did not pay attention, not necessarily because they were pro government. Sometimes, you know, the person doesn't want to shut down his shop or her shop, so they were shot at. We had people who looked religious. You know, Muslim men generally wear beard. So, Jeremy, you look religious. So if you were, if you were on the streets of Tehran, maybe, maybe you, you would have been shot. And this was Iran's 9 11. Basically, January 8th was Iran's 9 11. The Western media outlets frame what happened in Iran in the last few weeks in terms of very vicious police attacking peaceful demonstrators. This is how they want to frame it. In reality, what actually happened was these armed individuals, probably with the backing of Mossad in some cases, certainly with the backing of Mossad, basically shooting their way through different parts of Iranian cities, trying to take over government buildings. As to Trump asked them, he had a tweet in the middle of riots asking people to take over institutions, that's what he called them, and creating mayhem. This is what happened in reality. So Iran was a victim of a regime change operation. I think they maybe wanted to redo Libya. In Iran, you remember what happened in 2011. The demonstrations under Arab Spring initially started as peaceful. Then you had people armed by intelligence services of Western governments. The confrontation became bloody. The United States, other, some other NATO members started bombing Libya. They changed the Libyan government and Libya is not in a good shape. It's separated into three pieces. The oil is taken out by the Western oil companies. Libya was relatively one of the better shaped countries in Africa and now they are one of the poorest countries in the world. So in Iran, people realize what happened in Libya, people realize what happened in Syria. We have Israeli experts coming on Israeli television saying that once Iran's government falls, they are going to do to Iran what they did in Syria after the fall of the Assad government. They started bombing Syria extensively. So people in Israel are saying that Israel is planning to do the same if Iran's government falls. People in Iran get this type of news. They understand who Netanyahu is, they understand who Trump is. They realized they are not interested in human rights. If you engage in a genocide, you are not interested in human rights. And so this regime change sort of color revolution scheme that didn't work. About Monday of last week, we had huge demonstrations in Iran, basically saying no to Trump and Netanyahu. Although many people are not happy with the economic situation. Iran has been under illegal American sanctions for the last 47 years. But they don't want to be foot soldiers of Netanyahu. They don't, they don't want to be part of. If they want to change their government, they want to do it on their own. They don't want to have someone like Trump coming. They know why Trump is interested in Iran. He wants Iran's oil the same way he wants oil in Venezuela. He wants to take over Greenland. So they understand majority, overwhelming majority of people in Iran. They, you know, they have some level of iq, so they understand who these guys are and they don't want to be part of whatever plans they have for Iran. The basic idea I think is that the US want to repeat the Libya experience, disintegrate Iran, Balkanize Iran, take out the oil rich southern part, and then the rest of the country would fall apart. This is the ultimate plan they have. I think they're going to fail.
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A
Dr. Zadi, I've watched all of the videos that I could find that have come out of Iran. And I've watched videos that have been published by the Iranian government, by Iranian media outlets showing really horrifying crimes. You know, people being burned alive, people being summarily executed, attacks on civilian infrastructure, ambulances. You know, Iranian officials have said that many dozens of mosques were attacked.
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B
250.
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250. The supreme leader said this when he, when he gave his first major remarks addressing this situation. And on the other sort of major narrative push, you have non governmental organizations, some of which are in full disclosure, backed by the National Endowment for Democracy, which has a very close relationship with the CIA. You have a lot of questions about some of these non governmental organizations. But nonetheless, you've had witnesses in Iran also that have said that they personally witnessed acts of brutality also from the Iranian security forces. And we don't know the actual death toll. It seems certain that it's in the thousands. That seems to have been indicated by both Iranian officials and by opponents of the Iranian government how large of a death toll, who killed these people. This is where the real issue is about the numbers. But I want to ask you about this. You mentioned how generally when there are protests, you, you're saying that security forces tend not to use large scale violence against demonstrators. Are you saying that wasn't the case now even after the violence began? And let's say that everything you're saying is true, that there were agitators who began attacking the police, who began burning buildings. What did you witness or what is your understanding of how the state then responded once this violence broke out?
