The Fight for Freedom Inside Iran | Real Talk

What is happening in Iran? Will there be lasting consequences after the death of 22-year-old Masa Amini and many others like her? What would a world with nuclear Iran look like, and how close are we to knowing that answer? Lisa Daftari is an award-winning Persian journalist and a Middle East expert who has advised Congress over the last decade. She answers these questions during our conversation. I'm so glad to have you here. Thank you for having me, and thank you for giving this subject some time. Well, this is your second time here at PragerU talking about Iran. I feel like you were here a few years ago. You were warning us. I don't know if we're there yet, as far as what you were warning us about, but it's certainly worthy of a discussion because things have gotten pretty intense in the region. Yes, and a lot of people are obviously calling it a tipping point for many reasons, right? So, the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back, and now we have Iranian people all across the country in Iran in all sorts of cities and all sorts of rural and urban areas out onto the streets telling us no more. So, you're from Iran or your parents are from Iran. Do you still have family there? We have extended family. I obviously have a network of sources there because I've been covering the region for such a long time and really being in touch with such a large patchwork of the population, all sorts of people in all walks of life. And it used to be the case, even 10 or 15 years ago, that Iranians were very fearful of speaking out. If they would send me videos or would give me quotes, they would not want to be identified for fear of retribution, for fear of government crackdowns. They wouldn't post on social media. They wouldn't want their faces or identities revealed, but now it's the opposite. And we're seeing such a tremendous amount of courage from those people. It's really different this time around. How did your parents have the foresight to leave? I mean, how were they not duped? Oh, interesting. Well, I don't know if it was accidental or not, but my father was a study abroad student to New York. So, he came out of the country when he was 16 years old. This is prior to revolution, of course. And he went back on winter break and he met my mother. And then they started dating. And when they got married, it was just before the revolution. They got married a year before the revolution. And their plan was to be in New York until my father finished his studies and then to go back. But they happened to be in New York during the revolution. And then they saw kind of what was brewing. And the rest of my family was lucky enough to get out just right before the revolution as well. Did they get out as in run away because they figured out that it's going to become a more Islamist regime? Or what made them think that they should leave? Right. So, they were in Tehran. Both sides of my family lived in Tehran. And you see things in the city, right? Just like when changes happen in the United States, if you're in New York or Los Angeles, you'll see it first. And you'll see what's happening on our streets. I draw so many parallels between what's going on right now. You're actually like scaring the hell out of me right now. Because it's like to me, I'm like, what are the things that people who knew to run away on time, what is it that they saw? And at what point did they know that they should run away? And how did they figure out where to escape to? I mean, I guess at one point, America was the obvious choice if they could. Right. But you know, when we see some of the craziness that is happening in New York and California, I'm like, is this the time to get out? Is this the time we need to go? You know, I mean, it's like a lot of people do a lot of people have, right? So a lot of families, or are we like exaggerating and like, you know, right. And time will tell. And that's probably the lazy man's answer to all things. But I think there's a point where people think to themselves, this is much bigger than, you know, it's brewing and revolutions don't happen overnight. So when you see that fragmentation, right, you see those cracks happening and that fragmentation happening in society and being in Tehran and, you know, holding jobs where, whether it's in academia or medicine, or you're dealing with a lot of people, I think you have a sense for what's about to come. So your parents were able to leave like with their money, but then you have family members who had to leave after the revolution and had to leave everything behind. My grandparents left buildings behind and left, you know, their everything. How did they leave? Did they get permission? They took one suitcase and then they came to see, you know, let's go to New York for a little bit until things calmed down. And then that was it. They left with their one suitcase. Yeah. And now it's impossible to get your property back because everything's been changed. The deeds have been redone and all of that. So there's a lot of people who face that same predicament. But, you know, again, they were one of the fortunate ones. And I consider myself fortunate as much as, you know, I've never been to Iran. I speak the language. I read and write the language and communicate with the people there daily. But at the same time, I do consider myself very fortunate