The Last American Vagabond - Robert Inlakesh Interview - The Truth About "Iranian Proxies" & Iran's "Decades Of Terrorism"

Episode Date: March 20, 2026

Joining me today is Robert Inlakesh, here to discuss the Iran war, and the many different allegations being thrown around to justify it. Specifically, we review a White House document outlining what they frame as “The Iranian Regime’s Decades of Terrorism Against American Citizens.” We discuss whether or not the many allegations within the document are accurate, and if so, whether there is context that has been omitted, and how dramatically the added context can change one’s perspective. We also discuss in detail the groups labeled as “Iranian proxies” and whether or not this is an accurate framing of the situation.Source Links:(21) Stephen McIntyre on X: “The most definitive White House statement purporting to justify the Israel-US war on Iran was its March 2, 2026 statement entitled “The Iranian Regime’s Decades of Terrorism against American Citizens”. https://t.co/U0e9VnGy82 After a brief editorial opening, the article lists” / XIranian and Iranian-Backed Attacks Against Americans (1979-Present)FDD | The Foundation for Defense of Democracies(21) Zachary Foster on X: “https://t.co/VC8zv68Mht” / XThe Iranian Regime’s Decades of Terrorism Against American Citizens – The White HouseRobert Levinson: Family of American who disappeared in Iran say they believe he is dead | CNN PoliticsIranian officer charged with orchestrating murder of US citizen in Iraq - ABC News(21) Grok / X(21) Grok / XNew TabFather of service member killed in Iran war said he never told Pete Hegseth to ‘finish’ the jobTrump administration making heavy preparations for potential use of ground troops in Iran - CBS NewsNew TabTrump seeks swift end to Iran operationTrump: ‘I don’t want to do a ceasefire’ in Iran warNew TabGaza’s “Board Of Peace” Seeks To Reimagine The International Orderhow many die from bee stings in the us everybyear - Brave SearchIsraeli Settlers Consistently Use Arson Attacks To Burn Palestinians AliveISIS/al-Qaeda Was Created By The US & Israel - It’s An Open SecretRobert Inlakesh Interview - The ‘Steal Of The Century’ & Normalizing An Openly Violent Ethno-StateBitcoin Donations Are Appreciated:www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/bitcoin-donation(3FSozj9gQ1UniHvEiRmkPnXzHSVMc68U9f)The Last American Vagabond Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to The Last American Vagabond Substack at tlavagabond.substack.com/subscribe

What you're paying there when you go and fill up your tank is the Israel premium. You're paying the Israel premium there. You're paying for this war directly. Welcome to the Last American Vagabon. I have Robert In LeKess joining me to discuss pretty much just what's going on with the Iran war, the legalities from the United States perspective and the world. And one particular document released on the second by the White House that goes through the history of in particular Iranian, they claim attacks on Americans.

or really just the terrorist attacks of Iran on Americans around the world. And I thought it was important to go through this, like, you know, detailed oriented and discuss whether this was true, whether there's nuance to the conversation. And of course, whether this is being used dishonestly to try to drive support for an illegal war. So, Robert, how are you today? It's always a pleasure to have me in the show. It's been a while since we've had, you know, talked and you've been writing a lot, you know, articles for TLAB, but we haven't done the usual interviews we have in the past.

So it's good to have you on because we got to get back to it. because as you know, I mean, for those listening as well, if you haven't watched his work, Robert has some insight in these conversations that I feel most people just either are afraid to point out or just don't have in general. So how are you today, brother? I'm doing great. Thanks for having me back. And yeah, it's good to be in conversation rather than just the articles. Yeah, yeah. Looks like we got a little bit of a feed issue there. So just bear that in mind for the time difference, and the little delay on the video there. So basically the point today in general was, you know, to get into.

the specifics of whether or not the claims they're making are actually true. But in general, let's just start out with, you know, what points jump out at you, right? In regard to the Iran war in this part of it, I guess, you know, is there anything that jumps out at you that you think is important to discuss before we get into that that people may want to hear that you've been following? You know, because there's so many angles to this, the illegality of the war, the, you know, whether or not the appropriate measures were used. I mean, Declaration of War, War, power is out.

whether or not there was an eminent threat, whether or not this is justified based on previous actions. So is there anything else that jumps into your mind that you want to start with before we get into that? Well, I think the international order, as we've known it for some time, or at least the image that was presented to us, has completely collapsed in on itself. Not only because of the genocide in Gaza for two years and the inability of the so-called international community, the United Nations, and all of the legal. bodies that are supposed to safeguard the world from genocide and these sorts of horrific war crimes that we saw were, of course, not capable of stopping what we saw in Gaza, but then as well with the Trump administration advancing its so-called border peace through its UN Security Council resolution in November, I believe, of last year that passed through the Security Council

And this so-called Board of Peace was an attempt to replace the United Nations altogether, as well as a nation-building exercise in the Gaza Strip. So that being said, and then combining that with the fact that the U.S. Israeli attack on Iran was clearly a violation of the U.N. charter. And yet the U.N. Secretary General was not even capable of calling it out. for what it was. And I think there's a lot of parallels in terms of the illegality of this attack when it comes to the illegal invasion of Iraq. But what we've seen is that the United States didn't even bother trying to go to the UN Security Council for a resolution this time, like they

did for the Iraq war. They tried to get authorization. And they did get a resolution passed against Iraq. They didn't try this this time. They didn't even care. They've just swept aside the United Nations and international law. So I think the whole argument and the framing of international law, I think, has become irrelevant in many ways. We just look at the battlefield. And we've now entered the era of the law of the jungle. So I think that's important to note as we're looking at everything that's going on. And the U.S. has made a terrible mistake for itself. This is a war for Israel very, very clearly. And there's nothing that the United States gains at all. I mean, it degrades its power projection, the power projection of the U.S. military.

It degrades it in terms of its soft power. It degrades it in terms of not only its Gulf relations, but its international relations as a whole. And ultimately, the United States military is sort of getting embarrassed right now by a country that everybody was saying was a regime that's on its last legs and is about to collapse and its people hate it. And, you know, it's so incapable of doing anything against the great power of the United States. And yet, it's taking on the U.S. and the Israelis and throwing punches in every single direction and willing to take on anyone else who wants to join in in that coalition. And it's holding its own. And as you've often pointed out over the years that if it were to come to this point that this is what we would be.

Not necessarily over the years that you knew that they would be able to succeed in fighting it off, but that this would be the outcome, that it wouldn't be some over and done thing. And a lot of other people who are not partisan or, you know, blinded by the expertise of the State Department's perspective of Iran, right, that they just understand the reality that this is clear, I think, you know? And I mean, I really appreciate your work over the years for that very reason because it opens your eyes to a different perspective. Because what else do we have to look to? Because it's also not, I don't think, wise to trust what the Iranian government says about itself, right? It's about understanding the middle

ground. And I'll point out, by the way, what you said there, which is very important for people to hear from it, that you meant, you know, I believe you're talking about the government and the military, which is what you highlighted hurting itself. But as most Americans may take that as one thing, like Americans don't benefit from this, right? This is not America first. But as he's highlighting, the U.S. government doesn't benefit from this. So you can argue a world, you can see a world in which the government might take action that it benefits from at our expense. But what I really won't be able to hear in that is that they're taking action at its expense and our expense for a foreign power.

I don't know how. And I mean, I don't even need to say that next part, seeing as how it seems the main conversation and even the mainstream level is starting to grapple with whether Israel controls U.S. policy, kind of crazy that we're here, just on a side note, that, you know, that's actually being discussed for how long this has been broken down with facts. You know, any thoughts on that? No, I completely agree with you. to have these sort of conversations that we're having right now,

you know, we were, you know, labeled as, you know, conspiracy theorists and crazy people for discussing all of these ideas. But now this is the mainstream discourse because everybody's been exposed to it. And that's one, I wouldn't say, amazing thing. I'm trying to search for the word here. I find it amazing. And baffles that it happened, even though the facts. I would say that the fact that this all came from Gaza and the suffering of Gaza,

this tiny little strip of land, right, with a population just over two million, that it was Gaza that collapsed this entire deck of cards and exposed the whole system. I think that is something that should be noted in the history books. And everyone should recognize that, that the struggle of the people of Gaza, their steadfastness enduring the genocide that they have, has opened everyone's eyes. If it wasn't for Gaza, we wouldn't be here in terms of the way that people are now viewing the world. And everyone is now looking at the Israelis, looking at the U.S. government for what they are. And they're calling them out. And this is happening on a scale

that we quite frankly could not have predicted and people are saying things quite frankly that surprised me that shock me people who are let's say accepted in the mainstream discourse in the corporate media now even some people are coming out and saying things even the conversations that we're having now have dramatically shifted and that is because of Gaza and the sacrifice of Gaza and the steadfastness of its people so I would say that all originates from that tiny little strip of land and that population there of just over two million have changed the entire planet's perception on global politics on the way their governments function and open people's eyes and I do think it's it's a major shift it's an insane shift

And now the fact that there's a lot more people open to listening to the conversations like we're having now. Yeah, exactly. And then, you know, the Palestinian people, the suffering and the strife and the, you know, the decades, you know, I mean, if you can go beyond even just Israel. But, you know, the long term suffering and the strife of fighting this and having the arguments always be, you know, like even even recently, you know, somehow to capitulate as opposed to stand up for what's yours, you know, to just get out of the way instead of stand in your land. while they're bombing you, it's like, why don't you just flee to Egypt? Because this is our land. You know, like, and the fact that it's been going on for so much longer than post October 7th, you're right.

