Full Comment - Iran’s ‘mafia’ regime won’t be giving up that easily

00:00:00.000 it's being called the 12-day war and it's already over Israel versus Iran the United States dropping

00:00:10.720 the mother of all bombs on nuclear sites to try and shut it down there was talk of regime change

00:00:16.560 in Iran for a little while but now that appears to be on hold hi I'm Brian Lilly welcome to the

00:00:21.900 full comment podcast today we're going to do a deep dive into Iran what do we know what is true

00:00:27.860 what is false will there be a regime change and who would take over and did the United States

00:00:33.140 actually take out those nuclear facilities and what about that prison that Israel struck to answer

00:00:40.080 questions on all of this returning to Kaveh Sharouz he is a fellow at the McDonald-Laurier Institute

00:00:45.760 native of Iran and someone who knows issues well here's our conversation Kaveh what do we actually

00:00:51.460 know about what's happening in Iran right now we'll start with leadership and then talk about

00:00:56.280 what's going on for the average person but we know a lot of military leaders were taken out we

00:01:01.020 know a lot of IRGC people were taken out what who's left in control and how much control do they actually

00:01:08.540 have that's a great question slowly things are coming into focus and we're getting a better sense

00:01:15.000 of what has happened after the Israeli and American strikes so for example for quite a few days it was

00:01:21.020 unknown whether or not the supreme leader Ali Khamenei was alive we finally had proof of life yesterday

00:01:26.920 through a video in which he looked actually he looked like he'd aged a decade in the span of a few days

00:01:32.280 and he it was a very shaky performance but he's still alive some of the folks initially thought to be dead

00:01:37.440 like his key advisor or the leader of the Quds force of the sort of arm of the IRGC that deals with matters

00:01:45.940 abroad the initial thought was that they'd all been killed but they're still alive and yet still I mean

00:01:51.560 we know for a fact that much of the upper echelons of the IRGC has been taken out members of the

00:01:56.920 security apparatus a lot of the nuclear scientists have been killed so the the Islamic regime still

00:02:03.900 seems to be in charge but in terms of how much control they can still exert that remains to be seen

00:02:11.900 at the moment I think what they're trying to do is assert control and show dominance so what the

00:02:17.820 the regime has started to do is to engage in widespread arrests of well-known dissidents or

00:02:24.260 even people that have been mildly critical of the regime and I think I see all of that as a as an

00:02:29.140 effort to a just kind of reassert dominance and also send a message to everybody that you know we're

00:02:35.980 still in charge and um we're not going anywhere you had a post about um one such leader arrested the

00:02:42.100 other day uh um Hossein uh Ronaghi what what do should we know about him I mean we don't know a lot

00:02:49.900 about most of us don't uh you do a lot about opposition movements there you know was a time when

00:02:56.080 they were growing in strength and then they appeared to be cracked down on what about a decade ago

00:03:00.920 uh what is the state of of opposition right now regrettably the state of the opposition is not

00:03:07.960 great so you know we have um heroic figures like the one you mentioned Hossein Ronaghi who's been

00:03:12.960 um a critic of this regime inside the country for a number of years he's incredibly courageous

00:03:17.400 continuously gets detained and tortured and yet he still comes out every time and continues to

00:03:22.980 criticize the regime um there are figures like this truly heroic courageous people and obviously

00:03:27.680 there's you know an opposition force outside the country but um unfortunately these forces have not

00:03:34.320 been able to consolidate they haven't been able to work together there's still some very deep

00:03:37.800 fractures in our opposition and I think frankly one of the reasons the Islamic regime has been able

00:03:42.180 to stay in power for so long is that its opposition even though the numbers are great in total

00:03:47.680 um they simply can't work together and um they often even work at cross purposes and so um the

00:03:55.180 regime divides and conquers and it really benefits from that fracture in the opposition so right now

00:04:01.620 the regime as you say trying to crack down on what remains are they looking for spies traitors that they

00:04:10.080 as they might see them who provided a lot of this information the Israelis seem to have some very good

00:04:15.280 intelligence on what to hit and where to hit yeah one of the things that the Islamic regime says is

00:04:21.700 that they're looking for spies and just the other day actually a couple days ago they executed

00:04:24.920 a number of people very rapidly you know moving them through the so-called judicial system and

00:04:29.140 hanging them um on the basis that these are spies now anything that this regime says has to be taken

00:04:34.760 with a grain of salt this is a regime that often executes dissidents by calling them drug dealers for

00:04:39.560 example so it would not surprise me at all if they took people that had no role in spying for

00:04:44.120 israel and and calling them spies and and killing them in the process um you know i i don't think the

00:04:50.280 unnamed people that they kill the spies were the ones that are giving them this very very um sensitive

00:04:56.300 information i mean what israel did on the first day of the attacks by taking out a number of irgc

