Inside The Long Breakdown Between Iran And America

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The Feudal Future.
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Hello and welcome to another episode of the Feudal Future Podcast.
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I'm Marshall Taplansky.
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I'm Joel Kotkin.
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And today we are going to be focusing on a very timely topic, which is Iran and its relationship with the United States.
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Of course, as you know, Joel, we're in the midst of a war with Iran that seems to be up and down on any given day.
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And to help us really understand the context of where we're at, we are calling on the expertise of two veterans in this particular area.
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First is Professor Mansor Farhang, who is uh formerly the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations during the time of the hostage negotiations in 1979, and Ambassador John Limbert, who is uh a longtime veteran of the State Department, was not ambassador in Iran at the time of the hostage crisis, but and was since ambassador in a number of different uh capacities, but was in Iran during the hostage crisis and a hostage himself.
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Gentlemen, thank you for being with us.
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My pleasure.
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Well, let's let's start with kind of the historical context here.
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Joel, you want to kick us off?
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Yeah, um the this book, um which was really is uh really extraordinarily interesting, particularly um people who may not uh been familiar with the history.
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What I what I got from the book was that there seems to be a uh a kind of a folk way, if you want, or uh uh an approach towards um telling um actually what you what you believe uh um that is quite opposite to what you actually plan to do.
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And I was trying to explain uh what the reaction was when uh you mentioned that Homey was trying to, you know, was giving this image that he was going to be uh essentially tolerant, liberal, uh in the small L word uh word, and it would not seek ultimate power, and yet he did all those things.
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What is the justification for that?
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Or does it matter that I said A and and then I do B?
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Does that make no difference at all?
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Um maybe I'll start with you, Mansor.
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You're talking about Khomeini's position.
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Right.
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That was the most striking thing in the book that was what he was portraying himself as and what he actually did.
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You see in if we read Iranian history from the for a hundred years before the revolution, many experts uh anticipate about the possibility of change.
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And military coup, foreign invasion, revolution, and all that, particularly from the nationalists, the leftists.
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Remember, this is during the Cold Border Revolution.
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But the idea that Iran could become a theocracy was unimaginable.
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We cannot find a single phrase in the historical literature of Iran for 100 years before the revolution that anybody suggested that.
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So when Khomeini, in fact, Khomeini hated to go to Paris, Khomeini was in Iraq.
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And the Shah of Iran called Saddam Hussein and urged him to expel uh Khomeini from Iraq.
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Saddam Hussein said, we did these documents are actually at Harvard.
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People are interested in reading the conversation that when the United States invaded Iraq, they actually brought a lot of documents from the Iraqi uh government to the United States for research, and they sent him to Harvard.
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So what I'm actually explaining is a conversation between Saddam Hussein and Shah during this period.
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So Shah finally decides to pressure Saddam Hussein and he accepts it.
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And then the Shah is so powerful and influential in the Islamic world, Khomeini absolutely hated to go to Europe.
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In fact, he wanted to go to another Islamic country.
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Even he said, Indonesia, if you accept me, I will go there.
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No one gave him a visa.
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Ibrahim Yazi, who was actually teaching in Texas, he went to Kuwait to help because Khomeini spent about three or four days in the international area of Kuwait International Airport because they didn't permit him to enter the country.
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And the reason he could go to Paris, to France, because at that time the Iranians did not need a visa to go to Europe.
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And Khomeini went to Khomeini went to Paris hoping and thinking that would make arrangements for him to get a visa from an Islamic country.
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I think Khomeini's trip to uh Paris, and suddenly Iranian activists all over Europe and in the United States found a leader.
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They were fragmented and atomized amongst themselves, but he managed to be a perfect Machiavellian leader.
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I went to at the time, I did an article for Inquisit in Inquiry magazine in San Francisco, and I went to Paris to interview him for the article.
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I introduced myself as a teacher in California.
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He said he interrupted me.
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I said, I'm also a teacher.
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He used Arabic word and said, I'm also a teacher.
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Nothing I wish more than return to home to resume my teaching duties.
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It was music to my ear.
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The leader of the revolution, who is accepted her own, is not interested in power.
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But now we learned later on, and when he was returning to Iran, when someone in reporter asked him, an Italian reporter asked him, what about the statements you made when you were in Nufle Shadow?
