Pod Save the World - Understanding Iran

Episode Date: December 21, 2022

Yeganeh and Jason Rezaian join Ben to answer all of your burning questions about Iran: what life is like for girls and women, why this movement is different than any before it, the risk of civil war or wider conflict, and why we should all care about the future of Iran and its people. Then President and CEO of the International Rescue Committee David Milliband joins to discuss what the IRC is most concerned about in 2023, how to better prevent humanitarian crises and what we can all do to help. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome back to Pod State of the World. I am very pleased to be joined by two of the best friends of this podcast. Yegi Resign, who we had on recently to talk about Iran and Jason Resign, obviously the host of 544 Days, like one of the best podcasts we've had on Crooked. Thank you guys so much for being here. Thanks for having us. Great to be back. Thank you. So I mentioned this to you guys before, but we've done a couple of listeners' questions episodes recently. And the highest volume has been about Iran and just wanting to know more. more, and I think wanting to feel some solidarity with people there.

And some of this was probably in response to your appearance, Yegi. And I should say, by the way, proper introduction. Yegis with the Committee to Protect Journalists. Jason, of course, you can find out of the Washington Post. Yagi, I wanted to take this all the way back in the beginning, right, to take people deep inside how we got to where we are today, how it feels to Iranians, and then obviously talk about where this protest movement may be going. you're born in the 80s, Jason and I are a little older. And I'm just curious, like, what is it like as you're coming into consciousness of your surroundings? What did you think that the Islamic Republic, which was relatively young when you were growing up, was?

And how did you think about your place as a girl in this system that clearly had different rules for girls than boys? Right. going back deep, I think one of the first early memories of being a product of Islamic Republic was that first of all, when I was five years old, I had to go take the muckshot that you need for registering at school and for preschool, which I started the next year. So this is the summer of I am five and a half. And then my mom had to wanted to take me to do photography. And I had to wear a scarf because this is going to be a photo that it's going to be used during my school education years for the time being.

And I had to wear the scarf. And despite seeing my mom growing up until I was five that she always wore the scarf and the cover, body cover, Monto. It never occurred to me that there will be a time that I had to do it. Like it's going to be my turn. And on that day, she didn't buy me a proper size scarf, so she put hers on me. And this was like extremely long and huge. So I have this photo that every time I look, it just breaks my heart, seeing myself. I looked ridiculous.

I was this very tiny, super thin little girl. And this scarf was like up to my knees. So it was serving as both the scarf and the cover. And when I saw myself in the photography shop, I felt like terrible that, oh, my God, this is like from now on my life. Did your parents, like, talk to you about that? Or like, how do they tell you that, hey, they're going to be these rules if you're a girl? We used to watch lots of news. Like, TV was on all the time in our house, maybe in part because of the war.

So everyone was watching news. but my dad never talked about it. I guess it didn't, he didn't care. It's not that he didn't care that he was raising girls. Like everyone was so during those years, struggling with so many other economic, financial, the war post-revolution. And then my dad, my mom would every now and then say things,

but again, it was as if they, have accepted their fate. Yeah. Like, it felt as if my mom came to peace with it, that this is it. And she has to do it. And we are girls, then we have to follow her. So she was always telling us that when you leave the house, you have to do this. And otherwise, there will be problems.

But another early memory that made me think about, I'm being raised. somewhere that is a little bit different from the rest of the world, is when I started school at seven years old, first grade, every morning on the classes, I was at a school that had one of each class, like first grade, second grade, third grade, fourth, and fifth, like the primary school. Every morning we had to line up in the backyard of the school, and one of the teachers would be on the podium and say good morning, da-da, and we had to sing the national.

anthem and then we had to chant the slogan of death to America, death to Israel and death to Britain. That was like every morning three times each. What does the seven-year-old think of what that means? Exactly. So to me, I remember I came like coming home and asking my mom that why are these our enemies? What is the problem? Why do we have to keep saying so? And then remembering telling my mom that I want to go to America and Israel and Britain and see it myself. Like what are these places? Why do we have to keep saying that? So that gave me the like this first spark of okay I'm living in a country that its system has so many enemies good and bad. But because of that we are somehow always pears.

paranoid about our enemies. And then obviously there was war. So I grew up during the war. So we knew that what is that? And why is that to some extent as a little kid? I remember having the memories of Saddam throwing like bombs even in Tehran. So there was always a little bit of stress going on in our lives. Even as little kids we could understand.

I don't know what it is with the kids of 80s of Iran, that we all grew up with the anxiety and the stress of early post-revolution and then the war. And then that airplane shut down happened very early on when we were kids. So we grew up with all of these things and had this understanding that for some reason, either our system is the enemy of other places or other places are the enemy of our country. But I grew up in an environment that I never had the sense that our people are the enemy. Because my parents were not repeating those slogans or at least behind closed doors in our household. We were allowed to have our own values and thinking. and my parents are not necessarily religious or pro-Islamic republic. So especially my dad was always reading books, being very open-minded.

I was never forced to wear hijab indoors. But those early memories always stuck with me. Another thing is that I always remember not seeing a photo of any woman on TV. Like the news, there was no photo of any woman. I remember the news coverage of everything United States related was very amplified, right? Their animosity or everything U.S. related was very amplified in the news, including the president. And the president was Reagan at the time and also the Britain. But they were always talking about Britain, England, and the U.S., and they were always talking about Tatcher and Reagan, never showing Tachar.

So I always assumed Reagan Toucher is one person, is this man. But so who is Toucher? To me, it was just one person. That's interesting. For years, I thought Reagan Toucher is one person and it's that man, President Reagan. Yeah. And it took years until I was like maybe 1314 that I realized, oh, there was a woman named Toucher.

Yeah. Because they never showed her face in the news, right? Because because of hijab, they always censored her. Her look. Yeah, that's a detail right there. Well, Jason, you're on the other side of the planet, but you're come from an Iranian family that is living California, not unlike a lot of Iranian families in the diaspora. And you and I are about similar age.

So, like, you're coming of age, you know, the revolution and the hostage crisis, which is obviously a bigger deal here has happened. Iran-Iraq war is happening. You have these overlapping identities, right? You know, an Iranian family in America, an American family with Iranian heritage. I mean, how did you negotiate between coming from this place that was now like an enemy and chanting death to America? Like, how did you hold on to that Iranian identity and think about, you know, what the Islamic Republic was? So, you know, I had an Iranian dad who came from a large,

He had eight brothers and sisters. And by the time of the revolution, three of those sisters had moved to the U.S. And soon after the revolution, his brother moved to the U.S. So I had a lot of interaction with Iranian people, but I also had, you know, a very white American family. My mom is from the Midwest. She was an only child. And so we were this kind of blended family living in northern California.