to have this freedom, to have the ability to dress this way and look this way and say what you want to say openly and publicly. So, yeah, it's an added advantage, but also it's a responsibility that I feel on my shoulders to be their voice right now. So how are you getting these communications? Is it like through secret videos that they're sending you on Signal or how are you getting all this information? Right. So as you know, the government shut down the Internet. The Achilles heel of this government has always been its people. So they don't want the people communicating. They don't want the people sending videos out or even organizing protests with one another on the ground. So people have ways of using VPNs and proxy servers to get the information out, but they're mostly sending them through Telegram or WhatsApp or whatever they can get their hands on. Generally, Instagram and WhatsApp has been more difficult to access since the Internet's been shut down, but they find ways. And that's really the perseverance of this population. And this is what they're telling us. I mean, this last round of protests has been over the killing of Masa Amini, a 22-year-old girl who was taken in by the so-called morality police. And I hate that translation. It's not a proper translation, but it is a segment of the regime forces that are entrusted solely with the task of making sure that you are Sharia law compliant, that your head's covered, your clothing's covered, that you're not walking around with your boyfriend, that you're not touching, you're not kissing, you're not doing any of the things that they forbid. And a bit of her hair, imagine it's the year 2022, she was caught with a little bit of her hair showing and she was taken into custody. So it wasn't the whole thing was taken down? No. And I'll tell you the difference. You can always tell when you have a very religious Muslim girl because she'll be wearing a black hijab and that hijab will be very tightly around her face so that none of her hair is showing. When you have the more modern, contemporary, fashionable, trendy, it's further back. It'll be either a designer scarf. It'll be a floral scarf. It'll be a colored scarf that matches her outfit. It'll be worn very loosely to show some of her style, maybe her bangs, some of her makeup. It'll be worn more loosely. And she was, of course, contemporary. She was a modern 22-year-old girl taken into custody. She was beaten so badly. She suffered hemorrhages in her brain and she died. She slipped through a coma and died two days later. Of course, the regime is telling her family and others that she had a heart attack, but there were eyewitnesses that saw that she was beaten so badly that that is what she died from. What kind of videos are you getting? You're saying you're getting these secret videos from Iran recently. What are you seeing? Mostly it's the protests that we're seeing. So we'll see very courageous women taking off their hijabs, marching down the street in numbers to university protests. We'll see people chanting different chants against their slogans, whatever you want to call them. They're so beautifully written in Persian. They rhyme. They really give you goosebumps if you understand Persian. They show the different cities. They want to show that it is across Iran. So they're sending out a few different messages. One, that these slogans have picked up in steam and in severity. So it's no longer about a 22-year-old. Of course, that's the catalyst. And each time the people of Iran come out onto the street, it'll be a different catalyst. The egg protests, the gasoline protests, the bazaaris. In this case, the 22-year-old. There's a fraudulent election in 2009. Before that, you had the 1999 university protest. So there's always a catalyst. I remember when they tossed off the college students. That was horrible. Absolutely. And there's some graphic images from each time that these kids come out or the right now it's all ages. And right now it's called a feminist movement. But you see men on the streets. You see people of all ages. So each time there's a different catalyst. But when they come out, the message is always the same. Death to the dictator. The end of this regime. They're calling for regime change. Do you think people are going to just continue rioting or protesting on the streets for what, months? I'm like, how long can they even hold on doing that kind of thing? They've been burning down the CG headquarters and overturning cop cars. They went into the universities last week. And what they tried to do was, they closed off the university. The kids couldn't get out of the dorms. They just started indiscriminately shooting at these kids. We don't even know the death tolls yet. And what they wanted to do is make an example out of it because, as we all know, these big movements start at universities and they spread like wildfire. And instead of it being kind of like a warning for other kids not to come out on the streets, now we're seeing all sorts of copycat protests across universities in Iran and even high school students. There's a lot of video, and I have it on my website, with high school girls taking off their hijab. One of the schools even kicked out the headmaster because she was like, go back into your class. Trying to kind of shut down the protests. And the kids wouldn't have it, the girls. So we're seeing