Still Minab: Iran's Martyrs and Sovereign Truth w/Helyeh Doutaghi and Bikrum Gill

Bikrum Gill: Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim.

Adnan Husain: salam hello peace to you all i'm adnan hussein historian of the medieval mediterranean and islamicate world and we're back with another really important edition of the program with two wonderful returning guests uh helia dutari who is a scholar of international law and geopolitical economy and currently a postdoctoral fellow at the university of tehran and a journalist with vocal politics who has been behind and is the narrator for a very important documentary series that we're going to be discussing. Helya, it's wonderful to see you again.

Helyeh Doutaghi: Thank you very much for having me back, Adnan.

Adnan Husain: Yeah, it's our pleasure and we wish you salams and peace. We know you're in Tehran and so we're looking forward to talking with you both about this series and also what's been happening inside Iran. But we also have with us Bikram Gill, author of The Political Ecology of Colonial Capitalism, race, nature, and accumulation. And he is a scholar of geopolitical economy and also returning guest to the show. Bikram, it's wonderful to see you. Salaam.

Bikrum Gill: Yeah, thanks Adnan. It's great to be back. And you should also announce I'm at Cardiff University now. Oh, okay.

Adnan Husain: I wasn't sure when we were allowed to say. You're allowed to say it now.

Bikrum Gill: So I'm in the School of Law and Politics at Cardiff. So I'm not hiding that information anymore. Okay.

Adnan Husain: You're not just a free floater in the universe of ideas. You're now grounded at Cardiff University. That's great, wonderful. Well, welcome to you both. And there's so much to talk about. But the first thing is to talk a little bit about the very opening of the war. One of the dramatic events that people are aware of, of course, horrific massacre and slaughter of people in Minab and in particular the school that was targeted and the 168 school-age girls who were killed. I'm wondering if Maybe you can tell us a little bit first just to remind people of what happened on that day in general terms. And then we can talk a little bit about the work that you're doing to document it and give voice to those who experienced it.

Helyeh Doutaghi: Right. On February 28, it was perhaps an hour or so after Tehran was hit, multiple targeted airstrikes took place in Minab by the US scientists forces. And the first target of perhaps seven or eight, among seven or eight. The first target was a school. It was a Saturday. Saturdays in Iran are the beginning of the week. It was at 11.23 a.m. So it was the first day of the week with all the students inside, all the staff. we had um in fact you know there was this there was a just just a correction uh 155 students were killed including 72 boys and 48 girls uh and the rest were like staff parents um and so on and so forth so uh it was mistakenly articulated that it was it was a girls school but it wasn't uh upstairs were the girls downstairs were the boys and beside it was a kindergarten. And the school was hit three times. And in the accounts that I conduct, well, we're going to talk about what I did, but you'll see by the testimonies of those who were subject to this violence that a school was hit three times, targeted. And then immediately after the school, the very, the most, you know, Minab is a very small town. It's not, it's equipped, but it's not, it's still, it has an urban sense to it. And it has two clinics, not even fully hospitals. People had to be transferred to other cities to get serious care. But the medical centers that were present and they were, close to school, which happened to have the most equipped emergency room, was also targeted minutes after the school itself. And then again, after three hours at around 2.30. And then we also saw a cultural center very close by, also targeted. The playground, also targeted. And it was all within like a very big area of the city. all next to each other. And the pattern in which the targets were hit, starting with the school, and before that, the Tehran assassinations the first day, and then immediately after that, Minab, with targeting the school, and medical facilities. It was not only intentional, but also it was designed to create this collapse and shock, the moral collapse of the country after assassinating the supreme leader and then another generation of military commanders, and then also hitting a school with the intention of collapsing the morality and the strength of the people to reinforce the plan that they had, which was, which was the collapse of the country as the political system. But yeah, we can get into it in terms of what I heard and why I decided to do this documentary.

Adnan Husain: Yeah, yeah. Bikram, I'm wondering if you have any other thoughts about the significance of this attack on the city of Minab and particularly the school. We know, of course, that Minab is in the southwestern part, close to the Strait of Hormuz and is, you know, in the location that's in that region. I guess what I'm thinking about here is the way in which the attack upon the school and the victims there, the martyrs there in particular, resonated and reverberated in the early days of the war and setting the character in revealing the utter colonial brutality of this imperialist aggression, illegal war, upon Iran and how that contrasts or added to, you know, the outrage also that happened with the assassinations and martyrdom of the leader that Helya just mentioned on that very same day.

Bikrum Gill: What it really reveals, I think, and this is, I know before we got on, you're kind of joking around talking about that book I referenced too often by Anthony Engie, but I think it kind of reveals a certain rule of imperialist warfare, the strike on Minab. And you know, a couple of years ago, I wrote this essay, Two Logics of War, and I think it kind of demonstrates this genocidal logic, but at the same time, a liberation logic. So I think like, you know, there's a war, but there's like two wars that are being fought on two different logics, like the war of imperialism It is founded on a genocidal logic, but at what point does it intensify and return to this? So I think that's really important to put up front. This was not like collateral damage. And it's really, really vital to make this point because There's a lot of confusion that comes into the media and I think people get lost and there's still a disbelief people have that this would be a deliberate strike. But why is it a deliberate strike? So in that book, Angie or Victoria, what they will argue is, you know, imperialism is founded on an equation of force. So what imperialism requires is an armed imperialist, armed colonizer and a disarmed, a disarming of the colonized, a disarmament of those on the periphery. Under those conditions, anything is possible, but you're a beggar. So at the moment at which that founding condition gets put to test, you know, that's when like Vitoria through to the 19th century, you have this rule that is repeated again and again, at that point, when the colonized, when those on the periphery resist in this way and demonstrate an ability to meet force with force and overwhelm the force of them, genocidal violence is authorized. Genocidal violence is authorized because you cannot defeat them on the battlefield. So you return to a slaughter of the unarmed. You return to the very basis to force a form of treaty agreement, a framework or something that returns to this essential condition of colonialism, imperialism, again, armed versus disarmed. So the strike on Minab was not accidental. This is coming when? This is coming after a June war. in which you were unable to subdue Iran by military force. It's coming after decades of sanctions in which you are unable to restore the founding conditions of imperialism via economic sanctions. It's coming after this attempted coup d'etat, this kind of reproduction of not a color revolution, but I guess, again, it's similar to what happened in Iran in 1953, the paying of armed agitators. All of these mechanisms are not working. So you return then to a deliberate strike to force the people on the ground to turn against their resistance, to turn against their sovereign basis, to willingly surrender, to present to them an option, surrender or annihilation. So I think that's one thing we need to be very clear on, on the logic of imperialist war. But then on the other side, and this is also very important, The other logic of war that we've witnessed since Al-Aqsa flood is this liberation logic. So this does not operate on the same logic of war as the genocidal. And it's hard to grasp this, but it's important that we don't just start with imperialism. Because, you know, there's a way in which even in Marxist theory, imperialism becomes a self-propelling machine. You know, imperialism, a lot of people right now are saying, oh, there's like these chess moves the imperialists are making. They have Iran right where they want them. They're trying to monopolize oil and gas sectors or etc. It's not that that's not a part of it. But imperialism in many ways, vis-a-vis Iran, vis-a-vis Palestine, is responding to anti-imperialism. So there's like a world-scale struggle between imperialism and anti-imperialism. And it's precisely what the Islamic Revolution put forward in 1979. It's precisely the gains that anti-imperialism has made that pushes imperialism into this desperate state. It doesn't have to be desperate. You could give up your imperialism and move into a world of coexistence. But in refusing that, then you have this kind of hubris mixed with desperation and panic to restore those underlying conditions in the face of this sort of resistance. But what do we mean by liberation war? I think Hylia can say more about this, but this is what we've seen in the work that she's been doing on the ground, is we see the way in which this death machine, this genocidal logic is responded to. through a deep set of relations, qualitative relations, a form of life in Minab, in Iran, to the land, to one another, that disarms the imperialists, in fact. When they come to slaughter the unarmed in Minab with a type of violence that you can't even countenance. And then how do we grasp the way in which the families in Minab responded the way in which the the people of minab in iran have responded to say their martyrdom will not be in vain this martyrdom i think uh uh helia when you were sharing the second episode uh you know the mother that really profound line about this their martyrdom will awaken the world you know so like the the this this understanding that you can threaten us with death and destruction but it still will not make us compromise so what does the imperialists have left after that So I think that's what I would say. It illuminates these two logics that are actually fighting one another.

Adnan Husain: Yeah, well, I mean, that brings us to the work that you've been doing, Helia, with this amazing series, the first episode of which is out, and by the time this discussion is published, the second episode should be out. The first of the series, Still Minab, is the name of the series, and the first episode is The Angels' Games. Maybe you can tell us a little bit, and everyone should go see and watch this if you haven't already seen it, but maybe you can tell us a little bit about why you wanted to do this series and how you went about approaching it so that we can talk about, in fact, that response that gives voice to the families and how they're processing and dealing with and responding to this act of imperial violence against them.

Helyeh Doutaghi: So it goes back a little. Let me give you a little bit of a context. When I was still in Canada, I worked on a project with other co-authors and researchers on the high-tech violence of airstrike that is exclusively used by the United States because of its domination over technology, especially military technology. And what we did in that project was multiple articles were co-authored, and some of them were about what we did. We investigated and we studied 1,400 civilian files that were filed by the victims of NATO and US airstrikes in Afghanistan and in Iraq. And the victims or the families of the victims had filed those complaints about the attacks that took the lives of their loved ones. What the process, and this is supposed to be the process of justice, right, seeking justice for those who were killed. We extensively analyzed this process by studying the files very closely. And some of the facts that we found about this was how systematically through this process, the United States military produces ignorance What do I mean by that is that what they do is out of 1,400, perhaps around like 50, if I'm not mistaken, around 50 files were accepted as taking responsibility and not even taking responsibility in a sense that they would have any legal repercussions or any accountability, legal accountability legally, but they would pay compensation to the families. Out of 1,400, it was about 50. And the reasons for the rest that would be refused was that the united states military base would be the basis of which the claims and the complaints would be assessed they would say first of all the victims the burden was on the victims to provide the exact date the exact time the exact location and coordinates um saying how they were hit or which forces of nato uh was was was was the one like doing the airstrike And most of them would be rejected based on mismatching and being refused to even be engaged with. So the aggressor, the killer, would be the source of the truth, would be the source of credibility. And the ones who were the victims of this colonial violence were, and this was also different. We also realized in this research that even within civilians, there can be hierarchy. hierarchies of civilians. Let's say civilians have different categories under international law. We have journalists who are protected. They have protected a status. They're considered civilians. Non-combatants are considered civilians, soldiers that are not inactive combatants, and so on and so forth. And so even within the civilians, you would see the journalists that have affiliation with any Western news or any Western organizations or in other words, their proximity to the West would determine whether or not their lives would be counted and it would be grievable and it would allow you to seek justice or seek reparations or any sort of legal accountability. And so, One of the hierarchies in which these civilians operated was then the hierarchy of credibility and who is believed, who is believed as the knower, whose account is considered the truth. And so there is this very serious unequal hierarchy through which the narratives of this violence is produced, through which people get to know what happened on the ground. And those who are subject to this violence are never considered as legitimate knowers, are never considered as those who would be referred to. When MINOP happened, coming from this background and work that I've done in Iraq and in Afghanistan, it was very important for me to relocate the agency of the knowers back to those in MINOP who experienced this violence, because very immediately, what happened, and I think I was too late, it was day 30 of the war that I decided to do this. Within that 30 days, what we saw, and this is a pattern, and this is a pattern that we can extend to other, in Gaza and elsewhere as well. What we saw, they immediately create confusion. Trump came on and said, oh, Iran itself was the one who attacked this school, right? It's like a completely designed, manufactured lie to make everything uncertain and try people to engage with different accounts and different narratives of what happened. This uncertainty then becomes the responsibility of the, you know, we saw Guardian, we saw different Western news journalists and investigative journalists who would then investigate this absurd account of Trump to then deny it. And in doing so, what they would do is they would reference US military account itself that denies Trump's statement. So again, we saw the pattern repeating on Minob that the United States military, the United States authorities, and the United States account of what was hit in the first day became the source through which Trump's statement was contested by journalists in Western media. So that was really enraging for me. And there was no reference to any Iranian account, let alone any victims or survivors of MENA. So that was the basis of which I decided to go. I decided it was a very small group. It was the three of us. You know, we didn't even know if families would be able to talk to us. And the airports have been targeted. So we had to drive and it was like over 30 hours drive to the south. And we spent about eight days there. And I would talk to three families per day, which was so heavy. The content that you see is about like average 15 to 20 minutes per episode. But we had average like two to three hours interviews with those families. And so it was astonishing how different they experienced that violence from the accounts that we've been seeing in mainstream media, especially in English language media. And also how they would reject everything that was being said about them, first of all. about, for example, one of the main claims that were being made and we saw it even in more sympathetic articles in the Guardian or elsewhere that had provided accounts of the victims and tried to humanize them and not reduce the victims to numbers and names. they would still say that these were IRGC or adjacent IRGC spaces or areas. None of it was true and it was so easy for any serious journalist or any serious investigator to actually fact check these claims. What I did was, first of all, we went in and the entire area that was targeted that they said it was IRGC and it was based on the outdated database that they had because this was previously IRGC, the entire function of that area, both through administrative paper of the municipal section of the city, and also through any, even not a serious investigation, but you could see with Any thorough investigation would acknowledge the fact that the entire school and then the hospital and then the playground, you could see from above the colored walls. You could see from above the number of students that would be on lines and they would be playing and they would be present in the school. with the hospital, with the clinic that was targeted. I went in specifically to walk in to see if they only exclusively accept IRGC or if they ask any type of special insurance from me and they didn't, I would be walking and I would be visited by a doctor and I tried that myself. It would be very easy for anyone who's serious about the facts on the ground to dismantle the claims and the uncertainty and the ignorance that was being produced in order to deflect accountability. And what I hope this achieves is first of all, make me knobs and not even me, I'm not trying to give them a voice. They do have a voice and their voice is just much more stronger and much more, powerful than mine. And I'm trying to just reflect that in these documentaries and provide that a space for the English speaking audience to hear them. And what is important for me is to relocate the agency, relocate the truth and the source of truth to Iran and to MENA in terms of what happened. But also hopefully in this process, when we talk about an alternative legal mechanism in which the world requires for anything to move forward after everything that's been happening for the past two years, We need these documents, we need these atrocities documented and recorded for our future, for our humanity. Yeah, I'll stop here, and then maybe we can go.

Bikrum Gill: Yes. Can I follow up real quick on one thing there? Sure. So, Helia, I noticed in the first two episodes, there's a theme related to what you're saying. I think in the first episode, the father, maybe the mother in the second episode, they're... That's very powerful, like you're saying, the epistemology here of what counts as legitimate knowledge. They don't only document what was in Minab and what the truth of it was. But based on the truth of what Minab is and what's at stake in Minab, they speak back about who the imperialists are. Like, I mean, in a way, so you see like, there's like a reversal that almost happens. I know one part of the first episode that really made me stop and like pause was when the father he just says something simple. You don't think this was intentional or something like this. Like you don't think so. You know, like it's, it's like when Alara Jani says, I think he's reading Descartes and he says, take that skepticism and always apply it to the West. So in the Guardian, maybe not in these series, but they'll often say, Hamas run health ministry claims. They will say, whatever, a claim will be attached to it. And you see like, a really powerful way the documentary, without overstating anything, in demonstrating the life of Manab and the truth of Manab, it exposes the intention of the imperialists too. Indeed.

Helyeh Doutaghi: It does. And this also reminds me in the second episode when, so the mother that I talked to in the second episode was the same mother who was the speaker at the large funeral that took place for the kids. And we have a recording of that funeral where she speaks and we insert it in the second episode. And what she says, she says, I was raised by the generation that fought in the eight year imposed Western backed war on Iran. And from that war, we we grow at our generation the mothers that then gave birth to children who are now continue to fight and will defeat the us imperialism so she she really understands it as a as a generational struggle for liberation and they identify the enemy with no uncertainty, every single one of them. I would ask open-ended question, because I was really curious to see if any of them would suggest that maybe this was, maybe Trump's account was right. I was really curious, both in terms of the IRGC claims. I would ask every local I talked to, even beyond the families. I would ask, what is our relationship to Palestine? Because I didn't want to ask a leading question, like asking about, oh, did this remind you of kids? I intentionally, I was intentional about how I was asking my questions and the clarity that they had, the political clarity that every single family that I talked to had. it was exceptional. And they are truly the ones who are carrying forward the revolution. And they articulated very clearly and with utmost certainty, even as they are describing and talking about perhaps the most painful thing they've ever talked about when they're talking to me. They don't lose their clarity as they're experiencing that loss and as they're grieving. has only made them strong. Everyone should just watch the second episode to really understand the spirit of Iranian mothers who are carrying this revolution forward. It's incredible.

Adnan Husain: That's a very interesting point and observation that comes through in the first episode and people will see also in the second episode. It reminds me that what you're speaking about, both of you, is in some sense, sovereignty over the truth and the narrative, right? That's what's being asserted in having people tell their stories, their experience is speaking back against empire and the imperialist attempt to confuse, confute, and reform the narrative to exonerate themselves and demean the you know the victims and so on but so this is a question just as this whole struggle has been about defending iran's sovereignty is that it's also giving sovereign voices sovereign narratives back to the people rather than allowing the international media or the investigations under so-called international law that you described as having motivated this concern. So that's quite striking, it seems to me, and the series will continue and will keep contributing you know, to that. But the other kind of point that you made about the clarity of the people in identifying the enemy and following Bikram's point about the clarity about, you know, the empire, is it seems this is shared more widely even across Iran, right? You know, the way in which Minab clarified that for others, if I recall, in the failed attempt to steal Iran's enriched uranium stocks and store that about this whole rescue, so-called rescue attempt for these downed planes and so forth, that the interview with the gentleman wearing his bandolier, with his old rifle, with his daughter sitting there when they were interviewing him, she had encouraged him to keep shooting. They hadn't downed them yet. And the interviewer turned to her to ask, why did you tell him to keep shooting? And he said, because of what happened in Minab for those children. and the others in Minab. And they said, OK, so do you think, you know, we have to, you know, fight against it? And why do we have to fight against? And she said, because they are child killers. So the even a seven, eight, 10 year old girl in Iran right now understands who is the enemy, what is the enemy, and what is the reason why this devilish imperialist violence has to be stopped. So, you know, what you're doing with the people, talking to the people in Minam, it seems like it's all shared also broadly across So it's bringing, you know, in crystalline relief the whole condition. So I'm wondering if you had any thoughts, really, and what you can tell us about the progress of the second episode and what, you know, what else this series will cover. And I have to say, I mean, you know, this is something also maybe to discuss, is that the first episode, so incredibly painful to identify with how... uh difficult it is the choices that people are in a position how to even talk about it it's so clear of course it comes with great clarity about the enemy but like how do you process this with your people. I'm wondering, there's so much pain and cost. The first episode is about this young girl who's suffered huge injuries and burns and does not yet know that her brother has been martyred. That was just so difficult to watch, but mostly because of thinking how much suffering there must be for the parents. Like the father said, I still can't believe in a way that it happened. It's like processing this is very difficult. So I'm wondering if either of you had any reflections about that. you know, what this means and what the rest of the series may, you know, help. Do you feel that this, it's meant to help people kind of process, not only document and tell, but also process, you know, the meaning of this for themselves, how they can deal with it, such a horrible set of experiences?

Helyeh Doutaghi: I think the processing of this grief from what I witnessed was happening in the community. It was happening as a collective care. It was everyone around, because it's very hot in the South, especially these days, they would wait until around like 4 or 5 p.m. and they would go to the where all the martyrs, all the kids were buried. And they would just stay there, they would bring food, they would play music, they would have volunteers, both social workers and also therapists. for the kids who created a playground and they would play with the kids who often either lost a sibling or a cousin or a friend because it's just all a very tight community and it's a very small city. Everyone lost someone, everyone. Everyone had someone in their family who lost at least one kid. And so it was very much a collective, I guess, work in terms of grieving and in terms of processing. But what was really, and they knew very well how to take care of each other from what I was able to see. What was really, it really touched me and it really like shook me in a way that I didn't expect was how kind and how generous they were as they would receive me a complete stranger. Like I would just walk in, right? They don't know me. I was not there on behalf of anyone or with any previous calls or I was there as an independent journalist or ethnographer just trying to talk to them. And I would, you know, I was very, it was important for me to do all the ethics beforehand. I would talk to the parents, I would do a pre-talk, I would ask them what's okay and what's not. And I would tell them if I'm talking to a kid, I would obviously ask consent and then ask what they know, what they don't know, what we should touch upon. And all of them, were just so generous and so eager in their willingness to share their account. That's why I say I'm not the narrator, they are, because they are the ones doing the work there. And In terms of their kindness and generosity, in the first episode, I don't share this in the first episode, but it happened. I think I shared it elsewhere. Parastesh, the survivor, the 11-year-old girl, I had a bunch of care packages she had received with a bunch of chocolates and teddy bears and all that. And I'm trying to, and it would take me probably half an hour to get them to talk to me, to know me a little bit so that we can start recording. And so in that, so that they would warm up and they would feel a little bit sense of trust and closeness, I tell her, hey, I'm so jealous. You have a lot of chocolates. You're so lucky. And this is at the beginning of the conversation. Three hours later, I leave the house so that I can take, I can interview her father about things that she still doesn't know. And by the way, to this date, she doesn't know. She's still undergoing skin surgeries and she still doesn't know that her brother has been martyred. I talked to her father a few days ago. just to check in. And so I leave the house. And I go to the grandma's house next door. And the little cousin that is sitting next to us throughout the episode, she runs to me. And she's like, auntie, auntie, want you to have this chocolate. And one of the chocolates in the basket that I told her I really liked, she wanted me to have it. And the father, all of them, without exception, would insist that we would stay for either lunch or dinner. They would not allow us to leave without feeding us. And this was just part of how they received us. And in the second episode, as you'll see, it is the nature day in Iran that they were recording. It is the nature day. And the family that I talked to, Ahmad Zadeh, they lost two kids, one grader and another one, I think, she was nine, I think. And both of them have been killed in the attack. And they, at the end of it, they said it's the nature they and we want to give back to earth it's important for us

Adnan Husain: Oh, she dropped off.

Bikrum Gill: She dropped off.

Adnan Husain: Yeah. Well, I mean, I'm wondering, you know, Bikram, in the meantime, you know, kind of what observations you've made about these first two episodes.

Bikrum Gill: Yeah. So I mean, I think what you said in the lead up to the question, like I definitely felt I felt a lot of things when I when I would watch the small contribution I'm trying to make to the, to the, to the series, just like, you know, reflecting on it and thinking about kind of its significance. But, you know, in relation to what you said, I've been on your show before and I've talked about this is, um, It's really hard to hold both things at once, to hold the sense that it's kind of like too much has been lost. When you're watching the episode, what's really powerful is the way in which they bring the children to life. They remain alive. They're still with them. And they recount their lives in such a way that shows how their lives exceeded even the missile strike. It exceeds the logic of imperialist war. And you're left with a deep sense of loss, like a deep pain that these children that represented the best of humanity, you could see what they were bringing to the world. It was lost by the worst of humanity. So I think that really strikes kind of very deeply. And it's something that I think you can never overcome it. And I think the way in which Hylia is talking about the strength and generosity of those families, that comes out very well. But also, what also I think is expressed is how they hold that dignity along with the pain of the loss. And somehow, those of us who reside in these countries that are inflicting this violence, we have to somehow not abandon the pain that attended to these strikes, but also look to how they survive and renew life in the face of this. I just wanted to come back to something you had said about sovereign recognition. I think that's very important in the sense that You know, the documentary is not, it's not begging for recognition. So the difference between sovereign and non-sovereign, like I like the way you said it, like knowledge or voice, because, you know, my own like more scholarly concern with the decolonial, post-colonial trends was, is how they detached questions of knowledge production from questions of material power. And in that setting, it's like Sayyid Hassan Nasrullah said, they don't actually care if you're Muslim, actually. He's like, if you're a sovereign Muslim or a non-sovereign Muslim. So what that means is, from who does your voice seek recognition? Is your voice begging for recognition or is it commanding recognition? Is it commanding? And I think this documentary is that second mode. It is sovereign. I think that's a very good way you put it. But it's attached to a material power. And I think this is Hilya's point in her scholarship and in the documentary. is that the islamic republic this war is prefiguring showing us a world to come a different justice that's backed by a different force so if the force is in the west then you will perform for them you will ask for justice from them and then maybe what you will say is You know, the IRGC is the ultimate blame falls on them. You guys made a mistake. Can we have justice within this? Or something of that sort. But you're appealing to them for justice. The power of what's coming out of Iran over the past month, there's no appeal to justice from the West. You know, there is a demand for justice. There's a command for justice based on their own power. They're not begging anymore. And I think that inflects the voice differently. This question of sovereign voice. Who do we speak for? From whom do we seek recognition? And I think that's where a lot of otherwise people who've opposed the genocide in Palestine, they falter on this point. They falter on this point because they cannot see and they cannot apprehend what is signified by anti-imperialist power of a different world to come. So I think, yeah, the question of sovereign voice is important. And I think that's something that will come through in the documentary. And maybe last point, like what Hylia was saying there, is that that sovereign voice is grounded in a material power that opens up a different epistemology and in honoring their children and honoring their martyrdom. It's that grounding. It is from that grounding that they demand justice. So I think that's a good way to approach it. So we've lost, have we lost Haleah?

Adnan Husain: Yeah, actually she needs the link again, if you can. Yeah, I can. Then the link that you had, that would be good. I can't seem to find where on this. But I think that's a very useful framework of connecting the material conditions of sovereignty with narrative ones, these kind of cultural productions. And that's an important point. that you mentioned about trying to model what a future alternative sovereign framework would look like. I mean, that is, I think, so important about the kind of character of the Islamic Republic's resistance is that it is modeling an alternative, what a sovereign alternative looks like outside of the imperialist system. And we can see that the goals in some ways that have been articulated for the war kind of match and map onto that same kind of conscious goal of showing and achieving what a non-imperialist alternative that's sovereign for the region and its peoples might look like.

Bikrum Gill: Yeah, I sent you the link. I don't know if she got it.

Adnan Husain: I've got it, so I'm sending it now.

Bikrum Gill: OK, so, yeah, I think I mean, I mean, if she can join us, this is like also this would transition into the question of the article or articles we've been working on on international law. But I think this point that you're making, I don't know, we've talked about it before, but the sovereign alternative. or like a different world order, you know? So like the world order as it exists today is one structured by imperialism that has as its primary motive the appropriation of surplus value from the peripheries, a wealth drain from periphery to core, And the alternative that Iran is putting forward in alignment with other forces across the world system that are challenging imperialism. So what is really at stake structurally? What I say structurally is the surplus wealth that is generated through whether cooperative or competitive economic relations, for example. whether they are drained into an imperialist core or recycled back into a territory. Recycled back into a territory in a sovereign sense where the people of that territory can utilize their wealth, their resources, but also their knowledge in a way to reproduce their lives in a way that produces meaning in correspondence with their histories, with their theologies. That's really what's at stake. But the only way to get there is to enforce it. And that is the point on which the Islamic Republic of Iran has never compromised. It has refused to compromise. Of course, there have been internal debates. There have been different tendencies that have emerged. But the principle that has always fallen back upon is a refusal to end up in a dependent position, actually, structurally, materially, even epistemologically in other ways. So I think we're seeing this today. Maybe we'll get to it later on. But this question of the significance of Hormuz today in backstopping a real international law, this sovereign alternative you're speaking about, Because Iran has something in its hands. It's exceeded the United States. It hasn't simply left Israel and now gone into a scale of confrontation with the United States. It's actually left the United States. And now... gone to the level of the world economy. It's demonstrated itself to have a lever that can enforce a different type of law, like a real law based on justice and morals and ethics, rather than defending capital, defending the pursuit of profit, defending the pursuit of immediate pleasure, and so forth.

Adnan Husain: Yeah, okay, that's an interesting topic and in bringing up the Strait of Hormuz and control over it as a material sovereign act that disrupts the imperialist kind of economic and legal system. is an interesting point particularly because I saw a recent discussion based on an international legal scholar's publication that apparently had quite wide circulation and reception in Iran itself. Dr. Maryam Jamshidi about examining the legality of Iran's claims for control over its territorial waters in the strait. under various conventions about laws of the sea and the fact that Iran isn't a party to some of them and is asserting other kinds of rights, all of which especially during wartime and then subsequently could be configured as legal within the current international system. And so it's kind of an interesting question how much Iran has in some ways adhered to, in very careful ways, conventions of international law while also at the same time in the way that you're suggesting showing the possibilities for a different more just and more equitable regime for global south countries that have been written out and disadvantaged in many ways by the priorities of imperialism that fixed the legal system and the world order in the post-world war ii period and decolonization meant having to now become a nation within that system rather than creating some kind of new system. And so how do you think of the kind of balance between these things and how do you parse that kind of problem or question that Iran seems in some ways to be balancing between these two priorities and these two imperatives?

Bikrum Gill: Yeah, I think that's the right way to cut into it. Maybe what I'll say in the first instance is there's a difference between formal equality before the law and substantive equality. This is, of course, Marx's famous series of reflections on law and the relationship between law and property, but this can be applied to the international scale. For Marx, for example, you may have formal equality before the law. individuals but you have a vast discrepancy in terms of say property holders versus a dispossessed proletariat like what does it mean to speak of formal equality in this setting it's an equality that preserves inequality right it preserves the power of capital over the power of dispossessed labor so In this sense, if we think about some of those formal laws might theoretically sound good, but in practice, they don't work well because of this substantive inequality. So let's think about international law. I think there's an essay that I think everybody should read by Samir Amin. I'm going to mess up the title, but it's like U.S. imperialism. Europe and the Middle East. It's really important. And I think especially if people want to think about the relationship between the Ukraine war and what's been happening. And of course, Amin wrote this quarter century ago, but it still has a lot of relevance. I think thinking Europe and West Asia together in relation to how they backstop or necessary foundation for U.S. imperialism. But in that article, Amin basically makes this point that international law doesn't have to be a tool of imperialism. You would rather actually resolve questions of the relations among nations. You'd rather have a real law among nations, if possible. But Amin argues that the United States prevented this. So let's think about an example, like the law of the sea. So it can make sense to think about freedom of navigation. If you want to think about the security as states trade with one another, they invest with one another, and they want to have a sense of trust and security in their relations with one another. But the enforcement of that law has come through U.S. naval power. So what do you have in the Strait of Hormuz, or adjacent to the Strait of Hormuz? You have the US Fifth Fleet in Bahrain. So this US Fifth Fleet in Bahrain is supposed to be the upholder of the Law of the Sea, and they're supposed to do this in a way that upholds a real international law. But it's clearly designed in such a way to uphold the United States power over the control of oil flows out of the region, which then founds the recycling of oil flows into US treasuries, the pricing of oil in US dollars. But does it not make more sense for a law such as that to be enforced by sovereign powers of the region? So in the Strait of Hormuz, You know, so like you have actually Iran can say we are abiding by law in fact, right? Whereas the US Fifth Fleet does not allow for a consistent application of law because when they say that you are not allowing the free flow of capital or commerce, what they're basically arguing is you are asserting sovereignty. So what did Iran do in the Strait of Hormuz, starting from the US, the first Gulf War? They see how US naval power is able to enforce sanctions against Iraq. And so they start to develop a capacity in the Strait of Hormuz, which is now immovable capacity. I think this is important to remember. It's not like Iran woke up two years ago and decided we need to demonstrate a capacity to the Strait of Hormuz. This is something they've been building for decades out of the reality of the US Fifth Fleet in the region, out of the reality of the sanctions on Iraq and the wars on Iraq. And now you have a concrete power in the Strait of Hormuz that cannot be dislodged. And that power is a sovereign power. That's a regional power that invites the world to move through those waters, but in a way that respects the sovereignty of the states of the region now one can say well what about the sovereignty of the gulf states but we know those gulf states are not sovereign states so that's the so this don't don't get it wrong here we're not trying to say uh okay well iran is asserting sovereignty but what if there's a divergence of sovereign interests there's not a divergent sovereign interest those are not sovereign states you know they're upholding the interests of the united states

Adnan Husain: I think that's actually a very important point that derives from history as well as material analysis of their conditions of governance in the present. How hosting these US bases, But even in their creation as a historian, I'm more concerned by the fact that these are creations of the preceding imperialist power and system that also had an investment in the maritime law of free trade and so on under the British and this was just inherited by the United States in the region as hegemon taking over those same kind of functions. And these little statelets are not historic entities that have any kind of history significance. They are vassal states that were carved out from territories of the Ottoman Empire or other pre-existing polities to privilege access to the waterways even before oil was discovered to provide basing and refueling and strategic access for the British military and some of these countries didn't even become so-called independent states until the 1970s, like as in the case of Qatar. I think that's a very substantial point is that then they are placed within the nation-state system in the way that it's organized for international law without necessarily being sovereign. They're entities for the continual pursuit of imperialist goals in the region. If you look at the populations that we're talking about, we're tiny populations where they're next door to large populations, Iran, Iraq, You know, other parts of the region, even Saudi is like legitimately has like a real population, but most of which is, you know, but so it, you know, so that's what, you know, what in a materialist analysis you look at and you see, well, so the vast majority of people in this region are disenfranchised.

Bikrum Gill: Yeah.

Adnan Husain: And a kind of ruling oligarchic elite that is sponsored by the imperialist powers are, you know, enjoying outside kind of control and wealth of these resources that are meant just to sequester it from use for sovereign development of the peoples of the region more broadly.

Bikrum Gill: Exactly. And I think, so like, what are the GCC states, right? You have You have them, in some ways, they're protectorates, but now they clearly, there's a vacuum now that they're going to have to confront. So in what sense are they protectorates? So, you know, this petrodollar order that is spoken about often, this, you know, this relationship between the Gulf and the United States, we've clearly seen in the war over the past two months that a big part of this was protecting the Zionist entity. You know, like they're there, they host U.S. military bases, U.S. surveillance capabilities, Zionist surveillance capabilities in order to protect. And why do you want to protect The Zionist entity, because this is an entity that is key to the U.S. projection of power over the whole region. Right. So now the Gulf states are wealthy. So maybe somebody would say, well, OK, how can you say they're not sovereign? They're not poor. They've made a lot of wealth out of this, but they're dependent. They're not independently generating wealth in the way Iran is doing so. Now, no person is ever entirely independent. No society is ever entirely independent. The question I think going back to Amin is, is your development, is it more weighted towards an external basis or is it based endogenously more? So the Gulf states have done well working with the US military, with the US dollar, but they don't have an endogenous basis to their own economy. And this is, I think, the difference between a sovereign and a non-sovereign order. They exist primarily to police the region, to keep the region in its place, so you can't have broader sovereignty. So their wealth, comes at the expense of their neighbors. It comes at the expense, whereas a real sovereign regional order would not do that. And it's very interesting. Now we're at a moment where it's very clear that they do not have a protector. The US has been exposed now. This whole order has been exposed. They're not sovereign, that's very clear. They cannot protect themselves from a real sovereign. They rely on being protected by the United States, but the United States is incapable of doing that. Let's say, when we talk about hegemony, there's two components, will and capability. We can say on both of those, the United States is not capable neither does it have the will to protect the gene and that's very evident so there's a vacuum that exists in the region now and there's only one state that can fill the vacuum which is Iran. Iran is the only state. So Iran actually is offering them a sovereign future. And it's really interesting because Iran is offering for some years now Saudi Arabia. They're offering, and I think this is interesting because even right now as they've totally rejected US negotiations as they should because it's a sham, now you can see Iran returning to their foreign policy of what they call brotherliness or neighborliness. They're going to Oman, Pakistan, to go around negotiations, come to an understanding with their neighbors, because they don't actually need to talk to the United States right now. They can have that management over the Strait of Hormuz if they come to an agreement with Oman. But they've been saying to the Saudis for some years now, In your own interest, it is better to work with us than with the Americans. And Iran could very well say we never want to talk to Saudi Arabia again because of how they have worked with the Americans and the Zionist entity against us. But that's not what Iran is saying. What they are saying is there's a better future for you, a more sovereign future for the whole region. And like Iran, it has the underlying, when we talk about structural analysis, we have to understand that Iran has underlying structural power. It always did, but it's demonstrated this in her moves. And it's basically demonstrating to Saudi Arabia, your real security comes from integrating with us into the region, not with Israel, not with the United States. And that security can then allow for a more stable and secure economic basis. So this is something that was on offer when the China broker detente happens between Iran and Saudi Arabia in spring of 2023. It seemed like Saudi was hedging, but over the last year, it seemed like they went all the way back to the American camp, especially when Trump, I think, visits the Gulf in May of 2025. And it seems like Saudi goes all in on this again. But it seems very irrational. Now, we can explain it by saying these are client states. that are structured by a type of capital, profit-seeking classes that are integrated into US capital circuits. But even that we can see with Dubai, with the UAE, this is not sustainable in this way. So I think going back to the international law question and the question of the regulation of commerce into and out of the region, that should be done in the first instance in service of reproducing the peoples and lands of the region. And that has to happen through a regional integration. And that's what the Hormuz equation is putting forward. And I believe that this is going to force over the medium term, maybe not the short term, but I think the Gulf states are going to be, it's going to become very clear to them that they only have one choice. And that's going to have to be, especially for Saudi Arabia, it's going to have to be, I think, moving more towards integration with Iran, whether they like to or not. It's just the material fact that we find ourselves in.

Adnan Husain: yeah i mean i think these are the strategic questions that the war and iran's sovereign and successful response to imperialist war are posing for these gcc countries and it seems that some of them are trying to take different uh attacks or approaches but that even the uae like recently you know some high-level commentators who are close to the ruling you know uh family in Abu Dhabi seem to acknowledge and recognize that the US bases are a liability rather than a guarantee of security and that perhaps they should not return to fostering and sponsoring and hosting US bases. But at the same time, thinking that perhaps if we invest in our own military weapons and security from the United States, that we might be able to take our own defense rather than thinking, collective security regionally here is the only option for prosperity and continuation. But others seem to be perhaps more open and understanding. And I'm so glad that you mentioned that the the direction of travel and in fact in some ways the necessity of this war for the imperialists became evident a few years ago when China brokered that initial relationship between Saudi Arabia and Iran to restore diplomatic relations and that that was a very hopeful and promising possibility for continuing integration of the region on its own behalf for its own purposes and now I think we're seeing that these negotiations that have been hosted by Pakistan are coming out of really You know, maybe there are many pressures and many kind of reasons, you know, for trying to organize and support these. But one clearly is that Turkey, Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi have a stance that they're going to have to come up together with some sort of solution that's workable for these states, these actually populous, important, potentially sovereign states, because they're not right now, but they can see that the U.S. imperial kind of umbrella security architecture is just connected entirely with a greater Israel project. totally unreliable, does not privilege or prioritize the security of the vast majority of the peoples, even their allies and subordinates who have been incorporated into the US kind of program. And so alternatives have to be sought and Iran is creating the potential. And I think it's very important that they seem to recognize that too, that it isn't just about kind of confronting all these other states because they're part of the NATO alliance or they're, you know, vassals of the US military in the case of Egypt or, you know, like the way Saudi is incorporated in this whole Gulf program, but that they have to turn them towards their own genuine interests and and forge the mechanism by which, which doesn't mean that it won't have its stresses and there will be differences and so on, but at least if it's actually their own sovereign kind of negotiations and security architecture and economic plan for development in the region, outside of the US system, that's the only option for success. And the role of China having been important in sponsoring that is also perhaps a point of direction for the future as well. Not that they would be within China's umbrella, but that there are alternatives for technology, for investment, for infrastructure that will respect sovereignty of these countries.

Bikrum Gill: Yeah. So maybe starting with that last point, I think there should be an understanding. China will never, ever step in, you know, to be a guarantor in the region. That is not China's approach. It refuses that approach. You know, it'll be a guarantor in its immediate vicinity. But China has a belief when it talks about a multipolar world or a polycentric world, or if we use the old Chinese concept of international relations, all under heaven, right? Like if we think about this, That has to be based on real sovereign equality. It can't be real sovereign equality if China is a security guarantor of the region. You know, it has to come out of the region. And this is a firm belief of the Communist Party. So we're not going to see China step in as a security guarantor. But I think you're right that China, what it tries to offer is a different framework. So let's think about this in relation to Saudi Arabia. So, you know, when Saudi Arabia is engaged in an eight-year war with Yemen, With Ansarullah, a real sovereign power there. You see there, as we're seeing now, there is some rhyming that happens between the war on Iran and the war on Yemen. There are some similarities here, but one thing that we can see is Ansarullah comes to power in Yemen. Ansarullah is a real sovereign force. It understands that the sovereignty of Yemen is tied to the sovereignty of the region, which requires the defeat of U.S. imperialism, the defeat of Zionism. Saudi Arabia is afraid, obviously, because it has a lot... Saudi Arabia itself is a key... And I think people should have an understanding. Neither of us are saying Saudi Arabia is a revolutionary state or social formation in any sense. It's just what structure does. It's what might compel Saudi Arabia to change its behavior, different incentives. But of course, Saudi Arabia has had a really violent approach to Yemen for decades. You know, and Saudi Arabia is really... has a certain sort of paranoia or worry about revolutionary forces that have often risen up in Yemen. So Saudi obviously attacks Yemen in coordination with the US and the UK from 2015 to 2023. But the point here is they're not able to defeat Ansar Allah. There's no security solution to this. All the United States can offer them are more useless weapons. Weapons that can destroy, like Sayyid Hassan Ansar Allah says, yeah, sure. You can't impose a destruction that reveals who you are, that reveals your lack of humanity. But that doesn't do anything for you strategically. So the Saudis did engage in massive destruction. The people of Yemen suffered immensely. But it only enhanced the insecurity of Saudi Arabia. It did not do anything to actually further secure whatever. It made their oil production more insecure. And that's where China steps in. And China says, we have a different framework that we call a global security initiative, a global development initiative, a global civilization. These three initiatives, I think that President Xi Jinping puts forward. Your security is tied into the integration of Iran into the region. This will lead to a peace in Yemen. This is the best way to secure for you. Otherwise, you will never defeat you. There's no military solution here. There has to be an integration. And I think so that becomes a very important, I think, instruction of what's happening right now and the difference there. There is, I think, a difference we can point to between, I think, some of the states who said Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, Turkey versus, say, the UAE. So there is, I think, an understanding. There's been a Saudi Arabia-UAE quote-unquote rivalry even in Yemen. I think because of the UAE in many ways, financially, in other ways, it's so deeply intermeshed in an even more pronounced way. So we might see a furthering of a split there. But I think there's a question when we're thinking about what compels them to move even more so, these underlying structural shifts. Now, whether they do or do not, it may be an ideological question. So the degree to which the Gulf states were constituted through imperialism, even if it's irrational now for the immediate material interest, is there an ideological weight that hangs over them? That makes it impossible to see this is our rational interest. But then does this structural transformation of world and regional order, does it open space for what has been called in other terms of social, maybe not revolution, but some sort of transformation of the social question within Saudi Arabia? If the elites in Saudi Arabia continue to be incapable of responding to history, history meaning the material changes that are happening, and they continue to fall back into these foolish, irrational beliefs that they have, that the United States is a trustworthy partner in the region. Yeah.

Adnan Husain: Yeah, I mean, so this is, there's so many things that touch upon this, but this has been very substantive analysis. I mean, we have to hope that the forces, as you're saying, structurally in the region that come out of this Iranian sovereign resistance to the empire in the region actually can lead to reorientation and realignment, not because the nature of the Saudi regime is progressive, but just in its own interests that it recognizes that the empire is actually damaging to them uh in this context and that they have to seek a regional peace and a regional kind of program um on on some level so we hope uh we hope these lessons are being learned right and you know uh it's it's uh amazing to see uh how resistant sometimes um you know uh the vassal states and the empire is to recognizing the reality that's materially confronting them. I mean, this is the problem with empire is that it is so full of its own supremacist ideological projection that it cannot recognize reality and adjust capably to it. So this is the situation that we see now.

Bikrum Gill: And in Lebanon as well, how delusional, your empire doesn't adjust. And I think I like what you're saying, how delusional it makes its vessels. So you're seeing Lebanon, for example, you're seeing this government that seems to somehow believe that talking to Israel, talking to the United States is going to do something now at a moment when Hezbollah is clearly demonstrating a set of capabilities that Israel cannot deal with. We're seeing now these fiber optic explosive drones that Hezbollah is deploying. So they set up a yellow line and the resistance in the south is like, OK, wow, now watch this. We have these fiber optic drones. You think you're the only one who learns from the Ukraine war? And they're applying these. What did we see yesterday? They took out some more occupation soldiers, invading soldiers. But like the delusion that you're talking about, that it's not the choice. I think that the lesson that it should impart on us, I think to start where Hylia started, is the epistemological question as well. Do we, and I think I may have said this on your program or somewhere else, but do we just simply, look at the resistance? Do we simply look at those regions that are targeted by imperialism as objects of being targeted? Do we simply look at them in this way or do we take seriously them as sites of knowledge? Do we take them seriously as forces of world making? I think that's the question, right? And I think in the south of Lebanon, why that matters is we should not assume that imperialism is always the one with the initiative. And I think it's hard to grasp that because when we start to move away from imperialism as the initiative, I think the concern becomes how do we grasp when it's not just victim and oppressor, right? Like how do we, there is oppressor, there is the imperialist, but now they confront an empowered people. They confront somebody who holds power and has the initiative. And anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism is something the imperialist must respond to. So how do we shift to that? Because I think the power of the documentary on Minab that Hilya and her team have been working on is it refuses this logic that I think the West, whether left or right, anywhere in the political spectrum has a hard time getting out of when it comes to the East, the Orient or the South. is it can only apprehend them as victims or children or villainous monsters. You know, like either a child you have to save. This is the Francesca Albanese approach, right? Like doing brave work, pointing out all the, but never, ever, ever being able to apprehend a Palestinian with a rocket as having a legitimate right to that rocket, you know? Never, so, or, or, It moves from, if you are not a child or a victim, then you're only a villain. The moment you grasp power and wield power back, then that's really when Orientalism kicks in. Then, once again, what is described as a despotic power. So this is what is asked of us. How do we look at those, not simply as people to be saved, not simply as people who we feel sorry for, but as those who you engage in mutual recognition and learning with? And I think that's the challenge that even Lebanon poses today. Is it the case that the Lebanese government, can they grasp that Israel and the United States aren't the only ones with the initiative? That the resistance itself is creating facts on the ground, that they themselves are determining the course of the future, as is the case with the Islamic Republic. So I think you're right, the imperialists, are incapable of recognizing that. But even the vassals have this delusion. And maybe even those of us in the solidarity movements in the West, you know, and this is maybe the step we have to take right now.

Adnan Husain: Absolutely. I think that's absolutely correct. And it's the kind of thing I've been talking and thinking about is that something new has opened up because we're not used to actually seeing it very frequently, right? Like the history of the last 30 or 40 years has not provided a lot of examples of sovereign independence in resistance to empire. I mean, there may have been, you know, China is emerging, constantly increasing in its sovereign capabilities, but it didn't do so necessarily in direct war and confrontation. And so we're used to thinking of the empire as having this kind of power and being able to determine events and it's it's so powerful and it just slaughters and you know we obsess about that but in fact actually what is important is to recognize not just as victims that's the problem that iran poses for this consciousness that they're doing something different they're capable in a different way and not everybody has adjusted to reorienting and thinking about their political orientation of solidarity with a sovereign resistant power. We're only trained to be in solidarity with the victims. This is something new and important to recognize and discuss. and think about the implications and consequences of. And I really think that that's been very helpful for you to talk about it. And, you know, of course, the Lebanese government, it's even more. I've been thinking of you actually a number of times about it, reading your colleague Amal Saad's posts about it and following the situation and discussing it with colleagues and on different programs with Hussein Assaf from Vocal Politics there in southern Lebanon in a recent episode, is the contradictions and abuse and abuse of the concept of sovereignty by the Lebanese government. Of claiming that, oh, well, we have to have, we're the government, we're the legitimate nation state. So this is the thing. This is like what we were getting back to what we were talking about before that Iran has kind of demonstrated alternatives. It's not just about being recognized within the nation state system and within the Western constitution. constructed world order, that's not actual sovereignty. They mistake the kind of legal basis that they have a state that's recognized, even though it was put in place, you know, both the prime minister, you know, Nawaf Salam and Joseph Aoun, the president, were, you know, basically placed in power by Saudi U.S., etc., right? Forces that kind of put them in. They are mistaking, you know, that kind of fictional legal convention of sovereignty for real sovereignty, which is defending your territory, resisting the encroachments of Israel, and also bargaining away that sovereignty to give away, to allow colonization, recolonization of the country. I mean, this is like unbelievable. So I think what you've been talking about is shows that in the Lebanese example shows the gap between the imperialist concept of legal sovereignty under this existing order versus actual sovereignty, you know, that is defended by your missiles, is sovereign in your territory, that defends its people and that shows a different pathway and possibility.

Bikrum Gill: Yeah. So, I mean, on that point, definitely always shout out to Amal Saad. And, you know, I'm very, very grateful to have ended up in a department with her as a colleague and just, yeah, really, really wonderful comrade. And, you know, when we first started kind of thinking about our work when I was on the way here, it dawned upon us that we had been approaching sovereignty from very similar ways. Obviously, we were not in touch, but it just so happened that we've been thinking about it along similar lines. And I think you're right, she's been writing a lot of really important points on exactly how you framed it in Lebanon. And I think if you can remember, when I was on your program in November, written a couple months before a piece called Orders of Sovereignty, more in relation to Palestine. But what I looked at in that piece is similar to what Amal is looking at in relation to Lebanon, is this relation that you pointed to between internal and external sovereignty. Because on the one hand, if you listen to the Lebanese, the government, Aoun and Salam, you can hear something similar. You might be like, wait, they're saying the same thing we are. Because what they're saying is, To be a real sovereign, we can't have competing bases of force. We need to have a monopoly of force. And, you know, I don't disagree with that premise, but I think it goes to what you're saying, well, what is the basis of that monopoly of force? Well, clearly, to become, to establish, and that's when I talk in my own work about a quantitative basis of sovereignty. To establish that quantitative basis of sovereignty is to overwhelm any other challenger in your territory, to establish a monopoly of force. But, are turning to an external basis of sovereignty to do so they're not actually doing so internally they're not actually integrating the south and the rest of the country into a unified national position to demonstrate in the way Antonio Gramsci might have said in Italy like a unified kind of nation right that accounts for the interest of all in the nation they're not doing that they're seeking to lean on an external recognition that undermines one third or more of the country, right? That undermines their actual real territorial integrity because they're basically surrendering to this expansionist power to the side. So they're confusing the flow of sovereignty. Sovereignty should flow from an internal basis. And none of us would ever say, that there isn't an important way that sovereignty also involves recognition with other sovereigns that we encounter one another through difference and we recognize one another but it still should flow from the internal basis of sovereignty and it's flowing in the opposite direction in lebanon it's flowing external to internal even though they're claiming you know they're claiming this is about an internal monopoly of force but who is providing you the means to do so the united states the zionists right so it's external to internal whereas what hezbollah and the resistance in the south is putting on the table is an actual sovereign basis rooted in the land, in a defense of the land. And that's the qualitative form. So what is it? So sovereignty is about quantitative defense, but it's also about a form of life that's rooted in history, that's rooted in struggle, that may be rooted in theology. And it's out of that form that sovereignty emerges and then that the hard power of sovereignty seeks to defend that. But it has to go that direction, inside to outside, internal to relations with others. Otherwise, if you don't, then you will be always oriented towards reproducing that external basis you know so it becomes a loss of that so i think i would agree with you i think we're seeing when we when we've been saying imperialism versus sovereignty is the primary question and this framework i think we're seeing that sharpening and becoming more acute um we saw it in palestine we're seeing in lebanon we're seeing it in iran in different ways so yeah

Adnan Husain: Yeah, the evidence and the signs are all around for us to see. Just like as the poem says, there's all these signs, but only for those who reflect and ponder. So this has been an opportunity to do that and also to talk with Hélia Dutari, who unfortunately because of connection problems, had to drop off. But we're so grateful that we were able to talk with her about her wonderful series, Stealing Me Knob, the second episode of which should be out by the time this episode is out. And we look forward to continuing episodes coming to inform us and to tell a sovereign narrative story of that experience. And also, we covered some of what you and Xi are together working on in terms of a series or at least a two-part article set on these kinds of questions of sovereignty and these orders of sovereignty as they're working out in the case of Iran and Lebanon. Where will people be able to follow these and read these?

Bikrum Gill: Sure. So I think it's going to be, it's going to be, the plan is for it to come out in Middle East Critique. So I'm sure many people who follow or watch are familiar with the Middle East Critique Journal, obviously very important work. And so hopefully that'll be out soon in May or June at the latest. But yeah, it'll be fantastic. It's not a bad thing that it's become bigger than we had anticipated. So I think it's unfolding in that way. And I would just say maybe a couple of points on it's too bad, but it's the reality of how things are that Hylia's connection dropped. Apologies to your viewers. I also, if I'm quite honest, I wanted to hear and listen and learn from her a lot. So now your viewers got stuck just with the two of us. But hopefully the beginning was, I think, very profound, her opening thoughts. What I would say is, I just echo what you would say. I would really encourage everybody to watch every episode and to share it as widely as you can, because I've not seen an approach like this before. It's what Ahile was saying, it's not simply documenting. It's not simply looking at a scene. It's not simply documenting what has happened to people. It is a different type of knowledge production that is engaged. It is simultaneously ethnographic. It is simultaneously journalistic. It is simultaneously analytical. It's theoretical. And it's putting forward a different conception of the world. And it points you to that law that will come. you know so it's so what you can imagine is um you know there's uh i understand it has different connotations islamically mamadou is telling me this but uh ibn khaldun's uh i think this concept that he has that you know the world will renew uh and i'm aware that maybe it has it can have negative connotations also but if the world reviews renews from the margins it renews itself uh from the peripheries you know and i think we see this in this documentary we see that whatever world is to come whatever knowledge is to come you can see what it looks like from the vantage point of minab you know so we're not just looking we're not we're not just looking at me we're seeing minab look back at the world and we're seeing manab demand justice for its children but not just demand justice for its children it's like what the mother says in episode two She says something that really shook me. They're demanding justice for their children, but their martyrdom, the mother says, she understands their martyrdom as a part of awakening the world to the truth of what the United States stands for, to the truth of what the Zionist entity stands for and what's at stake. So we're seeing not just Minab, we're seeing the world as Minab, is responding and putting forward a different world it's it's it's very uh essential i don't think there's too many other things you can watch i like this so i really encourage that uh folks to watch that and um maybe uh you know like we had mentioned before we started recording we're going to to lahore pakistan for this um this conference. And yeah, I don't know what your schedule is like, Adnan, but if the connection is better there, maybe we can all get together again in the coming week while we're in Pakistan to try this again and to update you on the happenings there as well. So,

Adnan Husain: That would be fantastic. We would look forward to it. It would be our privilege to host a conversation from the conference with you, Helia, and others who might be there. I want to thank you so much, Bikram, for your time and for this analysis and also for really promoting this series, Still Minab. It is what I would call a form of guerrilla history, speaking back and both documenting but also waging kind of the intellectual war, the narrative war on behalf of the sovereignty of the people of Iran and hopefully for the rest of the world. So it's a great service and we look forward to more on this. I want to thank you again and thank all of you for joining. And there's much more on this channel. So please do like, share, subscribe. And I wish you all peace with justice and solidarity to you all.