And, you know, the food, the celebrations, the culture, very much part of my life from the very beginning. And the images of the hostage crisis especially. I think that's kind of my first understanding that the half of my family came from this other part of the world were really jarring for me. Because if you look at the coverage from 1979, 1980, it's a lot of burning of the stars and stripes. People, angry-looking people chanting death to America through your television screens as a three or four, five, six-year-old, it just didn't make sense to me because this is not my experience of Iranians. Yeah. And I think that that was something that I grew up with throughout school and high school. And it wasn't really until, you know, September 11th that I started to feel like, oh, other American people think of me as slightly different as well.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. I'm on that other side. I got a funny last name. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

My dad's got an accent, you know, all of that sort of stuff. And, you know, I was always really curious. And we had a constant stream of relatives who would come back and forth. You know, one of the things that gets forgotten in all this, although the U.S. and Iran haven't had relations since 1980, the diaspora here in the U.S. is large, you know, maybe as many as two million people. And goes back. I mean, I remember I have a bunch of Iranian-American friends as you guys know, and I was always surprised almost because we saw this as this, you know, ominous place. They all went, I mean, it kind of stopped recently, but, like, for a long time, it felt like there was a lot of travel back and forth. There was tons.

And, you know, part of that was that during the last. last decade and a half of the Shaw, during the Nixon Ford Carter years, there were more Iranian college students in America than students from any other country. So, you know, there was this kind of cross-pollination that had been going on forever. And then to have that cut off and all of the transportation and the flow of people going back and forth, be kind of clandestine and quiet. Yeah. You know, if you went to any major airport, L-AX, SFO, O'Hare, JFK, on any day, between the mid-1980s until a couple of years ago, you would have seen dozens of Iranians getting on a Liftonza flight or an Emirates flight or, you know, a KLM flight, stopping in Europe or in the Gulf and then heading to Iran. And this has been a common part of the experience for a very long time.

We've never had direct relations between the government officially. Obviously, you've been involved in all kinds of conversations with them that were not on the normal sort of... Not normal. Not normal. But the flow of information and communication among the people, as Yagi indicated, never really stopped. When did you go for the first time? I went in April of 2001.

So right before 9-11 was my first trip there. I was, you know, fascinated by the place. I think people assume that it was out of, you know, desire to connect with my roots. And I'm sure that that was some element of it. But, you know, like so many folks of your and my age who were finishing college in the late 90s and the dollar was historically strong. It was very easy to travel. We had the opportunity to travel in ways that previous generations didn't. 9-11 kind of ended that in parts of the world, you know.

But in that, you know, 90s. to 2001, I went everywhere I could. And Iran was kind of the holy grail of destinations for me. When I finally got in, I thought to myself, this place is fucking crazy. Well, I just kept wanting to go back. Yeah, I mean, you, so you're following your career and then, you know, 544 days. And I was just telling you guys, I heard both of your stories yet again on what I recommend to everybody, the oral history of Anthony Bordane. But so you basically kind of write your way into a job, it seems to me, right?

or Stringer, essentially, filing stories from Iran, Washington Post you hitch up with. And I remember at the time being struck by, like, how clear it was that you were really trying to show this complex, multidimensional country to an American audience. You know, like, you almost grabbing us, being like, hey, it's not just death to America chance. And it's not to say it's all good or bad. It's just, like, what were you trying to, up until the point when you were arrested, What did you think your mission was there as a journalist? What was the Iran you were trying to show people? I think that was the only value add that I could make to the conversation.

When I first moved to Iran in 2009, after having traveled back and forth, you know, a dozen or more times in the previous seven or eight years, you know, I wanted to show Americans that, yes, this country is very different than America. But the aspirations and dreams and fears of these people aren't any different than yours and mine. And actually, in a lot of ways, they're more similar to us than a lot of other countries who are very friendly with. Yeah. Well, they're a sense of exceptionalism. You know, there's a lot. There's a lot in common. Also, you know, very multi-ethnic, you know, multi-linguistic country.

And, you know, I wanted to show that to a very general American. audience. And I think that was kind of the secret recipe that I had that none of my other colleagues in the foreign media working in Iran could pull off because they hadn't grown up in the United States. They were all European or Iranian or people who'd grown up in the Gulf. They didn't have that understanding of not only the context of U.S.-Iran relationship, but the enmity that was kind of baked into that relationship for the average American. I just wanted to strip that apart and rebuild the whole thing. That was my goal. Yeah. And when you guys meet, what is it like to enter into a, you know, relationship?

I don't mean this to be too personal a question, but like, you know, you're in a society in which women are treated differently in a lot of ways, particularly out in public. Yeah. If you were in America and you guys started dating, you wouldn't have to think about is she covering her hair out and, you know, is there alcohol. You know, like, what is, you guys were meeting and obviously, you know, starting a wonderful relationship. How did it feel to be in a different social context than the one you grew up in? On the one hand, you know, selfishly and immaturely thrilling, right?

Yeah, yeah. On the other, you know, I think I'm a fairly empathetic person. And to see Yegi, who had just received her master's degree in English translation, struggling through job after job where she was more qualified, more ambitious, not getting paid and getting sexually harassed by one boss after another, it's infuriating. Yeah. And it changed my entire perception of women's experiences in Iran. understood that, you know, they are required to follow different rules than men, that they have to

literally sit in the back of the bus. Yeah. Right? All of these things that are very evocative to anybody who's paying attention. But then to, you know, fall in love with somebody who's subjected to that on a day-to-day basis, you feel it very differently. And I think, you know, I don't want to bring us too much to the current moment. No, we're going to get to the current moment.

I would say that, you know, the women have been leading this movement, but there are tens of millions of Iranian men who feel that frustration of their wives, girlfriends, sisters, moms, daughters who are just as supportive and understand that this has been the wrong way for a really long time. So you said, like, I'm going to actually break from what I was going to ask you next, Yeager, because the sexual harassment point is one that, how endemic? is that? It's unfortunate to say that it's very, the misogyny is very embedded in the society and and it's been completely okay approved by the system because if you have an abusing boss who wants to take advantage of you and takes advantage of his power and position, you don't know who you're going to go to where you take your complaint. Like, you can't go to the police because the man, the person in a position of power is protected. It's hard to go to your family because if you go to your mother, she is herself in a position that wants to protect you but doesn't have much power.