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Supporting democracy, supporting human rights, supporting freedom of religion, supporting separation of the state and uh uh state religion and so forth, his response was fantastic.
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So is this is this a case Italian relied.
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So is this a case of um the seduction of power?
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The idea that that so how how did how was it felt in amongst the later on when I read the first one of his books six months after the revolution, I cried that I I actually was had an optimistic attitude toward this this man who had written this book.
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And in this book, he's opposed to the idea of nationalism.
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We will talk about it.
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The idea of nationalism, he was also the idea of modernity, which was fascinating.
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So he's you know, he actually was, because Mossadegh in 1953 was a liberal, and he supported the coup.
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And many of the people who came to power after Khomeini became the uncontested leader in Iran were supporters of the 1953 coup.
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It's fascinating.
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Why?
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Because he was comparing the Shah with Mossatek, who was liberal, supported by the leftists and the liberals, and all that he dismissed him.
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So he was really, he proved to be a very Machiavellian uh politician with a coherent idea, ideologically, what he wanted.
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Later on, we can chat.
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I just like to just one one quick thing to just ask John.
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I mean, obviously, we the the United States was fooled by this.
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I mean, what was the thinking in Washington when all this is going on and and and in the State Department?
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That's a great question.
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Um I would say confusion compounded by ignorance, compounded uh by hubris, compounded by um, I don't know what uh you know, obstinate, uh uh uh willful obstinacy, um, all of these um all of these things.
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I mean, frankly, um what happened was um again in the United in the United States, if we looked at when people looked at Iran, uh when the American government looked at Iran and said, what's uh what are the sources of instability, what might change the conditions there, um they looked in two directions.
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One was a leftist takeover, uh leftist takeover, because of course this was the this were the era of the cold era of the Cold War, um, and that was the keeping the communist, anti-communism was essentially the prime directive of our foreign policy, uh, and especially toward Iran.
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The other was um perhaps some kind of a military coup um inside Iran, or uh maybe a separatist movement by um Kurds or Azuri Turks or Arabs or something like that that could tear the country uh break the country apart.
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But um to to um emphasize what Mansur said, the idea that this could come from a religious man and a religious source was out of the question, was out of the question.
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So what happened was I think in the States, people constructed, not just uh uh Americans, but Iranians as well, people constructed a Khomeini that they wanted to construct.
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They saw what they wanted to see.
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Um Jimmy, Jimmy Carter in his memoirs, President Carter's memoirs, uh said, one advisor tells me that if Khomeini, um if Khomeini takes control in Iran, uh Iran will fall to the communists.
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Uh another advisor tells me that if Khomeini takes control of Iran, Iran will become a democracy.
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Um who am I going to believe?
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Well, of course he should believe neither.
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So well, and it sounds like our it sounds like from a United States perspective, the kind of classical obsession with finding communists behind every tree um kind of created an environment of ignoring the reality of what it was.
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And I mean, was there no role, was there no role for US intelligence here?
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Let me add an important point that also explains the country.
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The leftists in Iran at the time, they did not represent a large sector of the population, but they were in the middle class, particularly among the educated group, they were active and they received a great deal of support from the Soviet Union at the time, because they saw this.
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This Khomeni's opposition to the West in his writings as well as in his actions was cultural.
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His opposition had absolutely nothing to do with Marxist theory of imperialism.
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But the leftist interpreted his anti-imper anti-American position as anti-imperialist, and Romini used the left against the liberals, against the social democrats, against the nationalists, because they they from their ideological perspective, the real enemy of the working class came from the national bourgeoisie.
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Therefore, they thought they were using the clerical elements as an instrument of defeating the national bourgeoisie.
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And according to theory, of course, the clerics are not going to be able to run the country.
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Khomeini understood that, and he used one group against the other very systematically to defeat.
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For example, most of the people who were demonstrating in front of the American embassy during the hostage, they were organized by the leftists, but they were using Islamic slogans.
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So it was really that confusion, and then many of the leftists laying around were executed completely.
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What Romani did to the left in Iran was far more devastating than Shaq could ever do, or any any other leader in the uh in the Middle East region.
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So the confusion was very pervasive, and Romani turned out to be a very, and then his opposition to nationalism, and then I would really like to say a few words about it, which it continues to this day, and that was also a shock to the Iranian.
