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A
Ladies and gentlemen, in 1979, the constitutional monarchy known as Iran shifted almost overnight to a Shia fundamentalist Sharia law governed country by the Ayatollah Khomeini. Let me mention some of the laws that he put in place when he took over the There were no freedoms that we would expect here in the West. There's no freedom for liberals, leftists or feminists. In fact, the first woman to serve in Iran's cabinet was executed by firing squad when the Ayatollah Khomeini took over. Sharia law permits no women to leave their homes without their husband's permission. No women can leave their house unless accompanied by a male relative or a woman must obey her husband in all matters or else she has no right to clothing, housing or food. A man can have multiple wives in Iran as young as 13. A man may physically discipline his wife for disobedience. In fact, The Quran Surah 4 talks about that there is no right for a woman to divorce her husband. But men possess the exclusive right to divorce and can divorce a wife without her knowledge, consent or formal proceeding. Only two male witnesses need to hear the husband's announcements and children then automatically become the custody of their father. No dogs are allowed as indoor pets in Iran. Tattoos are frowned upon. No alcohol, Western movies or dances. No music, including on radio or television. No men and women swimming or sunbathing. Men are punished for wearing shorts. All homosexuals in Iran are exterminated. The execution of drug addicts and prostitutes occur there. There's no freedom of speech. And a fatwa is declared on those who say things that insult Islam. That's an assassination. What? A fatwa is a declaration of an assassination. Anything that is not Islam insults Islam. There's no freedom of assembly. There's no right to a general, for the general public to own weapons which might cause trouble for the populace to want to rise up and take over that government. There's no meaningful right for people to pet their government. All education must be Islamicized. Youth are encouraged to martyrdom for Islam. There's no right to a public trial by an impartial jury. There's no right to be secure from arbitrary arrests, home invasions or property seizure seizures. Your four fingers are cut from your right hand if you steal and if you steal again, your left foot is amputated. Torture is systematically used against political prisoners and there is a death penalty if you convert to Christianity. Outside of that, Sharia law is a great thing. No? This is what has been going on in Iran for 47 years. Ladies and Gentlemen. And it mystifies me, there are people here in America who actually think the takedown of this regime is a bad thing. Did they know what's going on with regard to Sharia law? Do people understand that if Sharia law is put place here in America, nobody is going to like it yet. That's where we are right now. And in our previous episode, just last week, we had the great Bill Federer on talking to us about the history of Persia. We started all the way back with Abraham and we got up to the modern age. And we are going to pick it up right now with Bill because just at the end of the last program, we were talking about the fact that the Shah, the King of Persia was put into Place in 1954. He was the son of a previous Shah, but he was put into place basically by the CIA and I think in 1954 because the previous guy, not his father but the previous prime minister, was friendly to the ussr. And we didn't want them to be friendly with the ussr. Neither did the Brits, because the Brits were losing their oil, the BP oil company, and they wanted the oil back. So we put the Shah in place. And we were just getting to the point. In the last program, Bill, when you were describing what was happening in Iran in the late 70s, you started to talk about how there were protests from the college educated or the college kids pick it up right there to tell us what happened. And then how the Ayatollah took over in 1979.
B
Right. So the Operation Ajax, 1953, CIA head Allen Dulles sent over Kermit Roosevelt Jr. The grandson of Teddy Roosevelt, and he does. So we have the Cold War. What's that? World War II ends. There's countries in Europe that want to be free. They form republics, they elect leaders. Soviets don't like this, so they send in KGB agents to do critical theory. What's that? They simply observe all the groups in a country, economic groups, racial groups, religious groups, and they categorize them as victims and oppressors, haves and have nots. Then they identify the influencers of those groups and they want to befriend them and seed them with divisive messages that they can share with those that are under their influence. And their goal is to break the country in two and pit the groups against each other to create a discord. And then they stir it up to riots and violence and bloodshed. Why bloodshed? Then people think emotionally and not logically and they want to blame somebody for all the bloodshed. And then they co opt the media to blame the leader of the new republic and the people begin to believe the media. The new leader's popularity falls and when it falls enough, they do a couple a rigged election and nobody questions it because by this time they don't like the leader. And then they put in a Soviet puppet and the violence stops, not realizing the Soviets were behind the violence in the first place. And then after the honeymoon period's over, they wake up to realize they just surrendered their free country and now they are a satellite of the Soviet Union. Country after country fell. And Harry S. Truman does nothing because the United nations that he helped formed he thought would bring world peace. You got Eisenhower and he's faced with Farouk in Egypt wanting to play games, siding with the Soviet Union. And so the CIA partakes in Project FF to help overthrow Farouk and bring in Gamal Nasser who's a secular leader. Unfortunately he does not like the Jews, but we don't find that out for a while. And then Eisenhower approves of Operation Ajax to overthrow this guy Mazadec who had taken the British the oil from BP and excuse me there a second. And you have the situation of the US sort of behind the scenes working with these different factions. So now you have Mazedek is overthrown. He's put under house arrest where he dies. The Shah is the son of Reza Shah is Reza Pahlavi. He's put in as the leader of Iran and he wants to secularize his country. In America, secularizing is a bad word. In Muslim countries, secularizing is a good word because it means they're moving away from their fundamentalist Islam. So Reza Pahlavi secularizes Iran. He lets women get educated, let women wear fashions and he allows, you know, sports and women are into medicine and they're. It's almost like a state in America of freedoms and. But the Soviet Union didn't go away and so what do they do? They find college students that they can begin to recruit against the Shah. So sort of like in America, here we are the freest country that planet Earth has ever seen, with more opportunity, with more individual freedom and liberty, but