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The Chris Hedges Report
The Revolutionary Spirit of Iran (w/ Behrooz Ghamari) | The Chris Hedges Report
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- [00:10]
A
In February 1984, Behrouz Gamary Tabrizi was a prisoner on death row at Evian Prison in Tehran. He was alone in an infirmary cell, weak with advanced lymphoma. He had been arrested three years earlier for membership in a radical Marxist organization that sought to overthrow the Islamic Republic. He had been sentenced to death four months after his arrest. Now, to himself and his guards, he appeared to be dying. The regime of Saddam Hussein, locked in a bitter war with Iran that began in the summer of 1980, was bombing Tehran an attempt not unlike the recent bombing by Israel and the US to disrupt Iranian morale and compel Iranians to overthrow the government. But like most Iranians, Gamary Tabrizi, although sentenced to death, would not transfer his loyalty to a foreign aggressor. In 1985, after the high Judicial Court annulled his death sentence, he was granted medical parole, left Iran, and was treated at Stanford University Hospital with aggressive chemotherapy. He went on to get his doctorate and was the chair of the Department of Near Eastern Studies and director of the center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies at Princeton University from 2020 to 2024. In his latest book, the Long War on Iran, he implodes the myths used by US Administrations to demonize Iran and impose not only crippling sanctions but but twice in the last year wage an unprovoked war. Since its inception in 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran has exercised its own sovereign power to extend its regional political authority, he writes. The enduring question of the last four decades is Iran's sovereignty, its refusal to become a client state aligned with American interests in the region. The United States and its European allies instrumentalized the Islamic Republic's repressive state apparatus, its appalling violations of human rights, though arguably much less so than Western allies in the region, patriarchal legal system and its limitations on civil liberties to justify their attempts to force Iran to submit to their demands. Joining me to discuss this latest iteration of the long war on Iran, or waged by Israel and the United States, is Professor Behrouz Gamary Tabrisi, who is currently a visiting scholar at the center for Place Culture and Politics at the Couney Graduate center in New York. Let's begin with the which you write about in the book the assumption by Western leaders that the use of sanctions and in the last year the use of brute military force is an effective method by which Iranians will reject the regime and institute and of course, what they want is a kind of pro American ruling class.
- [03:38]
B
First, thank You, Chris, for having me on the program. The logic of sanctions goes like this, that if we put enough pressure on a society and communicate that with the people there, that we are inserting this pressure on you because of the fault of your government, then at some point when the pressure gets too much, people will rise up and overthrow their own government. Sometimes this logic changes and they say that, you know, we are not actually sanctioning the people, we are sanctioning the state. But that sort of second logic is somewhat difficult to subscribe to because inevitably when you sanction the state, it would affect people's lives. In reality, however, that stated objective never is realized in the way that the proponents of this policy advocate it. Possibly the first thing that happens with sanctions is that the impoverishment of people of all walks of life, middle classes would go down in immiseration and lose their means of livelihood. Working class would lose its means of livelihood. And the idea that when people are losing the means of their livelihood would then go and mobilize and organize against their own government, it's just a fantasy. The more people think about their bread and butter issues, the harder it becomes to go out and mobilize and form a formidable political movement. The second thing that happens is that it securitizes society. I've had a number of conversations with people in the American government who were promoting this policy and they always say that, you know, we are doing this to help to democratize society. And I always say that, you know, if you go and look at the consequences of this policy, you always realize that these policies actually securitize the society and enhances the power of those repressive forces inside the state that you are trying to contain. And last but not least, it creates a non transparent form of economy that is the hotbed and a very fertile ground for the emergence of economic corruption. Because, you know, the state is not going to throw their hands up and say, okay, now you sanctioned us, we are going to submit to your demands. They're going to find ways to go around sanctions and operate their economy and their trade. And since there is they do this in secret, then they create this network of cronies who have access to trade and economic resources. And no one knows exactly how this trade is happening and who owns the businesses and corporations, factories. And that's why we see in the past 15 to 20 years in Iran a very rapid and deep economic corruption inside the state, which partly for the most part, actually I should say, is the result of these sanctions. And of course, you know, people Take advantage of the opportunity that's provided to them by these sanctions and distribute economic resources towards their own sort of networks of nepotism grows and sons and daughters and cousins and all that would benefit from this kind of very non transparent economic activities.
