Gregg Roman-Executive Director, Middle East Forum- Iran, Israel, & Immigration (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_953)
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Summary
Inaugural Guest: Scott Saad, Director of the Declaration of Independence Center for the Study of American Freedom at the University of Mississippi. Inaugural guest: Greg R. Roman, Executive Director of The Middle East Forum.
Transcript
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I'm delighted to report that I have joined, as a scholar, the Declaration of Independence Center
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for the Study of American Freedom at the University of Mississippi.
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The center offers educational opportunities, speakers, internship, and reading groups for
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the University of Mississippi community. It is named in honor of the United States founding
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document, which constitutes the nation as a political community and expresses fundamental
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principles of American freedom, including in the recognition of the importance of Judeo-Christian
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values in shaping American exceptionalism. Dedicated to the academic and open-minded exploration of
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these principles, the center exists to encourage exploration into the many facets of freedom.
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It will sponsor a speaker series and an interdisciplinary faculty research team.
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If you'd like to learn more about the center, please visit Ole Miss, that's O-L-E-M-I-S-S dot
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Hi, everybody. This is Scott Saad, inaugural guest for 2026, so that's a big honor. Make sure
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to put that on your CV. We've got Greg Roman, Executive Director of the Middle East Forum.
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I'm great. Thanks for having me today, and Happy New Year.
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Happy New Year to you as well. Okay, well, let's start with the Middle East Forum. Tell us about
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it. But before you do, I actually, I think I met once, no, I'm sure I met once Daniel Pipes,
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who is the founder of the Middle East Forum. I think he founded it in 1994. He had come to Montreal
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to speak at some event, and I spoke to him very, very briefly. And I think I might have mentioned
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the fact that coming up with a distinction between Islam and Islamism and radical Islam was not a good
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idea. So maybe we could talk about that later, but tell us about the Middle East Forum.
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Sure. Daniel Pipes is the OG of fighting Islamism, and he's the guy who's been involved with this
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since 1972, when he got his doctorate from Harvard University. The thing that you have to understand
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about the way in which we fight wars is sort of the familial history of Daniel Pipes and the heritage
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that he comes from. His father, Richard Pipes, was the head of the Eastern Europe Bureau in the first
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Reagan administration. He's the guy who wrote the Evil Empire speech where Reagan architected the
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downfall of the Soviet Union. Wars don't end when one side declares victory. Wars end when one side
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admits defeat. And that's been our mantra for the past 31 years since the forum's founding. Actually,
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it's 32 years now, January of 1994. Focus on three things. The first is research. This is the academia
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which goes against the corrupt academe that's in American universities, specifically Middle East
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studies and Islamic studies programs, where a lot of these ethnic fights come from, a lot of this
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politicization of Middle Eastern diatribes. And if you think about the campus,
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the students who are parts of Students for Justice in Palestine, the Antifa movements,
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the different far-left organizations that come and go, they're there for four years. Maybe they're
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doing a master's or a doctoral student study, and they're there for 10 years, 12 years. But the
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professors who get tenure are the individuals who inject the virus into the hive mind of these students
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who then leave, but the professors stay and their vitriol continues. So we try to fight in terms of
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producing good research, good investigations, and we're budding and also having proactive academe
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pushback against a lot of the messages which are corrupting the next generation of American
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students. Secondarily, we have an operations arm. We engage in long-form writing, but also long-form
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research. Our scholars are in Syria. They're in Yemen, meeting with the South Transition Council.
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They're in Lebanon. They go to Iraq. They meet with the Kurds, the Yazidis. We even had a case last year
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where there was a Yazidi woman who was taken slave by members of Hamas, who started off as ISIS
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members in Syria, made their way to Turkey, Egypt, and then imprisoned this woman for 10 years
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in hostile captivity in Khan Yunus in Gaza. And as part of our operations, we identified her,
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spoke to her family, and arranged an extraction operation by the IDF. That's a small little example
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of an operational arm, but we're not just thinking, we're doing. And lastly, we engage ourselves in
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what I would call maybe statecraft or policy advisory. We work with Republicans, Democrats,
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members of Likud, members of Naftali Bennett's party, lawmakers across Europe and throughout the
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Middle East are trying to give the best policy prescriptions to make sure that American interests
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in the Middle East are promoted, but also that Western civilization is defended from Middle Eastern
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threats. So across research, operations, and this policy advice we give, we've been doing it for
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about 32 years. Great, great synopsis. Thank you. Of these three, you know, driving raison d'etre of your
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think tank, is there one that is uniquely more difficult than the other two, or is there one
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where you've been distinctly more successful than the other two? Tell us about if we pit these three
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objectives against one another, give us a sense of how difficult each is.
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I think our added value to responsible Middle East policymaking is our operational arm.
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We really have sort of a frontline advisory in terms of the way in which we procure information
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and then base recommendations off of what's coming from the field, not what's coming from an armchair
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analyst sitting in Washington, D.C., London, or Jerusalem. We're there when the events are happening.
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We're speaking with people on the ground, for instance, with the Iranian revolution,
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which is going on right now, or the counter-revolution. We have people on the ground
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monitoring what's happening inside the country. We've sent over 470 Starlink terminals to Iran
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over the past three years, and they're communicating directly to us, even if there's an internet blackout
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going on, like you just saw what happened in Kerman Shah and Tehran and Shiraz and Isfahan.
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They get us the information, ask us for advice on how to organize protests, sit-ins, boycotts,
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how to use non-violent action, because if you advocate anything that's kinetic, it's a violation of U.S. law.
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But getting these people organized and then giving them advice in the real time of how to make the next
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step forward. And I think that that combination is something that, beyond your traditional think
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tank model, which is really reacting to what's going on on the ground, we try to help them set
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the facts to make sure that Western interests are protected there.
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Now, you, offline, but I suggested that we discuss it online, you mentioned that the way that you got into
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this whole, you know, ecosystem was related to my reality being in Montreal. Can you tell us a bit
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Sure. So when I was six years old, my dad had the great idea of putting me into a singlet and starting
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a wrestling career. And I'm not your typical, you know, Philadelphia Jew. I did three varsity sports.
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I was collegiate wrestler in a division one program, and I had no interest in Israel,
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the Middle East or anything whatsoever. But in my first match of my career, which was at a tournament,
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I end up hurting my knee. There goes the wrestling career. I'm looking for something to do
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at American University in Washington, D.C. So after wrestling for 15 years and trying to find
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something else, the mentality of a wrestler is it's you and the other guy and that's it.
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Now, if I'm a student and I'm sitting in a classroom, it's me and the professor. If I disagree
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with him, he might fail me. On a much more exaggerated example, if I'm a student activist
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and I'm inviting someone like what happened at your university at Concordia, which was prime
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minister Netanyahu at that time in 2003, then he was finance minister Netanyahu, or may have even
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been a private citizen between his time in government. I saw this video called Concordia
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Unbecoming, which was produced by the Clarion Project. And before that was an organization
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called Hasbro Fellowships, which started in New York, and then now it's in Jerusalem over
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the States, Canada. And I saw these individuals taking these barriers and throwing them through
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the windows of the Concordia University Student Center or wherever he was giving a speech.
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And they quite literally used the violence to suppress his ability to speak. This is something
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not from last year or from the BLM riots or from Antifa or Occupy Wall Street. This is 24 years
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ago. And this is what would set the tone and the pace for the anti-Western movements going on in
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college campuses and quite frankly, in society for the past generation, which I saw. And his response
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was a certain level of magnetism, but also the film sort of gave a prescription for what would be
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happening up until this day. The students got together, they filmed what was going on, they organized
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public protests, they went to the administration, fell on deaf ears, but then they eventually turned that
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one incident into a movie which inspired a generation of pro-Western activists to come out and to fight
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back. So that led me on a path where I would eventually move to Israel, join the army, serve in the
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foreign ministry, work for the prime minister's office in the defense ministry, and 10 years ago come to be
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Wow. Well, it's good that, well, it feels right that something good came of this otherwise tragic
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reality that is unfolding at Concordia. Look, I have many wonderful things to say about my home
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university. I'm currently, as we discussed offline, I'm going to leave and I'm at Old Miss at the
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Declaration of Independence Center for the Study of American Freedom. But, you know, Concordia has given
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me all sorts of latitude in terms of the freedom to do the kinds of research that I want to do. You know,
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in the business school, it typically was not something that evolutionary psychologists would
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be applying evolutionary theory to study, you know, consumer behavior or economic decision-making.
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It was viewed with some suspicion, yet they were perfectly happy to let me do so, as long as, of
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course, I was productive, I was publishing in top journals. So there are many wonderful elements to
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Concordia. But to your point, there is a ecosystem of Jew hatred that has existed at Concordia.
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But much, much longer, to your point, than, you know, the October 7th reality. Now, October 7th
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came along, you've got me a, you know, pretty public Jewish professor who doesn't hide his sentiments
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about some of the dynamics in the Middle East, and suddenly it becomes impossible for me to be there.
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But I'm glad that that's what served as a catalyst for you. All right, let's talk about, we could take
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any of the, I thought, I mentioned earlier that we talk about Iran, Israel, immigration, Islam.
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You talked a bit about Iran, maybe let's continue with Iran, and then we'll go to some of the other
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eyes. How are you, what are your thoughts? Do you think that this counter-revolution will be the one
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Well, I think you have to understand two parts of history to first understand what's happening
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today in Iran. The first is the 120-year history of Iranian merchants being the barometer for where
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the regime or whatever governing authority will eventually take place in the Islamic Republic.
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1905, the bazaar goes on fire. In 1906, you get their first constitution. In 1952, 1953,
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Mossadegh is brought to power. The CIA eventually ends that. But you find a situation where because
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of the economic doldrums of Iran, after World War II, after the split between the Brits and the
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Soviets and the eventual withdrawal, you see that the economy dictates who takes control.
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1979, same thing. The Shah overspends on oil, isn't able to deliver what should be a pretty good way of
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life. In Iran, you have 400-plus people killed in a movie fire. Then the bazaar goes on strike.
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The Ayatollah comes in. That's the history over the last 120 years. Now, move to the last 20.
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2009, Green Movement, it's not about the economy. It's about Ahmadinejad being put in power, even
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though it was pretty clear that the election didn't go his way. 2019, now we start seeing the effects of
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the sanctions after Trump reinstates maximum pressure by pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal,
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and the economy starts teetering. 2022, again, not about the economy. The Women's Life Freedom
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protests comes forward because of the death of Masa Amini, a young Kurdish woman who was killed
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because she wasn't wearing her hijab the right way by the morality police. Again, millions of people
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come out onto the street, but unfortunately, the West didn't give the necessary support to turn that
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into a true counter-revolution. But now, you have three instances over the past six months.
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First, before the Iran-Israel war, the 12-day war in Operation Midnight Hammer, every Iranian truck
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driver goes on strike because of rising petrol prices and the price of gasoline, and they literally
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park their trucks on the side of every Iranian highway. Commerce stops. That's not the bazaar,
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but it is the way in which the logistics and supply chain go forward. That's interrupted
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by the 12-day war. Iran's capabilities on missiles, on proxies, and on the nuclear program,
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the three things which pose an existential threat also to Israel, but largely a strategic threat to
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the West, are decapitated or creating a situation insofar that their ability to strike back is severely
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brought down. And then you have December 27th, the all-time low of the Iranian riyal to the dollar.
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I think it's like 1.44 million riyals to $1. And then you have the bazaars say, you know what,
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we've had enough. 50% inflation, an expected tax increase in the middle of January announced by
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the Majils, the Iranian parliament. 42% of the economy being owned by the Revolutionary Guard.
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And story after story coming out about Iranian corruption within the regime, not those individuals
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who are outside making money off of it. And all this comes to a head Sunday, December 27th,
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the bazaar, the 27th, 28th, regardless, we're on day 12 right now. You have the bazaar go on strike,
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and then you start seeing the dominoes fall. It's not the students who rose up. It's not protesting
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about women's rights or the rights of minorities groups. This started with the same group that
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brought down the Shah in 1979. And now what you see is the reverse effect from all those other
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protests from 2009. The Kurds announced yesterday that they go on strike. If you go through the
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Kurdish towns, and there's videos of this available on Telegram, Twitter, wherever else, every shop is
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closed down. You even have protesters in a town about 45 minutes outside of Tehran going through the
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streets. And then the IRGC, the besiege, which is sort of like their paramilitary secret police,
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which represses revolts and protests when they come up, are on the rooftops with sniper rifles,
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pointed out this crowd. They say, we give up. They go down from the street, from the roofs to the
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streets, and they march with the protesters. So this isn't just the bazaar merchants. This isn't just
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minority groups. This isn't just Iranian youth. These are members of the regime security forces who are
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now joining the protest against their bosses. This is the most significant uprising against the
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ayatollahs and the mullahs control since they came into power in 79. But there's a lot of things that
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have to happen the right way over the next, not days, but weeks, months, even years, for this to
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turn into a way that the regime falls and doesn't just become a zombie regime, which is my biggest fear.
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Now, I've actually been in contact for several years with the folks of the crown prince, the son of
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the late Shah of Iran, to come on the show. It's never worked out. I think I recently heard that
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something like one third of Iranians would support him. Does that sound right? Is that number right?
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I think you really have to get a better idea of how the Iranian, what's called global population,
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between the diaspora and people in the country. Think about the crown prince and the way in which
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he might have an effect as a unifying force rather than a dividing force in the country. And you have
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to understand Iranian demographics a little bit before you get into that analysis. About 53 to 54 percent
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of Iran is Persian, ethnically Persian. The other minorities are dozens of different groups,
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which may constitute a majority in one of Iran's 31 provinces, but as a whole nationwide are a
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minority. So you have the Avazis, the Iranian Arabs. You have the Baluchis, the Sistanis, the
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Azeris in the north, the Kurbs, the Lourdes, the Gurbs, the Turkmen. And they all constitute,
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Armenians even, they all constitute different areas where they have a certain amount of pull. Now,
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the Shah back in the day was Persian. And there was a certain amount of animus between Pahlavi and
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then some of the other groups which were around here. And there was Iranian separatists and minority
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separatists. Fast forward now 47 years after the revolution, and you're in a situation that you see
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these separatist groups, which fragmented amongst themselves. There's nine different Iranian Kurdish
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political parties that can't even agree on things within their own demographics. If you think Jewish
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politics is one way, look at Iranian politics and you'll see there's some competitors for who can
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have the most amount of disagreement in the same house. But what was significant about this Kurdish
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worker strike yesterday, it was seven of those nine parties putting out a joint statement saying,
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we will join together as Iranian Kurds. We will join our Iranian Persian brethren in Tehran
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coming together and we'll all strike as one. As our main enemy is the regime. Now, when I speak
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about regime change, in general about this subject, I'm not focused on the day after, which some people
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might say is a mistake. I'm focused first on the downfall of the regime, and then let the Iranian
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people figure out what happens the day after, rather than having a coalition provisional authority with
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Iyad Alawi and Ahmed Shalabi, like we had in Iraq back in March of 2003, where the Lulia Jirga and the
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eventual Santaf Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan. The Iranian people need to have an organic, controlled implosion of
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the regime in the country, and then let them decide whether it's Reza Pahlavi who unifies, whether it's, there's a
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whole group, by the way, of Iranian intellectuals and wrestlers and Olympic heroes and people who are in the country now,
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who are leading the protests, they might have more so-called street cred being part of a transition.
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You might even have a situation where the regime itself fragments, because while there is the Islamic
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revolution and the guardians of that revolution in the Ayatollah's office, in the IRGC, the Bastij,
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there's a parallel state that exists within Iran of the government, the parliament, who are all approved
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by the Ayatollah. But you have mid-level bureaucrats like your dog catcher or your traffic police or the
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guy who's collecting taxes or approving building plans, and they, I think, will be more key to what
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happens in the day-after scenario, whether or not the crown prince is leading that, or I think more
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likely is part of a much larger national dialogue. And what's important here is that the minority groups
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feel like they're part of that process, and it's not just someone who was anointed by birth to be
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a replacement figure, and that there's a national dialogue that goes on about this, not happening
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in Washington, not happening in Paris, which are sort of the two main centers of political
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representation of the Iranian diaspora, but it's happening in Shiraz, in Tabriz, in Shadur,
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in Isfahan, in Tehran. And if there's a way for that to happen, and I don't really know
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where we're going right now with this, because maybe it's a voluntary departure like Assad,
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a middle of the night flight to Moscow with the Ayatollah, maybe the people go to the Ayatollah's
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offices and his residence and forcefully remove him. But there's a lot of things that have to
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happen in the future. The crown prince is part of that, but I don't think he's the only way in
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which the Iranian people become free. Now, from my own personal interactions with
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Iranian students, there are many such students at Concordia, and most of them were incredibly
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studious and serious and brilliant. I got the sense from them that there isn't this fervor
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for religion in Iran the way you otherwise see it, because it's imposed by the Islamic regime.
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Is that a fair statement in that once, hopefully, Iran is sort of liberated from the shackles of
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its theocracy, that it is true that there is an appetite amongst Iranians to be a lot more
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secular, a lot more Western, a lot more modern? Is that a fair statement?
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Yeah, I think what we're looking at here is the reverse Syria scenario, where you had a secular
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autocrat rule Syria since the 70s with the Banffist Revolution, and then since you've had Iran ruled
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by a theocratic autocrat since 1979, instead of seeing an Islamic republic like we're seeing rise
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in Syria right now, you'll see a secular government come in place in Iran to replace it. But to
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understand the origins of the Islamic republic, you got to go back to 1979. It wasn't just the Islamists
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who were clamoring for the Shah to leave Tehran. It was people who were Republicans, anti-monarchists,
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communists, socialists. There was a whole panoply of different political streams of thought that
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were event that would on day one of the revolution, right? It wasn't just the Islamic revolution. It was
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an Iranian revolution against the Shah. The Islamic revolution came later. And the reason for that
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was because the Islamic elements under Ayatollah Khomeini were organized in such a way that they
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had a date-after scenario planned where they had three member committees in every mosque across the
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country. So when the Ayatollah lands, the Shah leaves, they're the ones who are in first place to be able
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to create the infrastructure that would then lead to become the Islamic Republic. Reverse that now.
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You have opposition groups which are pretty fragmented in the diaspora. They have some
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representation in the country. But what you really have are the people who I think will be pulling
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the levers of power are those who are the Iranian middle class. If the Bazaaris, those in the Bazaar,
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are leading the uprising now, they'll be focused on improving the economy. If the universities right
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now feel sort of under the thumb of the Islamic Republic, and they want to be able to have more
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diversity of thought or just be able to think freely, they'll be part of that transition.
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So inevitably, the same people who were responsible for the Islamic revolution back in 79,
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they're in their 70s and 80s now. Those who are leading the uprising on the street didn't even know
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what the Iran-Iraq war looked like. They didn't know what the departure of the Shah was like. And
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that's a double-edged sword. Because on one hand, they don't want to see the Islamic Republic.
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On the other hand, they don't remember the Shah being in charge. So there's a third way,
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I think, that they'll find to see what kind of state this becomes.
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Interesting. So in the Middle East, of course, we've got the Abraham Accords. So a lot of the
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Gulf countries are becoming a lot friendlier, I mean, towards the West in general, and certainly
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towards Israel. Now you could have potentially the toppling of the Iranian regime. Let's suppose
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that these two dynamics were to fully happen. Would you become suddenly unbelievably optimistic
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about the future in the Middle East? Or there is always this ideological strain that could always
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come back the way we have the shingles virus? Do you follow what I mean?
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The cousin of the ideological strain is already emerging. And we're in the Shia Islamic crescent,
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from Iran, through Iraqi militias, with Qataiq al-Hezbollah in Iraq, to the Assad regime,
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Alawis, but still part of that alliance, even though they were the secular variant of it,
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to Hezbollah in Lebanon. And then also looking from the south with the Houthis,
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and also some other elements in Africa, you had a very Shia-dominated effort, not just against Israel,
00:24:46.860
but against Western interests in the region. That, since the defeat of Hezbollah, even though
00:24:52.000
there's a certain amount of reconstitution going on now, the semi-defeat of Hamas, even though
00:24:57.020
they're still around, the withdrawal of Iraqi Shia militias in December of 2023, and the Houthis
00:25:04.260
losing half their cabinet in an Israeli airstrike, is being replaced by a Sunni Islamist scimitar,
00:25:11.620
which is emerging with the patronage of Qatar and Turkey. So that vacuum that the Iranian withdrawal
00:25:16.920
created is now being filled by Turkish Islamists, Turkish back to jihadis. So it's not as if though
00:25:24.120
there is the elimination of all dangers in the Middle East, there's a new danger which is emerging.
00:25:30.300
And I would even argue that it might be a little bit more dangerous than the Iranians, because the
00:25:33.860
Iranians knew what you were dealing with. They were openly anti-Western. They didn't try to be an
00:25:39.300
ally in NATO or to be a non-NATO major ally of the United States, like Turkey and Qatar, while at the
00:25:47.000
same time investing in strategic plans, which is meant at the end of the day to bring Russia back into
00:25:52.720
the region, to bring China into the region. That's going on now, and it's going on largely behind
00:25:57.900
Western backs. And that's something that I think all policymakers need to be on the lookout for and
00:26:05.980
aware of the specter of a Turkish-dominated Sunni scimitar, which is now coming in Syria and Lebanon.
00:26:14.620
You know, originally from Lebanon, the Turkish MIT, their intelligence agency, is backing Lebanese Sunni
00:26:21.320
militias now in Tir and Sidon. They're very active there. They have a presence with the DNET that's in
00:26:27.020
Jerusalem. They're trying to buy up property in East Jerusalem. They're the main backers of Hamas, if you
00:26:32.980
see where their political leadership is in Istanbul. Same thing with Doha and Qatar. And they're frankly
00:26:38.280
trying to invest more money with Yemeni Muslim Brotherhood elements. And forget about Arabia. The Turks are
00:26:45.820
present with 3,000 soldiers in Somalia. Their Blue Horizon effort to take advantage of Northern Cyprus. Their
00:26:51.540
investments in the Debeva family in Western Libya. All of Libya's weaponry, those who are Islamist, comes from the
00:26:59.060
Turkish military industrial complex. And they're even making inroads in Algeria, Tunisia, and in Morocco. So this is
00:27:05.740
something that I think, not just Israel, but if you think about sort of that Eastern Mediterranean angle, you know, you have
00:27:12.500
Greece, Cyprus, and Israel. That's the new front of this battle against Islamism, rather than just thinking, oh, Iran is
00:27:21.280
taken care of. Now, we can have peace in the region. The converse side of that, the upside of all of that, is that if Iran does
00:27:29.580
turn to a more secular republic, if they honor Persian history going back 2,500 years, 3,000 years, then you get to an angle which is
00:27:39.800
sort of like what David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel had, which is what he called an outside-in
00:27:45.960
strategy. On Israel's borders, you had Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia to a lesser extent, Lebanon to a very lesser
00:27:55.080
extent, except with the PLO in the 70s and 80s. And Ben-Gurion's strategy was to have countries which were abutting
00:28:02.340
those major threats to Israel that would then become Israeli allies. And I think what you're seeing now is what I would call a
00:28:08.940
strategy of Pax Israeliana. Israel won this war, and now instead of just retreating to its borders, it's making sure it has a
00:28:16.080
presence, albeit maybe air power or cyber power or information warfare, where the Druze and the Maronites and the Kurds and the
00:28:25.820
Yazidis and other groups, which have not really had a state sponsor before, can rely on Israel, and Israel can rely on them as an early
00:28:33.120
warning system against the Turks, against the Qataris and other groups. So there's a strategy which is unfolding
00:28:38.880
here that the Israelis are projecting power. And even so far, they're going to protect Christians as well. There's still 10 to 15
00:28:46.200
million Middle Eastern Christians that are left in Middle East Muslim-majority countries. And Benjamin Netanyahu in a speech that he
00:28:52.200
made in Florida when he was visiting President Trump last week said, we don't just have an obligation to defend the Jews of our
00:28:59.420
country and Israeli citizens. We have an obligation to defend Judeo-Christian values. And now you're seeing him
00:29:05.020
actualize that. So there's an upside to this, too.
00:29:08.140
It's interesting that you mentioned about, you know, the Israeli protection of some of the, you know, non-Jewish
00:29:14.340
minorities in the Middle East. I've often written hypothetical dialogues, but based on realities that I've had with
00:29:23.000
Christian friends who, you know, it goes something like this, do you, who killed your family in Lebanon? I'm speaking
00:29:31.720
this as to a Christian Lebanese. And they'll say, oh, it was Muslims. Okay, they're the ones who eradicated your family
00:29:38.780
in that village. Yes. And what are your thoughts about Israel? Oh, I can't stand those Zionist entities. And so from this
00:29:47.140
side of the mouth, I will readily admit that it was the Muslims. And in many cases, it's the PLO who killed
00:29:54.100
my family. I'm going back now to the Lebanese Civil War. And then from this side of the mouth, when it was
00:29:58.880
Israel that was helping, let's say, you know, Shma'il and the Kata'ib, you know, the Christian militia in
00:30:05.540
Lebanon, they suddenly lose all sense of logic. And they suddenly become rabid, certainly anti-Israeli,
00:30:14.840
but it almost borders on maybe being anti-Jew. Have you experienced something similar in some of
00:30:22.480
your interactions with Christian minorities in the Middle East? So I bring up this example of Israel
00:30:27.820
having its proxies, just like the Iranians had their proxies, the Turks have their proxies.
00:30:32.560
And the main counter-argument is, they say, look at Saab Haddad and the SLA, the Southern Lebanese army,
00:30:39.400
from 82 until 2000, Israel drew to the blue line, and thousands of Lebanese Christians,
00:30:44.580
were left overnight to forcefully evacuate their homes and come to Israel to seek refuge.
00:30:52.040
Yes. My point here is that Israel is not trying to use armed proxies to project its power to occupy
00:31:01.120
an area under Israeli influence. The idea here is that Israel acts as a backstop against forces,
00:31:08.580
mainly Islamist forces, which are trying to massacre and genocide and ethnically cleanse areas
00:31:13.760
where minorities live. So long as they know they have a force they can rely on in their most dire
00:31:18.980
hour, they have autonomy. They govern the areas where they live. They can preserve their cultural
00:31:23.380
heritage. You try to give them a level playing field in the countries they live in to be able to
00:31:28.640
have a certain amount of autonomy so they can be part of Lebanese politics without being identified
00:31:32.980
as a force of Israel. And I think if you do that, it's the same thing that President Trump and
00:31:38.600
Vice President Vance just did in Nigeria. ISIS and the Boko Haram outlets go to Christian schools,
00:31:46.820
kidnap Christian girls, are burning villages down. And the Nigerian government was largely helpless to
00:31:52.700
be able to try to assist them, in part because it's in Muslim-majority provinces and it's not
00:31:57.600
politically convenient. And frankly, they didn't have the capability to win battles against these ISIS
00:32:01.980
forces. The other side was just too good. So then comes a U.S. carrier group. You have strikes
00:32:08.600
against these ISIS camps. And what President Trump does is he resets the playing field in terms of
00:32:14.920
the Christians to be able to have their autonomy, their practice of religion, their freedom, because
00:32:19.660
the U.S. has their backs. You're not having 10,000 Marines to pull in Nigeria to guard Christian
00:32:25.040
villages. But there's always that afterthought in the mind of an Islamist. If I go too far,
00:32:30.080
uh-oh, a U.S. carrier is going to be off my shores and they're going to be doing something.
00:32:33.120
I would say to Christians that see Israel as an oppressive force, as suppressing Middle East
00:32:40.320
minority groups, as an ally. Imagine Israel having an office of protecting the covenant.
00:32:46.920
In Hebrew, we call it Lishkatabrit, where there's now parity between Israel offering protection for
00:32:52.920
Christians but not telling them how to live their lives. And I think that that example of realizing that
00:32:58.920
there is true Islamic supremacism, which is targeting these minority communities, they're
00:33:06.480
feeling it. In March, the Alawis had 1,000 killed. In June, the Druze had 1,000 killed. It's here.
00:33:13.200
The danger is here. And Israel is the only country that is willing to step up to protect them,
00:33:19.040
not because they were asked to, because they feel like they have a moral responsibility to do that.
00:33:23.740
And also, frankly, it's strategically sound. The next generation of evangelical Americans
00:33:29.120
that are coming up are largely thinking that wherein you have mainline Protestant theology,
00:33:36.820
which says that the church replaced Israel in terms of the role of the Jewish state or the land of
00:33:42.920
Israel in Christianity. Evangelicals are now saying, well, there's Christians that are in Judea,
00:33:48.760
Samaria, and Gaza who are being persecuted by the Jews, who are being persecuted by Israelis.
00:33:53.200
They're second-class Palestinian Christians. I think what's happening now is that Israel is
00:33:57.680
realizing that these individuals have to be protected. They must be able to have their
00:34:01.780
freedom to worship. But it goes beyond Israel's borders. It's all Christians in the Middle East,
00:34:05.720
all minorities in the Middle East that should be able to rely on Israel for protection if they call for it.
00:34:11.720
Got you. What do you think about the argument that some American isolationists, I mean, of course,
00:34:19.200
you've heard this incessantly, and I've seen some of my public figures who historically were quite allied
00:34:28.300
with some of my thinking. But since October 7th, there's been a bit of fissers who say, look,
00:34:35.000
in the same way that I don't want Americans to intervene in Ukraine by the exact same logical mechanism,
00:34:42.920
I don't think we get anything in funding Israel the way that we do. So to your best, I'm sure you've
00:34:50.980
been asked this before, give us your best laid out arguments for why the relationship between Israel
00:34:57.720
and the United States is actually not a parasitic one, but a reciprocal one.
00:35:02.200
Well, I think I would just start off by saying that individuals who call for an American aid to Israel
00:35:06.940
in terms of the three or four billion dollar aid package that it gives on an annual basis for
00:35:12.300
armaments are right. The aid has to end. And I'm a proponent of not keeping the relationship status
00:35:18.400
quo, but evolving the relationship into a true partnership, not one in which American taxpayers
00:35:24.300
feel like they're subsidizing Israel's defense industry. Frankly, 80, 90 percent of the money that
00:35:29.820
the U.S. gives to Israel is spent in the United States anyway. It's more of a defense subsidy than it is
00:35:35.680
just supplying Israeli arms industries to build their own weaponry. But Israel, after this seven
00:35:41.440
front war, has to evolve to be a true equal partner of the United States, one in which the
00:35:47.720
everyday American feels like they're getting as much, if not more, from Israel as the Israeli and
00:35:51.900
the Israeli defense forces, as Israeli politicians, Israeli businessmen feel like they're getting.
00:35:56.560
So in order to evolve that relationship, you see some pretty seminal steps forward that this
00:36:02.720
government in Israel has made to become arms independent. A hundred billion dollar, excuse me,
00:36:09.100
that's way too much, a 350 billion shekel investment, 10 billion dollars a year for the next 10 years
00:36:15.440
that this government in Israel has made, it promised to, to build its own domestic arms industry.
00:36:22.620
So it doesn't need bombs. It doesn't need missiles. It doesn't need basic ammunition to be able to fight
00:36:27.700
its wars. Secondarily, when you have projects that have been subsidized by American taxpayer dollars,
00:36:33.160
like Iron Dome, the Arrow 3 missile interceptor system, some of Israel's fighter helmets that are
00:36:40.620
used on the F-35. When Israel becomes a laboratory for using these armaments, America's ability to have
00:36:47.920
a qualitative military edge over its enemies in China and Russia and elsewhere improves because it's not
00:36:52.960
American fighter pilots who are flying those jets, bombing targets in Syria, in Gaza, elsewhere, in Iran.
00:37:01.160
It's Israelis who are battle testing that. And then all those results go back to the United States
00:37:05.940
to improve our own weapons systems. There was actually a seminar that took place about a month ago
00:37:11.120
where the IDF hosted over 30 military attaches from different Western countries and even South Korea and
00:37:18.640
Japan to give them a one-day seminar on how things that they learned over the last two years could be
00:37:25.220
implemented in Western militaries. And I think that that story really goes untold. Beyond the military
00:37:31.740
dimension, I can give you the Startup Nation example. I can give you all the technology. You know, we have
00:37:37.760
our cell phones that are developed with the technology in Israel. But Israel has to be an equal partner on
00:37:43.980
equal footing with the United States, being able to make its own decisions, but not relying on American
00:37:48.800
handouts to fight its wars. Now, you do get to a situation sometimes where a country of only 10
00:37:53.880
million people comes under an onslaught from seven armies. I don't know if Israel will always be able
00:37:59.840
to fight its wars to the extent where if a nuclear weapon was developed by the Iranians, or any force for
00:38:05.600
that matter, imagine if the Turks get a nuke. Would the U.S. be expected to sit it out? No. But the value of the
00:38:12.020
relationship must be such that the U.S. sees losing Israel as a strategic liability to American
00:38:18.500
national security interests, not just as doing a favor to another country. But do you think, for
00:38:23.320
example, the argument that the intelligence sharing that goes from Israel towards the United States
00:38:29.980
goes a long way in terms of creating that parity, or that's simply insufficient, and therefore that's
00:38:36.960
why you're talking about a lopsidedness in the relationship? The intelligence sharing is
00:38:41.240
very valuable, but I don't think that it's enough. I think that you have to have a much stronger
00:38:49.100
partnership on a geopolitical level, on a strategic level, of which intelligence is important, but it's
00:38:55.420
not the sole factor that people should be informed about or take when they're having the equation of
00:38:59.880
whether Israel is an equal ally and partner of the United States. It has to be bigger than that,
00:39:04.820
and I think Israel is moving in that direction. When you share those sentiments, are you typically
00:39:12.080
in the minority amongst, you know, fellow pro-Israel folks in that they're surprised by your position?
00:39:19.380
How dare you say that it is not fully reciprocal, or are they well in line and congruent with what
00:39:24.520
you're saying? They believe that evolution has to take place. They don't know how to chart the path
00:39:30.960
to be able to get there, and frankly, I think they're taking their cues from the Israeli government,
00:39:36.320
and the government has now moved in that direction. They're talking about weaning itself off of
00:39:41.700
American defense aid for the Israeli military, and if you look back at 1996, when Prime Minister Netanyahu
00:39:49.500
was first elected, he advocated for ending economic aid to Israel, right? The aid package wasn't just
00:39:56.000
all military all the time. Back when President Bush, H.W. Bush, was the president, there was billions
00:40:03.680
of dollars in loan guarantees given to the government of Israel to absorb a million Jews
00:40:08.240
from former Soviet Union countries. Prime Minister Netanyahu came in and said, we want to end economic
00:40:14.000
aid. We're a strong enough, you know, powerhouse technologically and with our economy. We don't
00:40:19.820
need economic aid. Let's transition at the military aid, and now I think with his call that he made a few
00:40:24.980
weeks ago by investing in the Israeli defense establishment, we're getting to the point where
00:40:30.000
the Prime Minister might say, all right, we probably need another 10 years of aid to be able to have a
00:40:35.000
transition period, but by 2036, we'll be in a position to do this ourselves. Got it. I mentioned
00:40:41.920
the several I's that we were going to discuss today, so let's move on to immigration. Now, of course,
00:40:49.020
you deal with realities that happen in the Middle East, and oftentimes many of the immigrants come
00:40:56.940
from those regions. Do you think that it is sustainable for certainly Europe and or Canada
00:41:04.140
and the United States, Australia, to maintain the current levels of immigration flows that we're
00:41:10.820
seeing from some of those countries? If yes, why? If not, why not?