If you go to your father, then these fights get involved. So it's a very complicated situation. But it's terrible. I remember throughout the university, throughout different jobs. Interestingly, most of them, in the situation that this happened to me, most of them were like government positions, people who had any power in the system. People who think that they can operate with impunity. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, and I have to say, like, because this will, you know, I'm going to do one more thing in the past, but this is worth, I think, bringing the. to the present, like, how much, like, trauma is coming out in these protests? Like, I'm just imagining decades of impunity and sexual harassment and how many seven-year-old girls, five-year-old girls putting on their mother's hijab. Like, I can't imagine the pent-up trauma that is exploding right now. 40-something years, right? 43 years of gender apartheid and, as you said, misogyny and keeping. woman down and as Jason said literally force you to sit in the back of the bus or not having a

voice or a say and these are just little examples in a big city like Tehran which everyone is educated and modernized and have access to social media and think about women in the smaller cities I think that's why this time around is a little bit different because you can see that women from Kordistan are leading this thing because they have been through everything their own tribal pain and pressure on top of everything that the society and the government has dictated them. Yeah. I think, you know, one thing that I keep coming back to when we talk about these protests

is that it's a full-blown national equality movement. First of all, it's women. Second, it is ethnic minorities, whether it's Kurds, Baluchis, Azeris, religious minorities. Those groups happen to be overwhelmingly Sunni, right? It's all the subjugated groups in Iranian society, which happened to amount for probably 70% if not more of the people, right? So it's a lot of people with a lot of pent up frustration against. It's artists. It's writers.

It's journalists. Scientists. It's doctors who can operate. It affects all aspects of the society. Yeah, let's talk about the movement now because your detention, right, you guys have talked about. about a lot and 544 days coverage. Now, I will come back and ask you about that, but I think the conversation leads us here so interestingly,

like there's not really like a leadership, right? It's just kind of this explosion of 40 years of pent-up repression, trauma. Is that sustainable? Does there need to be like a leadership structure? Like how can a movement become either an evolution of the regime or a revolution absent some, who's going to negotiate with these people or who's going to, you know, clarify what is acceptable, right? Like when we saw the announcement, you know, about the morality police, which is obviously, you know, questionable in its own right and not enough. But like, what is enough?

Like, how does this movement become political change or social change? I mean, look, I think that if you were to ask people on the streets of, you know, Iranian cities right now, they would say that we're coming out because, because of our own grievances. And, you know, the, one of the mistakes of 1979 was not having a clearer idea of what it was that was going to replace the shop. Yes, exactly. And I think that that's very much a problem right now

that needs to be dealt with. At the same time, I think that we're in the nascent stages of a revolution. Yeah. This could last for, you know, many months. Many years, you know, years. And I think that realistically, figures will emerge from that.

But the one thing that the Islamic Republic has been overwhelmingly, you know, successful at over the years is snuffing out opposition. Yeah. So, you know, if these young protesters, women, others, were to put figures forward, that's a rest of the way. be for getting those people killed. Yes. Imprisoned or exiled and put in a situation.

So they're not a reason not to have leaders because then they can be decapitated. Exactly. Yeah. And I think that, you know, what a lot of us are waiting for is, you know, some effective, credible voices in diaspora to, you know, make it clear that they have a certain amount of credibility and responsibility. that folks inside Iran could, you know, put some faith in as interlocutors between them and the rest of the world. I don't think that that's happened yet.

So, and the follow-up question for you, Jason, on that is that is this complicated by the fact that there are geopolitical interests, right? So, like, in the sense that the U.S. interests in Iran is, yes, I think a sincere desire to see more democratic outcomes there. But there's also this longstanding enmity and how. How do you, particularly in the U.S., like, how does the diaspora not be seen as, you know, this is an objective of U.S. foreign policy, but rather this is a part of an Iranian movement, you know? Yeah, I mean, I think it's very, very challenging, and it's a tough one. I mean, you dealt with the Iranian diaspora, you know, for eight years while you were in the White House. Pretty, pretty fractured diaspora, yeah. Very much so.

From royalist to M.E.K. to much more reasonable people in this brand of spectrum, you know. To everything in between and, you know, communists and atheists and people who support the regime and people who are religious and don't support the regime and people who, you know, have business interests that they would like to see developed. I mean, so there's so much of that. And it's a group with incredible education, incredible financial resources, incredible connections. Yeah. And somehow we haven't figured out how to become a political force in this country. Yeah, yeah. And so I think that's the missing piece of it.

And, you know, you've seen a shift. I mean, I think while you guys were in office, there was an overwhelming feeling that diplomacy, that lifting of sanctions in return for curtailing nuclear program, making inroads between the civil society and Iran creating foreign investment opportunities. I wanted student visas to... All of that stuff, yeah. That was all very much supported six, seven years ago.

It's not right now, right? We're in a different world, yeah. We're in a totally different world. And so now it's how do we take some of those things, like student visas, like, you know, one thing that I've been talking to people about and writing about quite a bit is, you know, incubating civil society.

society in exile. Yeah. You know, allowing dissidents who have already fled the country, easy passage to the United States. This is what's missing from our conversation here. We don't have the human intelligence on Iran. You've got a bunch of people. Yegi and I have not been in Iran.

A month from that, it'll be seven years since we've been in Iran. You won't find experts in Washington, D.C. who've been there any more recently than she and I. Yeah. Right. And so that's a problem. Yeah. Yeah.

Is there a problem, too, that I talked about this a bit a couple weeks ago, because I saw this in Cuba. In Cuba, the government for a long time, you know, particularly under Fidel, they had a strategy every time there was some unrest of opening a massive valve. You know, sure, everybody can go to Florida, you know. They wanted the people to leave. Yeah. And if you look today, I'm noticing more and more prominent Iranian, you know, people in film and art and stuff. Athletes, yeah, athletes, basically leaving or not going back. And on the one end, that can help you set up kind of diaspora movement.

But the other end, then they're out of Iran. And the prominent people are just not present in the street. Like, what's that balance like? I want to say one thing, and then I want to hear what you have to say about it. But I think that right now is the moment where having them in diaspora can actually make a difference. Yeah. You know, I mean, we need to be going all in on supporting the aspirations of ordinary Iranian people right now and tapping into those voices. A year from now, two years from now, we'll have missed that moment.

So, you know, I think let them in right now. Yeah, yeah. Organize. It's going to be like herding cats. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then, you know, figure out what's possible. Yeah. I think going back to your point about Cuba, I think the government in Iran would like to see the prominent Iranians leave.

They don't have any problem with that as much as these prominent people can leave without any problem. Once they are outside Iran, the government, I think, inside is having so much problem and dealing with domestic issues that they think, okay, if, for example, Ali Keremie, who is a prominent soccer player, and opposition at this point and a very critical figure speaking against the system. If he leaves, we don't have to leave or deal with him anymore. So he's gone. Yeah. So because they are trying to kill the movement and silence the people on the ground. So they prefer those characters to live currently.