yet they're able to find college students that want to hate America. It's something about that naivety cornered with pride. And so the Soviets get a bunch of these socialist college students to begin to protest the Shah. Now the Shah did have secret police. Why? Because there's assassinations all the time and he doesn't want to be assassinated. So he's like keeping track of this. But the idea was that the whole nation was favorable toward America. And I went to college and had some Iranian classmates and they loved America. I remember visiting one of their dorm rooms and he had an American flag on his dorm room wall. And so our military was training their military. But these college students would organize these protests. And then when the Shah came to America, the college students in America, this is right during the 1960s and early 70s with the, you know, the anti Vietnam stuff. They protest the Shah and they like throw tear gas. So there's an outdoor, you know, parade, and the tear gas blows, goes to where the Shah and his wife are. And so Jimmy Carter has an ambassador over in Iran and he, William Sullivan. And he thinks that they're going to be successful and they're going to get rid of the Shah and that they're going to install a Mazadec type person who's pro Soviet. And so Jimmy Carter has these globalist advisors around him, you know, the Henry Kissinger and the David Rockefeller type people. And so they helped put Jimmy Carter in touch with the Ayatollah, who's this radical Shia fundamentalist exiled in France. Why? Because he tried to kill the Shah, you know, tried to overthrow him. And so the Ayatollah tells Jimmy Carter, if you help me to take over Iran, I won't be friends with the Soviets and relations with America will pretty much stay the same. And Jimmy Carter was so naive. I mean, there's a peanut farmer. I mean. Anyway, so Jimmy Carter pressures the Shah Reza Pahlavi to leave Iran. In 1979, the Ayatollah Khomeini's plane lands. All these naive college students, they like, greet him and he comes and he takes control of the government and he gets all the generals that are pro American and he takes them to the top of a high school and executes them. Then he hunts down all the pro American people and kills them. And then he turns on the college students and he kills them. And they're like, we helped you get in power. It's like, yeah, we don't care anymore. We're in power. And so that's one of these things where these college students are think, oh, let's tear down the country. It's like, what's going to come next? Hello. Think a little bit ahead. And so then within a month, the Ayatollah is saying, death to America. America's the Great Satan, Israel's the Little Satan. And he wants to export anti American ideology around all the Middle East. He helps support Hezbollah in the Palestine area. And around this time, Nixon is, excuse me, Ronald Reagan is the President. And you have the blowing up of the US Marine barracks in Lebanon. And Reagan's advisors just said, tuck tail and run. It's like, oh, great. And so we abandoned all of our allies. Not just did Jimmy Carter abandon our ally, the Shah, but we're abandoning our allies in Lebanon so the fundamentalist Muslims can take over. And then you have the Iran Iraq war. And we certainly don't want Iran to win. And so Ronald Reagan, Rumsfeld, we, America, are arming and training Saddam Hussein and the Iraqis to fight the Iranians from 1980 to 1988. And then we have go back for
A
a second bill to that conflict. What sparked that conflict between Iran and Iraq. Bloody, bloody war. Eight year war. In fact, I was over there at the very tail end of it. In fact, they just signed a peace deal. And we got over there right about that time. We were in the Persian Gulf flying out of Saudi Arabia and the Iranians were attacking Kuwaiti tankers that came through the Persian Gulf, came through the Straits of Hormuz. So we were out there re flagging those tankers, putting American flags on them to protect them. So Iran had become so belligerent to the United States that we had to reflag the tankers of our allies because if they then attacked one of those tankers, they would be attacking the United States. And they didn't want to do that. But why was Iran and Iraq at odds from 1980 to 1988? Why? What happened?
B
Yeah, well, the Shah was pro American. The Ayatollah gets in. He has globalist ambitions of spreading his Shia Islam around the world. The anti American sentiment now, the spark they claim was Iraq invading an area of Iran. But it wouldn't have happened if the Shah had still been in. It only happened because the Ayatollah was in. And it brings up the ancient Sunni, Shia blood feud. So here you have the Shia. And the Ayatollah is so fundamental that he refused to let the Quran be in the Farsi language of the people. He insisted the Quran stay in the Arabic language, the holy language. It's sort of like the Middle Ages with the Bible in Latin, right. And not in the common. And so the people of Iran cannot even recite the Quran verses in their own Farsi language. It's a foreign language to them. And yet they have religious police. One time, my Uber driver who had been from Iran, he goes, yeah, there was this guy in Iran and he was raping women that he thought were Dressed immodestly. He gets caught by the police and they give him a job as an enforcer of religious morals. In Iran, it's like this guy's going around. And so the common people in Iran, it's a foreign power that's taken over, over. And I mean, the Ayatollah even wanted to destroy Persepolis, the ancient palace of Cyrus of Persia that the Shah had, you know, rebuilt to try to build national identity, that they had an identity pre Islam, but they were going to destroy that. But during the Iran Iraq war, a million people die. It was a big deal. And then you have the Soviet Afghan war. And so the Soviets are wanting to take advantage. We think of checkers. It's more like Chinese checkers. It's more, you know, three and four different ones taking advantage of the other ones when they're weak. And so one of the things worth bringing up is the PLO was started in Moscow in the 1960s for the sole purpose of sowing division in the Middle east so it would not side with America the same way that the Soviets started Elm in Bolivia and FARC in Colombia and in the Congo and Brezhnev and Khrushchev meeting with Castro. And this idea is you go into countries and you find their grievances and you stir them up against each other. And when they're fighting, you have a window to overthrow the leadership of the country and install a communist leader. And so the whole plo, there was no Palestinian per se. Palestinian was the name of the land, but it was called Palestinian, the homeland of the Jew. Prior to World War I, it was the Ottoman Empire. For 700 years, there was no Palestinian state and a group of people that call themselves Palestinian, that was not until 1960 with the KGB starting the PLO. But the purpose. So now you have this combination of Islamic fundamentalism mixed with Soviet tactics. And so we have the Soviets. So Soviet Afghan war. And our CIA is arming and training the Taliban to fight the Soviets.