And I hope that that really does end up being not just a footnote, but the story, that the Palestinians and what they put themselves through are why we're here. You know, and there's other parts to be pointed to, but that is, it's a powerful point. And to show the determination, you know, the steadfast, like the choice to fight that in the midst of an insurmountable force. And, you know, I think that's kind of a good point of, where the world is at right now. You know, and it's, even though it can feel that way and maybe, it's still important

to stand up and fight back. And before we move on to the document, I wanted to put one more thing out. You mentioned about the UN. I made this point just the other day that I might have been yesterday. It's so obvious this, and it's actually a good point before we frame the kind of long-term lie about what Iran is. And that's not to say good guy, bad guy. It's just a highlight that they've been misrepresented for what they've been doing.

And that ultimately Iran has consistently gone to the UN in multiple examples. including, I believe it was February of this year saying, if they bomb, we will bomb these locations. It's a UN document. It's on the record. I'm sure you've seen it. And so the point is one, that means that they clearly knew that they would bomb these locations. They're now trying to claim were the rational response, even though it's a legal response to their attack, but also that it shows you they weren't planning attack. Because clearly they're going, look, if you attack us, we're going to respond, which clearly is not what you would do if you're planning a surprise attack. But the point is they went to the UN. Is that what a terrorist organization does?

As you pointed out, did the U.S. or Israel go to the U.N.? No. It's only so much you can truly ignore, you know? It's just, it's incredible. And that larger point, I'm so glad people are starting to see this. So I have a post that I saw. Actually, I originally saw Zachary Foster share this. Here's what he was sharing.

And he did a little side-by-side breakdown of the comparison. And you'll see why that's relevant in a second. It's basically an identical document to what was originally post. in June 19th, 2025 by the Foundation for Demence, excuse me, for defense of democracies, which as they highlight both is essentially a cut out of Israeli intelligence, you can decide for yourself, I happen to agree with the overwhelming influence on most of these think tanks, this one in particular. And so what Stephen here says, the most definitive White House statement purporting to justify the U.S. Israel-U.S. war on Iran, which was from March 2nd, 2026,

statement entitled the Iran's regime decades of terrorism against American citizens. Here's the document from the White House. He says after a brief editorial opening, the article lists 44 incidents with a total of 992 U.S. deaths, which we should address that in general before we get into this about the comparison to like be stings in a year. You know what I mean? Like the amount we're talking about. Also the fact that every one of these people now have casually said thousands of Americans

seeing in more, that's, you know, we'll just talk about that before we get going. The source of the data wasn't given. come from. He points out that it's this document. Now, and it's actually prepared by a former APEC member, which all of that made me nothing to you, the point for me, and I think it does matter, is whether these things are accurate, right? So before we get into the document and going down the list they have, it's an interesting point, right? The information about what we've been hearing and how often we hear from all of them, thousands. Trump even casually said maybe even millions in a press conference just the other day. Thousands of Americans. So before we get into that, can you break down for people listening

what that number comes from, like the general sentiment of where those thousands were supposedly killed in the bulk they reference in the, you know, Iraq conversation. Well, first of all, to address the foundation for defensive democracies, they, along with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, which are both ultra-Zionist think tanks. And if you look on the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, they have a project that tracks the transparency of the, the think tanks in Washington, D.C., and both of them rank the lowest of the low because they take

dark money. And it's recognized that they are essentially cutouts connected to the APAC lobby. And they were the cheerleaders for the Iraq War. So again, yet again, going into another regime change war, another forever war, you know, continuing the war on terror, as it was called, We're seeing that the White House again is citing these exact same think tanks as its justification and their data. And so to go through them, I mean, we could pull them up and go through each and every single one of them. But in essence, what they're arguing is all of Iran's allies and groups that are roughly connected to them, And every single death since 1979 is somehow the responsibility of the Iranian government of, you know, U.S. deaths. And just not, you know, caring to add any context into anything at all and blaming them for everything from, you know, roadside bombs in Iraq to Hamas attacks in occupied power.

Palestine to Hezbollah and a variety of other attacks. It's utterly ridiculous. And you'll hear, by the way, it's important you pointed out. It's like what, 996 they're saying. Important to them. So, you know, you'll hear that talking point that these, you know, Israel first pro-Trump people are putting thousands of Americans. And what they've done there is they're lazy.

and they've just said, well, every single roadside bomb and every single U.S. soldier that was killed in Iraq during the Iraq war was Iran's fault, which is ridiculous for the face of it. And that's kind of what I was getting at in that opening. So we'll go through in a second is not every single one because a lot of them kind of can be grouped together, but the general kind of long list of what they're claiming. But what the bulk, as far as I understand,

and correct me if I'm wrong, as you just highlighted, comes from like the illegal invasion of everything. Iraq and specifically the being like fought off by the Iran elements, which are some elements of just like we can get into like the PMU and what that really is, whether proxy ally, whatever, but then specifically Iran elements that were there with Soleimani and fighting off that illegal invasion. And so it for anyone to frame, which I mean, is anybody out there listening actually of the mind that that wasn't an illegal invasion? Do we pretend there were weapons of mass destruction? Like it's obvious. We know that was illegal. And yet at the same time, people could acknowledge

that somehow still want to make the case that them fighting off that illegal invasion was now a terrorist act. And I think that's what it largely stems back to. And then we can get into like the, you know, three killed here from a Hamas, whatever. But would you agree that that's the bulk of it? And then the roadside bombing point, too, is that like the general sentiment? It's it like from what I've seen on that list, it's just, oh, like groups that Iran either has a relationship with or some of the cases don't have a relationship.

and have never had a relationship with, or possibly could have been involved in funding or open allies with. And as part of its axis of resistances, it's called everything that was ever done by any of those groups was automatically Iran's fault. And as if it was ordered by Iran, I mean, it's just ridiculous. We can get into the list and we can go through everything. And I can address every single point that they're going to bring up. definitely you know so the the the the what i was just trying to get at is the interesting point that

it's something that they continue to cycle through even though it's more scattered than what they're really trying to suggest as you're highlighting and then back to the the um post about nine or 92 really just what he framed it as and we'll get into the actual list itself you know it's it's it may seem a small thing to some people you know that you can casually just refer to thousands of americans but one thing it shows you is that they're being fast and loose with the number of people that they claim is sacred to defend, you know, we have to honor their sacrifice, but then you kind of just blithely, just, you know, thousands, even though that's not the reality. Based on the numbers they provide, that's 992. So you don't even reach 8,000. And then,

and that's not to diminish the fact that they were killed. And we can get into the reality of what they thought they were fighting for. But then you can compare it to just about anything, like very benign things that take place in the country or over the, let's take the same time frame from 79 forward and the amount of things that, you know, like I've jokingly said, B-stings wildly outnumber what they're pointing to. So it's meant to make you feel like we're under attack and these people are targeting you, but by any metric, it in fact shows the opposite. And I just think that's really important to think about. So let's go through their list. For nearly a half century, the Islamic Republic of Iran, the world's, okay, let's just start with

that. Because it's amazing to me that with even what they show you, they can still make this argument, the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism. So do you find that to be an accurate framing and if not why i mean it's it's ridiculous like they're the leading a state sponsor of terrorism i mean did they fund uh alpida and all of the splinter groups across the region and in uh africa and across the world you know like a dash isis did they fund them these are the most well known right well just in case people don't know the answer is no unequivocally so that's what he was getting at right they are not and we'll get into that part in a second as well the ideological overlap the you know the isis point i think is the most insulting even as we can see isis attack iran

when israel starts criticizing them but then somehow and they're the group we're told is the leading group the big terrorism but then they fight each other but they're still the state leading sponsor it just it's it's it's it doesn't make any sense you know i recently saw rubio and others try to kind of or haggseth as well try to kind of broaden this out to well they're a state sponsor of terrorism why well or the leading because they take the money they make from their oil resources that, by the way, the U.S. has been sanctioning to then build tunnels and weapons and, like, what do you think about that claim? That first of all, that they are using the resources that are being suppressed by the U.S. government to build what other