But you're seeing a lot of them not leaving, standing up and saying, I'm not going anywhere. I would say those are prominent figures in who, in some sense. There are some political figures, characters, activists. Like the famous blogger, Hossein Roneghi, who has come out many, many times and said, I'm not leaving despite whatever they put me through. And he just came out of 50 days of hunger strike. So those are the people who have more political depth in their fight against the system. And what do you, so because I've noticed, you know, it's even like film directors, athletes, pop stars who actually the regime might have once elevated, you know, particularly that international prestige, you know, now they're speaking against the regime.

and it kind of leads to a place where, you know, you and I were talking on the way in, but, like, you have a pretty incompetent, hardline, you know, quote-unquote elected government, you know, fixed for President Racy. You've got a Supreme Leader who's just, I mean, I mean, this guy's, like, barely hanging on in a pretty old geriatric clerical establishment. You've got, you know, a bombardment of. disinformation from from the Iranian regime to the the Gulf countries to Israel, U.S., Russia, everybody's going to, there's something kind of dystopian like in that description.

What do you think it's like to be at the eye of that storm as just if you were an Iranian girl? Like what is motivating that person to continue to protest while also kind of just living daily life? Freedom. Yeah. Hope, hope for getting to what they deserve because as much as I'm sure the life on the ground is very difficult right now, people have been connected to the rest of the world as much as internet and social media was available to them or is available to them. They have seen the opportunities that the rest of the world kids their age have. they are very educated young generation. So they speak English, they know how to use Internet like everybody else. They have YouTube channels that they create content.

Everyone has a smartphone. They know how to get around the government sensors that they need to. Yes. And obviously they know that they deserve a better chance of life. And I don't think at this point the younger generation wants anything except the sense of freedom in a sense that no one is coming to the street and saying we want to have bars or discos, you know what I'm saying? They are not asking anything romanticized or too much. They just want to have democracy and freedom of choice of clothing, good education, good jobs. These are like very basic rights to have.

Do you guys think, you know, this is obviously a huge question, so I don't ask you to answer for all Iranians on this question. But like, does this have to be a wholesale change in the entire system, an end of the Islamic Republic and a new government? Or what if there did emerge from within some people who said, you know what? We're going to, you know, not just end the morality place, we're going to do some kind of overhaul this system. to try to address these concerns. I mean, do you think there's a room for that approach or do you think this is just existential? I think that was what Rohanian Zerif were trying to do

or at least pretend that they were doing. I honestly believe some of them genuinely thought they would be able to make such reform under the IRGC or the same supreme leader. But that ship is sailed now. That ship is, say, long time ago, and that's not what people want anymore. And even people, I think, realize that with some more modern, forward-thinking people, like Rohanian Zerif, the change is not going to be making a real difference in their lives.

So they are still the outcome of the same system. And at times they have to bow to the Supreme Leader and go move forward with whatever the heartlines, heartliners ask for. So people know that's not going to happen. That's why they are asking for the whole change. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that the bet on the Rohani years internally and probably from where you were sitting as well was that, you know, these are people that we can deal with. And, you know, the amount of foreign investment and engagement that might follow on to this will make the situation much more malleable and potentially something that we can influence, which we didn't have ever before that.

Yeah. We didn't have once we left the deal. We don't have right now. Yeah. Everything kind of collapsed onto that, right? Because it was like internally, it was also the same time that serious happenings of the RGC is flexing its muscles there. Then externally, Trump gets elected so this bet on the deal gets torn up and, you know, there's no, there's no room to even test that proposition. And the other promise of the deal for normal Iranians was a better economic situation.

So now, you know, I always looked at it and said, you know, having lived there and knowing that in 2009 when we, you know, faced the most repressive several months in, you know, 20 years before that, 2010, 2011, pretty good economic years for Iran, right? The value of the Iranian Rial was very strong. Iranians were able to travel, you know, they weren't out in the street protesting in the same way. When the sanctions started piling up in 2012 and 2013, it was that economic promise. And now we're in this moment right now where the economy is in the toilet. The value of the Rial is one-tenth of what it was when you guys struck that deal.

Right? And at that point, it was one-third of what it was before you started the sanctions. So over a 10-year period, now the value of the Iran currency is 1-30th of what it was a decade ago. people who are a little bit younger than Yegi, you know, people who are in college and thinking about their future, don't have any money, don't have any prospects,

don't have the ability to go anywhere, and have no freedom. The regime has zero answers for any of these problems. So I think that, you know, it's done. So my own peculiar overlapping identities, which are not as interesting as yours, but like two of them are

someone who's incredibly sympathetic with democratic movements and someone who was once a national security official. So as a person who is very sympathetic to democratic movements, I do look at this and I think, this is game over, right? Like this regime's never putting this back in a box. I mean, the stuff we're seeing is not, when you're seeing like 12-year-old girls just standing up to authority, like this is, they will never win back those people, whether it's one year, five years, or 10 years, like this place is going to change.

However, the national security official of me looks at this situation and thinks, You've got a theocratic regime that is not going to want to go quietly. They have almost a nuclear weapons capability. They do have neighbors, whether it's Saudis or the Israelis who have very significant interests in how this situation plays out. They're kind of a party to an actual war that is currently happening in Ukraine with the kind of drones and stuff that are supplying to the Russians. And I kind of look at this and I'm like, wait a second.

Yes, the Democratic, you know, activist in me is like, these people are going to win in the three, five, 10 year time period. But how is there not going to be a war or a civil war or just something horrible, you know, in the next couple of years? I think there's, you know, like these, they're there's, it's not unlike the Rahani thing. Like, even if we assumed all the best about Rahani, the, the, the, the, the, the. environment around that was not going to allow that to happen, right? And how much do you worry about how do we even navigate through the nuclear issue and the regional proxy wars and the Ukraine conflict and how this intersects? Like, what do you tell like a Biden administration how to avoid the war that might derail the democratic progress? Yeah, no. I mean, I know it's something that that

that they worry about. Yeah. Because, you know, you and I both talk to them about that regularly. Yeah. My first instinct on that is to tell them, you know, to think for themselves, right? You know, we don't need to take Saudi and Israeli intelligence on how to handle Iran. I mean, we're completely capable of it. And by the way, on our own and all the more reason to listen to these recent arrived diaspora. Completely. And we can create that space. And I would encourage them to do more to fast track creating that space and draw as a, you know, and draw as a space. much guidance from the ample number of people who are already in town and those who will soon

come, rather than relying on third parties with their own ulterior motives in terms of how U.S. policy on Iran should go. I'm very worried about the internal fissures within Iran. I've been worried about it for a decade. You know, you have – I'm not – I don't think. of, you know, separatist movements that some people, especially in the regime, talk about as a challenge. Like Kurdish separatism, yeah.

Yeah, I think that's bullshit. Those are Iranians. Those are people who've been in Iran for thousands of years and they want to maintain that Iranian identity. What I'm more worried about is the divide between people like Yegi and people in the morality police who arrested people like Yegi. I mean, I remember, you know, her calling me after being arrested by them one night and telling me, you know, these women, you know, they wanted my boots. And at the same time, they said, if I want to look like this and if I want to live a Western lifestyle, there's no place for me in this country that I should leave. And, you know, the more secular thinking, modern thinking Iranians want to deny the existence of more, you know, regime supporting people who still exist.