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B
The state was surprised. On January 8, there was a call by Pahrdavi, but he has been making these calls for many years. So the same way that Iran was surprised during the June attacks, Iran was in the middle of negotiations when the US Attacked Iran. They were supposed to meet in Oman on a Sunday and Iran was attacked two days before on that Friday. So this was the second surprise. The security forces were not really ready the instructions that they had because initially, as we said, it was normal peaceful demonstrations. The instructions that the police had was to make sure not to use force because they realized that doing another Libya in Iran may be an objective of the United States. And especially in the last number of months, the Iranian government wants to make sure that the number of people who are hurt, especially when this peaceful demonstrations started, when it got a Little hawkish. They wanted to make sure that people are not hurt, that the number of people who are killed is extremely limited. In the first few days, the police didn't have the permission to shoot back even when they were shot. So the permission that the police had initially was if they were stationed at important government buildings and they were shot, they could shoot back. This is the initial instruction they had. But if they were stationed in buildings that were not that important, they did not have permission to shoot back even when they were shot. And this is why we had over 100 police casualties. You know, Iranian police is trained, they have arms. So how do you get to kill a police when the police is not allowed to shoot back? This is when you have a police kill. So, you know, in the Western media, at least the corporate media, what has been doing, I've been watching CNN, other outlets, they come up with these figures. 12,000 people, 20,000 people. And they say that this is the number that the US Based human rights organization has given out. And when you Google the name of that US Based human rights organization, you realize this is a Pahlavi outlet, probably on the payroll of National Endowment for Democracy. But the fact that it's linked to Pahlavi is certain because they have been. It was created by that organization. So being US Based doesn't mean you are telling the truth. Trump is US Based and he says a lie every day. So just, you know.
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A
I take your, I take your point and that's why I mentioned it. I mean, I think it is important to, to note the connections that organizations have that are promoting this. And as you mentioned, that group has the monarchist flag on its website when it gives you the option to change the language from English into Farsi. It has a picture of the previous Iranian flag, not the current Iranian flag. But is it your. I'm asking you this not just as a professor and an academic, but also as a resident of Tehran. Is it your contention that security forces didn't use excessive force, didn't kill any president? Protesters? Like what, what are people to believe here then? Because the narrative from the other side is there's quite a number of people who have said that they witnessed security forces opening fire on, quote, unquote, peaceful demonstrators. There are pictures of people in the world. So what I'm, I'm asking you, both as your, as an academic, but also as just a resident, is it your contention that that didn't happen in Iran?
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B
Protesters don't get shot at, rioters don't get shot at. If, if you, you Know, this is something that when, when we get Iranians in the United States, if you look at the television stations in Los Angeles, you know, Farsi speaking, Iranian expatriate television stations, when, you know, they have this regular programming trying to teach new Iranians that come to the United States States that when you go to US please realize that the US Police and Iranian police are different. You know, I can find videos for you if you want. They trained Iranians that enter the U.S. they teach them that the U.S. police and Iranian police is different because you know what happens in, in US if police gives you a direction and, and you act in, in a way that the police, police feels threatened, they have the permission to shoot you. The same, you know, same thing happened to the lady, Mrs. Good, you know, a few weeks ago. She's, she's instructed to open the door of her car. She moves her car, she's dead. So they teach Iranians, new Iranians that are new to the United States that have come to the United States because this is not how the Iranian police works. Sometimes Iranian police tells someone to do something and they start shouting at the police. I don't know if you have been to Iran or not, but the police culture here is not the same police culture in the United States. People argue with the police, people shout at the police. You know, if the police is not armed, they may start fighting with the police. Iranian police is very different from what you hear on the corporate media. And they don't shoot at demonstrators. They don't even shoot at rioters. They even didn't, in these few weeks, they didn't have permission to shoot when they were shot at. Occasionally they were not permitted to do that. As I said, in certain locations, they had permission to shoot back if they were shot at. So what I'm telling you, as a Tehran resident, as a university professor, as someone who has been to Iran and has lived in the United States, Iranian police, they do not shoot at demonstrators. The frame that the corporate media wants to create, that if you demonstrate in Iran, you get shot, is 100% inaccurate. The reality is that Iran was a victim in the last few weeks of operations, regime change operations that were designed to be very violent. The numbers needed to be exaggerated so they could find an excuse for Trump to attack Iran. You remember on the first hour after Trump announced that he's not going to attack you had, I think her name is Collins, Caitlin Collins. She was a, she was upset. She was upset with Trump. That. Why are you backing.