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He said, whatever, for example, he hated Mussadia.
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He absolutely hated Mussadia and the nationalists.
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So it's it's a situation that historians are going to write about it for centuries from now.
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So I could, if I need to say, you know, basically what what Mansoor and I agree on, I'm so talking from the American side.
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If on the American side there was ignorance and confusion, it was also on the Iranian on the Iranian side.
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In 1967, 1967 or 68, I was a I was um a PhD student at Harvard, and I uncovered in the library a copy of um of a Khomeini speech from 1964 denouncing the Shah and denouncing his relations with the U with the U.S.
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And some reader had written in the margin, this is wonder in Persian, Iranian reader had written, this is wonderful stuff.
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This is great, this is great, this is this is terrific.
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And we can ignore all of the reactionary um clerical garbage in here because it's not important.
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Wow.
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Very, very interesting.
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So how did it let's I mean we could talk about history on this?
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It's uh it's really, really fascinating.
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But let me let me bring it forward to how this affects the present environment.
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So this is the historical, you know, the historical foundation of a very contentious and distrustful relationship on both sides between both sides.
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And now we find ourselves in a wartime situation where we're trying somehow, I think we're trying to negotiate our way out.
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I don't know whether or not uh, you know, it how sincere that negotiation is on both sides.
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But how does this impact, this foundation, impact the nature of the negotiations today?
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John, maybe you want to start us off.
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Um boy, that's a that's a good question.
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It's a it's a tough question.
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I mean, there are a couple of things going on here.
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Um first of all, any time, any time, and look, look at um, look at the relationship.
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I mean, I have this uh little piece behind me here I can show you um of the road to nowhere, which is um to me is symbolic of where the US and Iran have been.
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Um not that we've been, what is not so much surprising is that we've been hostile, but that we've been hostile for so long and unable to break it.
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I mean, we've been unable to break out of the uh of the hostility, despite um a case, sometimes a will to do so on both sides.
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We seem to be caught on this road, uh uh to be caught on this road.
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And one of the effects of this is when two countries, uh two family members, two neighbors don't talk, are unable to communicate with each other for a long period of time, they immediately assume the worst about the other person.
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Anything the other person says or does is interpreted ah.
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They're doing this uh uh because they they want to punish us.
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They want to do, they're tricking us.
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There's a trick to it.
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Any proposal is a trick.
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Um, they are not here to negotiate, they are here to cheat us.
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This is the, this is this is the assumption.
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And this is what the US and Iran have got, have got the trap that we have gotten ourselves into.
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And in a way, you could say that this recent, this outbreak of of open warfare, which we've pretty much been able to had been able to avoid for 47 years, um, is the inevitable result.
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Uh because after 47 years of distrust, of exchanging accusations, exchanging threats, name insults, um the wrong combination of people, the wrong combination of event uh um of events would throw us from a kind of cold, uh, you know, a sort of cold peace, if you like, into a hot, into a hot war.
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Where was Mars?
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And I get your point about assuming that after a lack of conversation, you're going to assume the worst.
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But the question that I have about all of this, and I'd love to hear from Monsur on this too, is are there two sides here, or are there multiple sides in this negotiation because of the structure of the Iranian side?
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Maybe lack of the other.
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As well as the structure of the Allies on the on the let's call it the Western side.
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Are the are the nate is the nature of the of the negotiations much more multilateral than we think?
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I think particularly it would be interested in in the decision-making in Iran, at least in the U.S.
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Who do you make a deal with?
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Yeah, we we kind of know what we're dealing with, right?
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Yeah.
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Well, well, Mansoor might want to go in uh go into this in more detail.
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I can just say on the on from what's what's striking to me, um what's striking to me is the the you know, as a student of history, the this is in some ways a rerun of 1979-1980, where you have people of both sides who want to resolve this, um, and they're being sabotaged uh from By internal forces in their internal forces for whom um enmity, for example, in Iran, um enmity with the U.S., enmity with the Shah, enmity with us at the embassy was far less important than crushing their internal their domestic rivals.
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It was those damn social democrats they wanted to get at.
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Those damn liberals, those those those national, those, those, those secular, secular nationalists.
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Those were the tar, those were the target.
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And now it seems to be the target is someone who wants to make an agreement with the anyone who wants to make an agreement with the United States, or at least some kind of stable agreement with the United States, uh, also seems to be the target of uh deliberate sabotage.