A
The enemy of my enemy is my friend. There you go.
B
And it was the largest covert CIA operation in history. And it was so big that Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts did a movie on it called Charlie Wilson's War. And Sylvester Stallone did a movie on it called Rambo 3. And so we did it from behind the scenes so much that even the Taliban thought that they defeated the Soviets. But one of the people we trained was
A
Osama bin Laden.
B
Osama bin Laden. And then it flips back and forth. So again, people look at Israel. Israel is faced With America being unstable ally you have maybe a Republican in they back. I mean the Democrat party originally their platform was that Israel had the right is Harry S. Truman. He's the one that is responsible for Israel being a state and said that Israel has the right of self defense. And then as soon after World War II when Harry S. Truman helped form the United nations, that's when the British said we're done with the Middle East. They dust their hands and say we pick a date. May 15, 1948, we are going to surrender the British mandate to the United Nations. It's your problem now. And now the clock's ticking. And that's when Chaim Weizman, who developed acetone for the British during World War I so they could have explosives and he appeals to Truman. Truman has his advisors saying don't get messed up mixed up in the Middle East. And Truman's friend Eddie Jacobson, who's a Jew, who they were in the same battalion in World War I together. And then after the war they started a men's clothing store in Kansas City together. That's when Eddie Jacobson calls truman and says Mr. President Harry Old buddy, can you meet with Chaim Wiseman? And Truman does and decides that this is a chance to help these persecuted people that have been persecuted for nearly 2000 years and lets us recognize Israel as its own country. But you have the communists wanting to sow this division. You have a 1948. So as soon as Israel becomes a nation immediately the surrounding Sunni countries attack. And Ralph Bunch, the first African American to win the Nobel Peace Prize negotiates the ceasefire. And then you have the early 1950s and Egypt attacks and the Israelis take the Sinai Peninsula. And Eisenhower says look, give them back the Sinai Peninsula land for peace. And then you have the surrounding Arab Sunni countries attack and the 1967 war. And that's when the Jews take the Temple Mount away from Jordan. And now they have Jerusalem again. And then you have the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood people, the 1972 Olympics and they kill all the Jewish athletes. And then 1973 is another war and this time the Jews survive. But it's not as clear cut victory. And so Jimmy Carter brokers a peace deal between Egypt and Israel. It's called the Camp David Accords. And Menachem Begin of Israel and Anwar Sadat of Egypt, they both win the Nobel Peace Prize. And even Billy Graham is praising Anwar Sadat for having the courage to not be afraid of the Muslim Brotherhood affiliated people and to make this treaty with the Jews. Pat Robertson praises Anwar Sadat and the Muslim Brotherhood type people had infiltrated the Egyptian military. They're having a parade and as they go past the bandstand, they turn and kill the president of their own country. Amor Sadat Mubarak is the vice president. He takes control and he is doing this balancing act, wanting to be friends with America, not wanting to get assassinated until Obama. And Obama goes over to Cairo, Egypt, disinvites our ally, Mubarak fills the room with Muslim Brotherhood people. And then Obama, instead of having the CIA going over to these countries and organizing coups, Obama has social media and he used social media to do the overthrowing in what's called the Arab Spring. But I'm sort of skipping around, but you can see that it's more than just the two sides. You got two different versions of Islam. 15% are Shia and they're mostly in Iran. 85% are Sunni and they're scattered all around. Theologically, the Shia is more top down, similar to the Catholic Church with the Ayatollah being their version of the Pope. The Sunni are more like the Protestants because every local imam can decide what he's going to push and not. And you have some little fragmented groups like the Sufi and they're more mystics and they do the whirling dervishes where they spin in circles and they're more moderate but they don't know why. You have the Alawites, which is what Assad was, which is so secular that the other Muslims don't even consider them Muslims. But mostly it's the Sunni and Shia go back to that blood feud and we're seeing a little of that today where you have these Sunni countries that are teaming up with America and Trump attacking Iran. But the Shia believe it's called the Twelver theology. So Muhammad had a daughter, Fatima, married to Ali and their son Hussein, but he had a son. He had a son. There were 12 different descendants of Muhammad. The last one was supposedly a five year old boy that disappears from history. And the shia, he's the 12th descendant of Muhammad. He's called the 12th Imam or the 12th, you know, the Mahdi M A D H I. And they think that this 12th descendant of Muhammad is hiding in a cave for 1200 years, from 874 when he disappears till now. They call it oculation. They think he's hiding in a cave. And this Twelver version of Islam, which is what the Ayatollah follows, thinks that if they can create a world war intentionally, the 12th Imam will come out of a cave and Their Christ, which is our Antichrist, their Christ will join up with this Mahdi and will kill the little Satan Israel, the big Satan, America. Kill all the Jews, kill all the Christians, kill all the apes and all the pigs and dogs and set up a global one world Islamic government called a caliphate. And so that's why Trump said, we cannot let the Communists have nuclear weapons, but they're not in a hurry to use them. The Ayatollah wants nuclear weapons because he was in a hurry to use them. He literally wants to create a global war. And so it's different. The secular politician in America can't understand the religious motivation there, but we have to, because if they get these weapons, they want to use them. And so the.