a lot of courage. We're seeing a lot of bravery. And I don't know if they're willing to let this kind of fizzle away. They're more committed than ever before. And they're more vocal and there are larger numbers of them. And as one side becomes more brazen, so does the other. So we are seeing more crackdowns. We're also seeing more courage on the part of the girls and all of them, the students. What a terrible time for these people. It's just awful. Imagine being a parent and hearing about these 16-year-old girls who are just shot at point blank. And you don't even get to collect the dead body, by the way. You don't even get to mourn your child. But then being a parent and having your child go out the next day, and being okay with that, and having to understand that your child has to do that. I mean, it's difficult. I do imagine how difficult it is. Because on the one hand, you want to tell them, keep going. Like, we're sitting here at the convenience of my office. Keep going. Keep fighting. Make sure she doesn't die in vain. You've had other incidents, but you didn't push hard enough. Keep pushing. Keep pushing. But on the other hand, saying that kind of thing is like, well, somebody's child is going to die. Somebody's best friend is going to be murdered. It's just... For what? For what? For coming out and peacefully protesting? It's mind-boggling. And this girl, Masa Amini, she's won. There's so many untold stories. But to lose your life because your bangs were showing? Yeah. It's unbelievable. It's absolutely crazy. I mean, the Iranians are extremely mad. They're also, the Iranian Americans are really mad at people like Oprah, and AOC, and Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib, and Nancy Pelosi, and the list goes on of people who have the platform and are not raising their voices. Why are they not saying anything? It just seems like such an easy thing to take on. It does, right? But I think that, well, in the case of some of them, they are just following the foreign policy of this country. And if they want to get back into the Iran nuclear deal, they don't want to ruffle any feathers. It's crazy. They want to give billions, they also want to tiptoe around the Iran regime. Just like we allowed them to have their visas and come to the UN in New York two weeks ago, and to do what? To prance around and to blame the United States? So the tune that they're getting, the celebrities are getting, again, the tune from the White All the Persians that I know in the United States are sophisticated. Really, they are. They're go-getters, and somehow you guys come here, you become doctors, attorneys, journalists, really incredible people. When I think of people who come from an Iranian background, it's almost surprising to hear that they come from a country that is an Islamist dictatorship. There's something that doesn't match between the government and the people. And so when you speak about how they're writing this poetry and they want to burst out of this oppressive regime, it really sounds like there is a serious disconnect over the years. We've heard about these protests, but every time there's a protest, things seem to get even worse. And I think the best way for me to at least understand what is going on is to understand a little bit of the history of that region. How do the people, that is a group of people that are so sophisticated, and Persians are generally not tribal, how did they get here today? Where did all of this start? Can you just give me a quick synopsis of that? Sure. And if you remember the Arab Spring of 2010, if you remember the talking points that we would hear in this country is when you create a political vacuum, you don't know what you're going to get. And I guarantee you that lesson was first learned in 1979 with the Iran Revolution. And the reason for that is the people did come out onto the streets. It wasn't in tremendous numbers like you're seeing now. It was more contained to certain cities. Right now you're seeing it all across the country. And of course, no society, no government is perfect. So when they were protesting certain aspects of the Shah's rule, they didn't know what they were going to get. They didn't realize that this was going to cause a revolution that would be supported by the West, that there would be a figure like the Ayatollah Khomeini to swoop right in and to steal the revolution. One of the slogans that you hear on the street right now, two, I should say, that are very telling. One is, what a mistake we made making a revolution. And it rhymes in Persian. So it's not as you say in English. So we made, what a mistake we made making a revolution. And another one is calling upon or evoking the name of the Shah, his father, and even his grandfather. So it's very interesting. The son of the Shah, the exiled Prince Pahlavi, he lives in the outskirts of Washington, D.C. He has not been in the country for 43 years, but yet they are saying his name on the streets of Iran. It's tremendous to think that this generation that's out on the streets, most of them are your age, my age, or younger, meaning they never lived under the Shah's regime. They only know this regime. And yet they are having this faux nostalgia for the government that their parents lived under, because they see their mothers went to college in miniskirts, in stiletto heels, in tank tops, with whatever hairstyle they wanted. And they're out on the streets saying, give us back our country. This was a stolen revolution. Give us back our country, our legacy, our civilization. And exactly as you said, the Census Bureau even has done studies on the Iranian-Americans being one of the most successful immigrant groups to this country. And I'm so glad you point that out, because the goal of the Iranian population as of 2009 was to say, we're different. This government does not represent us. We don't have reporters on the ground, but now we have social media. And if you remember in 2009, it was also dubbed the Twitter revolution, because those Iranians were brave enough to tell their own stories as citizen journalists. They sent us videos, we have no excuses to say we don't know any better. We know that they don't want this government. They don't want to live under Islamist Sharia law society, where the worth of a woman is half that of a man, where a woman cannot apply for divorce, even if she's being beaten for fear that she won't have custody of her children. These are the things that they're fighting for, basic, basic human rights. When you think that they're lamenting over the revolution, are they also lamenting over the detachment from the West? When I think about the revolution, I think about what an amazing relationship Iran had with Israel, with the United States, and then in come the Ayatollah and essentially change that. And essentially, he ran on this platform that Iran should move away from a relationship with the West. And that was his whole thing. And so do you think that the folks there are now recognizing that that was the mistake and that a relationship is a positive thing for them? Yeah, and that's really a great question to ask, because when this regime came into power, they had no choice but to do something to rally people around the flag. So they got involved in the Iran-Iraq war. Really quickly, they made for themselves this nationalistic pride that was based on lies and propaganda about the big Satan being the United States and the little Satan in the region being Israel. And they turned everyone to say, we're now martyrs. If your child died in the Iran-Iraq war, you became a martyred family. So you became more religious. You get the government handouts. So they pulled people in using this propaganda. Over the years, people realized we're isolated because of our government. We should be having Starbucks in our country. We should have access to Apple iPhones in our country. We shouldn't be sanctioned. We should have access to American goods. We should have a relationship with Israel, just like a lot of the moderate Arab states now have through the Abraham Accords. A lot of the slogans you now hear on the streets say, I don't care about Gaza. I don't care about Lebanon. I only care about Iran. There you go. It actually rhymes in English as well. So this is one of the slogans you're hearing is really a kind of a coming of age of the people. Nationalism in some way. Nationalism in some way, but saying, you lied to us. This is your propaganda. We want to be part of the moderate Middle East. We want to be part of the modern world that moves forward with modernity, to have access to technology. We don't want to have enemies. We don't hate Israel. And we're not here to suffer for the Palestinians and give our money to Hezbollah and Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Our money should go to Iran. And this is nationalistic pride, as you said. Do you think that the Iranians that live there and have been living there over the last 40 years feel like they've been duped when the revolution happened? Because, I mean, the Ayatollah has never said that it's going to become an Islamist country, right? They kind of work together with the communists to promise a bunch of things to the people. And it's classic communism, right? Or in some ways, almost like leftism. It's like, you know, there are other people who are stealing your oil. You're not getting enough money. You're not getting enough benefits. Let's change the regime. Give the power to the government. The government takes power suddenly before you know it. It's a religious, I mean, essentially they've been duped, right? Exactly right. And those are some of the slogans you hear. Not only that, but before this movement, I would hear a lot about how these arguments would happen at dinner table conversations, where the new generation would say to their parents, were you crazy? Like, why did you revolt? Why did you get the Shah out of this country when you had it so good? What was their answer? Their answer is that we were naive. A lot of them say, and I've interviewed dozens of Iranians who say, we went out onto the streets, but we just didn't know what was going on. Or, you know, I was a student and I thought, you know, we could have more freedom of this and more, we could have less censorship in the media or we can do this or we can do that. Very minor complaints compared to what's going on right now. And everything is relative. I'm not saying it was a perfect society, but I'm saying, listen to the people. And the people are telling us our parents' generation had it better, right? In the course of history, you always want to give your children better. You want time to progress. You want to give them more technology, more opportunity. And they've given their children less and