Podcasts about ayatollahs

Tara Servatius breaks down the high-stakes tension between Iran, Israel, and the United States in this fiery segment of The Tara Show. With Iran's nuclear ambitions back in the spotlight, Trump's alleged opposition to Netanyahu's proposed strike on Iranian nuclear facilities has raised eyebrows—especially after years of saber-rattling from both sides. Tara questions the logic of waiting on a deal with a regime that has repeatedly vowed to destroy Israel and assassinate Trump himself. She highlights the history of Democratic administrations enabling Iran through lifted sanctions and billions in funding, while Israel remains under constant threat from Iranian-backed proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah. From internal unrest in Iran to secret back-channel talks and the geopolitical powder keg brewing in the Middle East, Tara argues it's time to stop tying Israel's hands—and start asking why Democrats seem more aligned with the Ayatollahs than America's own allies.

Following seven years of diplomatic deadlock, Washington and Tehran have resumed nuclear negotiations — and for the first time in years, there are signs of real momentum. Alex Vatanka, MEI Senior Fellow and author of The Battle of the Ayatollahs in Iran, joins hosts Alistair Taylor and Matthew Czekaj to analyze the current round of talks, the technical issues under discussion, and the political stakes on both sides. He explores Iran's economic and domestic pressures, US red lines, and the role of key players like Israel, China, and Oman in shaping the negotiations. The conversation also assesses what's changed since the 2015 nuclear deal, and what it would take for this fragile opening to lead to something more lasting. Recorded on Tuesday, April 22, 2025 For more context, read Alex Vatanka and Ross Harrison's recent article, "Thinking the unthinkable: Improved US-Iran relations under Trump?" Look out for new episodes of Middle East Focus every Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts.

Send me a text!The rise of the Ayatollahs and the fall of the Shah.Different quotes Support the showwar102podcast@gmail.comhttps://www.reddit.com/r/War102Podcast/https://war102.buzzsprout.com

With the return of President Donald Trump, we also saw the return of the 'maximum pressure' campaign. The maximum pressure campaign was the hallmark of Trump's Iran foreign policy during his first term, and took the form of a raft of sanctions, which targeted individuals and the country's economy. This week on The New Arab Voice podcast, we look at what the return of Trump means for Iran, if the regime can survive four more years of Trump, and what the Iranian regime is doing to mitigate and circumvent the sanctions.To help us navigate Iran and the maximum pressure sanctions, we speak with Alex Vatanka (@AlexVatanka), a Senior Fellow at the Middle East Institute (@MiddleEastInst), specialising in Iran, and the author of The Battle of the Ayatollahs in Iran: The United States, Foreign Policy, and Political Rivalry since 1979. This podcast is written and produced by Hugo Goodridge (@hugogoodridge).Theme music by Omar al-Fil with additional music from Audio Network.To get in touch with the producers, follow then tweet us at @TNAPodcasts or email podcast@newarab.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

À partir du 28 février 2025 à 23h59, la chaîne C8 n'a plus le droit d'émettre sur la TNT. En cause : l'Arcom n'a pas renouvelé son autorisation de diffusion. Les concernés, mais aussi la droite et l'extrême droite fustigent depuis que cette décision est tombée que c'est une atteinte à la liberté d'expression. Marine Le Pen dénonce par exemple sur X-Twitter une décision “qui donne raison aux Ayatollahs de la pensée unique”.  Pourtant cette interdiction est une première en France, et C8 a été sommée de cesser ses dérapages à plusieurs reprises. 35 selon l'édito politique de Patrick Cohen le 20 février 2025 sur France Inter. On parle de ”mises en garde, mises en demeure, sanctions pécuniaires”, en tout 7 millions d'euros d'amendes ont été payés par chaîne du groupe Bolloré. Mais l'Arcom a-t-elle le droit de ne pas renouveler cette chaîne ? Quelles sont les missions de l'Arcom ? D'où vient l'Arcom ? Écoutez la suite de cet épisode de Maintenant vous savez ! Un podcast Bababam Originals, écrit et réalisé par Hugo de l'Estrac. À écouter ensuite : Peut-on vraiment trouver l'amour à la télé ? Comment l'émission Loft Story a-t-elle révolutionné la télé ? Comment les Unes de Libération ont-elles marqué les combats de ces 50 dernières années ? Retrouvez tous les épisodes de "Maintenant vous savez". Suivez Bababam sur Instagram. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Diesmal nur gute Nachrichten in Matusseks Stunde. Seine Herzoperation verlief gut, Stent eingesetzt, danke für alle guten Wünsche und Gebete. Zur guten Laune trägt bei, wie sich die ratlose Linke ins eigene Knie schießt. Steingarts Hickhack mit dem Ex-Kollegen vom „Spiegel“. Das Zittern der Ayatollahs im Iran und Matusseks Erfahrungen mit den Schiiten aus seiner Hippiezeit. Das Zittern vor Mileis Kettensäge auch bei uns. Peter Hahnes Gardinenpredigt in Bülow. Ein Gedicht von Chesterton über das Kind in der Krippe, das einst mit Sonne und Mond spielte und nun mit Heu in der Krippe. Songs von John Lennon, Elvis, Simon & Garfunkel, Boney M. Schließlich das Finale des Mafia-Abenteuers von Rupert, auch hier nur gute Nachrichten.

The recent US presidential election was a disturbing spectacle. We saw political professionals and self-appointed “experts” resort to intimidation, shaming, and apocalyptic doom and gloom to manipulate or shame people into voting for their candidate. Scaring or shaming someone into voting a certain way is a condescending and immature strategy that will always backfire because no one likes to be treated like a child by being frightened or tricked into doing things. This is typical of dictators like Nicolás Maduro, Fidel and Raúl Castro, Kim Jong Un, and Vladimir Putin— all on the left— or Adolf Hitler and the Ayatollahs of Iran on the right. Any politician who does not know how to persuade people with respect, integrity, and intelligent arguments and who has to resort instead to fear and intimidation to win votes is unworthy of leading any country, party, or company. Pop, rap, and R&B singers, as well as disturbed actors like Robert de Niro, Oprah Winfrey, and Whoopi Goldberg, made complete fools of themselves by loudly threatening Nazism, dictatorship, and the end of the world if people didn't vote the way they wanted. Sadly, this kind of political deceit is used in every continent and every political party. So, it is time to think about fatalism or catastrophism as a strategy for gaining or maintaining power. The short and brilliant text I present to you today was written by Andrew Torba, a man who gave up his easy and luxurious life in Silicon Valley to create the digital platform gab.com after seeing how Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google, and LinkedIn only promoted the posts and accounts of those who aligned with their political, social, or sexual sympathies. The gab.com platform aims to facilitate free speech for all (even those we do not want to associate with) and the parallel economy in the US. Visit gab.com and decide for yourself (I will not scare, manipulate, or shame you into doing so). Credits: Text: Andrew Torba Translation by Gabriel Porras for murmullosradiantes.com Show presented and produced by Gabriel Porras for murmullosradiantes.com Music: Until we all reach full measure, by Ghosts Of Us on Artlist.com. Used under licence. Alive & Well by Hello Love on Artlist.com. Used under licence. Cover image created by Ricardo Gil, ricardo@scrav.com Image created by Freepik on www.freepik.es. Used with permission. Feel free to share this material with anyone who might benefit from it. Leave a comment and subscribe to the channel to help me reach more people like you.

Nov 4th 2024 Yuriy outlines the new phase of conflict where Ukraine faces off against both Russian and North Korean forces, examining the geopolitical ramifications and the hesitations of Western allies. You can email Yuriy, ask him questions or simply send him a message of support: fightingtherussianbeast@gmail.com    You can help Yuriy and his family by donating to his GoFundMe: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-yuriys-family   Yuriy's Podbean Patron sign-up to give once or regularly: https://patron.podbean.com/yuriy   Buy Yuriy a coffee here: https://bmc.link/yuriymat  Subscribe to his substack: https://yuriymatsarsky.substack.com/  ----more---- TRANSCRIPT: (Apple Podcasts & Podbean app users can enjoy accurate closed captions)       It is 4th of November.  Our work has entered a new phase. This is obvious. First of all, we are now facing two regular armies: the Russian and the North Korean. Over 10,000 soldiers of that stupid greedy Kim have already taken positions with the Russians near the Ukrainian border, and thousands more are currently preparing in military camps in the Far East. This completely changes the configuration of the war.  Previously, all the Putin allies, the likes of Lukashenko, the half-dead Iranian, Ayatollahs and Kim, numbed by his own life of luxury- limited their support to supplying weapons, or providing territory for invasion. Now, everything has changed. We are facing two regular armies and both from   countries with nuclear weapons.  And where is our nuclear arsenal? We had one. Oh right, we gave it up in the 1990s in exchange for promises to respect our sovereignty and to keep our borders intact. And who made those promises? Russia, who took our weapons and now is destroying our country. And who was the guarantor of those promises? Who assured us that life without the bomb would be better and safer? The United Kingdom and the United States. Google the Budapest memorandum if you don't know this story.  Please don't think that I'm an ungrateful wretch who's forgotten all the weapons and other aid the Western countries have given us. I actually remember and deeply appreciate it, but I also know that we could destroy the Northern Korean expeditionary forces right now, before they have the chance to kill wound or rape anyone. Yet we don't have permission from Washington or our capitals to do so. They've told us directly: as soon as we cross the border, hit them with our weapons. Until then, no, no, no.  We are also not allowed to use Western missiles to destroy the Russian air fields from which planes launch daily to bomb our cities. We're also forbidden to strike at their drone stockpiles. Have you seen these drones? They are huge, the size of the car, packed with explosives powerful enough  to demolish an entire building. Just in the past few days, strikes by wars, drones on Ukrainian apartments have killed two children.  These drones- and this is another indicator of a changing nature of the war- are now being used much more frequently here even deadlier explosives. Thermobaric ones. When they explode, they burn everything around them, including people. I've seen how they work. No horror film could show you this, but we all see it every day.  Remember that you can support me. It's still extremely important. Without this help, things would be much harder for me than they are now. All details are in the description. I'll be back soon with shall we say a special episode because my birthday is coming up soon

The Qantas scandal engulfing the Prime Minister, the Greens fail miserably at the Queensland election, and how Israeli female fighters took on the misogynistic Ayatollahs of Iran and won. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Im September 2022 gingen Bilder von wütenden Menschen in Iran um die Welt. Vor allem Frauen protestierten gegen das repressive Regime der Ayatollahs und skandierten: Frau. Leben. Freiheit. Auch 1967 machte Iran weltweit Schlagzeilen. Der persische Schah Reza Pahlewi und seine Frau Farah waren damals auf Staatsbesuch in Westdeutschland. Vor allem deutsche Studenten protestierten gegen das autokratische Regime in Iran und riefen: „Nieder mit dem Schah!“ und „Freiheit für Persien“. In Iran selbst dauerte es noch bis 1978, bis die Menschen aufstanden, um das Schah-Regime zu stürzen. Das erste Großreich der Geschichte hat seit der Antike immer wieder Revolutionen und Umbrüche erlebt. Heute gehört Iran, wie schon 2002 für US-Präsident George W. Bush, zur „Achse des Bösen“. Denn das Regime unterstützt weltweit islamistischen Terror. Dabei war Iran lange Zeit nicht nur ein Liebling Deutschlands, sondern des gesamten Westens. In dieser Podcast-Folge geht es unter anderem um das sagenhafte Reich Kyros des Zweiten, um iranisches Erdöl, die Proteste von 2022 und die Frage: Stimmt es wirklich, dass sich 1979 die Mehrheit der Iranerinnen und Iraner für die islamische Republik unter Ayatollah Chomeini in einem Referendum ausgesprochen haben? **Gesprächspartner*innen:** - Arash Azizi - Frank Bösch - Bruno de Nicola - Lamya Kaddor - Maria Oellig - Gilda Sahebi **Literatur:** - Azizi, Arash (2024): What Iranians want: Women, Life, Freedom. - Axworthy, Michael (2011): Iran. Weltreich des Geistes. Von Zoroaster bis heute. - Bösch, Frank (2024): Deals mit Diktaturen. Eine andere Geschichte der Bundesrepublik. - Bösch, Frank (2015): Zwischen Schah und Khomeini. Die Bundesrepublik Deutschland und die islamische Revolution im Iran, in: Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte. Jahrgang 63, Heft 3. - Oellig, Marie (2019): Die Sukzession von Weltreichen. Zu den antiken Wurzeln einer geschichtsmächtigen Idee. - Polo, Marco (Edition Erdmann 2021) Beschreibung der Welt: Die Reise von Venedig nach China. - Sahebi, Gilda (2023): „Unser Schwert ist die Liebe“. Die Feministische Revolte im Iran. - Wiesehöfer, Josef (2021): Das frühe Persien. Geschichte eines antiken Weltreiches. 6. Auflage. **Internetquellen:** - https://www.bpb.de/themen/zeit-kulturgeschichte/deutschland-chronik/131575/27-mai-4-juni-1967/ - https://www.hdg.de/lemo/kapitel/geteiltes-deutschland-modernisierung/bundesrepublik-im-wandel/spiegel-affaere.html - https://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2023-03/iran-atomenergiebehoerde-uran-anreicherung-teheran - https://www.bgr.bund.de/DE/Gemeinsames/Produkte/Downloads/Commodity_Top_News/Energie/23_erdoel_erdgas_iran.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=3#:~:text=Der%20Iran%20verf%C3%BCgt%20mit%20ca,Erd%C3%B6lreserven%20betr%C3%A4gt%2011%2C1%20%25. - https://pm-wissen.com/das-erste-oelfeld-in-persien_7287 - https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/iran-oel-exporte-trotz-sanktionen-auf-hoechstem-stand-seit-6-jahren-a-f000db43-80cb-4bc3-88a4-aaa6456430d6 - https://de-statista-com.eu1.proxy.openathens.net/statistik/daten/studie/36452/umfrage/oelreserven-wichtiger-laender-seit-1990/ - http://www.eslam.de/manuskripte/buecher/rosengarten/der_rosengarten_abteilung8.htm - https://www.scinexx.de/news/geowissen/landwirtschaft-begann-mehrfach-gleichzeitig/ - https://afsa.org/love-tiflis-death-tehran-tragedy-alexander-sergeyevich-griboyedov - https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1979/12/25/in-1829-russian-embassy-in-tehran-was-attacked-by-mullah-incited-mob/4f36d478-e9c0-46a9-a66d-497eafd2d5f5/ **Weitere Links:** WDR ZeitZeichen - https://1.ard.de/zeitzeichen - https://1.ard.de/zeitzeichen-iran-schleierzwang **Team:** - Moderation: Mirko Drotschmann - Sprecher*innen: Juana Guschl, Dominik Freiberger, Nils Kretschmer - Buch und Regie: objektiv media GmbH, Janine Funke und Andrea Kath - Technik: Sascha Schiemann - Musik: Sonoton - Produktion: objektiv media GmbH im Auftrag des ZDF - Redaktion ZDF: Katharina Kolvenbach

Was Tuesday's call  by Prime Minister  Binyamin Netanyahu  for the Lebanese people to overthrow Hizbullah realistic? And what does the ayatollah regime in Iran fear the most? KAN's Mark Weiss spoke to Dr Mordechai Kedar from Bar Ilan university. (Photo: Fire and Rescue Service)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Conducido por Pablo Wasserman y Juan Ruocco.  Círculo Vicioso https://twitter.com/circulovicioso8 Sitio oficial: https://www.circulovicioso.club/ (0:00) INTRO (3:12) Comienza (6:12) Beepers explosivos (14:52) PsyOps, Mossad e ingeniería social (23:55) Iran y Ayatollahs (32:22) Religion, estado e ilustración (37:40) Protestantismo y Holanda (41:22) Bitcoin y criptografía (46:40) El fin de CV (48:40) Domar a la naturaleza (55:40) Dichos y lunfardo (58:20) Baldwin 4 y Hollywood (59:05) Natalie Portman (1:00:10) Estas a 5 grados (1:04:18) Borge Brende (1:07:11) Terminator 2 (1:11:09) Silicon Graphics (1:13:10) Sonic 3D blast (1:16:00) Show de drones (1:17:16) Drones y tecnología militar (1:25:03) Juegos, Wukong y Warhammer 40000 (1:37:20) La palabra "hello" (1:38:10) La Balgama de Pablo (1:43:40) Opeth y Led Zeppelin (1:45:10) 421 (1:51:15) India y softpower (1:54:20) Guile's Theme meme (2:00:55) Megapiojito - llora canalla

* Just Who Is Jason Miller (Communications Strategist) for Trump? * 'Nobody wants to become the next Bud Light': Another major company Coors Light announces it's ditching everything woke - 'What you should take away from this is that these companies are actually terrified of you, and know that the threat of you turning your back on them is real' - Brandon Morse, RedState.com * Iran has infiltrated the highest levels of the U.S. national security apparatus - There are people who make decisions about the defense of our nation who have obedience to Iran's Ayatollahs instead of the United States of America - Two of them even still have top-secret security clearance! - Kash Patel. * As I discuss in my book, “Government Gangsters,” there are no coincidences in government. And I plan to prove it!

As the dust settles from the US presidential debate, how can the Democrats manage the fallout from Joe Biden's faltering performance? Trumper Marc Lotter and Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg discuss. Then, from the Amanpour Archive, flashback to Iran's Green Revolution when citizens shouted 'death to the dictator', accusing the Ayatollahs of stealing the 2009 election and locking up the reformist leader. Meantime, as the UN takes flack for giving the Taliban a seat at the table but leaving Afghan women out in the cold, Anna Coren updates us on a young girl's second chance at life, after she tried to escape the Taliban's misogynistic rule. And finally, how panda diplomacy is making a comeback. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Exactly 110 years ago, a malnourished teenager with a pistol disordered the world. On Sunday the 28th of June 1914, Gavrilo Princip fired two bullets. They hit their targets -- killing both the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian imperial crown, and his wife, Sophie.     That event ended the age of the traditional European empires, unleashed the mud and blood of the Great War, catalysed the fall of the Tsar and theoretical Marxism's transformation into a totalitarian reality, and uncorked the nationalist genie that would lead to Hitler, the Second World War, the Holocaust, and later the Cold War. But did it also start our era of Enduring Disorder?     Jason has certain contentions about the relative degree of order and disorder in the past -- notably that the years 1815-2011, in general, and 1946-2003, in specific, were periods characterized by global order and coherent hegemonic leadership -- but what if he is wrong? What if our global disorder didn't start in 2003 but rather in 1914?    In this special anniversary episode of Disorder, Tim Butcher tells Jason Pack about that fateful day exactly 110 years ago, what its disordering implications have been, how they have rippled down the years, and how modern history can be thought to have begun on that street corner in Sarajevo.     Princip has been variously described as the `bloodiest assassin in history' and ‘the most important person in the entire 20th century'… but in this episode, we are going to investigate if he is -- possibly more so than even Trump, Putin or the Ayatollahs -- our world's true disorder-in-chief… As Tim explains, there is every reason to feel that the world of the Fin de Siècle was in fact more order than what came after it and that Princip is the author of the Disorder that we now inhabit.    Twitter: @DisorderShow    Subscribe to our Substack: https://natoandtheged.substack.com/     Website: https://natoandtheglobalenduringdisorder.com/     Producer: George McDonagh  Exec Producer: Neil Fearn    Show Notes Links    Buy ‘The Trigger: Hunting the Assassin Who Brought the World to War' by Tim Butcher - https://www.amazon.com/Trigger-Hunting-Assassin-Brought-World/dp/0802123899/     For more on Gavrilo Princip's biography: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Gavrilo-Princip     For more on Tim Butcher's amazing career: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Butcher     And for his great episode on our sister Pod, Battleground: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/121-how-the-2006-war-relates-to-gaza-today/id1617276298?i=1000640849125   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Should we worry that the complex dynamics between Israel and Iran might ignite WWIII? Intelligence analyst Ryan McBeth brings us in from Out of the Loop. Welcome to what we're calling our "Out of the Loop" episodes, where we dig a little deeper into fascinating current events that may only register as a blip on the media's news cycle and have conversations with the people who find themselves immersed in them. On This Episode of Out of the Loop: Israel and Iran have been engaged in recent attacks on each other, with Israel striking Iranian officers in Syria, Iran launching drones at Israel, and Israel firing missiles back at Iran. However, neither side seems to want a wider conflict. Iran's military is split between the regular Artesh forces and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The IRGC gets better equipment and training and has a Quds Force that specializes in unconventional warfare. Iran and Israel both lack strong expeditionary capabilities to directly attack each other. Iran's navy is mostly small fast attack boats, while Israel has a defensive-oriented military. Many ordinary Iranian citizens oppose their government and the Ayatollahs. The people should not be conflated with the regime. Iran has a large young population that is quite pro-Western. Overall, a massive conventional war between Israel and Iran remains unlikely due to the geographic and military constraints on both sides, despite the harsh rhetoric. However, proxy conflicts and tit-for-tat strikes may continue. And much more! Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/982 This Episode Is Brought To You By Our Fine Sponsors: jordanharbinger.com/deals Sign up for Six-Minute Networking — our free networking and relationship development mini course — at jordanharbinger.com/course! Like this show? Please leave us a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!

