Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 11/11/22 Muhammad Sahimi on the Iranian Protests and the Risk of Foreign Intervention

Episode Date: November 16, 2022

On Antiwar Radio this past Sunday, Scott was joined by Muhammad Sahimi to discuss the protests in Iran. Sahimi gives some background about how the brutal death of Mahsa Amini after she had been detained by Iranian morality police sparked protests led by the country’s younger generations. While both are supportive of the Iranian people in their resistance to the theocracy, Scott and Sahimi are also wary of the potential for foreign intervention to make the situation worse for everyone. They talk about which governments are already getting involved, what different factions in Iran are pushing for and examine the danger the U.S. government could turn this into another Syria.  Discussed on the show: The Murder of Mahsa Amini, Iranians’ Quest for a Democratic State, and the Role of Outside Forces” (Libertarian Institute)  Muhammad Sahimi is a professor at the University of Southern California who analyzes Iran’s political developments, its nuclear program, and foreign policy. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: The War State and Why The Vietnam War?, by Mike Swanson; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; and Thc Hemp Spot. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjYu5tZiG. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For Pacifica Radio, November the 13th, 2022, I'm Scott Horton. This is Anti-War Radio. All right, y'all welcome the show. It is Anti-War Radio. I'm your host, Scott Horton. I'm the editorial director of anti-war.com, and I'm the editorial director of anti-war.com, and I'm the editor-ed of the new book, Hotter Than the Sun. Time to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. You'll find my full interview archive, more than 5,800 of them now, going back to 2003 at Scott Horton.org,

and you'll follow me on Twitter at Scott Horton's show. All right, introducing our friend Mohamed Sahimi. He's a professor of chemical engineering at USC, but he's also a brilliant analyst of all American and Iran affairs, and we publish very much of what he writes, at anti-war.com, including on Friday, his article was our spotlight there, Iranian's quest for a democratic state and the role of outside forces. Welcome back to the show,

Mohammed. How are you doing, sir? I'm doing fine. It's great talking to you, Scott. Great. Appreciate that. Happy to talk to you again. And really, I'm so happy to have this great article that you wrote. It's called The Murder of Masa Amini. Iranians' quest for a democratic state and the role of outside forces. So, please, sir, can we start at the beginning with Masa Amini? Who is she and what happened to her and the beginnings of the backlash? Massa was a 22-year-old young woman from the province of Kurdistan, the Kurdish part of Iran, in Western Iran, who was visiting Tehran with her brother to see her friends,

and relatives. She was stopped by what Western press called the Morality Police for supposedly not covering her head with a proper Islamic hijab. Then she was taken to a detention center. A few hours later, she was taken to hospital and three days after her arrest, she passed away. The government claimed that during her detention, she had collapsed and had a stroke. and heart attack and there was also a video that the government published but eyewitnesses had said that she was mistreated and in fact eyewitnesses that had been taken to detention center repair on the same day and same arm had said that in the detention car the car that she was taken to the detention center violence had had been used against it somebody else had also said that

she had hit her head against the sidewalk as she was being arrested. Regardless of why she died, the fact of the matter is the Iranian government is responsible for her death because she passed away in detention and therefore the Iranian government is responsible for that. But the brutal way that she died angered Iranians and basically provided the motivation for tens of thousands of Iranians to come out onto a street and start protesting. And the protests have, of course, have not been just for a brutal death, but also the general conditions of the Iranian society. The hardliners have mismanagement of the economy. There is deep economic corruption, whereby a small fraction of the population has basically

looted national resources. There is also repression under the guise that that Iran is under trade by outside forces. And of course, ever since the Iranian revolution, Iranian women have been discriminated against and there has always been a woman movement within Iran to remove this discrimination and make Iranian women a full participant in the society opposing the hardliner's effort to push back women into homes and make them just mothers and, you know, raising children and that type of thing. So the death of Massa, Armenian actually provided just another excuse for Iranian people to protest. And the protest quickly spread throughout Iran. And there are certain differences between these demonstrations.

and what happened in 2018 and 2019, as well as the Green Movement of 2009. Because the Green Movement of 2009 that was in protest against fraudulent elections was basically driven by middle class in large cities. The protest, the large protests in 2018 and 2019 were driven by poor people that are living on the edge of large cities

and a very bad economic condition. The present protests are driven mostly by young people, particularly university students and people who were born over the past, let's say, 25 to 30 years. And these people, of course, have known nothing but the democratic state that hardwarns have set up in Iran. And they don't know anything about what, how was Iran before the revolution and so on.