they've given them fewer opportunities. And that is very apparent. And that is part of the conversation. And so now they're rioting. Obviously, we're hearing that the narrative that the Iranians are sharing with their people is that all of these riots are instigated again by the West. You know, Israel, America, they're creating these riots. And so they're using this as an opportunity to clamp down, eventually put on more power. It seems like every time there is some sort of attempt to either throw the government or push against the government, the government in Iran actually becomes even more powerful. Do you think that the death of Massamini or all of the other deaths that we've seen happen since, is it going to make any difference? There has to be, you know, one time that there is something that causes or is the actual last and most important catalyst to all of this, right? Because the people are speaking out. They understand that they cannot be the only factor in all of this. They understand that there has to be a push by the West, that Western governments have to support this, that there has to be international support for their movement. They need help. They need ammunition. They need technology. They need a lot of resources in order to take this revolution to the next step. But in terms of looking at this in the government's eyes, the vulnerability or the biggest vulnerability of the Iranian government has always been its people. It will always be its people. That's because that's how they came into power. So they understand that a grassroots movement, just like the one that took the Shah out of office, can do the same thing to them. And because of that, each time there is a protest movement like the one we're seeing, they're like, oh, there's a vulnerability. There's a vulnerability. We need to do this. We need to cut down. We need to cut the internet. We need to make sure we have more spies. Now there's texts going around. I actually got a copy of one where they are actually telling Iranians to spy on their neighbors, to tell on the protesters in their neighborhoods. And they will go after them, just like they went after these two women who sat at a cafe. It's a very viral photo. Two women having a breakfast, just like you and I, at a hijab. And they went after them and they arrested them. And that's exactly what they've been doing. They have asked people to spy on each other, on their friends, on their neighbors. And that's what they do. They create a society in which they can police and surveil and to maintain their control over the people. Lisa, what does getting the West involved mean? Yeah, it's probably the billion dollar question. It's a really tough question, right? Because these days, the West getting involved seems to be some sort of Twitter message or an Instagram post. Does that even help the Iranian people? What do you think the West actually needs to do? Right. So first, we said we need to have at least vocal support. And we got somewhat. We didn't hear anything from Vice President Kamala Harris, which has been very, very upsetting to Iranian people. There are a lot of memes about this going around on social media. This is a women's movement. We want to hear from our women politicians, especially the ones who are, you know, they kind of pride themselves on being women's rights advocates. But we haven't heard anything from them. President Biden did make mention of the protest twice by offering support. But then what happened? What does that mean, offering support? Verbal support. After that, then people are calling out hypocrisy because the Iranian people want to see the Biden administration move away from the nuclear negotiation table. You know, months ago, I should say years ago, the Iranian people, the average Iranian, who either was apolitical or center, left or right of center, would say, you know, having nuclear weapons for Iran is a nationalistic pride issue. So it's just like having a wonderful soccer team. Do we not want our country to have a wonderful soccer team? Of course we do. Like if America has won, why shouldn't Iran? Right. If Israel has won, if America has won, go down the list of countries in the region that may have won or are working towards one. So that that was the conversation. But now Iranians understand that the billions of dollars that would be released to the Iran regime as a result of the deal would only give them a longer lifeline to give them more money to put into their morality. The Iranians themselves that live there recognize that their government should not have a nuclear weapon. They understand that this government should not be entrusted with anything. And there is, you know, the saying, if our government had rope in its hands, they used it to hang us. Right. So anything that this government gets will not be for the people. Let me give you a better example. The billions of dollars that were released in the last JCPOA under President Obama in 2015, where did that money go? It did not go to relieve the pressure, the economic pressure on Main Street. That was the money that was flown in there on airplanes? Correct. Where did it go? Where? On a terror shopping spree. It went to support Hamas and Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen, the insurgencies in Iraq. It went to fund Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas. And the list goes on and on and on all throughout the region. Iran is the biggest state supporter of terrorism, individual terrorists, one off suicide bombers. If there is a terror attack around the world, you better believe that the Iran regime's footprints, fingerprints, money prints is behind it. So when people don't pay attention to what's going on in Iran, I always say it's not just Iranian blood that's on their hands. There is American blood on their hands. There is Western blood on their hands. Now, this regime being in power affects not only Iran, it affects the Middle East, the stability of the Middle East and the national, I should say, global security as a whole. What, in your opinion, then is the motive for our current administration to re-engage in the Iran deal? They are one-tracked, right? So they are following the Obama foreign policy handbook, which says appeasement, appeasement, appeasement. The only way, and it's almost as if two plus two equals four, they cannot move away from this configuration that they've created for themselves. When President Biden was running as candidate, Biden, for the last presidential election that we had in this country, he ran on going back to the Iran nuclear deal. He didn't talk about, well, let's see how things go. He didn't say there will be any preconditions. He just wanted to reverse what Donald Trump had done. In May of 2018- This is almost like a Trump derangement reaction. It's really a snapback. It's a snapback. And we're not talking about snapback in terms of punishing Iran's regime. We're talking about a snapback in terms of the partisan politics in this country. And when you look at the Iran regime issue, it truly, truly, like so many other things- If you had to exercise coming up with one good reason that the current administration is giving for re-engaging in this deal, could you come up with one? I really could not. We've had this conversation before because there is not one good reason other than they believe that this will fall into line with their line of foreign policy, which is the most dangerous foreign policy this country has ever seen. It is releasing money to terrorists. We are supporting terrorism. Every time a school, an ice cream shop, or a pizza shop's blown up in the Middle East, we release the money for that. So if you got elected right now as national security advisor and you had to make a plan for what you think America should do right now vis-a-vis Iran, what would that look like? We fully have to support- You want us to go into physical war against Iran? Not necessarily. What do you think we should do? That's not necessary and that's what the people of Iran are telling us. I think we have to take a cue from the biggest ally we have in the Middle East, and that's the Iranian people. The majority of 80 million people are telling us, they're giving us the cues not to get back into that deal, not to release money to their regime, and to starve them, to truly starve them. Look, the Iranian people are the ones that take the burden of the sanctions. So it's not easy for me as an Iranian or as a journalist or as an because they're the innocent ones. And we know that their regime is masterful enough to pass on the economic burden onto the people. But at the same time, the people are saying, we're willing. We are willing to take it all as long as we know that it's a short-term move in order to see a better future. Can you describe to me what sanctions would look like? I mean, we have current sanctions. What additional sanctions would look like and what kind of impact do you think they would have? Right. So we've had real sanctions on Iran. We've had diet sanctions on Iran. We've had kind of wishy-washy sanctions on Iran that never work. It's just sanctions in name. True sanctions on Iran would have to target the sectors that relate to the government, mainly in banking. So they would starve. They literally would not be able to collect, or to trade, or to get paid for anything. It would also obviously have to target the weapons sectors, technology sectors, cyber sectors. And those are probably the secondary. Banking being, I would say, number one, because you really need to starve them and not be able to bring in any money into the country. We've had some of those at certain times. The pressure campaign under Donald Trump was extremely effective. We saw that it was effective. We saw that Hezbollah was starving. There was anecdotes about Hezbollah in Lebanon actually putting up little charity boxes in supermarkets because they were not getting paid by Iran's regime. We know that it was working at that time. Under the current administration, we know that two things have happened. The Iran regime has been able to sell more oil to new partners, mainly China and Russia. Isn't part of that the wake of the sanctions where, okay, well, they're not going to do work with the West, so they're going to go and offer a discounted oil price to China? Right. And that's the point. It's almost like when you have mace in your hands, you're not going to use it unless you know that your opponent is going to be knocked out for a good amount of time so you could run away. Otherwise, you're only going to get your opponent to become more aggressive and aggravated towards you. In the case of sanctions, it's as if it's not going to cripple them enough to suffer the consequences. The only thing you're doing is