countries seem to use, but why that would make them the state sponsor of terrorism. Like, just, I don't know. It just seems like it's on its face ridiculous, but I'm trying to engage with it like it makes like it's a real argument, so we're not just dismissing it. But, you know, what do you think? Well, who does it on back? It on back. Hezbollah in Lebanon. It backs all of the Palestinian resistance groups, whether they're Islamic groups, Marxist groups, nationalist groups. They back them all. They provide them all with funding, logistical support, etc. And they also back on Tsarullah in Yemen. And they back the Hashid Ashihabi or the PMU in Iraq. These are all

legitimate allies that have their own grievances within their own borders or either in Yemen's case in Sana'a, they have a government. This is the government of Yemen. Two-thirds of the military were decided with them immediately when they took over in 2015. So that's a government there. It's not internationally recognized, but the so-called internationally recognized government in Yemen is a bunch of Saudi stooges that literally put together a new government in exile out of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Saudi Arabia and have no legitimacy whatsoever. They're a bunch of gangsters. They've allied themselves historically with forces fought on the side of al-Qaeda and Daesh, ISIS,

inside of Yemen. So let's look at that. Oh, well, Iran has backed Hezbollah. Well, Hezbollah is an organic resistance movement, which grew out of Lebanon after the Israeli invasion in 1982, when Israel killed around 20,000 Lebanese and Palestinians. And then when the Palestinian resistance, by the way, were pushed out, they agreed to leave Lebanon. Israel then used its fascist militia allies, which were proxies. And these were hardened killers to massacre thousands and thousands of Palestinian forces. refugees in refugee camps when they didn't have anyone to protect them. And they also killed the

Shia in South Lebanon as well. And Israel then occupied South Lebanon. And by the way, when we're talking about the Shia in South Lebanon, prior to this, during the era in the 70s and before the Israeli invasion, the Shia were not actually always hostile to the Israelis per se. This is the poorest population inside of Lebanon. And it's also a population that they, for a long time, and this goes into the history of Lebanon now, that population, a lot of them historically didn't really like that the PLO was inside of Lebanon. They viewed it as a state within a state, and they had some grievances against them. And so they weren't actually, they definitely weren't combative towards the Israelis at that point. But then the Israelis occupied them. The Israelis murdered them. The

Israelis brutalized them. They destroyed their homes. They took their fathers and their sons as political prisoners and they tortured them. And so then you had Hezbollah, which formed out of the occupation of South Lebanon and out of the invasion and the mass murder of tens of thousands of people. And yes, Iran did back them. The IRGC did back them. And they have an affinity towards them because they're of the same religious group. But Hezbollah are an organic resistance movement inside of Lebanon. They're the biggest political party inside of Lebanon. They have social movements and a political wing and also a military wing. And they're the only people capable of defending the country, quite frankly.

The Lebanese army is a glorified security force. This all being said, that's who Iran backs and that's why they back them. Because even for Iran strategically, when it's backing all of these allies, and that's just looking at Hezbollah alone, when it's backing these allies to fight against occupation and to expel and it's arming them and it's providing them with support it's doing that for a variety of reasons you can say it's ideological you can say it's a moral reason you can make those arguments but even if you're just looking at it from an iranian defense point of view since nine since 1979 the iranian government has been

under sanctions it has been constantly threatened by the united states and so it needs to to develop these allies as a protective shield for itself in the region. That's just the reality. They have military bases surrounding them and they have threats coming from every single direction. They've been placed under sanctions for their entire existence of this government and then not even two years into the new government after the people of Iran overfrewed their dictator, the Shah, who was a US-installed puppet installed by the CIA. Not even two years into that government, they couldn't even settle down, then the United States backs Saddam Hussein to launch a war of aggression and invasion, which lasted for around eight years and killed around 500,000 Iranians.

But this is, nobody gets told this, nobody knows this, nobody knows about the overfro of the first democratically elected leader in 1953 by the MI6 and the CIA, who, by the way, it's important to note, when we talk about a coup, the way that they did it is they funded and fueled for the CIA and MI6, they fueled protests against Hamid Mosadduk. They fueled these, like we saw earlier this year, with these riots and these attacks. Again, they were doing the same thing now as they did back in 1953 because the country had a democratically elected leader. And he wanted to nationalize the oil. He wanted to take the oil for himself.

And he didn't want to align himself. So they installed this shop. The people overflow the shop. And then immediately, under sanctioned, invasion of their country, hundreds of thousands of people dead. And at the very end of the Iranian-Iraq war, after we've seen this was the last year of the Iran-Iraq war, the United States Navy shoot down a civilian airliner

and kill over 270 Iranian civilians in the Gulf of Formuz. Right. And so they never apologized for that either. And Reagan famously says, I'll never apologize for the American, for America, I think he said, the way he framed it. Yeah. And this is, this is the problem is when you're like, whoa, Iran backs this group and it backs Hamas and it backs Islamic Shihad and it backs the PFLP and the other groups in Palestine. Yeah, they're fighting within the borders of occupied Palestine to liberate their country. Hezbollah is fighting to liberate Lebanese territory and to protect Lebanon.

The PMU, when it started backing the PMU and helped found them, it did it in response to an ISIS invasion, which had taken over large swaths of Iraq. People don't know this because they have this weird fantasy depiction of what happened with the defeat of ISIS in Iraq. The United States did not defeat ISIS in Iraq. The Iraqis defeated the ISIS occupation. It was a brutal, bloody battle, and no one should have any illusions about it. There were many, many bloody events which took place. And I'm not saying that there weren't bad things that happened during this time. That would be incorrect to say.

There were horrible things that happened in Iraq during this time. But the PMU were formed. And by the way, they had Christian groups involved, Sunni groups involved. Obviously, the majority were Shia. But not all of them were technically on the Iranian payroll and stuff. They were fighting to defend their country. So Iran threw its weight behind them. And they were the ground force, whereas the U.S. came in with the Air Force later and obviously did some special forces operation and some ground operations.

But the majority of the ground fight against ISIS was done by the PMU. And again, just from a defensive point of view for the Iranians, they're looking at this and going, well, if ISIS takes over Iraq, we're in big trouble. And they don't want that. So again, it makes sense from a defensive point of view for the Iranians to do this. And again, it's a force which in Iraq protects the country from being taken over by these hostile forces. in Yemen, we just went through what happened in Yemen. Again, another U.S.-backed dictator in the country, and the people in Yemen underwent an uprising,

and they overthrew the regime there. The Ansar al-Lah they came in later, popularly known in the Western government here as the Houthis, the Houthi rebels, to delegitimize them. But they came in, and they took over Sana'an. and there was a revolution before this. And there were massive protests on the streets. And people, including many, the majority of the armed forces, sided with Ansar al-La when they took over.

And again, it was about sovereignty. I'm not here to advocate and say, hey, everything about Ansar al-La is perfect and the people of Yemen should choose them as their government. No, that's not for me to decide. That's the people of Yemen. And all of these other countries, it's up to them. It's their countries. They should decide. However, to simply say, well, Iran backs all these terrorist groups and regimes. And the PMU are a part of the Iraqi security apparatus. Right. All of this is just so incredibly ridiculous. And if you look at each case by case,

on a case by case basis and you look into it, every single time you can make sense of it. You don't need to agree with it, but you can make sense of it. But Jordan backs has the law. And like, I mean, it's just stupid. Like, it's ridiculous, quite frankly. It is. And it comes down to the point that it like you, like from the origin point, PMU, for example, which again, I made this point, like up until not that long ago, the U.S. government was funding Iraq, which was then funding the PMU or arming and then acting like that's an, it just doesn't, this is your point.

It's a logical when you look at the actual information that's not being surface level put out. But the point is from the, and that's not the origin point, but from ultimately the point where, you know, just when they start calling them terrorists forward, you can highlight that the only real argument is that they are backed by like Iran proxy, which is why they're terrorists. And then any kind of action they're used, like when the PMU responds against the U.S. government for illegal actions in Iraq, they call it a terrorist act. My point is that there's a lot of things they point to that you can, there's no, like, like you said, with Hezbollah defending domestically. They're not lashing out and trying to overtake countries. They're responding to a tax on southern Lebanon, for example, which we're seeing with Israel or any number of these points we could make. You know, I think it's so obvious to see the one-sided arguments there.

But as you rightly pointed out, this is not about good guy, bad guy. We're trying to show the facts, the truth. And if you can understand that they're misrepresenting these groups and maybe you still think they're doing bad things, in fact, I think any power structure could eventually or maybe doing exactly the same thing, but that they are misrepresenting it. And what does that mean? if they are this evil terrorist organization, why would they have to lie about what they're doing?

You know? And so I want to get into the point about the proxy thing before we go further on the list. And I know we actually do have limited time today, so I want to make sure we get into it. But I always enjoyed talking with you about this stuff, Robert. And so real quickly, last point on this, I think this is kind of cut to the,

cuts to the quick of what we're getting at, proxies. So what you highlighted there, your quick point there, forget what the group name was, but you said Israel was basically using their proxy in that discussion. But then you highlighted the allies of Hezbollah, you know, any number of the groups we're talking about that are allied and even gain support and weapons and funding from their allies, just like the U.S. government does to other countries in the world.

We don't call them proxies, right? So what's the difference in your mind? Why would Hezbollah not be considered a proxy of Iran and then any number of groups we can point to that we could, you know, the elements the Israel and U.S. are using would be called proxies. What's your mind that's different? Go ahead. Why is someone that immigrates from, let's say, Nigeria to the United States called an immigrant, but someone that would immigrate from the United States to Nigeria called an expat? Again, this is just, it's propagandistic framing.

And it's honestly, it's American exceptionalism to an extent. And this is, when you want to frame the world in terms of goodies and baddies, which is Trump's, Trump's rhetoric, in essence, this is the way that he presents the world in goodies and baddies, right? In the most basic way of presenting international politics, and this is what you do. You know, the bad guys, they're regimes. They're not countries. they're not governments, their regimes. Iran can't be viewed as a government that, you know, for instance, lately there was an interview, I forget how long ago, with Professor Mohamed Morandi, he was on Pierce Morgan.

And Pierce Morgan asked him, can you condemn your regime? And it's like you want someone to just get on there and just condemn a random fact about their government? It's like, it's a country. people have problems with the policies of their government. The reality is here that as much as I'm opposed to the American government, the Canadian government, the British government, whatever, right? And I have so many criticisms of them. If suddenly a foreign power was invading and bombing my damn neighborhood and killing children,

right, and then talking about all these stupid excuses, right, as to what? why it's doing that and pushing propaganda. I'm going to stand there and go, no, if they were backing terrorist groups to run through the streets and to burn down businesses and attack churches and just run amok, would I be in support of that? Absolutely not. That's not something I would back. And this is somebody who is a, you know, a dissident. I don't like the policies of these governments. I have so many criticisms like you do.

But again, would you back your country? being, you know, plagued with these crazy religious fundamentalists that are given all this money by, I don't know, Russian intelligence or Chinese intelligence or whatever it would be. Like, you wouldn't. It's just obvious. But we have to present our enemies with our chosen enemies as being not human. Their governments are uniquely evil. Their systems are evil. Their religions are evil.

Their culture is evil. Everything about them. is different to us and they're not they're just not and a lot of people see through this nonsense they do unfortunately most people don't have the knowledge specifically about west asia to be able to elaborate so when they're asked to condemn hasbalah and hamas and uh insarallah and yemen as terrorists they just call them terrorists oh yeah yeah the terrorists or they just call they condemn the iranian regime oh yeah i hate the iranian regime it's like can you tell me anything about it do you know anything about the way that the government functions. Do you know about the different political

camps? Do you know about the history? Do you have any idea about you don't? But people are pressured into accepting the framing of the conversation. And that's what they do is they want to create a certain framing in a box. And if you're outside of that, you're crazy, you're a conspiracy you're an anti-Semite, you're whatever it is. And this box is just propagandistic nonsense. And in in itself, it is inherently racist, crap, orientalist crap, which is there. And I'm not using those words. A lot of people throw these words racist and orientalist around a lot. Like anti-Semitism is around a lot. I use them with purpose here because these, this framing specifically is there and that box is there in order to trick you and dupe you into hating people that you would

never hate if you met them and you would never hate their culture if you went over there and you would probably think it's beautiful if you went and visited iran if you went to uh palestine and and you were to walk the streets and see the hospitality of the people and the beauty of the land and what they've built you wouldn't hate the palestinians you wouldn't hate the iraqis or anyone else you wouldn't but you're supposed to view them as this unique evil. I suppose this is a bit of a rant here. But again, it's just all manufacturing consent. That's all it is.

And the Pierce Morgan example, you know, like you're saying, and if you don't give them that concession, right, where yes, yes, they're bad, but let me explain why they're not what you think. Well, maybe not everyone agrees that they're as evil as you're saying. And the point is you're not allowed inside that inner conversation. You don't get that upper echelon, you know, Pierce Morgan. You know, that's the whole point.

And maybe some of them do have that opinion. You know, yes, Hamas is terrorist organization, but this is why this is not true about this. But it's not accurate. And you're right to frame it that way because that's just not the truth about the nuanced reality of the groups. But you could, like you said, we could both point out things that we argue are crimes, even rightly point out things that happen on October 7th, which should be criticized. But it's not the same thing. And I think it's important to see how that kind of, you know, same thing with politicians,

you know, where you have to kind of give them that to be able to get inside the circle and so you compromise yourself, you know. Now, back to the proxy point, and one more thing before we get into the list, you know, I think it's really important to see that you highlight it from the Iranian perspective, you know, like it's a really important point there. I'm glad you outlined that. And so from Iran, you know, yes, they're protesting. There are real protests.

There have been plenty of times that they end up co-opting. And it's very clear, as the unions even pointed out, once it turned into these armed mass people that they told you they were arming. But the point is that Iranians do want to, you know, as you often point out, and do have influence on government action that has changed because of it. But then when you have actual people come in and start bombing hospitals and schools, even if it's in the interest of what they claim they want, that's not what they, the way they want it or how they want this to go.

And so they speak up and criticize it. The analogy I make is if Republicans are trying to, let's say they're the insurgent force trying to take over the Democrat-led government and all of a sudden their Republican leader starts bombing their Republican locations to get that done. Why would they be like, yeah, you know, it doesn't make sense. And that's what it's only in the world from the dehumanized outside perspective where that even, and that's not what's real on the ground. And you can easily prove this, you know?

And back to the proxy point, what I was simply saying, and what you were saying, I think is really important, is that it comes down to whether they're controlled or not. And I think that's what a proxy means. If they're literally like an extension of the government, so the U.S. government literally manufactures a group of fake people, or a fake organization that are packed with CIA, for example. That's a proxy.

It's not really the organization. whereas you have organizations that are simply allies of other groups. Now, it's for everybody out there to decide whether you think that line is crossed or not. But the important thing is to realize that a lot of these groups are, in my mind, not proxies, but simply allies versus something else. And that's really important what we're going to get into next. So on this, one thing is first, I think, as you already mentioned, let's not forget. And you'll be surprised, I think, at least I'd like to hope, how well informed my audience is about Operation Ajax.

And 53 forward and now what the 79 revolution really was. And as you highlighted, we're talking about an illegal coup d'etat. Very well documented at this point. Mazadec was, as you pointed out, I mean, I often point this out when I talk about it. I can't speak to what his mind was, but the discussion of him argued that he was very pro-democracy, had pictures of himself next to Liberty Bell, was all about trying to emulate these different cultures. But I understand he just didn't want to bow to the interests of the foreign powers at the expense of Iranians. So they got rid of him and put someone in place that was willing to bow to the elitist oligarch kind of upper

echelon, you know. And so I think whether people agree with that framing or not, it's an illegal coup d'etat that I think went against what the Iranian people want. And even Grock will tell you that dramatically bad for the vast majority of Iranians other than that upper circle. So then we come to 1979. So you have the revolution. Now, as you often pointed out, that doesn't mean it all went in the direction of what even all the Iranian people wanted or whether it was more kind of an overreaction in a religious sense to what Americans brought in. Right. But ultimately, regardless, it was the will of the people to push this away and ultimately then went in the direction of more, you know, like you've talked about the hijab point and how a lot of people saw it more of a response to what

the West was doing. All that aside, 79 forward in the midst of this aftermath, Iranian students, and this is from the White House Post, backed by the regime, and you can speak to whether you think that's even the case, seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking 66 American hostages in a four hundred and forty-four-day standoff. This is one of the most frequently cited points to why Iran's a terrorist organization, apparently, or why they're killing Americans or just frothing at the mouth to get it done. So what's your understanding of that basic situation? Well, the people, like this is a, the revolution was fresh at this point. And so it was students that did this and there's it backed by the regime. And it's like the government ended up taking

control of the situation and of course, endorsed their actions eventually. But this was an organic reaction because the people wanted the Shah to be returned back to Iran. They wanted him to be punished for all of his crimes. And he was a bloody and brutal dictator. And this is something that everyone misses. They shared these stupid black and white photos of, oh, look, there were women in bikinis and everything. Do you really know what the majority of Iranians were living like?

Do you know what it was like? They had literally Americans as like settlers in their own. own gative communities there inside of the country next to slums. The population were poor. The population and all women and women's rights. Yeah, did you know what happened when the Islamic Revolution came along? Yeah, women became overwhelmingly educated. They finally could have access to an education and higher education. And they excelled in every field you can imagine. And by every single metric, life or the condition, of life, the quality and the indicators of life improved for them. Now, you can argue about

certain Islamic rulings, how they're implemented. Many Iranians have problems with this. And they have had problems with this. And back in 2022, after the Masa Amini protest, which of course, foreign forces hijacked them. And you had the women life freedom, you know, a banner put up, which of course was promoted by Saudi Arabia, women life freedom, women's rights and feminism brought to you by the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which just gave the women the right to drive cars. But regardless, when it comes to the system, there has been many changes since 2022. And that reflects the fact that the government does respond to people. It does. Now, that takes a lot of struggle and the Iranian people have struggled for those changes. And they've

led for those changes. And it's their right to do that. And it's their country and they should have that right to say, hey, we want this or we don't want this because again, it is their country, not ours. We have no business telling them what they should do. But back then, with the hostage crisis, they went into that embassy. And that's how we found out about 1953, because the students went in, they took over that embassy. They were shredding all those documents. They brought them. They took these straighted documents, put them together, and they found out, wow, they found out so many different things because it was the head of the CIA operations for the region. So they found out a lot. And if you look at the way that the Iranian government dealt with that situation, they released all of the black hostages and they released all of the women hostages on humanitarian grounds because they said that African Americans have struggled.

oppressed and women of course like it's humanitarian we're not going to go we're not going to keep women right and they kept the rest of them and and the u.s ordered a botched uh special forces raid which was a catastrophe inside of the country to retrieve them and again it's like the country's placed under sanctions the united states is harboring the shah eventually where did the shah die the shah died in exile in egypt and then like these cultists these weirdos that, you know, a lot of them live in the West who are Iranian and Iranian diaspora people. They go over to the shrine of the Shah and, you know, I don't know, say prayers for him or I guess not prayers because they hate Muslims so much and they hate Islam and they deny the reality of their country

and their history as well. But the funny thing is the Shah was actually a practicing Muslim. Right. And they hate his not so much. It's so ridiculously inconsistent. And, you know, but even to the point of them, why does it even make sense that these people would go and pray, I guess, praise the Shah at his altar? It wasn't, I mean, unless you were in this upper elitist inner circle, which would then mean you weren't representative of the Iranian people, then, you know, you wouldn't feel that way. So my mind, it's either people who do very much represent that, that illegitimate position or are just doing it because they're being influenced today.

Like, what is it, Arinajav and, you know, all. all these U.S. State Department funded people claiming of Iranian activism. And you could look that up as well. It's documented on their own websites that they get funding from the U.S. Department of State. They don't want to even admit that the revolution was popular. They don't want to admit that. And the reality was it was millions and millions of people. It was a process that took years.

You know, people suffered greatly. People were disappeared by the internal security forces and tortured to down. Start with the NASS. What was it called again? The Savak, I think. Yes, correct. There it is, yeah. And other as well, like, of course, there were other ways of taking them and seizing them and killing them and executing them. And they followed them in some cases overseas to murder them. And there's people that are significant in the history of the Iranian revolution and the lead-up to it,

like Ali Shariati, who we won't get into right now, but there's a lot of speculation that he was assassinated in the United Kingdom. Some people say that he died due to health complications, but he was tortured by the Shah's forces and later fled. But what we should know is that there were millions and millions of people, and this was a very long drawn-out process inside of Iran, which involved all elements of the society who went on general strikes, who did everything in their power to collapse the Shah's pro-US, pro-Israeli regime. And so when that happened, there were forces like, for instance, the communist forces and Islamic forces. Marxist forces. And, you know, many of them were not happy about the direction that the revolution went in. And there were different groups that splintered off. And then you have like

these terrorist cults like the M.E.K, which splintered off and even sided with Saddam Hussein during the Iraq war. Which currently the U.S. government broadly supports and is fact one of the groups that many of the current U.S. administration wants to be in power when this might change. Just that's important to think about. And they were delegated as a terrorist organization until taken off by was it Clinton, I think, but I forget. And I mean, this is a deeply unpopular organization. Look, there are these psychopaths who are very vocal in the Iranian diaspora who they're mentally ill. They're just mentally ill people.

They are not coherent. They have no grasp of the history at all. And they subscribe to cultist ideology where they basically worship, whether it's the M.E.K. or the Shah worship of Reza Pahlavi now, who's just an Israeli stooge. I mean, this is, I honestly believe this. If Rezaphaelavi, if his father was around, the Shah was around, and he saw the way he was behaving, he would execute his own son.

And that, I honestly think that's what he would do. He'd probably execute him. It's just the reality, that's honestly, knowing, I know about the history. That's probably what he would do. But just to finish on this point, these people do not represent the bulk of the Iranian public. And if you speak to a lot of Iranians, and I know many, many, many Iranians, inside and outside, you have people who are more on the side of opposing, very critical, but sort of see themselves in the middle. They don't like the way the system is. They have so many criticisms of it, right? And they continue.

tell you, you know, they can be talking to you all night about how much they hate this, that, and the other inside of their country. And that probably is like a very big portion of the Iranian population. They're not like that. Just like in the United States. Exactly. Exactly. Like the United States, like every other country you can imagine. And most countries are like this. And then there is a loyal base of supporters. We're talking about a population that is over, 92 million people. There is probably around 20 to 30 million, it's estimated, who are like loyal, right? And this is in large part because that government is a religious government. And so it has a religious leadership. And so for them, this is like a something that is

spiritual. You know, it's like Catholics with the Pope and the way that they owe allegiance to the Pope. It's the same thing. What I'm trying to create in this country. And I think it's an extension of like basically the idea, and I think that this, again, it comes down to what people's want for their country, and I think that always has to be acknowledged, and that's up for them to decide. Same with Americans, same with, same with Israelis. But it's worth noting that in any one of them, including with Iran, which is some of the criticisms, it can be used to manipulate the population. And I think that's what Zionism is doing to its population. I think that's what Trump is trying to create. And the reason I'm saying that is because I see it as a dishonest use. Now, I'm sure people have the same

criticism. But what matters to me is whether people who, not just Iranians, but rather people who practice the same religion believe what they're doing is in line with that religion. I don't believe that's even remotely close. I mean, how can we look at a genocide or any act of war or bombing a school full of children and pretend like that in lines with what they're brutally practiced? Now, say again, the same criticism if we apply to Iran, but again, if you come down to like the nuclear war argument, they lie about these things. They are, if you look at the evidence, it does back up. There's a Fokwa and they have not done it. You know, it's again, it's, I want everyone to look in these things for themselves and come to their own conclusions. But I think that's a good way to look at

the difference of how it's applied and how it's a, I mean, even the point about Zionism, again, it doesn't want to get into this part of it, but it is a misrepresentation of it. It's a bastardization of it versus another framing of it. We're thinking about that. And I think it's like a weaponization of it, if you get what I'm saying. Yeah. No, I, the conversation when we're talking about Iran, And, you know, my expertise, I obviously am an analyst and I cover West Asia. My expertise is in like the Levant, sham, right? That's where my specific expertise is. But I know a decent amount about Iran, Iranian history.

And somebody actually knows about Iran, right? And I'm not saying I know the most and I'm an expert, you know, and I can be compared to other voices on Iran. I'm not saying that. There are many people that are more educated. However, when I'm just looking at the conversations that are had in the West and amongst some of these psychopaths, you know, who call themselves Iranians, who, you know, parade around the old Iranian monarchist flag, not knowing that, you know, the symbology on it is,

goes back to Ali. And it's actually religious, but regardless. is when I look at these conversations and the 30,000 killed protesters in the 40,000, and then it's 80, then it's 120, you know, like, why not say 2 billion protesters were killed in 15 minutes? Why not? It's just as lunatic. It's just as crazy. All of this talk about the regime and it's so evil and it's proxies and all the nonsense they spell. We're living in a different reality, that they live in their own parallel universe where there's a, there's a, there's, There's an imaginary Iran and a real Iran, which is a country with problems. Yes, it has its own

system of government and it has its own people who should be the ones to decide their fate. And here we are in the West talking about how bad they are. And if you don't agree with that, look, I don't agree with, I personally, I didn't like Saddam Hussein. I don't like, I still, there's nothing that you can really defend about it. I don't think he's a defendable character. I think he did horrible things in Iraq. But was it right for the United States to go in and invade Iraq, which led to the deaths of a million people, or to impose sanctions on Iraq, which starved to death and led to the deaths

because of lack of medicine and all of that of hundreds of thousands of children? No. And it doesn't matter what I think about Saddam Hussein. I'm not Iraqi. And even if I am Iraqi and I'm on the outside, who am I to go on television? advocate for the balming of a country I no longer live in. It's so ridiculous.

I agree. And the better way to say is, did it actually benefit the country? Did it achieve what they were trying to accomplish? Or the real question, where they're even trying to? And that's a different conversation, but I think we can know. The history shows you today they were not. But either way, the hypothetical point is, Saddam Hussein wasn't a good guy.

And clearly, that's why the U.S. government worked with him. But the point is that they took him out and destroyed the country for the purposes of what they claim they're trying to accomplish. Apply the same logic to Iran. Is it even if you think they're the worst group, is it going to benefit the country to let this group, who clearly is going to sell it out as best they can for their own benefit at the expense of everybody,

is it going to benefit the people? And we know that's not the case. But I know how much time you have left. Let's come back to the list since we can kind of finish with the break, the overview. How much time do you have left right now? We can keep going for a little bit, and I should be good for a little bit,

I don't know about 15 minutes or something. There you go. So this and this I'm willing to show you really quickly just because you talked about this. And I guarantee there are people out there that are just probably just dismissed what you were saying about this event. And just not the GROC saying it makes it true. I always pointed it out.

In fact, in my next show, I'm going to go over a very interesting point about how GROC is clearly being programmed to be subjective, to be, to infer and assume. And I get why that might be the case with like a conversational point. but it is not in the interest of facts and information, and it's used manipulatively. A different point, we'll get back to that the next show, but that's all said that it's a tool. And it's often wrong or deliberately misinforming,

but it's still a tool and it's important to reach to certain people who may think that this may be more aligned with their personal partisan perspective. And I think that's why, you know, it's worth thinking of it that way. Now, in regard to the hostage situation, it's exactly what you highlighted. Deep anti-American sentiment had built over decades due to U.S. support

for the Shah's authoritarian regime, including the CIA-back coup. Many Iranians viewed the U.S. is responsible for the repression and corruption, and ultimately their values they pushed on them. The immediate trigger was the Carter administration's decision to allow him to be exiled to get treatment in New York, as you highlighted. Rumors of the potential coup to reinstall him after that. That's interesting, too. I didn't know that, like they thought it might be put back in after that,

which spoke to why they were acting the way they were. 79, November 4th, the group of students ended up taking 66 American hostages, as you said, they did, in fact, let go women, African Americans. And the main point for me is the students demanded the Shah be extradited for trial. I mean, just think about the claim. These are monster terrorists who want to kill Americans for no reason,

but they didn't kill any Americans and let some of them go. And then they wanted trial and process. And officials wanted a U.S. apology for the for what happened and the release of frozen assets. You could even overlap that with the Obama point and how often this is the case. But the end result, diplomatic negotiations were stalled,

economic sanctions were imposed, including freezing their money, which, you know, they took more vicious action. Military rescue attempt, as you said, went wrong. Negotiations ended up where ultimately they were given concessions, give some money back, but it hurt U.S. relations with the wrong. Going forward, 52 hostages released. In fact, not a single person was killed. And I think that's so incredible to me that we can frame that as something, like, here's a better question. How was that even included in this list of Americans being killed, or I guess just terrorism against Americans as how they're framing it. But it's mostly about, go ahead, go ahead. But it's just, look, it's just ridiculous. It's the big propaganda story, you know, and, and it's often used. And,

and look at the rest of these on the list. I mean, look, Iran back to Hezbollah. It's like, right. Right. Which we covered. Yeah, like, as we looked at like Hezbollah and like, even at some of these cases, like the idea that this was Iran, it's just so ridiculous. Like, but I won't suppose get into the Hezbo law attack on U.S. military person. But again, we're looking at, sorry. It's okay. Like I said, there's a little delay.

Before we move past it, the, so we addressed the point that Hezbo, like, so first of all, as you already addressed, these are not just Iran. That's how they're trying to frame it that anything Hezbo is involved with is therefore Iran did it. not the reality of this. So that alone is ridiculous to just include anything they did. But then to the point, I want your opinion, and we won't go through every one of them. But let's just say 1983. Right. So it says that Hezbollah

killed 241 Americans, and it was a truck bombing at a compound in Beirut. Now, I don't know if you're familiar with the exact event, but in your mind is that something Hezbollah might have done. And I would argue that what's going on. Go ahead. Yeah, I don't think there's any doubt of their involvement. I mean, this is in the early stages of Hezbollah as well. Like Hezbollah, I think, officially announced itself in 1985. But this is the sort of early phases of the organization. And so when we're looking at these events, we're looking like at the end of the day, the United States was a belligerent occupying force to these people.

Exactly. We just watched an Exactly. And 20,000 people had just been slaughtered inside of Lebanon. And the capital was besieged. And that's the key context to this. It didn't come out of nowhere like,

oh, hey, these crazy people, Hezbollah, they just popped up out of nowhere and drove a truck into it, you know, and killed all of these. And again, they're military personnel in a foreign country. Like, when, do you see them going over and killing and targeting American civilians?

But where are, where are the, where do they target American civilians? Where do you have any evidence, evidence of it, of them going into a foreign country and a Western country and killing people there? There's all these weird things that they say and they cite. Right. Well, here's a way to frame it for somebody who's an American, right? So hypothetically we're talking about is Mexico seizes control of Texas. and then while that's happening,

Republicans decide to try to stop them, and they bomb military personnel who's occupying illegally Texas. To inter-Republican out there, would you see that as a terrorist act as the Republican? You probably would not. And, you know, I always love this point

that somebody else, I think it was Dave who made this in the past. And you know what? They probably yell something about God when they did it. Compare that to the idea of what they call terrorism and religious extremism.

It's just, it's important to think of it like that. And so, but regardless, yes, is that they killed American servicemen. But does it make a difference to you out there? If these were American servicemen, which we know were illegally occupying Beirut and these were a force that was fighting back.

You know, it's the same point from Hamas. They're illegally occupied. And at this point, I don't believe that was the case. Well, when was the Geneva Convention for the fourth Geneva Convention? I forget the year. But the point was today, the legally occupied territories have the right to arm resistance. So alone, that would address that point, you know?

And so if you go down the list here, like, look, there's Hezbo law. which we've got into. But if you look at down the list here, you've got Hamas. There's a Hamas suicide bomber in 1995 there, I believe, looking at. It's like, okay, like do you really, like anyone that has any knowledge, to try and claim that Iran is behind Hamas suicide bombings is insane. It's just stupid. Especially today, with how much information is not.

And again, there's like, there's cases. I think we looked at one earlier. And it's like, oh, you know, they killed like an American. Yeah, here's the one. What? Iran-backed terrorists killed an American Israeli dual citizen and wounded another American in the West Bank. And if you look at what that attack is, they're Israeli settlers. They're settlers.

Literally illegal settlers. Yeah, they might have American passports. But you know what? Israeli settlers, many of them with American passports, have killed American Palestinians in the West Bank, and the U.S. doesn't care. And it does nothing. And it never talks about it. Just brushes it under the rug like it's nothing. And these people themselves talking about terrorists and religious fundamentalists. These people are religious fundamentalists ideologues. They are the worst that we could say. As somebody that's been attacked by them personally, I have been attacked by them. I know for a fact that these are fundamentalist extremists. So the idea, oh, well, there's someone of an American citizen who, again, it's like context here. Was this American citizen serving in the military and in a foreign country committing an occupation or invading a foreign country?

Or was this person an illegal settler who probably lived in a heavily armed, gated facility guarded by an army that's illegally there against international law and stealing someone else's land and was kidnapped or killed by the people that they're robbing? Like, I mean, it's just, it's so dumb. And from the foundation for defensive democracies, it's to be expected. It's just to be expected. That's the whole point is that this is being, this was something post. in 2025 by a group clearly influenced by Israeli intelligence that now the U.S. government, the White House, just parrots, like literally puts out the exact same list to justify this. So clearly this is reactive, you know, and the point before, as I highlighted the

article you put up, that this, right now, the religious extremism coming out of the Zionist elements and some of the settlers are the worst I've ever seen are, you know, one of the worst examples of that in the world today. And that's a, that's really important to understand. And that's even alongside the groups, which, by the way, we should understand, are very much being funded, armed and basically, you know, in many ways conducted or operated ISIS and Al-Qaeda. And I actually just went over this again recently in a show about the idea that ISIS and Al-Qaeda were very much created by the United States. It's an open secret. We should all know that. You and I've talked about this before.

But to go back to the list, one of the things that was in here interesting is, you know, because we know of the Palestinian-Islamic jihad that represents that exists in Hamas. But this is the Islamic jihad. So on that one, we haven't talked about, and I know we have limited time just briefly. Like, so this is 1995. Islamic jihad terrorists killed eight people, including one American citizen, in Gaza. So was that at the time the Palestinian Islamic jihad, or was that something that changed? And do you think that represents Iran? It doesn't represent Iran.

But look, Palestinian Islamic Shihad. Again, they like to frame all of these groups as being, you know, creations. And Islamic Shihad, in specific, they try and claim that it's a creation. of Iran and that's just not correct. It was formed really in the late 1970s. It started committing armed operations before Hamas, by the way, because there was sort of a competition between them and Hamas that had arisen in the Gaza Strip where they emerged. And Islamic Jihad emerged as sort of the group that had a lot more support amongst the poorer population in the Gaza Strip.

Whereas Hamas, obviously it expanded later, especially for its charitable work, and it became a much bigger organization because of its social programs and the Islamic civil society sector that it set up. But with Islamic Jihad, what they did is they sort of were the pioneers of Islamic-styled resistance,

because before that in the Gaza Strip, It was all nationalists, but really mainly the strongest forces there were communist groups in the Gaza Strip. And so when they failed, people were looking for a sort of new ideology or doctrine. And so many of those people that were formally part of Fatah or even the PFLP and other groups ended up joining Islamic Shihad. And what they would do is literally they were this, they were poor. They would get their hands on a grenade and just throw it into an Israeli military camp or just open fire. And very, very rarely did they ever even kill any Israeli soldiers. And there was a big clash before the first Intifada that they pulled off.

And all of the Islamic Shihad fighters were killed, which was sort of just right before the Intifada, which was a non-violent uprising, which was when Hamas emerged. because Hamas before was like the social Islamic organization called the Mujahama. But Islamic Shihad used to sort of fight back and forth with the Mujama people, because Mujah at that time, which later became Hamas, were against armed resistance altogether. They believed that you have to first unite the Muslim Ummah, so the Muslim body, and then afterwards, when everyone's perfect Muslims, then you can fight.

I still argue opening right there for influence, the funding we've talked about, but I know it's not the same as complete control, but I do feel like there was an influence there from that element that ultimately did drive them in a direction to become more of the thing that could be used to justify certain responses. We don't have to get into all that. We've talked about it many times. And I think your opinion is the best I've heard on it, you know, that's more nuanced. But I find that interesting. Yeah. Hamas and Islamics you had is separate. So they're a separate group.

Yeah, Hamas. So the Mujama, which was active in the 70s and the 80s. So they were officially given approval by the Israeli occupying authorities, and they even got some funding given to them. And again, the reason why they got given this funding and the approval to operate was because at the start, they did a lot of, look, they did a lot of good work. They founded things like the Islamic University in the Gaza Strip. The Islamic civil society sector was better than anything else that was on offer.

It really developed. And they did a lot for the people, a lot of charity and stuff like this. But this organization was against violence, against the Israelis. Some of their activists would go into the streets and attack people for not being. conservative enough for drinking alcohol for not dressing a certain way stuff like this and the Israelis quite frankly didn't mind that they would like that they they like people that are like that right whereas if you look at Islamic jihad Islamic jihad Islamic jihad from the start was fighting and so from the start they wanted to hunt them down and kill them they didn't give them any authorization or anything

like that but then in the mid-1980s the Mujama set up something which was called an which was the security apparatus, which they then formed for this organization. And so they suddenly started arming themselves. And so when that happened, and this is where people like Yahyazin Warr, and the founder of the Mujamaan and Hamas, Ahmed Yassin started getting in trouble with the Israeli authorities. They started arresting them and torturing them and going after their people. And from that point, on that's when they started to form real serious armed cells up into the point of the intifada in 1987 they really they they took this seriously and they formed the Qassan Brigades in later officially but they had this sort of security apparatus and

those fighters by 1988 and And really, they didn't get going until the 1990s, like, to be honest, like in terms of a serious military organization. At that point, Israel was hunting them down and murdering them. And there's a lot to go into there. The reason why I talked about Islamic Shihad and Hamas, though, was because to show you that they're not simply organizations that, and another point here to this is they didn't start getting funding. from Iran until the 1990s, until the early 1990s. That's when Iran started backing them. So the whole idea and concept that these groups were like, you know, Iranian proxies that Iran created in the Gaza Strip node.

Like the reason why I'm telling you all of this stuff and going into this whole, you know, rabbit hole here and elaborating on this and rambling a little bit is just to demonstrate that these groups were functioning in a society. completely separate to Iran, and they had their own disputes and everything way before Iran came in and provided them funding. And the reason they got this backing from Iran was because their leaders were exiled by the Israelis. They were in prison and then exiled to Lebanon. And that's where they started getting those connections with Iran. So that's an important thing to know. Like, again, it goes against the notion of proxies and all of this. No, these are organic movements.

These are organic movements. You can love them, you can hate them, you can have lots of criticisms of them, you can have barely any, it doesn't matter, but they're not proxies. They're just not. That's the crux of the point today. There's a lot of different things to get into, but the real, and like you just said, it doesn't mean that we have to think they're the best story. You can still think they're terrorist organizations, but it's just not what they're

claiming. And the allegations they're trying to lay at their feet. In many cases, our whole cloth lies. So last couple minutes, let's just finish down the list. And ultimately, anything jumps out to you that you want to make sure you discuss. Let me know. But, you know, it just continues. I mean, 90% of these, if not more, are Iran-backed something.

Iran-backed, Hesbel, Iran-backed, which we just went over how these are not the reality. Well, I guess you could, the point I make is that when they say Iran-backed and very clearly, I mean, even, yeah, I mean, they're literally talking about the proxies. Like, that's the way they're framing it. But Iran-backed is not necessarily incorrect. But it is when you know the way they're trying to make the case. That's what I'm just trying to make clear. But ultimately, they're not proxies.

but the overall that these were attacks carried out by Hezbollah or Hamas or Jihad, and that's not Iran doing that. But the point, you can see jumps out to me. Okay, go ahead. Sorry, sorry to interrupt. But if you go down there, it says in 2001, 2002, that there was an attack carried out by the Alaksa Martyrs brigades. Okay.

Now, the Alaksa Martyrs brigades were essentially created by Yasser Arafat. Arafat was not backed by Iran. Iran was not the one backing these groups at that time. I mean, it's so, like, again, and Al-A-Martars brigades, by the way, were from the secular Fatah group. They're not an Islamic group, right? They might have been Muslims, but they're not an Islamic group. That's not their ideology like Hamas and Jihad and some of the others.

Like there's many different ones which emerged afterwards, which now exists today. But the Al-A-Martars brigade were affiliated with, specifically as well during the days of Yasser Arafat to fight against the Israelis. So again, it's stupid. Like, it's just dumb. But I wanted to note that because I saw it there and I was like, okay, like let's pinpoint on this because this is a secular group,

which again, this is just nonsense. Like Iran is not responsible for a group that was fighting on behalf of Arafat, you know? I was just laughing about this to the day. And it's, you know, that's why I was saying like in the beginning, you know, some of these things are so self-evident, like just so, like, objectively not the game, that it's like, I find it hard to engage with them like we take it seriously. You know, but it's important to do it for those that may, we don't want to look like we're being, you know, derisive or that we're just dismissing things. We are. We're going to the evidence. That's the point.

But, you know, these things, it is absurd to make these allegations. And I was saying this about a lot of things. In fact, one of them was the idea that you can, without question, show how ISIS and al-Qaeda were not just by a, byproduct allowed to be created but were created and actually stoked and actions were taken by the U.S. government and Israel in many cases to literally, you know, these are not questionable. So it's frustrating that we have to keep acting like it's a nuanced opinion. Like you said, you know, well, they're all this, but let's talk about the facts. It's like, you don't throw them the fake bones.

Address the facts. That's all that matters. And one of them, like, that's why I'm saying this, Al-Qaeda suicide bombs. You know, it's ridiculous that we even take seriously that, by the way, these groups, ISIS in particular that has, like I just pointed out over 2025, suddenly attacks Iran and then takes credit for it. Yet they're still the state sponsor of terrorism and it happens to be right when Israel is criticizing them. It's just, it's embarrassing that we can't take it. If it take, see what that is. But whether or not you think it's tied to something else,

Iran is not connected to al-Qaeda and ISIS, not ideological. These are these are Sunni ultimate groups. Like these are not, it doesn't make any sense, but it works for people who don't understand even what that is or why the Shiite Sunni conversation is very important for Israel's religious war or what they're really trying to do. But it's just, you know, same kind of point. It all doesn't make much sense. But Amos backed, Iran-backed popular resistance committees. I'm not, I'm not, you know, any reference to that.

Then the main point. Okay, right. And so the main point, so same point then. January 2007, a dozen men affiliated with the IRGC. Cuds force kills five U.S. soldiers. Now, this is where we start to get into what I think is interesting. where we're talking about in many cases, you know, action like Iraq overlap, Syria overlaps. Where you're talking about situations where you're, you know, PMU responding to illegal actions

from these occupying forces. And so whether you're talking about a tangential group or that whether it's Iran or not, they're just responding to illegal occupation, there's really no way to see these as anything other than misrepresentations. This one's different. Former FBI agent happens to disappear in Iran, likely dying in his Iran. Do you know anything about that one? likely. That I personally don't actually. I didn't heard of that before, to be honest with you. I don't know why I missed that.

Like, I should know about that, but I don't know why I don't know about this. I hadn't, it's not something that was on my radio, are there really, according to State Department officials, which right there should be a red flag, was never publicly seen or heard from again. Well, okay, so by that very point then, we don't know what happened.

Exactly. So why is he on your relationship? list. Right. So we've already been to lose one of these. So we like remove one from them. Right. But so we're on back to Moth, ran back to Moss, Ron back to Moss, Ron back. And this is, this is Katib Hezbollah, right?