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A
I think a fundamental point that you make several times in the book is the utter misreading of Iranian society and the Iranian revolution, which of course was a coalition of groups including leftist university students, Marxists. Yes, those groups were crushed later, actually fairly quickly and fairly brutally by the Islamic regime. But you make the case that that revolutionary spirit still exists within Iran. And of course, we saw it with the latest street demonstrations in January and a fairly brutal response on the part of the regime and a fairly, you know, counterproductive insertion of armed units apparently by the US and Israel into those protests. Talk about our misreading of Iranian society.
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B
I think the source of this misreading, I mean, part of it is intentional. I mean that's sort of a fabricating and manufacturing a kind of state of being in Iran that justifies the US and its allies policy towards Iran. And some of it therefore is very intentional. Some of it is misleading reading on the part of a lot of mass media and others, other observers who talk about Iran, that they constantly see that every few years, two years, three years, four years, we see a massive protest movement in Iran. And it ends up, anytime that this happens. We read that on the front pages of the New York Times, the Washington Post, all major newspapers and, and that kind of protest movement sometimes suggests that the situation in Iran is so brutal, so unbearable and so difficult to manage that constantly people are pouring into the streets and protesting. I think that's the source of misunderstanding that there is of course that protest movement and this kind of revolutionary consciousness among people in Iran. But that's not necessarily an indication that the Iranian state is so extraordinarily brutal and extraordinarily repressive that forces people to come to the streets as the last result of expressing their grievances. Actually, it's always the other way around. If the regimes are so brutal and they don't leave any possibility of expression of any kind of grievances, we don't see that often people coming to the streets. Iran, the Islamic Republic, is as repressive as any other country in the region, possibly less than other countries in the region. At least there are processes of electoral, electoral processes in elections. We might argue that they are not real, they are fake, they are all these things, but nevertheless in no shape or form. Iran is more repressive than its neighboring countries and possibly in most other countries in the world, actually. And the reason we see this kind of protest is actually that kind of what I call the transfer of collective revolutionary consciousness, generation after generation. I think this is possibly the most important achievement of the revolution in 1979, that people came to this realization that they can express their grievances, they can express their demands by marching on the streets. And we need to remember that Iranian Revolution of 1979 was the largest, most populous revolution in world history and they defeated the fifth largest military in the world at the time. So that is.
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A
And let me just interrupt one of the most brutal secret savak, one of the most brutal Israeli trained, largely Israeli trained secret police network.
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B
Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely. Mossad was a major sort of part of training of savak. CIA had advisors in Iran during the reign of the Shah. So, so that consciousness that people could actually overthrow for the most part by non violent means, you know, this was not an armed revolution. This was a revolution that asserted its power through the sheer numbers, you know, and in 1978, population of Tehran was around 4 million people. And there were demonstrations, rallies that more than 1 million people participated in this. So basically one out of four people were participating in revolutionary rallies. And that's, I think that kind of subjectivity, that kind of collective consciousness we see that has been transferred at least now, three generations after the revolution. And the reason we see all these protest movement and is that revolution of 79 continued in a sense in the mind of Iranian people rather than a reflection of the extreme brutality of the Iranian regime.
- [14:23]
A
Let's talk a little bit about Iranian consciousness of Western aggression which you write about the fact that the United States, not just the United States, the French and others supplied Iraq during the eight year war with Iran. The Iran used of course, chemical weapons, which the Iranians did not respond with chemical weapons. I don't know that the numbers were staggering. I mean, probably a few hundred thousand people were affected by sarin and these toxic chemical agents. And the west looked away. Not only looked away, but in the case of the United States and their famous visit of Rumsfeld traveling to Baghdad and shaking Saddam's hand, they funded and sustained this effort. And that's even now, I mean, that's embedded into the consciousness, I think, of most Iranians.
- [15:24]
B
That is so true. I mean, it always puzzles me when there is a conversation about trust during these negotiations and as if Iranians are the ones who need to build trust. And while the recent historical record actually points to the other direction that it's the Americans and their allies who need to build trust for Iranians because that has been repeated over and over again in the past half century, that Iranians cannot really trust Americans. And the last you mentioned, the Iran Iraq war, which was, you know, at the time, of course, Saddam Hussein in 1979, 1980, was a client state of the Soviet Union. But nevertheless, the whole kind of countries of the west came to rescue because once they realized that the war was not going to the directions that they envisioned, Americans, Germans, French, the uk, All Arab countries, with the exception of Libya and Syria, they all helped Saddam Hussein and they delivered even chemical weapons. You know, the German companies delivered chemical, the material for chemical weapons. The US Provided means of delivery of chemical weapons at the time. And even when Iran put a grievance in the national, the United Nations Security Council to condemn Iraqi's use of chemical weapons, the country that vetoed that was the United States. And, and I think that, you know, this has left a scar for Iranians that every time that they try to think about a rapprochement or a detente, and we see in the recent years that in the middle of negotiation they attack, you know, and they are in their attack, they are very indiscriminate and they do all these kind of things that amounts to war crime. And it's very openly exercised. This kind of both in rhetoric and in practice is exercised. So, you know, I think Iranians have good reasons to be skeptical of intentions, American intentions, and the need to build trust sort of falls in the court of Americans rather than the other way around.
- [18:14]
A
Well, you mentioned the fact that Israel and the United States bombed in the midst of negotiations both in Amman and Geneva. It's not in your book, but you can go back all the way to the Algiers Agreement, which was the agreement after 1979, which the United States promised not to carry out aggressive policies towards Iran and then immediately violated it. And then as you do write about in your book, the fact that Iran was an ally in terms of the installation of the Karzai government, Iran has enmity with the Taliban. And then also the fact that when the Americans were fighting the Sunni insurgency in Iraq, Iran physically had troops on the ground, militias on the ground, that were tacit allies of the United States to crush that insurgency.
- [19:13]
B
That is so true. And I think that goes back to this idea that Iranians, I mean, one of the justifications of this current war is that no matter how hard Iranians try to change their own situation, they faced dead ends. And that's the only alternative left was an external intervention, which is far from truth. And we see in the past 40 years, particularly at the end of Iran Iraq war, Iranian society has gone through major transformations. And when 9 11, for example, happened, Iran, both at the state level and at society level, was the only country in the Middle east that had the organized massive public mourning for the victims of 911 in New York City. And not only that, this was not a kind of a sort of a veneer of some other sort of sinister policy behind it. Actually, you know, as you mentioned, Iranians helped the US to overthrow the Taliban. And in 2002, in the Bonn conference, when they're deciding about the future of Afghanistan, the US delegation was very open about the fact that without Iran, they could not have toppled the Taliban that easily. But this was a kind of a reformist government under President Khatami at the time. And, and there were some high hopes riding on this moment. And Iran wanted to Iran, the Islamic Republic wanted to show that sort of, they're putting that kind of revolutionary fervor behind and ready to engage the US with mutual respect as equal partners. And then suddenly in State of the Union speech, George W. Bush comes out. This is after Iran was a partner in war on terror. George W. Bush State of Union comes out and calls Iran one of the axis of evil. And I think that really, again speaking of the question of trust, that that really inflicted irreparable damage to Iranian reformist movement. Because if you show that much flexibility, if you show that much readiness to engage on different terms with the United States and the result is being called axis of evil, then, you know, how possibly could you justify any kind of rapprochement after that? You know, I mean, they again justified it. They again tried to try that road unsuccessfully up to this point. And I think that's, again, it's very important to remember that all these US policies towards Iran, although the stated objective always has been that we want to help democratic elements inside Iran, in reality, every single policy that the U.S. adopted undermined Democratic elements inside Iranian state and Iranian society.
- [23:12]
A
Well, and of course, the perhaps the most illustrative example of that is the coup that overthrow the Prime Minister Mohamed Mosaddegh, who attempted to take control of Iranian oil which was controlled by the British. And I think as I remember from your book, the Iranians didn't even know how much oil was being exported out of their country. Workers in the oil fields were paid slave wages. And of course, the CIA and the British came and destroyed one of the most vital democracies in the Middle East.
- [23:50]
B
That's so true. I mean, I think in so many different ways. I mean the US and Iran has a long history together. But I think if we want to understand this situation today, I think the year zero is 1953 for Iran and the US. And there were a lot of hopes after, at the end of Second World War that the US is going to emerge as a force for good. You know, whether that was true or not, but at least that was the perception in many corners of the world. Because the US's posture was a anti colonial posture against the British Empire, against the French Empire, but that never materialized. And even Mossadegh at the beginning of this movement for nationalization of oil thought that the US would support his initiative against the British oil company which was a, you know, it's a very colonial kind of contract. That oil was discovered in Iran in 1908 and the British basically controlled the production, distribution, everything. And by the time that oil was nationalized in Iran, the share of Iran, the profit that Iran shared of the oil, the production was only 18%, 82% of the profit went to the British. 30% of them of that was directed to the British government. You know, and so that really sets a kind of the tone in the next 25 years for Iran US relations. And in so many different ways. In my other work I argue that, that the Iranian revolution was Iranians response to 1953 coup. And it's impossible to understand the revolution without having 1953 coup, CIA and MI6 coup in mind. Because without that it's impossible to understand the Iranian revolution without that. Because a lot of Americans, the only thing they remember of Iranian revolution is the taking over of American embassy in Tehran, the hostage crisis. And I think without 1953 coup, the hostage crisis is incomprehensible, not justifiable. I don't think it was justified. But one needs to understand the mindset of those students who took over American Embassy that they were thinking about 1953 coup and the possibility of the US and the CIA attempting to sabotage the revolution once again. But this is so important. That year zero is 1953. And we need to really give enough attention to that time in order to understand what happened in 1979 revolution, hostage crisis and to a certain degree what's going on today. This is basically the foundation of a colonial imperialist relations between the two countries that needs to be overturned. And this is the whole kind of debate there that the revolution basically changed the map of the Middle east and the Struggle. The point of contention today is to go Back to the pre1979 map of the Middle east with Iran as a client state and Iran as a state whose political authority does not exercise a political authority, does not undermine American interest or Israeli interest in the region.
- [28:07]
A
Yeah, very close parallels with Cuba, wouldn't you say?
- [28:10]
B
Oh, absolutely, absolutely. I mean, I gave this talk a couple of weeks ago at the University of Maryland, and one of my colleagues there, who's a Cuba specialist, at the end of my talk, he said that, you know, I just wanted to correct you one thing, that wherever you said Iran, you should have said Cuba, you know, because I mean, the similarity is really astonishing, that this is the same policy, this is the same points of contention. And as we see in Cuba, I mean, what is the result of like 70 years of embargo, you know, and accept, you know, immiseration of an entire nation? And when that happens, you know, it's exactly the same. When that happens, you're actually empowering the ruling classes. You are not disempowering them because you're empowering the ruling classes. And that can continue for decades after decades after decades, as is example in Cuba and this is example in Iran as well, that the more kind of free flow of ideas, trade, political relations, the better it is for the emergence of democratic movements in any country.
- [29:37]
A
Before we talk about where we are now, you write that Iran's existence depended on creating a ring of fire around its borders as a deterrent to the American and Israeli ambitions to redraw the map of the region. Explain the ring of fire.
- [29:58]
B
You know, for years, Iranian state Islamic Republic argued that that helping neighboring countries in Syria, in Lebanon, in Palestine, is a deterrence for Americans and Israelis to bring the war directly to Iran. I remember when Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, there was a conference in Istanbul and the war in Syria had started. And she said that, you know, we are in Syria, we are going to clip the wings of Iranians, you know, and it was very, from the, particularly after 9, 11, 2001, it was very clear that that kind of project of seven countries in five years was the biggest reward for that policy was toppling the Islamic Republic in Iran. So Iranians consciously created that kind of what I called a ring of fire as a deterrent to say that if you attack us, if you pressure us, we have the ability to respond in other places. And of course, I say this with a little bit of a caveat there that that doesn't mean that there was no ideological commitment there as well. I mean, Iranian, I believe that the Islamic Republic is committed to the Palestinian cause. They do instrumentalize it as well. But that doesn't mean that they don't genuinely believe that Palestinian, the right to return and statehood must be defended. So. But that kind of. And, you know, many years in 1984, I believe Henry Precht, who was in charge of the Iran desk at the State Department, in a piece, he said that Iranians are basically are not interested in dominion abroad. They are interested in security and safety at home. And whatever they do outside their borders is a way of protecting that stability and security at home. I don't believe that the Islamic Republic at any moment had this kind of expansionist ambitions to go. And even about the question of Israel, that they say, okay, they said, death to Israel, death to America. But that really did not translate into a specific policy of going towards annihilation of the state of Israel. This was basically a rhetorical gesture and with no actual plan or even, I want to mention this, that during the war with Iraq, there was a battalion of Revolutionary Guards who basically crossed the border from Iraq down to go to Lebanon. And they said that we are going to just go down to Israel and liberate Palestine. And Khomeini at the time, who is still alive, immediately said, just turn around, turn around. We don't want to go to Israel. This is all about protecting our own borders. This is not about going anywhere else. So they all turned around. And so basically, you know, at the beginning of the revolution, there was this misunderstanding that when they say that we are going to export the revolution, we are actually going to go and arm and liberate other lands. This was more of an inspirational kind of rhetoric rather than an actual kind of planned military and offensive plan to go and liberate other countries.