00:41:14.980
No, it's a death knell to Western civilization, if it keeps up at this pace. And as much as the
00:41:21.760
Middle East Forum has its mission statement promoting American interests, protecting American
00:41:26.260
interests in the Middle East, the second part of that is defending Western values from Middle
00:41:31.360
Eastern threats and the unchecked, unbridled immigration from Muslim-majority countries with
00:41:39.720
people who aren't vetted, aren't screened, come in because of quotas rather than because of
00:41:44.500
actually looking at their ideology and the kind of values that they bring to the West is something
00:41:48.560
that we deal with, too, through our Islamist Watch project. If you look at the work that we've done,
00:41:54.960
I'm going to cite Daniel Pipes here, who we spoke about at the beginning of the conversation,
00:41:58.620
of what he calls extreme vetting. This is what's needed for the West. You can't just have a test based
00:42:05.200
on race and ethnicity and religion and country of origin. That's all fine. You know, you can allow
00:42:13.480
Iraqis and Afghanis and Moroccans and whoever else. I'm for universal immigration. So long as these
00:42:21.220
individuals pass a test where they, when they come to the immigration officer, will be able to become
00:42:27.180
part of Western civilization. They can practice Islam in their own private community, but at the same
00:42:33.380
time, they better not try to impose the Sharia through democracy on secular institutions. As much
00:42:39.020
as I wouldn't want there to be Tanakhic, you know, expression inside of a public school or Christian
00:42:46.700
sermons being given as a homily, you know, homeroom class. Now, that makes me maybe more of an ardent
00:42:53.640
divider of secularism from the state and religion for your private place. And I think there's a role for
00:42:59.980
religion in the public, but it's more of the RFRA variety. If you know RFRA, the Religious Freedom
00:43:05.800
Restoration Act, which protects the practice of religion, but it doesn't protect the imposition
00:43:10.340
of religion on individuals who don't agree with that. And that's what's happening now. I mean,
00:43:15.280
when you have, and I hate to bring up the Somali example as Muslim migrants coming to Minnesota,
00:43:22.120
but when you have a massive population, which isn't asked about their adherence to constitutional
00:43:27.600
values, where they're not asked about how they would see themselves practicing their religion
00:43:33.500
within their own no-go zone of certain neighborhoods of Minneapolis, when they say one thing, when they
00:43:41.120
come in on their immigration forms, and then they do something else when they're here. And I don't
00:43:45.680
know if you've ever seen a U.S. Customs and Immigration Service form, or back then it was INS,
00:43:51.520
the Immigration and Naturalization Service. I went through that because my wife's Israeli.
00:43:55.760
We moved to the States from Israel back in 2012, and she had to go through every step of legal
00:44:02.880
immigration. First, you know, do you have a criminal history? No. Second, will you commit to work and be
00:44:08.640
a productive member of the American economy? Yes. And then you get to the point where you apply for
00:44:13.420
citizenship, which she did, and there's a hundred questions. Some of those questions involve, were you
00:44:18.640
ever a member of the Nazi Party? Were you ever a member of the Communist Party? Have you ever been part
00:44:23.680
of a fringe political group? No, no, no, no. Okay, you're good on that. Why can't we add to that,
00:44:29.460
do you believe in the First Amendment? Do you believe in the freedom of practice of religion?
00:44:34.240
Do you comport to what we consider to be regular Western values? Now, this isn't just, you know,
00:44:40.420
equality, liberty, and fraternity, or Napoleonic values, or whatever else you want to call it.
00:44:44.640
But if you say, yes, I believe in these basic fundamental rights of individuals in the West,
00:44:50.240
and specifically in the U.S., rights protected by the Bill of Rights, American law, the Constitution,
00:44:55.520
and you're found to have violated this after you become a citizen, you should be deported.
00:45:01.420
It's not like you get one test, and then you pass the bar, and you can do whatever you want.
00:45:05.100
That isn't even asked in immigration questionnaires. And we actually have a paper that we wrote on this
00:45:10.540
that's now in front of the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Integration,
00:45:15.720
which should become part of American immigration law. It's not just testing whether you're a member
00:45:20.940
of an organization. You have to have the same values as Americans to be part of American society.
00:45:26.560
And I think that's the direction that this should go.
00:45:28.460
So let me perhaps, for the only time in this conversation, respectfully push back.
00:45:33.980
So I've spent 32 plus years as a professor, and certainly as a doctoral student,
00:45:43.200
living my whole life as a behavioral scientist. And so I know one or two things about all kinds
00:45:48.600
of psychometric tests that you develop to measure all sorts of things. I've even written about
00:45:54.240
functional magnetic resonance imaging, which actually literally maps the neural activity of
00:45:59.180
your brain. And what you're calling extreme vetting is what I call unicornia la la land. In other words,
00:46:08.280
it's not very difficult for me if I am highly committed to entering your country to very, very quickly learn
00:46:15.880
what I need to say. And as a matter of fact, I've probably designed some scales, psychological scales
00:46:21.740
that are astoundingly more complicated than anything that could come up in any extreme vetting situation.
00:46:28.360
So having said all that, the reality is that let's take the shingles virus. The shingles virus exists
00:46:36.280
within you. And if you're lucky when you're 50 or 60, it doesn't get activated. It stays dormant,
00:46:44.520
and you live out your life without the outbreak. Or there could be a catalyst that brings it back.
00:46:50.820
So, and I hope this doesn't make you squirm uncomfortably, but Islam is like a shingles
00:46:58.980
virus. It could be, I could actually, when I went through the extreme vetting, not even I am answering
00:47:05.920
duplicitous, in a duplicitous manner, I could answer it fully committed and honestly to what I'm saying.
00:47:12.940
But then on the 37th time that I attend the mosque where we play, Allah, Allah killed the Jews,
00:47:20.180
that might be when the shingles virus gets activated. So demography is destiny, couldn't be
00:47:27.780
a more veridical maxim. So what you're saying might hold true when we are 1% of the population.