And because of the type of system of government that the Islamists in Iran have imposed of Iranian people demanding that they live certain way and they behave certain way, that has, of course, in addition to the economic conditions and which is partly, of course, due to American sanctions, there is also deep anger among Iranian youth because of the restrictions and repressions that they have. So that's where we are. The demonstrations have got smaller, but they have continued.

One reason for the demonstrations to reduce in size because after the first few days, demonstrations tend violent because the security forces started using violence against demonstrators in order to control them. And also a very, a small fraction of the population that was demonstrating responded violence with violence and therefore casualties started to go up.

As of, I think, yesterday, the number of people that are believed to have died is about 310 people, which is larger than 2019, or around the same number as 2019, where 321 people I could have lost their lives. So this is where we are internally. The regime is talking about discussing and negotiating and talking to the opposition, but it is not clear that that will actually take place. And if it does take place, wherever would it go with what goads and so on. There have also been a lot of demonstrations outside Iran,

by Iranians who were outside in support of the Iranian people inside Iran. But that is also where a lot of other things have coming in order to intervene in what's happening in Iran that we discuss as we go along. All right. So it's anti-war radio. I'm talking with Muhammad Sahini with this piece. The Iranians quest for a democratic state and the role of outside forces to, what degree is this a natural result of people living under a theocratic, you know,

pretended republic, but essentially a tyranny. And especially when you have a history, even, you know, very well-documented recent history, as you refer to here, of American support for dissident groups and ethnic minorities and even head-chopping maniacs like Jandala and groups like that in the past, Pijack, which is sort of the PKK of Iran, and this kind of thing, light. It raises the question of how much of this is just a CIA, Mossad, M-E-K-Op, and how much of this is legitimate. And for the average civilian in Iran, who'd like a change,

it puts them in a very difficult position, right? Of course. And one problem is that the regime in Tehran has tried to disrupt the Internet and social. networks so that people in Iran don't get the full picture of what's going on. But instead, what has happened is that Saudi Arabia has set up this television based in London that broadcast programs 24 hours a day into Iran in Farsi. This television station is owned by a Saudi group, which is widely believed to be connected

to Mohammed bin Salon, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia and guardian had an extensive reporting on it. The interesting about this television is that it has a large staff, about 100 to 150 people. It is that the programs are very exquisite. They pay exuberant amount of money to the people who work for them and with large salaries and they also try to attract other people. And it's estimated that it costs about $15 million a year just to run the television. And yet this television channel doesn't have any commercials. It doesn't have any income. So the whole thing is basically a propaganda machine

set up by Saudi Arabia in order to advance its agenda in Iran. And what has happened is that this television station, instead of trying to talk to people from all blocks of society, as you mentioned, or all layers of the society, The only thing they talk to or the only so-called experts that they talk to are separatists, for example, that are supported by Saudi Arabia or Israeli, United States, or all of them, or people who call for violent overthrow of the government. You don't see anybody that they talk to, for example, advocates peaceful demonstrations, advocates civil disobedience, advocates a strike and so on, in order to push the heart by the back and try to, find a better way, a better direction for the society. So that's, that's, that's, that has played big role in what's going on. So they constantly broadcast things that may not have any

basis in reality. They constantly say that sources in Tehran told us this or sources in Tehran told us of that. But it's not clear who these sources are and what the basis of these rumors or farce reportings are. But that for the population, that does not have complete access to internet and social networks and website and so on, where they can get accurate information. And at the same time, the national television and radio network of the regime also constantly these false information and propaganda. So the Iranian people have been basically trapped between these two.