So it's the same. It's Iraq groups, right? Yeah. So now we're getting into the groups which were formed after like Qatatatah, is part of the PMU. Right. And again, like now look at these attacks here. It's like, oh, well, there was 1001, 100.

and nine troops that suffer traumatic brain injuries because you assassinated Iran's top general and then they retaliated. Literally, like this is legal response. And again, like we're dealing with today, well, actually,

Soleimani was a little different since they bombed him in Iraq. But today, you know, the U.S. is bombing in Iran. So Iran would have every legal right to have responded bomb the United States. And I don't want that to happen. But they're not doing that.

That's restraint. And so in this case, you know, it's the same kind of idea. They were bombed. They were attacked. illegally. In fact, the most disgusting part of that, as you know, was they invited him under the guise of diplomacy. And as I understand it, the only reason he wanted him to come to Iraq

to kill him was because they still were arguing they could use the 2002 AUMF. And it was destabilizing Iraq by being there. And so they murdered him. That's the logic I believe they were trying to operate under. But they murdered him. And so they responded and bombed the U.S. base in Iraq. And they claimed that was, you know, terrorism, I guess. To 2020, same indicated Ronnie regime was considering a plot to assassinate South okay, like U.S. intelligence says, Iran rocket killed American citizen in Iraqi Kurdistan.

You know, and again, we're not talking about Iranian rockets right there. We're talking about the PMU. I mean, any number of examples are IRC orchestrated the killing of American citizen in Baghdad. You know, some of these, I'm not, I don't, the exact instances, but Ronnie an officer charged with orchestrating murder of U.S. citizen Iraq. You know, my argument was if you go through this information, you'll likely find out that, you know, this is coming from something the U.S. is claiming, but is Iran capable of killing something through, yes, and also this is any legal occupation of Iraq. You know, all these abuses have

already been discussed, you know, rather justifications. I'm just trying to hurry with time. Jump in if you, if you have any thoughts. No, and all of this is like, if you compare it to the amount of Iranians that have been killed in the region, in their own region, and over their own airspace by the Israelis, it doesn't compare by the American, sorry. The U.S. military has caused way more deaf and destruction to the Iranian people. And so it's just ridiculous. And there have been assassinations carried out by the United States and the Israelis inside of Iran for decades now. It's so ridiculous, these arguments.

And then look at it like, it's good that we've gone for this list because they're just clutching at straws. You know, it's like the fact that they put al-Qaeda on there and they put all, Iran's response, not even killing Americans, injuring, right? Because they didn't admit any deaths, right? So injuring Americans with a retaliatory strike on a U.S. base, you know, they're clutching its straws and they can't produce this thousands number, even when they're clutching at straws. Right.

Which I think just demonstrates how ridiculous this argument is that they put out. And like we were like we were talking about earlier, they live in this parallel universe. You know, the Iran that they're talking about is not the real Iran that exists. Right. You know. And that's the most of their propaganda in the world are really just most propaganda from any country. But just to wrap up in general, you know, now we're in the realm of what we've been dealing with, you know, where we're talking about where this has been, the posture has been obvious.

Trump can't stop telling you how he needs to remove Iran, his last administration now. And so they clearly recognize that they're under threat, just like they knew this was going to come. That's why they warned if you do it, we're going to respond this way. And we didn't get into it because it's not the point today. But the evidence is undeniably clear based on their own statements that there was no eminent threat. And so this is all illegal regardless. But they're now citing these responses. You know, June 2025, Iran-backed militias attacked at least three bases.

You know, this is stuff that's responding to what they're doing in the area. 12-day war forward, even the most recent examples, which they could tack on in regard to anything that's happening. It's obviously about their justifiable responses to what the U.S. and Israel doing in the world. I mean, this is not about taking sides. It's about the legality. It's the reality of international law. It's the reality of what the U.S. and Israel have always been doing in my experience. And if you want to criticize like we have today in some ways what Iran does in their country or what they do in their foreign policy, then go at it.

That's not the same point as recognizing the U.S. is lying about what they're doing. And I just think that has to matter. I thought that list needed to be broken down because right now they're using this argument to, I mean, really, I think create another forever, never-ending, ongoing kind of Middle East discussion, you know? And I'm very worried about that.

And any final thoughts? And I'll just kind of rattle off some points here on the screen for people to see, you know, with what we're dealing with right now and the road to the ground forces. And anyway, go ahead. Any last thoughts? No, I just say that obviously this work does not serve U.S. interests. I think the Israelis, ultimately, they're willing to drag down the U.S.

economy. They're willing to destroy the U.S. if it's going to come to that. And the presidency of Donald Trump at that. And also, I think their aim is to degrade the Persian Gulf states, to degrade the Iranian economy by going after civilian targets, by going after its infrastructure, and then hoping that they survived at the end of this. So that then in essence, what they've done is it's created the conditions where in the future the Iranian government might be weaker and there might be more chance for a regime change effort using their own proxies on the ground to do it.

Like we saw a similar scenario in Syria, I don't believe this will work personally. I think all of this death and destruction is ultimately going to result in a loss for the United States military and a loss for the Israelis. But that's what they're trying to do and they're very desperate and they have been since October 7. They believe that if they can't crush Iran and they can't achieve their greater Israel project, then they won't exist in the long. term. And I believe that that assessment is actually correct because in terms of what they deem as existing as Israel and greater Israel, that can't exist in the long term. It just won't. Now, they could have, they had an opportunity to be able to exist and to have their place

secured in the region, but they chose not to do the so-called two-state solution, which I thought was a terrible solution for the Palestinian people. It's not fair at all to them. However, the Palestinian leadership at the time would have taken it. It's very clear. And then they could have been integrated into the whole region. Everyone would have accepted them. Everyone signed onto that, the Arab Peace Initiative. You can look up the Arab Peace Initiative. They had the chance and they didn't want it. So now Americans are going to die. You're going to pay a lot more to fill up your tank and there's going to be inflation and what you're paying there when you go and fill up your tank is the Israel premium you're paying the Israel premium there you're

paying for this war directly and so that's that's where things stand right now it's sad but unfortunately you know there's not even people on the street in opposition to this that could change because it's going to personally affect them going forward So it couldn't change. But again, like this is a terrible decision on the part of the U.S. leadership. And it just demonstrates that this Trump administration is completely captured by the Israel lobby, completely captured. Has no mind of its own. It just serves Israel's interests.

Yeah. And I, you know, and I think the world and especially the U.S. population is coming to terms with that. And that doesn't mean it's, you know, it's not something that is, you know, something that we can overcome like anything else, as much as it may seem insurmountable. And I'll also add to finish that this is something that's now being jumped on as a last ditch effort, in my opinion, to justify why Trump somehow is always, you know, like the, the very point of being controlled by Israel is now being floated as why he's not responsible. But at the same time that it turns out that he is only doing this at his own expense to fight for us

from within the broken system. Glenn Beck is genuinely arguing that he's, he always knew. this would happen. He knew Israel controlled the Democrats, right? So he worked his way in in order to control what he could. And I'm just going, it's evidence free, blinds a self-serving assumption to just give yourself, like right now there's so many people that are starting to see that they were not what they said they were. And then you get a Glendek that gives them something that goes, oh, they can go, oh, thank God, I knew I was right. Ignore everything else. It turns out I really was right. Trump was really sacrificing for us. Just be smarter than that, guys. It's quite obvious. This is not what

this is not what you were promised. And everything, everything they're doing other than this is showing that as well. I'm just glad it's happening. So thank you again, Robert, for joining us. We can do this more often. And I'll leave you with a clip from Patrick Closson that I think is always important. So as always, everybody out there, question everything. Come to your own conclusions. Stay vigilant. I frankly think that crisis initiation is really tough. And it's very hard for me to see how the United States President can get us to war with Iran. Which leads me to conclude that if, in fact, compromise is not coming, that the traditional way of America gets to war is what would be best for U.S. interests.

Some people might think that Mr. Roosevelt wanted to get us into World War II, as David mentioned. You may recall we had to wait for Pearl Harbor. Some people might think Mr. Wilson wanted to get us into World War I. You may recall he had to wait for the Lusitania episode. Some people might think that Mr. Johnson wanted to send troops to Vietnam, you may recall he had to wait for the Gulf of Tonkin episode. We didn't go to war with Spain until the US, until the Maine exploded. And may I point out that Mr. Lincoln did not feel he could call out the Federal Army until

Fort Sumter was attacked, which is why he ordered the commander at Fort Sumter to do exactly that thing which the South Carolinians had said would cause an attack. So if, in fact, the Iranians aren't going to compromise, it would be best if somebody else started the war. But I would just like to suggest that one can combine other means of pressure with sanctions. I mentioned that explosion on August 17th. We could step up the pressure. I mean, look, people, Iranian submarines periodically go down.

Someday one of them might not come up. Who would know why? We can do a variety of things if we wish to increase the pressure. I'm not advocating that, but I'm just suggesting that this is not either or proposition of, you know, it's just sanctions has to succeed or other things. We are in the game of using covert means against the Iranians. We could get nastier at that.