A
Well, you notice too, Bill, just to point out where we are right now, and we're recording this on the 4th of March, so things may change before this airs, but that these countries around Iran, these Muslim countries, whether we're talking about Kuwait or Saudi Arabia or Amman or Bahrain, these countries, when this initiative began, were kind of quiet. But as soon as Iran began to fire missiles into their countries, then they felt they had the license to come out and say, yeah, you shouldn't be doing this. We want you to be taken out. I think, and correct me if I'm wrong here, many of these leaders fear the fundamentalists in their own nations who, if they come out too strongly for, say, America or for Israel and against Iran, these leaders fear they themselves will be assassinated. Which, of course, is why Yasser Arafat never agreed to anything. Even when Barack, not Barack Obama, but Ehud Barak, offered basically, Yasser Arafat, almost everything he wanted in 1993. I think Arafat knew that if he had agreed to that with the Israelis, he would have been executed. Is that a fair statement? Do you think that that's the motivation behind some of these leaders being really tepid, even though privately they want Iran taken out?
B
Yeah, well, the Quran, the Hadith, the Sirat, it all forbids Muslims from making treaties with infidels. I mean, that's why they did the treaty. Joel Barlow did the Treaty of Tripoli. Right. And he was trying to say, look, you're not making a treaty with Christianity. You're making a treaty with a political entity called the United States of America. But the Muslim mind couldn't separate religion and politics. They still can't separate religion and politics. And so when you let Muslims into the country, you're also letting their politics in. Because Muhammad was a political leader, a military leader, and a religious leader. Now, a definition the word Islam means submission to the will of Allah. A Muslim is one who has submitted to the will of Allah and they think there will be world peace when the whole world submits to the will of Allah. So it is a religion of peace. It's just their definition of peace is different than ours. Our definition of peace is different groups getting along. Their definition of peace is world Islam. Your enemies are defeated. There's nobody left to fight. Now, a moderate Muslim believes the world will submit to Allah later, maybe in the distant future, maybe the end of the world, maybe it's even figurative. And since it's so far off, they really don't think about it. They just want to live their lives and they prefer to live under the freedoms, under the umbrella of the West, So they can wear the fashions and they can eat the foods and they can listen to music and everything. So when the west shows itself strong against the fundamentalists, the large majority of moderate ones are happy to side with the West. But when the fundamentalist ones do their terrorist attacks and the west shows weakness, well, the moderate ones don't want to be killed. So they end up leaning toward the, the, the fundamentalist ones. And so I tell people it's.
A
No, I was just going to say this is the problem. Most Muslims, vast majority of Muslims, are moderate and peaceful. But when the more radical elements take over, the moderates defer to them and Sharia law is imposed, or variations of Sharia law. The Sharia law that I read at the top of this program is what Ayatollah Khomeini put in way back in 1979. And that, by the way, is from your American Minute that you sent me. Bill and friends, if you haven't signed up for Bill Federer's American Minute, you need to do so. You'll get an email a couple times a week, maybe that has a great history lesson for you. You can read the whole thing in five minutes. And you listed all of those aspects of Sharia law I read at the top of the program in Iran. Now, that's not the case in every Muslim nation, but there are very few Muslim nations that have the kind of freedoms, if any, that have the kind of freedoms we have here in America. So go ahead.
B
So my book is called what Every American Needs to Know about the A History of Islam in the United States, where I put all this in there. Both the Sunni and the Shia want a one world Islamic government called a caliphate. The Shia are the ones that think if they can create a world war, it will help bring this to pass. But all of them, the people themselves, are humans, and they prefer to be nice to their neighbors, and they have nice traditions. And I tell people, imagine if a gang is moving into your neighborhood and they're doing a deal on your front lawn. You call the police, the police show up, arrest them. Are you gonna call the police again? Yeah. But let's say you call the police and they don't show up. Worse, the gang leader comes up to your door and says, we have somebody inside the police department. They said, you called. If you do it again, we'll kill you. Are you gonna call the police anymore? Probably not. And so the moderate Muslim, when they see the fundamentalist ones do a terrorist attack and the west comes down strong, boom. They're like, we're going to keep siding with the West. But if the west does not show itself strong, worse, the west is enabling the Muslims like Biden, leaving $85 billion worth of weapons to the Taliban. And all the lists of all the Afghans that were working together with America so they could get tracked down and killed. And our night vision goggles, and no attempt by our government to blow up these stashes. Before we left, you know, it was clearly Obama and Biden were doing this on purpose. One of my Uber drivers one time, he said, I'm an educated person. I have my wings. I flew Blackhawk helicopters. I was trained by America. I fought with the Americans against the Taliban. He says, we could have taken them out so easily. We had missiles and, you know, and they had pickup trucks, 1500 of them. We could have taken them out, but we got an order to stand down. He said, my friends landed their helicopters in Tajikistan because they didn't want to get killed. And he said he landed his in Afghanistan and he had to hide for 12. For 12 days he's hiding out and they're trying to hunt him down. He finally contacted his trainer in America, who pulled some strings and got him out. I was talking with David Barton and Glenn Beck and a couple others, and they got, like, thousands of people out. They did Were American friends when. And they said their biggest enemy was American government, making it harder for them to get our American allies out. So we see that Biden and Obama were facilitating this. And then I talked to another person that was over there, and he said that he saw Chinese planes flying in while American planes were evacuating people out. A former military guy did security for, like, a power plant. And he's still doing it, but only now it's for the Chinese rare earth minerals. For batteries. It was a gift from Biden to the Chinese. But the Taliban has all these weapons. Another instance was the Bosnian Serbian war. And Bill Clinton was funneling weapons through Iran to get to the Bosnian Muslims. Right, to fight the Serbian Christians. And irregardless of the, you know, thousand year battles that the Serbs had against the Muslim Turks, there's more that goes on over there. And so you have the two Shia and Sunni, but then you have the Soviets and the US wanting to be a proxy over there. And again, oil is one of the main. Oil is the number one traded commodity worldwide. And so it's a big deal.