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You're referring to the cnn, CNN Yes.
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CNN journalist, she has a program, it's called the Source. And she was very, very upset that, that Trump has backtracked on the idea of attacking Iran. And you know, I, this is, this is very sad because, and the reason Trump backtracked was, I think it was, we have, we had, they had military reasons. I think they were not ready for another major attack on Iran. It's, I think that's the main reason. But the fact, I want to, I.
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A
Want to actually ask you, I'm going to let you finish this point, but this is, this is part of what I want to ask you. Coming up, I want to ask you about the, the purported justification for backing off what they said and then what you think about it. But finish this arc of your point that you were referring to.
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B
So, you know, Pahlavi, his father Shah was one of the most corrupt rulers of the 20th century. If you look at the old Amnesty International reports on IRAN in the 1970s, Iran was number one in terms of political prisoner torture. So this guy's father was very brutal, was very corrupt. When he fled Iran because of the revolution, he stole millions of dollars of the money that belonged to the Iranian people. He stole gold. You know, this guy hasn't had a job for one day in the last 47 years. He has never worked. He has been living off the money that his father stole from Iranian people. Iranians remember who his father was. His father was a fascist. He's a fascist. His supporters are, because of this reason, are quite small in numbers. So, you know, Iran is a city of 10 million people. And at the height of, you look at the videos that you get out of Iran at the height of demonstrations in Tehran, they could gather just a few thousand people and not more. So overwhelming majority of Iranians realize what is going on. That's why they showed up in huge numbers, not in support of government. The Western media, they said these are pro government demonstrators. I disagree. They were demonstrating against Trump and Netanyahu. Many of them have difficulties with the economic situation. They have difficulties with government policies, but they don't want their country to be run by Trump the same way he's claiming to run Venezuela.
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A
Yeah. I want to ask you, you mentioned the, the fact that the US didn't go through and then militarily attack and, you know, apparently there were even discussions of trying to do what is called decap, decapitation strike in military parlance, which is trying to kill the Iranian leadership. Of course, this is something that Netanyahu also has seemed, and Israel in general has seemed to want to do for some time to kill Iran's supreme leader. But the story that sort of was floated or promoted by the US and many media outlets contributed to this narrative in the west was that Iran was preparing to execute large numbers of people. Trump, I think, put a number on it at 837. In fact, there was one story of a young man in Iran that went viral. They were saying that he was gonna be executed imminently, that his family was really concerned about him. And it became a. You know, it went viral. I'm sure you saw it as well. But Trump then claimed that he told them, you know, you can't do this. That they backed down and that he decided to sort of step back and that Iran has assured him that there's not gonna be any imminent executions. Break down what's true or false or what you know about this.