This week on Rational Security, Alan and Quinta sat down with Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes to talk through the week's big national security news, including:“Ayatollahs and Airstrikes.” In retaliation for an Israeli strike that killed several high-ranking Iranian military officers in Syria, over the weekend Iran launched a wave of drone and missile attacks against Israel. The vast majority of these were shot down by Israel and its allies, including notably Jordan, causing minimal injuries and damage in Israel. As Israel considers whether to respond, its American and European allies are putting pressure on it to deescalate. What's Israel's next move and can broader regional war be avoided?“Beginning of the end or just the end of the beginning?” It has been six months since Hamas's attack on October 7 and the start of Israel's war in Gaza, which appears to be entering a new, potentially lower-intensity phase. Israel has withdrawn most of its troops from southern Gaza, although it still argues that it needs to invade Rafah, on the border with Egypt, to defeat Hamas. Meanwhile, violence between Jewish settlers and Palestinians in the West Bank continues to increase. What's next in the ongoing conflict?“What's a little obstruction between friends?” Earlier this week, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Fischer v. United States, a case challenging the government's use of a common statute used to prosecute participants in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The six conservative Justices appeared skeptical of the government's argument that a statute that makes it a crime to “obstruct any official proceeding” applies to physical disruptions. How is the Court likely to rule and how might such a ruling affect Donald Trump's federal trial for trying to overthrow the 2020 election?For object lessons, Quinta recommended a throwing-the-wife-under-the-bus update in New Jersey's Senator Bob Menendez's ongoing legal troubles, and Alan and Ben both recommended excellent, if anxiety-inducing, national security themed movies: the recently released Civil War and the upcoming War Game.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/c/trumptrials.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, Alan and Quinta sat down with Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes to talk through the week's big national security news, including:“Ayatollahs and Airstrikes.” In retaliation for an Israeli strike that killed several high-ranking Iranian military officers in Syria, over the weekend Iran launched a wave of drone and missile attacks against Israel. The vast majority of these were shot down by Israel and its allies, including notably Jordan, causing minimal injuries and damage in Israel. As Israel considers whether to respond, its American and European allies are putting pressure on it to deescalate. What's Israel's next move and can broader regional war be avoided?“Beginning of the end or just the end of the beginning?” It has been six months since Hamas's attack on October 7 and the start of Israel's war in Gaza, which appears to be entering a new, potentially lower-intensity phase. Israel has withdrawn most of its troops from southern Gaza, although it still argues that it needs to invade Rafah, on the border with Egypt, to defeat Hamas. Meanwhile, violence between Jewish settlers and Palestinians in the West Bank continues to increase. What's next in the ongoing conflict?“What's a little obstruction between friends?” Earlier this week, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Fischer v. United States, a case challenging the government's use of a common statute used to prosecute participants in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The six conservative Justices appeared skeptical of the government's argument that a statute that makes it a crime to “obstruct any official proceeding” applies to physical disruptions. How is the Court likely to rule and how might such a ruling affect Donald Trump's federal trial for trying to overthrow the 2020 election?For object lessons, Quinta recommended a throwing-the-wife-under-the-bus update in New Jersey's Senator Bob Menendez's ongoing legal troubles, and Alan and Ben both recommended excellent, if anxiety-inducing, national security themed movies: the recently released Civil War and the upcoming War Game.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/c/trumptrials. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Follow this week's guest Scott Ritter on X/Twitter @RealScottRitter and his substack http://scottritterextra.com/ and read his latest article here: https://consortiumnews.com/2024/04/15/scott-ritter-the-missiles-of-april/ Find me and the show on social media @DrWilmerLeon on X (Twitter), Instagram, and YouTube Facebook page is www.facebook.com/Drwilmerleonctd   FULL TRANSCRIPT: Announcer (00:06): Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge. Wilmer Leon (00:14): Welcome to the Connecting the Dots podcast with Dr. Wilmer Leon, and I'm Wilmer Leon. Here's the point. We have a tendency to view current events as though they happen in a vacuum, failing to understand the broader historical context in which they occur. During each episode, my guests and I have probing, provocative, and in-depth discussions that connect the dots between current events in the broader historic context in which they happen, enabling you to better understand and analyze the events that impact the global village in which we live on today's episode. The issue before it says, what can we expect next? Now that Iran has responded militarily to Israel's attack on the Iranian consulate in Syria for insight into this, let's turn to my guest. He's a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD. His most recent book is entitled Disarmament in the Time of Parika, and he is of course, Scott Ritter. As always, Scott, welcome to the Connecting the Dots podcast with Wilmer Leon. Scott Ritter (01:37): Well, thanks for having me. Wilmer Leon (01:39): So Pepe Escobar wrote the following. He called it the Shadow Play, and he writes, so this is how it happened. Burns met an Iranian delegation in Oman. He was told the Israeli punishment was inevitable, and if the US got involved, then all US bases will be attacked and the Rai of Horus would be blocked. Burns said, we do nothing if no civilians are harmed. The Iranians said it will be a military base or an embassy. The CIA said, go ahead and do it. Scott Ritter, you've been writing about these issues in Iran for over 20 years. First, your assessment of Pepe Escobar's assessment. Scott Ritter (02:29): Well, I mean, clearly Pepe, he is a journalist. He is a journalist of some renno, and he has a source and he's reporting it. It's plausible. I can't confirm it. I can't sit here and say, I know that this happened. I have no idea if this happened. I do know that the CIA has over the course of time, taken on a shadow diplomacy role because the State Department in implementing America's hegemonic policies has alienated America with so many nations and that normal diplomatic relations are impossible. And so the CIAs assume this responsibility. Indeed, this is why William Burns was selected by Joe Biden to be the director of the CIA. He's not a CIA hand, he's not a man who has involved. He's a diplomat, former ambassador to Russia, and he's a man who has written a book called The Back Channel, which describes his approach, the back channel approach to resolving things. Burns has carried out similar meetings with Russia when trying to reopen arms control venues or talk about possible prisoner exchanges. (03:55) It's burns that takes the lead on these things. The CIA has played an important role in the past in facilitating dialogue between the Palestinians and the Israelis. The CIA had a very big role to play in making that happen. The CIA was behind the secret negotiations with the Taliban that led to the American withdrawal. So would it surprise me that the CIA has connectivity with Iran? Absolutely not. Especially given Burns' role and the importance of the back channel to the Biden administration. I think the Israelis might find it somewhat of a shock that the United States green lit the Iranian response. But then again, we're living in very strange times where the lack of, let's just call it the deterioration of relations between the United States and Israel is real. I've said for some time now that no American president or presidential candidate has won the White House by turning his back on Israel. (05:09) And I've also noted that no Israeli Prime Minister stays in power by turning his back on the United States. And yet we have a situation today where Joe Biden, a sitting president, is starting to turn his back on Israel because of the policies of Benjamin Netanyahu's government policies that are being carried out in direct defiance of American instructions to the contrary. So we live in unprecedented times, and it would seem to me that the United States has made it clear that their policy objectives, strategic policy objectives, and again, just a quick background, remember, part of the reason why we withdrew from Afghanistan in August of 2021 is that we were delinking ourselves from a two decade long commitment to the middle. We were going to lower our profile there as part of our pivot to the Pacific to confront China. And so we have, we no longer are actively implementing the Carter Era doctrine of guaranteed American military intervention. (06:21) Anytime something in the Middle East goes south that we don't like, we don't do Desert Storm anymore. We don't do Operation Iraqi freedom anymore. We don't do the invasion of Afghanistan anymore. We're not looking for a fight. We're looking to avoid a fight. And one of the reasons is that Iran has emerged as a very significant regional power with a tremendous amount of military capability. Iran is also a major player in the regional and global economy, and it's incumbent upon the United States to do what we can stabilize this economy to make sure that it doesn't go south, especially in an election year where the old James Carville mantra, it's the economy stupid factors in so large. So we don't want a war or a conflict with Iran that could lead to the shutting down of the straight or moves. This would've a devastating impact on global energy security. (07:20) Oil prices would go through the roof at a time again to remind people when Joe Biden has lowered the strategic petroleum reserve down to less than 17 days worth of reserves. So if there was suddenly a shutdown in oil transit, we'd be in trouble. Huge trouble in an election year, which is for Joe Biden. So it doesn't, what I'm trying to say is a long way of saying that there's a lot of reason to believe the reporting that's put out by Pepe Esquire. And again, when I say believe the reporting, I'm not challenging Pepe Escobar. I understand I'm saying that every journalist has sources and some sources are better than others. But what I'm saying is my assessment of the information that Pepe is reporting from the source would be that this is extraordinarily plausible, that it makes sense that this would indeed happen. Wilmer Leon (08:15): That was my takeaway, whether it was Bill Burns or whether it was Mr. Burns from whatever that cartoon is. I was really focused more on the point that there was a dialogue between the United States and the parties involved, and that those parties came to a consensus. In fact, when I read, it might have been, I guess it was Thursday, that Iran had seized an Iranian cargo ship in the Straits of Horus. Then there was the missile launching, and then that drones were used as the kind of foray or entree into all of this and that the drones traveled as far as they did. I said, oh, well, Iran was really sending a message more than they were an attack. And I think the message was, and is if you're looking for trouble, you found it and you found a very big bag of it, and you really don't want to mess around with this. It seems as though the Biden administration is starting to get that message. I don't know that Netanyahu, I think it seems like it's falling on deaf ears in Israel. Scott Ritter (09:45): What Iran did here is I have said that I've called it one of the most impressive military victories in modern history. Wilmer Leon (09:57): In fact, let me interrupt and say, folks, you need to read Scott's piece, the missiles of April. You can find it in Consortium News, Scott, you can tell me where else, but it's a phenomenal assessment of what recently transpired. Scott Ritter. Scott Ritter (10:14): Well, thank you very much. It was originally put out on my substack, it's scott ritter extra.com, but then Joe Luria, who I have a very good relationship, he's the editor of Consortium News, asked permission to publish it with Consortium News. And then he and I had a discussion and he asked some questions, follow on questions based upon the article, and I gave him some answers. (10:38) So he added some material. So for anybody who read my article on my substack, there's additional material in on the consortium news variant. You might want to read that as well. It's just basically an update when you write things about moving targets such as breaking news, you write based upon the data that's available. And in the time between, I published on my Substack and I spoke with Joe Lauria, there was additional information necessary that provided additional clarity to some of the points I made. So it's not that I changed anything in terms of my assessments, although that's possible too. When you get new information, assessments can change, they should change, and you shouldn't be afraid to change them. But my assessment regarding the Iranian, the efficacy of the Iranian attack remains the same, one of the most impressive military victories in time. Now, people say, well, wait a minute, how could that be? (11:29) They didn't blow up Israel. They didn't destroy anything. War is an extension of politics by other means. That's what everybody needs to understand. Military victories basically mean that you have achieved something through the use of military force. That's impressive, especially an impressive military victory. What Iran did on April 14th, on April 13th, 14th, and this attack is established deterrence, supremacy over Israel. Iran has had a problem with what I would say, making the world understand its declaratory policy regarding deterrence, it's deterrence strategy. Deterrence is basically a policy posture that says, if you want to hit me, understand that I'm going to come in afterwards and pummel you to death, that the price you're going to pay for hitting me is going to be so great that you don't want to hit me. I'm not threatening to hit you first. I'm sitting here saying, live and let live, but if you attack me, the price you're going to pay will be so overwhelming that it won't be worth what you thought you were going to achieve by hitting me in the first place. (12:44) Iran has established this deterrence superiority over the United States. We saw that when the United States assassinated QM Soleimani in 2020, the Iranians responded with a missile attack against the Alad airbase that didn't kill any Americans. It was telegraphed well in advance, but the purpose was to demonstrate the Americans that we can reach out and touch you anywhere, anytime with devastating force, and there's nothing you can do to stop this, nothing you can do. So now we get to William Burns meeting with his Iranian counterparts, and when they say, and we will strike American bases, burns is going, and they can, and if they do, there's nothing we could do to stop it and we will suffer horrific losses. Therefore, Mr. President, we should heed what the Iranians are saying. This is deterrent superiority over the United States, that the United States understands the consequences of attacking. Iran is not willing to live with those consequences. (13:45) They'll be severe even more so in an election year where any disruption of the economy is politically fatal to the incumbent seeking reelection. So they have successfully done that with the United States. Iran has also used missiles. Again, part of declaratory policy. It doesn't have to be necessarily spoken policy, but demonstrative, and we've seen Iran use missiles to strike targets in Iran, in Syria, Pakistan, in Pakistan. Wilmer Leon (14:17): In fact, on that Pakistan point, that was what about a month ago, maybe month and a half ago, and when I heard that Iran had sent, I think it was a cruise missile into Pakistan, I did my best to calculate how far that missile traveled. And then I checked, well, what's the distance between Tehran and Tel Aviv? It was about the same distance. And I said, I think Iran is sending a message to the Israel that we can strike Tel Aviv if we so choose. Scott Ritter (14:57): Yeah, I mean, first of all, just so people understand historically during the Gulf War, and not too many people know this, so Israel was very perturbed about Saddam Hussein's scud missiles hitting Israeli cities and locations, and they were threatening direct military intervention, which would've destroyed the coalition that George W. Bush had built up. And so we were doing everything we could to convince the Israelis that we had the scud problem under Control Pro. And you mean that you were personally involved in doing that? Yeah, no, this was my part of the war that, I mean, first of all, I wasn't a general, I wasn't a colonel. I wasn't lieutenant Colonel. I wasn't a major, I was just a captain. But as a captain, I played a bigger role than one would normally expect from a captain. I mean, when my name gets briefed to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff, and when General Schwarz cov not only fires me, but arrests me because of what I'm doing, I'm having an impact larger than what I was wearing on my shoulder, and I'm pretty proud of the work I did during the Gulf War, but that's beside the point. (16:04) The point is that Israel was being told, don't intervene because we've got it under control. But Israel needed to make a statement, and it was a statement being made not to Iraq, because what they did is they brought out a Jericho missile, which is a nuclear capable missile, but also can have control warheads, and they fired this missile into the Mediterranean Sea, and when you measure the distance that it went, it's exactly the distance from Israel to Baghdad and what the Israelis were telling, not the Iraqis, because the Iraqis couldn't monitor the attack and it wasn't publicly announced. They were telling the Americans who were monitoring that, if you don't solve this problem, we're going to solve it for you, and this is the weapon that we're going to use. And it was a wake up call. I remember when that happened. We're all like, stop. (16:55) We were only getting two hours sleep at night. No more sleep at night. Do everything you can to stop these Iraqi missiles from flying. We never did, but Israel stayed out of the war. But my point is, when you talk about, because to the lay person, they might be like, come on Wilmer, you're getting a little too creative. They're a little too conspiratorial. Wilmer Leon (17:17): I heard that. I heard that last Saturday night. I was at a buddy's house and he said to me, I walk into his house and CNN is on, as it always is, chirping in the background. And so finally he says to me, so what do you think? I said, think about what he said. What do you think about the Iraq? I said, oh. I said, man, that was collaborated. That was done with collaboration. He said, man, you always come in here with this junk. I said, well, okay. So I hear that a lot. Scott Ritter (17:53): Well, but in this case, it's not junk because I'm telling you, as somebody who has been in the technical analysis business of ballistic missiles for some time now, there are various ways to send a message. To give you an example, in the arms control world, sometimes the way to send a message is to open up telemetry channels that are normally closed down and launch a missile test. You're not saying anything. You don't put out a press release, but the people monitor because you don't want to say anything. North Korea does this all the time, all the time. They open up some telemetry channels and they just go, Hey, listen to this. And they send a to the Sea of Japan, and the technicians are going, ohoh. They got, oh, they did this capability. Oh, no. And then they're writing secret reports, and that message gets, meanwhile, the public is just sitting there, going to the beach, surfing, smoking dope, and doing whatever we do because we are not meant to get upset about this or worried about it. (18:52) It's a subtle message being sent to leadership through the intelligence agency. So your notion that the distance mattered because Iran didn't need to fire at that distance. They just could have fired at a closer range, whatever, but to fire at that distance is a signal to the people who are that distance away, that what we're doing here we can do here. But the problem is the Israelis weren't listening. This is the problem. Iran has through very indirect and direct means. First of all, Iran has never issued a public declaratory policy on deterrence and ballistic missiles until now. And it's one of the weaknesses of Iran is that they didn't make it clear what the consequences would be. The United States got it because they hit us and we're smart enough to go, oh, we don't want that again. Pakistan sort of gets it, but I mean ISIS and Syria, when they got hit with missiles, ISIS isn't going to sit there and go, oh, you're going to hit us with missiles, so we're not going to carry out terrorism anymore. (20:03) No, that was a punitive attack. The same thing with the various missile strikes in Iraq. It was punitive attack. It wasn't meant to be a declaratory policy statement. And so here you have a situation where Israel just isn't getting it because Israel believes that it has deterrent supremacy over Iran. And why would Israel believe that? I don't know. Maybe they've assassinated a whole bunch of Iranian scientists in Iran with no consequence. Maybe they've carried out covert direct action sabotage in Iran blowing up nuclear related facilities with no consequence. Maybe they've struck Iranian revolutionary Guard command positions in Lebanon, in Syria, in Iraq, inflicting casualties with no consequence. So maybe Israel believed that it had established deterrent supremacy over Iran. Therefore, when they saw a meeting at the Iranian consulate in Damascus of these major people plotting the next phase of the operation against Israel, they said, take it out. (21:04) There won't be any consequence because the Iranians are afraid of us. The Iranians won't strike us because we have deterrent supremacy. Iran believes that if they attack us, we will come down on them tenfold. And so they struck the consulate and Iran went, guess what guys? Nope, it's over. We're done with the subtlety. We warned you don't attack our sovereign territory. The consulate is sovereign territory. We're going to respond. But now the problem with the Iranian response is you have to put yourself in the Iranian shoes because the last thing Iran wants, it's just like the United States. They don't want a war with Israel. They don't want it, as they said in the Godfather, it's bad for business, it's bad for business. And business right now for Iran is improving. They're members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. China has brokered a reproachment with Saudi Arabia, dismantling an American strategy of creating a Sunni shield against the Shia crescent and provoking permanent conflict that would empower American defense industry, Israeli security credibility and economic co prosperity between that part of the ward and Europe with Israel in the middle. (22:25) Israel's going, wow, we're back in the game, guys, when Israel was Benjamin Netanyahu, for all the criticism that people have out there, and I'm one of those biggest critics understand that on October 6th, he was on top of the world on October 6th, he had created a geopolitical reality that had Israel normalizing relations with the Gulf Arab states, Israel becoming a major player in a major global economic enterprise, the India, middle East, economic C and the world, not talking about a Palestinian state anymore. Israel was entering, becoming legitimate. It was like Michael Corleone and the Godfather when he was saying, I'm going to put all that behind me and I'm going to become legitimate, reached out and just drag them back in by October 7th. And then Israel was exposed for the criminal enterprise that it is, and now Israel has collapsed. But Iran, that was the Israeli process. (23:27) Iran is sitting here saying, we don't want to war. We're members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. We normalized relations with Saudi Arabia. We have an axis of resistance that's holding Israel in check and these plans, Hezbollah is very strong. The militias in Iraq and are strong. The Anella movement in Yemen, the Yemen strong, but we don't want to provoke war. What we want is to become economically viable again. The promise that we, the theocracy have made to the Iranian people over time that trust us, things will get better. We're in that, Hey, you trusted us. Now things are about to get better. We're joining bricks together with Saudi Arabia, so we're going to work with Saudi Arabia and these powerful economic interests that no longer are turning their backs on us to create economic opportunity. And the last thing Iran needed is a war with Israel. It's bad for business. (24:29) It's bad for business. And so now the Iranians are like, how do we set declaratory policy to achieve deterrent supremacy? I mean, not supremacy, superiority supremacy is where you have everybody just totally intimidated. Superiority is where you put the thought in people's mind, and they now need to tell the Israelis, you can't attack us or the price you're going to pay is tenfold. Normally you do that. It's like going in the boxing ring. Mike Tyson, even now, I don't know if you've been watching his training videos of him getting ready for this fight he's got in July 20th. The man's a beast. I'm intimidated if I could 57, what he's doing. Wilmer Leon (25:10): Well, lemme tell you. I don't know if you saw the report of the guy that was kicking the back of his seat on the airplane, and he came over. He kept asking the guy, Hey man, can you stop kicking my seat? And the guy wouldn't leave him alone. And the folks on the plane said, finally he came over the top of that seat like Iran and pummeled the guy. They had to carry the guy off the plane and a stretcher. Scott Ritter (25:42): Well see, that's deterrence supremacy. There you go. Deterrence supremacy is when I jump into the ring with Tyson and Tyson knocks my face in, kicks my teeth out, and I'm on the ground hospitalized and bites your ear, pardon? And bites your ear. That is a bonus. Yes. (26:02) The deterrence superiority is where I jump in the ring, ent Tyson comes up, takes the fist right to my nose and just touches it. But he doesn't in a way that I'm in my stance, but he's already there and I'm like, oh, oh, I got a problem. Yeah, okay. I don't really want to be in this ring, Mike. It was a misunderstanding. I'm backing off. I'm just going to go out here and pee my pants in the parking lot. So that's what Iran needed to do. But how do you do this? It's very delicate operation. That's why this was one of the most impressive military opera victories in modern history because what Iran did was make all the demonstration necessary to show potential, and in the end, they hit a base nem. And this is important for your audience to understand. The Naam airbase is the single most heavily protected spot on earth when it comes to anti-ballistic missile defense. (26:55) There's no spot on earth that's better defended than nem. It has at the heart of this defense, a and I'll give you a fancy name, a N TP Y two X-Band radar sounds like, well, not one, not one, but two. Well, it's the number two radar, not two radars. Wilmer Leon (27:13): No, I'm saying because I got one over my house. Yeah, they got two over 2.0. This is 2.0 man. Scott Ritter (27:20): They got this radar there that has the ability to do overheard the horizon surveillance, but it's not just the radar, which is the most sophisticated radar of its type in the world. It's linked into the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization in the United States Strategic Command and the satellites that we have over hanging over the area. So all of that's linked in into a common command center that's shared with the Israelis. So this data is fed to the Israelis and around Nati. (27:48) And why is Naam important? I don't know. The F 35 I fighters are there. This is Israel's best fighter plane, their strategic deterrent. They have F fifteens, F sixteens, and they do other secret things there as well because of the notice that they were given, if I understand it, they were able to move those F 35. So the F, again, it was coordinated 100%. I mean, we'll get to that in a second. But they have the arrow two and arrow three missiles, which are joint Israeli American projects are deployed around Nevada. David Sling, which is another anti-ballistic missile capability, is deployed around Nevada. Advanced Patriot missiles are deployed around Nevada. And the US Thad system is deployed around Nevada. The bottom line is they have, and there's Iron Dome as well. So what they have is this multi-layered defense using the world's best anti-ballistic missile technology linked to the world's best surveillance and tracking technology. (28:56) And you read the literature on this stuff, we hit a bullet with a bullet. Okay, wow, you guys are good. Now here's the other thing. It's all specifically tailored for one threat and one threat only. Iranian medium range ballistic missiles. That's all it's geared to do. It's not like there's confusion. It's not like you have a multitude of missions. One mission, Iranian medium range missiles. Okay? So now that's like me watching Mike Tyson training videos, and I'm watching the training and I'm like, I got 'em. I can move. I got this guys, I got this. I go into training, bullet, hit a bullet, hit a bullet. I got this. And so now, Mike Tyson, Iran, they go a step further. Not only do they do the Pepe Escobar advanced notice, they build the attack in a way that says, Hey, this is really happening. They announce that the launch of the drones, and these aren't just any drones, guys. (29:57) These are slow, moving, loud drones. So you couldn't get a better air alarm system than what Iran gave Israel. They unleashed the drones, and here the drones go. Now Israel's got, they're like flying bumblebees six hours of advanced notice, which gives the United States time to say, take your F 30 fives out, anything value out. But the other thing the Iranians did is they told the United States, see, I think they went a step further. The Iranians made it clear that they will only strike military targets that were related to the action. Iran's whole argument. And again, I know in the West, we tend to rule our eyes, like when Russia says, we acted in Ukraine based upon Article 51, self-defense, preemptive self-defense, the Caroline Doctrine, all the people who hate Russia go, no, no. That was a brutal roar of aggression. Unprovoked. No, the Russians actually have a cognitive legal case because that's how Russia operates based upon the rule of law. (30:57) Now, the rule of law, Wil, as we all know, can be bent, twisted, manipulated. I'm not saying that the Russians have the perfect case. What I'm saying is the case that Russia has made is cognizable under law, right? It's defendable. You could take it to a court and it's not going to be tossed out asr. It's not Tony Blinken rules based order. It is not. And so now the Saudis, or not the, I'm sorry, the Iranians, they have been attacked and they have cited Article 51 of the UN charter as their justification. But now you can't claim to be hiding behind the law and then just totally break the law yourself. If Iran had come in, you can. You're the United States, correct? But that's the rules based international, not the law based international. That's the difference between the two. The rules say we can do whatever we want. (31:50) The law says no, you're constrained by the law. So in order to justify self-defense, Iran had to limit its retaliation to the immediate threat that was posed by those who attacked them, which means you can hit the two air bases where the airplanes flew out. And there's a third site that nobody's talking about yet. Is that the CIA site? Well, it's the 8,200, the Sgin site on Golan Heights that's looking out into Damascus. And according to the Iranians, that's the site that gathered the intelligence about the Iranians being in the consulate and then shared that intelligence with the airplanes coming in. And so these three targets are the three. Now, in addition to that, Iran is allowed to strike facilities and locations that are involved in the defense of these three things. So the ballistic missile defense capability becomes a legitimate target. But now, so Iran has to hit these three, and so they've broadcasted, we're coming, we're coming. (32:55) And that gives the United States do something politically smart, which is to tell the Israelis, we will defend you, but we will not participate in any Israeli counter attack. So we've limited the scope and scale of our participation in this. And so we came together, we started shooting down these drones, creating a fiction of Iranian incompetence, Iranian lack of capability. So this is part of the plan. This is all part of the plan. Now, Iran didn't sit down with the United States and say, this is what we're going to do. This is what we want you to do. Iran is scripting it for them. I mean, this is basically United States going, damn, I forgot my lines. Here you go. Here come the drones. Here come the drones. Shoot them down. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you. And so we're shooting it down, and then we're sending the cruise missiles, just in case you don't know, we're launching them live on TV Here. (33:51) Let me show you a closeup of what they look like so you understand the operational parameters of the system. And off go, the cruise missiles. Don't shoot pigeons, shoot cruise missiles. So now they're shooting. But then as they're doing this, the Iranians are sitting there going, okay, so we sent the drones. What's lightening up, guys? First of all, what people don't understand is before all this happened, the Iranians did a very targeted cyber attack and shut down. They attacked the Iron Dome system. Now, why do you want to attack the Iron Dome system but not attack the others? Because the Iron Dome system isn't designed to take down big ballistic missiles. It's designed to take down the other stuff. Medium range cruise missiles. No, well, cruise missiles and drones, low flying. It's actually designed to take down kaka rockets and the Hamas rockets. Okay? That's what it's supposed to do. (34:44) So you disrupt this so that the other systems have to take priority, and then the arrives, you go, oh, thank you very much. Now, some of the drones that were sent in aren't armed with explosives, but armed with radars and signals intelligence collection, which they're broadcasting the data back to Iran. These are guys are very sophisticated ladies and gentlemen. These aren't amateurs you're dealing with. And so they're sitting in going here. They come turn it on, collect, thank you. And now they have their targeters looking at a big map going, okay, we got a radar here. We got here. Okay, now they're shooting. Okay, we got missile launchers here, boom, boom, boom. It's all there. And they've looked at all. Then they say, okay, remember, because the goal now is to get the glove to touch the nose. The goal isn't to hit the knockout. (35:33) So they say, what do we need to do to demonstrate capability the Iranians used? Now, there's some mixed reporting out here. The problem is I like everybody else, I'm held hostage with the Iranians. I don't get to go on the ground anymore and look at the debris and do technical analysis. I used to do that, and I used to be able to come back. One of the things we did with the Iraqis, just so people understand, I am not the dumbest marine in the world. I'm one of the dumbest Marines in the world, but I do have some capability based upon experience. And when my time as a weapons inspector, I worked with the Israelis, their technical intelligence people on looking at debris of the missiles that Iraq fired against Israel. And we were able to ascertain several different variants of scud missiles that have different capabilities that the Iraqis had been denying or not declaring. (36:27) And by coming back to them with the technical intelligence from the debris on the ground, the Iraqis had to admit to certain capabilities that they had been denying. And this is important when you're trying to be able to stand before the world and say, we understand the total picture of Iraqi ballistic missile capability, and we can certify that we can account for it all. Because imagine going before the security council and saying that only to have the Israelis go, yes, but what about variant 3D alpha four? Well, I don't understand what you're talking about. What's 3D alpha four? That's the point. You're making a report and you don't understand what we're talking about, which means you don't know everything, do you? I don't like to be in that position as an expert, or I want to know everything. And so we did, and we got the Iraqis to come clean. (37:14) So when I say we could account for Iraq's ballistic missile program, we could account for every aspect of it. So I don't get to do that right now. So I'm at a disadvantage where I have to rely upon information. So I don't know if Iran used their hypersonic missiles or not. I don't know that, okay, reports, it's reported. There's reports that they did, and then there's reports that they didn't, and it's conflicting. The most recent press TV report and press TV is a organ of the Iranian state, says that they did use the fat two missiles against thetan airfield. So I'm going to run with that, but I want to put a big caveat on that, that I don't know for certain. (38:01) But we do know, just looking at the characteristics of the missiles that came in, that they used at least three different kinds of, they used more than that, but three that were designed to put the glove on the nose, other missiles that were sent were designed to be shot down again as part of the intelligence collection process. So you send in an older ballistic missile that comes on a ballistic missile trajectory. The first thing that you do by doing that is you are training the defense systems. These Iranians are smart. They understand these things. You're training them because you see, there's a whole bunch of computers, software, artificial intelligence. This is the proof that ai, please don't do it better than ai. Is the brain a train brain? Because ai, listen to what everybody's talking about. I mean, I get this phone call. I don't know if you get this up, Scott, I'd like to take the transcripts of your discussions and use them to train my ai. I don't know if you've ever received that request. And I'm like, no, I don't want you to do that. But I just personally go. But the point is, that's how ai, it's not artificial intelligence, ladies and gentlemen. It's just programmed, just programmed in a different way. And you can program in stupidity, which the Iranians said, which they usually do. Let's program in stupidity. Wilmer Leon (39:24): Well, for example, just for a quick example, that's why facial recognition technology fails to the degree that it does. It's limited by the abilities and capabilities of the people that are programming it. That's why facial recognition technology doesn't work on Asian people, and it doesn't work on people of color. Dammit, I'm the wrong race. I could have put that a long time ago. Go ahead, Scott Ritter (39:57): Touche. So the Iranians are programming the ai. They're sending missiles in, and the system is starting to normalize to come up with a, because it's wartime now. So now you're actually detecting tracking and firing. Then what you do is you throw in, it's like a pitcher, fastball, fastball, fastball, changeup, and here comes the changeup. First changeup they do is, and I don't know the sequence that they did this, but we see the video evidence. There's a warhead that comes in, and again, it's about timing. So you're sending these missiles in. Now they have separating warheads. So what happens when a missile has a separating warhead is the radar's picking one target. (40:44) All of a sudden, the radar is dealing with two targets, but it's not just two targets. When you separate the warhead from the missile body, the missile body starts to tumble and it starts sending differentiating signals, and it's no longer a ballistic trajectory. So the computer's going, oh my God, what's happening here? Meanwhile, this warhead's going this way, it's tracking that, and it has to make a decision. Which one? Which one? Which one, which one, which one? This one, pick this warhead. So now they've trained it to discriminate onto this warhead, which is what they want. Now, you'd say, why would they want to look at that warhead? You'll find out the warhead comes in and they're timing. It's like a track coach got the timer, warhead comes in, and the missiles fire up to hit it, and you go, we got it. We now know what the release point is for the missiles being fired. (41:29) So now they send in this other missile, it comes in, warhead separates the AI says, go with the warhead baby. They ignore this thing, which is good. It's just a distraction. They're focused on the warhead, they're on the clock. Everything's getting queued up just the way it's supposed to be. Everything's optimized. We're going to take this thing, a bullet hits a bullet baby, and all of a sudden, the warhead right before the launch on the ground, fires off a whole bunch of decoys. It's like a shotgun shell. And the computer goes, damn, what the hell just happened? We don't know. It's going crazy, trying to differentiate between all this stuff. And they're firing a whole bunch of missiles now in panic overload, and they're trying to deal with this. And meanwhile, they have a warhead here. They accelerated these shotgun shells out. So they're going faster. (42:17) Now, the computer's adapting to that. Oh God, what do we do? Fire, fire, fire. That warhead's hanging back. It's not the priority right now. And then once everything's committed, you see it on the film, boom. It has a booster engine on it. It gets fired through the chaff. Nothing's intercepting it, bam hits the ground. But not only that, as it comes in, it makes an adjustment. I don't know if people saw that. It comes in and you see it go up, up. Again, terminal adjustment to hit the precise target it wanted to hit. Iran sent a couple of those in, and they took out the Iron Dome sites, et cetera. A signal just got you. And they know that the Israelis are smart. They know that there's a bunch of Israeli guys who were smarter than I am that I used to work with who were looking at all this stuff going, oh God, they got us. (43:11) They got us. Damn. Now we come to Nevada, and it's the same thing. They send in the missiles. This is the most heavily layered system in the world. They send in the missiles, and this one's not even as sophisticated. It just comes in. They release it, hyper accelerates down. Then wham hits the ground and the Israelis, because the Israelis are like, okay, we got it. We got it. We don't have it. It's like a catcher used to catch 70 mile an hour fastballs, and it hits him in the head, and then the guy fires the 102 mile an hour. Bam. What happened? I wasn't ready for that. It comes in and it hits it. Wilmer Leon (43:47): Well catcher called a change up, and a fastball came through. Fast ball came in. Scott Ritter (43:52): So then they came into Na, Nevada, and they touched Naum at least five times. The Iranians were saying seven times. I would probably go with five. And the reason why I say this is that there is a chance the most heavily defended space on earth, there's a chance that they got two of 'em. I'm going to concede that point to the Israelis and the Americans that you put all these hundreds of billions of dollars into building something, and you got two out of seven, but five hit. But the idea, none of them were meant to be a knockout blow. Each one was just a, Hey, hey. And the Israelis know that They're sitting there going, and now they've come to the realization, and this is the whole point. After all of this, the Israelis have come to the realization that Iran can reach out and touch us anytime it wants to, any place it wants to, and there's nothing we can do to stop them. So now the Israelis are in a quandary because Iran has war is an extension of politics by other means. (44:51) So Iran has established a political reality using military means to establish a deterrence superiority without creating the conditions that mandate an automatic Israeli response. You see, they've allowed the situation a narrative to be developed by the United States and Israel that says, Iran sucks. He sent everything in there. We shot it all down. We're better than they are. We actually established deterrence over Iran by telling the Iranians that no matter what they do, you thought you were Mike Tyson. You came in and swang gave us all your punches. You miss, you, miss you, miss you, miss you, miss. It's like, Ali, I'm still here. You didn't touch me. You punched yourself out. Can't touch this. That's the narrative that Iran was allowing the West to do. But the reality though is that the Israelis got down there, and there was an interesting text, I don't know if you saw it by, not text, but a post by an Israeli insider who has connectivity with the war council. (45:58) And he said, if the Israeli public heard what was being said in the War Council, 4 million people will be leaving Israel right now. I'm going to tell you right now what was said in the war Council, Iran can destroy us. Iran can flatten us. There's nothing we can do if we allow this to happen to remain unanswered. We've lost everything that we've fought for over the past several decades. This deterrence, supremacy that we thought we had has gone forever. Nobody will ever respect us. Nobody will ever fear us, and therefore people will attack us, and we will be in an untenable situation Wilmer Leon (46:39): Wait a minute. That's that's very important politically, because that is part of the whole Zionist ideology, is we we're the persecuted people, and you all need us to protect you because the wolves are always at the door. And now what is the reality is all that insurance money you've been paying for those insurance policies, you've wasted your money. Scott Ritter (47:15): Absolutely. I used to live in Turkey, and when I've traveled through the planes of Turkey, they have shepherds with their flocks, and out there amongst the flocks are the sheep dogs. I don't know if you've ever seen a picture of an Anatolian sheep dog. Yes, big. Wilmer Leon (47:34): I'm a big dog guy. Yes. Scott Ritter (47:35): Okay, so these are like bears, right? Some of them are bigger than bears. And I remember we were walking once in a Kurdish village and we got too close to the sheep, and all of a sudden, these two things coming at us, and they're bigger than we are. I mean, these are bigger than humans, and they're coming at us, and they're going to kill us. And we knew that it was just all over. Then you hear, and the shepherd gives whatever signal, and the sheep dogs stop, and then they come up and they sit down and you pet 'em. (48:04) They have no ears because their ears have been chewed off. Their noses are scars their faces. They got these giant collars with spikes on to protect their throat, their faces like that, because they fight wolves. They hold the wolves off. Israel has been telling the world that we are the anatolian sheep dog. We are here and we will protect you. The rest of the world, the sheep from the wolves, they're getting ready. What Iran just did is went, took off the cloak, then went, you're just a sheep. You're just a sheep. We are the wolves. You're just a sheep. And the sheep's going, I don't want everybody to know this. We were faking them out, that we were the anatolian sheep dog, but we're really just a sheep. So that's a political problem for the Israelis, and this is important, and this is probably the most important part of this discussion, believe it or not, this isn't about Israeli security. This isn't about a real threat to, because Iran is a responsible nation. When Iran talks about deterrence, Wilmer Leon (49:07): oh, wait a minute now, wait a minute. Now, Scott, now you've crossed the Rubicon is Iran is responsible? Yeah, Iran is a, they're ravaging. Crazy. Raghead. Come on, Scott. Scott Ritter (49:25): That may be true, but they're ravaging, crazy Raghead who operate based upon a law-based system as opposed to a rule-based system. Not only that, a law-based system that is based on thousands of years of history and culture, right? I mean, that's their own national culture. I mean, a lot of people go the theocracy, the theocracy, theocracy, yes, but Persian. Persian, Persian. I understand that this is a civilized people who have been around. They invented cataract surgery. They invented a lot of stuff. They invented the agrarian watering system, the irrigation, the irrigation system. They invented the wheel. I think they probably did. (50:20) We've been reinventing the wheel over time. But mathematics, psychology, the whole thing, sociology, all comes out of there. And today, you see it when you Google International Math Olympics, the teams that are coming in at top are Chinese teams and Iranian teams, MIT, California technology, they're coming in down at the bottom. They're not one in this thing behind it. The Indian Institute of Technology, the Indians are getting up there too. They have good applied science and good applied skills. And it's not just that. I mean, to give you an example, the Iranians have the highest percentage of peer reviewed, not percentage, the highest number of peer reviewed PhD thesis published per year. So it's not like, excuse me, Iraq, I, forgive me for this, but under Sadam Hussein, where you went to an Iraqi university, it used to have a good reputation, but they were just punching out, handing out diplomas to Kuai. (51:26) And the thugs who went in there and said, I went to school. Here's your diploma. See, I'm a doctor. No, in Iran, you earn it. You go to the school, you earn it, and you earn it the old fashioned way, peer reviewed, which means your thesis leaves. Iran goes out of ranks the world, the experts, they review it, they come back and they say, this is PhD level work. Wilmer Leon (51:46): I just had a conversation with another dear friend. And when you look at their diplomats, when you look at their leadership, many of them are engineers. President Amad, the first time I went to Iran, I got to sit for two hours with then former president Amadinijad has a PhD in engineering and teaches engineering at the University of Tehran. I sat there for two hours listening to this cat going, oh my God. Yeah, he's not what? (52:22) He was sold deep. He's not some short madman. He's a short, brilliant man. Scott Ritter (52:31): A brilliant madman maybe. But the point is, brilliant dude, genius. No, they're all that way. They all have extraordinary. First of all, let's stop picking on Ayatollahs. If people understood what it took to become an ayatollah in Iran, the level of seminarian study, what you have to know, not just about. And here's the important thing about the Shia theocracy for all the Shia people out there, if I got this wrong, please forgive me, but it's my understanding, especially in the Iranian model, they have something called the Marja, which is basically, it's like your flock. (53:14) What do they call it? A diocese in the Catholic church, right? Congregation. Thank you. There's what we want, congregation. It's a congregation. Now, you have to, because in Iran, it's not just about knowing the religion, but having a philosophy that is derived from absolute understanding of the religion that is approachable to the people. It is religious democracy, because now I've done my ayatollah training and they go, Huma, I can't do the cross. Sorry, God, I just made a huge mistake. Forgive me. But they anoint you. They say, you're the dude. You're the guy that can do it. But now, to survive, you have to write a document that says, this is my religious philosophy as it applies to something today. There's a name for that, the, or something. Again, I apologize, but they put that out there. Now. People read it, the public, it's there for the public. (54:10) And then people go, I like this guy. I'm going to hang out at his marja for a little bit and see what he does. Now, if they come to the Marja and he's not impressive, then the Marja dissipates and they shut 'em down. They say, you failed. You couldn't win the people. It's not just about imposing religion on people. It's about getting the people to buy into what you're saying religiously. Wilmer Leon (54:35): That's what the Ayatollah Khomeini was doing when he was in exile in France. Scott Ritter (54:39): Bingo. Okay. But you have compete, for instance, Al Sistani in Iraq, he has a competing the Najaf. Marges compete with the coal Marges that compete with Carval, which compete with, there's competing margins. And even within Comb, there's different margins. Wilmer Leon (54:59): I'm drawing a blank on the guy in Iraq that was raising all kind of hell. Muqtada al Sadr. There you go. Yeah. Who is the son, if I have it right? He's the son of a the, Grand Ayatollah Scott Ritter (55:17): yeah, yeah, yeah. And he, in order to become credible, had to go to Cole and study and learn things because everybody, when he was out there talking, he had a lot of personality. He had the name, but people are going, you don't have the credentials, man. You can't sit here and play religion because we take our religion seriously. So we had to go disappear and go to calm and train up and all that. Wilmer Leon (55:45): Had to coach him up a little bit. Scott Ritter (55:48): But he also then has to go out and sell himself right? To an audience. And a lot of people weren't buying what he was selling. I mean, he's a very popular man, very influential in Iraqi politics today. But it's earned. It's not given. But the point is, the Iranians are a responsible nation, and if Israel was smart, they would've said, okay, we're in a bad position here, bad position. (56:12) It's not a good position for us to be in. We need to take a step back, take advantage of the fact that the Iranians have written a script that makes it believable that we did some amazing stuff. And then we have to reassess where we are. What do we have to do to get our defenses back up? What do we have to do to get capabilities to strike Iran? When do we want to do it? Because the United States isn't on our side right now, behavioral modification to get the world to love us. Again, things of this nature, strategic thinking. But Israel's governed by a crazy man named Benjamin Netanyahu, who doesn't care about Israel. He doesn't care about the Israeli people. He doesn't care about Israeli security. He doesn't care about alliances with the United States. He's a 76-year-old man in bad health who only cares about Benjamin Netanyahu. (56:58) And he right now has his butt in a sling because he got embarrassed on October 7th, and now he was just humiliated by the Iranians. And he can only stay in power as a wartime prime minister. And if they're going to either, they have to ratchet it up in Gaza. Every Israeli knows that they lost in Gaza that they haven't won Harts the day before, the Iranian attack front page headline, we lost. We lost everything. We haven't won anything we've lost. And that's the assessment of the Israeli intelligence service. And people who don't know need to know that Harts is a very prominent Israeli newspaper with a very good reputation of like, well, you said good reputation. I was about to compare to the New York, used to have, right? There you go. There you go. Like it used to have. But so he's lost in Gaza. (57:52) He was looking to maybe promote a conflict against Hezbollah to expand the war. And there's always that hope that we can drag the United States into a larger war with Iran. But the United States, it says, no, we're not doing that. Hezbollah now is linked to Iranian deterrence, superiority. So you can't do the Hezbollah thing like you wanted to do anymore. You're in a, and now you've got Ansara Allah in the Red Sea shutting down the Red Sea, shutting down the Israeli economy. Wilmer Leon (58:22): And on the other side, you have Iran shutting down the strai of Harmouz. And that's why I go back to that ship that they captured because they wanted the United States to understand will shut your oil off. Scott Ritter (58:36): And the United States, remember, we've been running guardian prosperity or something like that, whatever the name of our wonderfully named operation to deter the Hootie. And we, I don't know if everybody understands, we had to approach the Hoothie last week and beg them to stop it. Please, please, please, please, please. We'll stop bombing you. We'll do everything. We'll lift the terrorism thing, but just stop this, please, because we can't force you to stop it. And the Hootie went, no. Yeah. They said, here's another one. The missiles, you guys are deterring. That's a failure. But that's the thing. The failure of deterrents policy has been played out with the Hoothie and it's being played out. See, America no longer has deterrents, superiority. We no longer have deterrence. We can't deter a minute. Wilmer Leon (59:25): Wait a minute. We sent the Eisenhower into, now this takes me back to, so we sent a couple of aircraft carrier groups into the region when I think it was the Eisenhower. Oh, it was Gerald Ford. We first sent the Gerald Ford in President Putin says to Joe Biden, why did you do that? You are not scaring anybody. These people don't scare. And oh, by the way, we can sink your carrier from here with our Kenjal missile. Hypersonic missile. So stop it, Joe. You're not scaring anybody. Scott Ritter (01:00:08): But here's something else that happened, and I'm glad you brought this up. This is an important thing. The United States linked at least two of its ships to this system, and this is part of the American anti-ballistic missile strategy. We do this with Japan, we do this with Korea, we do this with Europe. We have a whole bunch of ages, class destroyers in Spain that we now are going to fan out to protect Europe from Russian missiles. And we're telling everybody, no worry. We got this. We got this. Remember guys, when that satellite was coming down, we shot it down. We're that good? We can pull it, hit a bullet kind of stuff. So we went to the Israelis and we plugged in to the world's most sophisticated anti-ballistic missile shield in the world. We plugged in and the Iranians went. (01:00:55) What the Iranians proved, and I just want this to sink in there, they can hit any American ship anytime they want with a warhead that will sink that ship. They just sent a signal to the United States that we will sink every one of your aircraft carriers. We will sink every one of your destroyers, all these wonderful ships you have. You can't stop it. The missile we sent in and touched, Nevada can sink any one of your ships. And how do we know? Because you plugged your ships into the system. Guys, up until then, we might've been theoretical about this, but now you plugged it in and you were playing the game. You committed your best anti-missile ships to the defense system, and you didn't stop us. We went in and went pop, pop, pop, pop, pop five times on the target. If Nevada had become the Gerald Ford or become the Eisenhower or the Carl Benson, we would've sunk that ship. (01:01:52) That's the other thing that the Iranians did here that nobody's talking about, because this is the scariest thing in the world to the United States. Iran just told the United States, your Navy is useless. Useless. It's done and now, but it's not just the Iranians, the North Korean, China China has everybody out there who has hypersonic missile capability is now basically saying, oh yeah, we can sink American ships too. And this is important thing. Wilmer Leon (01:02:22): I was talking to KJ Noh last week, and KJ was talking about the United States sending all kind of hardware into Taiwan and that the United States may even wind up sending personnel in Taiwan and in anticipation of China making a, I think this is what KJ said, making a land invasion in Taiwan. And I said, kj, why would China do that when all they got to do is sink an aircraft carrier with a hypersonic missile? And he said, well, that's a good point. Scott Ritter (01:02:58): No, I mean the United States, but now we come to, because America's facing the same problem that BB Netanyahu is, except there's not a political dimension to it. BB Netanyahu right now has to do something to stay in power politically so now Wilmer Leon (01:03:15): and not be prosecuted for theft. Scott Ritter (01:03:19): Correct. For his corruption. Yeah. Second, he leaves office, he gets arrested and he gets put on trial. Wilmer Leon (01:03:25): Ala Donald Trump. Scott Ritter (01:03:27): Except, yeah, I mean, yeah, Wilmer Leon (01:03:32): that's a whole nother story. But I'm just saying that right now is what Donald Trump is facing. Scott Ritter (01:03:38): Correct. Wilmer Leon (01:03:38): And I'm not saying it's legitimate or not legitimate. Scott Ritter (01:03:41): Yeah. That's my only reason why I did that is I don't want to get into the, no, Wilmer Leon (01:03:47): it's happening. Scott Ritter (01:03:47): Because Netanyahu is a criminal. He is a corrupt person. Donald Trump is an imperfect human being who may have committed some crimes, but in America, you're innocent until proven guilty. And he has these trials, many of which people believe are politicized, designed, and diminishes. We can move on. We don't need to go down that rabbit hole on this episode. But the fact is Israel right now is desperately looking for a face saving way out of this because the fiction of we were so good that we stopped this Iranian attack is not believable. It's not believable domestically. So now the Israelis are looking for the ability to do something that if not gives them deterrence, superiority they're looking for right now, deterrence, parody. Parody. And so here's the question, because you remember now we come back to Pepe, and this is probably a good way to spin this around. (01:04:53) William Burns met with Iranians beforehand and came up with an elegant solution to an extraordinarily difficult and dangerous problem. Iran now has established a deterrence philosophy, and they articulate the second Israeli airplanes take off. We launch our missiles. We're not waiting for Israel to attack us. The second your planes take off, we're firing. And Iran has said, we consider the matter settled. Settled. We consider the matter over. You struck us, we struck back, let it go. Correct. But it's not settled because there's thing called politics. And Iranians, again, are some of the most sophisticated political players in the world. So my guess is as we're speaking, Hey Pepe, if you're out there, call your source. I'm giving you a hint that behavioral patterns, one thing I used to do as an intelligence officer is do analysis and assessments, predictive analysis based upon behavioral patterns. Humans tend to repeat behavioral patterns. (01:05:59) And so now the CIA and the Iranians have talked to prevent one crisis. They're talking right now and the CIA saying, guys, what can we do to prevent Israel from doing something really stupid, which is the big attack, which politically we need a safety valve. This is the equivalent of a methane tank getting heat on it. And if you don't have a safety valve that goes, it's going to blow. So how do we get a safety valve? What can Israel do to save face that doesn't impact you? And you see the Israelis now ratcheting it down. It was, we're going to strike nuclear facilities. We're going to strike this, we're going to strike that. And now they're saying, well, what if we strike something outside of Iran? But it's clearly Iran like at seven 11. Yeah, at three in the morning when it's been closed and nobody's there strike at seven 11. (01:06:53) And so they're desperately looking for this outlet. The question now is, what will Iran do? My bet is that Iran will facilitate a face saving gesture by Israel because the Iranians don't want and don't need a war, a major war business. Well, it's horribly. The Iranian foreign ministry, just so everybody understands this, their number one priority now, one of their top priorities is they have all of their smart people right now writing papers for the Brick summit in October, which Iran will be attending and will be playing a major role in establishing new global infrastructure and institutions on how the world's going to be governed and a possible international currency off of the dollar bingo. These are big ticket things. Business. They don't need to be business. They don't need to be dragged into this stupidity of a mafia family dispute Wilmer Leon (01:07:54): Really quickly. One of the reasons why President Putin went into Ukraine light in the beginning was he doesn't want a war because it's bad for his economy. Scott Ritter (01:08:11): But the West didn't pick up on that. Now we got thing. Wilmer Leon (01:08:15): And now he's kicking ass and taking names and folks are all befuddled. Hey, you started. You went looking for trouble. You found a big bag of it. And now, so thank you for your time, Scott. Two things I want to hit quickly. One is the estimates are in very simple terms, that Iran spent a million dollars on this attack and Israel lost a billion in their response to it. Scott Ritter (01:08:50): I'd say 60 million for the Iranians, about 3.2 billion for the Israelis and the United States altogether. Wilmer Leon (01:08:55): Okay. Okay. And this other thing, is it velvet or violet, this AI program that Israel has developed that they assign a score? Are you familiar with this? They assign a score to Palestinians based upon a number of predetermined social behaviors. And when your score gets close to a hundred, you get assassinated. And this is all generated by artificial intelligence. You mentioned ai, so I want to just to quickly drop that one in there before we get out. Scott Ritter (01:09:31): No, I mean, again, it's a criminal enterprise. It's about killing innocence. And part of this AI too is that it calculates the number of civilian casualties that'll be assigned to that thing target. And unfortunately for the Palestinians, one would think if you're a rational, look, I keep telling people, I'm not a pacifist, and if you want to go to war, I'm old. You're the guy. But guys, I have no problem killing you. I mean, I know you're trying to kill me, so I will kill you, and I'm not going to weep at night when you die because you wanted to play this game. But I'm not in the business of killing you and taking out innocent civilians. Okay? (01:10:17) That's where I draw the line. Now there's collateral damage. If it happens, I'll be upset, but I have my parameters. If I'm going to take you and they're saying, you're going to take out this many civilians, I'm going, that's a bad target. Not the right time. Not the right place. We're not going to do it. But the Israelis have the opposite thing. It's not just when you're going to take out the target, but when you get the maximum impact of civilian casualties. The Israeli approach is AI program is designed to kill the maximum number of family members and civilians to maximize the impact of the attack on the morale of the Palestinian people. But see, that's where AI fails because it doesn't understand the human heart and doesn't understand rage, it doesn't understand hate, and they don't understand that the more Palestinians you kill, the more you train them to hate you. (01:11:05) And not only that, the world is turning against you. See, the AI program hasn't figured out the global factor that every time they do this, the world hates Israel even more. Hamas is a political organization. Hamas is a military organization. Hamas is an ideology, and you don't kill an ideology with weapons. You defeat an ideology with a better ideology, which is generally linked to a better lifestyle, better standard of living, economic prosperity. Again, Jane Carville's mantra, it's the economy. Stupid isn't just an American only. It's a global human reality Wilmer Leon (01:11:52