00:05:02.840 figures a number of nuclear scientists this is not information that's available to low-level people i mean

00:05:07.460 these people are heavily guarded so it really must be somebody in the upper echelons somebody or

00:05:12.760 several people in the upper echelons of the regime uh that are working for the mossad um this is a

00:05:18.240 regime that's completely infiltrated it seems and um yeah i think the for the foreseeable future those

00:05:24.060 that remain loyal to this regime are going to continue to hunt down for for spies of the mossad

00:05:27.860 well given what you've been describing for the last several minutes can this regime survive we know

00:05:35.660 that donald trump has said look i'm not here for regime change uh i don't think he'd be unhappy if

00:05:41.720 it did change but he's not going to be the agent of that change so does the islamic republic of iran

00:05:48.700 the ayatollah the people around him does it survive good question i mean really depends on what day you

00:05:56.300 ask me if you were to ask me two or three days ago when the fighting was still happening and it

00:05:59.800 looked like the israelis were going to continue bombing um control centers of the regime i was i

00:06:04.820 was thinking that this regime is about to fall now that the israelis have basically been told by the

00:06:10.020 us to pull back and donald trump has changed this tune um it looks like the regime has a new lease on

00:06:16.260 life so whether or not it will survive is is hard to predict um but here are some factors to consider so

00:06:22.900 i just mentioned a moment ago this is a regime that's deeply infiltrated by israeli intelligence

00:06:27.680 what that suggests to me is that there's not a ton of loyalty there's not a ton of revolutionary zeal

00:06:32.940 um in its upper ranks um these i always often refer to the islamic republic as a mafia state

00:06:38.860 and um you know in a mafia state there's no real loyalty to any greater cause so that that

00:06:46.140 thing that would hold a regime together that sense of loyalty is now gone you have a deeply deeply

00:06:53.240 unhappy population uh that's very angry at this regime and has demonstrated that over and over

00:06:59.460 again by coming on the streets courageously fighting even at the cost of their lives they've

00:07:04.420 been saying that they don't want this regime anymore i think you will increasingly see a base for

00:07:09.580 this regime i mean this is a regime that probably has somewhere between 10 and 20 support inside the

00:07:13.180 country and even those people must be looking around and saying you know this is a regime that

00:07:17.220 performed very very poorly in this 12-day war that occurred so they must be their faith in the

00:07:22.940 regime must be shaken a little bit um and this is a regime that no longer has proxies hamas and

00:07:28.340 hezbollah have been decimated in the past couple of years um so all the elements are there this is a

00:07:34.080 weakened regime with an angry population ready to overthrow it all the elements are there for regime

00:07:39.760 change but the one there but there are a couple of things that work in the regime's favor one is

00:07:44.900 its propensity to use violence its willingness to use indiscriminate violence to hold on to power

00:07:49.880 it's demonstrated that at home in the past and it's demonstrated that through its proxies

00:07:54.120 so for many years bashar al-assad in syria held on to power through the help of the irgc and the iranian

00:07:59.860 regime and the way it did it was by just indiscriminately attacking his own civilians this is something

00:08:03.940 iran's regime will do and the second thing that might keep the regime in power is you know if the west

00:08:09.000 signs a deal with it allows it to allows the regime to re-access international markets and get

00:08:14.660 capital again um the regime may be able to you know give some meager um benefits to the public

00:08:23.540 especially its own base to keep them happy um so these two things are in tension but um my hope is

00:08:29.300 that um over time you know the people will win out but remains to be seen if i think back to five years

00:08:36.760 ago um and the the time and days leading up to october 7th 2023 do you think that the

00:08:45.400 the leadership in iran really misplayed their hands i mean they they had built up hamas they had built up

00:08:52.780 hezbollah they were as you say supporting um assad in syria they had the houthis they they were trying

00:09:00.320 to exert power and influence throughout the region in a way that scared the rest of their neighbors not

00:09:05.920 just israel but since october 7th hamas is as you say effectively taken out hezbollah taken out

00:09:14.620 assad's gone um the houthis aren't exactly what they were and and now they're hanging on for dear

00:09:21.420 life did they overplay their hand by allowing hamas to do what they did on october 7th absolutely i think

00:09:31.600 october 7th um aside from just the human tragedy and the evil that it was if you look at it purely

00:09:37.760 from a political perspective um i think it was a gross political miscalculation by iran's regime

00:09:44.120 and the islamists in hamas and elsewhere they had thought that they would attack israel israel would

00:09:49.280 lob a few missiles back perhaps take out you know a few hamas fighters here and there but it would be

00:09:53.680 business as usual perhaps they didn't think that the october 7th would be as successful as it ended up

00:09:58.020 being but whatever it was i don't think they calculated the wrath of the israeli public and

00:10:03.320 the desire of the netanyahu government to engage in this kind of war to actually stop their policy

