Front Burner - U.S. vs Iran: a decades-old fight

Episode Date: March 3, 2026

In 1953, the United States helped stage a coup to overthrow Iran’s democratically elected prime minister, largely a response to the Iranian leader’s nationalization of the oil industry. Twenty-six years later, revolutionaries stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran just months after having deposed the U.S. installed King. Since then, the relationship between these two nations has been defined by sanctions, proxy battles, covert operations, nuclear diplomacy, political assassinations, deep mutual mistrust, and now a war.How did we get here? Our guest is Nader Hashemi, Director of the Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian understanding and an associate professor of Middle East and Islamic politics at Georgetown University.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

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N-E-T-H-R-I-S dot com. Nethris, much more than just a payroll software. This is a CBC podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Prosson. For 47 years, the Iranian regime has chanted death to America and waged an unending campaign of bloodshed and mass murder. Targeting the United States, our troops and the innocent people in many, many countries. That was U.S. President Donald Trump over the weekend announcing combat operations against Iran. During those 47 years that passed since Iran,

Islamic Revolution, the United States has not sat idly by. The two countries have been enemies ever since. Today, we're going to dive into the complex relationship between Iran and the United States, the proxy wars, the sanctions, the moves towards peace with countless stops and starts. Nader Hashemhi is my guest. He is the director of the Al-Walid Center for Muslim Christian Understanding and an associate professor of Middle East and Islamic politics at Georgetown University. Naderai, thank you so much for coming on to Frontbrner.

Thanks for the invite. So I know that the continuum of Iranian history is long and would require several episodes to really do it justice. But why don't we begin with an incident that will be regarded as the most important in the Iran-U.S. timeline by many. And that is the coup led by the CIA and British intelligence in 1953, which saw an elected leader, Mohamed Mossadegh, deposed his leader and the reinstatement of the monarchy of Shah Mohammed Reza Polavi. Why did the British and the Americans orchestrate this coup? Well, we have to remember the political and international context of what was happening in the world at the time. This was the early days of the Cold War where the United States was

locked in a rival with the Soviet Union. And there was a belief that Iran, like other countries in the developing world, could go communist if there wasn't an external intervention to ensure that a loyal American ally is in power in that very important country, which at that time bordered the Soviet Union, had a lot of natural resources. And that was the justification. That was the argument. I wonder if you could just elaborate for me a little more on the role that oil played in this as well.

Yeah, this was the key issue that was at the top of the Iranian political and national agenda at the time. A former Time magazine man of the year, the populist Mossadegh had a great deal of support from ordinary Iranians. He reduced the powers of the autocratic king, the Shah, and nationalized the Iranian oil industry. Mohammed Mossadegh, Premier of Iran, meets the press to reaffirm his government's unwillingness to arbitrate with Britain over nationalizing the Anglo-Iranian oil company. Iran is located in the Middle East. it was a country that was experiencing a similar set of political transformations, debates, and convulsions that broadly can apply to other countries in Asia and Africa at this time. In other words, this was the period of decolonization when countries were struggling for independence, for self-determination.

And while Iran wasn't formally colonized like other countries were, there was a broad perception among many Iranians that Iran wasn't fully independent because of the role of external powers, shaping Iran's destiny. And so in the context of this moment, the key issue at the top of Iranian politics that shaped a national debate was the question of oil. Why? Because the oil industry was established by the British, the British Petroleum Corporation, and they were reaping the profits. And so this was a core grievance that Iranian nationalists had at the moment when everyone around the world was struggling for independent self-determination. In the Iranian context, that manifested itself with a desire by Iranian nationalist forces to obtain

full control over their national resources. They had a view that the British and the Americans found very offensive, that the resources that lie under their feet should belong to the people of that nation, not to a foreign country. We should not allow the biggest foreign acid in Britain to go. without doing something about it. The sooner then that he left power, the better for Persia. Not for us, for Persia. After this coup,

the Shah, who had previously ruled the country as king and was cast aside by Mossadegh, is reinstalled as king, right? And he sets the country on this much different course. He pursues a rapid modernization project, land reform, women's suffrage, an expansion of industry. There are images of this time,

regularly featured on social media today that show it as like an example of a cosmopolitan Iran, a non-religiously fundamental Iran. You see people drinking alcohol, people dancing to pop music, miniskirts, dresses. Under the Shah's administration, land redistribution, literacy programs, and industrial development have made the country a leader among the Persian Gulf states.