This is part of the outside intervention that I talked about in my piece. We have also had terrorist attacks in Iran. There is this group that is linked with Al-Aidah. It's called Jaiso, an ad, which operates in Iran province of Sistan and Balochistan. And as states, some terrorist attacks, ISIS, Islam in the state, carried on the terrorist attack in the southern city of Shiraz. And interestingly, and curiously, the United States Department didn't condemn the attack. whereas 15 people were killed by the ISIS attack. The other thing is that, for example,

the government in Iran has lied so much and has misrepresented things that even when it talks the truth, nobody believes it. So, for example, when ISIS attacked in the city of Shiraz and the government said that this was done by ISIS, everybody said that they are lying because of the past lies that they have said.

Until ISIS actually posted, the picture of the guy who had committed the terror attack and also broadcasts a tape of the so-called ceremony in which the terrorists had pledged his allegiance to ISIS. Even after that, places like the Saudi Arabia television in London, which is called Iran International, and websites like Elon Wire, which is funded by the State Department, kept saying that this is done by the Iranian government. And of course, this is of the Iranian government doing it, because as I said, they have lied so much

and they have misrepresented facts so much that it is hard to believe, even when they tell the truth. So that's another part of it. Then the U.S. itself has been involved. As I document in the article that you mentioned, they have been active in two fronts. One is through Central Command, which is responsible, as you know, for all U.S. forces in the Middle East.

And the propaganda has been aimed at Iran through websites and other outlets that they have set up. And the Washington Post actually had an article about how the Pentagon is reviewing those operations. And there was this very not good article in the website Cradle in which it documented the type of propaganda that the Pentagon. Central Command was carrying in the Middle East and particularly end of Iran. Give me just a minute here. At the Libertarian Institute, we published books, real good ones. So far, we've got Will Griggs's No Quarter, Sheldon Richmond's coming to Palestine and what social animals owe to each other, and four of mine, fools Aaron, enough already,

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Your wife will clean it up. At the same time, the Biden administration has been propping up people in the United States trying to promote them as the future Iranian leaders. And there have been several of them. And it has, of course, a long history going back to early 2000 when the Neocombs were supporting Ahmad Chalabi in order to justify their illegal invasion of Iraq. And since at least 2006, Neocons and bar rights in the United States

has been trying to find sort of. of a leader for Iran among ex-patios and ex-ad people. And this began in 2006 when Richard Pair of American Enterprise Institute helped this guy, Amir Abbas Fakhravar, to bring him to the United States. He was supposedly a political prisoner, which in fact he wasn't, although he kept repeating and claiming that, he was brought here in the United States in order to present him as sort of a future Iranian leader that they know-cons like.

And after me, there have been many, many other other people that have come and gone. And in fact, back in 2007, I published an article. And one of this, I said, these guys are looking for another Ahmadinev, except that they are looking for the Iranian version of it. And of course, Rizop Ha'halavi, the last son of the Shah of Iran,

is another candidate that Israeli lobby, in particular, supports him. And he constantly talks to Israeli lobby, for example, Washington Institute where near his policy or the Hudson Institute and places like that. But the Biden administration has also been promoting another Iranian inside. Her name is Masi al-Ni Najal, and she was a journalist living in Iran. And at that time, she was a reformist journalist. She wasn't a political activist.

And in fact, she left Iran on her own. She was never jailed. She was never arrested for anything. She was just a reformist journalist. And then in 2010, she came to the United States. And the first few years that she was here, she was still acting like a reformist journalist, supporting reformist within Iran.

And even complaining that why the Iranian exile in the United States are so active against Iran's national. interest. Then she had a meeting with General David Petraeus, former commander of Central Command and U.S. forces in Iraq. And after that, I don't know what happened in that, meaning let me just say, but after that, she was hired by Voice of America. She was given a program on Voice of America that she still produces. She was given, she has been given hundreds of thousands of dollars since then, and doors start opening for her. She has been given awards by a couple of Israel lobby, including Washington,

Mississippi policy that just gave her the Scholar Assessment Award. She received the Oxy Award for courage, whereas when she was in Iran, she never participated in any struggle against the Iranian government. and she was just there, as I said, a journalist. Then, violent administration started also promoting another exile Iranian Nazarene Boni. Nazan Boniadi is a Hollywood activist and has no history of activism except here and there, you know, saying things here or there. She has supported the U.S. sanctions against Iran, as has Masia Riyadh. They both support sanctions.

in several cases has said that sanctions are not enough. So it sanctions on enough. Can you imagine? I'm sorry to interrupt, but that's just insane. And I'm so sick of people from around the world coming to this country and demanding that America wage war on their home country. What the hell is this? Go fight your own damn battles.

I totally agree. I mean, what they want is they want to use U.S. forces to actually. like their homeland. And so not only it will spill the blood of American young American soldiers in this country, but also destroy their home country. And this is very the most despicable thing that that they do. And Massia enjoyed on several occasions has said that sanctions are not enough. And Rezaa Halavi, the last, the son of the last job, you know, has said sanctions on that, you know, we know what happened in Afghanistan, we know what happened in Iraq.

They were liberated. Of course, Afghanistan wasn't liberated. It was just in a state of war for 20 years. And then now it's, again, under the control of the reaction in Taliban. And Iraq is still, you know, struggling with the aftermath of invasion of 20 years ago. But these people have advocated this. And the Iranian people have basically given. trap between Iraq and hard to eggs.

On one hand, the hardliners in Iran resist any sort of reform, resist any sort of liberation or opening up the political space and allowing decision votes to be here, allowing political parties to freely operate, allowing free press, and so on. coupled with the deep corruptions that they have coupled with the repression that they have and mismanagement of the national resources, that's another problem that Iran has been struggling because Iran has been deep with a long-running severe drought.

Iran has always been a country where water has been scarce and now because of drought and also mismanagement of water resources, we have sort of water war within Iran between various regions of Iran. So all of that has put Iran a country of 87 million people with highly educated people and a lot of people in a very bad condition. On the other hand, on outside forces, we have a small section of the opposition outside because in my opinion and my experience, a vast majority of Iranians who are outside Iran, one, a peaceful transition from the present regime to a democratic state. But these people do not have, you know, the means to, so that their voice can be heard.

Instead, what we have is that all the resources have been given to that a small fraction of opposition who wants to topp on the regime at any cost. Of course, anybody with a reasonable mind wants the democratic state to go away. and be replaced by a democratic regime. But the question is at what cost and how we are going to achieve it. Yeah, and in whose interest are we going to see this regime change?

Because if it's just, you know, America overthrowing the government there again, as they've done twice before, including sort of the installation of the Ayatollah, they at least cooperated with that and the revolution is 79. You know, if that's the way it goes and definitely the Iranian people

are going to be no better off, If it comes from within and it's really up to them, then at least they'll have a fighting chance at independence and freedom. Absolutely. And we have to remember that Iran is made of various ethnic groups. We have the Kurds. We have Turks. We have the Arabs and the Balochis and we have the Persian people.

These people have always lived together in harmony for thousands of years. Iran has existed. But now there are a small separatist group. They don't even represent the majority of their own. people. For example, I've had many Kurdish students that have worked with me, and they all have told me that Kurdish people don't want to separate from Iran. They want to be part of Iran because Kurdish people in Iran actually consider themselves the purest one of Iranian people. They consider with pride, they say that they are Iranian. But there are these small separatist

groups that are supported by outside forces, like these Pajok that you mentioned, for the Phajah, forces that I mentioned in the article, POP forces, which is basically a Kurdish acronym, an acronym for a free party of Kurdistan, is a Kurdish group that was armed and trained by the United States during the war with ISIS in Iraq. They were given weapons and trainings and bases to buy ISIS. Now that the war with ISIS in Iraq has basically, is over,