00:10:08.840 of so-called mowing the lawn periodically just you know taking out some hamas fighters and living and

00:10:14.000 continuing to live alongside it they didn't calculate that the policy would change the doctrine would

00:10:18.660 change and it would be a wholesale attack on the infrastructure of the iranian regime and its

00:10:23.100 proxies um and you know if the regime falls and i'm hopeful that it will um you know i think we

00:10:28.760 will look back on october 7th as that decisive date when really the calculation in jerusalem changed the

00:10:34.840 calculation in washington changed and it became known to a lot of western leaders that this is not

00:10:40.080 a regime that you can bargain with that you can sit and negotiate with this is a regime that has to

00:10:44.160 be overthrown effectively their nuclear program um it has been start and go for a long time

00:10:51.500 they do you believe that that they were close to getting nuclear weapons i know there there are

00:10:58.020 people out there in western media and society trying to downplay this iran was no threat that

00:11:03.720 was in the globe and mail the other day for goodness sakes um you know people trying to compare

00:11:09.440 this to iraq and weapons of mass destruction what do you know and what do you believe they were

00:11:16.660 trying to do there i think they were trying to develop a nuclear weapons program and i believe

00:11:22.480 they were close now exactly how close they were were they a few weeks away a few months away i don't

00:11:26.800 know obviously that's for the experts and the intelligence community to assess but first of all i have

00:11:32.460 no doubt that this was a weapons program the idea this was for civilian use makes no sense there's

00:11:36.920 no reason why the irgc needs to keep a secret civilian nuclear program there is no reason to

00:11:42.560 enrich uranium to the levels that iran was enriching them at um so certainly there was a weapons there

00:11:49.360 was a desire to acquire acquire nuclear weapons um in terms of how close they were i i don't know

00:11:55.220 there are different um stories about this but one of the things i find surprising you know you mentioned

00:11:58.880 the global mail you see this kind of rhetoric in a lot of places is simply the willingness to give

00:12:03.840 iran's regime the benefit of the doubt and i have no idea why so many western commentators are willing

00:12:08.060 to do that this is a regime that has lied over and over again about everything under the sun

00:12:12.320 including the nuclear program which they kept hidden from the world and they lie to international

00:12:17.080 monitors um so given a choice between trusting you know western intelligence agencies or the iranian

00:12:24.060 regime i'm going to choose the west every time and i don't know why so many of our commentators fall

00:12:28.400 on the other side you've got syria and jordan allowing israel to use their airspace to carry out

00:12:35.260 strikes you've got uh muhammad bin salman the crown prince of saudi arabia i mean

00:12:41.680 we didn't see him dancing over the strikes but he was happy he had said recently how concerned he was

00:12:48.900 about iran getting a nuclear weapon and said saudi arabia does not want one but if they get one we must

00:12:55.660 have one yeah so i i think that speaks to like the level of confidence that everybody except certain

00:13:02.780 western commentators have on this issue and why they would believe a regime that shot down a plane

00:13:11.180 full of canadians and and ps752 and then say oh well i mean that was a mistake i mean no this is a

00:13:19.560 bloodthirsty regime that you know has carried out terrorism around the world while oppressing their own

00:13:25.860 people that's absolutely true you know the most hardcore supporters of this regime aside from a few

00:13:31.540 in in and around tehran seem to be at the think tanks of washington dc and uh you know in brussels and

00:13:38.340 in certain university faculties um anyone that has had contact with this regime including other

00:13:44.780 countries in the region know what a threat it is um this is a regime that has tried from day one for

00:13:49.500 46 years um when it came to power it has tried to destabilize every government in the region it has

00:13:55.440 needlessly gotten itself involved um in the israel-palestine conflict i mean that that's a

00:14:01.120 conflict that does not implicate iranian national interests at all and yet iran has been iran's

00:14:06.520 regime has been front and center in that fight it makes no sense it has fought the saudis it you know

00:14:11.400 obviously um was in a war with iraq i mean that was a war that iraq in fairness started but um uh you

00:14:17.160 know it was very involved in in the war in syria anytime there is conflict in the region iran somehow

00:14:23.100 seems to be part of it and all those governments are looking around saying well you know we would be

00:14:29.040 better off and the region would be much more peaceful without iran's regime and increasingly

00:14:33.540 you know these are governments that have gotten comfortable um with the state of israel they've

00:14:37.660 signed the abraham accords they're ready to structure a different sort of life in the middle east and yet

00:14:43.920 iran remains the holdout it's still the one shouting death to israel death to america and um you know it

00:14:50.140 would it would love nothing more than to kind of establish that shia dominance throughout the region

00:14:54.880 how badly do you think those mobs the mothers of all bombs damaged for now or for now and the other

00:15:04.640 facilities um obliterated damaged a bit again this is a matter of of open debate yeah it is a matter of