Though glorifying in its past, Persia today is no less proud of its virile present. At the Amjadir Stadium, girls of the Reza Shah Kabir School gave a display of calisthenics in honor of the queen. It is the Shah's policy to encourage physical culture in the schools throughout his dominion. Since he came to the throne,

great strides have been made in education and in the general welfare of the younger people. These kinds of images are viewed with a tint of romance and nostalgia, but does that tell the whole story? No, it doesn't. It's a deeply distorted picture. All of those things that you described are true and accurate, but I think one needs a deeper understanding of how these things were playing out in Iranian society and who is really benefiting and who wasn't. So, yes, the Shah of Iran that's restored to power by the Americans after the coup is a very pro-American, pro-Western. He spent most of his time at a boarding school and as a young man in Switzerland, speaks fluent English. in French, and he is very much America's man on the job in the Middle East, and he pursues a policy of modernization. Everything that you said is absolutely correct, but it was modernization

under the heavy hand of an increasingly repressive state. It was also a modernization policy that was done from the top down, in other words, policies were imposed on a traditional religious society without any societal input. In a very arrogant and, um, sort of self-centered manner. The idea was that, look, you know, Iran's rulers, the king, the monarchy, they knew much better what the people of Iran wanted than the masses down below who, you know, didn't have any understanding of the modern world. And so that's very much inherent, actually, in the whole concept of modernization. The idea that the, you know, the role model here is Europe is the West and the rest of the world has to

sort of just emulate that form of development. And so these are the policies that were being, you know, pursued, but because they were done with a heavy hand and because they were done in a very aggressive manner, and because they were done in a way that really wasn't, you know, benefiting many people in Iran, you know, you could go outside of a major city of Iran in the 1950s or 60s or even 70s and, you know, local villages wouldn't have drinking water. Well, the Shah of Iran was living in a palace in northern Tehran, a lot of money was spent on purchasing American weapons. The ruling elites were living very comfortably, but the wealth wasn't being equally distributing. That was a part of

the story that people forget. And that's why, you know, the Shah's political legitimacy slowly started to evaporate over the time as the population grew and as people started to ask questions about why is the national wealth spent for the Shah and for his army and for his family and friends and why is there so much, you know, poverty and misery in smaller towns and villages. The other key element here is the Shah always suffered from a crisis of legitimacy because people never forgot. He came back to the throne because effectively the Americans put him there. So that was that was issue as something that he couldn't really transcend. It haunted his credibility. Always seen as like a puppet.

Exactly. Okay. So then. I think that brings us to 1979, right, when all of this concentrated anger and dissatisfaction towards the Shah culminates in a months-long series of protests, violence, a general strike led by Iranians determined to push for new leadership. The Shah flees, ultimately ending up eventually in the United States, and a previously exiled cleric named Ruhullah, Hameini, returns to Iran. Omane, almost unknown outside of Iran, just a few months.

