Office Hours 20-Iran: Strategic Patience vs. Preemptive Strike w/Ali Alizadeh

Adnan Husain: Salaam. Hello. Peace to all of you podcast listeners of the Adnan Hussain Show. I just have unlocked my office hour Iran live stream that I did earlier this week on Monday with really excellent journalist commentator ali alizadeh of jedal tv and also jedal english on youtube he's really one of the best commentators on the situation in iran and because it's such a significant topic in this moment for everyone to be as fully informed about the situation and also to really understand Iran better, I'm unlocking the office hours full audio here on the podcast. If you would like to have access to every live stream in audio, you audiophiles, um, as well as the struggle sessions and my regular episodes, um, you can sign up on patreon.com slash Adnan Hussain, A-D-N-A-N-H-U-S-A-I-N and have access to that. And occasionally some of my additional bonus, uh, readings and commentaries or solo commentaries, um, that I hope you would find interesting, informative, and valuable. And also you would have the knowledge that you are helping make this content free and available to as many people as possible by doing so. You can also follow me on substack.com. I am AdnanAHussein.substack.com. And I also post audio of the live streams there, a bit of writing and so on. And in these times where platforms are being removed or people are being removed from the platforms for their political views and so forth, I think that's a useful site to subscribe to the work that I'm doing because it allows me to contact and reach you on a different platform. So please do sign up on Substack. Also, if you'd like, become a patron and supporter of the show. Without further ado, I hope you enjoy this discussion with Ali Alizadeh about the situation in Iran and look forward to seeing you very soon on a live stream or as a patron. All the best, solidarity and peace above all. Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim. Salam, hello, peace to you all and welcome to the Adnan Hussain show. I'm Adnan Hussain, professor of medieval Mediterranean and Islamicate world history and also co-host of Guerrilla History podcast. Go check that out as well. We're here for a very special edition of Office Hours live stream, almost you might say an urgent, almost emergency live stream in addition to the programming we've offered with friend and colleague david professor david yagubian on iran and iran's history and of course a week ago the struggle session uh regular monthly panel live stream that had nina farnia on and we discussed the topic and the issue of what's been happening in iran obviously there are so many continuing developments and the situation is still unresolved, how it will go. Even the reason why I say this is almost an emergency live stream is last week I felt that there may be a military strike over the weekend with the U.S. military buildup sending aircraft carrier group units USS Lincoln into the Indian Ocean and close to the Persian Gulf, and also reports of other kinds of mobilizations and movements of military assets and resources into the region by the United States. And also continuing bellicose statements by leaders like Donald Trump. And also, of course, we heard foreign minister of Iran, Arachi, warning people last week. And these statements have continued that if there is an attack on Iran, it won't just be a limited U.S.-Iran situation, but that it would be a regional war. And we, of course, have heard repeated suggestions, even again over the weekend at a recent event by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei about the fact that if there's any attack on Iran it won't be a limited response but it will be a full response and so we're at that kind of a situation where we're still on the cusp of possible war attack but also at the same time there are suggestions that there are some lines of discussion still taking place. And this whole question of whether there are negotiations, what the conditions of those negotiations might be, we know the United States has been, you know, making all kinds of rather absolutist sounding demands. And so there's so much to talk about to analyze the situation. And to do that, we have a very special guest, somebody whose work I have admired for quite some time. Ali Alizadeh, a journalist, commentator, host of Jedal TV, principally a Persian language, Farsi language channel, but it also has Jedal English. And obviously, Ali has been watching and analyzing this situation, well, for decades, but very closely, of course, recently. Ali, it's so wonderful to have you on the program. Thank you for making time in a very busy schedule.

Ali Alizadeh: Thank you very much Adnan for inviting me. Salaam to you and to all your audience and thank you very much for giving me this opportunity to open up some of the quite complicated and difficult to decode issues around Iran.

Adnan Husain: Yes, well, we appreciate having somebody with, you know, real knowledge, expertise, and also experience watching the situation. You know, at one place, you know, with that introduction that I mentioned, we're kind of at a particular moment that's of, where there's a lot of ambiguity about the intentions or the strategic responses. And when you have a situation where There is a big military buildup. You know, almost anything can happen and things can move very quickly depending on, you know, actions that are taken or not taken, whether there are negotiations and so on. And I was interested in how you might respond to some of the kind of mainstream analysis that gets promoted in various circles when it comes to Iran. In particular, I was thinking about a recent tweet from over the weekend by Trita Parsi, well known, you know, at the Quincy Institute for, I forget the full title, but it's sort of on statecraft or something like that, but the Quincy Institute. And he said, and maybe I'll see if I can share this here. Yes, you can see that he tweeted here about, you know, that basically this is a situation where According to his analysis, neither side has really given itself in their rhetoric an opportunity to easily de-escalate. There's been a lot of tough language here mentioned. But at the same time, his view is that neither side necessarily wants a full-scale war. So it's this kind of difficult to analyze situation of how it could go. And then at the end, he really makes an interesting statement where he recommends that Iran could follow a path of de-escalating by opening more direct negotiations. And he even says, you know, Iran could pick up the phone and, you know, call Trump and try and resolve this and that failure to do so would be a real strategic malpractice on the level, he argues and claims, of Ayatollah Khomeini's refusal, he says, to conclude the war in 1982 against And we know, of course, he's referring to the Iran-Iraq war that was seven or eight years in length. So I'm wondering how you kind of characterize this whole question about the diplomatic situation, the strategic situation right at this moment. How would you respond to these sorts of views that seem to put the onus really on Iran as if Iran was the major belligerent in this circumstance?