What will Israel do next? Savage speaks with Alex Traiman, CEO and Jerusalem Bureau Chief of JNS (Jewish News Syndicate), to discuss the evolving war in Israel. Learn what Iran's unprecedented attack means for the Middle East and the world. Is Russia supporting Iran? How did the Biden Admin unravel the progress made during the Trump term? Why is Israel a harbinger for the rest of the world? How did Obama enable the Ayatollahs? What is John Kerry's SHOCKING connection to the Iranian Regime? Why have Russian-Israeli relations collapsed? Why has Biden's posturing put the world at risk? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Eliot grills Eric on three recent articles identifying some big problems in U.S. foreign policy.  What will happen once Iran is nuclear armed? Will the Ayatollahs undergo "nuclear learning" as some political scientists suggest or will they become more emboldened (not to seek a suicidal nuclear armageddon but to unleash their proxies -- Hezbollah, Iraqi militias, the Houthis, etc)?  Should the U.S. be ready to launch a pre-emptive or prevent strike? Should it accelerate covert efforts at regime change? What about NATO decision-making? Now that the alliance is made up of 32 rather than 12 members should the decision-making move away from the consensus rules that have governed it since 1949? What should be done to avoid Hungary, Turkey or Slovakia from blocking consensus and acting as a Trojan horse inside the alliance? How tough should the U.S. be willing to be with putative allies, particularly in a wartime scenario? Finally, has the Trumpist turn to "America First" isolationism in the GOP rendered it unfit as a political instrument for conservatives who remain committed to internationalism and the US role in upholding the global order?  Is it time for a new conservative internationalist political party? https://thedispatch.com/article/when-iran-goes-nuclear/  https://www.foreignaffairs.com/middle-east/iran-protesters-want-regime-change https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/natos-decision-process-has-an-achilles-heel/ https://sapirjournal.org/friends-and-foes/2024/03/republican-isolationists/ Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.