00:15:13.980 open debate and i don't know if uh you know my view has any more credibility than anybody else's i mean

00:15:19.640 i'm reading in the same newspapers really it's for the intelligence community to assess

00:15:22.800 um my feeling though is that um you know the regime probably anticipated there were going to be

00:15:28.660 attacks on its uh nuclear facilities it may have moved um equipment away it may have moved um some

00:15:35.420 of the enriched uranium away so until such time that is really in western intelligence agencies say that

00:15:42.200 this program is done and it's been destroyed and it doesn't look that way certainly based on the

00:15:46.640 reporting in new york times and elsewhere um i'm not comfortable i feel that this is a regime that is

00:15:51.080 going to pursue nuclear weapons and if it it's you know centrifuges are damaged now it will try to set

00:15:57.280 up shop elsewhere and do it for them i think for the iranian regime at this point now knowing that

00:16:01.860 israel is um willing to attack them and how much superiority in terms of power military power israel has

00:16:08.400 i think it's become an existential issue for for iran's leaders now so i think they're gonna

00:16:12.000 if they've been able to preserve anything from from those nuclear sites they're going to

00:16:16.180 race to get a bomb as quickly as they can what is it that drives them to want that nuclear bomb to

00:16:21.920 get involved in all of these other wars you know i've listened to people say well it's a specific

00:16:28.260 um subsect within uh shia islam and and they have a very uh end times worldview do you put stock in that

00:16:39.240 you know the the iranian regime is a is an amalgam of different things there are some people that have

00:16:45.300 this messianic um religious outlook um the twelvers the twelvers the shia twelvers yeah that refers to

00:16:52.820 12 imams that they believe in that followed the prophet muhammad um so there are some of them there's

00:16:57.860 some true believers you know if you go back 46 years to when the revolution happened i think there

00:17:02.560 were a lot of true believers over time um a lot of that belief i think among the upper echelons has

00:17:07.520 fallen away but but some of them still believe this stuff but i think for the vast majority of

00:17:11.380 the regime apparatchiks and high-ranking officials you know i continuously refer to iran as a mafia

00:17:18.080 state um they want to hold on to power and for them the nuclear bomb is the thing that basically

00:17:25.720 serves as a guarantee that they will not be overthrown because the foreign governments will

00:17:29.860 be afraid of them they feel that if they can frighten away the rest of the world they will be able

00:17:34.120 to keep a lid on things at home by through sheer repression no no one's trying to invade iran no

00:17:40.280 one's threatening iran not since the war you said with iraq but it's not like saudi arabia says you

00:17:47.140 know it'd be great let's go over and take them over i mean it's it is a bit of a bizarre calculation

00:17:52.340 on their part i mean had they not pursued this program they would not have been in this kind of

00:17:56.940 conflict with the world i don't think um and they'd have a lot of money to and they would have a

00:18:01.300 ton more money programs the public would be happy about absolutely so i i don't know kind of what

00:18:07.920 is motivating this but i i feel like you know this has been part of the ideology of this regime from

00:18:12.860 day one this feeling um perpetuated over and over again that they're isolated in the world that

00:18:18.240 they're under threat from governments in the region you know the saudis tend to be a favorite

00:18:22.620 villain of theirs um and israel certainly um and now that they're in this path they don't feel safe

00:18:29.860 they feel like other regimes are going to try to topple them um obviously they have the experience

00:18:34.000 of having watched what happened to the shah they themselves were involved in the toppling of the

00:18:37.900 shah so they um would like some guarantees in terms of their ability to continue to um rob the country

00:18:44.660 blind part of this isolationist idea would it be that because iran is mostly persian not arab mostly

00:18:54.040 shia not sunni it's a difference you know among the neighbors is that part of it i suspect that

00:19:00.660 plays into it i don't know if the persian versus arab matters as much to the clerics the clerics don't

00:19:05.720 tend to think in nationalistic terms though interestingly in the last little while in order

00:19:09.420 to mobilize people against israel and the united states in the last few days if you look at the

00:19:14.160 broadcasts from iran you'll see a lot more references to persian mythology and you know iran the

00:19:18.680 motherland and that kind of stuff but by and large over the life of this regime it has not been a

00:19:23.180 nationalistic regime it doesn't think the clerics don't think in those terms exactly they they're

00:19:27.060 theocratic and they think of their people as the shia muslims not the iranian population um and so

00:19:33.680 i i suspect that the shia sunni divide is a really big issue for them and um they and that's that

00:19:40.740 explains probably one of the the major reasons for conflict with saudi arabia i mean iran is sort of

00:19:45.060 the thought of as the shia center and saudi arabia is the sunni center of the muslim world and so that

00:19:50.040 conflict i i suspect psychologically probably matters a lot uh to iran's leadership all right

00:19:54.840 let's uh take a quick break when we come back we'll talk about who leaders where leaders may