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And you have something, I I I suspect we and I think we have something similar on this on the American side.
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Mansom?
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Let me, I think we really have to bring in the issue of Israel to the story because it's an indispensable part of the story.
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You see, when Khomenius T did not believe in nationalism, but he believed in expansionist according to his own interpretation of Islam, the national boundaries were outrageous and he was against them.
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So he used the word omatzazi, which means international.
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Very much, I would say, if I want to compare it, compare the way the communist police used to talk about uh uh organizing the working people of the world.
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Right.
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It was in the boundaries.
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Right.
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We want to organize greater Islam as a movie.
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But he was very clever politically.
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What he did was he took a position against the existence of Israel, not in favor of Palestinian rights, which was a very different story.
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When he did that, he had some, he found some friends in Israel.
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That is the right-wing religious people in Israel, including not only yahu, who were very much interested in fragmentation and atomization of Palestinians.
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They absolutely hated the idea if Palestinians could have a Nelson Mandela or a Gandhi uniting them on the basis of national interests or human rights and all that.
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So he was opposed to that idea.
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So his opposition, when he said Israel is a cancer that has to be uh destroyed, it extremely, it was extremely helpful to the Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition.
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Because whenever for Jewish people who have suffered discrimination, who have suffered genocide for 2,000 years, and suddenly someone in the neighborhood is coming to cancer, and he's also interested in gaining it, making nuclear bombs.
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So it's very obvious that how would they respond?
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And what was the purpose?
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Khomeni knew that he could not destroy Israel.
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He knew the Arab states want to uh coexist with Israel, but the public opinion in the Arab world, there is an anti-Israeli sentiment which always existed.
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So, in other words, he took position against the Arab states, used to describe Saudi Arabia as worse than America and the rest of the Arab world, because he wanted to appeal to the public opinion, but against the governments, for example, when Egypt made peace with Israel, Netanyahu and Khomeini were both against the idea.
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Completely the the relationship between Egypt and Iran came to an end, completely.
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So your point is that that polarization was a powerful weapon for both Iran and for and for the Israelis to be able to create it.
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And then I presume what you're about to say is that the influence of Israel on US foreign policy was then able to be translated in a clearer way.
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To be able to then extend that threat out to America.
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It's very fascinating that when Qatar was giving Hamas, a terrorist organization, a criminal terrorist organization to the poor, over a billion, one and a half billion dollars in the candidates of Israel, a number of liberal and progressives were criticized the support of the Israeli government for this assistance to Hamas.
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And Nataniya who gave a fascinating lecture that we actually quote him in the book, that he said anybody who is opposed to the idea of an independent Palestinian state or even a peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should support Hamas.
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What?
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Hamas took exactly the same position.
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They were categorically opposed to the idea of two-state solution.
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They wanted to destroy Israel in their propaganda.
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Which was incredibly convenient for the Israelis.
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It's a basic for the right wing Israel.
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Well, what I'm saying, though, is that it is a it is a barrier, a structural barrier to ever having any meaningful peace if nobody would have extremely both sides.
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Seven million Palestinians, seven million Israeli Jews, if if if Palestinians were going to have a unified force peacefully pursuing their national interests, it would have been a very difficult challenge that if they're fragmented by radicals and communists and particularly Hamas and so forth.
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So it said this story today, today, in just in Tehran, in Washington, and in Tel Aviv, there are people who are categorically opposed to the peaceful resolution of the conflict between the United States and Iran.
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And the United States and Iran have absolutely no conflict of interest.
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Absolutely no conflict of interest.
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Both sides, for both sides, it's a devastating confrontation, and yet it has become part of the identity of the people who rule Iran, and also the right-wing people in the United States under the that's exactly I was very con just two days ago, J.D.
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Vance made exactly the argument that I'm making right now.
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He said in the United States and in Israel, the people who are for war, and he and in Iran there are people.
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Intimate enemies with shared with shared goals in a bizarre kind of way.
00:24:58.319 --> 00:25:00.240
So where does one go from here?
00:25:00.559 --> 00:25:05.359
What is a path forward that would be positive for both countries?
00:25:05.839 --> 00:25:11.039
Overwhelming majority of the people, like overwhelming majority of American people are opposed to this work.