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B
You know, I think Trump realized that this regime change scheme is not. Is not working. He realized that, you know, he wants to be on the winning side, and he realized that the investment they had on Pahlavi did not pay off. He even had an interview with Reuters saying that he's not sure if Pahlavi is accepted in Iran, which he is not. So once he realized that the operation is not really going to be successful, he needed a reason to back off. You know, we have had a couple of people who were arrested during the June war, and it was proven that they were working for Mossad. You know, Mossad had operations in Iran, you know, targeting buildings in Iran, not with F35 missiles, but with drones that were operated by Mossad agents inside the country during that 12 day war. So we have had a couple of people who were executed because it was proven in courts, and they have attorneys that they were working for Mossad. Generally, it takes about two years for a case in Iran to go through. So initially, if someone is arrested, then it takes. And if he's convicted of espionage at the level that requires execution, because sometimes you're convicted of espionage and you go to prison for five years or ten. Ten years or not. Not every espionage case is. Is. Has a death penalty for it. So this is totally false. I think he wanted to come up with some number to create some sort of victory that I stopped execution of so many people. It is not. It is not true. This is. We. You know, when. When there is an execution in Iran, the name of the person is announced. It said that this person was killed. The couple of people that I mentioned, this happened to them. So in media outlets they say so and so was executed because of his work with Mossad. And maybe one reason judicially here makes this public is to prevent others not to work for Mossad. And this is how it's done. So I don't believe what Trump said. He never gave any evidence for the numbers that he presented. The main reason he didn't go with this idea of attacking Iran again was because he realized that attacking Iran again would have this rally around the flag effect like last time. And if you want to overthrow the Iranian government and disintegrate Iran, you don't want Iranians rally around the flag. So they realized the operation has failed. You know, in 1953, Iran was a victim of an American British coup. In 2026, Iran was a victim of an American Israeli regime change operation. In 1953, they were successful. This time they have not been successful. I don't think they have given up. I think in a few months you may see something like this repeated. I don't think Netanyahu is going to leave Iran alone. I think Trump has basically given the Iran portfolio to Netanyahu. He decides what to do, and then basically Trump implements whatever Netanyahu has decided to do. And Trump is going to be in office for another three years. So I don't think they're done with Iran. They're moving troops, battleships to this area from different parts of the world. And they may have a military confrontation with Iran in a few weeks. You never know. And what we know about Trump is that he doesn't really need an excuse to attack a country. He wants to take over Greenland because he didn't get the Nobel Peace Prize. You know, he finds some excuse to do whatever he wants to do. Yeah.
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A
And as you note, I mean, there are, there are US Military assets that are being repositioned right now. The kinds of assets that you would put in place in the places that you would want them to be if you were going to do a military attack. But on that note, I want to ask you about this op ed in the Wall Street Journal that the Iranian foreign minister wrote because it seemed like what he was saying, and you and I have talked about this before, was, you know, in the past, Iran has shown restraint in how it has responded militarily to both Israel, when Israel repeatedly attacked Iran, and then Iran on two large occasions responded with its own strikes inside of Israel. And then when the 12 Day War happened, or the 12 days of intense US bombing, you also had an Iranian response toward both Israel and the United States. But in the case of the United States. What we understand is that there is coordination that happens even in the case of Israel, where the Iranian leadership has back channel or intermediary discussions where the Iranians are able to respond and at times even hit US Military bases in the region. But the strikes are calibrated so that they're not going to kill Americans, or if they did that, the casualties would be low. My read on what the foreign minister was saying is that if the US does try to militarily change, enact regime change, those rules would not be the same. Was that your read of what the foreign minister was saying?
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I think that's the decision that the Iranian government has made. You know, we had a number of high ranking military officials that made the decision to inform the United States when they were attacking the US Bases. This was mainly their decision. And the idea was basically trying to ride out the Trump administration, not to confront him in a serious manner, respond to him, but respond in a very limited style so they don't start a huge war with the United States. This was their decision, and they were killed in June. And the people who replace these people, these military leaders, are not going to be killed. They don't want to be killed. They, I think, have realized that if I think they realized that that was the wrong policy. I think the people who are in charge of Iranian military, the people who are in Iran's National Security Council, people like Arakchi, that, you know, this is a reformist government. He was very much involved with the nuclear negotiations. He was deputy foreign minister when we had the nuclear negotiations. All their lives they were trying to find ways of accommodating the United States, lowering tensions with the United States, coming up with diplomatic solutions with the United States. And even these reformist individuals and politicians realized that that policy was the wrong policy. And I think they have made the decision to respond in a much more serious manner this time. And the number that I hear is the goal is to get at least 500American soldiers. The casualties that they need to have if Iran is attacked again is at least 500, which is very sad because these are young people. They didn't go to US Military to get killed. But the commander in chief is Trump and he's really engaging in very dangerous policies. And I think the Iranian government, the Iranian military has decided to respond quite harsh this time because, you know, you cannot have a country when that country is threatened to be attacked militarily every other week. They want to put on a stop. And yes, Trump may respond in a harsher way. In response to Iranian position. But, but they, they say that, you know, it has to end. The idea is that you need to respond to the United States in a manner that this does not continue. And if they want to have a full fledged war, let it be. This is not the choice that Iranian leaders want to have. They want to build the economy. They want to basically engage in policies that does not threaten the well being of the country. But if, if you have Trump and he wants to have a full fledged war with Iran, I think the people here have decided to accept that reality and, and respond in a manner that, that would result in that. If that is the policy and the choice that the other side has. Yeah.