they have turned their guns that they will ship on the United States towards Iran and attack you. from the Iraqi side of the border. So that's one group. The other group of Pejok have existed for years, there is a democratic party of Kurdistan, whose leader, Mustafa I.Gri, has asked Israel for help. He has demanded many times that Iran's province of Kurdistan be declared

in no-fly zone so that his forces can attack Avil and carry other operations. other Kurdish group. And as I mentioned earlier, there is also this jihadi terrorist group in the province of Sistan and Balochistan in South Eastern Iran on the border with Pakistan and Afghanistan that at least spiritually, you know, they get their guide from Saudi Arabians, Salafi, Hanapi ideology. And in fact, many years ago, I published an extensive article in previous front-line terror view of website where I documented all the help that, the practices of these groups that at that time was called Joint Law, and you mentioned at the

beginning of the program, that they were receiving support from Israel and the United States. And there were documents about NBC reported on, many other outlets reported on. So these groups have been operating on the eastern or western border of Iran, and they are all supported Monday or another by off-side forces. And that has created a problem for the Iranian people, because Iranian people want to replace the regime with a democratic state, but all these factors have come into play and has played a very negative role. I'm all for, you know, purporting Iranian within Iran with demonstrations here, writing petitions, talking to, you know, human rights organization, to keep watching Iran, to see what's

happening in Iran. I'm all for that. But whether I'm not for these, you know, having these groups that want to disintegrate Iran, want to wage war, want to refuse violence in order to achieve their goal. But if we continue the way they want, if we

walk around the path that they want, what will happen is that Iran will become another Syria. For years, people like me in our writings warn that, you know, we should be careful because the West would like nothing more than make converting Iran to another Syria.

And the same opposition, fake opposition, they are called fake because they have always supported economic sanctions and even threatening war and secreties and so on. They always said that no, Iran cannot be analytic Syria. Iran will never be analytic Syria. Whereas if you actually compare Iran with Syria, you will see that Iran is far more right to be converted to another city because of the fact that it has several ethnic groups. and there are small, as I said, a small group within these ethnic groups that are supported for outside forces and they want nothing more than a military confrontation

with the government forces in Iran. And therefore, Iran is actually in a very precarious situation right now because these people attack from Iraq's side of the border, as I said, in Sistan and Raluchesan and elsewhere. And violence has also been used within Iran violence security forces. And I can assure you, you that MEK support this in Iran are also trying to provoke people to use violence against

the government because the goal of NEPK, as its leader, my Jan Rajatvi was quoted, saying that the only way we can win in Iran right now is if several thousands of people are killed by the security forces. So what they want to do is to incite more violence so that people would be more angry, people would be angry and try to take up arms to fight the government forces. And that will lead us to a sort of a civil war within Iran and convert Iran to another Syria. And this is basically what all the patriotic Iranians, they live in Iran or outside Iran, are worried about.

And the U.S. is not playing a positive role here. Saudi Arabia and Australia, of course, are Iran's enemy and they are against the best to intervening this and advanced their agenda. Several Saudi Saudi officials or Saudi link people have said that they like to see nothing but an Iran which is disintegrated into several small countries that would be weak and that would be fighting with each other all the time over resources and so on. So they would like to convert or transform Iran to that type of state or at the very least

we can get on to the point that it cannot be. defending itself. So this is a very complicated, very sad and very troubling situation. Yeah. All right. I'm so sorry that we're all out of time. Everybody, you've got to go look at this great piece by Mohamed Sahimi. It was the spotlight Friday on anti-war.com. The murder of Masa Amini, Iranians' quest for a democratic state and the role of outside forces. Thank you so much again for your time, Mohammed. Thank you, Scott, for having me your great program. All right, you guys. And that's it for anti-war radio for this morning. Thanks very much for and find the full interview archive,

5,800 of them now going back to 2003 at Scott Horton.org follow me on Twitter at Scott Horton's show and I'm here every Sunday morning from 9 to 930 on KPFK 90.7 FM in L.A. See you next week.