00:25:11.359 --> 00:25:19.920
And in Iran, the result has been about 40% of the 92 million Iranians have the real problem of putting food on their table.
00:25:20.720 --> 00:25:21.599
It's unbelievable.
00:25:21.759 --> 00:25:27.519
And Iran has 92 million people, 70% of the population are under 50.
00:25:28.160 --> 00:25:37.599
Which means the revolution, the Iran they are experiencing, is categorically different from what their parents experience.
00:25:37.759 --> 00:25:47.680
So and yet the radical people have had, it's interesting, the Iranian regime has had two unwanted successes.
00:25:48.000 --> 00:26:00.000
One is that they have actually created a public, a social base for uh for monarchy, which never existed in Iran.
00:26:00.319 --> 00:26:04.720
Monarchy, wherever it happened, it was either military coup or it was war.
00:26:05.440 --> 00:26:13.440
But because people are comparing the present situation with the past, all of us, they obviously pass from back to worse.
00:26:13.680 --> 00:26:20.799
I would say today there is a government that nominally they have been elected.
00:26:21.039 --> 00:26:29.359
Like uh president of Iran, he was elected, but elected in the same sense in dictatorship, sorry, in Satama Sen and so forth.
00:26:29.440 --> 00:26:40.160
And yet today, those people after Harmonies with Iran, we also have to add that Iran has always had in modern times an uncontested leader.
00:26:40.480 --> 00:26:46.240
This is the first time in modern Iranian history that there is no uncontested leader.
00:26:46.400 --> 00:26:50.160
So there is fragmentation and atomization among them.
00:26:50.240 --> 00:27:17.680
The people who want to use the force in order to continue the present situation because they're benefiting from it, they stay in power, and there are also people, the government, the prime minister, the foreign minister and the leader of the Iranian parliament, as well as Pezesh Kyan, the Republican president, they are very much on the side of making a deed.
00:27:18.480 --> 00:27:28.000
You go to the revolutionary guards and you go to other security and intelligence apparatus that control over 40% of the country's economy.
00:27:28.160 --> 00:27:30.240
They very much want to continue.
00:27:30.400 --> 00:27:34.559
So the country is divided, not among the population, not at all.
00:27:35.359 --> 00:27:36.000
Among the elite.
00:27:37.839 --> 00:27:38.079
Yeah.
00:27:38.480 --> 00:27:43.759
So just very briefly, how how would you describe the mood of the population in general?
00:27:45.759 --> 00:27:55.359
Well, it's uh there have been a number of survey research in Iran, both by they do a lot of it by telephone and all that.
00:27:55.519 --> 00:28:04.480
Um, I would say overwhelmingly, in my opinion, the Iranian regime has probably about 15% of popular support in Iran.
00:28:04.960 --> 00:28:11.920
As John Alba says, 92 billion population, 15% could be about 11 million people.
00:28:12.160 --> 00:28:19.759
And they have the ability because they have the resources, they have the ability to mobilize them and use them.
00:28:20.160 --> 00:28:25.279
And many of them have also economic interests, job-related in the system.
00:28:25.440 --> 00:28:37.039
And they have actually been very effective in creating a coercive apparatus that knows absolutely no limits in uh destroying the critics and the poor.
00:28:37.279 --> 00:28:44.160
Over the past six months, 40,000 Iranians have been killed on the streets of the country, which is incredible.
00:28:44.319 --> 00:28:48.160
It has never happened in the history of the country.
00:28:48.240 --> 00:28:54.000
We have always had dictatorships, but in the past, dictatorships were interested in getting your silence.
00:28:54.160 --> 00:29:00.079
Not to here we have a theocracy which interferes in the private sphere of life.
00:29:00.319 --> 00:29:05.359
What you're supposed to eat, what kind of relationship you're supposed to have, and on and on.
00:29:05.599 --> 00:29:11.039
So that's what almost 8 million people have left the country over the past 37, 34 years.
00:29:11.200 --> 00:29:24.079
And I would say many of them, not for political reasons, but for cultural reasons, for the oppressive nature of the social culture environment they have created in the Iran has a very solid middle class, educated.
00:29:25.359 --> 00:29:29.440
There are about four million university students in Iran.
00:29:29.759 --> 00:29:37.359
Almost uh close to uh more than 50% of them are women.