I hate to say it. I don't know the percentage of it, but there's still some people there who, for whatever reasons, are wedded to that system. And everybody's going to be trying to feed those fissures, right? Yeah, all these external actors. Yeah, I think I have been worried for years about a civil war, to be honest. I think that's kind of imminent because yesterday they executed a twin.

23-year-old, whom apparently was not participating in a protest or anything. He was home with his sister and his mother, and these heartliners were in their street, bad-mouthing women, and this young ambition athlete guy went out and started getting into a fight and trying to silencing them because they were saying anti-women. stuff and that's where the fight started and according to the to the regime which I'm sure they are manipulating the story he beat or killed two Bessigis so these were dogs of the system and he got into a fight with them protecting his mother and sister and they they executed him after only 23 days of arresting him so imagine how fast the trial and everything and and appeal everything when move forward. And they executed a guy who was just protecting his mother and sister. And may not have done anything at all.

At all. Nothing. Nothing. He just got into a verbal fight with them or supposedly. Just like you were supposedly like using avocados over the regime or something. So this is the beginning of a civil war between the group that Jason said, between more secular Iranians and besieges or. or more system-like people.

In a way, it's already happening. Yeah, it is happening. Like, it's something occurred to me in hearing both of you talk about this is obviously the trauma of that kind of sexual harassment and repression of women, just generally, the apartheid system. And also, like, the men, you know, I have daughter. I'm trying to imagine what the trauma for, if you see your sister or your wife or your daughters get sexually harassed or mistreated and you can't do anything.

because you might be executed if you do something. I mean, you can't put that in a box, you know. It's a zero-sum situation. Yeah, it's zero-sum. It's just that, and to wind this down a bit, Yeager, you always asked you before, but a question kept popping my head. You are in prison and even prison by your own government.

Right. Along with Jason, treated horribly, kind of dehumanized in how they treated you. then you're released while he's still in prison. So the person you love is still in prison by your own government. And then you have to leave and suffer the kind of pain of exile. I have to think, you know, when you watch these protests and you think about having to have left Iran, you must have thought about what is the Iran you want to return to someday.

Right. And you guys have a young child, like, I'm sure. sure you would like, you know, to have your family experience Iran. Like, what do you think about that? What is the Iran you would like to go back to? So first, let me say that I left Iran in a very traumatic way, as you said. During Jason's ordeal, I felt constantly betrayed with my own people, with my own government, just because I married the guy who's half foreign, right? Half American. And then I had to leave without any heads-up or anything. And I'm even grateful for that because I could have been still stuck there, right?

Thanks to Ben and Cole for that, by the way. Yeah, bit player, but yeah. Yeah, thanks to everyone in the Obama administration for not leaving me behind, which I know how hard it was. Yeah, it was crazy. Yeah. But all of this makes me have very, very strong feelings about my country. Yeah.

And at times there are moments that I think to myself, if this regime is gone, I'm going to go back in a heartbeat, get a plane ticket and fly back tomorrow morning. There was a time that I even told Jason that I'm going to. going back tomorrow, fuck everything during the Trump administration because I was so angry with Trump's policies. It was like, it's still at the end of the day, my country. If there's a war, if they throw a bomb on my people, I'm going to go and do something, like on the ground. Just be there with them.

Exactly. Because I'm one of them. I never saw myself as anything except an Iranian people, right? But now I also have when I see the violence of this regime, how brutal it is to the people, I think to myself, if there's one single person from this regime still around in Iran, I will never step back into that soil until that last person is removed because these are violence, these are non-human beings. These are dogs. These are enemies of anything that the Persian culture ever stood for, like, poetry and happiness and love and humanity, all those great things that we are always boastful about having them. So I don't know. It's a very mixed feeling and I'm sure I'm not the only one having all these mixed feelings.

I'm sure many of us in the diaspora have these. have these thoughts of, should we go back anytime soon if we are allowed? Should we not go back? I still apparently have a case in the Revolutionary Guard open against me. So I don't know it's some of us are bound to the politics of the place that we were. born forever. And Iranians are very political on people and doesn't matter where they are, the politics of our homeland always hunts us, I think, as you mentioned, their Cubans are like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know, for example, a Somalian is like that or an Indian is

like that or, or let's say, someone from somewhere else is like that. Yeah, or even you guys, Like if as an American, if you lived outside America, would you feel like the politics of your country is hunting you every day? Or I don't know, but for me, I feel like I have one foot out the door, always be ready in a bag to go back. But do I want to go back? Will I ever feel safe? We sometimes joke, who's going to go back first? Jason, I won't let you go. I go back and if it is safe and he jokes and says, actually he doesn't joke. He's very serious.

I won't let you take our kid. So it's complicated. The last question I want to ask then is, you know, for both you to, part of what is happening, I think, as an outside observer and someone who's worked on Iran, known and really loved Iranians over the years is. And this is about like what is it mean to being Iranian, right? Because the identity that they try to beat into you is being Iranian is Islamic Republic, hijab, death to America, death to Israel, death of Britain. That is Iranian identity. That's what they are trying to indoctrinate us with. And it's interesting to me.

That's what I always tell Jason. Despite all the regime's effort, look at me. I am supposed to be an outcome of the system. You're the failure of that project. Exactly. Their project was completely failed. It didn't work. Even with the next generation of kids who are like a decade younger than me, they even failed more.

They fail worse each generation. Exactly. So what is it? What is Iran? Oh, to me, Iran is this beautiful land of, of, Really kind people. I always say that something we have in common with Americans is that we are also very family oriented, like Americans. When it's weekend, everyone wants to be home, celebrate, cook food.

We have this beautiful tradition of the last day of Noros, which is called the Day of the Nature, which we're kind of similar, like summertime or like, Memorial Day, like barbecuing outside. The weather is nice, so everyone is outside, playing with their kids, eating outside. But people can't even freely sit outside in like a park or something with their family, with their wives, with their daughters, and feel relaxed and free. That's what everything this regime has taken away, stone from people. Restaurants cannot have seats outdoors because this regime is worried about assembly of more than two people, right?

But to me, Iran is this beautiful land of good food and kind people and poetry and art and really good films that has been taken hostage, hijacked by this regime. I think for me, you know, it's slightly different, you know, having grown up in a family and had some access to the culture and then to go there. You know, it's a real complex identity. Yeah. Right? Yeah, it's not one thing. You know, we are different people behind closed doors as we are from public.

We're incredibly hospitable people. You know, we tend to be really polite superficially and then talk a lot of shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not letting out any secrets. People know. People know this about us. You know, we are, we're complex beings. And I think that's part of having been around and had a concept of ourselves for,

as many years as we have. I mean, I think about my dad who, you know, was born in Iran, lived there until he was 20 and then came to the U.S. And, you know, he was kind of mercurial and a total character, not perfect at all, but really lovable, fun, smart, curious, hospitable, inquisitive. Those are the things that I think are most interesting

and represent us. When I went to Iran, I remember thinking, and this was all the way up until I was arrested, having traveled there for almost a decade and a half, anytime people would hear in your voice that you weren't from there, they just want to engage and know about where you're from. Yeah. They love knowing that Jason is a foreigner.

And it's one of the funniest stories is that Jason's full name is Jason Adams, So his middle name is Adam, right? But Adam in Farsi means human being after like the prophet. So everywhere when the member of Bessigis or the member of the foreign ministry, they were always asking me, back in the days they would call me with my middle name, Miss Salehi, is your husband really American? I was like, yeah, so why is it that he's like double human being? It's because he really is double human being.

He's such a good person. And then they would love it. They were giving him, I remember we were walking in Tadrish Pazar, and as soon as a fruit seller or like a salesperson heard that he was talking English with me, they gave him free food or free fruit or vegetables. I think I just looked hungry, but yeah. No, you always hear about this abiding curiosity about Americans. And not just Americans.

And, you know, literally. Especially Americans. But, you know, taking you by the hand and saying, hey, Ben, you know, you're not from here, you're coming to my house. And then 12 hours later, you know, you're eating dinner. Yeah, exactly. And it's, it's... Drink their homemade alcohol like Arab.

Yeah, I mean, it's a special place. And I think about it these days when people ask me, like, why we should care. And I'm just like, you know, Iranians are worth it. Yeah. The history is worth it. The food's worth it. The women's struggles are worth it. The art, the Persian rugs, the poetry, the four seasons.

the mountains, the desert, you know, the Persian Gulf, the caviar. I mean, the list goes on and all, the pistachios. Yes, the saffron. Yeah. Well, look, I love this conversation because actually, and I loved how we ended, because there's so much just, like, why should people care, not just for the geopolitics of it all, because it's an amazing country full of amazing people that deserve a lot better. And so as I know you guys would implore our listeners, keep paying attention to this,

like, however you can express solid. solidarity to the people of Iran, particularly the women of Iran now, like, keep doing that. Yes, please. Keep raising your voices. Get to know an Iranian. There may be more of them showing up in your neighborhood if you're in certain places. Maybe your dental hygienist, your real estate agent. By the way, my dental hygienist is an Iranian.

Of course. And let's just say, like, she loves the conversation because it's entirely one-sided. Right. So it's a very Iranian experience to have your tooth cleaned by an Iranian hygiener. because they just talked the whole time. And at first I feel bad because I'm like, oh, I can't answer. And I'm like, actually, she's fine with that.

Like, because I'm getting her view on everything, you know? That's great. All right, guys. Thanks to see you. Thanks for doing this. Thank you for having us. Okay, we're very pleased to welcome back to Pod Save the World. David Miliband, the president of the International Rescue Committee, the IRC,

which provides aid to people around the world facing humanitarian crises, working in 40 war-affected countries and in refugee resettlement and assistance. programs across the United States and around the world, really. Before joining IRC, Miliband was in a series of positions in the UK, including Foreign Secretary, where we overlap for a couple years. David Miliband, welcome back to the podcast. Thank you, Ben. Nice to be with you. So you guys have recently kind of put out what I would call a warning. You've been issuing very prescient and sober and insightful. warnings in a number of ways for years. But I think what's striking is you talk about how

this slide that continues to happen in different parts of the world where the IRC is active, from fragile to kind of failed states and the model of humanitarian aid that comes in after the kind of unraveling, that that model is kind of broken. And that we need to think differently about how to affect this cycle that is creating so much mass displacement around the world and creating so many humanitarian crises that then the international community has kind of scrambled together to create a response and kind of mitigate damage. How do we do that? How do you look at the prevention that needs to take place to stop the kind of explosion of not just migration, but the humanitarian crises that we've seen in the last decade or so? Let's start by looking at

what it is we're trying to prevent. What do we mean by humanitarian crisis? And essentially, the watch list that we put out takes 67 different data sources, takes information from our 200 field offices around the world in those 40 countries that you mentioned, and it draws up a list of the 20 countries most likely to suffer from humanitarian disaster in the next year. So you're right to call it a warning. It's also a description, and it's increasingly a call to action, because as you say, we can better preposition people, medicines, money, but we're running to catch up. And just to give your listeners a sense of the scale of the catch-up that needs to be done. The UN says that 339 million people around the world are in need of humanitarian aid to survive. The 20 countries that we cover

in our emergency watch list account for about 90% of those people, so 300 million of them in those countries. In 2014, so just eight years ago, the figure was 81 million. So you can see that this is a galloping tide, really, well, a tide can't gallop. It's a rising tide of misery. And it's being driven by three things. It's being driven by conflict, which is now the preeminent driver of humanitarian crisis and extreme poverty. More than half of the world's extreme poor now live in fragile and conflict states. It's being driven by the climate crisis, which intersects with conflict because of the resource stress that it creates, but it also creates misery on its own. So the climate crisis is being experienced in the poorest countries in the world today. And then the kicker

over the last year has been the consequences, the economic consequences of Ukraine because of its impact on food prices and energy prices, interest rates globally, but also the long-term ripple effects from COVID. So those are the drivers. Your question is, well, how can you get in there? And we highlight three ways that the world needs to change its approach. One is it needs to break the cycle of crisis and that means at a micro level in the treatment of famine and we can come back to whether or not and when it's right to use the word famine. But essentially 600,000 people around the world today are at the international phase classification five, which means famine. So it can be at the micro level or it can be at the more macro level where at the moment,

the humanitarian and climate movements really occupy totally separate spaces. They don't work properly together. They don't map risks together. They don't combine finances together. So one is to break the cycle of crisis. Secondly, is to protect civilians in conflict. Civilians are now the people who in the main get killed in conflict, not soldiers. 34,000 civilians killed last year.

The Russian tactics in Ukraine are purely to pummel civilian infrastructure today. So we have a massive issue around the world that we can't get to the people in need. because of the tactics of combatants. And we say that NGOs like us, but also UN officials are afraid to call this out. We say there needs to be an independent office for the promotion of humanitarian access. And the third thing that we say is that the world needs to manage global risks much, much better, be they pandemic risks or climate risks. And all of this is to say that we're living in a time when risk is being globalized,

but resilience is happening at the national level. And that is the gap. That's the whole that the clients of organizations like the IRC are falling into. And I hope that this report, as well as helping our own internal preparedness, is the kind of call to action that the world needs. So I want to break this into pieces because there's a lot there. I do think everybody should check this out. This watch list is put up by the ARC.

