The Anchormen Show with Matt Gaetz - The Anchormen Show Episode 95 - Mirage of Change？ w⧸ Pearson Sharp & Ali Alizadeh

00:00:00.000 now it's time for the anchorman podcast with matt gates and pearson sharp

00:00:11.200 welcome back to another episode of anchorman i am joined as always by my outstanding co-host

00:00:21.180 pearson sharp and we've got a great discussion planned for everybody we are going to have

00:00:26.500 a key voice uh that is listened to a lot in iran an iranian political analyst here to break down

00:00:33.320 what we've seen in these recent protests what's to come for the big persian empire and whether or

00:00:38.960 not there is a possibility for friendship or some sort of accord with the united states or are we

00:00:43.460 destined for this conflict and battle and and indeed more bloodshed like we've seen in iran but

00:00:49.680 first pearson you know what what i really looked forward to when we did this little project together

00:00:54.740 is that all of the rage baiting that i do of you normally kicking around at the one american news

00:01:00.380 studio i can now do for the world and i saw this poll from the wall street journal and i just thought

00:01:06.260 pearson's gonna go nuts because even though you text me about four times a week that republicans

00:01:12.440 in congress are useless that no one there fights they don't that there's never consequences when

00:01:17.800 they trap president trump in the back they are crushing it in this poll take a look democrats only

00:01:23.820 prevailing on on health care as a major uh component of the issue matrix border security

00:01:29.780 republicans up 28 immigration economy inflation foreign policy russia ukraine war tariffs we're

00:01:37.500 winning on tariffs have the right priorities these are the things that win elections pearson why are you

00:01:41.720 so down all the time i mean i don't think the the voters in every sense are always the best place to

00:01:47.260 uh judge how shrewd the perception is in america pearson sharp don't trust the voters well let's let's

00:01:55.000 revisit that this november when we lose the house and see how what we think of the voters you are a

00:02:00.260 doomer you are the doomer that dan bongino has been warning me about okay so i am so glad you brought

00:02:06.300 that up so our estimable estimable inestimable congress uh has passed fewer than 40 bills into

00:02:17.260 law this term which is the lowest output in modern history for a first session of a presidency the

00:02:24.300 fewest house votes in two years in congress this century only 362 on record uh the legislative calendar

00:02:32.700 crowded with confirmations not law mocking law making senate devoted lots of time to judges and

00:02:37.800 executive nominees good internal my answer is good i am so glad that congress is passing fewer laws

00:02:45.300 like to say well yes what congressman has been like elect me so i can make more no i generally i

00:02:50.940 would agree with that but after the last four years we've got a lot of things to put into place to

00:02:54.660 get rid of what happened before and he did it in the one big beautiful bill these guys are going to

00:02:57.920 rise or fall with the one big beautiful bill act it's going to make people feel better about the

00:03:01.540 economy or not executive it's going to fund the deportations or not and the wall street journal

00:03:05.940 says they need to be made into law they need to be made into law all these things that trump has done

00:03:09.600 but here's the argument that there's going to get wiped out there's this big uh there's a lot of

00:03:13.620 reporting right now from politico and axios on this point republicans in swing districts are saying

00:03:18.600 we don't want to take votes on those executive orders we might we might alienate some people or make

00:03:23.060 that's retarded we absolutely have to but let me get back to this wonderful poll of yours

00:03:27.820 we had a record 43 government days government shutdown uh the house split longer yeah well

00:03:34.320 generally i i would agree generally the less government the better uh house gop split on

00:03:40.080 ned funding 81 republicans joined the democrats that's pathetic to defeat a gop amendment to strip

00:03:46.900 315 million dollars the national endowment for democracy which hates republicans hates conservatives

00:03:53.320 hates the american people and 81 republicans joined democrats for that congress and republicans

00:03:58.680 funded the atf at biden level era or biden era levels uh 1.6 billion instead of the deep cuts that

00:04:07.780 trump and pro 2a groups wanted uh go knows of america so the gop backed down and bent over and

00:04:13.940 surrendered by rejecting trump's bigger cuts um health care affordability here's what i would say

00:04:19.860 because we only got we only got a minute on this you know what that's progress because when i was

00:04:24.860 there you only would have had 81 republicans taking the conservative position so the fact that 81 took

00:04:30.420 the liberal position backstabbed us and betrayed us it means that we at least have the majority of the

00:04:34.580 majority and it probably takes a lot more than that to win the country and those 81 should be ashamed

00:04:38.880 well and the 17 republicans who supported obamacare we can't even get rid of that yeah and by the way

00:04:43.180 those are the ones that call themselves the majority makers so this is what i say to your poll

00:04:47.280 congress is useless if if pro is the opposite of con then congress is the opposite of progress

00:04:53.480 and we will be right back with our discussion about iran in moments you've heard me talk about

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00:05:44.140 10 off with code matt 10. welcome back we'll be discussing the ongoing conflict in iran for the

00:05:51.020 remainder of our program my co-host pearson sharp and i are joined by ali alizadeh an iranian political

00:05:57.180 analyst and the editorial chief for jadal tv ali thank you so much for being with you with us here on the

00:06:03.520 program what are your observations about what's going on in iran right now thank you very much for

00:06:09.280 inviting me and giving me this opportunity uh i just managed to talk to people in iran uh yesterday

00:06:17.460 and today after a long break because the internet blackout is quite severe and what i heard is on

00:06:26.420 8th and 9th of january we've had unprecedented demonstrations protests and unprecedented level of

00:06:34.800 violence uh that from from a essence and quality that we have never seen before in iran which i will

00:06:43.660 go and explain to it later if there's time but since uh saturday morning 10th of january hasn't been a

00:06:50.820 single protest uh even though when you look at western coverage uh it looked like the protests

00:06:57.520 were ongoing and one of the reasons for that was because they were hoping to uh push people to come

00:07:02.880 out uh further and further but but the crackdown has managed to finish all protests so the question is

00:07:10.140 the question of the number of casualties and and the number of dead people is being uh debated and has

00:07:17.200 oscillated from like a few thousand to 16 000 12 000 this about a couple of hours ago uh iran's uh

00:07:27.040 council of defense uh officially announced 3 114 dead from which they said 2 400 of them were normal

00:07:39.200 citizens and uh officers and uh officers and forces of uh security and they didn't uh clarify the nature

00:07:48.260 of the other 670 people which tells you possibly they're gonna call them the terrorists and so at least

00:07:55.600 3 100 people have got killed which is a astonishing number with iranian standards yeah and so at this

00:08:04.480 stage people are like i don't know tell me tell me this how does that much death impact a country of 90

00:08:10.840 million people the thing is let me just give you some perspective uh in 2009 election uh dispute which

00:08:21.160 was which led to green movement i think 56 people died in 2009 and then in january 2010 which was the

00:08:30.240 next one about 35 overall i think less than 150 people in uh the protest of january 2018 i think 27 people

00:08:40.940 died and in november 2019 which was part of and the result of trump's maximum pressure campaign and it

00:08:49.720 was quite heavy in very uh deprived part of uh big cities and made of urban poor about 217

00:09:00.020 people died and in a woman life freedom about 400 people all around the country including

00:09:07.340 guerrilla movement in kurdistan and balochistan so this number is a new standard we haven't had this

00:09:16.080 before also the kind of violence used in this uh two days is something we haven't seen before i know

00:09:24.600 a big part of it the main responsibility of course it stays with the state but the so-called protest

00:09:31.600 protesters as well have performed things that we haven't seen before burning police officers alive

00:09:39.820 uh banging the head of uh kind of the militia close to the state with with bricks uh with knife and

00:09:49.640 is a is a kind of violence which we had seen only before in syria and iraq when isis appeared in 2013

00:09:58.160 and 14 and we hadn't seen here before and also a big part of not big part but a considerable part of

00:10:05.100 the protesters were armed and uh now there's a question and debate how they uh were armed where

00:10:12.000 they found the uh weapons and ammunition because in iran keeping weapons absolutely illegal and can like

00:10:17.880 lead to uh death sentence so so it sounds many of them sorry it sounds like you're blaming the

00:10:23.880 protesters for this and you think that maybe they're in the wrong in this situation no no i'm not i'm not

00:10:29.520 blaming me it's a complicated thing and i think we need to become uh familiar with this complicated

00:10:35.700 phenomenon i uh i've been arguing myself with the level of economic hardship in iran uh we expected

00:10:45.960 this to happen i said back in september that uh is not time for economic surgery and shock doctrine as

00:10:53.800 iranian president was going to do and i said if we do it we're going to have about 2 500 deaths i

00:10:59.540 predicted that back in back in september but two things i hadn't seen i hadn't seen this level of

00:11:06.280 angry mob in iran which kind of we can say they are showing signs of uh fascistic behavior which is

00:11:15.400 organic and that's very dangerous and scary isis hold on lay out for me what you believe is the

00:11:24.360 organic fascism in in the uprisings that you've observed in iran uh one uh the level of physical

00:11:33.980 violence so yeah but they've been repressed there i mean the argument is these are repressed people

00:11:40.000 these are people fighting back yeah who by by virtue of some people will blame blame the sanctions some

00:11:45.020 people will say you know they were riled up by foreign intel but but but regardless of any of that

00:11:50.040 they have a lot of reason to be upset yeah they've clearly been repressed by the iranian regime brutalized

00:11:55.720 do you not concede that no of course you are brutalized but you need to direct your anger towards

00:12:02.180 someone who's done it directing your anger against a 19 years old what they call basi which is like

00:12:07.680 militia or uh plainclothes person who's coming from the same poor background and he's not even armed

00:12:14.540 the state has sent them to the street on uh 125 cc motorcycles and getting them and inserting objects

00:12:23.440 to to the country orifice that's that's something we haven't seen you're gonna you're gonna respond

00:12:29.220 brutally to whoever who was brutalizing you whoever that is it's a plainclothes cop who's 19 years old or

00:12:35.300 it's a well-armed you know soldier whoever is coming at you you're going to respond to them

00:12:39.580 so but but again like burning mullahs because in a sense if you're angry in america if you go back to

00:12:46.820 like black lives matter or the the riots eyewitness in london in 2011 you're angry but you wouldn't go

00:12:53.020 around like i don't know uh white priest and to burn them alive so these protests uh it's like these

00:13:00.540 protests this layer of protesters i'm talking about because there are so many layers there are normal

00:13:04.860 ordinary angry people there are more radical elements and there are another elements that

00:13:10.100 the state is talking about them and they seem to have been very well organized they had coordination

00:13:15.440 with each other and they were trained and i want to get into that i want to get into that in a moment

00:13:20.460 but first but but first yeah we don't we don't we certainly don't concede that the fact that someone

00:13:26.260 is using violence to fight back against the violent regime is evidence of fascism you you would need

00:13:32.280 you would need stronger evidence i think to make that claim but but uh let me throw out an argument

00:13:37.240 let me just add this one because because because one thing is iran is still a muslim country i mean

00:13:43.860 that's the religion the same way that america is a christian country uh doesn't mean that you

00:13:48.980 practice it or not but that's like the framework of the culture burning mosques burning mosques burning

00:13:55.360 the holy places burning the the shrines and things it comes from a new hatred and that hatred which

00:14:02.300 uh somehow uh is articulated in the hatred of islam trying to go to pre-islamic ideology this never

00:14:09.700 existed before i mean if you're trying to like go to pagan ideology and burn down all churches in