A
Let me ask you a question, Bill, about the difference between Iran and Iraq, because there's a big difference between the two countries. And it may play into this ability of Iran to actually get a stable government that might have more freedoms than the government that just fell. At least that, that the heads have fallen. There's, they're still in power as we speak right now. But what is the difference in infrastructure and history between Iran and Iraq?
B
Yeah, the Turks and the Persians, they fought for centuries. And, and then again you had Britain siding with Iran and Germany and France siding with the Turks. And it was, you know, over, first it was over trade, you know, silk and all the other stuff, but then it was, you know, China Silk Road, but then it was over the British East India Company and then eventually oil. Now Israel, Israel is the linchpin that's holding back the caliphate. So if you think of it as a crescent, so the Turkey through the Middle east and Iran to Northern Africa, in Egypt, it's like a crescent. They want to reestablish this land that all had been Islamic. They want it back, they want it unified. And there's one little country standing in the way. Israel. It's the linchpin holding back the caliphate. Nine million Jews surrounded by 400 million Muslims. Again, the majority of them are happy to be moderate, but the fundamental ones. So if you thought Mandami winning the mayor position in the biggest city in America and the energizing effect that that had on Muslims with the pictures of Times Square filled up with Muslims bowing, if you thought that energized the fundamental Muslims, if Israel fell, all of them would think it's happening now, right before our eyes, and we would see it would be jihad on steroids.
A
The caliphate is back.
B
They would say it would be. The caliphate's back. This is end times, let's all jump in. And it would be a global. So instead of Israel being the problem in The Middle east, it's the linchpin holding back the caliphate and they know it. That's why the Ayatollah said, we got to get rid of the little Satan Israel and the big Satan, Americ.
A
That's a good insight. But I, the, the question I, or the direction I was going in with my question was Iran has a, a Western history and they have infrastructure. They came from a westernized state prior to 1979, whereas Iraq has always been kind of less sophisticated in its infrastructure, less sophisticated in its unity. Ir, Is it possible that Iran's history, its affinity with the west, the fact that it was westernized prior to the Ayatollah taken over, does that in any way speak well of the possibility of the people getting a government that is more friendly to the west than, say, Iraq?
B
Right. Yeah. Well, Iraq, back prior to World War I was part of the Ottoman Empire. But you're right. So Persia was civilized. The Arabs were desert wanderers and were illiterate. And if it wasn't for the invention of the stirrup and the cimeter sword, and if it wasn't for the fact that the Persians and the Romans had beat each other up for seven centuries, Islam would have never advanced the way it did. But Persia was civilized. And we're talking it had been the biggest empire in the world. Arabia had never been a world power. There never was Arabian kings that ruled. Right. They were always. It wasn't until 1938 that Standard Oil Company discovered oil in Saudi Arabia that they actually were put on the map. Prior to that, it was just mountains of sand. And you can thank John D. Rockefeller. His company was the one that found oil in Saudi Arabia, but Persia, they have. And it's almost like today people that do not like the Ayatollah call themselves Persian and they prefer not to call themselves Iranian. And so if you meet somebody and they refer to themselves as a Persian, they're probably somebody that wants to be friends with the West.
A
That's an important distinction because a lot of Americans think, okay, if they're Muslim, they're Arabs, but in fact, Iranians are Persians, they're not Arabs. And they have this rich history that goes way, way back to Biblical times, as we talked about in the previous program. And they, they were westernized until the Ayatollah, until Jimmy Carter basically said, why don't you come back in the naivety of Jimmy Carter, by the way. I think a lot of our presidents are naive. You know, they, they talk about a two state solution with regard to Hamas or with regard to the area surrounding Israel. When the Hamas charter says that's all a waste of time. They want a one state solution. No Israel, let's just kill all the Jews. It's basically a document that talks about the Ji, the Jews, yet you even have Trump sometimes talking about a two state solution. Why don't we listen to these people, the Muslims who say, we want to kill all Jews? And we're thinking, no, no, you don't, you really don't want to do that. No, no, we really do. Oh, we want a nuclear weapon, right? We're going to use it on Israel. No, no, you're never going to do that. At least Trump is now saying, okay, I can't take that chance. I can't take that chance. You're actually going to do what you say you're going to do. So we, we, we tend not to listen to people when they say they want to kill us, but the history shows they do. Again, most Muslims don't, but this fundamental significant minority does. So what do you think's going to happen, Bill, with regard to Operation Epic Fury? What do you, do you think Iran is going to come out of there with a new government, with more freedoms or not? What, what, what's your thoughts on this? And then the last question I'll ask you is about what do you think the Bible says about that land? And then we'll wrap it up. Go ahead.
B
Yeah. You know, Ronald Reagan, when he was running for president, he criticized Jimmy Carter abandoning the shah. And so October 21, 1984, Ronald Reagan said, I criticized President Carter for undercutting what was a stalwart ally, the Shah of Iran. I am not at all convinced that he was that far out of line with his people or that they wanted the revolution to happen. And the Shah had done our bidding and carried our load in the Middle east for quite some time. And I did think that it was a blot on our record that we let him down. The Shah was building low cost housing, taking land from the mullahs. The mullahs. It's important to understand software hardware. The mullahs are the software programmers. Right. So you're a spirit, mind and body. And your mind is like a super fancy computer. It's more than that, but it's at least that. And your body's like the computer case, which makes it silly for people to argue over what color the computer case is. Imagine if I were to say, you know, green computer better than blue computers. It doesn't matter what color the computer or the iPhone is what matters what software is on. It doesn't matter what color somebody's skin is. It's what behavioral software is running on their brain. And so the idea is it doesn't
A
matter
B
what country a person is from or what background they're from. What matters is what software, what behavioral software is running on their brain. And so it's a programming problem. The mullahs are the programmers and they will gradually cause their followers to become radicalized. When the Dutch took over Indonesia in the 1600s, they would arrest the imams that were inciting their people to violence against the Dutch and then another imam would speak out and they would arrest him and then another, until pretty soon the imams were like, you know what, let's not speak out about killing the Dutch. And it went into a 300 year period of Islam and Indonesia becoming less violent. Right. And so the arresting of the mullahs, that's the problem. So it's not in America. It would be, let's do background checks on all the imams and let's see what they are teaching their followers. And that's the danger. Zudi Jasser is a friend of mine. He's a doctor from Phoenix, He's a moderate Muslim, he fought in our military, he's from Syria. I mean, he's a very faithful. And so he and his different friends helped get a little group together and it turned into a mosque and it grew and it grew until they got an imam and then the imam started criticizing him and saying that, oh, one of our members was on Fox News and they started targeting him. And so finally he and his family had to leave. Right. And he helped start that mosque. But then, so the imams are the programmers and they're the ones that are seeding them. And so if we do what the Dutch did, let's do background checks. Eisenhower had to do this 1954, Communists coming into America. And Eisenhower said no group can use the Bill of Rights as a privileged sanctuary from which to wage war to destroy the Bill of Rights. You can't come in as a communist, say we want freedom of speech and assembly and press because our goal is to outlaw freedom of speech in assembly and press. You can't.
A
It's not a self defeating amendment. You know, the First Amendment gives us the right to freedom of religion, but it doesn't give one religion the right to take the freedom of religion from every other religion, which is what Islam wants to do.
B
Yeah, you can't come in and say we want freedom of religion, speech and press, but our Goal is to set up Sharia law where we're not going to allow freedom of religion, speech or press. And then you have to understand Islam is not just a religion, it's also political and a military system. It's very similar to if the MS.13 gang simply started calling itself a religion and we're like, oh, you're a religion now? Yes, we're a legend. Well, I guess we can let you take over the neighborhood and we can let you do your own Sharia, Ms. 13 vigilante justice. And if somebody wants to leave your group, you can kill them and you can sex traffic nine year old girls and you can, we can teach, we can even teach MS.13 in the schools. Right? And what if the MS.13 leader started promising booty in the next life? Right? And so you can't let something come in under the guise of religion. But, but yet it wants to have a goal of setting up a political and a military system that wants to take away our freedoms. Patrick Henry gave a speech and he says our mild religion teaches us the admirable maxim of forgive and forget. We must act this way as individuals. But when you also add to this the role of a patriot, we cannot act this way. We must respond with vengeance. In other words, if you're personally treated bad, yeah, let them slap you around. But you can't let them slap your children around and you can't let them slap your wife around. And so the idea is that we're tasked as a good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children and what better can we leave them as a country with freedom and especially the freedom to preach the gospel. And so we have to defend these freedoms for the sake of future generations. And so it's every parent has to do deal with this. You love your kid, but every now and then you got to take a stand and you gotta, you know, correct your kid and then you defend your kid because. So anyway, but what do you think,
A
what do you think of the prospects of a, a America friendly government, a freedom friendly government in Iran? Do you have any insights on that Bill, given where we are right now?
B
Yeah. Personally I, I've met the Crown Prince, the son of reza Pahlavi about 20 years ago in D.C. and he wants to have Iran be a secular country again, a constitutional monarchy again. You can't have democracy until you have the population trained in self government for a couple generations, otherwise it's going to quickly be taken over by communism and being overthrown and so forth. So I think from the people that I talk to the son of Reza Pahlavi is the one that they're holding up pictures of when they have their demonstrations in Iran. And so I pray that Trump doesn't settle on one of these other groups. One of the groups called mek. It is worse than the Ayatollah, you know, so. So some of these, you know, small groups, we don't want to be involved. And so, you know, so this gentleman is.
A
Is the son of the Shah that left in 1979. He's an older man himself now. He's probably around 70 years old. But you think if he were to come back to Iran, it's possible he could get a government in place that would allow freedoms and be friendly to America?
B
Yeah, yeah. I mean, he's lived in America for all these years. Right, right. So we know that he's gonna be friends with America. He's somebody that all the faction groups in Iran can agree on. Otherwise, it's just gonna be a bunch of infighting for a long time. I'm. I'm praying that that happens.
A
You know, when we were over there, As I say 20 years ago this summer, we were over there for at least a week. I can't remember how. How many days we were there, but I found the people to be great in Iran, in Tehran, the people we dealt with were all very friendly. I remember we're. We're in the streets of Tehran. We're walking along, and some lady gets out of an old Mercedes, and she knows we're Americans, and she has some papers in her hands, and she says, I want to go to University of Massachusetts. And it was like she thought I was the admissions officer or something. You know, I mean, they.
B
They.
A
They're friendly. At least the people that we ran into were very friendly to America. Now, all around us, we saw Ayatollah Khomeini pictures on the side of a building.
B
There were.
A
And maybe we'll insert these into the program, an American flag that instead of stripes, had bombs coming down. Death to America. On the wall, that was the wall that separated the old embassy from the street, it said, we will said had something like, we will make America face a severe defeat. So they had all of this propaganda all over their buildings in Tehran, but the people themselves seemed very friendly. And it's actually a very pretty place, Tehran. If you go up into the north, you get up into the hills there, it's just very beautiful. And the Caspian Sea right on the other side of there.
B
It's.
A
It's a very pretty country. And there's so much history there. I'm just praying that a government takes over that allows some freedom and allows the gospel. Because as I understand it, the, the church there, at least the reports are coming out that the underground church is quite strong in Iran and they're having dreams of Jesus. Yeah, I was just going to say Jesus is appearing in dreams. That's what I'm hearing.
B
Growing religion in Iran is Christianity.
A
Yeah. So let's pray that that happens and pray for our leaders and pray the people of Iran are safe. But their evil government is, is dealt with justly. Let me just ask you the last thing, Bill. And we can't go spend a lot of time on it. But I just want, I want to understand your viewpoint because there are different viewpoints with regard to prophecy in the Bible. You know, either Persia, Elam media are mentioned in the Bible. They're mentioned in say Jeremiah 49. They're mentioned in Ezekiel 38, Ezekiel 30. What's your overall view of Iran in the end times?
B
Well, Matthew 24, Jesus talks about the birth pangs, which means it comes really intense and then you give a little breather and then it gets more intense. And I think we're getting closer. There are some things, you know, that have not happened yet. There's no restored temple in Jerusalem, you know, there's no Damascus, hasn't been destroyed yet, you know, but we're getting close with AI and all these different programs where they can track everybody. I mean, we're moving in that direction, you know, Jeremiah chapter 2049. Jeremiah 49 talks about all these judgments on Elam, Persia. But then it has like this last verse that says, but it will be in the last days that I will reverse the captivity and restore the fortunes of Elam, says the Lord. So there could be a period of blessing for Persia. And then my view of the end time and my very limited understanding, it's sort of like a GPS on your phone. We're going to get to the destination, it's going to get to the book of Revelation. But if we repent, it can take the long way around. But if we don't repent, it can take the direct route. So.
A
Well, that's important. And what I've been saying lately, actually, my wife noticed this the other day. She said it almost seems like in this situation it's not the nations teaming up on Israel, they seem to be teaming up on Iran right now. Right. It's kind of the reverse of what the scriptures say, that all the nations are going to come down on Israel. But right now you've got all these nations coming down on Iran, even neighboring Muslim nations who are tired of having missiles shot at them indiscriminately.
B
So.
A
But ultimately, yeah, we're going to get to a point where this is all going to be rolled up. The Lord's going to come and, and, and end it all, have the ultimate victory. But what I've been telling people today is you are more certain. I am more certain that my personal judgment is going to take place within. Could be tomorrow, it could be. It's going to be within a few decades, max. I'm in the fourth quarter, so are you, Bill. We're in our 60s, right? We're in the fourth quarter. I am more certain that I'm gonna die before Jesus comes. Then I know when Jesus is going to come. So my judgment is, is going to happen. I'm much more certain about when that's going to happen than when Jesus is going to happen. Let me put it that way. So I'm wondering why people are. It's very interesting to look at eschatology, but I want to emphasize to people that your personal eschatology is more certain than the whole universe eschatology. So make sure that you repent and accept Jesus now, because you're not going to have a chance on the other side. I'll give you the last word, Bill.
B
Go ahead. Manasseh, wicked King of Judah, sacrificing kids to Moloch. Prophets come to him. Tell them you're doing the same thing that the people that were here before Israel came in were doing. And because they were doing it, I brought Israel in to judge them. And because you're doing it, I'm going to judge you and drive you out. So the prophets prophesied judgment. But then Manasseh has a grandson, Josiah, 8 years old. He becomes a teenager, starts to seek the Lord. 20 years old. He tells him to clean out the temple that his granddad had trashed and neglected. And they find the law of God. They read it to this young king. He rips his garments and repents. Sends to a prophetess in town named Huldah to ask what's going to happen. And she said, tell the man that sent you that judgment is coming, but not during his lifetime, because he repented. And so there's a 31 year reprieve, an entire generation. And Josiah has a big Passover, has, you know, Tarazon Sodomite temples, has the Levites go out and teach the law. And so I'm praying for A Josiah generation. Right. The prophets prophesied the judgment, but if we repent, God can. The judgment's still going to come, but it can happen in another generation from now. Again, I'm not a prophecy scholar, but that's sort of the view I take.
A
Bill, tell people about your website and also the book that has much of what we've spoken about in this podcast in the previous one.
B
Yeah, so my website's americanminute.com and the book is this one. It's called what Every American Needs to Know about the A History of Islam and the United States. And it's really packed. Again, it goes through fast history all the way from pre Mohammed up to the present.
A
Check that out, ladies and gentlemen. Yeah. And americanmediate.com sign up for the email. It's great stuff. It's always a pleasure having you on, Bill. You're such a wealth of knowledge and you know just about everything. About everything. So thank you for being on again.
B
Oh, thank you, Frank. It's always an honor. And I travel the country and people say, I heard you on Frank Turek's cross exam. And so, so I appreciate you very much.
A
Well, thank you, brother. And friends, don't forget Christopher Newport University, March 11th. That'll be tomorrow night if you're listening to this, on Tuesday. And then we're going to be at Colorado Mesa and Utah Valley University where Charlie was murdered a couple of weeks after that. All the details on our website. Then Ole Miss. Also visiting a Church in St. Louis this month of March. Check it all out. By the way, Bill, where can people see you? Because you're out there on the speaking circuit too. Where do they go to? Where's your schedule?
B
Oh, I don't have it posted. I mean, every week I'm somewhere, it just, I, it's, it's hard enough for me to keep up with much less posted every.
A
And you know, well, well, check them out@americanminute.com ladies and gentlemen. Sign up for his email. Don't forget. Also we've got online CIA coming up, the Cross Examine Instructor Academy. That's going to be starting in April. Check all that out@cross examine.com org. Click on online courses. You'll see it there. And Lord willing, we will see you here next week. Make sure you pray for all the leaders involved. Pray that peace ultimately arrives and that freedom takes over Iran, which means the gospel can go forward. Amen. See you next time.
Podcast: I Don't Have Enough FAITH to Be an ATHEIST
Host: Dr. Frank Turek
Guest: Bill Federer
Date: March 10, 2026
This episode continues Dr. Frank Turek’s in-depth conversation with historian Bill Federer, focusing on the recent and ancient history of Iran (formerly Persia), especially in relation to Sharia law, geopolitical power plays, U.S. foreign policy, and the influence of Islam—both Shia and Sunni—on the region’s fate.
Key themes include the nature and consequences of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the Cold War context, Iran's unique cultural heritage relative to the Arab world, trends in Islamic theology, and the possible outcomes for Iran as its government faces instability. The episode challenges listeners to consider how religious, political, and historical factors intertwine in Iran and shape both local and global events.
Dr. Turek opens by laying out the radical transformations after the Ayatollah Khomeini’s 1979 takeover, particularly the imposition of strict Sharia law:
Summary: The transformation under Khomeini is positioned as a complete societal reversal from prior Western freedoms to an authoritarian theocracy.
Bill Federer chronicles how U.S. and British interests (specifically oil) led to the 1953 CIA-backed Operation Ajax that replaced Iran’s prime minister with the Shah (Reza Pahlavi).
The Shah’s tenure was undermined by:
Notable Quote:
The Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), causing a million deaths, is characterized as the outgrowth of Shia-Sunni rivalries, historical grievances, and the fallout from the Shah’s removal.
Notable pop culture moment:
U.S. shortsightedness and shifting alliances — e.g., support of Osama bin Laden against Soviets
Federer asserts that Israel prevents the reestablishment of a pan-Islamic caliphate:
Distinction between Persian and Arab history
The potential for a more moderate, West-friendly government:
Grassroots support for the West among the general population:
Federer references passages from Jeremiah 49 and Ezekiel, suggesting Scripture prophesies both judgment and the possibility of future blessing for Persia / Iran.
Eschatology (“end times”) perspective: Pressure on Israel is expected, but current alliances against Iran are viewed as a temporary realignment.
Dr. Turek emphasizes personal “eschatology” — the urgency to consider one’s relationship with Christ given the uncertainties of life.
“These college students are think, oh, let's tear down the country. It's like, what's going to come next? Hello. Think a little bit ahead.” ([12:24], B - Bill Federer)
“If Israel fell, all of them would think it's happening now, right before our eyes, and we would see it would be jihad on steroids.” ([37:25], B - Bill Federer)
“Their definition of peace is different than ours. Our definition of peace is different groups getting along. Their definition of peace is world Islam. Your enemies are defeated. There's nobody left to fight.” ([28:25], B - Bill Federer)
“It's not in America. It would be, let's do background checks on all the imams and let's see what they are teaching their followers. And that's the danger.” ([43:10], B - Bill Federer)
This episode offers a sweeping, historical, and theological perspective on Iran’s complex journey—from ancient Persia to the contemporary Islamic Republic and the current protests and crises. The discussion spotlights the intricate interplay between theology, politics, and international strategy, emphasizing the role of ideas, education, and spiritual renewal in national destiny.
Closing Insights: