Angry Planet - The Life and Death of Iran's Shadow Commander

Episode Date: December 10, 2020

If you’ve ever heard the phrase one-man wrecking crew, they might well have been talking about Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s Shadow Commander.Soleimani’s first fight was against Iraq in the war that started right after Iran’s revolution and lasted until 1988. He went on to great success fighting bandits and drug lords, eventually taking over Iran’s Quds Force - Iran’s tool for diplomacy by other means.For more than 20 years, Soleimani helped Ayatollah Khamanei project power around the region-becoming a force to be reckoned with in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and more.In January, Qassem Soleimani was killed by the United States.Today, we’re joined by Arash Azizi, who literally wrote the book on Soleimani. It’s called The Shadow Commander: Soleimani, the US and Iran’s Global Ambitions, and it was published in November.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast. Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. The idea was that when you join Hezbollah or when you join a Iraqi group or even when you join the Houthis in Yemen, you are joining this bigger attempt to change the world. You're joining this big attempt to reform politics. and all the ideas the revolutionary fever that came out of the 1979. Of course, that's just the potential.

How was Soleimani able to effectuate this potential, which had failed many times before? One day, all of the facts in about 30 years' time will be published. When genocide has been colored out in this country, almost in infinity, and when it is near completion, people talk about intervention. They met with fire. fury and frankly power, the likes of which this world has never seen before. Welcome to Angry Planet. I'm Jason Fields. And I'm Matthew Galtz. If you've ever heard of the phrase one-man wrecking crew, you might well think of this next man.

Kassim Soleimani, Iran's shadow commander. Soleimani's first fight was against Iraq in the war that started right after Iran's revolution. and lasted until 1988. He went on to great success, fighting bandits and drug lords, eventually taking over Iran's Quds force, Iran's tool for diplomacy by other means. For more than 20 years, Soleimani helped Ayatollah Khomey project power around the region, becoming a force to be reckoned with in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and more. In January, Qasem Soleimani was killed by the United States.

States. Today, we're joined by Arash Azizi, who literally wrote the book on Soleimani. It's called The Shadow Commander, Soleimani, the U.S., and Iran's global ambitions, and it was just published in November. Welcome to the show. Hi, thanks for having me. It's great to be with you guys. Can we start with, it's not quite breaking news, but it's pretty close. A top nuclear scientist, Iranian nuclear scientist was killed by everybody says Israel recently. And that comes on the heels of another Israeli operation that killed someone from al-Qaeda also in Tehran. Can you talk a little bit about what you see might be going on? I mean, you know, the basic reality that it shows, number one, is how vulnerable the IRGC is and how bad it is at its most basic jobs.

of keeping the security of even its highest officials. So the said scientist, Mosin Fakhrizadeh, was actually the head of a covert nuclear weapons program that the world believed, most of the intelligence agencies believed it was discontinued in 2003. But at any rate, he was very highly guarded. He was always known. In fact, if you read Ronan Bergman's book

about history of Mossad operations around the world, it notes that Iranians heavily guarded Fakhrizada. So he was always a really high-value target. And the fact that they were able to kill him in plain sight in a very guarded, a small village outside Tehran. And then they're also able to get one of the Al-Qaeda figures who was in Iran a few months before that shows that they're really bad. And I think it ties to the story of my book, perhaps. And the question that is raised is that, you know, what does that say about Iranan security when the IRGC, the security agencies have this ability to have control in Lebanon and Iraq and Syria and spread themselves out?

but they're not able to keep basic security in their own backyard in Iran. Perhaps that's one way to think about it. I think first you should actually tell people what the IRGC is, because not everybody probably knows, and maybe even a little bit about their foundation, because the story is fascinating. So this is basically, yeah, I think it's at the heart of the book. IRGC, which stands for Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

an organization that came to be after the 1979 revolution. So the revolution brings down the Shah, brings down the monarchy in Iran and gives rise to a new Islamic Republic headed by Ayatollah Khomeini, a Shia cleric who had spent most of the last couple of decades in exile, but he now comes back to heroes welcome and he's able to unite the very large coalition and founded to Islamic Republic.

So as with any revolution, there is a question of what to do with the state institutions that the country inherits from the past and how to build new ones. Many, and not just the Islamists, believe that you need new armed forces of different sorts. And in fact, new armed groups and armed guards have really sprung up all over the place. They've took the affairs to their own hands. Again, this happens in basically a revolution in history, in Russian, Cuba and Chinese. So, but what happens at this point, again, like with other cases in the world is that Khomeini and the leadership of Islam Republic try to unite disarmed groups and banish the ones they don't like and they do

that and that's how IRGC comes to be but the important thing about it I'll just point to two things about IRGC in its foundation that that is important one is that it doesn't even use the name Iran in its name right and this was a debate and it's not accidental they choose not to have the name Iran because they believe that their goals are international and beyond Iran so from the The very beginning, this idea that they should do things outside Iran is there. And the two is that, as RGC leaders repeatedly say themselves, they don't believe they are bound by the Constitution of Iran,

letter on international law. They don't believe they are bound by anything but what they see as the ideals of the revolution as interpreted by themselves sometimes or by the command of the supreme leader. So this really defines them as this force that sees itself not bound by the borders of Iran and not bound by any law. And today it is definitely the most powerful force in Iran, not just militarily, but economically, it controls them like 30, 40% of Iran and economy.

So let's talk about Soleimani a little bit. Can you tell us basically who he was, what his origins were? Because his story is tied up with the guard just inextricably. Definitely. So Qasem Soleimani was a very young man when the revolution happened. Unlike the stories that they sort of later claimed, he was a basic young boy in a tribal part of Iran, and he did not seem to have had any political or even religious really experienced, right? So he had not really been part of the revolution in any serious, meaningful way.

But who he was was from a Kerman province in the start of Iran and not even on the sort of provincial center, but he came from a tribal area, a very small village. And as a young man, he had ended up going to Kerman, the provincial center, to work to help, you know, pay his family, which was a pretty poor family. And, you know, he signed up in karate classes and he got into martial arts. And he's known to have had friends who would attend revolutionary sermons. But anyways, the revolution of Iran, 1979, and the war that ensues immediately after with Iraq, eight-year war that pits Iran against Saddam Hussein's Iraq from 1980 to 1988. is what really makes Soleimani's career. The young boy joins the IRGC.

His first obligation to join is actually rejected because he didn't look like anything like a good, you know, Islamist boy. You know, he kind of was too fashionable and had funny hair and they didn't like him for that. But he impresses them with his physical abilities, really, because he was, as I said, he had played karate. He had played sort of traditional Persian athletics.

And he looked like someone that you want to have on your side, right? So he's able to really rise through the ranks of the IRC, throughout the war with Iraq. And he's one of the many whose lives are really changed by the revolution and by the war. And throughout these eight years of the war, he rises to become some sort of a middle commander, if you will. And he heads his own division. And he really excels at having, you know, basically recruiting boys from his own province of Kerman and a couple provinces nearby.

So in a revolution that had to rise a mass army, basically, to fight Iraq. with a very deadly, you know, long war, people like this are very important, right? People who are able to recruit local boys. And that's the story of his rise. That's how, as he rises to become a leading soldier, and to the end of his days, to the day he was killed in January 3, 2020, he remained a soldier of the IRGC. Can you tell us a little bit more about what Iran looked like and what it was like politically and intellectually at the time when he was a young man?

So I think that in the Western, especially America, we really misunderstand the revolution. So can you talk about that a little bit and how it was not just this one Islamic thing, but it was, you know, it was very different than that, right? Certainly, of course. Of course, it wasn't just an Islamic thing. The basic way to understand the Iranian Revolution of 1979 is to actually look at it, in my opinion, in the framework of what I call the long 1960s. from 1960s and 70s, right? This is a time when you have revolts all over the world. You have different sort of experimentation.

And if I want to say a bit provocatively, the Iran revolution has more to do with the sort of sex drugs and rock and roll culture, the 60s that it has with Islamic history, really, because it's just one more form of experimentation. So what happens is that Iran has a monarchical government of the Shah, who is also a close U.S. ally in the context of the Cold War, that obviously matters. and there is a very wide-ranging coalition against him, a lot of whom are communist, they're Marxists, and yes, and some of whom are Islamists.

Although this Islamist almost always, actually not even almost, it's very, very rare for them to emphasize, let's say, a social conservative agenda, right? Khomeini, very rarely he says that, oh yeah, we'd like to go and make Iran a more socially conservative place. He speaks of an Islam that is revolutionary, that he speaks of his community. to human rights. And there are many Islamists figures who mix Islam with Mao Zedong, with Lenin, with different sort of leftist interpretations. Of course, if anyone actually read the fine print of Khomeini, he had already pretty much said that he wants to create a Islamist regime in Iran.

Islamist regime that some scholars have likened to Plato's Republic in some way. Basically, this was a, you know, he wanted a teutocratic system. led by a philosopher king. But as you know, people don't read fine prints. They don't actually read the tourist of works. Figures like this, they support them politically. The basic story and tragedy, if you were, the Iranian Revolution, is that there was a very wide coalition

of people who came out for progressive change, really. They wanted them into the dictatorship, and they had all different source of progressive visions. But what happened afterwards is that Khomeini was able to use his mass facting to suppress all other forces, even all other Islamists, basically. Everybody bought himself and his accolades effectively and built the Islamic Republic in the way that we know it, a dictatorial, restrictive regime that also starts having

what you can call a sort of social conservative agenda, but, I mean, a very forcefully applied social conservative agenda. He wants to remake the world in the image of an ideal Islam in a way that, really has never happened in history when you really think about it, certainly not in modern times. So how, actually, I want to talk about Soleimani himself a little bit more. He really came into his own, I mean, by being everywhere at once. I mean, that's one thing that comes up in your book,

that he is just always at the forefront of the battle. And can you tell us a little bit about that? I mean, how he got that reputation and then also why he's called the Shadow Commander. I mean, I love that title. I personally wouldn't mind being like the Shadow podcast host or something like that. Yeah, well, it's an interesting story because it's a story of how capability and competence, if you will, can play an important role in history, right? There's actually all these debates about how effective the assassination of Soleimani was and how replaceable he is.

And this debates are sometimes silly because they're not genuine. Like people really have an opinion and sort of they say. But I think if you actually look at the facts, it's quite clear that Soleimani is very hard to replace. So the story of his life is really the story of the level of competence and capability that he had. And that's because of something that you point to. So the basic, in my view, Soleimani, because he came from, he came from a very marginalized background. He came from travel Iran. He was also a real soldier for life.

This is important because there are other people in the IRGC who have a more, you know, they have a theoretical understanding of Islamism. They're sort of their readers, right? They're people who are interested in politics. Soleimani really doesn't involve himself in political thinking. They tried to, you know, the images that they give of him is that, oh, he was such a genius that, you know, when he met Putin, Putin was like, wow, you understand the world better than anyone I've ever met. But there is no truth to this. There's ample evidence you can see in his writings

and in his speeches. He has actually very limited understanding of politics, you know, and that he sort of follows the command of harmony. But what he's very impressive at is that he's, number one, he's a combat man. So he's always there. And this is very important. And you can see this throughout his career. In his career throughout the war with Iraq, 1980 to 98, it's not as broad. I mean, I'm not a military historian, so there's a limit to how much judgment I can have, but it's clear that he's definitely not perceived as being, you know, very brilliant. But he's considered as being very brave, almost to the crazy level, right? The sort of guy who does something that everyone, the sort of guy that you see in superhero movies, right, that does something that's kind of crazy,

but it's very daring, and he would do it. And this quality matters a bit in the Iran-Iraq War, But it comes to matter very more later because of what happens after the war is that he joins the effort to fight the drug lords of eastern Iran. These are the borders of Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. And imagine it's something like a lawless border where a lot of drug rules. Drug lords really control vast swats. If you talk to people who live in that areas, there are vast swats of Iran that are Nogo areas. And Soleimani is a guy who goes there. and he gets on a helicopter and he shows up.

And this becomes much more important. The next job that he has is the commander of the Guzvors, which directs Iranian operations in the Arab world, whether it's helping Hezbollah in Lebanon and in its famous fight with Israel in 2006, or whether it's helping the Shia forces in Syria and other places. Soleimani shows up, and he's able, really, the achievement of his career,

he was able to build a Shia transnational army that really is able to fight. That is more than the sum of its parts, right? That it really has some sort of a unity. And it's important because the question of why would people join up in militia to fight and die for, it's an important one, right? We pass over it. But it's, you know, why would young Iraqis go and join not their national army,

but a army effectively under the country? command of an Iranian. It's not, it's not obvious of why that would happen. And part of it is that Soleimani is there and he has his capability. And the last thing I'd say on this account is that the most important part of the being there was, well, in the fight against ISIS, he shows up to Iraq, he paddled and he shows up to Syria. But in 2006, also, he shows up to Lebanon against the advice of Hezbollah leadership, frankly. And he does it twice. I mean, he comes from Iran after Hisbullah and Israel are in that fight. And his bulls, he does. law at the beginning thinks they're finished. But so Imani goes there and brings sort of greetings

and instructions from the Supreme Leader of Iran and he goes back to Iran and he comes back again in the course of that war that went on for a couple months. So this ability, this quality of being there really helps him to build trust with a lot of young men that he sent to their deaths and to be an effective commander of what is a very unusual theater spanning a few countries. You make it sound like, let me see if I can phrase it this way. So was he aware of the myth and the reputation that surrounded him? And did he use that? Or was it something that was more propped up by other people?

So there was always a debate, right? So on one side of this debate, I mean, we live in the age of media, right? We live in the age of mass media and Soleimani is the man of this age. There was actually a big debate as to, is it really the Western press that makes, Soleimani to who he is, because that's surely what they cared about most, right? Soleimani's image of being on the Newsweek and Soleimani's profile in the New Yorker magazine are repeated like, you know, religiously across the sort of publications and support. And this was a big, you know, now we have a commander who's on the cover of Newsweek

that can even maybe give rise to the ethics of the question because we all know also, if you're in the Western media, you are looking for characters, right? It's sort of character-driven story. so you want a guy you put on the cover. So maybe you help really turn the guy into a minute. But whatever the process was, I'd say that, yeah, so he turned out to be this big figure. He had this mythical image that he cultivated.

He cultivated very closely and very carefully. The Iranian regime is very adept at this sort of thing. They were, you know, they spent millions of dollars so that they would create just the right image of him, that he would be seen in just the right way, and that he would be seen above politics, even though he wasn't above politics, he was very much able to support the suppression of democratic movement in Iran and support the supreme leader. So they really cultivated image of him as this mystical, above at all commander with all these qualities and some of the best coverage helped.

But the last thing I'd say on this is that, you know, we talk about the shadow commander. There's something that I quote in the book, Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador who walked close with Soleimani at some point in his career. he wrote a piece about Soleimani's assassination in New York Times. I think the day after, definitely said the shadow command had come out of the shadows. And that's definitely the case. Soleimani had become a household name. Obviously, everyone knew how he looked like. And I think he was enjoying it a little too much, frankly,

which is why he also, as I reveal in the book for the first time, he considered running for president in 2021. I think he made, you know, he made, what you can say, perhaps the mistake of enjoying it a little too much. The temptations are hard, right, when you become a globally known figure. And when you, he was easily Iran's, you know, best known person in some ways, right? One of the top five. And it was a, he was a little too tempting. So he taunted Trump, he tweeted him, he spoke against him, but also he was, he was everywhere now. There were pictures of him everywhere. There was pictures of Iraq, pictures of him in Syria. That definitely created vulnerabilities. That, you know,

For example, figure like Jehad Moknyi, who I write about the book, one of the Headsbollah figures. I mean, famously for years, no one knew how he looked like. Like there was no pictures. Intelligence agencies hardly had pictures of him. And they was famous that, oh, he's just in downtown Beirut. He's having ice cream in downtown Beirut and no one even knows because, you know, no one knows how he looks like. So, Amani compromised that by becoming this big media celebrity.

We're going to pause there for a break. You were listening to Angry Planet. We are talking about the Shadow Commander. All right. Thank you very much for sticking with us. You are listening to Angry Planet. We are talking about the shadow commander. But it's interesting because he wasn't out there entirely on his own. I mean, in the West, you get this figure of like MacArthur, Douglas MacArthur, that like he went off and, you know, he almost invaded China during the Korean War and had to be fired before he started. up World War III effectively. But Soleimani was actually, he stayed by Homanie's side, right? I mean, he was actually happy to be working for the guy. A company man, we'd call him. Thank you. That's an excellent. I think that's an actually excellent point. And it's interesting that

you bring MacArthur, who obviously was a soldier in a contribute or democratic sort of norms, and there's civilian control of the military, is established and all that. And yet he was, he effectively come out of that and that's why he had to be fired but also he could be fired right

it's an interesting comparison with Soleimani because you're absolutely right that he he carried the commands of hominy to the note right and he he was very much a

hominy man and he was very much a company man in this way the question of course is and the question is not dead because Soleimani is dead but they're much more of the IRGC the question of relationship

of IRGC with I told Allah Khomeini is an interesting one. Harmony is 81 now. He's thinking about his successor and his legacy and the IRGC is this most powerful militia. And everyone thought until a couple months ago, everyone thought it's sure that IRC is going to control the next president of Iran, whoever it is, maybe a guards figure actually,

the presidential election in June 2021. Of course, one thing has now changed, and that's the defeat of Trump in the U.S. elections. And there's a question whether a President Biden can do a sort of an overture that would strengthen Rouhani the current president or strengthened more pro-West figures in Iran. But pro-best figures, many figures who prefer dealing with the West as opposed to IRGC heartliners. And, you know, better, even if Khomeini approves that IRGC can go against him, right? So the question of whether there would be any daylight, if you will, between a RGC commander like Soleimani and Khomey is interesting. I think with the way Soleimani had defined his life and career,

and I say this based on the closest study that obviously of him, everything he's ever written, everything, all the people of, you know, I spoke to his driver, I spoke to his family members. I think he very much had tied himself to harmony. And it's important to remember that I don't know what, who two men was to Douglas MacArthur, right? I guess there is this thing in, and I talk about, in the book I do talk about, this, there is this sort of soldiers who hate politicians in suits in general, right? So

Soleimani and them had this about, they had this about the elected presidents, they had this about a lot of sort of people in suits, but they don't see Chominee that way, the supreme leader. They see him as philosopher king, really. They see him as a sage, they have a mystical image of him, as a wise sage who is also very innocent in his own way, right? That's the image they give of the guy. You know, it's important to understand this image that they have of and what I mean by innocent it's sort of a mystical Shia image of a guy who actually you know he is again above at all he's wrong by everyone where he has to sort of put them together it's it gets an interesting level of ideological work to give this image of someone who after all

it's head of a state you know controls everything it's kind of amazing actually when chomani gives the speeches and complains about the political sort of situation in the country you some regimes you get to do that, right? It doesn't make sense if, say, a president of the United States does that because everyone says, well, you have all the power. But Mao Zedong in China could, in fact, work on a revolution against the state itself in a way, right? So how many does that to the degree sometimes?

He tries to push himself above it all and as a figure who is trying to do the right thing, but as if he doesn't actually control the state. So the loyalty that Soleimani, had to hominy was really of this mystical, almost Sufi way, that was beyond a feeling that a soldier would have to a normal commander-in-chief. If we can expand on that a little bit, I want to touch on something that you've brought up a couple times now, was that Soleimani had an ability to get young men to fight for him.

I think you've said two or three times that that was one of his defining characteristics. What was it about him that made him so charismatic and made people from other countries want to come and fight in Hezbollah? That's a great point. Because again, it's a good question, right? How would thousands of people sign up in modern times, the most normal way in which people sign up to die effectively, is for their nation in the national army. So when they do that for militias that are not national armies, questions that raise books are written like departments that created. because we want to understand this phenomenon.

Now, I think Soleimani operated, of course, out of the, what you can say, Khomeinism, the Ryan ideology, Islamism, whatever we want to call it. But this image that came out of Tehran, this ideology that came out of Tehran helped. The idea was that when you join Hezbollah or when you join a Iraqi group or even when you join the Houthis in Yemen, you are joining this bigger attempt to change the world, right? you're joining this big attempt to reform politics. And all the ideas, the revolutionary fever that came out of the 1979. Of course, that's just a potential.

How was Soleimani able to effectuate this potential, which had failed many times before? You know, it fails in Bosnia when Iran tries to create a good group there. It fails when Iran tries to incite the Shia in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia is their attempts of the 80s. But I think the reason, there are a couple of points for Soleimani. he was able to do it. First, personally, they take charisma question. He said that, yeah, he is able to create this charisma because, number one, they can see that he's a guy who is ready to take a bullet, right? He is not a commander behind the desk. He's always showing up. He's

impressive in that way. He has this sort of quiet, you know, has this sort of quiet mysticism to him. He's very technically able. He's also, not only he's very sort of has a very strong physique, but he's technically able. He's, he's very technically competent. He uses the achieved technological knowledge that Iranian armies gained in the 1980s in the bar with Iraq. And he applies it to these, you know, effectively terrorist groups that he supports so that they're not, you know, they're not very shoddy affairs as they were before. They're more able and more effective in that way. But also, you know, the sort of thing that we've got to talk about, of course, is that in the

last 20 years, what the scholars have called sectarianization. It's important to be exact here because it's unfortunate that many sort of studies in the Middle East, imagine that Sunni and Shia, the two main sects of Islam, there are sort of automatic categories that mean, well, of course you could go and you're not the Shias or you're not the Sunnis. It's never like that, and it's been ever been so simple. Some of the people Solomonists have put it like Hamas for Sunnis. In the history, the very recent history, we see, for example, the Shia kingdom in Yemen, was supported by Saudi Arabia.

So it's really not about the fact that Osani supports Sunni and Shia support Shia, but how this sectarianism, sectarian hatred created on both sides, which happens to different processes, including the Iraqi invasion of 2003, including the rise of al-Qaeda, including the way Lebanese politics work, will they help, right? So if you're a young Shia, now there is this Shia-Sundi fight, and Soleimani is a big figure on yourself. And he's able to use all these elements of Shia culture,

Shia martyred them to encourage them and to come and join it. It seems to be a small difference, but it's a big difference, right? And why does that matter? Because so if sectarianization was possible, on sectoranization is also possible. And I think that's actually what we're seeing. Had Soleimani lived, he would see his own army, I think, unravel in front of his eyes. And I think you already see it a bit, especially in Iraq and Lebanon, where two countries with Shia, and a large Shia majority in Iraq and a very no one does the census in Lebanon so we don't know

how big the Shia are in Lebanon but they're the biggest, they're the plural definitely population and they're turning against Iranian influence and they're turning against Soleimani's friends because they're fed up of the well they're fed up of fine interference frankly and they're fed up of the problems

they have in their own countries. So Soleimani's effectiveness also had its limits. Well and he also fought on all kinds of different sides, as you're sort of saying. I mean, he, sometimes he's on a Shia side, sometimes he's on a Sunni side, and he also was on the American side on a couple of battles. I know it was kind of a coincidence, but I mean, well, it's not exactly a coincidence. Can you kind of explain how the United States found itself fighting alongside Soleimani?

Well, we really got to go back. Let's go back to 9-11, right? So, I'm on a new. the job. He was appointed head of the Guz commander in 1998. So his job is to organize pro-Iran forces across the world, really, and in the region. And 9-11 happens. And after the Middle East and really the world is changed forever. So what's the first thing that follows 9-11? After a month after the 9-11 terrorist attacks, which of force were condemned by Iran, US invades Afghanistan. This is good news for Iran, basically, because it gets rid of one of its main enemies, Taliban, the militant Islamist regime, something like the, you know, it's really like the ISIS of its day. It had existed in Afghanistan.

It was only recognized by Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Actually, it wasn't recognized by Saudi Arabia either. I think Pakistan, United Arab Emirates officially. And so Iran is happy that Taliban is coming down. And Iran is ready to play ball with America. In fact, Soleimani, this is the period in which Soleimani helps Americans get, rid of Taliban, right? And there are these meetings, Ryan Crocker, who's the ambassador to Afghanistan at this point. US's, you know, new ambassador to Afghanistan has this notes about, you know, he's given interviews,

he's written about what happens in these meetings, which was sort of funny to him, because Soleimani's men show up to the meetings and they're like with maps, right? So it's not just some generic thing. They're like, oh, here are the maps, here are the Taliban positions. They effectively help. They help Americans get rid of the Taliban because, A, a common enemy, B, because they're also, you know, excuse me, have French, but they're scared, right? They're scared of, well, if the United States is coming heavily to the region and even invaded Afghanistan, then is going to go for Iraq, they're very worried that they could come for Iran. So they're ready to compromise in the United States.

And, well, you know, this is not just what I think, but Brian Cocker, many other diplomats in the U.S. think that this is where the Bush government makes this sort of historical mistake, which really, it attacks Iran, you know, it computes it part of the axis of evil. And what's amazing is that, so Bush declares Iran to be part of access of evil in his set of union speech, his first assertive union speech in 2002. And January 2002. And even the top American diplomats were talking to Iranians just find about this while they were watching TV. Like they were not even consulted. So this is, effectively, Iran is closely working with America against Taliban at that point.

And all of a sudden, on TV, they hear that Iran is access of evil. and the policies that the Bush administration has. It's one of the many false stars between Iran and the United States in the last two decades. But yeah, that's one important instance of Soleimani working with Americans against Taliban. And then in Iraq, effectively in the years of rise of ISIS, so let's say about 2013, 2015, and afterwards,

well, Iran and the United States are on the same side because they're both fighting ISIS, throughout the period of invasion of Iraq. So after 2003, it's important to draw a distinction. Soleimani does kill a lot of American soldiers, helps kill a lot of American soldiers, which is why many intelligence and defense community in the United States really hated the guy, right?

And they're happy he was killed. But they also collaborate at certain points. This collaboration is, even before ISIS is a collaboration of effectively two imperial powers in Iraq, right? You sort of, the Iran and United States become the two strongest power in Iraq, they have to collaborate somehow, right, just to keep a stability in the ground. So that's what happens.

And the last thing I'd say is that throughout the years of fight against ISIS, of course, is also when Iran and the United States are doing the nuclear negotiations, which leads to the Iran nuclear data of 2015. So really, it's a point in which Iran and United States have become closest in some ways, if you go, with a lot of caveats because it's complicated, but they are they are collaborating and they had also collaborated in the early years of the century. Just all sounds like real politic, right? I mean, it's just, I didn't say that very well, but you know what I'm, you know what I mean?

It's just insane. Nobody's really on anybody's side. It's all alliances of the moment. Very, very much like a good TV show nowadays. Yeah, well, you know, they say there's an old saying that nations don't have permanent friends. They have permanent interests. right? But I think specifically in relation to Iran, the thing that, you know, the reason that I and many others have jobs as Iran watchers of different sorts is this complexity, this about Iran, that is, you know, so the revolution in 1979 gave birth to Islamist regime, which he was born in the condition of Cold War. It was not pro-US, but it was also not pro-Soviet. In fact, one of the reasons it had came to be was that the Carter administration at the time, was not very worried about Islamist coming to power in Iran

because they believed, well, whatever they are, they're not communist, right? This leads to conspiracy theories on the monarchist side who believe Carter personally wrote, you know, Shah Dung, which is obviously sort of ridiculous. But it is true, the President Carter wrote, for example, in his diary, is that, oh, if Iran a non-aligned regime comes to Iran, maybe that's not so bad. Maybe we can get rid of that Shah on behalf.

So from the beginning, there's this ambiguity. Then, of course, the ransacking of the U.S. Embassy, in Tehran, happens in November 9,79, and anti-Americanism turns out to be actually a sort of part of the DNA of the Islamic regime and becomes sort of very important. But this has always, also, this anti-Americanism has always had a unstable character to it. Because just think about it, right? After all, who says in order to be a good Islamist, you have to be against America? It's not immediately clear, right? It's not really clear. If you have a very anti-imperalist vision, then maybe you have to be.

You know, if you're a good Islamist, you might ask yourself, you know what, how come we collaborate with Putin's Russia, which is best friends with Israel, who's not a Muslim, let alone the fact that he's sort of, his friends with China who suffers a lot of its own Muslims, but we can't be friends with the United States. So there is this inherent instability built into the,

to the inconsistent ideology and reality of Islamic Republic. That means that there are, their significant sections of the regime who wants to have good relations with the U.S. in Bombay or the other. And the other important thing is the ideology of the regime born in the conditions of the Cold War was also sort of neutral, if you will, or contested on the question of capitalism or communism. Of course, what they said, it's easy. What do you say as an Islamist? We don't want capitalism.

We don't want communism. We want Islam, right? But what does that actually mean? What does Islamic economy really mean? And, you know, I won't bore you, this has been a long debate on different sorts of Islamists, but in the first 10 years of the revolution, different proposals are tried. There are some who are straight out socialist, they want to nationalize everything and build heavy industry. They want Iran to be like an Islamic Soviet Union, really.

And there are those who are outright capitalists. The capitalists win. That's really the story. They win already before the end of the Cold War, but they're definitely being after the end of the Cold War, right? And which is why Iran today is a capital. country. They push it to be more capitalists. And if you're capitalists, again, there is more room to work with the United States. So long and story short, the desire to have better relations with the United States in Bombay or the other has always been part of the Islamic Republic.

It's just the question of how Khomeini, the current Supreme Leader, who's been there since 1989, has already made such a brand out of anti-Americanism. that it would be difficult for him effectively to eat his hat, if you will, and have established good relations with the United States. But it won't be out of character or in a fundamental contradiction with the ideologies of the Iranian regime. Boy, I got to say, this is actually very, in some ways, it's just, it's confusing because there's just no moral clarity here. So when we love our moral clarity. in the United States.

We do like our moral clarity. We like to know who our good guys are and who are bad guys are. And, I mean, it just actually sounds a little bit like, you know, an ad in the old village voice. It's right, you know, like chance encounter where the United States says, I was on the out-uptown bus. You were running downtown and we almost got together, but we never quite brought it all into one thing. Well, that's actually, I think that's a good description of Iran and American relations. I mean, there's been so many near misses.

I mean, you know, God knows what would have happened if Hillary Clinton had won the 2016 presidential elections, right? Because, I mean, I'll tell you, the Iran and America were not, we're supposed to be enemies at that point already. But I covered the nuclear talks, right? And, you know, Zari and the whole team, right? It's like the foreign ministers of Iran and the United States. they were chums, you know, they emailed, they joked, they sent happy birthdays, they, the Iranian deputy fire minister, by the way, a fun fact, sent a Christmas card to Vendisherman. Of course, Wendy Sherman is Jewish, so she pointed out that this wasn't quite a period,

but that's where we were, right? So that's how close the connections between two elites were. And for, you know, as long as the good guys and the bad guys are concerned, by the way, let me say my two cents as well, because when you write about the guy like this, It becomes clear. Obviously, it's boring if you just write a book and, you know, keep talking about how much the guy sucks, right? You're interested in understanding, but there's no doubt in my mind that these are all the bad guys, right? This is a regime that has organized terrorist attacks around the world that endorses Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism on a massive scale, right? It's Chominee is probably, I mean, he's probably the only head of a state who does regular Holocaust denial, but it's interesting.

thing because not just August 9, but it's, you know, it's not some just sort of cranky idea. It's actually part of the, you know, it's really important, basically, to the type of politics that he espouses. And that, and all the other things, the only country in the world that imposes a dress court on half of its population, are the women, the only country in the world that bans women from singing, the heavily restrictive dictatorial. So there's all these things. But what makes Iran complicated, if you've, you've,

is, I think in one word, is that part of the people who led the 79 revolution have already come to this conclusion that, you know, that they were wrong and they would like to make changes. And there's always been a domestic battle in a lot. And if you really think about it, it's in some ways not unlike the Soviet Union. There are important differences. But at the end of the day, I think we all can all agree to the Stalin Soviet Union was, you know, as bad guy as you can possibly get, right? you know, hopefully you don't have many tanky audiences, but I mean, killing sort of millions of people

and putting them in gulags and all that. But from the 50s, you have different sort of engagements to the Soviet Union precisely because many people believe that engagement is ultimately and ultimately better and ultimately it will help the reform of the regime or it will strengthen the better elements. And yeah, so that's what makes the whole thing complicated. It's not that we're not sure whether harmony is a good guy or not. It's the question of how can you reform a regime like this and how can you strengthen those elements inside the country who are, you know, who will the job of change themselves?

And I am on one of those who believes you do that by engagement, actually. That the biggest threat to the Islamic regime is actually the engagement. It's engagement with the United States bidded. that maximum pressure policy of Trump was a failure precisely on this account. It has strengthened the most hardland elements in the regime, and it would never be able to bring it down. Well, so what's next? No, seriously.

I mean, we've got, I mean, Soleimani's out of the picture. I assume someone else took over the Quds Force, and we'll be stirring up shit all over the Middle East, continuing that fine tradition. But, I mean, do you see anything clear? on the horizon? Ani is the guy who replaces Soleimani. Very briefly, I would just say that he does not have the charisma of Soleimani, not even

close. He doesn't even speak Arabic. And also, Iran is in such dire economic strength that he can't spend, you know, on his forces like he did before. So he's definitely no Soleimani. Now, as for the reading of tea leaves and the future, I mean, it's, you know, many factors in play. What happened in the next presidential elections in Iran would be telling?

The next two months are interesting. Of course, you've got to see what happens in the region. There are many worries that there might be a conflagration of one sort of. But the next six months are also interesting. Basically, we have to see what Biden administration does and what kind of, there is almost no doubt that Biden administration will do some sort of overture to Iran, around the nuclear question. And we have to see what would a possible return to the negotiations mean.

We have to see what effect that will have on Iranian society. But I'll tell you this. Harmony will die. He's 81. He'll die sometimes soon, right? We hope. And we hope. I mean, you know, you don't live forever, as we know. So the question of what will happen in the regime afterwards, it's interesting, of course. It's hard for me to be a sort of called blooded analyst on this. It's my country. You know, I'd like to go back. I haven't been able to go back for some years now. And what makes me, let's say, optimistic and hopeful is that I think fundamentally, this authoritarian regime, it's really incompatible with Iranian people. You know, I really, I do say that as not just an emotional thing. I just think it's almost fluke of the history how we ended up having a regime like this. And I think there is not real and big, deep support in the majority of society. It has some support, of course, but in the majority of society is not. So my hope is that in the long term, Iranians are going to be a normal country, if I would say, which is kind of

dream that we've had. It's not a very sexy dream to just want to be normal, but effectively they will have a country, they will have a country that reflects our reality as a big country in the Middle East that will have relations with Israel actually, like we did during the, during the Shah's time and with Arab countries and with, you know, with different countries around the world. But this, this reality of a extremist regime that tries to export its vision by force of the bayonet will become a thing of the past. I think if one looks at the fundamentalist Iranian society, one is hopeful that that's what lies in the future, even though if you don't know that if that future comes in, you know, five, ten, or fifteen years.

Arash is easy. I want to say thank you so much for coming on the show. And also tell everybody to buy your book. I really enjoyed it very, very much. I mean, just to get a grasp on how the Iranian revolution actually happened, how some of it worked. So many things I didn't know. So, yeah, say something good about your book. Thank you so much for having it. Yeah, what I would say about the book is that, you know, it's obviously up to, you know, either this side.

But something I'd say about the book is that I think, you know, if you're interested in the Middle East and Iran, obviously, we'll find it interesting. But also, if it's your first entry, I think I've tried to make it in a way that if it's your first entry, if you just, basically, if you just want a good story with a lot of the chills and chills. And that ends up, you know, and then you end up also learning something about the Middle East. I think that's certainly the spirit in which I have tried to write a book. That's it for this week, Angry Planet listeners. Angry Planet is me, myself, Matthew Galt, Jason Fields, and Kevin Odell was created by myself and Jason Fields. If you like the show,

we have a substack. That's angryplanet.substack.com where you get two premium episodes every month for $9.00. Again, that's Angry Planet.com. com. If you like the show, please follow us on Twitter. We're at Angry Planet Pod. I am at MJ Galt. Jason is at JQ Fields. We're on Facebook. You can find the show wherever fine pods are casted. We will see you next week with another conversation about conflict on an angry planet. Stay safe until then.