- [34:29]
A
You're right. And we're talking, I think you wrote the book. You're responding to the bombings in June, but they can, of course, it is current. For the latest round of attacks, fresh in the minds of Iranians was Israel's genocide in Palestine. Bombing Iranian cities immediately evoked the image of complete destruction of Gazan cities. Iranians knew that the Israelis possessed no inhibition in committing war crimes and acts of genocide. They and their American backers wanted Iranians to have the image of Gaza in their mind, of the atrocities they are capable of, and to force them to surrender unconditionally in the first few days of the assaults. They also had hoped that the attacks would instigate regime change through mobilization from below, led by domestic and Diasporic dissidents. You write a lot about the diaspora, quite scathingly incorrectly bombing Evan prison could be understood as a manifestation of the naive fantasy of the latter option. Raising the prison gates with the masses storming Evan, carrying freed political prisoners on their shoulders and celebrating the end of the Islamic Republic in a replay of the fall of the Bastille. I think that is what they thought and I think it's probably another example of the complete corrosion or disintegration of our, the U.S. diplomatic corps. In a sense you have to rely on diplomats who to a certain extent are buy cultural. But let's talk about the latest assault. What you've, you know, what you think it's done within Iran and what you think the Iranian regime will do from here on out.
- [36:24]
B
The last part of your question is very hard to tell. You know, we don't know. But I want to emphasize this, that I truly believe that without genocide in Gaza, we will not be talking about this war in Iran. The genocide in Gaza I think was an exercise in impunity. The transformation of the so called rule based world order through this genocide in Gaza opened up this possibility of. War crimes that otherwise could have been unthinkable. I mean it was unthinkable to do such thing to, to have a president of the United States openly saying that we are going to annihilate an entire civilization. I don't think we could imagine anything like this, like five years ago, 10 years ago. And I think that was made possible by genocide in Gaza. And Israelis I think were very much aware of this. And for that reason I blame much of the, I put much of the responsibility of what's happening in Iran on the shoulders of Biden administration because they had the opportunity to intervene and stop that genocide at its very, very early stages. And not only didn't they do it, not only they refused to do so, they helped to carry that out. And I think that really changed the face of war in 21st century. And I think that the word impunity is very key there. And Israelis tried it and I think they tried it successfully. That the genocide that unfolded in front of the world's eyes could be carried out for two years without any kind of consequences. I mean there is a, you know, ICC indictment and but you know, these are really not something that could ever stop that war machine against Palestinians in Gaza. And they knew that the only way they could attack Iran, declare war on Iran was through a similar campaign of blanket bombing and destruction of civilian infrastructure that they did in Gaza. And that's what they did. And even today, they understand that there is no other option. What are they going to do? I would imagine even they might go as far as God forbid, to drop a nuclear bomb on Iran, you know, because what other options do they have? They can't invade Iran. And the only option they have is to basically what exactly President Trump is saying, to annihilate the entire nation and to do so very openly. And so I think for Iranians, this was a moment of a great lesson, because for many years, when these kind of protests in Iran were happening and people were very dissatisfied with their own state and there was a lot of publicity about the diversion of Iranian resources to help the axis of resistance, the Palestinians in Hezbollah in Syria and Iranians, a lot of these protests, people were shouting that not for Gaza, not for Lebanon. My heart only, you know, is for Iran. I sacrificed my life for Iran. And now they realize that all those things that the state was saying came to be true, that if they don't have this fight in the streets of Damascus, they have to do it in the streets of Tehran. And it doesn't, it might not sit well with the Syrians who live in Damascus, and for good reasons, you know, but that was the reality that in the absence of Hezbollah, in the absence of Palestinian resistance, I mean, Iran doesn't have a very strong relations with Hamas, and that's another misunderstanding of this whole thing. But with Palestinian resistance, then, you know, now the war has come to Iran and Iranians have to deal with it. And I think this was a moment that a light went on in Iranian. Many Iranians mind that there was some truth to that, that this was a project in the making for the past, at least for the past 20 years, to bring this