months ago, returned a hero, the man who from long distance had led the revolution to topple the Shah. Inside the airport terminal, Khomeini was greeted by scores of Muslim religious leaders and political allies. He called on Iranian Prime Minister Bakhtiar to resign and said all foreigners should leave the country. The end of Iran's monarchy came early today when Khomeini's followers took control of the palace of the Shah. The imperial guards there gave up without a struggle. This is known as the Islamic Revolution. And what was Khomeini's vision for Iran? And so Khomeini presented himself as a sort of humble cleric who lived on a diet of yogurt and raisins, a simple man who was willing to challenge the authoritarian repression of a very pro-Western and arrogant monarch. And so when Iranians were looking at their political choices at the time, this is what they saw. They saw the Shah, who famous,

had a golden toilet and was living in an opulent palace. And then you had this humble cleric who claimed to be a man of the people and claimed that he wanted to bring justice and democracy to Iran. And he emerges in this political context. He had sort of a, there was an event that happened 15 years before the 1979 revolution where in 1963, Khomeini makes a name for himself on the national stage when he defies the Shah's modernization policies and gives a series of speeches that produces street protest. He eventually is picked up and put into exile. And it's when he was in exile, he starts to develop this new political theory of Islamic government that provided many Iranians with an alternative to the current

repressive pro-Western policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran. And so that was who Hulmini was. And the key most powerful sort of slogan at the time, that capture. the ideals of this revolution was freedom, independence, and an Islamic Republic, which effectively meant people wanted political freedom. They didn't want to live under a dictatorship. They wanted independence from the control of Western powers, because Iran was part of that third world decolonization experience. And then they wanted an Islamic government.

And that's what is confused as most people who try and figure out this story. why would people want an Islamic government in the end of the 20th century in the age of secular reason? This election is not only the first time Iran has elected a president. It's also the closest thing Iran has ever had to a free election. How free? Well, we don't know for sure who we win. Whereas back in the days of the Shah, there was little suspense at election time. Islamic government for many people in Iran simply meant an alternative to the pro-Western secular policies of the Shah.

It meant in their imagination a regime, a political system of justice. No one had lived under an Islamic government before because it was an abstract idea. And the relationship between religion and politics in Muslim societies historically is very different than it has been in the West. Iranians continue to vote today on the new Islamic constitution, a document that legitimizes the power of the religious leaders and invests in one of them, supreme powers. Tashi Tafrashi, a 29-year-old student, said he read the Islamic Constitution very carefully. He doesn't like a great deal of it, but he believes it's a good start. But I'm just vote for an Imam because he said yes, and I should follow him. That's my only thing. Yes, you trust.

I trust him, yes. We would need a separate episode just to go into that. But that argument had an appeal because the alternative political vision was that of a pro-eastern. Western dictatorship. And so there was a referendum that happened in the early days after the revolution where people were asking, do you want an Islamic government or not? And overwhelmingly, people said yes, because it was a popular revolution. And it was a revolution that wasn't just about, you know, religion exclusively. It brought in many different political currents. There were left-wing groups, nationalists, and then religious groups that all were part of this broader

umbrella that were able to topple the Shah in 1979. At Nethris, we are Canada's payroll experts. For more than 45 years, we have proudly supported local businesses. Powered by CGI, we provide a robust and secure technological infrastructure. Let our specialists handle your payroll so you can maximize your efficiency and focus on what truly matters. Try Nethrists now. The first month is free. Certain conditions apply.

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Business. So join the more than 400,000 Canadian entrepreneurs who already count on us, and contact Desjardin. And today, we'd love to talk business. Roughly nine months after Homanie's return, pro-revolution students who explicitly reference the 1953 coup that we were just talking about, seized the U.S. Embassy and its staff for 444 days. It's an incident known widely as the Iranian hostage crisis.

The American Embassy in Tehran is in the hands of Muslim students tonight. spurred on by an anti-American speech by the Ayatollah Khomeini, they stormed the embassy, fought the Marine Guards for three hours, overpowered them, and took dozens of American hostages. The Iranians burned a United States flag and announced the U.S. government, saying they would stay until the U.S. sends the deposed Shah back to Iran. The government of Iran must recognize the gravity of the situation which it has itself created,

and the grave consequences which will result if harm comes to any of the hostages. How did this incident in Khomeini's leadership change the U.S.-Iran relationship? Yeah, it's a critical moment. One has to, again, understand how things looked from an Iranian nationalist perspective at the time. So when the revolution takes place, it takes place against the backdrop of a totalist. 25-year pro-American dictatorship, the amount of anger and resentment that Ronan revolutionary forces had, and it's not just the religious forces, the secularists and the nationalists had the same view, was it a deep anger that they felt that effectively that they were the ones who were held hostage for 25 years

by this brutal dictatorship that was backed by the West. And no one really said anything. In fact, they said the opposite. When the Shah would go to the West, he was received as a hero. And so when the revolution takes place, there's an incredible. amount of anger and resentment, of course, at the Shah, and then especially at the United States. So the Shah flees Iran, and he is let into the United States by Jimmy Carter at the time, and this raises the level of anger of Iranian revolutionaries. And they take the embassy, the young kids take the embassy, but then the government in power, led by Khomeini, backs it. And of course, it was a grave breach of international protocol and international law to take

and the embassy staff hostage. But I'm trying to sensitize the listeners here to why that took place. It wasn't simply an act of irrational, you know, barbaric, you know, Islamic behavior that sometimes it's portrayed. It was very much a response to the humiliation that Iranians were feeling at the hands of this pro-Western dictatorship and the United States government, which was its biggest backer. and the level of torture, you know, the Shah's regime was characterized by, it was a torture state. The notorious Savak was responsible for doing horrific things to Iranian dissidents. And so this was at the forefront of the minds of many people. And so they viewed that American embassy as sort of a target.

And people were lashing out now that they had the freedom to express themselves at the United States because they viewed the United States as their enemy. And then it's around this time that they're not. the Ayatollah began to refer to the U.S. as the Great Satan, right? And Israel as little Satan. And just could you walk me through how and why these ideas became a popularized sentiment throughout the region? And is this a theological argument or a political one? It's a political one. Often outsiders think that, you know, Iranian politics are irrational because they're driven by, you know, these theological politics that go back to the 7th century. I think that's a, fundamental misreading. These are fundamentally political grievances. And they're very much rooted in sort of what we're talking about right now because of the United States's role in Iran and backing a dictatorship and suppressing the Iranian right to self-determination. Homania emerges as this nationalist figure who articulates these grievances through a religious paradigm in prism, but very much, you know, similar to the rhetoric and the language that you can associate with a

Che Guevara or a Mount Saitung. I teach this stuff in my modern Islamic political thought course, and I often get my students to sort of, you know, read a quote and tell me, is this from Khomey or is this from Che Guevara? Oh, interesting. So, and they can't tell. And so, you know, this was, this was the worldview. This was, so the United States was considered to be the great state, not the people or culture of the United States, but U.S. foreign policy because of its policies in Iran, going back to the 53 coup, but much more broadly, you know, there was this current. of opinion that had broad residence within the developing world, that this was a revolutionary moment where these revolutionary forces, like the Cuban Revolution in the late 50s or like the

Chinese Revolution a bit earlier, would try and rewrite the relationship between the Global North and the Global South, spread these revolutionary emancipatory sort of ideas rooted in a social justice sort of program that would then. allegedly be a net gain for the impoverished masses in the world. And so the way Israel fits into this equation was Israel was viewed as an ally and effectively a puppet of Western countries. The whole history of the question of Israel that we understand instinctively from a Western perspective that Israel is connected to the legacy of anti-Semitism and the horrors of the Holocaust, us, that story is generally unknown or has been generally unknown to most people in the Middle East until relatively recently. The approach that Homanie and the revolutionaries and nationalist forces had toward the question of Israel israelistan was from the perspective of the plight of the Palestinians who were dispossessed and expelled as a result of the creation of the state of Israel. So Hulmani and other revolutionaries, and this is also a left-wing perspective too among nationalist forces in Iran. They viewed Israel as an imperial outpost of the West.

The wreckage of an Iranian jet fighter shot down over Iraq in the war that's shaken the whole Gulf region and the wider world beyond. In 1980, if we could move to 1980, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein launches a full-scale invasion of Iran. Beginning one of the deadliest conventional wars of the 20th century, Saddam saw a country reeling from internal issues and the revolution that we have just talked about. And he saw it as a moment of opportunity. Iran, still in economic and political convulsions in the aftermath of revolution, was considered by Iraq and by most outside observers to be virtually unable to defend itself against a determined and well-armed foe. And the U.S. actually supports Iraq in that war. And at one point, shot down a commercial flight in Iran in what they have long called an accident. Iraq's President Saddam Hussein, along with other Iraqi leaders, has been castigated by Homanie as godless.

and pawns of the great Satan. Can you talk to me about what this conflict meant for Iran, a country that was then in this moment of this revolutionary transition? Yeah, it's a key moment in the early days of the revolution that really shapes what was to come afterwards. So you're absolutely right. This war begins in September 1980. And Saddam Hussein saw an opportunity to, you know, expand his influence,

to be a regional hegemon. He invades Iran and he occupies part of it. He's eventually sort of pushed back to where the international border stood. But it was a very bloody and brutal war. But critically, Saddam Hussein was backed by not just the regional Arab countries who financed the war, but by the, you know, indirectly by the West itself. It was a famous line by Henry Kissinger where he said, you know, the best outcome from our perspective is for both sides to beat each other up. as extensively as possible, and then none of them win. A critical part of this story that is forgotten in the West,

but is very much remembered and commemorated in Iran, is that in the early years of the war, Saddam Hussein starts to use chemical weapons, and it starts to use them quite extensively. According to its own declarations, Iraq used more than 101,000 chemical bombs and munitions during eight years of war, including mustard gas and nerve agents. The UN investigated and confirmed the Iraqi attacks, but it could not find evidence supporting claims Iran had also used chemical weapons. And the West is relatively silent on this.

In fact, they keep selling arms to Saddam Hussein, and they keep backing him because they view him as the lesser of the evil. And the Iranian regime is sort of outraged over this. Where is the international law? Where are the moral voices that claim that these weapons of mass destruction should not be used? So Saddam Hussein and the support that he received from not just American allies, but indirectly from American and the West itself in terms of arms sales, really shapes this revolution and creates a generation of people who come to power in Iran and control major sectors of the Iranian political system and economy, but their worldview was shaped by what they believe was an act of aggression by Saddam Hussein, but really by the West as a way of crushing the aspirations of the Iranian revolution. So Iranian revolutionaries, the regime itself, they teach this moment, not just the function of, you know, the aggressive tendencies of this Middle East dictator, as Saddam Hussein, but really as an ongoing attempt by the West in a different way now to subjugate the Iranian people. And this is where we see the advent of the now very well-known Iranian Revolutionary Guard or the IRGC group that Canada and others have designated as a terrorist group.

And this is also around the time that we see the creation of a network of largely non-state paramilitary groups like Hezbollah from Lebanon, Hamas, and the Islamic jihad in Gaza. And, you know, is it fair for me to say that this is an acknowledgement from Iran that they could not compete militarily with Western nations and had to instead commit themselves to like a program of asymmetrical warfare? Can you talk to me about this calculus and how it was created? No, that's absolutely correct. Iran being much weaker militarily realizes it can't go to battle against the United States or Israel because of this deep asymmetry in power. So it develops a national defense strategy that's very much rooted in supporting these regional allies or proxies, if you will, that it supports. sustains with the goal of trying to expand its political clout in the region. It's important to realize that these groups that its support are not simply puppets. They're not mercenaries. They do have local

connections to communities within the Middle East that have grievances that are tied to this broader sort of, you know, nationalist, religious nationalist sort of movements that are emerging at this time. They have grievances toward the West, toward Arab dictatorships, toward Israel. and so they have ideological symmetry with Iran. Iran backs them, supports them, trains them, but very much with an eye of trying to shift the balance of power between its relationship with the West. So Hezbollah is sort of its biggest ally in the region, not just because of cultural connections that exist between the Shia and Lebanon and the Iranian regime, which is also a Shia Muslim dominated political enterprise. But it supports and it backs Hezbollah as sort of a,

key part of its defense strategy, hoping that if ever there's a moment of crisis, it can call upon Hezbollah to pressure Israel and pressure the West from its geographic location. That was the intention. That was the goal. And it did happen. And that's why Iran invested so much money in Lebanon and Hezbollah. Now that's an old story in many ways, because with the fall of the Bashar Assad regime last year, Ron has no direct access to Hezbollah. And now that they've been, you know, very hard by the Israelis, Hezbollah is really a shadow of its former self. So, and that, that translates into Iran's overall geographic and political and military weakness in the region because one of its core allies effectively no longer exists as it used to do.

You know, a lot of people listening will probably remember that speech in the early 2000s that George W. Bush gave the state of the Union. speech where he, you know, calls Iran along with Iraq and North Korea. States like these and their terrorist allies constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world by seeking weapons of mass destruction. These regimes pose a grave and growing danger. And this argument, of course, was part of the rationale behind the U.S. invasion of Iraq. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them,

them the means to match their hatred. They could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States. In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic. Running parallel to all of this has been the nuclear question. And can you walk me through Iran's thinking regarding the pursuit of nuclear capacity for energy and as a deterrent? Yeah, so we talked about the Iran-Iraq War. And that was a key moment that deeply shaped Iran or the Islamic Revolution of Iran's and the government in power. It's geostrategic and political thinking.

And it develops a nuclear program, or more accurately, it restarts a nuclear program. The origins of the nuclear program began under the Shah of Iran with American knowledge and quasi sort of support. It wasn't a problem back then because the Shah was an ally of the United States. So Iran's nuclear program is developed allegedly to produce nuclear technology for energy reasons, for research reasons, but really, I think, motivated by this desire to have this backup option. If ever the regime is facing an existential crisis, it could draw upon its nuclear technology to produce a weapon in a short time and tell its adversaries back off. you know, we're part of this nuclear club. The details of this program are slowly revealed, largely by Israeli intelligence and by American intelligence. Iran is sort of caught, effectively lying about what they were producing. And this produces a major crisis in Iran's

relationship with the international community. There's longstanding negotiations. Iran tries to sort of, you know, work within the framework of the non-proliferation agreement, which Iran has signed. Iran does actually go a step first. and agrees to these sort of on-the-spot inspections of its nuclear program. These are called the protocols, the extra protocols of the non-proliferation treaty. Long story short, the key event is in 2015, where after Iran suffering heavy sanctions by the West agrees that its national interests are best preserved by effectively giving up its nuclear program and putting it under international inspection in exchange for sanction relief.

The United States, together where our international partners, has achieved, something that decades of animosity has not. A comprehensive long-term deal with Iran that will prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon. This was a key moment because everyone sort of celebrated, including many Iranians at the time, because they thought that this was the end of sanctions, the end of sort of external pressure. It would be an opening for Iran's economy, but also Iran's possible reintegration into the global economy. A lot of excitement around the world and within Iran at this moment. It comes to a crashing end when Donald Trump gets elected. Any terror. up that agreement. I am announcing today that the United States will withdraw from the Iran

nuclear deal. In a few moments, I will sign a presidential memorandum to begin reinstating U.S. nuclear sanctions on the Iranian regime. Yeah. And why does he do that in 2018? Right. He does it, I think, for a couple of reasons. Like, I'm 100% sure he never read the agreement. He does it largely because I think he's encouraged by Netanyahu and by pro-Israel forces in the United States, but also Arab states in the region who are antagonistic toward Iran, that, look, this agreement is not a good thing. He's also very jealous of the accolades that were directed at President Obama for pulling off that diplomatic feat. I think a lot of this is driven simply by that sort of animus. We know right now Donald Trump keeps aspiring to win the Nobel Prize. And so he does that in a way that really speaks well to his core base of supporters in the Maga movement and in the pro-Israel constituency.

But it's critically that event that has set the stage and provided a direct roadmap to the crisis that we're facing today. That agreement, as I said, was adhered to by Iran, even after the United States pulled out of the agreement. But then Iran sort of felt that, well, it had to sort of start enriching uranium as a way of trying to get leverage in future negotiations. But that is the key event that I think really explains why we're in a war situation today as we're speaking in March, February, March of 26. Right. And just, you know, what are some of the other key events that you would say got us to this place over the last, you know, several years? Well, it's really the rise of Donald Trump, I think, is critical because when that happens, he moves, you know, in a different direction, tears up this nuclear agreement. There's a lot of things that are happening, of course, regionally. I think the October 7th, 23, Hamas attack on Israel and Israel's response to that attack, which now, according to human rights groups, constitutes an acts of genocide, has changed the political language. landscape in the region and has forced Israel to respond very brutally, not just to the Palestinians

in Gaza, but to reshape Israeli calculation that they want to now go after their adversaries in the region, not just Hamas, not just Hezbollah, not just the Houthis, but critically the headquarters of this so-called axis of resistance, which is in Tehran. I think that's a big, a big sort of game changer, of course, supported by the Biden administration, but supported to a much greater degree by the Trump administration and his allies. All of the people in Trump's inner circle have very hawkish views toward Iran, a very sympathetic to the Benjamin Netanyahu worldview. So I think that's a big part of the story as well that has shaped the regional landscape.

You know, we began this conversation talking about the Shah and the fact that he left the country following the revolution in 1979. The Shah's son, Reza Palavi, is a person. who summoned the diaspora and in the U.S. government have looked, too, to reprise his father's position as leader. He's been doing the rounds on American television making his case talking about how he would stand to benefit America as a leader of Iran. You know, the president says, Maga, we said, Miga, make Iran great again. And in that sense, I think that a different Iran, that now will be at peace with the region, work with our neighbors, will bring an element of stability, will be good for American national security.

but most importantly, an opportunity to be successful in terms of economic growth and what have you. Is there a possibility, you think, that this story comes full circle, that the son of the Shah, who was deposed via popular uprising and installed by the West, could be installed as leader once again? The only option for that to happen is if he's installed in power on the back of an American or an Israeli tank because there's no way of him coming back into power by himself. He doesn't have an organized group of supporters, a ground game within Iran. He's very successful in terms of the social media atmosphere. He's very close to Republican, you know, mega-oriented political

groups in the United States and critically with pro-Israel organizations who, you know, amplify his narrative as this sort of model of a democracy that can present an alternative. He's popular, I think, now at this moment, because of the deep level of frustration and anger and desperation that many Iranians feel. And he's sort of the only figure who has stepped forward and occupied this space that provides an alternative to the ruling regime. So I certainly hope that Iran does not witness a moment where the monarchy is restored because that would effectively mean going back, politically in terms of Iran's political development trajectory rather than moving forward. I hope that this doesn't happen where, you know, the alternative to this repressive regime in Iran is

the restoration of a of a monarchy that was in many ways responsible for getting us to this moment. You know, you can't understand the current repressive regimes of the Islamic Republic of Iran unless you have a familiarity with the topics that we've been discussing, right, and the lead-up to this moment. So I think that would be a net defeat for the Democrat aspirational. of the Iranian people. I think very much there are powerful countries in the West, particularly in the United States, that love to see this man by the name of Reza Palli who restored to power. But I strongly believe everything that I've seen and read by him, that if he does, it would not be a net gain for the prospects of democracy and human rights.

It would effectively reproduce the policies of the former regime that his father presided over. And as I said, a moment ago, really set the groundwork, set the stage for the 1970. Revolution. Okay. Better on that note, thank you so much. This was a true gift to polysyners like me, and I know people listening everywhere. Thank you. Thanks for your questions. Pleasure. All right. That is all for today. I'm Jamie Plesson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.