- [37:53]
A
And I just want to remind people that the entire region around Iran is dotted with US Military facilities. And you know, part of the, part of the reason that some of the Arab Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia, which spent a great portion of Trump's first time in office trying to lobby Trump to become more focused on regime change in Iran, is because they're also housing these military bases. And you know, if, if Iran as, as you say, Dr. Azadi, if Iran has decided to adopt a different posture and say, we're not going to do this back channel coordination anymore, you really could see then not only increased number of deaths of US personnel, as you indicate, there's discussions of 500 being a number, but you could also have numbers of people from these Arab countries that are right there, right in the region and are housing these US Military bases.
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B
Iran has oil refineries, gas stations. And the decision is that if the US Attacks these infrastructure, then the oil refineries and oil facilities of these countries on the southern part of the Persian Gulf, that would be hit. So if you hit Iran, the first place that would be hit would be US bases with the aim of getting 500 people. And then if they hit Iranian infrastructure, Iran cannot attack American infrastructure. But infrastructure in the countries that have provided basis for the United States to engage in this type of military attacks on Iran, they are available, they will be hit. Iran will lose a lot of people. United States would lose a lot of people. These countries, as you said, may lose a lot of people and infrastructure. So engaging, attacking Iran again through trying to do another Libya in Iran again, this is just not a good policy. It's not good for the United States. Everybody would lose. And it's just, it's just pointless. A lot of people will get killed. What is the solution? You know, accepting the 1979 revolution, accepting the fact that Shah was a puppet of the United States. He was not popular. There was a revolution, a new government came in, and, you know, we have a reformist government in place. So they are very much ready to engage diplomatically with the United States, limit Iran's nuclear program, do whatever the US Wants in order to get us off Iran's back. And this is an opportunity for the United States to engage this particular government in office. You know, we had Dr. Pazishkin, the President, even when we had people shooting at police, was talking about dialogue and sort of engaging with the people. So they're quite soft when it comes to comes to the United States or managing these type of problems. But you know, as I said, what I believe is that Netanyahu is driving U. S. Policy towards Iran. And I think he thinks he has an opportunity to get rid of Iran as a country and as a civilization. And I, you know, he's not going to be successful. He's going to cause a lot of damage. And I think Israel will also get hurt because that would be a target if Iran is attacked.
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A
Again, you know, some of the discourse on the left in the United States and also you hear this from Iranians who consider themselves leftists and also Iranians living in the diaspora. I mean, there certainly is a very loud monarchist segment of the diaspora and that's represented then in Pahlavi and all of these things that you're referencing. But you know, Iran, inside of Iran, it's a very diverse country. And then around the world, the diaspora is very diverse. But I want to ask you about Iranians in the diaspora or even within Iran itself who say, we are left wing and we don't want the United States to come in here. We don't want regime change, but we are living under an authoritarian government. We're living under a brutal government that doesn't respect our rights. We're living under a theocracy and we don't want to live like that. So we're stuck in a situation where we don't like our government and we don't want the United States to bomb our country and our people and we don't want the United States to choose who's the government. What is your response? You spend so much time, I know you follow American politics and you understand some of the nuances. What is your response to Iranians who say that? Who say, no, we're with you, Dr. Azadi. We want no regime change sponsored by the United States. We don't want bombing. But our position is this is an authoritarian state and our rights are not respected. And all of these people are saying, well, Iran is defending Palestine, so you should shut up about it. Because that's a part of the discourse in the United States and elsewhere. And I want to hear your response to it.