Ali Alizadeh: I do have respect for Trita Parsi. He's an intelligent man. Also, with all the differences that we have politically, I found his position on Palestine very principled in the last two and a half years. So this is a kind of friendly critique. And even in this tweet, in the long... tweet that he wrote. I think three-quarters of his analysis is sound and reasonable. He is correctly talking about Iran's unwillingness to enter a full-on war and also Trump's miscalculation of Iran's current weakness, because it's very important that Iran has become relatively weakened over the last two and a half years since 7th of October. But even previously to that, from 2020, almost, Iran started getting weaker in a military way. and regionally. However, this discourse of weakness, Iran is getting weaker, Iran has weakened, has been repeated so much among Western think tanks and Western media that they have made too much out of it, and they believed it too much, in the sense they drank too much of their own Kool-Aid. And to the level that Daily Telegraph, the oldest newspaper in the Western world, published, I think, 19 or 20th of January, that the regime is collapsing imminently. And this is a joke. This is an embarrassment to any form of credible journalism. And this was not alone. That was one of the many propagandist reports about the imminent fall of Iranian regime, Iranian state, etc. So in a sense, Parsi, again, is correcting that this weakness is not a kind of weakness that you can come and do what you did with Venezuela removing Maduro that way, or how Assad's estate fell to Jolani in 2024. So these are all only for the media hype that you needed to build up pressure, build up pressure, build up pressure, possibly from Zionist media in order to push Trump, or at least push part of the establishment to prepare for an all-out war. He's very correct in saying that. And he's also correct saying that part of the state in Iran are getting impatient. They're getting a bit uncomfortable with this almost five, six years of strategic patience, which was imposed by Ayatollah Khamenei, neither war nor peace. this grey area, and they believe that this is becoming detrimental for us, because even though we are not entering a full all-out war, however, it is deteriorating the economic condition inside, it is causing more social unrest, there is no bright horizon of future for part of the public and also economy is not doing well so in a sense we are not being killed by america but we are being boiled by america like a story of the frog in the in the pot slowly but slowly slowly so in a sense they prefer a kind of war in which iran restore and revive its deterrence. Iran shows United States that this dream of regime change or destroying Iran or I will destroy 50 points of Iran and all this like cowboyish, Yankee rhetoric that Trump has been using since his first term are delusional when it comes to a country like Iran. And so at least after that, Iran's position is being restored, and that will open up to reform inside, also opening up economically, and at least we get out of this corner. His truth apart, he's correct in mentioning some circles in Iran, especially more revolutionary circles are fighting for that. When it comes to the end of it, and he says Iran has to pick up the phone and make negotiation, I think he's very mistaken. And I think that goes to the fact that he has started his political career in National Iranian American Council as trying to sell this line of negotiation between Iran and America from beginning, from early. So it's difficult for him to get out of that, even though he's with Quincy at the moment, not with New York anymore. And why is it that? Parsi is not the only one who thinks the lack of negotiation between Iran and America is an ideological taboo which has been calcified so much. And the Iranian leader's hardheadedness or stubbornness is the main obstacle for picking up the phone and having the negotiation. In order to sell this line, many people say, look at that, even Vietcongs and Americans were having open negotiation during the war. Soviet Union had American embassy while they were having so much enmity with America. But I don't think when it comes to Iran, that's correct. And I'll tell you why. And I think Khamenei, Ayatollah Khamenei, has been correct in being hard-headed, stubborn, and if you want to call it ideological in that sense. Why? Because when you look at the balance of forces inside Iran, if you remember that you have reformist, pragmatist, pro-Rafsanjani forces, whatever you want to call them, the pro-Western liberals in Iran as a big, important bloc who are still controlling a big part of Iranian technocracy, big... foundations of what you call them, bonyads, big part of Iranian industry, part of Iranian import-export, oil faction. They are important. They are part of Iranian bourgeoisie, Islamic Republic's made bourgeoisie, and also the technocracy which work for that. The other side, you have the or traditionally what was called Osulgaraz or conservatives. Then you have part of the society which is becoming outside these two, is becoming impatient, becoming anti-state, would be happy with like regime change, et cetera. So it's a very complicated game to maneuver for Iranian leader. However, the pro-Western faction, They have a very strong hegemonic rule over the middle class and upper middle class in Iran, the more educated, more modern forces inside Iran. And they can get the line, easily penetrate their heads and also penetrate a big part of Iranian society. And especially their line can get echoed later by BBC Persian service, by all these satellite channels encircling Iran, and then by Western media. Let me give you an example. When they decided to sit down on direct negotiation with United States in 2013, Iran negotiation which became famous to Iran deal or JCPOA later, They sold it not as one tactical element of foreign policy, but as the core and the pillar of their politics and what should be everyone politics to a big part of nation. So if we would ask a 12 day, 12 years old kid at the time in 2014, what's the problem in Iran? The problem is we don't have negotiation with America. We don't have American embassy. If you become friends with America, everything will come. Everything is sorted out. Even we get Ronaldo to Iran as a football player like Saudis did. So that became the center point of their politics.

Adnan Husain: He could join Persepolis FC, yes.

Ali Alizadeh: Persepolis FC. So in a sense that what we call socialization of discourse of foreign politics. So everyone from housewives to ordinary people who do not have anything to do with politics, they bought that line and changing that became impossible. So in 2008, If it wasn't for Trump's crazy posture of tearing apart JCPOA and leaving it, people always would have thought that that was the path to Iran's prosperity and development. Trump was so radical, so outrageous in his action doing that, which forced that big part of Iranian majority who had gone along with the pro-American pro-negotiation to revise his vision and become skeptical again to America. So in this balance of forces, which until today, Javad Zarif, Hassan Rouhani, Mohammad Khatami, part of reformists, big part of like Hassan Hossein Marashi, big part of industrialists, those people who have power, who have media inside the country in their hand, have really big influence inside intelligence ministry, not inside IRGC, but inside other forces of power. And they have one hand in London and another hand in Washington. and they have some huge amount of money in Dubai, in Turkey and Toronto, these people can again push and push and say, that's not enough. Go further, go further, go further. Now give up your missile. Why do we need drones? People in Iran are hungry. You kill 3,000 people, 30,000 people. Why do you impoverish the nation by being so militaristic? We don't need nuclear. We don't need drones. We don't need missiles. And they start pushing from within. That's why... The socialization of turn to the West has been so powerful. So that allows the reformists to create the force from within the society. And this force pushes Khamenei, IRGC, and other factions who want to resist, who want to stand against them. Western pressure for disarmament and disable this kind of resistance and paralyzes that. That's why the problem is. So now imagine if you have American embassy in Iran, and if you break the taboo, both this has two problems. The state will lose its base ideologically, a steadfast loyalty to the idea of resistance, which has been from 1979, because they become confused. So you said, United States is our enemy. Now you're like shaking hand with them, this and that. And from the other side, the pressure comes. You cannot control. If you had a strong... dictatorial, autocratic control, the way that the Western media portrays Iran, you could say, I open the American embassy, and if anyone goes around it, I'm going to put you in prison. I'm going to make a Navalny out of you. If anyone starts making... behind the sin deal with American embassy, as they did in 1953, which led to the coup d'etat against Mossadegh and other forms of treachery, I will have you. But when the central state is weak, unlike what they show in the West, when the internal state and the polity is so divided, you cannot control it. So those who are selling you the open direct negotiation, they know that is a slippery slope and it will lead to the next step, the next step, the next step. And in shorter time, you're going to end up with full disarmament.

Adnan Husain: Yeah, that's a very useful and interesting set of insights. And there's two kind of things that follow from it that I'd be interested to hear what you have to say. One is that, how does one explain this, what Jalal Ali Ahmed might have said, occidentosis? I mean, it seems that the... period of the Shah, the westernization, the modernization program that came with secularization, and also with centralized authoritarian repression to enforce this, to try and transform Iranian society. Of course, that was, dialectically speaking, part of the reason why the revolution took the shape that it did, that there were lots of forces that were against this authoritarian, totalitarian, oppressive regime, and that much of the opposition took place in the form of resentment, of these attacks upon the culture and the religion of people. But it seems that the The revolution by becoming maybe the official, you know, by Islam becoming the official kind of ideology, the religion, the basis of the Islamic Republic of Iran has allowed in some ways, because it hasn't actually completely changed the society that had it. its interest in, you know, Western kinds of experiences and models in their mind of development being in the image of Europe and so on, is that this has kind of continued to foster some element that's very strong and very powerful and perduring over a long period of time. with this image of the solutions come from the West. So that's quite interesting to think about why the Islamic Republic itself has not been able to really And we're talking about people, when you mentioned these reformers, Khatami, Zarif, Rouhani, these are not people who would avowedly claim that they want to remove Islam from the state. They want to change the constitution completely. Many of them are themselves religiously trained figures, but yet they still have this persistent kind of obsession with thinking that the advancement or that they have to make some rapprochement somehow with the West. And so that's an important point. And I wonder what thoughts you have about that. But secondly, that also ends up foreclosing the other alternative that everybody is always discussing and answering. In fact, we even had... a comment from peapod to what extent does the alternative development path presented by china provide a rebuttal to this west-facing reformist line and clearly there's a lot of complications there because there may have been some forces that would be interested in some connection and alternate resources alliances military technology trade etc with other groups but i think as you have talked about um you know the experience during the iran iraq war and extreme sanctions for 40 years has meant that iran has had to find its own sovereign pathways right and it is in fact itself maybe not so comfortable with alliances that might subordinate it, right, in time of need to other powers, going from, you know, subordination to the West, like under the Shah's Iran, to being under the kind of thumb of other great powers, et cetera. So why is, you know, how would you explain and understand this kind of ambiguous, you might say... ideological orientation, making the point that even people who clearly are committed in some sense to the Islamic Republic are still very Western-oriented and Western-facing, and at the same time, that those who oppose those groups still aren't themselves necessarily comfortable with a full alliance, you know, with Russia, China, as a substitute for dependency on the U.S. and the West.

Ali Alizadeh: Okay, is that... uh multi-layered and a few different questions here but let's just go to the first one i mean i mean we are like i think we shouldn't conflate a few things here together one is the question of justification in what jalal ahmed said the fact that the minds the cognition the consciousness of people is still pro-western second one is a question of royal politics in which whether you can make alliances towards china and not because i think China was not sophisticated and both with the revolution and with the cultural revolution and other things found its own inner path and got reconnected to its own history. When it did, it could even open up to America. It could bring Kissinger and Nixon could open to American companies, but it had already found the core, and with a strong core, then it had the confidence of opening up, and not only the confidence, it had the power of doing so. Iran still hasn't found the power, and I think that's the main problem. And if it had found the power, it could, in a sense, from a Nietzschean concept, from the pathos of difference, the pathos of distance, could look to the other side as well. But I think still Iran is in a weak position. So you have a bit of a slave morality here, again, in a Nietzschean sense. But let me just say, first thing, Iran has suffered from a semi-colonial situation for almost two centuries from 1812 onward. Iran has been on its decline and has been losing a massive amount of land. A big part of Iran has been buffer zone for Tsar Empire of Russia and British Empire. And so there's a That was like this decline in Iranian national identity and how they saw themselves. Also, there were two full occupation of Iran during First World War and Second World War. And then you had the coup d'etat of 1953 by CIA and MI6, which they toppled the legal government of Mossadegh. So in a sense, they... national identity is quite bruised. Revolution tries to revive, bring out a new Iranian-ness, a new dimension, which I think is a question of power. I mean, for me, Ayatollah Khomeini in his put Shiaism upside down. Shiaism was about lamenting Karbala, lamenting the death of Hussein. And it was a It was a religion of mourning to some extent and Khomeini turned it into a religion of protest and religion of gaining power. What is the motto of IRGC? Gather whatever you can from power and from devices and from tools. So this is like go and gain tool instead of sitting down and moaning about the... about the evil of colonialism and being a post-colonial lecturer in a European university, go and gain tool, go and make your missile. They kill you with aeroplanes, go and make your aeroplane. They are threatening to throw nuclear bomb on your head, go and learn how to make nuclear deterrence. That was the motto of revolution and I think to some extent it has delivered. Still, people who are running Iranian military, and the reason Iran has not been invaded today, as we are talking, by Trump, and Trump is dwindling and hesitating, shall I start the war or not, is by those who actually could manage to overcome the resuscitation. But it's an uneven and combined development. There are so many forces. Among them, there were the ones who went abroad, mainly to the Western universities, 99% of them, 98% of them. They went to Europe, to America, to Canada, to Australia. None of them went to China, Russia, or India. So they studied there, and their mind frame was developed there. Second problem. A big part of Iranian political energy of 1979 revolution got drained both during this post-revolutionary battle of hegemony, different factions fighting against each other. And second, and building a state, building a state's institutions, it drained the revolutionary energy. And second, eight years war. War is... it can produce many things and it can create many things, but also can drain your energy. So by the time that Ayatollah Khomeini died in 1989, three or four things happened at the same time, which paved the path to second republic, if you want to call it. One, the absence or demise of charismatic leader. And Khomeini was an important element of revolution. Khomeini was not only the leader of revolution. He was, for a society like Iran, which is rooted in spiritualism or Irfan, he's a very... person was that point of emulation emulation and point of gathering of all is like political subjectivity second thing was that was the end of war and the promises of war that we will liberate Jerusalem etc suddenly people saw that okay we had eight years of war we didn't win we didn't lose and So it was an ambiguous ending to the war. But third thing, all this inside Iran coincided with a very important global event, and that was the destruction of Soviet Union. That was the... collapse of Soviet Union and the birth of this unilateral super empire that we had never seen like of it before. And this superpower empire had its first show of power in Iran's region, in Persian Gulf. So what happened in order to show the world that the world order and the logic of power has changed, it had to attack Iraq. And you remember, better than me, how those Infrared images sent to CNN, which was the first cable showing for 24 hours, it almost like got etched to the consciousness of the global viewers around the world, including Iranian leaders. So Iranian leaders watched it with possible anxiety and fear, a country coming out of a devastating war without its charismatic leader, with a much weaker leadership of Khamenei and Rafsanjani together as a package after that, and seeing that there is no... There is no Cold War anymore in which we can maneuver in the interspace. That's the important thing. Now we are the other of the empire. America said in 2002 that access of Iran, Iraq, and North Korea, but from 1990 onward, Iran, Libya, Syria, North Korea, these countries were the pockets outside the totalization of the empire. From that moment, Iranians were quite scared. And I think a big part of this consciousness that we are talking about got shaped during that time. They thought we have to negotiate with the empire. We have to manage our problem with the empire, but we cannot overcome the empire. That's why we should not read history backward or retrospectively. It's easy today to say, why didn't Iranians go for building multipolar blocks? But in 1990s, there was no other bloc. There was only one thing on the horizon, and that was America. That was a thing for me to understand how this Western faction got shaped. You have to go to that very important seminal moment. But these two factions are fighting and fighting and fighting, coming to this moment. The other thing is these people, I mean, yes, you're right. I mean, in the 80s, Iran had the fear and phobia of both camps, fear of United States, but also fear of Soviet Union because to the party was very strong in Iran and with all the positive thing that Tudeh party has made for Iran, but to the party, there are lots of documents of his loyalty to Moscow. There's an open debate. I have many of the members of Tudeh as guests in my show. They will disagree with it, but at least I was understanding. And on the east side of Iran, there was occupation of Afghanistan by Soviet Union. And Iran had 2,000 kilometer at the time, direct border with Soviet Union. So the fear of Soviet was as a stronger, if not as a strongest fear of America, but itself was very important part of it. And I think that has continued as well to this preference of trying to at least establish your defense doctrine in an independent and in a self-reliant way. So that's, I think, as much as I can say from here. The second problem is, I think Iranian revolution, like many other revolutions in the world, it was really, even though it happened in Iran in the Islamic context, but it was also a child of Islam. global time, global period, born out of 60s and 70s. It had tentacles in anti-Vietnam War. It had tentacles in Palestinian liberation movement. Many of the people who became prominent in Iranian revolution, like Chamran or even Ebrahim Yazidi became foreign minister of the transitionary government after revolution, they had fought in Palestine or Lebanon. They had connections there. Most of them were the students in the West, part of the Iranian Confederation, who were active in left movement here. you go to Bader Meinhof, you go to 1968 movement. 1968 is started by the joint movement of Iranian students and German students. And so that basically exploded Germany and then that led to France later and became Paris, May 68. So in a sense, these Many of the elements of Iranian revolution were exposed to coming ideas, especially socialism, from their friends and comrades in the Western society. Also, a big part were like clergy in Iran, traditionalists who had never stepped out of Iran. But all these ideas merged into each other and they got hybrid. But in the 80s, I think the Islamic Republic did a massive mistake and it perished, massacred. obliterated most of Iranian left. And so by 1988, it was left with only right wing neoliberals who had come from abroad, from the Western universities, in a world unilateral without any horizon outside. So they didn't even have right critique of Western capitalism and the new forms of it coming from 1990s onwards. So in a sense, intellectually, Islamic Republic became quite drained and barren of any forms of ideas of resistance. And so they had to go deeper and deeper in their own Islamicization of revolutionary ideology. So there are two things. One is, I don't know how, I mean, are we going like too much off the way from your main topic?

Adnan Husain: Oh, no, no. Very interesting.

Ali Alizadeh: Okay, if it's interesting, so let me explain. Because in a sense, if al-Ahmad would be around, I think he would have written a second book saying that he talked about vestofsication for a semi-colonized country like Iran. But you cannot de-vestofsicate by issuing... decrease by making laws in parliament, by pushing a button, by order of the leader, we cannot de-vestoficate as easy as that. Vestofication becomes itself part of the native geography of a society. So now we have, for example, native the sophisticated westernized iranian intellectuals which some of them are 150 years i think i'm sure the same in pakistan or like in india or like in arab countries and you should understand them as well you can in an organic way they can get affected and new forms come out of it but you cannot perish the sophisticated figures and you think everything's fine second you cannot i think islamicization to some extent the very form of islamicization itself was a Western idea. And that's why in many occasions you have immediate negation using the Hegelian language, immediate negation of what the Western government of Shah had done before. So Shah, for example, in a very state-oriented Western style, which was alien to countries outside the Western world, ordered how can I say, unveiling of all women.

Adnan Husain: Right, like that's a great example is like enforced legal unveiling. And then you get in response to that forced legal veiling, right? So it's kind of polemical dialectic rather than really transcending and finding a different way of making it meaningful. It's just in reaction to the secularizing project. And you see it even in Turkey, similar. Maybe it's a little bit more balanced in that it was not enforced by the state, right? But again, they're responding and reacting to what came before, perhaps in some ways, rather than figuring out some new... direction, right, to naturalize it and get out of this kind, because then that just creates the same reaction is that they want to restore, right, you know, back to some, so you end up being trapped a little bit in this response, rather than forging something new.

Ali Alizadeh: Exactly. So that's why, in a sense, it might be easy for a normal audience who doesn't want to go too much inside Iran. If you differentiate between Iranian revolution, which was a massive historical force, which inspired many people inside Iran and outside Iran and created political subjectivity, and told them that, yes, you can. Don't worry about the West. Don't feel so inferior to the West. Ayatollah Khamenei's speech yesterday, which I covered last night, had many elements of that, because yesterday was... 49th anniversary of Ayatollah Khomeini's arrival in Iran, being welcomed by 3 million people, and in 10 days after that, revolution finds its victory. And Ayatollah Khomeini was saying that we had no confidence, national confidence. We We didn't see ourselves capable of any creation, any invention, any innovation. And yet, now we can do everything. And I agree with him. I think that was out of revolution. It taught people that you can make any technological thing you want. And I think... That is there. But second problem is Islamic Republic of Iran, a state with all its contradictions, with all its problems unfolding endless contradictions. And so these two, you have to differentiate them. And I think the second one has its own benefits because In a sense, it was a native experience of nation estate building with many contradictions and fallacies and problems. You can see each one of these contradictions is unfolding and now getting faced by people and by the public in a very pricey way. The fact that the unveiling and veiling was not understood by a state and the state uses for mobilizing its own forces and playing mobilizing them against part of the less Islamic forces or non-Islamic forces of revolution for the benefit during 80s, then in 2022 has this backlash and has such a price. You have to kill 400 people and you have to lose part of your legitimacy to back off. And now there is no obligatory unveiling. So the state has completely backed off its learning. But when you look at, if you look from A more trans-historical point of view, these things are normal. I mean, any kind of long state, and even the kind of Western state in Britain, in America, in France, they have gone through this when we were not around to witness as much as we are today in 17th, 18th, 19th century. A state building has its own contradictions. We should not conflate a state building in Iran with all its problems, but nonetheless, it's all important because having a state in a region that imperialism wants to destroy all the states is very, very important. We don't have the affordance to become anarchist like part of the left and say, Let's do away with the state. The state has so many evils. We don't want them. We just want to go to a Rojava style, Kobani, no state, only people, communes. We cannot afford it. It's Middle East here, it's West Asia. If you have a weak state, it takes about three days for America to come and bomb you. You have this state with some evil, but many positive aspects. And then the other side, you have revolution, which is like a sin. A sin is like producing and pushing people towards self-independence. I think I might have explained part of your question, but then the second one is about China and why Iran is not moving to China. So, as I said, When you talk about Russia, you have to understand this long history between Iran and Russia. Iran was, a third of Iran was taken away by Russian Tsar Empire in In 19th century, even Soviet Union during Stalin occupied part of Iran's Azerbaijan. And so there is this long suspicion about Russia. And also, this is not the same Russia that we see today. Russia, even up until 10, 12 years ago, was not trying to go head to head against United States for the sake of Iran.

Adnan Husain: right things often things have changed obviously with the ukraine war and and and so on that's exactly they have and and you know in fact actually i would encourage listeners to go back and check out and i put the link um you know iran's history and geopolitical relations with professor david yagubian we talked about the 19th century way in which you know there were these zones of interest and even agreements between the british and the russians about which part of the country they would have predominant. So even though they didn't directly colonize, Iran has this history, and you pointed out, also two periods of occupation around World War I and right after World War II. too. And so, you know, it does definitely have historic reasons to be suspicious of this neighbor, aggressive neighbor that had, you know, imperialist interests in Iran from before. But China is definitely a more, is something of a different situation. There isn't that same historic animosity, enmity from longer history, there's maybe the opportunities. And also, of course, China is much more powerful a country economically and in many respects right now. So that might be the question that people would say, why not? So please continue about the relationship between Iran and China.

Ali Alizadeh: So, but I'm just going to finish the Russia first. So in a sense, so we have to look at with China as well. China today is willing to get a lot of American beating for the sake of Iran. China is buying Iran's oil despite all America's threats. But China 10 years ago wouldn't behave this way. In 2009, 2010, two or three countries United Nations Security Council resolution were issued against Iran. And that was like very paralyzing. This is like the main reason for all these problems of sanction. And China and Russia didn't veto it. So in a sense, you have to remember, things are changing. Multipolarity is a new thing, is a new phenomenon. And Iran's problem and enmity, and mostly, sorry, United States enmity and animosity against Iran is much older than that. So Iran started defending itself when no one else was around. When America attacked this region and occupied both sides of Iran to squeeze Iran in 2001 Afghanistan and 2003 United States, Imagine 900 kilometer on one side with 905 kilometer and 1,300 kilometer on the other side suddenly became filled with American commandos and servicemen. And there was no one else to help Iran. So you can see Iran had to think from within. And that has some longstanding thing. But second problem is Iran's domestic problem is finding echoes and counterparts in differences in foreign policy. So what does it mean? So from 1989, when Ayatollah Khomeini, he was an absolute leader because revolutions cannot have absolute, but he was a charismatic leader, powerful enough to be able to solve the endless differences and oppositions caused in a post-revolutionary state. This is like natural to any post-revolutionary state that different factions are constantly fighting with each other. So even 1981, when they perished, all the Marxists and all the Islamic Marxists, Mujahideen and things, but even the Khomeinis themselves had so much like differences of opinion among themselves. So someone looked from outside and because of the Western media, Iran is a unified, homogeneous state with only one voice. And then you open the door and you hear this clamor of endless disagreement, fighting, backstabbing between different social factions, between political factions, even inside Khamenei's court. It's endless. I think to some extent it's healthy to any polity, but for me, it's the result of revolution because you cannot absolutize the power. When Khamenei died, that got exacerbated to a much higher level. Part of the polity, which was very close to Khomeini, the left-leaning faction of the 1980s, they went abroad mainly to the United Kingdom. They became metamorphosized, what we call and they became updated and they became a third race, Anthony Giddens' style, and they realized, oh, well, we need dialogue with the West, we need pluralism, we need tolerance, and we need to reach some Karl Popper, instead of reading some Islamicized version of Karl Marx, they moved to Karl Popper. And so you have this like birth of reformism. And so from that moment onward, national interests and national security has been taken hostage for the factional fighting inside the country. So even when you know, so you imagine a character, I'm in opposition sitting outside, I constantly criticize you for criticizing Khamenei for why not having open dialogue with the United States. But when I get to government myself and I realize the real obstacles and constraints for doing that, I changed my position. So in a sense, like the United States, Republicans and Democrats, when they are out of power, they behave differently. So domestic power and domestic endless infighting has translated itself so much on foreign politics. And the reformists and the pro-Western faction more or less from 1997 onward, they formulated the politics in line with what was fashionable at time, which was democratization, civil society, joining WTO, and normalization of relationship with the West, and accepting part of the West's pressure in disarmament. and not going any further in obtaining further military technology. They have not moved since then. They have not cognitively and epistemologically register the change of time. Let me just give you a famous example. Javad Zarif, who teaches international relations, is a very important figure, eight years foreign minister, and then became Pesachkian, current president's deputy. And he's like faced with this undeniable existence of multipolarity. When he was in power, he did everything for Iran not to join BRICS. He did everything for Iran not to ratify shanghai agreement and join shanghai officially and and so but when he's like faced with the undeniability of multipolarity he said it's not multipolarity we have entered the era of non-polarity So in a sense, to dodge the bullet and not to accept it. So they don't want to accept it, because if they accept it, they don't know how to push them. They lose their own political projects. So historically, they have formulated the project in line with this move towards the West. I interviewed one of the famous Iranian reformists back in 2021. a lady, Dr. Elahi Koulayi, who was an MP during the heyday of reform in 1997, 1999 to 2002. And she's a lecturer in Tehran University. And she famously said that if we move to Russia and China and to these autocratic states, we will lose our chance of becoming a democratic country forever. So they see this move as, emboldening, empowering the more autocratic faction inside Iranian states. And my answer to her was, why don't you move to China and Russia in order to open the shackle of sanction and basically save your economy from this strangulation and And with the money, then you can internally and domestically fight for democracy. I mean, didn't you always say democracy comes from a strong middle class back in the 90s? Do you remember all those endless theories about middle class being this holy element pushing and driving the societies towards democracy? And she had no answer for that. So in a sense, I think maybe they are a bit too old for changing their policy, but also there's so much interest in that. In an irrational way, the interest of Iranian pro-Western bourgeoisie is even if they earn money through doing business with the East, East is not a place for you to invest your money. They don't trust it. Who wants to save their money in a bank in China when China has a good relationship with the hardliners inside Iran or with the state? If you want to plunder the state in the form of old colonialism and take money from periphery to center, you take it to the West. No Nigerian warlord takes his money to come to hide it in Russia or China. They take it to Switzerland. In a sense, that's one of the main obstacles in Iran that people should understand, that the state has been too divided, and the strength of a state has been too deteriorated by this endless infighting. And you might ask me why the state doesn't do anything else. And the state did when the opportunity came. In 2005, the opportunity came. Ahmadinejad was not a normal conservative. He was a populist. He was an attractive populist who could manage to win the heart of millions of Iranians. He's done many mistakes. I'm not supporting him. I'm just describing what happened when he came to power. So while normal conservatives are not very popular because they have a very statist language, Ahmadinejad was very different. He presented himself as as an opposition to establishment. And so that really worked with the people. He got 18 million votes in 2005. And then he was lucky, or some people say he pushed for oil prices to go higher, especially because he became an ally with Hugo Chavez. And he brought a lot of money inside the country. He distributed widely from bottom. He gets criticized for not investing enough on infrastructure, but nonetheless, he made people very happy. And in 2009, I think all polls show that he had won the election in a landslide victory. They had done some small fraud here and there. There's no doubt about that. But I talked to many people, including Mir Hossein Mousavi's spokesperson in the West, Mr. Arjomand, and none of them had any hard proof of systematic rigging that they claimed. And yet, what happened? The pro-Western faction created a mass movement, disputed the election, and brought the state to its knees. That's what you have to understand, because Ahmadinejad had about 20, I mean, they claimed 24 million, 20, 21, 22 million of votes, but from that part of society, which had less cultural, social, and economic capital. Whereas the part that Milos and Mousavi and Rafsanjani had, they had a strong capital, they had strong roots in Tehran's bazaar, in mercantile capitalism, and also that relationship with the West. So there is a hard document of Rafsanjani's son asking people in the West for lobbying for sanctions. Because they thought Khamenei's hardheadedness, not negotiating with the West, all these things, and also purging us from the state is dangerous. So bringing power from the West in order to push your rivals domestically, this has been the dynamic inside Iran. And this is the main problem. And Khamenei couldn't win that battle. So what he did? He compromised. Four years later, he invited them back into election and he gave them, he shared the power. He gave them the executive branch and he allowed them to go and negotiate. And the result of that was Hassan Rouhani. So you see Hassan Rouhani as a president, Khamenei as the leader. Khamenei talk today, on today's Monday, he said, we will not budge to America. Hassan Rouhani will give a speech on Tuesday next day saying that those who don't want to budge to America are blind to people's poverty. So in a sense, that is a kind of friction inside the country. So now, with that image, I hope that people have understood that why Iran cannot act in a very unified a straight way sometimes. Many people ask me why Iran didn't join the battle, why they didn't join in solidarity with Palestinians right after 7th of October. And many people inside Iran believe that from a realist point of view, the reason that we are here today, the reason that the United States and Israel can dare to wage a hybrid warfare on the streets of Iran and force the state to kill thousands of its own citizens, is because Iran didn't join, because Iran got weaker and weaker. And why didn't Iran join on 7th of October? Because of the internal political situation. Many people ask why Iran didn't dare to announce that Raisi's helicopter crash was assassination done by Israel. Again, for the internal problem. Go on.

Adnan Husain: Well, no, also the same kind of question people argue about, you know, why not announce, you know, real deterrence with a nuclear weapon, right? And then very often this is described as a theological kind of question. And of course, there's some component of that. I mean, we should acknowledge that that's part of the religious rulings and so on. But clearly... You know, and I even heard, I think it was Dr. Ali Larijani on some program not too long ago where he said, yes, well, of course, this is the doctrine. But, you know, as circumstances change, these things will always be applied according to circumstance. Right. You know, there's always interpretive reasoning. room, you know, in these things. So really, it isn't just a question of, like the orientalists and people who fetishize, you know, Islamic ideology, always kind of, you know, explain it as well, okay, there's this religious ruling, so they can't, you know, do that. That's not the real question. geostrategic and political thinking behind it, it fits into the pattern that you're mentioning, is that there are these kind of divided, factional kind of forces that have to be managed and it produces its own contradictions in approach and policy.

Ali Alizadeh: So Iran is getting constantly criticized for not being democratic and having a dictator on top. But the reality is actually, I'm not saying it has too much democracy, because it's more like plutocracy. And for me, democracy is not there until you have trade unions, you have like the right of assembly and many other things and actual people without... without economic power being able to come to the political arena. However, you have too much of this kind of semi-democracy in Iran, which is to be managed. I think that's what people should understand, that it is a post-revolutionary situation. It's not something that Khamenei can go and arrest every critique, bring tanks to the streets, and solve the problem. Iran It's not even like Chinese Communist Party of 1989, which can do a Tiananmen. So it does a semi-Tiananmen and immediately has to back off and then make amends and make a deal with the other side. But let me just give you an example again for people to understand. Let's go back to 2009 election in Iran. The first one of these big movements, which brought really, truly millions. Tehran had the two and a half, three million people demonstration on... if I'm not wrong, on 5th of July, 2009. What happened there? Ahmadinejad's forces were shouting, nuclear power is our inalienable right. And pro-Mousavi forces were shouting, neither Gaza nor Lebanon, Iran only and Iran. So you could see how these forces were echoing different foreign policy slogans. And you could see how the battle over foreign policy has become central to the domestic battle in Iran. And so what would you do as Washington? You would constantly try to empower the pro-Western faction. you would give echo to them. When they are winning the election, you say, hope for Iran, possibility of reform, change. And when the other faction, which is like the realists are winning and are emphasizing independence, the West portrayed them as crazy, cannibalist, hard-line, super Islamist fundamentalist, whereas I think to some extent Ahmadinejad was even culturally much more moderate than Hassan Rouhani and governments after him. So in a sense, you have the power of the West coming to your aid as well, and creating this discourse on behalf of reformists, which then gets consumed by people inside Iran. So a young person in Iran is consuming most BBC Persian service, which is created by British government in order to help and aid reformists in Iran more than anything else. and also guests like CNN and also guests like celebrities in Hollywood who all come to help this reformist discourse. And so, Being ghettoized in a country under sanction, not being able to travel abroad much, feeling isolated enough, suddenly you hear Angelina Jolie or Angela Davis, doesn't matter, from Angelina Jolie to Angela Davis, all of them say yes to your movement. Go for freedom. We are with you. We are in solidarity with you. You feel very empowered. That's why this happens. their political energy doesn't come from revolution and from the internal history anymore. Directly gets like imported from the West. And that makes it even more complicated.

Adnan Husain: So I hope that I've explained part of your... Oh, no, that's very, very useful analysis. and I'm sure very illuminating for the audience, because you don't usually get such a kind of rich sense of what is being contested in Iran, and particularly its relationship to the foreign policy question, which makes me wonder, you know, if, you know, that's been a historic pattern. I'm wondering if you would say that things have changed. I mean, it seems like we might not be any longer in the era of strategic patience, given the more kind of... defiant sorts of statements of warning you know the united states that any you know attack won't fall into the earlier pattern of we'll kind of arrange a kind of theatrical kind of uh you know you bomb this we bombed that and then we you know we we call the case closed for the moment and we buy one another more time and we back off of the you know difficult kind of confrontational rhetoric By doing that and we see that you know in this this pattern. I mean You know that It's happened many times. But what about the you know has anything changed? from your perspective in the relations between these kinds of forces? Is there a new consciousness or new forces that have aligned or emerged as a result of say the 12 day war? Because it seems that that was a moment where all factions from within society and different classes and different cultural orientations could basically come together on the basis of Iranian nationalism and sovereignty and defense of the homeland in response to uh you know grotesque brutal you know uh uh imperialist attack from from you know israel and with the connivance as it's increasingly become clear and knowledge and connivance of the united states and then culminating in spectacular u.s bombing in order to bring to a close and relieve perhaps Israel from the damage that it was taking in the Islamic Republic's response once it recovered from these initial attacks. But what we saw after that was that there were lots of expressions of collective Iranian nationhood. And yet, some six months later, you have these economic grievance protests being quickly turned into much more kind of violent riots against the regime that lead to almost nihilistic kind of, you know, violence attacking people. public infrastructure buses hospitals clinics shooting um of of of police burning you know mosques and so on um and using starlink you know thousands of starlink terminals to you know kind of communicate uh and so on that seems like You know, it represents that there were certain, we can say of course that these were very much inspired, organized, you know, maybe arms were brought in and so on by various, you know, external groups using some of their, you know, kind of dissident groups seeking autonomy or independence like you know baluchis in certain part of the country kurds in the north you know and mek terrorists etc but there was also clearly some internal you know, groupings maybe among the youth, et cetera, that were willing to be committed to use violence against what you might say is the public, you know, just the society as a whole in order to try and overthrow or undermine the government. So how does one kind of explain and see, you know, how this could happen and what are your conclusions?

Ali Alizadeh: I think I'm... logical problem here is you see Iranian people as what you see in TV and you think, oh, well, six months ago they were rallying around the flag, but the same people are doing. It's not. It's a country of 90 million people with endless factions and different layers. And I think we saw a big part of Iranian society rallied around the flag and not necessarily around the Islamic Republic, but around the cause of nationalism back in June and July, 2025. However, here we are seeing a small faction. I mean, opposition say up to the same million, but state says two or 300,000 people came outside all together in hundreds of cities. So it's a small faction. None of them, none of this image we've seen is determining the Iranian people as a whole. So I think that's one thing. But one thing we know is the Iranian people as a whole are not happy. This is like a direct message that we have from elections, which is not only one election, two consecutive, three consecutive elections, four consecutive elections. 2020, yes, March 2020 parliamentary election, then you have... presidential election of 2021, and then you have the parliamentary election of 2023 or 2024, and then you have the presidential election of Pesachkian. And you have, while you used to have 60, 70 or 77% participation previously, now it has gone to 50%, 40%. participation in presidential election, and Tehran parliamentary election has come to 8%, 9%. So the message is clear. People are not very happy with the way economy is being managed, with the fact that Iranian government has not managed to overcome sanctions, number one, and second, the fact that despite the sanctions, there is a massive class difference and It's a question of injustice inside the country as well. And then also the question of rentierism and the question of nepotism and the kleptocracy and all these things. So if any anti-imperialist tells you that Iranian people love Iranian state, I think they should come and live in Iran. Because no, I mean, if you have like 14 years of consecutive sanction in which Iranians there is no horizon to get out of it. People can across the world, whether it's like in Canada where you live or Britain where I live or in Iran, people can deal with poverty as long as there is some horizon of change, economic change in the future. But then the state at the moment is in trouble giving any image of possible exit from this economic dire situation. And I think they've lost their way of making narrative. That's why I argued that if Iran goes to a war, to an all-out war, might be better for it to manage the situation rather than rather than wait back again, impose more patience, and then internally and domestically gets deteriorated and exhausted and other things. Second is back in 2020, when I started my channel, There were people who were talking about the necessity of a Bonapartism in a style of what Marx talks about, that the suspension of republic for a couple of years for a strong force to come and manage to solve the problems. Ebrahim Raisi was seen as a kind of Bonapartist government, and he didn't manage to do so, or at least the other side used the opportunity of woman life freedom and those cultural riots to disable and paralyze Raisi's government. But nonetheless, Raisi was offering some meager light at the end of the tunnel. So he was giving some light by joining BRICS, joining Shanghai, and maybe he could bring some foreign investment from BRICS countries. And then after women's life freedom, things became very difficult for him. And internally, he couldn't do much. And also, even his government was very close to oligarchy, and he couldn't stand against them. So all these things are together. But are Iranian people... angry enough to allow regime change from above by America bombarding Iran, I think that's a media hype. That's a media hype, and I don't think, based on all the statistics that we have from Iran, because Iran, like any other society, is not that erratic. You have lots of polls. These polls are all available. I'm absolutely like... In disbelief, why when it comes to Iran, the Western media are acting the way that Orientalists acted in 17th, not even 18th, 17th century, mystify and go to like this, like propaganda. It's like a society. Just go and read one of these polls. There are so many sociologists in Iran. There are like 125 department of sociology and thousands of sociologists, thousands of like social science experts. Go and talk to one of them, bring them to come to your program, use a translator. They will explain to you how many Iranians are religious, how many are less religious, how many are anti-religious, like every other society. You have like, I think, Two million people in Britain voted for Jedi, the Star War character. Whether it was a joke or was a trend or they really believed. If I come and build all my analysis of British society based on that, that makes me either a propagandist or a stupid idiotic person. When it comes to Iran as well, it's always like optic being seen from the media. This doesn't work. Iranian society has a strong religious core, but also the trend of secularization is very strong. So the contradiction is strong. What you've seen by burning masks, it can be organic, but it's definitely pushed and pumped by other people. Even if you are atheistic, Islamophobic, in a yearning to return to pre-Islamic Iran with this semi-racial supremacy of Aryan discourse that the Pahlavis use, you wouldn't go and dare to burn mosque because you know the consequences. Not from the state, you know the consequence of ordinary Iranians. The same way that no one would dare to go and burn a church in Britain because, you know, the consequence of ordinary British passerbys to stand against you. So I think that was pumped. But nonetheless, there is a hatred of Islam by a small faction of especially young generation. So these things are... can be organic. But still, there's a core into Iranian society, and this core has acted rationally, doesn't want foreign intervention, but is tired of corruption, is tired of economic injustice, and is tired of the state's mismanagement and inability to deal with the sanctions. Also, this core, the rational core, was the one which went along with Hassan Rouhani's promise of resolving Iran's fundamental problems by sitting on negotiation with John Kerry for two consecutive years and making massive compromises, and has historically experienced the fact that America does not abide by its own promises and obligations. So they don't have that much hope in that either. So in a sense, you have this... That's why Iranian society is more or less depressed, doesn't see much option out. And I think it's the other side, the revolutionaries, realists, whatever, the other faction is to be blamed because they should have created a narrative for turning to multipolarity. They should have explained that there were other countries who were doing worse than us. They were under even more pressure from the United States than us. And they managed to resolve it, not on their own in an autocratic way, but by building blocks with other Southern countries. And the fact that Iranian national TV, IRIB, doesn't have enough programs. Only last week for the first time, apparently they started having a mini documentary series about China and Chinese cities and what it means. Because many people in Iran still have an image of China as it was in 1980, in which bicycles are going and coming. And Iranian pro-Western politicians, famously, including Massoud Pesachkian, in his electoral debate last year, he talked about China as two things. One, buying our oil on the price and selling us rubbish, low-quality rubbish. It is like unbelievable. I mean, this is like your image in 1995, like 2020, 2002, not in 2025, 26, which is like is a beacon of like high tech and cutting edge technology. So in a sense, the country is a bit stuck. The leader is a bit old. The narrative is neither peace nor war. So If we move away from the media hype and all this noise, no, Iran is not going to be destroyed by America. But whether Iran can find a path forward is a much, much, much more difficult question.