Today's guest is Ray Takeyh, senior fellow for Middle East studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, and a former senior advisor on Iran at the State Department. In this episode, we discuss the mindset of the Iranian regime and what the US' understanding of it may be, the so-called ‘axis of resistance' and Iran's use of proxies in various regional conflicts, and how that regional involvement is impacting the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the current war in Gaza. Full bio Ray Takeyh is Hasib J. Sabbagh senior fellow for Middle East studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). His area of specialization are Iran, U.S. foreign policy, and modern Middle East. Takeyh is, most recently, the author of The Last Shah: America, Iran and the Fall of the Pahlavi Dynasty. He is the coauthor of The Pragmatic Superpower: Winning the Cold War in the Middle East and Revolution & Aftermath: Forging a New Strategy toward Iran. He is author of three previous books, Guardians of the Revolution: Iran and the World in the Age of the Ayatollahs, Hidden Iran: Paradox and Power in the Islamic Republic, and The Origins of the Eisenhower Doctrine: The US, Britain and Nasser's Egypt, 1952-1957. He has written more than three hundred articles and opinion pieces in many news outlets including Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Foreign Affairs. Takeyh has testified more than twenty times in various Congressional committees. Prior to joining CFR he has served as a senior advisor on Iran at the State Department, fellow at the Yale University, Washington Institute of Near East Policy and Middle East Center at University of California, Berkeley. Takeyh has a doctorate in modern history from Oxford University.

Today we examine the war on diversity, equity, and inclusion, three stalwarts in the building of our great country, and why they're in trouble today. The Ayatollahs have nothing on the new Republican Party. Give a listen, won't you?

Welcome to another episode, the seventy-fifth, of the Lessons from the Cockpit show! I am your host Mark Hasara and for over 60 years my passion has been aviation. The situation in the Red Sea and Gulf of Adan has everyone's attention. It's the continuation of the Proxy War between western powers and the Ayatollahs of Iran and their influence with the Houthi Rebels in Yemen, attacking shipping in one of the largest and wealthiest waterways on the planet. America and our allies have been here before, sometimes with tragic results. The USS Cole was nearly sunk in the Yemeni harbor of Adan after an al Qaeda suicide boat rammed into it. The weapons used are now much more sophisticated and supplied by other US enemies. But we are more prepared in my opinion to fight and win a maritime conflict in this region, which this episode discusses. This episode is financially supported by the book Tanker Pilot, found in all four formats; hardback, softback, Kindle, and Audible on Amazon. The Hardback, Kindle and Audible formats contain the 32 pictures in color, the softback in black and white. Tanker Pilot gives readers a behind the scenes look at global air refueling and air operations in four wars. The Lessons from the Cockpit show is sponsored by Wall Pilot, custom aviation art for the walls of your home, office, or hanger. Wall Pilot creates profile views of famous aircraft, printed on vinyl in four, six, and eight foot lengths you can peel off and stick to any flat surface. Wall Pilot can also create custom graphics of your favorite airplanes with your name, tail codes and numbers, and cool weapons loads. Support the Lessons from the Cockpit show by ordering one or two of these very detailed prints for the walls of your home, office, or hanger. We did a thirty foot long profile for one customer and his hanger! US and Coalition forces recently struck Houthi targets in Yemen. The Navy aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower has four F-18 Super Hornet squadrons in its air wing. This F-18F Super Hornet from VFA-103 represents the 22 Super Hornets involved in the air strikes in Yemen. The strike packages were supported with electronic intelligence by the RC-135 Rivet Joint signals collection and intelligence aircraft of the US Air Force. This print is an RC-135 Rivet Joint aircraft assigned to the 343rd Reconnaissance Squadron of the 55th Reconnaissance Wing, Offutt Air Force base Nebraska. F-15E Strike Eagles from Royal Air Force Lakenheath England have deployed to the region when Iran tried to close down shipping going through the Straight of Hormuz. This F-15E Strike Eagle from the 494th Fighter Squadron is configured for the Maritime Air Support or MAS mission to interdict and destroy enemy surface ships using Laser and GPS guided weapons. The Panthers Strike Eagles carried the AN-ASQ-236 Dragon Eye pod on the centerline as this graphic depicts. Unmanned and remotely piloted vehicles have played a huge role in the Horn of Africa, combating terrorism and piracy on the high seas. This MQ-9 Reaper drone armed with GBU-12 500 pound laser-guided bombs and AGM-114 Hellfire missiles is assigned to the 867th Attack Squadron of the 432nd Wing based out of Creech Air Base north of Las Vegas Nevada. MQ-9 Reapers are the type of drones operating out of Djibouti and Chadbelli airports in the Horn of Africa. Thanks for downloading and listening to this and previous episodes of the Lessons from the Cockpit show. This and previous episodes can be found on the Lessons from the Cockpit website. Every lesson learned today becomes the foundation for tomorrow's breakthroughs and your stories fuel our mission! We are always looking for guests with compelling aviation stories and terrific lessons learned from those experiences. Contact us through the website and lets talk about you becoming a guest on the show. We want to hear your lessons learned and leave a legacy of wisdom for future generations of aviation enthusiasts.

Welcome to another episode, the seventy-fifth, of the Lessons from the Cockpit show! I am your host Mark Hasara and for over 60 years my passion has been aviation. The situation in the Red Sea and Gulf of Adan has everyone's attention. It's the continuation of the Proxy War between western powers and the Ayatollahs of Iran and their influence with the Houthi Rebels in Yemen, attacking shipping in one of the largest and wealthiest waterways on the planet. America and our allies have been here before, sometimes with tragic results. The USS Cole was nearly sunk in the Yemeni haror of Adan after an al Qaeda suicide boat rammed into it. The weapons used are now much more sophisticated and supplied by other US enemies. But we are more prepared in my opinion to fight and win a maritime conflict in this region, which this episode discusses. This episode is finanicially supported by the book Tanker Pilot, found in all four formats; hardback, softback, Kindle, and Audible on Amazon. The Hardbback, Kindle and Audible formats contain the 32 pictures in color, the softback in black and white. Tanker Pilot gives readers a behind the scenes look at global air refueling and air operations in four wars. The Lessons from the Cockpit show is sponsored by Wall Pilot, custom aviation art for the walls of your home, office, or hanger. Wall Pilot creates profile views of famous aircraft, printed on vinyl in four, six, and eight foot lengths you can peel off and stick to any flat surface. Wall Pilot can also create custom graphics of your favorite airplanes with your name, tail codes and numbers, and cool weapons loads. Support the Lessons from the Cockpit show by ordering one or two of these very detailed prints for the walls of your home, office, or hanger. We did a thrity foot long profile for one customer and his hanger! US and Coalition forces recently struck Houthi targets in Yemen. The Navy aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower has four F-18 Super Hornet squadrons in its air wing. This F-18F Super Hornet from VFA-103 represents the 22 Super Hornets involved in the air strikes in Yemen. The strike packages were supported with electronic intelligence by the RC-135 Rivet Joint signals collection and intelligence aircraft of the US Air Force. This print is an RC-135 Rivet Joint aircraft assigned to the 343rd Reconnaissance Squadron of the 55th Reconnaissance Wing, Offutt Air Force base Nebraska. F-15E Strike Eagles from Royal Air Force Lakenheath England have deployed to the region when Iran tried to close down shipping going through the Straight of Hormuz. This F-15E Strike Eagle from the 494th Fighter Squadron is configured for the Maritime Air Support or MAS mission to interdict and destroy enemy surface ships using Laser and GPS guided weapons. The Panthers Strike Eagles carried the AN-ASQ-236 Dragon Eye pod on the centerline as this graphic depicts. Unmanned and remotely piloted vehicles have played a huge role in the Horn of Africa, combating terrorism and piracy on the high seas. This MQ-9 Reaper drone armed with GBU-12 500 pound laser-guided bombs and AGM-114 Hellfire missiles is assigned to the 867th Attack Squadron of the 432nd Wing absed out of Creech Air Base north of Las Vegas Nevada. MQ-9 Reapers are the type of drones operating out of Djibouti and Chadbelli airports in the Horn of Africa. Thanks for downloading and listening to this and previous episodes of the Lesons from the Cockpit show. This and previous episodes can be found on the Lessons from the Cockpit website. Every lesson learned today becomes the foundation for tomorrow's breakthroughs and your stories fuel our mission! We are always looking for guests with compelling aviation stories and terrific lessons learned from those experiences. Contact us through the website and lets talk about you becoming a guest on the show. We want to hear your lessons learned and leave a legacy of wisdom for future generations of aviation enthusists.   

Show Notes and Transcript Retired CIA officer Sam Faddis is a regular security expert on War Room and he joins Hearts of Oak to look at the terror threat within the US.  His Substack goes in depth on the many hazards that we face externally and we pick up on some of his recent articles.  We start by looking at open borders and why the establishment won't cut off illegal immigration.  The US have endured an onslaught of unknown individuals, when a country is not able to know who is within its borders then it has no idea what perils it faces internally.  It is a dangerous situation that America finds itself in.  Sam shows us why and how the FBI has spent its time focusing on groups like Moms for Liberty which seems like political targeting and is quite simply illegal.  Then we move onto looking at how the situation in Israel could affect the US before finishing on how China has imbedded itself into the establishment and throughout the system. Sam Faddis is a Retired CIA Operations Officer. Served in Near East and South Asia. Author, commentator. Senior Editor AND Magazine. Public Speaker. Host of Ground Truth. Connect with Sam... X                   https://x.com/RealSamFaddis?s=20 GETTR          https://gettr.com/user/samfaddis SUBSTACK   https://substack.com/profile/28080362-sam-faddis                       https://andmagazine.substack.com/                       https://andmagazine.substack.com/s/ground-truth Interview recorded 28.11.23 Audio Podcast version available on Podbean and all major podcast directories...  ⁣https://heartsofoak.podbean.com/ Transcript available on our Substack...https://heartsofoak.substack.com/ To sign up for our weekly email, find our social media, podcasts, video, livestreaming platforms and more... https://heartsofoak.org/connect/ Support Hearts of Oak by purchasing one of our fancy T-Shirts.... https://heartsofoak.org/shop/ Transcript (Hearts of Oak) It's wonderful to have you with us. Thank you so much for your time today. (Sam Faddis) Thank you for having me, appreciate it.  Not all, I've enjoyed your many times on War Room and maybe we'll touch on that before we get on to everything else. But obviously people can find you @RealSamFaddis on Twitter, @ANDMagazine also. And I think Substack certainly, what I enjoy is andmagazine.substack.com. Everything is in the description. And I think that's where you put a lot of your longer pieces. So if people enjoy the Twitter, they can jump on and look at the Substack. And of course, Sam, you're a retired CIA officer, served in Near East and South Asia, author, commentator, and of course, senior editor of AND Magazine. And certainly for me, as maybe for many others, what often happens, people coming on Steve Bannon's War Room, it opens a window. Maybe we can just touch on that. It's always fun to ask people how they ended up being on War Room and they will jump on, I think, a lot of the threats, the terror threats currently inside the US. So, what about yourself? How did you end up being on War Room? Yeah, I don't... I think my contact with Steve goes back to when he and Jack Maxey were still working together. And we got particularly deeply involved regarding the Hunter Biden laptop story, because when they got a hold of a copy of the hard drive, one of the first things they wanted to do was make sure that they weren't being played, that this was in fact, something real, they weren't going to run with it. And, you know, they were more than happy to run with it if it was real and authentic, which it is, but they wanted to do their homework first. So they called me in as an old, CIA operator to take a look at this thing and say, Hey, do you think this thing's real? Or is there anything to this accusation that it's Russian disinformation? And after about, I mean, I spent the whole night down, I showed up in DC one night and spent the whole night down in a townhouse in Capitol Hill with those guys going through it. But I can tell you that it took me about five minutes to be able to tell them. It is impossible for somebody to have faked this thing. That's completely ludicrous. If you came to me when I was operating and said, do this to somebody else, I would have said. No can do, man. I mean, can I make up a fake laptop? Yeah. Will it stand more than about five minutes scrutiny from an adversary who knows what they're doing? No, it will not. It will be obvious for a million reasons. And we've obviously delved into that with Miranda Devine, laptop from hell, Garrett Ziegler on a number of times and and as a huge and you wonder why the media don't wake up to that fact. But that and many, many others. But of course your background, CIA background, that intelligence side, and on your Substack lots of really interesting articles and I think for me it's the concern about the terror threat within the U.S. We talk a lot about what's happening externally. But really the big concern I have looking across the water and we have in the UK, having open borders is the terror threat within here in the UK, as you're concerned over there in the States. And maybe look at the border, because one of your recent Substack posts was the trade in asylum seekers, why the establishment won't cut off illegal immigration. And the issue of open border means the opposite of a purpose of government, isn't it? A government should be closing the borders, protecting its citizens, and this administration seems to want the opposite. So, what are your thoughts as you look on that open border policy? Well, as you well know, given your trade, you know, language can either be used to illuminate or obfuscate. We spend a lot of time listening to this administration use language to obfuscate, to dance around, to pretend, let's just be clear. This administration's policy is open borders. That's the Biden administration's policy is we don't have a border. So nobody in Congress changed the law. Nobody legislated that. The American people didn't decide that. These guys just basically decided, without ever admitting so, that they will not enforce the existing law. If you show up at the border, you're processed, you're handed a notice to appear for a hearing, which may be five to 10 years in the future, and you're cut loose. Actually, you're probably transported onto your onward destination like Chicago or New York. Once you have that hearing notice in hand, by the way, if anybody stops you, you just tell them you're waiting for your hearing. It in fact functions as a permit. In fact, the illegals refer to it as a permit. So that's our policy and we don't, there's no magic database to check these people. We have no idea who they are. We have no idea if the documents they're carrying, if any, are real. So anybody and everybody can walk into the United States. So why? Well, I mean, ideologically, a lot of these people frankly don't believe we have a right to control our borders. But there's also just a lot of money here, right? I mean, there's a huge garment industry as an example in Southern, California around Los Angeles, actually a large number of clothes a large amount of clothing that's made in the United States. It's all made by illegals. I mean if you walked into a shop and there's 300 people in the room and you found one of them who actually had legal documentation to be in the United States. You'd probably die of shock. Everybody knows that. You go to Alabama chicken processing plants for folks to stand on their feet for 10 or 12 hours a day and they gut and pluck chickens not exactly pleasant work. I've done a little bit of it once upon a time. Okay Who does that? Again, if there's 600 people in the plant and you found one that actually has permission to be in the United States and be working. You'd be stunned. So what we have I could go on obviously, I mean you get the point, there's a lot of folks here who are pretending like somehow they're welcoming the poor of the planet and doing something philanthropic. That's not what's happening. They're making a boatload of money. In the article that you referenced, we talked about how, for instance, in New York State, they actually run a state website where employers can go on the website and advertise jobs and that's specifically marketed to illegals. Now, they don't use that terminology, illegals, but that's what it is. It is a state-run website to match up employers with folks who will, again, when it's all said and done, they will work off the books for less than minimum wage. And none of these guys are gonna complain about workplace safety. I mean, if you think about it, it's kind of sick. Here's the Democratic Party pushes this, supposedly the party of the working man. This is a war on American working men and women. It's none of these pesky unions, man. We're gonna deal with folks that are about one step above slaves. Yeah and I get that and that was a conversation I had in the Brexit debate in the UK talking to voters and you talk to small businesses and they wanted cheap labour, they want a free movement of people and I get the economic argument on that but then you move over on to the security issue and just because you let someone in for, they can cheap labour, if you're not checking who that person is, then you have no idea who is in the country. And it surprises me why, you're on a scale well above what the UK is on, but it surprises me why the media and politicians don't really call this out for what it is, which is a massive security risk for the US. Without question. I mean, first of all, people talk in terms of checking names against databases. Okay, so first of all, let's just assume that happens. What database? I mean, a database consists is only as good as the data that goes into it. What's the premise there? We have a magic database with the names of all the members of Al Qaeda and Hezbollah and Hamas in it. There is no such database. The guy's name is the name of John Smith, something generic. Born in some village nobody ever heard of in Pakistan, okay? You know what you're gonna find? You're gonna find there's no data in your laptop. Does that mean that he's good? It doesn't mean anything. That's, by the way, assuming he's actually telling you his real name. Hezbollah is an example. Hezbollah has a longstanding relationship with Venezuela. They are very serious boys. I've worked against them all over the planet. They plan years and years in advance, they're very meticulous. They don't show up one day and say, let's blow something up. They flip a switch on and off that they've been working for five years. Pre-positioned explosives, case targets, all this. They have a relationship with Venezuela. Venezuela gives them full sets of false identity documents, passport, driver's license, etc., backstopped by the Venezuelan government. Meaning if you ask the Venezuelans, is this guy Jose one of yours? They'll say yes because they gave him the docks as part of their deal. Number one group of people coming out of Central and South America into the United States right now Venezuelans. That is not me saying obviously that every Venezuelan walking into the United States is a terrorist, I'm just saying when you have a flood of people like that and you know you have this capability. It's the simplest thing in the world to insert into that stream guys who are operatives and we have no capacity for detecting them and we have caught them on U.S. soil before. Where they have been here for years and years and years working targets, New York City, Washington DC, Chicago. So yeah, there's a clock ticking out there someplace. Isn't there? It's just you know I mean, when stuff starts to blow up, is there really anybody with a straight face is going to turn around and say, wow, that was unforeseeable, I'm shocked. We're just waiting for it now.  Well, I mean, your time working abroad with the CIA and you're dealing with, countries and individuals and situations which you wouldn't expect to find at home, and I've talked to other people working in the field at different ops. And I think the assumption was, and I assume the assumption is that the intelligence services abroad for the US that, you know, there is trust in what happens back home. There is trust in the borders, in the systems, and you're doing what you do abroad because you know you've got the backing of the US, but also, you know, there's protection there in the US and that's not even touching on the military. Is just touching on the institutions and the border. And if that's no longer there, then kind of you wonder, what is the point of intelligence abroad whenever there's no kind of backstop there back in the US? Yeah, there is no point. I mean, again, this is what I think people need to understand, and they don't, and maybe on some level, they don't want to, right? Because the enormity, first of all, it's staggering and hard to get your head around. But also, you kind of just don't want to face this reality because it's very unpleasant. We don't have a border in the United States functionally. I mean, we have guys that process illegals and then put them on buses and send them to Chicago. We've turned border patrol into welcome wagon, but we don't, we don't, our defences are down. I mean, you're living in a house in a bad neighbourhood and the doors are unlocked and the windows are open and nobody's paying attention. So is it hard to predict what will happen? It will not right now, look at what's happening in the middle East. I mean, you could send intelligence message after intelligence message out of the Middle East from a CIA station, saying everybody and his brother is planning on blowing stuff up all across the United States. Nobody's gonna react to it, nobody's gonna do anything about it. They have politically decided to ignore it. And God willing, somehow miraculously, this will not happen, but I don't see how we will avoid it. People are going to die. We are going to get hit again. And people should keep in mind that when 9-11 happened. Al-Qaeda, just as an example, they never conceived of that as the end of anything, nor did they conceive of that as the worst they could do. So they have never, and many of the other groups, never given up their ambitions for biological, chemical, nuclear, radiological attacks. So as horrible as 9-11 was, what you could see would potentially be much, much worse than that. What do you think as someone who is working abroad on the field, seeing obviously what's happened with not only Afghanistan, but then you mentioned the threat of Iran not being neutralised and that being left to fester and grow and continue to be a threat. And I guess, and it's not, it is one way pointing the finger at the Democrats because of what has happened, but maybe other administrations haven't maybe dealt with that threat either. Does that make any sense or is that on the ball? No, it makes no sense at all. And again, yeah, I'm not going to try to lay all of the issues here squarely and purely at the foot of the Biden administration. Not that they don't. Not that they are working overtime to mess things up. But yeah, we've made mistakes in regard to Iran as an example for a really long time. I mean, look, I've worked with a lot of Iranians, Iranian patriots over the years who are fighting for freedom in their country. I got nothing but respect for the Iranian people, Persian culture, Persian history. But the boys that are in charge in Tehran the IRGC and the ayatollahs are psychos. I mean they they they have an expressly apocalyptic view of history. They believe these are the end times literally in the way, somebody who's a true believer in the literal word of the Bible might believe these are the end times. That's a reality. That's not, that's not a metaphor. These are the end times. The Mahdi, who they regard as an Islamic superman prophet, is about to come back. And there's going to be a giant, fiery end to the world, and they emerge as the winners, and you're all either with them or you're gone. So that's the way they look at the world. Now, these guys have been on a course to acquire nuclear weapons for decades now. Their nuclear program exists for one purpose, for nuclear weapons. Everything else is garbage, just dispense with the nonsense. We keep reading things like, you know, the latest I read was an assessment that's now seven months old that said we think the Iranians are 12 days from having a nuke. Okay, so I'm not a math genius, but I'm pretty sure that if it's been seven months and you told me they were 12 days away. That by this point you should assume they have a nuclear weapon and anybody who thinks that our intelligence collection is so good, that we will know for sure in advance. That they're about to acquire it is living in dreamland. Not true but nobody will know that. Even the Israelis who have a really robust, they basically, you live in a world right now where you could wake up tomorrow and realize not just that they just got the bomb, but they have had the bomb for some period of time. So, I mean, a nuclear Iran that can actually vaporize Tel Aviv, that's the end of peace in the Middle East. You just set that whole region on fire. The Israelis will not live with that. What are we doing? We're shipping billions of dollars to the Ayatollahs. That's what we've been doing under this administration. We've been ransoming hostages. Look at the situation in Afghanistan. I mean, Biden wants everybody to forget about it because politically it's a disaster. All right, let's get down to the real implications. It's a terrorist super state. It's a safe haven for Al Qaeda. Al-Qaeda is at least as strong as they've ever been, and now they have a much more powerful, secure foundation. The Taliban is waging war to topple the government in Islamabad next door. Maybe you don't care about the Pakistanis. They happen to have about 200 functional nuclear weapons, plus the means to deliver them. So if Islamabad falls, that means all of a sudden Al-Qaeda and Taliban are one of the top nuclear powers on the planet. That's kind of a big deal. Somebody ought to be paying attention to that. We can't let that happen, yet we are doing nothing to stop it. I mean tell, because one of the other articles was standby for another intelligence failure. I think it's the most recent one. Joe does not in his terror threat here at home escalates. And on that you touch on what's happening in Israel and you touch on Iran. I mean, how does that affect? Because America has never been weaker militarily and from a completely civilian point of view seems to never have been at a weaker place in regards to intelligence. Where does that leave America with what is currently happening in the Middle East? Well, it leaves us functionally blind, and I think there are probably two sides to that coin. One is the part where you give warning to the policy makers, to the politicians, and it doesn't happen to fit with their agenda, so they ignore you. We did a lot of this in the run-up to 9-11, which is not to say we had specific information on that plot, but it wasn't exactly a secret to anybody working the target that they're serious and they're coming for us. By the way, they already blew up two of our embassies, tried to take down the World Trade Center once before, and almost sank the USS Cole in Yemen. So for real, guys, they're coming. That didn't fit with Bill Clinton's peace dividend agenda. And we're now at the end of times, and it's every kinder, gentler planet. And the Bush administration didn't seem particularly focused on it before 9-11. So I did a lot of that. I was involved with a lot of that, and as was my wife, who's also a retired agency officer, as were any number of our friends. It's not just me. A whole bunch of guys over a whole bunch of years saying, we better go take care of this Bin Laden guy before something really catastrophic happens and it's ignored. And the second part is just a decrease in collection capability. And we absolutely do not have the collection capability we need. Anybody, Afghanistan is under the control of the Taliban and they got billions of dollars worth of our gear and the international community, including the United States keeps sending them money, calling it humanitarian funding. Anybody who thinks they're using that to buy baby formula is on drugs. So, and you've got every group in the world, including Al-Qaeda back there with, training camps and a completely safe platform from which to plan, train, and launch attack. What if, I don't under anybody who thinks we have any collection capability on the ground in Afghanistan at this point that's worth anything. Again is in dreamland. I mean you can take pictures of it from space and you can listen to, you can surf the internet and intercept email messages. You know, it took us ten years to find Bin Laden because he didn't use the internet and he didn't use a cell phone He recognized the capacity. He ran an entire worldwide outfit for 10 years after we took Afghanistan. Took us 10 years to find him. Why? Because he understood our technical capability, and he knew we didn't have the sources we needed to find him. So we don't have robust, we have essentially no capability in Afghanistan. We have no idea what they're plotting, what they're planning, how many attacks are being hatched over there.  And when I've talked to friends, background intelligence, it's all about assets and having people on the ground and that information. Is it simply with the move, the technological move? Is it that the focus is we can now do everything with technology and the hard work on the ground is simply ignored? Is that maybe the focus of politicians? The focus of politicians is also, unfortunately, the focus of too many people inside the intelligence community, right? I mean, one of the things the United States, just to stick with us as an example, that we do pretty well is allocate money, buy stuff, build buildings, fill them with people looking at flat screen computer monitors, doing PowerPoint presentations, generate a lot of this stuff, build a machine that flies around in space and sucks up signals. Okay, now espionage is not at all like that. Espionage is weird, arcane, old art, really realistically probably hasn't changed for thousands of years, meaningfully, because it's all about human nature. So as long as people are people, it's going to be the same thing. You need this very eclectic group of individuals, often drawn from a whole bunch of very disparate backgrounds, kind of people who in another lifetime would be stealing the crown jewels, who aren't very comfortable colouring within the lines all the time, but they have enough self-control to not go totally off the reservation, if you will. In other words, they'll do it for a good cause. And then you got to train them really well, and then you got to season them really well. Like you got, I mean, when I showed up at my first field station, it was more or less an attitude like, yeah, you go make like 500 asset meetings, and then we might let you talk in the morning meeting when we all get together. Because right now, you know so little, you don't even know what you don't know. And then you got to trust instincts. It's got to be a very flat, nimble organization. If I'm talking to a source in Turkey, and I got an opportunity to do something inside Iran, we need to exploit that opportunity really fast. I don't mean like I should have carte blanche to just do whatever the hell I want, but I just, we got to move. We got a window of opportunity. We got, let's go. I can't send that message back to headquarters and wait six months while they go through 27 levels of review and committees of people who've never been overseas discuss whether or not this is a good idea, right? The really good organizations in history. Have had that capacity, I mean, one, I've done a lot of study over the years of the American OSS in the Second World War, but also SOE, the Special Operations Executive, the British equivalent that was, predates OSS and obviously was the template for OSS. Read the history of that, man, it's a, you know, a bunch of guys like Patrick Leigh Fairmoor that walked across Europe sleeping in barns before the war and, spoke classical Greek and, just this weird combination of things who the next thing you know, they're on Crete and they're dreaming up operations to kidnap Nazi generals. And they actually pull it off like two guys and a handful of Greeks do this. Good lord, if you sent that proposal to Langley these days. You know, you would have no chance on earth of that thing ever being approved. They would come back with nine million reasons why that won't work, and you'd get tired of trying to explain it to them. You'd just be, okay, whatever, too much trouble, leave it alone. Now, I want to ask you about to the domestic side. It seems, again, as someone looking from the outside in, it seems the role of the FBI is now no longer about catching real threats within the US and is more focused on, I mean, whenever Moms for Liberty was declared an extremist organization and those who want to stand up for common sense and basically values of life and liberty and freedom, those are now the ones in the crosshairs. I mean, how has that change happened? Is that just because it's easier to focus on those type of people because they don't push back, they're not a threat. Has there been an active decision to see those people standing up for American values as a threat as opposed to others, maybe the Islamist type? Tell us how that change has happened and what that means for the fabric of the U.S. Well, first of all, it's catastrophic for the United States, right? I mean, intelligence agencies. Intelligence agencies shouldn't be within 10 miles of American domestic politics. It's illegal, it's unconstitutional, it's immoral, and they should never be, even when they've got to deal with domestic things like the FBI, they should never, never should be partisan. Again, that's illegal and unconstitutional and so forth. I think you have you have like two problems that are affecting both the FBI the CIA and a bunch of other agencies one is bureaucratization which kind of bureaucratic hardening of the arteries the organizations go soft. You stop having guys at the top who made their bones running operations, whether we're talking about the Bureau or CIA now, you got guys who have played political games. And then we have politicization in the sense of American domestic politics. We have outfits that should not have come anywhere near this, that at least at the senior levels have become very politicized. I mean, the Moms with Liberty thing is a great example. I have a, where I live in the state of Pennsylvania, I have a lot of contact with Moms of Liberty because of other things that we do, my wife and I. You know, you're talking about an organization, the centre of gravity is a 55 to 60 year old grandmother. And Moms for Liberty's primary focus is things like, why is this book filled with sexually explicit drawings in an elementary school library accessible to my eight-year-old? I'm not trying to ban the book, burn the book, demonize the person who wrote it. It's just age-inappropriate. It shouldn't be available to kids. It's not exactly incendiary. It's certainly not domestic violent extremism. So, it's insane that the Bureau would label these guys as an organization like that, as being a danger to anything. Not a danger. They're people involved in a political process expressing actually what are really common sense things. So, hugely dangerous. You know, and I think the problem is primarily at the senior levels, but I'm honest enough to say, and I've had this discussion with many old colleagues, you know, I'm still waiting for the day when somebody comes to an FBI SWAT team leader and says, I want you to go at five o'clock in the morning with 25 guys, all gunned up and arrest this 75-year-old guy for praying silently outside an abortion clinic. I think it would be nice to see the day where the guy would say, that's a really interesting idea, man, but I'm not doing that. I'm not the Gestapo, I'm not your secret police. It's not happening, my guys aren't going, you want my badge? Take my badge, but I'm not doing that. When they went to arrest Roger Stone, okay? On what, if you believe there was a crime, would have been at most a white collar crime. So what's the procedure in the United States, you contact the guy's lawyer and you ask him to come down to the courthouse? He shows up you charge him and then typically he's released and he walks out the door, happens all day every day all over America. That's the m.o. Nobody sends a gunboat and an armoured car and a squad of guys, with machine guns to arrest a man who's what 80 years old and by the way stands about 5'3 and, at that towers over his wife who has heart trouble and you're gonna go show up at his doorstep at 4.35 o'clock in the morning I mean come, on that's you are utilizing the law enforcement power of the United States government to intimidate political opponents. Straight up. Not okay. And I guess that infiltration, that change of thinking, that doesn't change just with administration. Something is deeper than that and there is no necessary quick fix for it. Well, I mean, let me let me focus on the CIA, but we could be talking about several organizations in addition to the FBI. Is it fixable? Yeah, I think it's fixable. I mean, first you have, but you need somebody who understands the outfit, because if you send somebody from the outside to CIA, they will be led around by the nose and played by the guys inside, and they will have no idea what's going on. But the key factor is really you have to have a president of the United States who says, go there, break as much China as you have to, fire as many people as you have to, get it back on track and get it back to work. Now, I've said this many times. I believe if you did that, and you went to CIA as an example, and tossed out folks who have clearly crossed the line on political considerations as an example, and just said, we're going back to work, We're going back to business, we're doing the people's business. I think you'd actually honestly have people standing in the halls cheering. I think the rank and file would be, thank God. Like, you don't go to CIA for the pay check. I mean, you don't starve, but you don't get rich. And you make a tremendous number of sacrifices, and you do a lot of interesting stuff, but you also live some places that are hard. And you certainly put your family through a lot of hell along the way. So really people come there for a reason and because they, as hokey as it may sound, they believe in the mission and they can see when they're not being allowed to do the job. They can see when a guy's getting promoted that has never done anything, but he laughs at the boss's jokes. They're not stupid. And tell me, some of the threat we talked about earlier, the Middle East, you've got that Islamic threat, you've got a completely different way of life and a different viewpoint on how things should end. But another article you wrote recently in the Substack, was looking at China and that threat, Biden meets Xi for talking's sake. And we've certainly had massive concerns here in the UK of that Chinese influence in our education system and much wider. You've probably had similar in education in the political system. That's another threat which is there internally and no one seems to want to deal with it. We've just had David Cameron coming back in the UK as the Foreign Secretary, one of the most pro-China political leaders in a generation. You probably have the same. So tell us about that. That article of Xi coming over and Biden being his lapdog, basically, being summoned to San Francisco. What's your concern of the Chinese influence and where that can take America? Yeah, well, let me state up front, you know, I was a case officer for the Central Intelligence Agency, which is what any normal person would refer to as a spy or a spook. CIA doesn't. Those terms are used differently at CIA. Anyway, what was my job? Well, my job is to do a whole bunch of stuff, but the guts of what you get paid to do as an ops officer, as a case officer, is recruit sources inside target organizations. So in other words, my job to do to the enemy what they're trying to do to us. It is my job to get the Chinese intelligence officer to work for us, the Russian SVR guy to work for us, to get a guy inside Al Qaeda to work for us. So when I say that, not like a hooray for me speech, but as a, when I'm talking about people being recruited and how this works, it's not because I read a book about it one time, it's because this is what I did for a very, very long time, with I think some significant effect. What the Chinese do on an industrial scale is they engage in what's called elite capture, their term. That means they come in and they recruit, they gain control of, they buy, whatever verbiage resonates with you. Influential people in target countries. So that's politicians, could be military officers, corporate leaders, whoever they think has power in that country and can further their interest, they buy them and they gain control over them. They don't do them a favour and then hope later they'll do them a favour. That's what diplomats do. They gain control over them. They stick their, they, you know, they push the buttons in your head, whatever it takes, man. They stroke your ego, feed you money, produce attractive young female agents. Whatever floats your boat, whatever is the key that unlocks you, that's what they do. That's how spies work. Okay, we know that. There's no controversy about this, not a conspiracy theory. It's done worldwide on industrial scale. Not surprisingly, target number one for the Chinese Communist Party Intel guys would be the United States of America. They do this all over the United States. God knows how many guys in Congress they have turned. God knows how many corporate leaders. Look at Joe Biden, right? I mean, again, let's stop beating around the bush and playing games. This is a guy who's taken, I think Miranda Devine's best estimate is at least $31 million flowed to the Biden's from China, from individuals who are directly connected to Chinese intelligence. So let's just take the ambiguity out. Chinese spies funnelled at least $31 million to the Biden's. They didn't give it to Hunter for his good looks, or because of his cocaine user. I mean, there's only one product that Biden's had to sell and that was Joe. The Chinese communists are a lot of things, they're not idiots and they just don't throw money away. So we know all that money flowed to him and we know it came from folks directly connected Chinese Communist Party and Chinese Intel. There's only one question left to ask, what did they get and are they getting in return? You might hand a chunk of change to Hunter one time because he claimed he could do something and then it turned out he couldn't produce and you think okay, nothing ventured nothing gained. We lost the bucks move on, you would not continue to hand millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars to these guys unless something was coming back the other way. So when you put Xi and Joe in a room together and people seriously talk as if Joe is representing the interests of the United States of America. I'm just shaking my head. I'm like, really? Because he's sitting in a room with a guy that, as far as I can tell, bought him years ago. He owns the man. And if you really internalize that, the implications for American national security and the entire free world are terrifying, because it doesn't matter how many carrier battle groups you have, or nuclear weapons. Look, I'm kind of a history nerd. Once upon a time, the British East India Company took over India. They fought a battle at Plessy, I believe, and they defeated a vastly superior Indian army. Now, taking nothing away from the British army, who did a superb job. Number one reason they won the battle, because they bought off the commander of the Indian army, who sat on the side-lines with something like 80%, of the Indian forces and watched while his master and the rest of them were destroyed. Like they just, simple solution, we'll buy this guy off and they'll sit on their hands and watch. So I mean, if the Chinese move on Taiwan tomorrow and you're counting on Joe Biden to be the guy that gives the order to the 7th Fleet to save the day. Good luck, man. What's your, just so we finish off, what is your big concern with the life you've led, with your experience, seen so much and how foreign agencies work, foreign governments work, that ongoing battle, to fight for, I guess, the freedom in the US. What are your kind of big concerns when you look at the US and what has happened? Because obviously a lot of what's happened has been enabled politically, but it's also been enabled in the media, in many, economically, that's been a way in for China. But what to you is probably your major concern of where America currently is? See, here's the way I would sum it up. I think since 1945, the American people have taken for granted the fact that the United States is the preeminent political, military, and economic power on the planet. That's just sort of bedrock, and it's almost like a law of nature now. So things are good sometimes and less good other times, and occasionally we get dragged into a war, and then after a while, we get tired of the war and we go home. Well, we don't think we actually lost our status as the number one power. And even when we leave Afghanistan, we don't think we don't really think of it as we got beat. We think of it as maybe we shouldn't have been there and we got tired of it and we went home. Nobody's dictating articles of surrender on a battleship like we did to the Japanese in 1945. And we sort of assume that, again, that that's, you know, U.S. Military's the most powerful, our economy's the biggest, yada yada. There are no, of course, laws of physics that says that is true. And we've touched on some of the reasons, but we could go on probably all day talking about there's a lot of really catastrophic stuff happening around the planet. Between the Chinese, the possibility the Iranians are going to get nuclear weapons, Pakistan falls and all of a sudden the Taliban has 200 nuclear weapons. Terror attacks inside the United States. I hate this word because it gets overused, but you're actually beginning to talk about things that are existential when it comes to the United States. You're actually, I've said this to numerous people, you could realize that the Chinese could move on Taiwan and a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier could go to the bottom of the Pacific and you realize you don't have one west of San Diego. And all of a sudden right there the status quo that has existed since 1945 where the Pacific is an American Lake ceased to exist guys but the Chinese aren't in San Francisco yet, but, you are no longer everybody in the entire all of East Asia now lives with a new reality, Nope, the South Koreans the Japanese. What are they going to do just fend for themselves? That kind of stuff is already starting to happen all over the planet, and we're either facilitating it or just blissfully ignorant to it, but we're not doing anything to stop it. What happens if the Iranians wake up? What happens if the Iranians detonate a nuclear weapon in the desert and say, we have 12 more? And guess what? But we already moved half of them to places like Lebanon, under the control of Hezbollah, to locations you don't know about and where you can't stop us from launching them. So you Israelis knock yourselves out bombing sites in Iran. We didn't tell you this until we had already taken steps. Now you live in a world where the Iranians can wink the state of Israel out of existence, literally, because Israel's a tiny place, right? Two or three nuclear weapons and Israel doesn't exist anymore. It is that danger. It's that like we're teetering on the edge of a cliff and yet we're not, don't seem to actually be doing anything about it. Well Sam I appreciate you coming on. I think it is so important for the public to understand the perilous situation which we do face and I've thoroughly enjoyed your many times on War Room. So thank you so much for giving us your time today in sharing some of those insights. Thank you. Appreciate it.

In hour 2 of The Annie Frey Show, Annie and the crew discuss what is important to the left. Later, Annie is joined by Tyrus, Co-Host of the Tyrus and Timpf podcast, Gutfeld!, Fox News Contributor, and author of Nuff Said available for pre-order. He discussed the current indoctrination of students in universities and what's causing it. Later, she is joined by Deroy Murdock, Nationally syndicated columnist and Fox News Contributor to discuss how Joe Biden is the greatest gift ever to Iran's Ayatollahs. They wrap up the hour with Halloween Take It or Leave It.

Listen to this segment of The Annie Frey Show where Annie is joined by Deroy Murdock, Nationally syndicated columnist and Fox News Contributor to discuss how Joe Biden is the greatest gift ever to Iran's Ayatollahs.

Negar Mortazavi speaks with Alex Vatanka about Iran's domestic politics and mass protests, the crisis of legitimacy and the issue of leadership succession, Tehran's deescalation with Washington and regional engagement with Arab rivals, and the continuous shift to the East towards Russia and China. Guest: Alex Vatanka, Director of Iran Program at the Middle East Institute, and author of “The Battle of the Ayatollahs in Iran: The United States, Foreign Policy, and Political Rivalry Since 1979”. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/theiranpodcast/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/theiranpodcast/support

Mobs looted multiple stores and damaged property in Philadelphia Tuesday night. Meanwhile, President Biden attended a fundraiser at the California home of a billionaire couple that funds the movement to “abolish policing.” 5) Large crowds loot stores across Philadelphia; 4) Target closes nine stores in major cities because of organized theft rings; 3) Biden spends 12 minutes on UAW picket line before heading to California for fundraiser hosted by billionaires; 2) Anthony Fauci was smuggled into CIA headquarters to influence agency's COVID-19 analysis; 1) Ayatollahs consider using artificial intelligence to help issue fatwas. FOLLOW US! Twitter X: @SkyWatch_TV YouTube: @SkyWatchTVnow @SimplyHIS @FiveInTen Rumble: @SkyWatchTV Facebook: @SkyWatchTV @SimplyHIS @EdensEssentials Instagram: @SkyWatchTV @SimplyHisShow @EdensEssentialsUSA TikTok: @SkyWatchTV @SimplyHisShow @EdensEssentials SkyWatchTV.com | SkyWatchTVStore.com | EdensEssentials.com | WhisperingPoniesRanch.com

September 13th 2023 Yuriy delves into Russia's long-term intentions and their alarming preparations for a century-long conflict, shedding light on how their war against Ukraine is just the beginning of a broader global threat with a startling revelation about the Russian school curriculum. You can email Yuriy, ask him questions or simply send him a message of support: fightingtherussianbeast@gmail.com    You can help Yuriy and his family by donating to his GoFundMe: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-yuriys-family   Yuriy's Podbean Patron sign-up to give once or regularly: https://patron.podbean.com/yuriy   Buy Yuriy a coffee here: https://bmc.link/yuriymat  ----more---- TRANSCRIPT: (Podbean app users can enjoy closed captions) It is 13th of September I have a friend in the army who urges Ukraine and the world to brace themselves to the prospect that this war may endure for another century. And he might be right. He has been in the midst of this conflict for almost a decade now, since the spring of 2014 when the Russians invaded Donbas. Since then, Russia has displayed no signs of willingness to relent. On the contrary, it is evidently gearing up for a protracted conflict, with Russians hoping to gain control over not only the entirety of Ukraine, but also to restore their influence over Eastern and Central Europe.  They don't even attempt to conceal their intentions. If you have even a basic understanding of the Russian language, just take a look at any Russian news broadcast from the past year and a half online. It inevitably includes accusations branding Ukrainians as Nazis, calls for the dismantling of Ukraine's current political system and threats to severely punish Europe and the western world if they dare to obstruct Russia's mission to annihilate Ukrainians. They construct a highly distorted narrative in which a country where a president is Jewish and the defense minister is Muslim suddenly transforms into a Nazi regime and the entire civilized world supporting this nation is automatically labeled as an accomplice of the Nazis. Recently, I had a conversation with a Russian acquaintance who relocated to another country a few weeks ago. She explained that she made the move for the sake of her children since their education in Russia primarily consisted of imbibing hatred for Ukraine, the United States, and Europe. Russian schools now have a dedicated subject aimed at indoctrinating children with this hatred, aptly named "Conversations About Important Things". During these classes, Teachers are mandated to inform children that all power in Western countries is controlled by gays, transgender individuals, and perverts who aspire to destroy the last righteous Christian nation in the world- Russia. In this context, aggression against Ukraine is portrayed as the opening act of this war. Teachers even tell children that Russians do not kill, rob, and rape Ukrainians, but rather save them from Western Perverts.  Other subjects also frequently became vehicles for propagandistic endeavors. In geography classes, children are taught that Eastern Europe must fall under Moscow's dominion and that the cunning West deceived Russians into losing control over Poland, the Baltic countries, and other territories. History lessons revolve around perpetual grievances against foreign rulers who supposedly insulted Russians for centuries fostering a belief in children that enemies surround them, necessitating revenge for past offenses. Literature classes have devolved into lessons in chauvinism with students being taught with genuine literature exist only in Russia, while writers from all other countries, if they exist at all, are deemed unworthy compared to Russian classics.  Once again, it is crucial to grasp that Russians are preparing the next generation for an unending conflict, one that extends beyond just Ukrainians. For them, the war against us serves as the initial phase of their confrontation with entire world. Shockingly, many Russians are comfortable with this situation. Much like my acquaintance who relocated from Russia so her children could receive a proper education, she remained in Russia while her country bombed peaceful Ukrainian cities, while Russians tortured Ukrainians, erected concentration camps, and carried out mass executions. I believe that if Russia continued its actions, but left the school curriculum untouched, she wouldn't have even contemplated leaving because everything seemed fine for her and her children. She displayed minimal interest in the actions of her country in Ukraine, done in her name and on behalf of all other Russians.  Nonetheless, let's return to the matter of preparing Russians for a long term, possibly multi generational war. It is crucial to understand that the longer Russia's conflict with Ukraine persists, the greater the threat to the entire world. A protracted war offers Putin the opportunity not only to indoctrinate Russian youth with hatred, but also to forge a new Axis of Evil. Russians are already buying weapons from Iran and at this very moment they are negotiating missile supplies from North Korea. What will Putin provide to fanatical ayatollahs and bloodthirsty Korean communists in return? Who can assure us that at some point he won't transfer them the technology required to create atomic bombs or even ready warheads? in exchange for their assistance in eliminating Ukrainians. Where will these warheads ultimately be targeted? Israel, Europe, the United States, Japan or elsewhere? Do you genuinely want to find out or would you rather not? In that case, be aware that the defeat of Russians, and it must be a comprehensive and definitive defeat, is not only a matter of survival for Ukraine and Ukrainians, but also a matter of global security.

Iran releases five Americans to house arrest after Joe Biden pays them $6 BILLION; the House Oversight Committee vows to subpoena the Bidens; and a massive brawl breaks out between a group of white offenders and a group of black defenders in Alabama. Click here to join the member exclusive portion of my show: https://utm.io/ueSEj Ep.1786 - - -   DailyWire+: Get 25% off your DailyWire+ membership: https://bit.ly/3VhjaTs Get your Ben Shapiro merch here: https://bit.ly/3TAu2cw  - - -  Today's Sponsors: ExpressVPN - Get 3 Months FREE of ExpressVPN: https://expressvpn.com/ben ZipRecruiter - Try ZipRecruiter for FREE: https://www.ziprecruiter.com/dailywire Boll & Branch - Get 15% off your order with promo code Shapiro at https://www.bollandbranch.com/ PragerU - Have your donation DOUBLED at http://www.PragerU.com Masterworks - Use my link to skip the waitlist: https://masterworks.com/benSee important Reg A and performance disclosures: https://www.masterworks.com/about/disclaimer - - - Socials: Follow on Twitter: https://bit.ly/3cXUn53 Follow on Instagram: https://bit.ly/3QtuibJ Follow on Facebook: https://bit.ly/3TTirqd Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/3RPyBiB

A special new edition of Roqe focused on the confusing culture of drinking in Iran. We all know that alcohol is officially forbidden under Islam. But we also know that most of the Islamic world, including Iran, has a long history that is drenched in drinking and culturally entwined with the consumption, celebration, romance, and medicinal practise of wine, beer, and alcohol drinking. So how do we make sense of this? Historian Dr. Rudi Matthee, author of the newly published book, "Angels, Tapping at the Wine Shop's Door: A Comprehensive History of Alcohol in the Islamic World," joins Jian to walk through the paradoxical past and present of alcohol and the Islamic world - including Iran under the Ayatollahs. Plus, a very special Roqe Roundup with Captain Reza and Smart Pegah discussing alcohol, hip hop lyrics and the latest from inside Iran including the latest reinforcement of hijab laws.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Pakistan's Generals can't risk opening a fourth front. Their surrender to the Tehreek-e-Labbaik last week demonstrates just how fragile the foundations of the State itself have become.

The Ayatollahs are nuclear.

From Atatürk to Erdoğan. From Secularism to Islamism. From a parliamentary system to absolute presidential power. Türkiye is set to hold a runoff election next week, on May 28th, between President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the opposition leader, Mr. Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. And the general consensus is that Erdoğan is in the lead. This has come as a surprise and a disappointment to many, particularly since there is much discontent against Mr. Erdoğan. But as you well know, we are not here to cover the news. So let's uncover the history behind this news. Atatürk is writ large in modern Turkish history. Many businesses and government offices (at least up to the recent past), hung his portrait on the wall. He disliked religion and "despised" Islam in particular. Accordingly, he set out to sever Türkiye from its Ottoman past - practically in every way. For example, Atatürk changed the Turkish alphabet from its Arabic base to a Latinized European alphabet. He forbade the hijab in many government institutions and essentially relegated religion to the private realm. Additionally, he pivoted Türkiye toward the West, especially the ideals of the French Enlightenment. Whether or not the Turks liked it, Atatürk drastically changed Türkiye and its direction into the 20th century. Dr. Sinan Ciddi, my guest in this episode, explains that Atatürk acted like a benevolent dictator. He is the "Father of the Turks", a title bestowed upon him by the Turkish parliament in 1934. Well, if all of this is true about Atatürk, then who is Erdoğan? How did Erdoğan rise to power in a country that was modeled after Atatürk's visions of secularism and Westernization? And how did Türkiye lose its parliamentary form of government that was founded on strong institutions, and replace it with an all-powerful presidential system of personalized government in which Erdoğan essentially rules by decree - like an Ottoman Sultan?  Per Dr. Ciddi, Erdoğan is essentially the anthesis of Atatürk, at least in several major areas that matter most to Türkiye and the world. And the danger that Türkiye faces now is that Erdoğan has imperiled its democracy, its secularism, and its international alliances and commitments. Dr. Ciddi is an Associate Professor of National Security Studies at Command and Staff College in Marine Corps University. He is also an Adjunct Associate Professor at the School of Foreign Service in Georgetown University. In addition, he is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Dr. Ciddi is the author of Kemalism in Turkish Politics: The Republican People's Party, Secularism and Nationalism, a book that we discuss in this episode. To learn more about Dr. Ciddi, you can visit his academic ⁠homepage⁠. Also, the shift from secularism to Islamism seems to be a trend in the Middle East since Iran's 1979 Revolution. In an earlier episode, Dr. Ghamari-Tabrizi of Princeton University spoke with me about Iran's dichotomy of an Islamic state pretending to be a Republic! How would one even write an Islamic constitution for a republic? Here is a Hint: Iran's Ayatollahs had no clue! Click ⁠here and listen⁠ to this fascinating episode. I hope you enjoy these episodes. Adel Host of the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠History Behind News⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ podcast ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠SUPPORT⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Click here⁠ and join⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.

YORAM ETTINGER, Former Minister for Congressional Affairs at Israel's Embassy in DC, Consultant to Israeli and US legislators A recent meeting convened by Iran to try and expand their "sphere" all the way to the Mediterranean Analyzing the "vision" of the Ayatollahs of Iran What lead to a resumption of relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran? PETER HUESSY, Senior fellow at Hudson Institute Assessing the nuclear capability of the Iranian regime Do Russia and China care if Iran has nuclear weapons? What does Vladimir Putin want the U.S. to do with respect to its nuclear weapons in Europe? FAITH MCDONNELL, Director of Religious Liberty Programs at the Institute on Religion and Democracy: A fight for control of the government taking place in Sudan A history of Sudan's government supporting terrorism Is there any hope for the citizens of Sudan?

In 1979, Iran's pro-Western Shah was overthrown by Ayatollah Khomeini, ushering in the Iranian Revolution and Iran's shift to an Islamic Republic. But the hope many people thought Khomeini represented, quickly soured as his zeal led to increasing amounts of oppression. And despite it all, this revolution still holds strong today, only recently starting to face real threats to its stability. So how has it lasted so long? What do the women's rights protests mean for Iran's future? And what was it really like to live through the revolution? This week, we're joined by award-winning British-Iranian journalist, documentary producer and author, Ramita Navai, to talk through the history and her personal experiences with the Iranian Revolution. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A new edition of Roqe as part of the Uprising series: Feature guests include Iranian-Canadian guitar maestro, composer and musician Babak Amini, who has been very active politically in recent months, and soprano opera singer Golrokh Aminian, both live in the Roqe studio. Jian begins the show with an essay suggesting that a revolution in Iran today is not only about the future but about returning to a proud pre-Ayatollah past. Plus, the Roqe regulars convene for the roundtable and discuss a new interview with Reza Pahlavi, the lackluster Fajr Film Festival currently taking place in Tehran, and the most recent viral videos about Iran.

Sinds de Iraanse revolutie van 1979 was er niet zo'n grote golf van protest als nu. Maakt de bevolking een kans tegen de wrede Ayatollahs? En wat zouden de gevolgen zijn als Poetins bondgenoot zich bekeert tot het Westen?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Taliban carry out the first public execution and death for hijab protester in Iran even as the Ayatollahs abolish morality police — ThePrint Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta explores the latest developments in episode 1129 of 'Cut The Clutter'. Brought to you by  @KiaInd  ----more----Read The Economist article here: https://archive.is/20221205231307/https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2022/12/05/life-under-the-taliban-has-hit-rock-bottom----more----Read The New York Times article here: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/04/world/middleeast/iran-morality-police.html

Susan Hayward, associate director of the Religious Literacy and the Professions Initiative at Harvard Divinity School, leads the conversation on religious literacy in international affairs.   FASKIANOS: Welcome to the final session of the Fall 2022 CFR Academic Webinar Series. I'm Irina Faskianos, vice president of the National Program and Outreach here at CFR. Today's discussion is on the record, and the video and transcript will be available on our website, CFR.org/Academic if you would like to share it with your classmates or colleagues. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. We're delighted to have Susan Hayward with us to discuss religious literacy in international affairs. Reverend Hayward is the associate director for the Religious Literacy and Professions Initiative at Harvard Divinity School. From 2007 to 2021, she worked for the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP), with focus on Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Columbia, and Iraq. And most recently serving as senior advisor for Religion and Inclusive Societies, and as a fellow in Religion and Public Life. During her tenure at USIP, Reverend Hayward also coordinated an initiative exploring the intersection of women, religion, conflict, and peacebuilding, partnership with the Berkley Center at Georgetown University and the World Faith Development Dialogue. And she coedited a book on the topic entitled Women, Religion and Peacebuilding: Illuminating the Unseen. Reverend Hayward has also taught at Georgetown and George Washington Universities and serves as a regular guest lecturer and trainer at the Foreign Service Institute. And she's also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. So, Susan, thank you very much for being with us today. Can you begin by explaining why religious literacy is so important for understanding international affairs? HAYWARD: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Irina. And thanks to the Council on Foreign Relations for inviting me to be a part of this webinar. And I really appreciate you and the invitation, and I appreciate all of you who have joined us today, taking time out of what I know is a busy time of year, as we hurdle towards final exams and cramming everything into these last weeks of the semester. So it's great to be with all of you. I am going to be—in answering that broad question that Irina offered, I'm going to be drawing on my work. As Irina said, I worked at the—I work now at Harvard Divinity School's Religion and Public Life Program. And what we seek to do here is to do here is to advance the public understanding of religion in service of a just world at peace. And we do that, in part, by working with professionals in governments and foreign policy, and in the humanitarian sector, as well as working with our students who are seeking to go into vocations in those professional spheres. And then my fourteen years with the Religion and Inclusive Societies Program at the U.S. Institute of Peace. So I'll say a little bit more about both of those as we go along, and those experiences, but I'm also happy to answer any questions about either of those programs when we turn to the Q&A. And I should say that I'm going to be focusing as well—given that a lot of you all who are joining us today are educators yourselves or are students—I'm going to be focusing in particular on how we teach religious literacy within international affairs. So I wanted to begin with the definition of religious literacy, because this is a term that is increasingly employed as part of a rallying cry that's based on a particular diagnosis. And the diagnosis is that there has been insufficient deep consideration of the multiple and complex dimensions of religion and culture that impact international affairs at all levels across the world. And that the result of that lack of a complex understanding of religion in this arena has been the—the hamstringing of the ability of the international system to operate in ways that are effective in bringing justice, peace, democracy, human rights, and development. So I'm going to circle back to that diagnosis in a bit. But first I want to jump to the prescription that's offered, which is to enhance religious literacy using various resources, trainings, courses, and ways that are relevant for foreign policymakers and those working across the international system, as well as those students who are in the schools of international affairs, or other schools and planning to go into this space, into this profession. So the definition that we use here at Harvard Divinity School—and this is one that has been adopted by the American Academy of Religion, which is the scholarly guild for religious studies—defines it in this way: Religious literacy is the—entails the ability to discern and analyze the fundamental intersections of religion and social, political, and cultural life through multiple lenses. So specifically, one who is religious literate will possess a basic understanding of different religious traditions, including sort of fundamental beliefs and practices and contemporary manifestation of different religious traditions, as well as how they arose out of and continue to be shaped by particular social, historical, and cultural contexts. And the ability to discern and explore the religious dimensions of political, social, and cultural expressions across time and space. So this gets broken down in two different ways—three, according to me. But that definition focuses on two in particular. One is often referred to as the confessional approach or the substantive approach. So that's looking at understanding different religious traditions and their manifestations in different places. That's understanding something fundamental about the difference between Theravada Buddhism and Vajrayana Buddhism, for example. Or how Islam is practiced, and dominantly practiced in Nigeria, versus in North America, for example. The second approach is the religious studies approach. Which is sometimes also called the functional approach. So that's the ability to be able to analyze the ways in which religions in complex ways are really intersecting with social, and political, and economic life, even if not explicitly so. But in implicit, embedded ways shaping different kinds of economic systems, social systems, and political systems, and being able to analyze and see that, and so ask particular questions and consider different kinds of policy solutions—diagnoses and solutions that can take that into account. And then finally, I add the religious engagement approach. That particularly comes out of my work when I was at USIP and working with foreign policymakers in the State Department and elsewhere. To some extent, overseas as well, those in the diplomatic sector. Which I understand is determining whether, when, and how to engage with specifically defined religious institutions, actors, and interests, including on issues related, for example, with religious freedom, in ways that are inclusive, just, strategic, and, importantly for the U.S. context, legal. So abiding by the Establishment Clause of the Constitution. Now, all three types of religious literacy defined here depend on three principles or ideas. So the first is that they understand religions as lived, as constituted by humans who are constantly interpreting and reinterpreting their religious traditions. This means that as a result they are internally diverse, sometimes very internally contradictory. They'll have different religious interpretations with respect to particular human rights issues, particular social issues, issues related to gender, and so on and so forth. That they change over time. That that sort of complex interpretive process that is going on within religious traditions also leads to kind of larger normative changes within religious traditions over history in different temporal contexts. And that they're culturally embedded. So as the question I was asking earlier, how is Islam, as it's understood and practiced in Nigeria, different from how it's understood and practiced in North America, for example. There are ways in which the particular religious interpretations and practices of a tradition are always going to be entangled with specific cultural contexts in ways that are near impossible to disentangle at times. And that means that they just manifest differently in different places. And this—these ideas of religion as lived pushes against an understanding of religions as being static or being monolithic. So that then leads us to ensure that there's never—that it's always going to be a problem to make sweeping claims about entire religious traditions because you'll always find somebody or some community within those religious traditions that don't believe or practice according to the claim that you just made about it. And that applies to situations of violent conflict and with respect to human rights, on global issues like climate and migration. This idea, the internal diversity in particular, is what is at play when you hear the phrase “Ambivalence of the Sacred” that was coined by Scott Appleby in his—in this very influential book by the same name. I'll throw in here a quote from Scott Appleby from that book, this idea that religions are always going to show up in ambivalent or contradictory ways across different places, but also sometimes in the very same contexts. So I think we can see that, for example, in the U.S. right now, and that there's no one, let's say, religious position with respect to reproductive rights, for example. There's a great deal of internal plurality and ambivalence that exists across religious traditions and interpretations within the Christian tradition and beyond about that specific issue. Moreover then, what religion is, what is considered religious, what is recognized as religious and what isn't, and how it manifests in different contexts depends on just a complex array of intersecting factors. I'm going to come back to—that's kind of meaty phrase just to throw out there, so I'm going to come back to that in a minute. So the second principle or idea of religious literacy that I want to highlight here is the idea of right-sizing religion. This is a phrase that Peter Mandaville used quite a bit when he was in the State Department's Religion and Global Affairs Office under the Obama administration and has written about. So I'll turn you to that article of his to understand more about it. But the central idea is that we don't want to over nor underemphasize religion's role in any given context. So just by way of a quick example, in looking at the Rohingya crisis or the ethnic cleansing of Rakhine State in Myanmar, one could not say it was all about religion, that it was about Buddhist nationalists who are anti-Muslim wanting to destroy a particular religious community. Nor could you say it had nothing to do with religion, because there were these religious dimensions that were at play in driving the violence towards the Rohingya and the larger communities' acceptance of that violence against the Rohingya community. But if you were to overemphasize the religious roles, the religious dimensions of that crisis, then your policy solutions—you might look at religious freedom tools and resources to be able to address the situation. And that would address the situation in part, but obviously there were other economic and political factors that were at play in leading to the Rohingya crisis. And including certain economic interests with oil pipelines that were being constructed across lands that the Rohingya were living on in Rakhine state, or the political conflict that was taking place between the military and the National League of Democracy, and so on. So addressing the crisis holistically and sustainably requires that we right-size the role that religion is playing in that particular crisis. And that goes across the board, in looking at conflicts and looking at the role of religion in climate, and addressing climate collapse, and so on and so forth. We need to always neither under nor overestimate the role that religion is playing in driving some of these issues and as a solution in addressing some of these issues. OK. So with that definition and principles of religious literacy in mind, I want to go back to the diagnosis that I gave at the—that I mentioned at the top, for which religious literacy is offered as a solution. The diagnosis, if you remember, was that there's been insufficient consideration given to the multiple and complex dimensions of religion and culture that impact international affairs. So I'm going to demonstrate what it means to apply the religious studies approach to religious literacy, or the functional approach to religious literacy, to help us understand why that might be. And remember, the religious studies approach is seeking to discern and explore the religious dimensions of political, social, and cultural expressions and understandings across time and place. So this approach, in trying to answer that question and consider that diagnosis, it would invite us to look historically at the development of the modern international legal and political systems in a particular time and place in Western Europe, during the European Enlightenment. As many of you may well know, this came about in the aftermath of the so-called confessional or religious wars. Those were largely understood to have pitted Protestants against Catholics, though it's more complicated in reality. But broadly, that's the story. And the modern state, on which the international system was built, sought to create a separation between religious and state authority. For the first time in European history, this separation between religious and state authority that became more rigid and enforced over time, in the belief that this was necessary in order to ensure peace and prosperity moving forward, to bring an end to these wars, and to ensure that the state would be better able to deal with the reality of increasing religious pluralism within Europe. So this was essentially the idea of secular political structures that was born in that time and place. And these secular political structures were considered to be areligious or neutral towards religion over time, again. In the process of legitimating this sort of revolutionary new model of the secular modern state, and in the process of creating this demarcated distinction that had not previously existed—at least, not a neat distinction of the secular or the political authority and the religious—the religious authority—there was an assertion as part of that ideologically legitimate and support that. There was an assertion of the secular as rational, ordered, and associated with all of the good stuff of modernity. Meanwhile, the religious was defined in counter-distinction as a threat to the secular. It was irrational, backwards, a threat to the emerging order. A not-subtle presumption in all of this is that the new modern state and the international system would serve as a bulwark against archaic, dangerous, religious, and other traditionally cultural, in particular, worldviews and practices in—it would be a bulwark against that, and a support for this neutral and considered universal international law and system—secular system. Now, I realize I'm making some, like, huge, broad historical sweeps here, given the short amount of time I have. But within that story I just told, there is a lot more complexity that one can dig into. But part of what I seek to do in offering religious literacy in international relations theory and practice to students, and to practitioners in this realm, is to help those operating in the system think through how that historically and contextually derived conception of religion and the co-constitutive conception of secularism continues to operate within and shape how we interpret and respond to global events within the system. And this occurs—I see this happening in two dominant ways. One is, first, in thinking about religion as a distinct sphere of life that can be disentangled entirely from the political, when in reality religion is deeply entangled with the political, and vice versa. And scholars like Talal Asad and Elizabeth Shakman Hurd have done really great work to show how even our understanding of the secular and secular norms and so on is shaped by Protestant Christian commitments and understandings. And saying within that, our understanding of what religion is—like, a focus on belief, for example, which has been codified in a lot of religious freedom law, as part of the international system—again, tends to emphasize Protestant Christian understandings of what religion is and how it functions. So that's the first reason for doing that. And then second, in understanding religion to be a threat to modernity, and sometimes seeing and responding to it as such rather than taking into account its complexity, its ambivalence, the ways in which it has been a powerful force for good, and bad, and everything in between, and in ways that sometimes let the secular off the hook for ways that it has driven forms of violence, colonialism, gender injustice, global inequalities, the climate crisis, and so on. So those are the consequences of when we don't have that religious literacy, of those potential pitfalls. And, on that second point, of the ways in which religion continues to be defined in ways that can overemphasize its negative aspect at time within the international system, I commend the work of William Cavanaugh in particular and his book, The Myth of Religious Violence to dig into that a little bit more. So what we're seeking to do, in bringing that kind of religious literacy to even thinking about the international system and its norms and how it operates, is to raise the consciousness of what Donna Haraway calls the situatedness of the international system, the embedded agendas and assumptions that inevitably operate within it. And it invites students to be skeptical of any claims to the systems neutrality about religion, how it's defined, and how it's responded to. So I recognize that that approach is very deconstructionist work. It's informed by, post-colonial critical theory, which reflects where religious studies has been for the last couple decades. But importantly, it doesn't, nor shouldn't ideally, lead students to what is sometimes referred to as analysis paralysis, when there's sort of groundedness within hypercritical approaches, only looking at the complexity to a degree that it's hard to understand how to move forward then to respond constructively to these concerns. Rather, the purpose is to ensure that they're more conscious of these underlying embedded norms or assumptions so that they can better operate within the system in just ways, not reproducing forms of Eurocentrism, Christo-centrism, or forms of cultural harm. So the hope is that it helps students to be able to better critique the ways in in which religion and secularism is being—are being discussed, analyzed, or engaged within international affairs, and then be able to enter into those kinds of analysis, policymaking, program development, and so on, in ways that can help disrupt problematic assumptions and ensure that the work of religious literacy or religious engagement is just. So I'm just going to offer one example of how this kind of critical thinking and critical—the way of thinking complexly about religion in this space can be fruitful. And it speaks back to one of the things Irina noted about my biography, the work I had done looking at women and religion and peacebuilding. So while I was at USIP, in that program, we spent several years looking specifically and critically at forms of theory and practice, and this subfield that had emerged of religious peacebuilding. And we were looking at it through the lens of gender justice, asking how religion was being defined in the theory or engaged in the peacebuilding practice and policy in ways that unintentionally reinforced gender injustice. And what we found is that there were assumptions operating about certain authorities—often those at the top of institutions, which tended to be older, well-educated men—representing entire traditions. Assumptions made about their social and political power as well. When in reality, we knew that those of different genders, and ages, and socioeconomic locations were doing their own work of peacebuilding within these religious landscapes, and had different experiences of violence, and so different prescriptions for how to build peace. So we began to ask questions, like whose peace is being built in this field of religious peacebuilding that was emerging? And the work that USIP had been doing in this space of religious peacebuilding? Whose stories were being left out in the dominant analyses or narratives in the media about religious dimensions of certain conflicts, and what are the consequences of that? So these kinds of questions are grounded in the recognition of, again, the internal diversity, the change over time of religious traditions. And they help ensure that analysis and policy actions aren't unintentionally reproducing forms of harm or structural violence. I'm almost done. So please do bring your questions so that we can engage in a discussion with each other. But I wanted to end by offering a couple examples of resources that I think might be helpful to both enhancing your own religious literacy but also as potential pedagogical tools in this work. So first is Religious Peacebuilding Action Guides that were produced by the U.S. Institute of Peace, in partnership with Salam Institute for Peace and Justice, and the Network for Religious and Traditional Peacemakers. There's four guides. They're all available for free online. Once I close down my PowerPoint, I'm going to throw the links for all of these things I'm mentioning into the chat box so you can all see it. But one of the things—I'm just going to dive in a little bit to the analysis guide, because one of the things that I think is useful in helping, again, to help us think a little bit more complexly about religion, is that it takes you through this process of thinking about the different dimensions of religion as defined here—ideas, community, institutions, symbols and practices, and spirituality. So it's already moving beyond just an idea of religious institutions, for example. And it takes you through doing a conflict assessment, and asking the questions related to religion with respect to the drivers of the conflict and the geographic location and peacebuilding initiatives, to help you craft a peacebuilding—a religious peacebuilding initiative. I have used this framework as a means to help students think through the ambivalence of religion as it manifests in different places. So I have an example there of a question that I have sometimes used that has been fruitful in thinking about how these five different dimensions of religion have manifested in American history in ways that either have advanced forms of racialized violence and injustice or that have served as drivers of peace and justice. And there's lots of examples across all of those dimensions of the ways in which religion has shown up in ambivalent ways in that respect. There's also—USIP's team has produced a lot of amazing things. So I'll put some links to some of their other resources in there too, which includes they're doing religious landscape mappings of conflict-affected states. They have an online course on religious engagement in peacebuilding that's free to take. Another resource is from here, at Harvard Divinity School in the Religion in Public Life Program. And we provide a series of case studies that is for educators. It's primarily created educators in secondary schools and in community colleges, but I think could easily be adapted and used in other kinds of four-year universities or other kinds of professional settings, where you're doing trainings or workshops, or even just holding discussions on religious literacy. So there's a series of kind of short, concise, but dense, case studies that are looking at different religions as they intersect with a host of issues, including peace, climate, human rights, gender issues. And it says something about that case study here—the example that I have here is the conflict in Myanmar, pre-coup, the conflicts that were occurring between religious communities, and particularly between Buddhist communities and Muslim communities. And then there's a set of discussion questions there that really help to unearth some of those lessons about internal diversity and about the ways in which religious intersects with state policies and other kinds of power interests and agendas—political power interests and agendas. And then also, at our program, Religion and Public Life, we have a number of courses that are available online, one that's more on the substantive religious literacy side, looking at different religious traditions through their scriptures. Another course, it's on religion, conflict and peace, all of which are free and I'm going to throw them into the chat box in a moment. And we also have ongoing workshops for educators on religious literacy, a whole network with that. So you're welcome to join that network if you'd like. And then finally, we have a one-year master's of religion and public life program for people in professions—quote/unquote, “secular” professions—who want to come and think about—they're encountering religion in various ways in their work in public health, or in their work in journalism. And so they want to come here for a year and to think deeply about that, and bring something back into their profession. And then the final thing, and then I'm going to be done, and this one is short, is the Transatlantic Policy for Religion and Diplomacy, which brings together point people from—who work on religion across different foreign ministries in North America and Europe. And their website, religionanddiplomacy.org, has a lot of really great resources that—reports on various thematic issues, but also looking at religion in situ in a number of different geographic locations. They have these strategic notes, that's what I have the image of here, that talk about, at a particular time, what are some of the big stories related to religion and international affairs overseas. And they list a number of other religious literacy resources on their website as well. So I commend all of that to. And with that, let me stop share, throw some links into the chat box, and hear responses and questions from folks. FASKIANOS: Wonderful. Thank you for that. That was terrific. And we are going to send out—as a follow-up, we'll send out a link to this webinar, maybe a link to your presentation, as well as the resources that you drop into the chat. So if you don't get it here, you will have another bite at the apple, so to speak. (Gives queuing instructions.) So I'm going to go first to the written question from Meredith Coon, who's an undergraduate student at Lewis University: What would be a solution for India to have many different religions live in peace with each other, especially since most religions share a lot of the same core values of how people should live? And how can society prevent the weaponization of religion, while still allowing broad religious freedom? HAYWARD: All right. Thank you for the question, Meredith. And one thing just to note, by way of housekeeping, I'm not sure I can actually share the links with all of the participants. So we'll make sure that you get all of those links in that follow-up note, as Irina said. So, Meredith, I think a couple things. One, I just want to note that one of the assumptions within your question itself is that folks of different religious persuasions are constantly at conflict with one another. And of course, there is a reality of there is increasing religious tensions around the world, communal tensions of many different sorts, ethnic, and religious, and racial, and so on, across the world. And the threat to democracy and increasing authoritarianism has sometimes exacerbated those kinds of tensions. But there's also a lot of examples presently and historically of religiously incredibly diverse communities living in ways that are harmonious, that are just, and so on. So I think it is important—there's a lot of work that supports forms of interfaith dialogue and intra-faith dialogue. And I think that that work is—will always be important, to be able to recognize shared values and shared commitments, and in order to acknowledge and develop respect and appreciation for differences as well on different topics—again, both within religious traditions and across them. But I think that dialogue alone, frankly, is not enough. Because so often these tensions and these conflicts are rooted in structural violence and discrimination and concerns, economic issues, and political issues, and so on. And so I think part of that work, it's not just about building relationships kind of on a horizontal level, but also about ensuring that state policies and practice, economic policies and practices, and so on, are not operating in ways that disadvantage some groups over others, on a religious side, on a gender side, on a racial side, and so on. So it's about ensuring as well inclusive societies and a sense as well of inclusive political systems and inclusive economic systems. And doing that work in kind of integrated ways is going to be critical for ensuring that we're able to address some of these rising forms of violations of religious freedom. Thanks again for the question. FASKIANOS: Thank you. Next question from Clemente Abrokwaa. Clemente, do you want to ask your question? Associate teaching professor of African studies at Pennsylvania State University? I'm going to give you a moment, so we can hear some voices. Q: OK. Thank you very much. Yeah, my question is I'm wondering how peacebuilding, in terms of religious literacy, how would you look at—or, how does it look at those that are termed fundamentalists? How their actions and beliefs, especially their beliefs, those of us—there are those outside who perceive them as being destructive. So then to that person, is their beliefs are good. So they fight for, just like anyone will fight for, what, a freedom fighter or something, or a religious fighter in this case. So I'm just wondering how does religious literacy perceive that in terms of peacebuilding? HAYWARD: Right. Thank you for the question, Professor Abrokwaa. I really appreciate it. So a couple things. One, first of all, with respect to—just going back, again, to the ambivalence of the sacred—recognizing that that exists. That there are particular religious ideas, commitments, groups, practices that are used in order to fuel and legitimate forms of violence. And I use violence in a capacious understanding of it, that includes both direct forms of violence but also structural and cultural forms of violence, to use the framework of Johan Galtung. And so that needs to be addressed as part of the work to build peace, is recognizing religious and nonreligious practices and ideas that are driving those forms of violence. But when it comes to religious literacy to understand that, a couple ways in which the principles apply. One is, first, not assuming that their—that that is the only or exclusive religious interpretation. And I think sometimes well-meaning folks end up reifying this idea that that is the exclusive religious interpretation or understanding when they're—when they're offering sometimes purely nonreligious responses to it. And what I mean by this, for example, let's look at Iran right now. I read some analyses where it's saying that, the Iranian authorities and the Ayatollahs who comprise the Supreme Council and so on, that they—that they define what Islamic law is. And there's not a qualification of that. And in the meantime, the protesters are sort of defined as, like, secular, or they're not—the idea that they could be driven by certain—their own Islamic interpretations that are just as authoritative to them, and motivating them, and shaping them is critical. So being able to recognize the internal plurality and not unintentionally reify that particular interpretation of a religious tradition as exclusive or authoritative. Rather, it's one interpretation of a religious tradition with particular consequences that are harmful for peace. And there are multiple other interpretations of that religious tradition that are operating within that context. And then a second way that the religious literacy would apply would also look at the ways in which sometimes the diagnoses of extremist groups that are operating within a religious frame doesn't right-size the role of religion in that. It sometimes overemphasizes the religious commitments, and drives, and so on. And so, again, we need to right-size. There are religious motivations. And we need to take those seriously. And we need to develop solutions for addressing that. And there are economic interests. And there are political interests. So there's a whole host of factors that are motivating and inspiring and legitimating those groups. And being able to take into account that more holistic picture and ensure that your responses to it are going to be holistic. And then one final thing I want to say that's not with respect to religious literacy as much—or, maybe it is—but it's more just about my experience of work at USIP, is that—and it kind of goes back to the question that Meredith asked before you about religious harmony between multireligious relations and harmony, is that I sometimes finds that engaging with groups that are defining themselves and motivating themselves with a primary grounding in religion, that they're not going to participate generally in interfaith initiatives, and so on, right? And so that's where some of that intra-faith work can be particularly important. I saw this, for example, in Myanmar, when their—when previously the movement that was known as Ma Ba Tha, which was defined by some as a Buddhist nationalist anti-Muslim kind of Buddhist supremacist group. The folks who were most successful in being able to engage in a values-grounded conversation with members of the organization were other Buddhist monks, who were able to speak within the language of meaning and to draw attention to, like, different understandings of religious teachings or religious principles with respect to responding to minority groups, and so on. So I think that's in particular, with addressing those groups, that's where that intra-religious work or intra-communal work can be really critical, in addition to some of that cross-communal work. FASKIANOS: Thank you. So we've seen, obviously, the war in Ukraine and how Christian Orthodoxy is being—or, Greek Orthodoxy in Ukraine, and the division. Can you talk a little bit about that and how it's playing out with Russian identity? HAYWARD: Yeah, absolutely. There's been some really good analysis and work out there of the religious dimensions of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. So again, the sort of dominant story that you see, which reflects a reality, is that there are ways in which political and religious actors and interests are aligning on the Russian side in order to advance particular narratives and that legitimate the invasion of Ukraine that—that are about sort of fighting back against an understanding of the West as being counter to traditional and religious values. Those are some of the religious understandings. And then that concern gets linked then to the establishment of an independent or autocephalous Orthodox Church within the Ukraine context. And you see—in particular, what's pointed to often is the relationship between Patriarch Kirill in the Russian Orthodox Church, and Putin, and the ways in which they've sort of reinforced each other's narrative and offered support to it. And there's really great analysis out there and stories that have been done about that. And that needs to be taken into account in responding to the situation and, I would say, that some of the religious literacy principles would then ask us to think about other ways in which religion is showing up within that, that go beyond the institution too. So a lot of the news stories that I've seen, for example, have focused exclusively on—sometimes—exclusively on the clerics within the Orthodox Church and their positions, either in support of or in opposition to the war. But in reality, on the ground there's a lot more complexity that's taken place, and a lot more of the ways in which different individuals and communities on both the Russia and the Ukraine side are responding to the violence, to the displacements, and so on. It paints a more complex and, I think, fascinating story, frankly. And sort of illuminates ways forward in support of peacebuilding. For example, there's ways in which different kinds of ritual practices within Orthodoxy have served as a source of support and constancy to folks who are living in this situation of insecurity and displacement, in ways that have been helpful. There are, of course, other religious traditions that exist within both Ukraine and Russia that are operating and responding in different ways. Like, the Jewish community in Ukraine and the Catholic—the Greek Catholic Church in Ukraine. So looking at those complexities both within Orthodoxy, but there's many different ways that Orthodox Christians are responding in both countries. There's not one story of Orthodox Christianity and the invasion of Ukraine. But also looking at some of the religious diversity within it. And that helps to ensure, like I said, one, that we're developing solutions that are also recognizing the ways in which religion at a very ground level is serving as a source of support, humanitarian relief, social, psychological support to people on the ground, as well as the ways in which it's sort of manifesting ambivalently and complexly in ways that are driving some of the violence as well. And it also helps to push back against any sort of a narrative that this is about a Russian religion—on the Russian side—this is about a religious war against a secular, non-religious West or Ukraine, right? That that goes back to what I was talking about with the historical sort of contingencies that are baked into this system a little bit. And in defining it in that way, Russia's religious and its motivations are religious, Ukraine's not religious, that's both not true—(laughs)—because there's many religious folks within the Ukraine and within the West generally, but also feeds—it feeds the very narrative that Putin and Kirill are giving of a secular West that is anti-religion, that is in opposition to Russian traditional values. FASKIANOS: It seems like there needs to be some training of journalists too to have religious literacy, in the same way that we're talking about media literacy. HAYWARD: Yeah. FASKIANOS: Probably should be introduced as well. (Laughs.) HAYWARD: Yeah, Irina, it's funny, we did—one of my students actually did a kind of mapping and analysis of stories about the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the religious dimensions of it. And she noted that there was—for example, it was—almost always it was male clerics who were being quoted. So there was very little that was coming from other gendered perspectives and experiences on the ground, lay folks and so on. And again, for that—for that very reason it's sort of—because we know so many policymakers and international analysis are depending on these kinds of media stories, I worry that it creates a blinder to potential opportunities for different kinds of ways of addressing needs and partners for addressing needs on the ground. FASKIANOS: Great. Thank you. I'm going to go next to Liam Wall, an undergraduate student at Loyola Marymount University: With so much diversity within religions itself, how can we avoid the analysis paralysis you mentioned and take in as many unique perspectives as possible, without letting that stand in the way of progress? How does one know that they have enough religious literacy and can now become an effective practitioner? HAYWARD: Well, OK, the bad news is that you will never have enough religious literacy. (Laughs.) This is a process, not an end. There are scholars here at Harvard who have been studying one particular sect of a particular religious tradition for their entire adult lives, and they would still say that they are students of those traditions, because they're so complex. Because so many of these traditions are composed of a billion people or just—just 500 million people. But that means that there's going to be an incredible diversity to explore. And so that's the bad news. But the good news is, one, like, first take the burden off of your shoulders of having to be an expert on any one particular religious tradition, in order to be able to help to develop and enhance your own religious literacy, and those of others, and to operate in ways that reflect the principles of religious literacy, is the good news. As well as there are many different kinds of resources that you can turn to in order to understand, for example if you're going to be working in a particular geographic location, scholarship, people you can speak to in order to begin to understand at least some of the specific manifestations and practices, and some of the disputes and diversity that exists within that particular country or geographic location across religious traditions. But, secondly, I would say, it's almost more important than—like, the substance is important. But what's just as important, if not more important, is understanding what kinds of questions to be asking, and to be curious about these religious questions and their intersection with the political and social. So we sometimes say that religious literacy is about developing habits of mind in how we think about these religious questions, and what kinds of questions we ask about religion. So it's about developing that kind of a reflex to be able to kind of see what's underneath some of the analysis that you're seeing that might be relevant to religion or that might be advancing particularly problematic understandings of religion, or reinforcing binaries like the secular and the religious and so on. And that's just as—just as important. So the extent to which you're continuing to, like, hone those—that way of thinking, and those habits of mind, that will set you up well for then going into this space and being able to ask those particular questions with respect to whatever issues you're focusing on, or whatever geographic location you're looking at. FASKIANOS: Great. I'm going to go next to Mohamed Bilal, a postgraduate student at the Postgraduate Institute of Management in Sri Lanka. HAYWARD: Yay! FASKIANOS: Yes. How does sectarianism influence our literacy? In turn, if we are influenced by sectarianism, then would we be illiterate of the religion but literate of the sect? Thus, wouldn't such a religious literacy perpetuate sectarianism? HAYWARD: Thank you for the question, Mohamed. It's—I miss Sri Lanka. I have not been there in too long, and I look forward to going back at some point. So I would say sectarianism, in the sense of—so, there's both religious sects, right? There's the existence of different kinds of religious traditions, interpretive bodies, jurisprudential bodies in the case of Islam. And then broader, different schools or denominations. The term that's used depends on the different religious tradition. And that reflects internal diversity. Sectarianism, with the -ism on the end of it, gets back to the same kinds of questions that I think Professor Clemente was asking with respect to fundamentalism. That's about being sort of entrenched in an idea that your particular religious understanding and practice is the normative, authentic, and pure practice, and that all others are false in some ways. That is a devotional claim or—what I mean by a devotional claim, is that is a knowledge claim that is rooted within a particular religious commitment and understanding. And so religious literacy in this case would—again, it's the principles of internal diversity, recognizing that different sects and different bodies of thought and practice are going to exist within religious traditions, but then also ensuring that any claim to be normative or to be orthodox by any of these different interpretive bodies is always a claim that is rooted within that religious tradition that we sometimes say is authentic. It's authentic to those communities and what they believe. But it's not exclusive. It's not the only claim that exists within that religious tradition more broadly. And the concern is about—sects are fine. Different denominations, different interpretative bodies are fine and a good and sort of natural thing, given the breadth and the depth of these religious traditions. The problem is that -ism part of it, when it becomes a source of competition or even potentially violence between groups. And so that's what needs to be interrogated and understood. FASKIANOS: So another question from John Francis, who's the senior associate vice president for academic affairs at the University of Utah: If you were training new diplomats in other countries to be stationed in the United States, where a wide range of religious traditions thrive, how would you prepare them for dealing with such religious variation? HAYWARD: The same way I would—and thank you, again, for the question. The same way that I would with any other diplomats going to any other—the same way I do with foreign service officers at the Foreign Service Institute, who are going to work overseas. I would—I would invite them to think about their own assumptions and their own worldviews and their own understandings of what religion is, based on their own contexts that they grew up in. So how that shapes how they understand what religion is, in the ways I was speaking to before. So for example, in Protestant Christianity, we tend to emphasize belief as the sort of core principle of religious traditions. But other religious traditions might emphasize different forms of practice or community as sort of the central or principal factor. So recognizing your own situatedness and the ways in which you understand and respond to different religious traditions. I would invite those who are coming to work here to read up on the historical developments and reality of different religious communities and nonreligious communities in the U.S. and encourage them to look not just at some of the—what we call the world religions, or the major religions, but also at indigenous traditions and different practices within different immigrant communities. And I would have them look at the historical relationship between the state and different religious communities as well, including the Mormon tradition there in Utah, and how the experience of, for example, the Mormon community has shaped its own relationship with the state, with other religious communities on a whole host of issues as well. And then I would encourage—just as I was saying earlier—no diplomat going to the U.S. is going to become an expert on the religious context in the U.S., because it's incredibly complex, just like anywhere else in the world. But to be able to have sort of a basic understanding to be able to then continue to ask the kinds of questions that are going to help to understand how any political action is taken or response to any policy issues kind of inevitably bumps up against particular religious or cultural commitments and values. FASKIANOS: Great. I'm going to take the next question from Will Carpenter, director of private equity principal investments at the Teacher Retirement System of Texas, and also taking a course at the Harvard Extension School. HAYWARD: Hey! FASKIANOS: I'm going to ask the second part of Will's question. How will the current polarized domestic debate regarding U.S. history, which is often colored by the extremes—as a force for good only versus tainted by a foundation of injustice—impact America's capacity to lead internationally? HAYWARD: Hmm, a lot. (Laughter.) Thank you for the question. I mean, I think the fact of polarization in the U.S. and the increasing difficulty that we're facing in being able to have really deep conversations and frank conversations about historical experiences and perceptions of different communities, not just religiously, not just racially even, but across different—urban-rural, across socioeconomic divides, across educational divides and, of course, across political divides, and so on. I think that—I think that absolutely hampers our ability to engage within the global stage effectively. One, just because of the image that it gives to the rest of the world. So how can we—how can we have an authentic moral voice when we ourselves are having such a hard time engaging with one other in ways that reflect those values and that are grounded within those values? But also because I think get concern—with respect to religion questions in particular—I get concern about the increasing polarization and partisanization of religion in foreign policy and issues of religious freedom, and so on. Which means that we're going to constantly have this sort of swinging back and forth then between Republican and Democratic administrations on how we understand and engage issues related to religion and foreign policy, different religious communities in particular, like Muslim communities worldwide, or on issues of religious freedom. So I think it's incredibly critical—always has been, but is particularly right now at this historical moment—for us to be in the U.S. doing this hard work of having these conversations, and hearing, and listening to one another, and centering and being open about our values and having these conversations on that level of values. To be able to politically here in the U.S., much less overseas, to be able to work in ways that are effective. Irina, you're muted. FASKIANOS: Thank you. (Laughs.) With that, we are at the end of our time. Thank you so much for this. This has been a really important hour of discussion. Again, we will send out the link to the webinar, as well as all the resources that you mentioned, Susan. Sorry we didn't have the chat open so that we could focus on what you were saying and all the questions and comments that came forward. So we appreciate it. And thank you so much, again, for your time, Susan Hayward. And I just want to remind everybody that this is the last webinar of the semester, but we will be announcing the Winter/Spring Academic Webinar lineup in our Academic bulletin. And if you're not already subscribed to that, you can email us at cfracademic@cfr.org. Just as a reminder, you can learn about CFR paid internships for students and fellowships for professors at CFR.org/careers. Follow @CFR_Academic on Twitter and visit CFR.org, ForeignAffairs.com, and ThinkGlobalHealth.org for research and analysis on global issues. Good luck with your exams. (Laughs.) Grading, taking them, et cetera. Wishing you all a happy Thanksgiving. And we look forward to seeing you again next semester. So, again, thank you to Susan Hayward. HAYWARD: Thank you, everybody. Take care.

Another Roqe Special Edition featuring interviews with anti-regime individuals inside Iran as the 2022 revolution builds momentum. Once again, Jian is joined by brave protesters who give a rare first-hand account of the ongoing developments inside Iran despite heavy internet blockages and continued crackdowns. Behgol, a young graphic artist joins Jian from the south of Iran. Bardia, a tourism industry worker who travels the country and protests at various stops is on the line from Tehran. And Sami, a documentarian and comedian also in Tehran, shares his experiences out on the streets. Plus, the Roqe on-air Team discuss the latest news from the uprising and Jian does an opening essay entitled, “Hey Ayatollahs, you won't win this war.”

With the protests in Iran escalating, I am beginning to see parralels with the first Palestinian Intifada of 1987 +.  There may also be parallels with the anti-Shah protests of 1978 that brought the Ayatollah Khomeini to power but I have not had time to think of those points through.  However the common thread in all three sets of protests are that the security forces kill someone during a demonstration and then there are follow up demonstrations to protest that killing.  It just keeps escalating.  And the security forces go into stupid mode and keep thinking that they can suppress the protests with violence.The current protests may be suppressed or may fizzle out.  We can't tell.  But as of October 9  over 150 people have been killed by the security forces, and many, many, many detained.  ps.  Please don't tell the Ayatollahs that  I think they are behaving like Israelis.  

Today's episode challenges preconceived notions about Iranian society, the hijab, and the regime clinging to power in Tehran. Joining us today for a highly enlightening conversation are two Iran experts, Marjan Keypour Greenblatt and Alex Vatanka. Marjan is the founder and director of the Alliance for Rights of All Minorities (ARAM), a non-resident scholar with MEI's Iran Program, and a member of the Anti-Defamation League's Task Force on Middle East Minorities. Alex is the director of MEI's Iran Program and a Senior Fellow with the Frontier Europe Initiative. He is the author of the 2021 book The Battle of the Ayatollahs in Iran: The United States, Foreign Policy and Political Rivalry Since 1979.

It's been a year since the U.S. military's disastrous pullout from Afghanistan left allies, colleagues, and up to 1,000 American citizens there to fend for themselves. Though the new Taliban government promised to respect human rights, especially the rights of women, it's turned out as many expected.   Universities and primary schools are open to women, but girls over age 11 are locked out of secondary schools, women are only permitted to work in education and health, must keep their faces covered, and must be accompanied by a male guardian for long-distance travel. And, swift and cruel punishments for breaking these rules also have returned.  Though the Taliban deny it, a division is growing between a political wing that wants better relations with the outside world (and therefore wants to relax restrictions on women) and clerics in Kandahar who, like the Ayatollahs in Iran, dictate policy on the ground.   We often hear that all worldviews are equal, all religions the same, and we shouldn't impose our values on anyone else. The truth is that our ideas about the world and human beings have real consequences and real victims. 

Tom, Ella and Fraser discuss the fallout from the Rushdie attack. Order your copy of ‘How Woke Won' by Joanna Williams: https://www.spiked-online.com/shop/  Donate to spiked: https://www.spiked-online.com/donate/  Become a spiked supporter: https://www.spiked-online.com/supporters/  Sign up to spiked's newsletters: https://www.spiked-online.com/newsletters/  Sponsored by ExpressVPN: https://www.expressvpn.com/spiked

Ashton is joined by Historian Daniel Chirot to discuss the major revolutions that have taken place throughout history - The American Revolution, The French Revolution, The Russian Revolution, The Nazi Revolution, and the Iranian Revolution. What do these have in common? Could they have been stopped? What can be learned from them?This was a fascinating discussion any history buff will be sure to enjoy. Daniel Chirot is a historian, professor and author of You Say You Want a Revolution?: Radical Idealism and Its Tragic ConsequencesSubscribe to Ashton Cohen: ELECTile Dysfunction Podcast on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ashton-cohen-the-electile-dysfunction-podcast/id1565208599Subscribe to Ashton Cohen: ELECTile Dysfunction Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6siXVSwM2OWz3itH90YRNA?si=v5MUMEpwTSG_sVGPOKHP8wSubscribe to Ashton's channel on Youtube: youtube.com/c/ashtoncohenFollow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/theashtoncohenFollow on TikTok: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZM8nQjHta/Follow on Instagram: instagram.com/theashtoncohenFollow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theAshtonCohen

“Persian Language Under the Ayatollahs” - Part 32 of the Roqe Media series, The Contemporary History of Iran. The Islamic Revolution of 1979 created seismic shifts in Iranian society, but what effect did it have on language? What impact did the Islamic Republic's attempts to Islamize language in Iran have on the way Persians speak? Iranian-Canadian linguist, author, and curator of Iranian cinema and Persian literature, Dr. Khatereh Sheibani, professor of Persian Studies at York University, joins Jian Ghomeshi from Toronto, to discuss how the Persian lexicon has changed since the period of the Shah, and how resistance to the current Iranian government has created a new vernacular as well.

Who is the Ayatollah Khamenei and can the US and the Western World Negotiate with him? What is the current situation like in Iran and is it on the verge of collapse? Can the people of Iran overthrow the Iranian Regime? How close is Iran to acquiring Nuclear Bombs and can they be stopped from developing them?Ashton is joined by Alex Vatanka to discuss these questions. Vatanka is an expert on the Iranian regime, serves as the Director of the Iran Program at the Middle East Institute and is an author of a new book, Battle of the Ayatollahs of Iran.You can learn more about Alex and the Middle East Institute here: https://www.mei.edu/profile/alex-vatankaYou can find Alex's latest book, Battle of the Ayatollahs of Iran here: https://www.amazon.com/Battle-Ayatollahs-Iran-Foreign-Political/dp/1838601554Subscribe to Ashton Cohen: ELECTile Dysfunction Podcast on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ashton-cohen-the-electile-dysfunction-podcast/id1565208599Subscribe to Ashton Cohen: ELECTile Dysfunction Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6siXVSwM2OWz3itH90YRNA?si=v5MUMEpwTSG_sVGPOKHP8wSubscribe to Ashton's channel on Youtube: youtube.com/c/ashtoncohenFollow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/theashtoncohenFollow on TikTok: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZM8nQjHta/Follow on Instagram: instagram.com/theashtoncohenFollow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theAshtonCohen