pushing them to new trading partners. It's exactly what we're doing with Russia right now, where they're buying weapons from North Korea and buying weapons from China and buying drones from Iran's regime. The same thing. We have pushed these rogue states together to not need the United States anymore, to not need the West anymore, and to be able to basically have their lifeline by finding new trade partners. And that's exactly what Iran and China have done. They signed a 25-year deal to have basically reciprocated trade agreements for 25 years. Now, whether or not they'll be able to keep those agreements, China's not in the best state to keep it for 25 years. A lot of people say that their abilities are overstated and so on. But that's a topic for a different day. In terms of Iran, the regime has found many ways of finding loopholes to work around the sanctions because these sanctions in name only have been placed on them for such a long time. So the point about sanctions, if I were to advise the current administration, is you either do it or you don't. You have to commit to it in a serious way that will cripple the regime or you don't. But my main, main point to anyone who wants to know anything about what's going on in Iran right now, follow the people and follow this movement. As a great way to follow the people and the movement is through your foreign desk. Do you actually post some of these videos? We do. Our social media has been around the clock. We post videos that are coming straight from Iran, from the Iranian people. We post their slogans. We post the women without their headscarves. We post their chants. We followed the university protests over the weekend where a couple of the universities were kind of closed off and there was a besiegement of the universities. We do it all. So it's the website. You can follow us on social media, on Twitter. We try to keep up to date on this. So what I want to ask you is why should Americans care about Iran right now? Because we have our own issues here in America, right? Whether it's our own border or voter issues. We certainly have plenty of things to stay up late at night. Why should we care about Iran? I mean, it's on the other side of the planet. I always say there's something for everyone, right? If you care about women's issues, you should care about Iran. If you care about- Yeah, but there are women who are oppressed in other countries other than Iran, too. I can give you a whole list of them. Sure, but there are a lot of hypocrites on the streets of Los Angeles or New York or anywhere else crying out about women's rights, but then they're silent about the women of Iran. But I'll tell you, the reason why people like you and I should care about it is because we pay attention to national security. We know that at our southern border, which is a domestic issue, we know how many thousands of migrants that came through actually had Middle Eastern passports, Middle Eastern passports coming from states in which they cannot be vetted. There have been four or five members of ISIS just the past week that were caught there. There are members of Al-Qaeda- They're flying into Mexico and then coming in- They're coming up because they know it's a vulnerable border, and that's their best way in. My point is this. If you care about global terrorism, if you care about national security, if you care about the stability of the Middle East, it will always trickle into our domestic issues here at home. It will matter if you care about your child going to- I mean, before the pandemic, we talked a lot about security. I think we've kind of let our guard down a bit because of the pandemic. When you walk into a stadium, I, because of my training in counterterrorism, always think, they didn't even check our bags. But other people think, nobody's wearing a mask in here. So the terrorists know that we're vulnerable, especially right now, because nobody is checking for that. Nobody is looking for- We're telling them that America now believes in open borders. Well, at least our government does. Our people don't, but our government does. And they got the memo, or else they wouldn't be showing up at our southern border. And because of that, and because of the vulnerabilities that we have, we don't want, we certainly don't want to be funding that terrorism by giving billions of dollars to terrorists, but we don't want terrorism. We don't want terrorism in the world. We don't want it in our hemisphere. We also know that the Iran regime has tentacles in Latin America. They have headquarters and besiege headquarters set up in places like Bolivia and Venezuela, especially in Brazil. They have a large presence just at our footstep, and people don't talk about that too often, but they're here. They are here. They can reach us. They can reach the little Satan. They can reach the big Satan. And look, it only takes one time for them to be right, and for us to have the right lens in our foreign policy to stop them when we can. Do you think that the reason that our current administration is not as assertive about these things is because it's just easier to kick the can down the road, and the whole system of, well, in four years, somebody else will deal with it? Is that this appeasement thing kind of fits within that whole narrative of, let me kick it down the road so somebody else will handle the situation? Sure, but it also fits their lens of like, we're bad, right? We have to erase our history. We have to cancel our teachers, and cancel our police officers, and cancel anybody who wants to respect the United States, and yet we will bow down to our enemies, and bow down to the terrorists, and negotiate with terrorists, and give them billions of dollars, and shake their hands, because it makes us feel like we did the right thing. But it also isn't kicking the can down the road, as you said. This is the administration that didn't want wars. How many wars are we now involved in? How many potential wars will there be at the end of this administration? You know, you always have to think about what are our enemies thinking when they look at this country, and the division that we have here, and the foreign policy, or lack of foreign policy that we have right now. I mean, this is dangerous. It truly is dangerous. I'm not trying to be, you know, alarmist by any means, but when you have the opportunity to stop evil, where it won't trickle down into our hemisphere, whether it's in Latin America, or at our border, or coming into the United States, that's when we should stop it. And as a bonus, we can help the people of Iran who are asking us for help. What would be your final message for those who are tuning in to this issue right now? Is it a message of hope? Is it a message of get off your seats and do something? What is your message? I think there is a message of hope here. You know, I think I loved your first question, which was, you know, seeing the Iranian people tell us that they're more like us than they're not. They really are more like us, I think, right? They truly are. You know, they are not a communist by any means. They're extremely capitalist. They are so entrepreneurial. There is so much potential in that country. And the message of hope here is to say that they are not our enemies. So if they're saying to us, help us get rid of our mutual enemies, we should be paying attention. If they're telling us that we want to have a free country, a capitalist country, a country of democracy, a country where we have the same opportunities you have in the West, and we can be allied, why wouldn't we be listening? I mean, I would imagine that having Iran as an ally again, as it was in the 70s, to the United States, to Israel, would be an incredible thing for the West, right? I mean, that region is just becoming more and more dangerous. And having Iran actually become a country that seeks progress and not digression, would you agree with me that it should be in the West's best interest to make sure that that place becomes an ally? Are there other people who are saying otherwise? Are some people saying, oh no, America wants a war in Iran? I mean, you see these things on the internet all the time. Because people have lied to themselves. For 43 years, there are many, even academics, especially I should say. They are my favorite. The academics are my favorite. Hi, academics, love you all. Right. They have lied to us all. The reason I went into this line of work, I remember in eighth grade, my first term paper was writing about the Iran revolution, because I understood why my family had to live here. We were Iranian and we lived on the East Coast. But I wanted to explain to my teachers and classmates the difference between Iran's and the people. And this is really like, what is this, 90s, early 90s, about what that means and why we should be paying attention to the difference between the people. And this is years ago, right? And then, obviously, my line of work kind of changed after 9-11. I, again, was drawn to this line of work to contextualize what happened to this country after 9-11. Foreign policy is not foreign. It's domestic policy. Because at the end of the day, when we talk about whether it's Iran or the Arab Spring, or we talk about any changes globally, it's all for the betterment of our national security here at home, our southern border, Latin America, you know, all of it. And I think the Abraham Accords are the best case study for why we need to bring in moderate states. It's going to be that the globe will be divided into two parts, them and us. And them are the terrorists, and us are the moderates who want to live a good life. They don't want to blow themselves up. They want to live a good life. They want a new iPad. They want a new MacBook. And those are the kids in Iran, just like the kids in Dubai and in Bahrain and in Sudan and in Morocco and in Jordan and in Lebanon. And they should all be brought in under the same flag. And that's what the Abraham Accords did. And a lot of people throw around the term Cyrus Accords as a potential accord between Israel and Iran, because their populations are, again, more similar than not. We're seeing a lot of support in Israel for the current protests in Iran. And again, the world is speaking out. And, you know, if the United States, if this administration doesn't catch up with it, we're going to be left behind. We're going to be left behind. Well, the Iranian people are worth fighting for. And I hope, you know, I hope this this one actually turns into a positive revolution. Absolutely. That their efforts are not in vain. Yeah. Well, thanks so much for coming to talk to me. And I'll continue to pray for your people. Thank you, Marissa. And thank you for showing such an interest in these very important topics.