Adnan Husain: Ali, I really have to thank you for giving us this really well-developed and thorough perspective on... know the conundrums that iran faces it brings uh so much beyond the simple stereotypes and propagandistic portraits of iran and brings a lot of illumination i wish we had had you've been so generous with your time and i know you're so busy i would have loved to have talked a little bit more about the diaspora and some of these factions and what role they're sort of playing in helping perpetuate imperialist and zionist uh views about Iran, perhaps for another time, but also even our friends, as Professor Gerald Horne often talks about our friends on the left, what he means to say something somewhat critical of their, you know, discourses is that even there, there's been a real gap when it comes to showing solidarity and really examining and understanding the circumstances in the rich textured way you've given us through history, politics, economic and geopolitical analysis. But we find that a lot of people who should be in solidarity against a war and an attack on Iran and for lifting the sanctions, let's remember, You know that people have not been talking about 40 years of sanctions and especially a decade really of these maximum pressure sanctions. You know, that there should be more solidarity. And instead of having protests to say hands off Iran, like we have for hands off Cuba, hands off Venezuela, no war on Iran. Instead, you know, you know, I've read articles today about supposedly 100000 protesters. filling the streets of Toronto to support the people of Iran against their regime and to call upon the Canadian government to support and do more. So not to be there against a war on Iran, but in fact, actually playing into these narratives. Yeah, for war, ultimately. So there's so much we'll be watching. I encourage everyone to go to Jeddah channel on YouTube. There's a Jeddah English as well. If you don't speak Farsi, like most of my audience, although there are some people clearly who do, they should be watching Jeddah TV. Also, you have on Jeddah English some excellent videos. documentaries that I want to recommend that people check out. You did one almost a year ago on the untold story of Hezbollah. which I think is still extremely important and relevant in thinking about the rise of that movement and what its sources are socially and ideologically and so on. And you also did one of just a few months ago about Iran's nuclear program, the history of Iran's nuclear program, again, in this sort of series, the untold history. So I have to thank you for those very valuable comments contributions and encourage people to go check those out and to check out your channel. Where else can people follow you and keep track of what's happening as we continue to observe the situation that is not resolved? We're still going to be seized with this. Where should people go to get up-to-date analysis and information from you?

Ali Alizadeh: They can follow me on Twitter, but instead of Z, they have to put seven, which looks like Z. And also, given you mentioned those documentaries, I think it will be interesting for people to see because in line with everything I said today, my aim was to explain that Iran is not an essential think there that someone can come and talk about it. This is a country coming out of a very long history, but also the current phase is created after a massive revolution and revolution creates processes. So we are talking about processes and these processes intersect, they cut each other off, they negate each other, they oppose each other, they get united together. So in a sense, is a country in which things are still becoming and constantly are becoming. People are changing. So when the revolution started, most of Iranian society was rural. Revolution helped urbanization of people. Revolution helped uh most of these rural religious people come into city send them to university to a school and in a sense inadvertently created process of secularization different demands so it's a burning society with many things but studying and understanding this extremely complicated constantly changing ever-changing society and state is one thing The Western propaganda, which mystifies and demonize and give you a one-sided story of baddies and these like bad wolves of a state and this poor nation, which is like shouting for help from the white Soviets is another thing. So you can be critique of Iranian, this or that element of Iranian state, but which part? Because there's so many factions that right now, as I'm talking to, there are factions in Iran who are asking for eradication of all neoliberal factions There are other factions who are asking for full immersion and co-option inside Western global market. So in a sense, my proposal to people is look at a country with 90 million population and history of so much uh internal change with a bit more respect rather than in a usual colonial way try to simplify and you and objectify it and demonize it from outside so if you look that way i think things become a bit different those documentaries i made were uh actually representation of some of these processes for example when it comes to military you have to see how it is rooted in the political energy coming out of revolution how this belief that we have to defend ourselves rooted in revolution and the war and so people can see how iranian missile industry drone industry and nuclear industry were produced out of this question but also out of question of sovereignty and i think um despite what we saw in the last few weeks, that the West has so much vengeance, so much hatred against Iran's sovereignty. I mean, the problem is nothing to do with the current protests. The problem is coming from 1979. The United States still has not forgiven the fact that a nation in West Asia had dared to fight ask for sovereignty and dare to say, I don't want to be a slave anymore. I want to decide my own situation. And if I'm allowed to say this, this is important as well, because that's one story in which one can really side with Iranian state. Iranian state is not a superhero who comes and come join 7th of October, resolve all the contradictions inside, fight against its internal oligarchy, fight against its corruption. It's not a superhero. But When you look from the other side, that it has managed to survive against 49 years of endless enmity from the United States, and it still is here. Its very fact of survival is near miracle. And I think that's something that if you look from the other side, you can have some respect and some solidarity with the state. So it depends where you're coming from. I, as an Iranian, and I see myself as a subject of Iranian revolution, have my own criticism internally. But looking from outside, the fact that we saw only in the last three weeks, every single member of European Union, every single member of these Arab monarchies, so much hatred, as if all of them want to undo the history. Their hatred is hatred of 79 revolution. And in that sense, one should stand with the state as... As a harbinger on the inheritor of the revolution with many perversions, of course, with many fallacies, perversions, and contradictions, but nonetheless, because of revolution, you have to understand which side you are siding with, with imperialism to destroy or with the revolution.

Adnan Husain: I completely second that and just would remind people that although we always talk about modern history of Iran, you know, this is a society and a culture and a civilization that has a two, 3,000 years of history of statecraft, you know, of having a state, you know, it's not to be dismissed lightly. And when you talk about the revolution, I've heard you say elsewhere that it was the, you know, maybe one of the fourth most important, or certainly it was the fourth in a line of very serious revolutions of global historical significance. I would actually say five. I would say, I mean, I assumed you were counting the U.S., revolution which i don't i would say debatable but okay it's had a kind of impact on political discourse globally the french revolution of course the haitian revolution i think must be included in there then of course you know there's the russian revolution and then you have to put the iranian revolution i think you make the case that we all have to learn this history And in doing so, reorienting our sense of historical narratives will also reorient our sense of politics and do so with greater respect by learning about, you know, the important sacrifices that the people of Iran made to try and free themselves and the forces, imperialist forces that are aligned to try and undo that. So again, I want to thank you so much, Ali, for a wonderful conversation. I'm sure people learned a lot. And good luck with all of your continuing ventures to try and educate people. Everyone should go follow you on Twitter, on x.com, Ali Zadeh with a seven for the Z, and also follow the channel, Jadal TV. It's also in English. Again, thank you so much. And to everybody else, please like the stream. share it with people. More people need to learn and hear about these kinds of analyses and historical contextualization. Until next time, and also I want to mention that I have an upcoming stream in an hour and a half. It's a big day for Iran streaming. I have a former student, PhD student of mine, Milad Dokhanji, who will have probably, I think, a more anarchist sort of take. I mean, he's in Iran and You know, he's got his own political take, but what's good to hear from people who are inside Iran, who they may have their own critiques of the state, but also have a view on the society and want to communicate how and why. They should be left alone to be able to follow their own sovereign path of development. So we'll be talking at 2 p.m. Eastern with Milad Dohanji. Hopefully the internet will work and we'll have a second component of the live stream today, a special edition of Office Hours Inside Iran with Milad Dohanji. So I invite you all to rejoin. And until that next time, peace and solidarity. Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim.