The Ben Mulroney Show - Iran offers $30K reward for killing or capturing U.S. soldiers

Episode Date: August 17, 2026

On today's episode of "The Ben Mulroney Show," Ben welcomes back Goldie Ghamari, former Ontario politician and human rights activist to discuss the recent developments in Iran, the impact of US sanctions, and the geopolitical strategies surrounding the Islamic regime. The conversation offers insights into Iran's internal struggles, international responses, and the broader implications for global security. If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://link.chtbl.com/bms⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Also, on youtube -- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@BenMulroneyShow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Insta: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠   Executive Producer:  Mike Drolet Reach out to Mike with story ideas or tips at [e-mail] Enjoy   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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we have your playbook. OZoon. Well played. Discover free sports tips, casino games and poker guides at Ozone.net. Today actually marks the end, the expiration of a 60-day window following a U.S. Iran memorandum of understanding in the hopes of getting a peace accord in that war. That did not happen. And so it's up for grabs. We don't really know what's going to happen. The Strait of Hormuz is still firmly in control of Iran.

And so, yeah, we're sort of living in this stasis waiting for the axe to fall that hangs over oil prices and also over the lives of so many innocent people inside Iran who are held against their will by a terrorist regime. So to talk about this and a number of other stories were joined by Goldie Gamari, human rights activist, former Ontario politician and somebody who knows the lay of the land in that part of the world very well. Goldie, welcome. Thank you so much for having me on, Ben. Great to be here. Okay, before we start on that, how are you?

Because in March, you know, there was a $250,000 bounty that was put on your head. And I'm wondering how you are and how life is for you on a day-to-day basis. I mean, I'm doing okay, all things considered. obviously I have to be very careful about my surroundings because you know when when the Islamic regime places a bounty on someone's head that's pretty much for life I mean just look at salman Rushdie the fatwa was placed against him in the 1980s and yet he was attacked I think in 2022 I believe so I have to be more careful obviously you know with respect to where I go and my location and you know whether I'm secure or not but I do have to say I am a little bit

insulted because I'm worth way more than 250,000 so I mean the bounty should have been at least a million dollars yeah yeah a cool million what do you what do you make of the expiration of this 60 day memorandum of understanding uh well I mean I knew it wasn't going to lead to anything in the first place. Those of us who have been monitoring and studying the Islamic regime for a very long time, we understand the nature of this authoritarian dictatorship. I mean, this is essentially a barbaric, savage, seventh century death cult, and it was, you know, created back in 1979 on this core foundational pillar of jihad with the West. And essentially what that means is destroying the United States, you know, destroying Canada, destroying Israel.

So I knew this wasn't going to get anywhere. If any, the Islamic regime is now using this time period during the MOU to claim a victory by saying, look, we survived. The United States has been incredibly weak. They're too scared to attack us. So that's sort of what's been happening with the MOU. But I knew it wasn't going to lead to any peace deal. Yeah, I just want to go on record. I was very much in favor of this war going forward. And once it happened, I wasn't, I wasn't cheering it on, say, go, go, go. But once it started, I said, good because we've best best to rid the world of evil wherever you can find it but but i did so believing that the cia would have done what the cia has done forever which has been to train

uh iranian militants uh secretly and clandestinely and have catches of of arms all over the hidden all over the country so that when it when ultimately it came time for a popular uprising, you would have it would have teeth. And I don't, I saw no evidence of that. And I was, I was shocked that that part hadn't been thought out. Well, you know, President Trump did say back, back in March, I believe that March or April that they had sent, they had tried to send arms to the Iranian people, but they had done so through the Kurdish militia groups in Iraq, which is a huge mistake because the Kurdish militia groups in Iraq, they're actually anti-imperialists as well. And, you know, those Kurdish militia groups are founded within the ideology of communism.

So a lot of people, when they think of the Kurds, they think of like just one monolithic sort of group. and that's not the case at all. I mean, Iranians, there are numerous Iranian Kurds, but they are Iranian first, and they live in Iran, and they're fighting, you know, the Islamic regime, just like the rest of us. So President Trump said that that happened, and he knew it was a mistake.

But we don't know if right now arms are being sent or not. What I can say is that I have seen in more recent weeks some videos coming from Iranian freedom fighters who are claiming that they are armed and they are getting ready. So there may or may not be something that's happening. I don't know. But the sense that I'm getting from people inside of occupied Iran is that people are mobilizing

and they're starting to get ready for something. Well, we'll be paying very, very close attention. In the meantime, the Iranian government is offering essentially a bounty to regular Iranians, as much as the equivalent of $30,000 if they kill or capture U.S. soldiers on Iranian territory. And they'll double it if you happen to be a woman who does that. This is perplexing to say the least. First of all, there's been no ground invasion to speak of. And so I don't know, I don't know, I mean, are they girding for an invasion? But secondly, this flies in the face of the fundamental rules of war, according to the first and third Geneva Convention. This is against

every convention of war. So what do you make of this? I mean, this is exactly how the Islamic regime operates. I mean, you can't expect much from an Islamic dictatorship that back on January 8 and 9 mass slaughtered over 54,000 innocent unarmed Iranians in two nights alone just because they were peacefully protesting for freedom, right? This is what you can expect of an Islamic occupation that is murdering and hanging Iranians every day for the crime of Maharabe. Maharabe means waging war against Allah. So essentially any Iranian who speaks out against the Islamic regime and wants to live in a free secular democratic society, just like what we have in Canada,

that's considered a crime under Sharia law. And they're executed for that. And these public executions are happening every day. So I'm obviously not surprised by the Islamic regime saying this. But I also think that this is more of just like a show of force. They're trying to pretend like they're strong. They're trying to convey this image of, oh, you know, Iranians.

support the Islamic occupation, which is not true at all. But when it comes to what you said about, you know, the law of armed conflict, obviously they're going to breach all of these rules because they just don't care about these sorts of conventions. This is not a normal regular country. Yeah, but the problem with this, Goldie, for them, is that these rules exist for a reason. And that reason is to protect civilians against, any sort of protect them against being attacked against being bombed. If the government effectively deputizes every civilian into the army and says,

we give you permission to behave like soldiers. And in this case, they would be viewed as unprivileged combatants. That's according to the Geneva Convention. You expose them to direct attacks from the enemy. You're essentially giving license. to the U.S. should they ever enter to view every single Iranian civilian as a potential threat?

Yeah, I mean, absolutely. You're 100% right. And, you know, I think the challenge that you have been is that you're approaching this from a logical perspective, and you're assuming the Islamic regime is a logical, rational, reasonable entity, but they're not.

They're literally a 7th century Islamic dictatorship. They operate within their own rules. And, you know, this is an Islamic regime that has also been using, Iranians as human shields. We have documented evidence of them using schools and mosques and hospitals and residential areas as military bases. So they have no problem. Didn't they use kids? Didn't they use kids to clear landmines during the Iran-Iraq war? Yes, absolutely. They did. In fact, I lost a number of extended family members back in the 1980s because they were dragged away and they were exactly. They

were used to detonate the landmines so that the tanks wouldn't be destroyed. So yeah, this is absolutely what the Islamic regime does. And they don't care about human lives. They don't care about the lives of Iranians. Again, this is a regime that has been murdering us for the last 47 years. So this is just another tactic for them. All right. Well, we're going to hold on to our guests for one more segment because this story is too big to let go of in just one.

We're going to continue to pack, unpack this major headline when we come back with Goldie Gamarri. Well, the consequences of what comes next in the U.S. and Israeli offensive in war against Iran are myriad and far-reaching. But what that's going to be is still up in the air. And we're sticking around with Goldie Gamari. She's a human rights activist, former Ontario politician, and she knows that part of the world intimately and personally.

And so thank you so much for sticking around with us, Goldie. If you were a betting person, what would you think is the? the next thing that happens. Right now we're sort of in a stalemate. Both both sides have gone back to their corners, claiming victory. But that can't hold forever. I mean, it's really difficult to predict what's going to happen in the future. But I would say there's one of two possibilities. Now, we have to keep in mind that a lot of people that are focusing on the kinetic action, you know, the military strikes, but not a lot of focus is being given to the, economic side of things. And Scott Bessent last week, he's the U.S. Secretary of Treasury,

he announced that as of this week, they're going to impose economic sanctions on the Islamic regime the world has never seen before. Wait, hold on. Hold on. So I said they're going to take their eye off the big, bad, evil Canadian government for a minute to actually focus on a real bad guy? Yes. I had to throw that. I had to throw that. I had to throw that. There you go. But yeah, so they're going to impose economic sanctions, likes of which the world has never seen.

And, you know, this is reminding me a lot of sort of the steps that led to the eventual dissolution of the USSR. You had severe economic collapse of the nation combined with political and social unrest. Now, of course, Iran is not going to, you know, break apart into various pieces. That's not the point here. it seems like it's following a similar sort of trajectory where the country is already a failed state. It essentially became a failed state back in 1979 when the Islamic regime took over.

You know, the Islamic regime there were millions, if not billions of dollars, and yet 70% of people live below the poverty line. And if you recall, all of this initially started back on December 28 with the collapse of the Riyal, which led to nationwide strikes. And then within 24 hours, it led to calls for overthrow of the Islamic regime. So I see this playing out in two ways. One way is the economic pressure essentially makes the whole country sort of like the Islamic regime collapsed. And then the Iranian people can take over.

Or the other possibility is, of course, resuming the, I call them the boom-booms. So resuming the military strikes. against the Islamic regime. I hope that that happens sooner rather than later because the only way that Iranian people can be freed is by destroying this Islamic dictatorship. Because as long as they're around, they don't use their military weapons against the United States or Israel.

They use them against the Iranian people themselves. And they bring in their terrorist proxy groups from across the region to murder Iranians. But there's also the question of feeding and paying their army and their soldiers in the IRGC. I mean, if you want a dictatorship to fall, you need to decapitate their ability to pay for and feed their army. One of the reasons that Cuba survived after the fall of the Soviet Union

is they replaced the funds that came directly from the USSR with tourist dollars. That money got funneled back into the Cuban military, and therefore they were able to keep, they were able to keep the control of that country. And if there's a way for these sanctions to directly affect the regime's ability to fund and pay for and keep their army fed, that's a huge blow. Yeah, absolutely. I agree, which is why I'm thinking it could go one of either two ways.

Now, we already know that the economic situation is terrible inside of occupied Iran. Many nurses are already on strike, people in different economic sense. sectors are on strike. They're not getting paid. It seems as if the Islamic regime is trying to keep the wages for those within the IRGC and also their terrorist proxy militia forces. But even that seems to be drying up. So, you know, that's partly due to the U.S. naval blockade, which is preventing the Islamic regime from exporting oil, but also, of course, the economic sanctions. So, you know, I'm very interested to see what these upcoming economic sanctions are going to look like because I have a feeling that we're kind of getting into that sort of Reagan-esque strategy

with the eventual collapse of the Islamic regime. The difference is even in Reagan's time, there was a huge vast swath of the Democratic Party that could make an argument to support military action like this. But now with the radicalization of the Democrat Party and its takeover by the Democratic Socialists of America, you've got these people who have found common common cause. You've got people in America finding common cause with this regime, saying that in fact, America is far worse than Iran and its proxies. And a lot of them have big microphones and big platforms and and malleable, malleable, useful idiots that listen to them. Oh, yeah, absolutely.

I mean, if you recall the 1979 Islamic coup d'etat, it happened with the help of Jimmy Carter and the Democrats. If Richard Nixon had still been around, he said that he would have never supported Khomeini or the Islamic regime. In fact, Richard Nixon is one of only two dignitaries who attended the funeral of the Shah, the late Shah of Iran, when he passed away in 1980s. So that's why I like to make a distinction between Democrats and the rest of the United States, because the Democrats will always support the Islamic regime. because if they side with the Republicans on this, then they have to admit that what Jimmy Carter and the Democrats did back in 1979 was a fundamental mistake.

And, you know, they will never own up to that. And, you know, they've become even more radicalized these days. Yeah. And that's why I don't even think they have to go back that far. I mean, I'm sure you can make an argument as a moderate Democrat that, you know, I don't know that they necessarily have to own that or the party can, but the people currently in it don't have to. So I wouldn't even have to look at that.

I just think that there is a virus that is swept leftists across the West that allows them to feel that they are progressive and inclusive and stand up for the rights of minorities. But when it comes to oppressed women and when it comes to the when it comes to the democratic voices coming from within Iran, those people need to shut up. Those people need to shut up because they've never had it so good. Yeah, it's absolutely wild that, you know, I call it Iran-splining. So whenever like someone who's not from Iran tries to tell us Iranians, you know, what are you guys talking about? Like America's worst, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, please don't Iran-splain the country to me.

But you're absolutely right. And so what you're seeing here is this unholy alliance of the red and the black where you have, you know, Islamists and jihadis on one side. And then you have the communists and the socialists and the woke progressive left on the other side. And in fact, it was the same unholy alliance that destroyed Iran back in 1979, you know, with the support of Jimmy Carter and the Democrats. And so these two groups, they are united in their anti-Western ideology. But that's pretty much where it ends. Because anyone who knows history, you know, just look at what happened to Iran. After 1979, when the Islamic

regime took over, one of the first things they did is they turned around and they started executing, you know, the communists, the socialists, the woke progressive, you know, all these people. So it's absolutely wild to me that today we're seeing the exact same thing in the United States where we have a whole bunch of like woke leftist, progressive, supposedly progressive people who are so blinded by their anti-West ideology that they would actually rather support a brutal dictatorship that literally murders women for the crime of showing a strand of hair. Yeah, well, Goldie Gamarre, leave it to a leftist. They could always explain away why something didn't work in the past

and why it needs to be tried again. It's shot. It's Groundhog Day, but with people's lives hanging in the balance. Thank you so much for joining us. I love this chat. Please be safe. I'd love to talk to you again soon. Thank you so much.

Absolutely, happy to be on here. Thank you.