00:19:59.880 emerge from in the coming days and weeks when i found out my friend got a great deal on a wool

00:20:04.820 coat from winners i started wondering is every fabulous item i see from winners like that woman

00:20:11.480 over there with the designer jeans are those from winners ooh are those beautiful gold earrings did she

00:20:17.680 pay full price or that leather tote or that cashmere sweater or those knee-high boots that

00:20:22.600 dress that jacket those shoes is anyone paying full price for anything stop wondering start winning

00:20:29.760 winners find fabulous for less this is tristan hopper the host of canada did what where we unpack the

00:20:36.420 biggest weirdest and wildest political moments in canadian history you thought you knew and tell you

00:20:41.920 what really happened stick around at the end of the episode to hear a sample of one of our favorite

00:20:46.960 episodes if you don't want to stick around make sure you subscribe to canada did what everywhere

00:20:52.660 you get podcasts there were a lot of precision strikes carried out by israel in the 12 day war

00:20:59.200 and and cave i want to ask you about one in particular a prison for political dissidents um we don't have

00:21:07.720 such things in canada mostly because we don't tend to put political dissidents in prison not often

00:21:12.820 but they wouldn't have their own prison anyway did people get out of this do we know if there were

00:21:20.540 significant political dissidents that were able to escape because of this strike to my knowledge uh

00:21:26.200 nobody managed to escape um so the israelis carried out a bombing it seemed to be a symbolic bombing of

00:21:32.240 the sort of front door of evin prison uh the notorious prison where a lot of dissidents are kept

00:21:37.180 pretty badass it was look i i have to say on uh initial viewing the of the video i was really ecstatic

00:21:44.840 you know the symbolism was awesome mind you subsequently um some news got out a lot of the

00:21:49.660 prisoners themselves said they were very frightened that the conditions in the prison got very bad

00:21:53.500 um so perhaps as a practical matter it wasn't it wasn't that great to to do that um i know that

00:22:00.200 the regime very quickly seemed to uh gather its forces put all the prisoners in buses and i think took

00:22:05.600 them to other places um but you know that is symbolically i go back to this psychologically i

00:22:12.720 think it matters a lot to blow up the door of evin prison it really opens up the mind to the

00:22:17.060 possibilities of what would happen if many of those prisoners were back um and able to be politically

00:22:21.660 active again well there's a whole mythology in france surrounding the bastille yeah um so you know

00:22:26.980 that that goes uh back a long way the we talked briefly about the opposition earlier uh there is

00:22:37.300 one gentleman who i know some people say well he should just become the leader he's the son of the

00:22:42.820 former king uh is it reza reza palavi yes so you had a long thread on x the other day about this uh

00:22:52.620 uh you're not a fan tell us who he is why he matters and and why you don't think he's the right

00:22:59.240 guy yeah some of your listeners um of iranian background aren't going to like this but um let

00:23:04.860 me let me do my best so reza palavi is a 64 year old man who lives in maryland um where he's lived most

00:23:12.600 of his life and um for much of his life he has spoken about wanting to establish democracy in iran

00:23:19.460 wanting to play a role in establishing democracy in iran and he sort of met with different political

00:23:25.220 leaders and um said a lot of the right things so i i actually was a fan up until fairly recently um i

00:23:31.980 had the opportunity to meet with him a couple times everything he said sounded good to me he seemed like

00:23:36.840 he had really um internalized democratic ideals in the west um but what happened was there was a

00:23:44.120 protest movement a couple years ago you may recall uh which people often refer to as the woman

00:23:49.400 life freedom movements and as a result of that there was a real push um in the inside iran and

00:23:55.040 also outside in the diaspora to sort of create a an opposition coalition um and mr pahlavi was part

00:24:02.160 of that coalition there was a nobel peace prize winner miss shirin abadi that was part of that

00:24:07.120 coalition we had a famous um prominent women's rights activist massie alinejad part of that uh we had

00:24:13.020 a gentleman from toronto whose loved ones um were killed on ps752 and he had sort of been an

00:24:18.840 outspoken critic of the regime and um he sort of represented the constituency of a lot of people

00:24:24.500 that um whose loved ones had been hurt by this regime tortured executed and what have you so it

00:24:29.760 seemed to be an interesting coalition and yet under pressure from the sort of the i would argue the far

00:24:36.360 right or at least you know his supporters his extreme nationalist supporters mr pahlavi effectively

00:24:41.400 blew up that coalition and he walked away and the coalition fell apart very quickly and i think

00:24:45.980 didn't last even a month and since then um his supporters have uh gone on a tear for the past

00:24:54.200 couple of years and attacked all other opposition figures anyone that does not bend the knee to mr

00:24:59.480 pahlavi and doesn't accept him as the leader of the opposition um they have attacked they have called

00:25:04.620 them supporters of the regime they've said you know you're just in it for the money you're trying to