00:29:38.000 --> 00:29:40.079
Close to 60% of them are women.
00:29:40.559 --> 00:29:42.079
And many leaving the country.
00:29:42.319 --> 00:29:54.640
So we are really talking about theocracy in a country that really has a pre-advanced modern middle class interested in a more open society, culturally and politically.
00:29:54.880 --> 00:30:17.680
So how it I would say the possibilities, and we don't know exactly what the possibilities could be if within the revolutionary guards, we have 250,000 men in the revolutionary guards controlling 40% of the economy and also controlling the coercive, the intelligence and the security agencies of the state.
00:30:17.920 --> 00:30:38.240
Is it conceivable that we have a leader like Jamal Abdul Nasser or like uh uh Alter Tork or like Rizor Shah Pahlavi emerging from that, even using the religious vocabulary, but completely changing and disorienting the poor?
00:30:38.480 --> 00:30:43.839
That's a possibility because at the present time there is no organized opposition.
00:30:44.319 --> 00:30:44.559
Right.
00:30:44.799 --> 00:30:49.440
So there's no there's there's while there's a split, it's not an organized split.
00:30:50.079 --> 00:30:51.039
It's not that they're a split.
00:30:51.119 --> 00:30:59.119
The regime does not permit any kind of organized opposition, any kind of even organized, even for le for left businesses.
00:30:59.440 --> 00:31:02.880
It reminds me very much of how China works.
00:31:03.200 --> 00:31:05.680
And they don't absolutely similar issue, right?
00:31:05.839 --> 00:31:16.799
Where you have you have a technological dominance of the security and uh and ruling elite, and it's able to create, exert tremendous control over the rest of the society.
00:31:17.359 --> 00:31:22.400
So, you know, as I I'm obviously we're not gonna stop this conflict on this show.
00:31:23.039 --> 00:31:40.160
But fundamentally, um, and I'd like to get you both on this as uh as we wrap up is what should the United States and you know, obviously I'm sure our uh associate director who's first will get try to get this out to uh Iran itself.
00:31:40.480 --> 00:31:45.519
But what is it that the United States should do to get the right result?
00:31:45.839 --> 00:31:53.920
To how do you how do you combat a theocracy um in a way that gets you to a a good resolution?
00:31:54.079 --> 00:31:56.880
Uh John, you're you're the diplomat uh on the show.
00:31:57.279 --> 00:31:59.519
Hey, that again, good very good question.
00:31:59.839 --> 00:32:01.119
Very good, very good question.
00:32:01.279 --> 00:32:05.039
For the first principle, I suppose, is uh do no harm.
00:32:05.759 --> 00:32:21.359
Um because uh we seem to, you know, you seem to think, we seem to think, for example, or some people seem to think that uh dropping bombs on schoolgirls is a way to bring democracy uh to a country, uh to a country.
00:32:21.519 --> 00:32:22.480
It doesn't work that way.
00:32:22.720 --> 00:32:24.160
It doesn't work that way.
00:32:24.319 --> 00:32:28.160
Uh the second is um have a clear goal.
00:32:28.480 --> 00:32:31.440
Know what you want, know what you want.
00:32:31.839 --> 00:32:39.519
You remember, I mean um you remember what the Cheshire Cat said to Alice uh in uh in in Lewis Carroll's book.
00:32:39.599 --> 00:32:44.880
He says, she he said, uh, you know, if you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there.
00:32:47.039 --> 00:32:50.319
So no know where you know where you're going.
00:32:50.480 --> 00:32:51.839
What what is it?
00:32:52.240 --> 00:32:54.000
What what is a policy goal?
00:32:54.079 --> 00:32:56.640
I mean, what is a realistic policy goal?
00:32:56.960 --> 00:33:12.640
Some kind of limitation on the nuclear program, uh, freedom of navigation in the Persian Gulf, a a government that treats its people decently uh treats its people decently, um, all of them.
00:33:12.880 --> 00:33:20.559
Um a government that does not threaten um its neighbors and our friends or allies in the re uh in the region.
00:33:20.799 --> 00:33:22.559
Uh what is the what is the goal?
00:33:22.720 --> 00:33:28.720
Until you have a goal, um, you can't measure the success of what you're doing.
00:33:28.799 --> 00:33:38.160
You can't say, okay, this this measure will help, and this measure will not, this measure will hurt, uh, um will hurt.