00:14:16.160 america that's like that alexander the great might have a have an argument to make but but but the the the

00:14:22.100 uh the uh the argument i want to make for you to agree with or disagree with i'm fascinated in your

00:14:26.560 perspective is that is that let's take all of the inputs you've just said about the uh unprecedented

00:14:32.860 nature of the riots the uh the the seemingly torturous nature of some of those those interactions

00:14:41.780 but here we are today and there are no protests anymore and so is it fair to say the iranian regime

00:14:49.380 is stronger today than ever before because every time you survive one of these things you get

00:14:56.000 stronger because you further demoralize those who would participate in a future and you've eliminated

00:15:00.200 uprising yeah you've eliminated the command and control you talked about the 3 000 plus deaths

00:15:05.160 that they administered onto the civilian population should should america right now think about the

00:15:10.640 iranian regime as in uh full control of the country at a zenith of of that power i mean i will

00:15:19.240 call it iranian a state whether you like it or not that's a state which has come out of revolution

00:15:23.440 and has only like 400 000 military personnel who believe in its ideology so i don't think this

00:15:29.600 is a regime it's not it's not as that regime it's a state and it's a dysfunctional state is a state with

00:15:35.180 lots of corruption it's a state with a lot of uh unfreedoms by the state because it is uh like

00:15:41.820 is comprised of at least still 10 million uh heartfelt uh kind of supporters so uh but whether iran is

00:15:49.240 stronger today or not yes it definitely feels like they uh overcome a crisis but i don't think they

00:15:56.380 have overcome the underlying condition for this crisis to happen they haven't overcome the economic

00:16:04.040 hardship of this crisis however i think there's a behavior there's a pattern of behavior in islam

00:16:10.960 republic whenever a crisis happens they brutally or unbrutally whatever you want to call it uh they

00:16:17.740 repress it and then behind and they come and say that they repeat the same things that it was done by

00:16:24.420 the foreign agents and we will not move an inch but behind the scene they change the policy they change

00:16:30.780 the policy and they make compromises so in 2022 woman life freedom they kind of after they repress the

00:16:38.200 movement and the demonstrations what happened obligatory hijab was gone for good yeah so i think

00:16:45.120 this can be iran's tiana men square in chinese language this can be a moment that the state may decide

00:16:53.640 to overcome its hesitations what are iranian state's hesitations two one big part of iranian state are

00:17:01.920 pro west no correctly pro america javad zarif hasan rohani and a big part of iranian oligarchy

00:17:09.060 is studied in britain in america and they they love to be part of uh kind of western uh war system

00:17:17.580 well i know they'd love to be part of western markets the people you just mentioned are i think

00:17:21.360 currently sanctioned i know i know about the sanction but the children studied there they have

00:17:26.420 the children have american passports zarif's children have american passport they were born in america

00:17:31.300 rohani studied in britain his niece lives there sure the elite have all those privileges what about

00:17:37.540 the rest of the population no no i'm not defending that i'm saying that they want to be pro west but

00:17:42.380 there's another faction who thinks we are not getting anywhere we need to go really kind of fast

00:17:49.340 towards bricks shanghai we have to have a very acute turn to the east but they haven't managed to

00:17:56.460 do it properly because these two sides are like pulling from both ways and i think this can be a

00:18:02.280 moment that the state overcomes hesitation the state say goodbye to america say goodbye to waiting

00:18:09.400 for making detente with america and and also the second hesitation is making the bomb because iran has

00:18:17.180 amin ayatollah khamenei has decided to take a third way to be a threshold of the state they thought

00:18:23.860 is less pricey to be threshold of the state but it seems like it's not working as long as iran is a

00:18:29.140 threshold of state israel is is like we'll have the appetite to come and destroy it 12 days war

00:18:34.840 uh assassinating all the commanders not the dream to assassinate khamenei but if iran becomes nuclear so

00:18:41.480 this this crisis may trigger more hardline elements to to get more power and the state to overcome

00:18:49.780 hesitations is that what hold on is that what you saw happen after these other uprisings is that the

00:18:55.820 hardliners used the putting down of the uprisings and the what the potential western well not even the

00:19:02.560 potential the at this point the acknowledged western support for those uprisings as a as a basis to drive

00:19:09.540 out what what would be the more moderate voices and i couch that term very substantially when speaking

00:19:15.980 about the leadership of iran in 2019 that happened in 2019 uh when uh hassan rohani's supposedly a liberal

00:19:25.500 pro-western government uh kind of caused the uprising by uh immediately but in above sharply increasing the

00:19:34.200 price of petrol uh many people wanted to impeach him khamenei didn't allow them to do that but then

00:19:39.960 he slowly moved uh become appointed raisi as a hardliner as an ex-president and so shifted the

00:19:47.200 country towards that direction that's when finally iran joined breaks got much closer to russia and

00:19:53.020 also started like working closely with china and i think this time this is going to happen as well

00:19:58.300 and i think i think this is like in line with logic of a state because america and israel are leaving

00:20:04.500 no other option for a state than jumping to the bosom of russia and china i want to get to the

00:20:11.300 united states and israel and some some beliefs as to what role they may have had and what we've just

00:20:16.520 observed in iran before that did you have any other questions on yeah i i did the u.s has has intervened

00:20:23.420 in iran famously infamously uh in the past several times and there's talk about the u.s intervening again

00:20:32.280 you know on the behalf of the downtrodden and oppressed people of iran which you know in this

00:20:37.940 case i think would probably be a good idea but from your perspective considering the u.s's history

00:20:45.240 in iran do you think the people of iran want the u.s to get involved this time do they have an appetite

00:20:50.660 for american intervention in this case and to come and talk about people of america we cannot because

00:20:58.580 there are so many different layers in american society a society of 330 40 million people and

00:21:04.920 no no he's asking a more precise question he's asking a more precise question which is

00:21:09.380 if america intervenes militarily how do you perceive the populace in iran reacting to that

00:21:15.860 right correct that's what i'm saying i mean there's no i mean the polls are you have to look at polls

00:21:20.460 and different parts of population definitely there is a hardened more radicalized section of iranian

00:21:26.620 society which will cheer for uh trump especially not because iran is experiencing a mass hysteria

00:21:34.640 more from i don't have to say more among iranians abroad than diaspora you should not confuse the mood

00:21:41.620 of diaspora of a society with mood of people inside and diaspora is big about six seven million iranians

00:21:47.960 who have been pushed out of the country lots of hatred like venezuela and diaspora cuban diaspora

00:21:54.480 measuring iranian uh 1885 90 million iranians mood with the diaspora is a big mistake but

00:22:03.000 some people may cheer out of the anger especially what's happening now the regime that the state has

00:22:08.520 killed many people but you have to remember i think iran is the oldest country in the region

00:22:13.840 if you go back to six iran was born the modern iran 1501 so it's the oldest country and there's a deep

00:22:22.440 rooted nationalist dna there and foreign intervention is not going to be looked it's not

00:22:27.940 going to it's not going to look good and i don't think uh trump will find enough support inside the

00:22:34.820 country second this you're saying iranians don't want america to get involved at this point

00:22:39.620 i mean iranians inside iran they understand the meaning of war because in the last in the in the 12

00:22:46.740 days war they experienced that israel didn't only kill irgc commanders israel killed among the 1100

00:22:54.780 people who got killed many of them were normal iranian citizens children uh some people who had

00:23:00.660 nothing to do with the commanders one of them was a neighbor one of them was like someone who was just

00:23:04.900 passing by so the iranians have fought eight years war with crazy saddam and they had seen this 12 days

00:23:11.580 war they understand what war is and they understand any war will have a lot of collateral damage and

00:23:17.280 the nation will be the collateral damage they don't want it second thing is iran has been extremely

00:23:23.280 restrained in the last six years since uh 3rd of june 3rd of january 2000 2000 when trump assassinated

00:23:32.760 general qasem soleimani after that iran went to a very restrained defensive mode that khamenei called

00:23:40.800 the strategic patience uh trump killed iran's top general iran attacked an al-assad's empty

00:23:47.000 camps nothing not even like a single american soldier got killed him and then again trump bombed

00:23:53.980 all iranian nuclear facilities iran did some uh firework around al-udaid nothing yeah but i think

00:24:01.120 if this true attack is going to be serious by trump especially if he attacks oratola khamenei himself

00:24:07.440 or anything like that the state has to out of his logic of survival has to take the risk this time

00:24:14.960 and attack american personnel american servicemen american army property unlike last times because

00:24:21.760 this time the pressure from inside and if trump joins from outside they cannot just uh take that

00:24:29.440 restrain action well i think that was so i think if trump gets involved now it would be a war at that

00:24:35.160 point but you're saying that but to what end like regime change well that would be yeah oh oh exactly

00:24:42.140 another middle east regime change exactly sweet no right it had been a couple decades since we started

00:24:48.820 right but it seems like it's a little different in this situation but why well but hang on so you're

00:24:54.420 saying though that even considering all the thousands of iranians who were just killed by the

00:25:00.140 government that the people of iran still don't want america to come in and help them

00:25:04.160 with 90 you said yourself 90 million population yeah a couple of thousand first of all one important

00:25:11.660 thing is from this 3 000 the state says one i mean the number of like officers policemen uh

00:25:19.240 basigi is killed is like it's unbelievable i mean if anything it shows how unprepared the state was

00:25:25.460 for this round of attacks it's a very interesting corollary too you draw to like the blm riots that

00:25:31.820 that those folks lost a lot of sympathy they might have otherwise had when they started killing police

00:25:39.120 officers shooting it at people who were involved in a public safety regime that weren't like you know

00:25:45.760 donald trump incarnate uh policing your local neighborhood how many police were killed in blm

00:25:51.740 gosh it was it was a handful it was a handful yeah it was it was i think less than a dozen but uh

00:25:58.380 there were those instances in texas too many yeah um i i do want to get to an analysis that we had

00:26:04.500 recently on my program the mac gates show and get your reaction to it this is former cia analyst larry

00:26:10.620 johnson explaining what he believed happened during these protests in iran take a listen this was a

00:26:15.900 long planned op it was launched on december 28th um cia massad and most likely mi6 were involved

00:26:24.020 the first step was to crash the currency create an economic crisis that's real the plan both to ramp

00:26:31.880 up these protests use outside influences that would that were already supplied with starlink terminals

00:26:39.980 with firearms ammunition they were going to in i guess uh insert themselves into these protests

00:26:49.020 and then create acts of violence that was going to be supplemented by a massive information operation

00:26:55.760 that was being run out of london trying to create the impression that it was simply the iranian

00:27:00.160 government killing all these people and to kill enough to create a pretext that the united states

00:27:04.600 would justify the attack that was planned for last tuesday problem was this all failed

00:27:10.900 we're rejoined by ali ali zeda the editorial chief for jadal tv also an iranian political analyst so

00:27:17.560 uh as you hear former cia analyst larry johnson described that is that is that something you think

00:27:23.260 happened i mean i don't have the certainty of larry johnson and i think none of us knows what has

00:27:30.160 happened so far because it's a bit of darkness in iran until more documents come out we have like

00:27:35.480 these videos we have to like analyze them etc so we exactly don't know what has happened but i know

00:27:40.680 that iranian authorities and security forces were truly uh taken by surprise they didn't expect this

00:27:47.120 level of violence they didn't expect it to be so coordinated in so many cities at the same time and

00:27:53.060 and so definitely uh there's a possibility of infiltration however there's a longer term

00:27:59.260 infiltration as i said at the beginning the fascist movement as the elements of fascism because it's

00:28:04.720 like tv channels run from london one of them possibly funded by israel they've been like putting ideas in

00:28:11.680 the minds of uh kind of people filling them with anger teaching them what to do sometimes these tvs openly

00:28:18.240 tell you about how to create uh how to make like um uh kind of handmade bombs and create violence etc but

00:28:25.300 definitely the second thing that larry johnson said and is under investigation at the moment is

00:28:29.780 maybe the air the beginning of the whole crisis maybe is done in uae in emirates which is very close

00:28:37.620 to israel and that uh forced iranians to depreciate uh kind of the price of the national uh currency even

00:28:44.760 more because as you know iran has to bypass sanctions how do they do that they have people

00:28:50.920 called trustees these people are in based in dubai their money comes there they go through so many

00:28:56.360 different like bank accounts and they try to like lose the path and then the money goes uh to another

00:29:02.220 channel that's wait so you're saying that whether this was inspired by the uae or the cia or fascist

00:29:09.400 propaganda from london that this was an outside operation and that this is not a grassroots

00:29:16.140 legitimate feeling from the people desiring on their own to rise up against the government

00:29:20.500 i'm saying that one thing is the beginning of all these things is by by sanctions iranian government

00:29:29.480 which i have a lot of criticism for they are they have corruptions they have oligarchies who are

00:29:35.580 kind of deaf to the demands of people but trust me they are not more corrupt than saudis they are not

00:29:41.700 more corrupt than jordanians than egyptians than any other uh government in the region what has made so

00:29:48.420 much crisis in iran is sanctions without sanctions things will be like as it is in any other uh any of

00:29:55.580 any other of these west asian countries yeah so sanctions has brought people to their knees as

00:30:01.980 more so than the brutal islamic law much more much more which is the islamic laws i mean iranian

00:30:09.800 islamic laws are like uh libertarian in comparison with wahhabi uh laws in qatar and saudi arabia

00:30:17.060 well sure i mean you're still yeah you're still beating women for the way they dress

00:30:21.720 and you know cracking down the last time you did was like 2022 and you took one of them and

00:30:27.800 so you stopped you really you you you basically paid a high price and you realized that was a

00:30:32.200 stupid form of governance and you backed off yeah you backed off and the thing is you have to remember

00:30:37.560 i mean i don't my mom all my childhood memories is like my mom being arrested by these vans yeah

00:30:42.660 and when i was like uh 18 myself 20 myself they put a kind of gun and they like shaved my head so

00:30:48.400 i i have nothing to support this however in order to understand the complexity of that hijab rule

00:30:53.460 you have to think as american about american gun laws as someone who lives in london everyone look

00:30:59.120 at the gun laws and they think crazy american one more school shooting why don't they stop it but

00:31:04.980 the society is half half is it is not an easy law to change um iranian society was very combined

00:31:11.960 half of it wanted some form of enforcement of hijab law and and then that uprising the state violence

00:31:18.900 changes not the majority of iranians don't want any form of enforcement it's not like a state uh was

00:31:25.960 doing it against 90 will okay well for the sake of argument let me grant let me grant the premise

00:31:31.860 that it is the sanctions that have created the sense of economic unrest which likely was fuel for the

00:31:38.820 uprisings we just observed the sanctions haven't gone anywhere they're still in place so what happens

00:31:44.540 next are we are we just in a in a period of cascading uprisings or with with three thousand

00:31:52.140 storm is more coming yeah yeah i'm curious as to as to your your perspective on that i'm so excited

00:31:58.440 when we get our merriweather farm shipments and you get a beautiful piece of ribeye look look at that

00:32:03.080 marbling now i take it out of the package let it get down to room temperature all i've got on here is a

00:32:08.580 little salt a little pepper and then a little avocado oil and then i've had my pan preheating with a

00:32:14.020 little oil head to merriweather farms.com and enter promo code matt g for 15 off your first order

00:32:26.940 that's why i say it's like iran's tiana money square iran has options it's 2026 if it was 2019 2017

00:32:36.000 china wouldn't dare to work with iran but now it's a new china it's a china which dare to like

00:32:42.580 impose sanctions on america china has been buying iran's oil despite all trump's pressure and you

00:32:49.160 know yesterday iran reached its record high uh production of oil since 1979 revolution so iran

00:32:56.960 is like producing oil selling oil and has options iran can leave swift and can leave uh the dollar

00:33:04.340 network and can can de-dollarize can work with china directly through yuan and through a kind of

00:33:10.940 barter mechanism as they are already doing it with russia iran and russia directly work without

00:33:16.140 going through swift so the sanctions have their own blowback and i think america has abused sanctions

00:33:22.660 so much and iranians waited and waited and waited and waited for sanctions to be relieved and they did

00:33:28.460 anything you can imagine what what more can they do they gave all the kind of nuclear thing uh they

00:33:34.380 were willing to give more concession iraq chain well i'm with you on the sanction like like to me i

00:33:40.620 don't see where sanctions have really worked in the world right anywhere you know you you've studied

00:33:45.140 russia extensively totally worked there they haven't worked in cuba uh and and uh here they seem to have

00:33:51.740 had kind of the desired effect of sanctions like if you were a really pro-sanctions person you would say

00:33:57.200 well like the reason we want to do sanctions is we want to make it so uncomfortable for a country

00:34:01.360 that they will change their behavior right they have no other option this sounds like what what

00:34:05.460 what uh we're hearing they are being forced to change their actions right in in iran if it is in

00:34:11.420 fact the case pearson that foreign intelligence is stirring up these uprisings does that even concern

00:34:18.300 you are you cool that as like as as joe q public american taxpayer do you believe the american tax dollar

00:34:24.900 should be going to foment uprisings in iran i mean

00:34:30.040 no i don't think we should be you were just pro-intervention like 10 well it depends on where

00:34:38.060 the where the focus for the uprising is coming from if it's artificial that's one thing but if it's

00:34:44.740 genuine and i mean the regime and i i will push back and i will say it's a regime and i'll i want to ask

00:34:51.840 you about that again in a second they're already at war with the population and at this point the u.s

00:34:57.460 is just deciding whether we should prop it up or step aside and you have you have this country that

00:35:05.820 has no freedom of expression no freedom of internet no freedom of press uh no freedom of conscience no

00:35:11.820 equality before the law um are you talking about ukraine or no talking yeah exactly no talking about

00:35:18.640 iran no free elections so i think you have a regime here i mean they just killed thousands of

00:35:25.200 their own people i think you have legitimate causes for the people who live there to be aggrieved at

00:35:31.640 their own government and to want a change and i don't think sanctions or propaganda videos from

00:35:37.460 london have to be the cause of that um so this is like getting into deeper debate but look at that

00:35:44.820 well that's what we're here for okay so if you have time so no no election i mean i i look at like

00:35:50.520 american election and thinking i mean if your option is only between trump and hillary clinton come on i

00:35:55.920 mean uh we deserve more but but that's the election but at least the people pick those candidates in iran you

00:36:02.460 don't get to pick your candidates the clerics do but people plus media empires people plus those who

00:36:09.360 can i mean you you know better than me that how much uh kind of fundings and and and uh kind of

00:36:15.440 the the money that you get for uh for elections has changed american system unfortunately i think

00:36:22.120 american american like electoral system was one of the most free but then the money really really

00:36:27.600 changes and and at least in britain you have a cap and how much money you can get for election

00:36:31.720 and you don't have that not that's helped england at all

00:36:34.360 i mean but still in comparison with like the unlimited amount of money that you can bring

00:36:41.360 to election how much money did you spend the last uh cycle of election in america yeah presidential

00:36:46.100 campaign costs a billion dollars presidential campaign costs a billion dollars to run but like

00:36:50.720 but i don't know i i don't i disagree with that because uh after a certain amount of money is spent

00:36:57.640 there are substantial diminishing returns like when i would run for office i i would at times run

00:37:03.300 against people who had like you know four million dollars maybe i had a million dollars but like

00:37:08.020 after you've spent the first million like it all kind of starts to uh look like the wallpaper a bit

00:37:15.500 but but yeah but that's the problem yeah we've got a bit down a rabbit hole here

00:37:18.820 let me explain actually the problem we have now in iran is more to do with the with the political

00:37:26.580 system in united states and you guys should change that than the political system in iran

00:37:31.220 iran has a limited system the candidates go through the council of guardian and they're like

00:37:36.360 handpicked by the state uh there's a reason for that because if you have american b2s over a state

00:37:43.820 if you have security threat and existential threat all the time they're not going to open themselves

00:37:49.140 which which state throughout history has opened up to more liberal libertarian values when they had war

00:37:56.580 and an existential threat in america when you have in america when you are september 11 you had

00:38:02.940 existential threat you got freedom of speech you brought back torture you brought back waterboarding

00:38:08.300 and everything which is okay because it's called announcing a state of exception when a state of

00:38:14.940 exception came things change iran had a 12 days war america constantly says we want to do a regime change

00:38:21.300 we want to decapitate your leader we want to like yes today trump said that we will i will blow up the

00:38:28.740 whole country not irgc not well i mean the ayatollah did just threaten trump's life so yeah but that's

00:38:36.680 deterrent obviously trump isn't going to blow up the whole country he's trying to reset deterrent so that

00:38:41.420 there's peace instead of uh this kind of tit for tat that we see is it your expectation that iran in the

00:38:47.300 coming weeks or months uh will have as a part of their response a reactivation of some of these

00:38:52.040 proxy forces or do you think things will stay calm on on that front so can i just finish on the

00:38:58.200 previous one i'll come back here the reason i said the problem is more with the electoral system the

00:39:01.860 problem is with that hundred million dollar that miriam adelson gave to trump if it wasn't for that i

00:39:07.000 think trump uh and with the coherency that he's shown in his policies otherwise he wouldn't get

00:39:13.420 involved with iran at all oh no that's totally false no no no no no no listen listen uh president

00:39:19.000 trump is is himself a billionaire and he almost views himself as entitled to those to those political

00:39:24.900 resources that political donations don't shape how president trump behaves and by the way like

00:39:30.000 even if they did it certainly wouldn't impact it in a second term like trump's not running again

00:39:35.960 if you think donald trump has a problem taking a hundred million dollars from someone and looking

00:39:39.780 them in the face and telling them that he's not going to do what they want then then you don't

00:39:43.200 understand the psyche of the man why is he risking why is he risking his uh presidential

00:39:49.960 credentials his winning in venezuela all his like a good uh kind of photo ops at the moment

00:39:57.340 with getting very close to a head-to-head war with iran why is he doing that oh by the way it's a great

00:40:03.160 question it's it's a great question i'm glad you've asked it i think the game you are watching

00:40:06.800 is not the game being played i believe that netanyahu wanted to execute the ayatollah

00:40:11.700 and i believe that any other person that had run for president in 2024 joe biden kamala harris

00:40:18.460 ronda sanus nikki haley i might you know i think any of those people would have let netanyahu do it

00:40:24.800 and trump understood that if you execute the ayatollah right now you have a country of 90 million people

00:40:30.740 that goes into abject chaos you have tens of millions of war refugees that that move across

00:40:36.180 the middle east you you crush you uh crush capital markets uh in these emerging places and trump is

00:40:42.940 fond of those emerging markets and so that's why that's why we we had to do some bb sitting we had

00:40:48.420 to constantly send our senior government officials over to israel to keep netanyahu from going completely

00:40:54.460 insane and now you know bb comes to mar-a-lago he begs for trump to again strike iran and i think

00:41:01.880 trump understood what you just said on this program that that the risk of another u.s engagement there

00:41:09.220 could create uh great security problems for u.s forces in the region that that uh we don't get a lot

00:41:17.860 of benefit out of that risk and so i think that that trump is actually a moderating force in this

00:41:24.000 not someone at all acting at the behest of someone's hundred million dollar donation

00:41:27.660 okay going back to well putting all of this thing together first of all you said

00:41:33.420 what about regime change what will like people protest and then the fact that i'm like attributing

00:41:38.620 to foreign and foreign infiltrators and saying the other way around actually there's a new

00:41:43.660 phenomena here the phenomena which i've really been surprised and been thinking about since 2022

00:41:48.920 and the phenomena is iran with all this like organic discontent uh that the people have if you give them

00:41:55.900 time and you allow them to develop their kind of movements for example woman life freedom in 2022 or

00:42:02.480 this time is slowly and organically it will be actually shaking the foundation of the state yeah this

00:42:09.120 one i was talking to people in iran today and yesterday and they were saying that if these

00:42:13.640 demonstrations were not uh met with such massive violence from the so-called protesters on 8th and

00:42:20.760 9th of january they would they were getting bigger and bigger and many even religious factions many of the

00:42:25.840 base of the state would have joined them because the economic hardship is trans-factional is

00:42:32.680 bipartisan it goes beyond whether you're religious or you're eight states whether you're pro-estate or

00:42:37.560 you're anti-state whether you are like so you think this would have resolved itself on its own

00:42:41.180 no he's making an argument for incrementalism you've been making an argument for incrementalism

00:42:46.300 the entire discussion same as 2022 but there's a new phenomena which comes is so much in rush is hurried

00:42:54.480 wants to like force everything as if there is no tomorrow so in woman life freedom on week after one

00:43:00.900 week i saw in like this uh the media channels they were asking for armed insurrection she's like

00:43:07.500 wow it's iran made i mean this is like this is not like syria 2014 and i think that's israeli

00:43:13.960 so israelis are in rush most of things differently from cia from america and i think that's why i

00:43:21.260 disagree with you matt because in 2022 biden really um took a back seat he didn't intervene he didn't use

00:43:28.340 any inflammatory sentence and and everything was done by netanyahu who brought reza pahlavi the

00:43:35.420 when did biden check netanyahu netanyahu rolled through gaza and killed tens of thousands of

00:43:41.800 people and biden was backing aid packages at all times please please please tell me when you think

00:43:47.940 biden restrained netanyahu no he didn't restrain but at least trump did and add to his right so

00:43:55.260 there's no time biden ever restrained netanyahu he let him mow through gaza in in in the most uh

00:44:01.940 like abuse like how would he have stopped horrendous way possible yeah there's no world i believe i

00:44:09.320 think if netanyahu wanted to execute the ayatollah and biden was president netanyahu would execute

00:44:14.560 the ayatollah okay i don't know how much how much maneuvering space trump has from outsider point of

00:44:22.160 view it looked like he's becoming he's falling for another kind of trap he was getting into like

00:44:27.300 another war uh quite yeah that by the way i know that's what it looks like that's why i'm telling

00:44:32.220 you i don't think the game that's that you're watching is the game that's being played and i think

00:44:35.900 that's why trump named this thing the 12-day war trump names it the 12-day war because he doesn't

00:44:41.060 want it to see day 13 you know it's intentionally limited yeah um i i want to conclude on this because

00:44:47.300 you've you've given us a terrific uh episode so if that's if that's let me just go with this one

00:44:53.040 if that's your understanding so someone like scott ritter's uh reading today that maybe trump

00:44:59.260 actually backstabbed netanyahu by making him lose his momentum so not having uh abraham lincoln

00:45:07.780 around saying that oh wait for it to arrive so he made actually uh become netanyahu and all this like

00:45:13.920 force coming to do regime change decapitation of harmony to lose his momentum so he wasn't he

00:45:19.200 wasn't on board from beginning so he was just pretending is it something that you are uh implying

00:45:24.120 on board with what on board with the the execution of the ayatollah yeah that's right the decapitation

00:45:31.420 of harmony i think i think that what you're seeing play out in venezuela is probably what president

00:45:36.520 trump would prefer in iran which is that the ayatollah is not a shot caller anymore is not a trusted

00:45:42.820 um you know is not the person leading the country but like we're not going to do in iran what we did

00:45:49.460 in iraq where we showed up and said anybody who was ever a bathist anybody who was ever in saddam's

00:45:55.300 government you've you're all going to be tried as war criminals and banished to the deserts i think

00:46:00.800 that that what you see in venezuela is a model for personnel change leaving something functional

00:46:06.460 yeah that doesn't that doesn't that doesn't embrace the challenges of the full-scale regime change

00:46:11.220 pearson you had a you had a final point yeah i i wanted to know what do you think at this point

00:46:15.900 is the best possible outcome for iran where do you see it going from here optimally and do you think

00:46:23.840 that the u.s and iran could be allies at any point and what would that involve some some people say i

00:46:30.400 don't i don't i think i mean iran needs to clean up uh have a kind of uh clean up a house clean up

00:46:37.820 is corruption clean up kind of uh restrain is oligarchy and thing and i think you need to

00:46:42.520 clean up your house your uh political house is so much ruled by by israel that's not hard to rule

00:46:48.740 a country you are an empire you used to be empire you are a superpower why do you allow netanyahu to

00:46:54.340 dictate to 330 million americans what they think iran really i mean i i'm telling that from inside iran

00:47:01.820 they there's the state majority of this state they really wanted to be integrated with american

00:47:08.520 system they don't like russia they didn't like russia they don't like china because they don't

00:47:13.140 speak the language they don't like the culture they love the united states i'm not talking about

00:47:17.380 the people i'm talking about the mullahs and you made them suffer they made the iran deal trump came

00:47:24.240 out of it yeah why because at the time i think he got 450 million billion dollars from ben salman

00:47:29.680 and he helped ben salman doing his uh maximum pressure but i think ben salman was more clever

00:47:34.660 he learned his lesson after aramco was bombed in september 2019 and he backed off you know this

00:47:41.300 time trump is just doing it for israel i don't think america and american government gains any benefit

00:47:48.320 of creating this tension with iran zero because it's really pushing iran towards china and russia and i

00:47:55.060 think in that sense i don't i think i think america almost has lost its chance well i want iran to do

00:48:00.760 a sharp turn towards china i want iran to really go to like xi jinping tomorrow and say guys come

00:48:07.380 come the country is like we are like going to do a strategic uh partnership with you everything we're

00:48:13.080 going to throw away dollar everything in yuan directly barter because america left no option for

00:48:19.140 iran is strangulating it and it's pushing the country to the point of syrian syrianization

00:48:24.280 and internal dissolution so i think if i was at a lot tomorrow instead of shooting kids on the street

00:48:31.040 i would go and get these like pro-american oligarchs and politicians like zarif rohani and the rest

00:48:37.560 i will put them on house arrest and i will do a semi i will do a from above a bonapartian sharp turn to

00:48:46.120 the east because the west really betrayed iran not once but so many times and it seems it's not

00:48:52.940 suffice with anything less than turning iran into syria and libya yeah the the goal is not to do that

00:49:02.080 and i think that's why president trump has has restrained some of the ambitions of netanyahu but

00:49:07.380 but know this about the american president he never forecloses the prospect of a deal even when he talks

00:49:13.300 about iran now in very sharp terms at times the crass terms that you've identified uh arahchi went to

00:49:20.300 the meeting with whitkoff in september in the iran un whitkoff didn't even appear to the meeting

00:49:26.200 how humiliating after you bomb a country you destroy all his like facilities and iran comes i mean

00:49:32.620 remember pezashkian in his conversation with tucker carson didn't even mention american bombing iran

00:49:37.740 because they didn't want to like uh escalate the tension arahchi in his conversation with fox news

00:49:44.460 didn't mention uh american uh kind of bombing iran they all like focus on israel yet america said we

00:49:51.180 don't want negotiation we want surrender what trump said we want total surrender and let me just

00:49:56.380 surrender of those ambitions of the nuclear program but i don't think trump i don't think trump

00:50:00.420 i don't think trump seeks like surrender of the country and and and and i would i would also offer

00:50:05.360 that uh this is how it works man with with trump and his diplomatic way of doing things one minute

00:50:11.860 it's uh my red button is bigger than your red button and the next minute uh he and kim are writing love

00:50:19.820 letters to each other and so there's a fire and ice to it iran doesn't have kim had something that

00:50:25.080 iran had didn't have and that's nuclear bomb i think if iran had the intelligence of kim trump would

00:50:30.820 have respected iran much more let me just finish on this one however as uh has irrational iranians

00:50:37.320 have been in uh not not making them so a nuclear power so far and would be better for the peace and

00:50:44.040 prosperity of everyone in the region but i have to say there's a difference between iran and gaddafi

00:50:49.260 and assad and the rest these these people in iran this irgc they've been fighting since they're 18

00:50:54.860 they fought eight years war against saddam who gassed people who like used biological weapon and

00:51:00.260 iran was absolutely empty go and read foreign policy how america helped saddam gassing iranians

00:51:05.860 yeah so these people have built everything themselves they're not going to go anywhere

00:51:09.940 they have nowhere to go they're not going to go to europe they're not going to get go to exile in

00:51:13.660 miami or anything so the dream of regime change the way that was presented by american media last week

00:51:20.360 was not hollywood was bollywood was like so cheap so stupid so i mean i mean they were like

00:51:26.940 telegraph was talking about imminent collapse of the regime this is like a joke it's a it's a state

00:51:32.760 with massive apparatus with like tentacles in iraq and lebanon and yemen and afghanistan and so many

00:51:39.820 other places they're not going to go anywhere so regime change is not possible but the regime or

00:51:44.680 what do you call the regime the state was willing to make a lot of concessions and trump doesn't

00:51:50.500 even receive them trump says surrender and i think that doesn't work you're going to see this time

00:51:55.400 you're going to see a much more severe response from irgc and possibly trump is pushing iran to become

00:52:02.500 nuclear and is pushing iran to fall in the hand of irgc so far mullahs is going to go to a military

00:52:09.700 ruled country and both of them will be manufactured by donald trump if iran builds a bomb it would not

00:52:15.540 be called fat man or short man would be called loved by trump because trump is the engineer of

00:52:21.360 iranian bomb yeah i think there might be some folks at fordo that would have a different perspective on

00:52:29.160 that uh ali aliza thank you so much for joining us for the debate and discussion we appreciate your

00:52:34.500 perspective and your insights the uh editorial chief for jadal tv an iranian political analyst

00:52:40.060 based in london thanks for being with us on the program thanks for giving the time and platform

00:52:44.640 thank you yes always a pleasure and we'll be back next week with another episode of anchorman

00:52:50.540 thanks so much for joining me pearson always want to see more great videos like this click on the link

00:52:56.400 below to subscribe to oan live and watch dan ball's real america and the matt gate show on dish channel

00:53:01.800 212 tune in subscribe and watch today

The Anchormen Show with Matt Gaetz - January 23, 2026

The Anchormen Show Episode 95 - Mirage of Change？ w⧸ Pearson Sharp & Ali Alizadeh

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