I mean, just the data alone is, I mean, that I was going to actually quote that statue, the $80 million to $340 million in just less than a decade. stunning number, but sadly not surprising. Breaking your kind of prescriptive answer in a few pieces, I guess I'm going to start at the last piece, which may be more like your old Foreign Secretary had as much as your IRC hat. It strikes me that like when you were Foreign Secretary, you know, when I was coming into the Obama administration, the architecture was creaky.

But when there was something brewing like in Sudan or South Sudan or in the Horn of Africa, you still kind of turn to this UN infrastructure, you know, the Security Council and, you know, the existing pieces of the international system to try to mitigate it, to put guardrails around it, to prevent things from getting worse, and then to get humanitarian access. That has kind of broken down in the last decade to the point that, like, if I look at a bunch of situations from Myanmar to, you know, any number of places in Africa. Africa, you know, the security council is kind of not even, like, nobody even goes there anymore, you know, what set of tools are needed when we see a conflict brewing, as you could have,

you know, as you could see in Ethiopia, you know, a couple of years ago, as you can see in other parts of the world, where do you turn to kind of stop things from getting worse? Is it just a matter of, like, making the existing infrastructure work better? or do you think we need to rethink the tools that we use to prevent places from falling into chaos and conflict? Yeah, that's a really interesting way of putting it. I'd say a couple of things. First of all, you're right that things have changed. I date the change really to 2005, 6. That was the high point in some ways, both of the democratic tide of the 1990s and of what was called at the time the responsibility to protect. You'll remember that. This was the idea that governments that abuse their own citizens had responsibilities that the international community could hold them to account. We've seen 15 years when democracy has been in recession around the world. And so has global responsibility. So that's where you get this mismatch between the international risks and the national resilience. Now, this is politics that's been going on at the international level with the rise of impunity.

You and I have talked about that before. So that's the first thing that's going on. The second thing that's going on, though, is that the tools of diplomacy that would develop for relations between states don't work for resolving conflicts within states. Sovereignty is being used today as a shield against accountability. And although there's one very important example of a war between states, the Ukraine crisis, we've got 54 civil conflicts going on. And essentially, to your question, have we got the tools? The answer is no. Because essentially the tools that regulated relations between states are being used to stop the resolution of conflicts within states. You can just think about Syria,

you can think about Myanmar, you can think about a whole range of countries. Now, the thing that strikes me is that the political fragmentation, which is the first element that I pointed to, the rise of autocracies, the rise of what Ann Applebaum calls the bad guys. And on the other hand, secondly, this dissolution within the states, this conflict within the states, they're feeding off each other in a very dangerous way. And it's all being exacerbated by the global risks that I've described. So I think it is right to think about how you rebuild the international system. There are a couple of elements of that that I think are straightforward, and then the rest of it is very, very difficult.

One element is that the like-minded do need to work much more effectively together, the rebirth of some version of the G7++ plus plus of those countries who are willing to defend not just liberal democracy at home, but the rule of law abroad. that's very important. Secondly, I would say that one of the things I've learned in my eight, nine years at the International Rescue Committee is that untended humanitarian crisis is a driver of political crisis and political instability. Now, those are two things, relatively speaking, that are straightforward. The much more difficult, and by the way, it speaks to some of a theme, both those points, speak to a theme that you've emphasized, which is engaging with civil society, thinking about the pluralateral system, not just the multilateral system. In other words, thinking about, society as well as governmental level. Beyond that, though, how you build a system of international relations that's fit for the interdependent world is very, very challenging when you've got rogue actors who are willing to defy the rules, be they states or non-state actors. And yes, the Western world has to get its own house in order. That much is clear. Yes, there are global imperatives for engaging with China and others on issues like climate where there is real shared interest. But then you've got a large range of more political disputes where it's much harder to figure out how to get the leverage.

And that's what we see every day when accountability is in retreat, when humanitarian aid is in retreat, and when politics in a way is in retreat. Yeah, no, but even the steps you outlined, you know, recognizing. how many harder steps are, could make things better. As my old boss, Brock Lamaama would say, like, better is good, even if it's not. So I think the like-minded working better together and the kind of the efforts to take these crises more seriously because of how they can evolve is spot on. One of the things you guys talk about a bit in the report is trying to shift to more people-focused approaches, right? So, for instance, like the development banks, very government focused, right? You know,

stabilization plan with ex-government, you know, price subsidies, you know, and development programs themselves often focused on government, you know, capacity building, getting into ministries. Talk about whether we can do more, you know, you mentioned my interest, office, in civil society, but, like, how do we get resources to the people on the ground? You know, because, like, one of the critiques you hear, even of the IRC, right, is just they're these big organizations and, and there are these, if you're someone on the ground in, you know, well, in any one of these places, sometimes it takes longer for stuff to reach you. Like, are there things that can be done to make the existing resources more efficient and just getting to the people who need them

faster? Yes, definitely, although I'm bound to say that's not a criticism that you would level at the IRS. Yes. Of our, of our, of our, 20,000 staff, you know, 19,000 of them are local people. If you even, you know, in Afghanistan, but it's interesting. The whole apparatus. Yeah, not you guys, but like, I get it. But it's an interesting point because there is, you will find some organizations that will, will fall into the trap of describing the heroic global aid worker, whereas the heroic

aid worker for the IRC is an Afghan who is working to defend their own community in Afghanistan. Yeah. Or someone in Syria who is working in their own community. in northwest Syria and can't get out of that area. So I think the first thing is transparency. You've got to demand that organizations like mine are utterly transparent about where the money goes, who's employed, how it's organized. Secondly, you've got to resolve this contradiction between, on the one hand, wanting to be

local, on the other hand, having compliance mechanisms that squeeze the life out of any local organization that wants to partner with us. So there's a compliance versus localization challenge. The third thing that I think is really, really important is that you understand how the UN system works with or without local engagement. And when I say UNS system, maybe it's better to say the international system. You see, you're absolutely right about the international financial institutions. There's a massive agenda. Larry Summers has been onto this about increasing the spending power of the World Bank,

making sure that they are actually leveraging the funds that they've, got. And of course, part of that comes down to how their stakeholders behave. Those are stakeholders like your country and mine who sit on the governing boards. But it's also about how they engage with civil society, because larger and larger tracts of the world are ungoverned space when it comes to governments. When we work in northwest Syria or northeast Syria, we're working in areas that the Syrian government doesn't control. And in those areas it does control, it doesn't do what, want to do what many international organizations want it to do. So I think there's a real change of mindset. And that's why we talk about a people-first approach, because it's not an excuse that you can't engage.