00:33:38.480 --> 00:33:45.599
Um but again, for for me and I think Mansour and so many others, uh, this issue is personal.
00:33:45.759 --> 00:33:53.759
This is not just uh, you know, this is not just a political conflict that we sit around and talk about in coffee shops uh in coffee shops.
00:33:53.839 --> 00:33:56.480
Uh this affects family and friends.
00:33:56.720 --> 00:34:05.359
Um we've seen so many people have their lives torn apart uh uh uh torn apart uh by these uh by these events.
00:34:05.519 --> 00:34:12.239
So this is not just this is not just something, you know, an abstract uh political political question.
00:34:12.880 --> 00:34:31.920
And uh what we what we do know, um, and Mansor uh uh pointed this out, was um this system, whatever we call it, has been incredible uh has been resilient beyond anybody's prediction.
00:34:32.159 --> 00:34:32.400
Right.
00:34:32.800 --> 00:34:42.800
In August of 1979, okay, this is what, eight months after, seven, six, seven months after the revolution.
00:34:42.880 --> 00:34:47.760
Um, I arrived in Tehran, I came to Tehran to work at the embassy, uh to work at the embassy.
00:34:47.840 --> 00:34:52.159
Obviously, that didn't last very long, but um I I did go.
00:34:52.239 --> 00:34:53.840
I did I arrived there.
00:34:54.239 --> 00:35:08.000
And uh at the at the airport, when I was going through immigration and customs, one of the officers there asked me, uh, excuse me, tell can you tell me something?
00:35:08.239 --> 00:35:15.039
He looked at my passport, it was American diplomatic passport, and he said, When are they leaving?
00:35:16.079 --> 00:35:18.320
When are they leaving?
00:35:18.639 --> 00:35:22.480
They on Hakojam, on a K mean in in Persian.
00:35:22.960 --> 00:35:27.679
They meaning the theocrats, the ruler, the people who had taken control.
00:35:28.000 --> 00:35:35.039
This is six months, this is 40 says 47 years ago, almost 47 years ago to the day.
00:35:35.199 --> 00:35:37.199
Next next month it'll be 47 years.
00:35:37.360 --> 00:35:39.599
That he said uh he said this.
00:35:39.760 --> 00:35:42.559
Um uh, you know, he wanted them gone.
00:35:42.800 --> 00:35:51.920
He knew it didn't make sense to have uh have have clerics with many with a medieval education running a 20th century country.
00:35:52.079 --> 00:35:54.000
Um, but they're still there.
00:35:54.480 --> 00:36:15.360
And they've survived war, they've survived international isolation, they've survived every sanction known to man known to man, uh, they've survived their own incredible uh diplomatic ineptitude, having made enemies of just about everybody, uh just about everybody, and there's and they're still there.
00:36:15.760 --> 00:36:41.519
And so if if if one thinks there could be, you know, a bit one wants something better, not just for our Iranian friends and family, but for uh, you know, for the neighbors and the neighbors and our allies and everyone, uh everyone else, um, I would the first thing I would say is you're not going to get there by dropping bobs.
00:36:43.119 --> 00:36:48.000
Because you turn the country, suppose you do, suppose you turn the country into a pile of rubble.
00:36:49.760 --> 00:36:50.559
It's possible.
00:36:50.719 --> 00:36:51.760
It's possible.
00:36:52.000 --> 00:36:55.760
Um Frankly, the people at the top don't care.
00:36:57.440 --> 00:37:02.559
Uh they can say, turn us into a pile of rubble, make my day.
00:37:02.800 --> 00:37:06.559
As long as we rule that pile of rubble, we're fine.
00:37:06.880 --> 00:37:10.320
And thank you for coalescing my uh my people in anger.
00:37:10.800 --> 00:37:14.880
Um so you just gave me the lever to pay to maintain power.
00:37:16.079 --> 00:37:20.880
No, no, I mean uh uh again, but um what can you say?
00:37:21.039 --> 00:37:25.119
The the the the ruling group there is what it is, yeah.
00:37:25.360 --> 00:37:31.199
Um and it it it keeps it it keeps power and it's been able to keep power.
00:37:31.440 --> 00:37:46.079
And our it's it's a shame on us, and shame on us for for not understanding that and for believing that this could be changed, altered, shifted easily.
00:37:46.320 --> 00:37:51.599
Yeah, by the way, before we wrap up, I just want to give the book a formal plug.
00:37:52.000 --> 00:37:54.159
It is a modern theocracy.
00:37:54.239 --> 00:38:12.400
Uh, Iran's anti-Enlightenment revolution endures, which is precisely what John has just been talking about by both John and Mansur, published by Mazda Publishers, which is a fantastic publishing house if you're ever interested in specializing in in uh Iranian and Persian history.
00:38:12.559 --> 00:38:25.039
Uh but this is just a terrific book, and I would really recommend it very highly, highly readable, and uh gets into the depth that both uh uh Mansoor and John uh are able to uh to muster.
00:38:25.199 --> 00:38:26.800
So thank you guys for writing it.
00:38:26.960 --> 00:38:33.199
So as we as we wrap up, let me bring Mansoor in as the question of where do we go from here?
00:38:33.760 --> 00:38:44.480
The question you raise is extremely important today, uh even from the perspective of both American and Iranian national interests, is the United States should stop bombing Iran.
00:38:44.719 --> 00:38:47.440
Bombing Iran is not going to solve the problem.
00:38:47.599 --> 00:39:02.400
And particularly what is uh uh Trump has been uh threatening in the past couple of days, bombing infrastructures, the the bridges or the uh the disorganization voters and all that.
00:39:02.559 --> 00:39:04.639
They they help the right-wing people.
00:39:05.119 --> 00:39:11.679
They help so there are right now there is serious division within the political elites.
00:39:17.280 --> 00:39:19.519
Of course, they have the upper hand.
00:39:19.760 --> 00:39:27.679
And when the United States attacks Iran bombing infrastructures, particularly civilian infrastructures, they benefit from it.
00:39:28.159 --> 00:39:29.519
No question about it.
00:39:29.760 --> 00:39:54.719
So if the United States wants to, well no, if if if uh Trump is even able to think in those terms, they should do, they should be creative in helping the people who want mediation and resolution of the conflict, which means uh Pezashkian, the president, the foreign minister, and the leader of the parliament.
00:39:54.960 --> 00:40:04.079
They also have all of them have at least nominally legitimacy, because according to the rules of the Iranian regime, they have been elected.
00:40:04.639 --> 00:40:07.280
And they always said they're elected, they're Democrats.
00:40:07.440 --> 00:40:21.360
But while the United States Trump administration has actually been acting in such a way that the moderate people are becoming weakened, and while the radical uh uh people are benefiting from it.
00:40:21.519 --> 00:40:27.519
I and the reason is that uh people who are advising Trump, they really don't know Iran.
00:40:27.760 --> 00:40:28.480
They need John.
00:40:29.519 --> 00:40:37.599
They need Obama was managed to succeed the first nuclear program that they achieved with Iran.
00:40:37.840 --> 00:40:45.760
He was advised by distinguished Americans who knew Iranian history and culture and attitudes and so forth.
00:40:45.920 --> 00:40:57.199
Today, when I follow them, they're really very uninformed, very ignorant about Iran, and they're really contributing to this disaster, the the victims of which are the Iranian people.
00:40:58.400 --> 00:41:02.719
Well, this has been an absolutely wonderful conversation, gentlemen.
00:41:02.880 --> 00:41:07.039
Thank you so much for being part of the Feudal Future podcast.
00:41:07.119 --> 00:41:20.719
Uh, and let's just hope that we can have some sanity, some informed judgment that uh that uh helps us craft a way forward so that uh damage gets minimized on both sides.
00:41:20.880 --> 00:41:24.639
So thank you again for being part of the Feudal Future Podcast.
00:41:25.679 --> 00:41:26.400
Thank you very much.
00:41:26.639 --> 00:41:26.880
Thank you.
00:41:27.280 --> 00:41:29.519
Thank you for your thank you for your excellent questions.
00:41:29.599 --> 00:41:31.280
I wish we had better answers to that.
00:41:33.360 --> 00:41:35.119
Well, that's the nature of this, right?
00:41:35.280 --> 00:41:39.280
Is that the questions are the questions are supposed to stimulate good thinking.
00:41:39.440 --> 00:41:41.360
Let's hope that good thinking happens.
00:41:41.840 --> 00:41:43.679
The feudal future.