00:25:07.960 get funds for your activities and so on and um it's it's been a real problem so mr pahlavi hasn't

00:25:14.760 actually expanded his base if anything he has um in my view shrunk his base so there are a lot of

00:25:21.620 opposition people that maybe a couple years ago would have been willing to work with him would have

00:25:25.140 been willing to get in a coalition with him and i don't think they would um any longer be willing

00:25:29.880 to do that and so much of politics is about you know building bridges and building um um you know

00:25:36.320 building coalitions well what i like to say is politics is about addition not subtraction that's

00:25:41.800 that's exactly right and that has not been the attitude of um mr pahlavi's uh team now there are

00:25:48.520 some i you know i've seen messages from his hardcore supporters they don't want him to go in and establish

00:25:55.080 democracy they want him to go in and establish re-establish the monarchy yeah some of his

00:26:00.500 supporters i mean if you and and they often say this not in english but in but in farsi which is i think

00:26:05.060 is an important point in english they tend to say often all the right things they say you know here's

00:26:10.040 he's going to be a transition leader he's going to be um you know setting up a you know a democratic

00:26:16.060 system and then he'll walk away from power or whatever in farsi when you start to read it they're

00:26:20.100 like no no we we want him in charge and we want to return to the pre-revolution times where i admit

00:26:25.260 you know pre-revolutionary iran was much much better than what it is now uh but it was not politically

00:26:30.100 free um you know his father ruled for with an iron fist for many years and he created the conditions

00:26:36.060 for this revolution um so mr pahlevi has not i don't think reassured the public and the rest of

00:26:42.420 the opposition that he is um interested in true liberal democracy um even though he he's the rhetoric

00:26:49.920 is liberal democratic the behavior of of his supporters and especially his his sort of inner

00:26:54.960 team his uh you know few advisors around him that behavior has not been reassuring and i think

00:27:00.980 a lot of people you know women's rights activists human rights activists have their concerns about him

00:27:04.960 uh the ethnic minorities in iran like the the kurds for example which are politically powerful and

00:27:10.300 they're large a number um they are very concerned um and so you know i think the feeling was if this

00:27:17.760 if this war this 12 war continued and the regime was toppled uh you know the israelis would probably

00:27:22.980 back mr pahlevi to take power now that is really attack is uh has stopped the feeling is that um

00:27:30.600 mr pahlevi may have overplayed his hand maybe he thought he was more powerful than he actually is and

00:27:34.660 if there is going to be a future iteration um of uh you know a coalition it may not include him

00:27:41.220 because he has not been democratic in outlook i still think that you know he still has a

00:27:44.480 constituency in iran um he he cannot be ignored but i really hope that he changes his ways and he

00:27:50.420 focuses you say on on addition rather than subtraction so if he were to change his ways build a

00:27:56.620 coalition bring in different parties factions and and work towards a democratic

00:28:01.960 iran in the future you you wouldn't have a problem with that you just don't see him doing

00:28:06.920 that at the moment absolutely not i mean i was um encouraging a lot of my friends who were not

00:28:11.620 who are not monarchists who were distrustful of him a couple of years ago i was encouraging them to

00:28:15.720 you know sit down with mr pahlevi i helped organize a virtual meeting with him i um persuaded

00:28:21.700 some of the folks that or i tried to persuade some of the folks that got into a coalition with

00:28:25.120 mr pahlevi uh they were reluctant to do it but i said you know this needs to be done

00:28:28.460 so i don't have a problem with him personally i i don't even have a problem you know my choice is

00:28:32.120 not a constitutional monarchy i would like to see the future iran be a republic but you know a non-islamic

00:28:38.940 republic non-islamic republic certainly but there's nothing undemocratic about a constitutional monarchy

00:28:43.600 i mean i live in canada and this is a perfectly democratic country and it's a constitutional monarchy

00:28:46.760 um so i don't i don't have a problem with that i what i do worry about is a return to pre-revolution

00:28:52.660 iran where you have a king who is effectively an authoritarian leader even if benevolent

00:28:58.020 it's still authoritarianism and that's not what i want to see in a future iran

00:29:01.620 are there other blocks factions groups parties that are out there you know i i doubt that you

00:29:09.600 could easily do a comparison well here's the new democrats in iran and here's the liberals and

00:29:14.800 here's the conservatives and oh yeah we've got a block quebecois too i don't do that but can you

00:29:20.600 help listeners in canada that aren't familiar with iran understand who the different parties and

00:29:26.640 factions are is it alone a left-right divide uh such as that is or is it alone other uh lines of

00:29:33.700 of uh demarcation yeah it's not as clear-cut as um you know just left right and center um so one

00:29:40.680 thing to keep in mind is that iran is made up of a lot of different ethnic groups and probably the most

00:29:45.120 organized among them are the kurds um now the the kurdish parties some of them are separatists we have

00:29:52.500 to admit and some of them just want a little bit more autonomy in a future free iran um and

00:29:57.740 regrettably i would say you know to go back to our discussion of mr pathevi um his supporters have

00:30:01.900 not been willing to distinguish between those two and they sort of view all um kurdish groups with

00:30:07.960 suspicion they think all of them are separatists so you know some of the breakdown in our opposition

00:30:13.300 is along ethnic lines um some of it is along the lines of republican versus monarchists or

00:30:19.360 constitutional monarchists um there is um there are still remnants of the old iranian left um you

00:30:27.120 know dating back to the 60s and 70s and they're sort of a radical left and um i find them personally

00:30:32.260 distasteful and i think their ideas are really out of uh out of date but they they definitely exist but

00:30:38.980 in terms of organized parties regrettably there are not many um but there are individuals here and

00:30:44.960 there who who can take a leadership role or at least be part of a coalition of uh figures with uh

00:30:50.600 political uh political views we've all uh well again i've seen i'm i'm sure many others listening

00:30:57.400 have seen those before and after photos of tehran before the islamic revolution and after

00:31:05.360 i understand your concerns about the you know political freedoms uh during the pre-revolutionary

00:31:12.580 times but in other ways it was a very free country it was a very forward-looking country

00:31:17.540 um perhaps more western than some would like but it was prosperous it seemed it seemed like things were

00:31:25.840 on the go would iran be able to get back to that under different leadership would would it be a

00:31:33.800 a prosperous country a place where you know someone like me might say you know what let's take a trip

00:31:39.200 to tehran yeah i have no doubt that uh iran could be that iran has vast natural resources iran uh has

00:31:48.640 a population that's very well educated um that's you know unlike a place like north korea which also

00:31:55.320 has an authoritarian regime iran's population has not been cut off from the world they have been

00:31:59.600 watching the west they've been interacting with the west on the internet through satellite television

00:32:03.560 so on they speak many young people in iran speak english very well they want to be integrated into

00:32:08.340 the world and they're very talented and you see evidence of that by just looking at the success of

00:32:12.840 the iranian diaspora so many um you know doctors engineers lawyers business people um of uh you know

00:32:19.640 have have been uh been successful in the west and you know those talents um can either you know those

00:32:26.480 folks can either go back to iran or i mean it tells you something about the culture that that's so much

00:32:30.440 uh uh there's so much emphasis on education and and um achievement and so on so i think that the

00:32:36.400 all the ingredients are there now mind you there's one one issue that does worry me about um a future

00:32:41.200 iran which is uh this regime for the past 40 years has completely neglected uh the environment and you

00:32:47.120 know some of the damage to to iran's environment may be irreparable i do worry about that and there are

00:32:51.320 some experts to say that but putting that aside all the ingredients are there for a very forward

00:32:55.900 looking country for a very prosperous country for a country where brian can come as a tourist and visit

00:33:00.700 and he would have a great time it would be welcomed by the population um but yeah i think it really

00:33:06.820 requires a different leadership and uh that's something that's been missing for 40 years under

00:33:11.640 different leadership uh one not driven by theocratic aims would iran get along with israel would there be

00:33:20.380 peace with israel i know that you know you mentioned the story that everyone mentions in your

00:33:24.780 jerusalem post peace about cyrus uh saving the jews um would the would the general population

00:33:32.420 be okay with saying you know what we're we're going to stop attacking those guys we're just going to

00:33:36.640 live in peace yeah absolutely um look i mentioned earlier that that our opposition is fractured but

00:33:43.680 there is no serious current in our opposition you know the people that would replace this regime

00:33:48.060 there's no serious current that wants conflict with israel everyone from right to left

00:33:54.180 want peace with israel even the lefties i think who have probably more sympathy for the palestinian

00:34:00.480 cause they ultimately think of it as not a national issue but you know they have sympathies and they

00:34:05.720 they want the palestinians better treated but they don't want iran to be involved in a conflict

00:34:09.900 with israel um so yeah i mean i think a different leadership uh in iran assuming there's not civil war and

00:34:19.720 and general chaos any democratic government in a future iran would be uh willing to make peace and

00:34:26.240 you see that in the general population as well i mean there are videos that come out of let's say

00:34:30.600 soccer stadiums where the iranian regime at the beginning of the war in gaza would bring out

00:34:35.360 palestinian flags and you would see tens of thousands of people um and excuse my language here

00:34:40.960 they would start shouting in in a rhyme in persian you know take your palestinian flag and shove it

00:34:45.800 up your ass like that's the general sentiment um and it's you know it's it's not i i don't

00:34:51.920 think of that as as anger at the palestinians i think of that as anger at a regime that has gotten us

00:34:56.540 gotten iran so caught up in the israel-palestinian conflict beyond far beyond what our national

00:35:02.900 interest may be you mentioned uh or did a quick comparison to north korea give us a quick sense of

00:35:09.060 what daily life is like in in iran do you have freedom to go around shopping you know doing your

00:35:16.840 own things you know regular foodstuffs or is the government controlling everything yeah so some of

00:35:23.780 that will depend on how wealthy you are and how connected you are so if you live in northern tehran

00:35:30.960 and you are quite wealthy and perhaps you know your family has ties to the regime you can live a

00:35:37.440 pretty comfortable life in iran i mean you still have to if you're a woman pretend to put on a

00:35:42.220 hijab even though increasingly even that seems to be optional or not optional but but it's it's the

00:35:46.980 rules are not enforced as harshly in certain parts of parts of the country um so you know you can live a

00:35:54.180 life of relative comfort and luxury if you're wealthy but for the rest of the country it's a very

00:35:59.940 different life um the economy is collapsing a lot of young people are not able to get jobs they have

00:36:06.780 no hope for the future they're putting off marriages because they you know they simply will not be able

00:36:10.820 to afford you know having their own home raising kids and and so on um and the regime inserts itself

00:36:18.160 not just in the economy not just in politics but in every element of everyday life so aside from those

00:36:23.220 small zones where the government doesn't for example enforce the hijab rules if you're a woman in iran

00:36:28.280 you are constantly worried about what you're wearing a choice as personal as intimate as what

00:36:35.180 you wear is dictated by the regime if you're a young person walking down the street with let's say

00:36:40.480 your girlfriend or your boyfriend you could have some thugs from the regime stop you in the middle

00:36:44.640 of the street ask you you know what you're doing what your relationship is and if you know you're not

00:36:49.280 married and you're holding hands you could actually end up getting whipped i mean that's that's the kind

00:36:53.860 of fear that people people live in if you have a party then you've got western music playing and if

00:36:58.880 you've got alcohol um and a lot of people do this you know the the authorities could show up and break

00:37:04.260 it up and again take you to jail and you could be lashed for for having just these very basic freedoms

00:37:10.160 so actually online for a few years there was this campaign this online campaign of people um you know

00:37:16.260 with the hashtag normal life all people want is just to be able to live the normal life that people in

00:37:22.780 the west live the very very basic things that you and i take for granted every day we wake up and we

00:37:27.140 decide what we can wear what we want to wear we decide you know who we want to spend time with if

00:37:30.980 we want to have our friends over and you know what we would serve at our party all these choices are

00:37:36.020 in technically speaking uh controlled by the government and and you run a risk by just living a basic

00:37:42.940 normal life well hopefully that changes for the people of iran and hopefully one day before uh before

00:37:49.320 it's too late for me i will get to visit tehran because it is one of the places that i would love

00:37:53.600 to see kave thanks so much thank you so much i really appreciate it brian full comment is a post

00:37:58.040 media podcast my name is brian lily your host this episode was produced by andre prude theme music by

00:38:03.600 bryce hall kevin libin is the executive producer please hit the subscribe button wherever you get your

00:38:08.920 podcast on amazon spotify wherever apple of course and help us out by leaving us a rating giving us

00:38:15.860 a review until next time thanks for listening i'm brian lily

00:38:19.460 here's that clip from canada did what i promised you

00:38:26.860 but the late 1960s you have members of the montreal police who can spend their entire shift

00:38:35.060 rushing from one flq bombing to another here's how new year's eve 1968 played out for robert cote

00:38:42.900 a member of the montreal police bomb squad which put him at the forefront of fighting the flq during

00:38:49.100 this period he was supposed to be at home with his wife who had just miscarried twin daughters

00:38:54.400 but instead at 11 pm he's called out to montreal city hall to investigate a bomb that had just gone

00:39:00.820 off he's en route with sirens blaring when he's told actually don't bother with the exploded bomb

00:39:06.820 there's an unexploded bomb on the other side of city hall you have to defuse and then right after

00:39:13.780 snipping the wires on the city hall bomb cote has to speed west where a third bomb has just exploded

00:39:20.460 outside a federal building the bombing started in april and may of 1963 that's when the first bombings

00:39:29.040 took place and the mailbox bombings were the most famous part of the whole thing which was basically

00:39:35.620 on the thursday night and friday night needing into the victoria day weekend in 1963

00:39:41.220 so and initially they they started attacking these symbols of federalism federal institutions whether

00:39:48.760 it was a montreal post office or a revenue canada but the bombings escalated as time went on

00:39:55.360 uh in terms of the size of the bombs and the powerfulness of these bombs

00:40:00.380 if you want to hear the rest of the story make sure you subscribe to canada did what

00:40:06.960 everywhere you get your podcasts

00:40:09.180 you

Full Comment - June 30, 2025

Iran’s ‘mafia’ regime won’t be giving up that easily

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