There are some examples of something called the National Solidarity Program in Afghanistan that work through local institutions, not national ones. And surprise, surprise, the local institutions were far less corrupt than the national ones. So I think there is some quite good practice there. It can't be done on its own. And of course, where you have governments that are willing to engage, you've got a chance, it's much easier to make a difference. But here's where I come back to where I started.

The numbers of people in extreme poverty in stable states is going down, despite COVID, despite everything. The number of people in extreme poverty in unstable, fragile and conflict states is going up. That's the scissors effect that we have to deal, that the international system has to deal with. And these problems don't stop where they originate. They will move. The people will move and the problems will move as well. Yeah. No, I think it's a really important point.

And one of the things you said, you've used. said in your work, and it's in the report here, is that there's this convergence of crises, right? The climate crisis is now interacting with the refugee crisis, which is interacting with these political crises. And you guys are kind of at the tip of the spirit, the response. And what you're seeing is it's not just one causation. And yet there are these kind of siloed communities, right? There's a kind of a climate community and people focus on climate mitigation, then there are people who focus on migration of peoples, and then there are people who focus on How do you, as one of the biggest organizations, it's just dealing with the impact of all these things,

is there a way to thread together the kind of international community of people that includes NGOs, frankly, includes increasingly like private sector has to get involved in this as well as governments, how do we start to think of these as fully connected in one ecosystem rather than like, you know, we have conversations at COP about climate migration and, you know, we have conversations somewhere else about migration because of a war, you know, when in fact a lot of those wars have a climate nexus. I tell you the way we try and do it and there's lots of organizations out there. We do it by starting with the solution rather than starting with the suffering. And what does it mean to start with the solution? It means behavioral scientists being part of our teams, not just humanitarian

aid workers, who go down to the absolute ground level of malnutrition in Somalia or Mali. We've just finished a 27,000 kids study in Mali that turns upside down the way in which malnutrition is treated. How do we do that? By starting at the level of the poorest family and asking, okay, you've got six kids, you're never going to be able to get to the health center that offers treatment for severe acute malnutrition. What would it mean to diagnose and treat malnutrition in your own home? And we've shown how a 96% recovery rate can be achieved if you start from a community-based solution. So number one, you've got to start with the solution. Number two, you've got to find those funders who are willing to think in new ways, because a lot of the old bureaucratic systems

are stuck. Some of them will come in the private sector. Some of them will come from foundations. Some of them will come from governments that are willing to think imaginatively. Thirdly, and I think as it happens talking about this today in our leadership board, you've got to think about scale solutions from the beginning. A boutique solution that is very costly per person is never going to be scaled and is not going to want. And so we now try and build into our program design the question, how do you scale this? Let me give me an example. The first thing we will do in any emergency is to give out cash. It's not complicated. The poorest people are poor by definition, and they need cash. You can get cash to people. Sometimes where there's phones, sometimes where

there's no funds. Sometimes we're in Eastern Ethiopia last month. I was seeing us giving out literal bank notes. And you build from the needs of the people where cash isn't needed, where it's not cash, where it's health or education, you build around that. But I think that those, that building in of scale solutions is absolutely key. Otherwise, we're going to be struggling. Now, people say to me, well, you're a big organization. You just said this. We've grown from being a $430 million NGO less than a decade ago to now being a $1.5 billion. end you go. What I'm interested in, though, is not just how much revenue do we have. The fact that we helped 31 million people last year, that is the real proof point, that we've built programs

that don't just have high impact, but that they can reach big scale. And too often, the humanitarian sector, often the charitable sector, has boutique solutions that different funders want something new, whereas actually you've got to build in scale from the beginning alongside the starting with the solution with the range of skills that I described. I think that's exactly right, because if you can't replicate these approaches and you're trying to reinvent the wheel each time, the cost and time and bandwidth just goes up and your capacity to say, hey, this worked here, let's do this over here. That creates all kinds of efficiencies. Well, I want to end on a note. This is going to air heading into kind of a holiday season, obviously. What would you say to people at home, like,

who care about this stuff, are a little numbed by the scale of it? How can they be involved? How can they support efforts to mitigate humanitarian suffering? How can they be part of the solutions that you're talking about. I tell you what I always go back to. If you look at the statistics, you get depressed, if you think about the people and see the people, you have hope. And so I really invite people, go to therescue.org, which is our website, and just see what our staff are doing,

see what our clients are saying. Because there you'll see a solutions focus. If you care about maternal and newborn health, 60% of the women who die in childbirth, die in our settings in fragile and complex states, we'll show you what we're doing about it. If you care about the war in Ukraine, we can show you what it means to get to Kharkiv 36 hours after the Ukrainian military say, okay, civilians can get into this war zone, into this former war zone. If you care about child malnutrition, 80% of acutely malnourished

kids around the world are failed by the mainstream system. We can show you how you can flip that. And I hope that people obviously can support us that way. Also, if they're in America, we are now pretty much the largest refugee resettlement agency in America. If you're a refugee who comes to America and the Biden administration has really boosted the number of refugees who are allowed to come in, it'll probably reach 50,000 next year, maybe even 65,000, which is target on route, 225,000. Those refugees need buddies in the 28 offices that we run all around the country. If you're an employer, give those people a chance of getting a job. that there's local action that is part of this. And the final thing I would say is that there is a, the Pope talked about the globalization of indifference. I don't think that's quite, I don't know if you're allowed to argue with the Pope on the opposite of the world. I think the way you put it actually,

which is people, people worry that they have lost agency. Yeah. My learning, my point is that governments are in retreat from big problems, but that's the time that NGOs and philanthropic sector and the private sector need to march in. and address those problems.

And that's what we're trying to do. That gives me a sense of momentum. It creates momentum in our organization. And it would be wonderful to get some recruits and supporters and idealists and ideas from your listeners. Well, look, I think that's a great note to add on. People should go to rescue.org to learn more about these issues. And there's a lot of information there. But also, I encourage you this season to think about how you can help in whatever way.

One important way that David mentioned, being in a community with reference. refugee resettlement, you can make an enormous difference by being welcoming, whether that's, you know, a job, whether that's a companionship, whether that's just support. And you will be better for it, by the way, because I've never had an experience in my own life that was not, which I wasn't massively enriched by engaging with those types of communities. So David, thanks so much for joining us and for the work. And to all your, you know, people in the field, we, we're grateful to them too. that's very nice of you and happy new year and all that thanks to jason yegy resion for that really extraordinary conversation

thanks to david milliband and for everybody frankly at the irc for their work they're doing on behalf of refugees around the world we will see you guys after the holidays so whatever you are doing I hope you and your family have a great one and we will see you again in the new year thanks worldos everybody out there for listening pot say the world is a crooked media production the executive producer is michael Martinez. Our producer is Haley Muse. Saul Rubin is our associate producer. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Segglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn,

Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim, and Amelia Montuth who upload our episodes and videos at YouTube.com slash crooked media.