- [43:29]
B
You know, we have had, in front of Iranian embassies in Europe, in front of the White House a few days ago, we have had Iranians demonstrating. Generally, these demonstrations were organized by Ahlavi people. So you had the old Iranian flag alongside the Israeli flag and the United States flag. And then you had some counter demonstrations by Iranians, some of them leftists, some of them nationalists, that don't want their country to be ruled by this guy, you know, he's, he's a very weak leader. He, you know, he could get an education. He was in. He has been living in the United States for 47 years. No education.
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A
You're referring to Pahlavi.
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B
Yes. Yeah. So people, people don't. Don't want him. They don't want to go back to kingdom. You know, this, this was something that, the form of government before. And yes, you're right.
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A
So.
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B
So they oppose Pahlavi. They sometimes go to these Pahlavi demonstrations as counter demonstrators. They realize that, you know, Pahlavi visited Israel two times in the middle of genocide. So they, they don't want. They don't want this crowd. These are generally. The ideology is fascism. They don't like fascism and they don't like the current government. That's true. So we have a good number of Iranian expatriates that don't like the current government. We have a lot of Iranians inside Iran that don't like the current government. And I would separate these Iranians into two groups. One guru realizes that if this government falls, Iran is not going to be taken over by the leftists. They realize that. They realize that Iran is not going to be taken over by nationalists. They realize if this government falls, Pahlavi is going to come for a few months, probably because his job is to disintegrate Iran. And they don't want their country to be disintegrated. They want to keep Iran as is. They want to keep the current borders. They realize this, although they don't like the government, they sort of tolerate the government because they don't like the alternative. So this is one group of people. The other group of people say that they are for regime change also. They don't. They don't like Pahlavi. So they're in. They don't know. They really don't know. They don't have a good option. They don't like Pahlavi. They don't like the current government. They're sort of wondering what may happen. Some of them would say that, let's just change the government. Hopefully something better would come out. So this is the second group. And what I think is that realizing what Trump and Netanyahu are capable of doing, even if people who don't like the current government want to engage in regime change operations, don't do it. I would suggest not to do it during the Trump administration because the people who are in the White House now are not going to let Iranians have a normal country. They want to basically destroy Iran as a country, as a civilization. So those regime, the second group that is seriously interested in regime change, I think they should hold off for some time until Trump and Netanyahu realize that their policies are not working out. You know, working. And overall, I think this, what Trump has been doing has been educating Iranians. Many Iranians, especially the younger people. You know, I teach at University of Tehran. A lot of our students, you know, our students are in their 20s, 30s, so they never saw the Shah, they never saw the revolution happening. And they were always wondering why their parents, their grandparents, were so anti American. They never realized that, you know, the United States does a very good job of propagating their version of history to Iran. They have all these Farsi channels. They finance these channels. You know, they got this lady, Masih Alinejad, at the UN as the voice of Iranian civil society. This person has been on the US payroll. If you go to US spending, she has gotten over $800,000 from the United States as a contractor. She goes on Voice of America propagating what Trump wants. She's not part of the Iranian civil society. She's an employee of United States Information Agency at least. And, you know, until that, you had U.S. information agency. She works for Voice of America. You still have that. So people realize. People realize that these people when, when they come in, they are not going to do something that's good for Iran. They're going to do something that is good for people who paid them all these years. And overall, I think the younger people especially realize why their parents and grandparents were anti American. They realized that although they have difficulties with the current government, the solution is to fix the current government, to reform the current government. The solution is not to replace the current government. And even within the current government, you have a lot of people realizing that maybe some of the policies of the past did not work. So if you come to Tehran today. In the last few months, these hijab laws are not enforced. You know, people. People dress whichever way they want to dress. So the country, majority of people in the country, and a good portion of the government officials realize the country is in danger. So the Iranians are getting united from different political backgrounds to save the country. And so Trump, in reality, has been educating Iran, especially the younger Iranians, in a manner that the Iranian government couldn't