war to Iran. And as Netanyahu always said, to cut the head of the snake. And that snake, that head is Iran. And that's the major reward for this sort of re envisioning the Middle East. And that's why we see that a very strong rallying around the flag in Iran and these nightly gatherings, congregations in public squares in Iran, that started as a state initiative, but then it turned very quickly into kind of a civil society movement that people show up all night waving flags and with families, with kids, with elderly, with disabled people, everyone is showing that kind of support. But where it leads, that's a major, major question, because we really don't know what's going to happen at the end of this war. I mean, the economic situation in Iran was already very hard and the inflation is between 60 to 70% and it's going to get worse. Now there is an estimate that 4 million people have lost their jobs because of the war. And the unemployment rate was already above 15% before the war. And so all those economic grievances that started in January and December and January last year, now I think it's going to resurface at the end of this war. And I don't know whether the government has the resources to offer any kind of satisfactory alternative to how they are going to deal with that kind of very grave economic crisis. It all depends on how the war ends and what kind of agreements they make. And if all the sanctions are lifted, maybe there is a possibility that, that the government can cope with the economic consequences of this war. But I truly worry about what's going to be left in those ruins in relation to the state exercising its authority and the people who are trying to find a way to continue their means of subsistence.
- [45:35]
A
It does appear that the Iranian regime has a high degree of leverage over the Strait of Hormuz. And of course, if they can get the Houthis to shut down the Bab El Mandeb, that will block Saudi oil that is being shipped through a pipeline and shipped out not through the strait. And I'm just asking. It also appears to me anyway that there are certain non negotiable demands on the part of the Iranian government. That is one, reparations. Two, the freezing, unfreezing of Iranian assets which are at least $100 billion. The some kind of UN guarantee that they won't be attacked again. They've been attacked twice within the last year. And then also this ability to collect tolls, if you want to call them that, in usually in Chinese currency, I think exclusively in Chinese currency, which are a kind of backdoor form of reparations. Perhaps, but just your take on the Iranian position, the Iranian negotiating strength. I know I'm not asking you to predict the future, that's a dangerous thing to do, but at least the trends.
- [46:50]
B
Yeah. Amiti, the last proposal Iranians sent which they try to separate nuclear question from the crisis of Strait of Hormuz and they said that, you know, we lift it, we lift the blockade of Hormuz and then the US lift the blockade and then, and then you unfreeze our assets and then we're all good to go, you know, like. But of course, you know, that's for the U.S. i think that's a non starter. I don't think the US is going to accept separating the nuclear issue from terms of ending this war. Because if they do, this is a very open admission of defeat for the US because that was the whole idea of this war. And although no one knows what the idea of this war was, objective, this war. But I think up to this point, I think Iranians have the upper hand. And. They always knew that this Strait of Hormuz is their winning card. And they wanted to save that for day like this. And now they're using it and they're basically holding the whole world economy hostage. And the world also knows that this hostage crisis is caused by the US not by the Iranians. And I don't know if you heard the German chancellor the other day yesterday. You know, that, that, I mean, if the Germans are blaming the US for this, then, you know, we can say with a certain level of confidence that the world believes that this responsibility of this situation is on the shoulders of the U.S. so Iranians have the upper hand. And how they're going to use this upper hand is not quite clear. And I believe that they're ready and they have said so before this war start, that they're ready to agree to a certain amount of year, number of years of freezing their enrichment program. And I believe that at the end, this is the kind of agreement that they can sort of work with, that Iran would freeze for a certain number of years their enrichment program and the sanctions are lifted and some confidence building and so on and so forth. And then we go back to where we were last year, that without any of the, I mean, the painful part of it is that we could have achieved this without all this destruction and death. And now our hope is that we could get to an agreement that is something close to what we could have agreed on a year ago.
- [50:18]
A
Great. Thank you, Behrouz. I want to thank Max and Sophia Bruce the show. You can find me@chrishedges substack.com thank you so much, Chris.