do. So he has been providing a service to Iran by providing the alternative. People look at the alternative, they realize it's not good. So it will help them fix the problems of their country on their own because they realize Iran is number one in terms of oil and gas. Venezuela has more oil than Iran. But if you combine Iranian oil and gas, Iran is richer than Venezuela. So people realize that there are a lot of friends of Trump in oil companies that want to basically do to Iran what they did before the 1979 revolution. You know, before the revolution, Iranians didn't know, even the Shah didn't know how much oil was taken out of the country because the companies, oil companies were just reporting that today we got this much oil out, nobody could verify because Iranians were not able to be present in levels that would know actually how much oil was taken out. So people remember this history, and I think I'm actually very optimistic about the future Germany, because the Trump policy, Netanyahu policy is going to fail, fail. Iran is going to stay intact, and then this educational experience is going to help Iranians fix the problems they have. So I think, you know, we have, among our students, we have a good number of leftist students, and they, maybe a few months ago, they were hesitant with regard to a lot of things that were happening. I'm getting calls from them that they say that we need to fight imperialism. You know, leftist terminology is very much present. So overall, I'm very optimistic about the future because the enemies of Iran, Trump and Netanyahu, are not going to realize the policies that. That they want to have. They're not going to be successful with the policies that they have. They will unite Iranians of different backgrounds to make sure that the country stays as a unified country and the difficulties that exist. And, you know, we are moving towards a multipolar world. The United States is losing its ability to dictate to other countries. You listen to Canadian Prime Minister's speech at Davos. He is joining the axis of resistance. You know, resisting the United States is becoming very popular because the type of government that the US has now and as, as we go forward, Iran's economy will improve because U.S. ability to sanction Iran in the manner that they have been able to sanction Iran is going to be reduced. Their ability to put that much pressure is going to be reduced. This will improve Iran's economy. An improved economy. The ordinary citizens that get tired of economic difficulties would not be in that situation. And gradually, you can have an Iran that has been an inspiration for world civilization for thousands of years. You know, Iran is one of the oldest countries in the world and has contributed to human civilization for many, many centuries. And that Iran will stay intact and that position will continue to exist.
- [54:32]
A
Well, I want to thank you for giving us so much time. And I know the, the Internet has been on and off. And I just want to end by asking you about that, though, because I was really so glad when finally I was able to reach you. Why is the Internet shut down and when is it going to come back to any sort of normalcy?
- [54:52]
B
You know, if you look at Western media outlets, they were saying that Trump has a number of options on Iran. One is military attack, one is cyber attack. The Internet in Iran works fine. You know, internal Internet, domestic Internet is very much normal. You cannot run a country in 21st century without Internet. So you need Internet for banks, for, you know, for shopping. You know, you go to shops, you use your bank card. What has cut is the link between internal domestic Internet and international Internet. And the reason the government cut that is to take that option of cyber attack off Trump's table. Because if Iran's Internet is connected to international Internet, then Iran is going to. Can be a victim of cyber operations, cyber attacks. And this was one of the options that Trump has. Trump doesn't have that option in the last two, three weeks, two weeks almost. Because, because of that cutoff. The news is that, you know, for the last week or so, there are no riots, no problems, things are normal. I have children going to a school, so school is open. Everything is normal. And the news is that in few days, the connection between internal Internet and external international Internet will be reestablished. I think they want to make sure that once they open this link, you don't have a flood of sort of digital or cyber attacks facing Iran. That's the basic idea they had. You know, in, in previous years, we have had gas stations in Iran going offline because of cyber attacks, Israeli cyber attacks. So people go to gas stations, they cannot get gas. All of these things run through Internet. So if, if, if Iran's internal Internet is linked to outside Internet, they can do this type of operations. And so I think government wanted to make sure that this does not create an additional problem as we had in the in previous years.
- [57:29]
A
Dr. Fouad Azadi, professor of American Studies and International Relations at the University of Tehran, thank you once again for joining us.
- [57:37]
B
Thank you. Thank you for having.
- [57:40]
A
And that does it for this broadcast. Thank you so much for watching. On behalf of everyone at dropsitenewsdropsitenews. Com, we urge you to subscribe for free. If you have a little bit of extra money, you can also be a paid subscriber, but we put nothing behind the paywall. Until next time. I'm Jeremy Scahill. Thank you so much for joining us.