00:47:36.340
When we become 9%, it becomes a lot more problematic. That's why we have Minneapolis.
00:47:42.720
That's why we have Patterson, New Jersey. That's why we have Dearborn. So does that mean that I'm
00:47:48.380
saying every single Muslim that's alive can't come to the West? Of course not. But what I'm saying,
00:47:54.220
it's a lot more than simply, simply improving the methodology of vetting. I will shut up now and
00:48:02.480
No, I agree with you. It's not just vetting, which has to be taken into consideration.
00:48:07.520
If you have quotas from countries, if you have more strict asylum programs, if you have the ability
00:48:13.740
to have somebody have a waiting period before they become a citizen, maybe this virus takes 10 years
00:48:19.340
to incubate, make it 10 years until you become a citizen, 20 years. And that's actually the standard
00:48:24.120
for employees of American missions overseas. If I work for the US embassy in Tel Aviv, I need 20 years
00:48:32.040
before I can apply for a green card. So there's other things we can do to meet in the middle
00:48:36.760
that I think incorporates vetting, but also takes into account more rigidity in terms of how you
00:48:44.100
become a citizen, how you become part of the country. But I think frankly, if you lie on your
00:48:48.840
immigration form and let's say your opinion evolves to then act as a point where you're negating
00:48:54.800
something that you were answering at that time, truthfully under oath, there has to be a mechanism
00:48:59.460
in place to send you back to where you came from. Right. So I think we're in violent agreement
00:49:04.500
on this. Also known as the Ilhan Omar Maxim. Do you think, do you think, Greg, that inshallah,
00:49:13.400
there will be a day when the noble, beautiful Ilhan Omar will be deported back to start a leering
00:49:21.600
center in Mogadishu? I'm going to offer something which might make you cringe, but I think having
00:49:28.940
her as an elected representative in Minnesota is the best thing to happen to the Republican Party
00:49:35.220
because the person that I'm afraid of is the imam in the basement mosque of a bodega talking to 15
00:49:43.140
adherents who are planning violent jihad against America. Fair enough. When you have an elected
00:49:47.860
representative who wears her hard on her sleeve and spews her nonsense from the House of
00:49:54.600
Representatives, I love that because it gives me so much more ammunition to use against those,
00:50:00.320
you know, I want to be careful with my words so I don't get into trouble here, but those who are
00:50:05.800
anti-American elected representatives in American government. And I'd rather have them out there
00:50:11.600
speaking loudly because I know at the end of the day, my arguments, my values, what I think is a
00:50:16.840
super majority of Americans detest that. And I'd rather have Father Coughlin at Madison Square Garden
00:50:22.580
than, you know, what's his name? Amr al-Maliki of the deserts of Yemen planning an expedites bombing
00:50:29.240
on my flight back to New York. Wow, it's been a while since I've heard that guy's name. That's the guy
00:50:34.800
who was taken out by a drone from noble prophet Barack Obama, yes? Yeah. Yes, yes, very good. All right,
00:50:42.020
tell us before I'm looking at the time, I want to be mindful of your time. Tell us about some existing
00:50:47.080
ongoing projects, whether it be at the personal level, oh, I'm working on the next book or whatever,
00:50:52.460
or some things that are happening at the Middle East Forum that you'd like to share with us.
00:50:56.660
Sure. So the first thing I like to talk about is a book I have coming out called The Carthage
00:51:02.060
Doctrine. The idea that when you have an attack on Israel, Israel's response should not just be
00:51:09.480
disproportionate, but should go to the ends of the earth to destroy any organization or state structure
00:51:15.420
that threatens stability to live, breathe, and be free. You know, and it should be within international
00:51:21.480
law, it should be within confining with whatever is considered to be at the bare ends of the Geneva
00:51:26.120
Convention. But Israel should not allow those who threaten it to use non-kinetic means to inhibit
00:51:33.500
its ability to conduct war. Just like the Romans during the Punic Wars assaulted Carthage, the same
00:51:40.800
thing should happen to Israel's enemies. Not to mean the civilian populations that those enemy groups
00:51:46.740
or enemy states govern, but you should have a leveling off a total decapitation and tailored deterrence
00:51:51.880
of anyone who threatens the Jewish state. And frankly, I think that should be American defense
00:51:56.100
strategy, too. And it largely is. Look at Maduro. Now, the second thing that I would want to talk
00:52:01.180
about is a study of Islamic schools in the United States that Middle East Forum is coming out with
00:52:05.980
soon. We've looked at every curricula, every textbook, every syllabus which is used, and in many cases
00:52:13.380
publicly funded Islamic charter schools. And if people knew what their taxpayers were subsidizing,
00:52:19.280
they would become livid with the fact that public government is funding this extremism.
00:52:26.100
The third thing that I would point individuals to is testimony that I gave before the House of
00:52:31.400
Representatives back in February before the House Oversight Committee, about the $144 million in U.S.
00:52:37.440
foreign aid that subsidized groups that are on the U.S. terrorism list. We're talking about during
00:52:43.180
the Obama administration, a check being cut to al-Qaeda in Sudan, signed off by the Obama administration.
00:52:52.080
And it happened under Biden. It happened under the last 20 years.
00:52:54.140
Is that because of, forgive me for interrupting you, is that because of ineptitude, or was it willful?
00:52:58.720
No. There was a waiver that was given by USAID to the nonprofit that was hiring a subcontractor that was a listed al-Qaeda
00:53:12.020
affiliate in Sudan. You have half a million dollars. You have money that went to Hezbollah, money that went to Somali pirates
00:53:19.560
and Mogadishu and al-Shabaab, money that went to underwrite Iraqi militias, money that goes to underwrite
00:53:24.800
the Taliban. And that has since that hearing been defunded in the U.S. state and foreign aid appropriations
00:53:33.840
bill from 26. But it's not enough to just cut the money off. These organizations must be debarred from receiving U.S.
00:53:44.200
taxpayer funds. You can have ostensibly another president come in in 2029 and a Congress that pulls back all of this
00:53:52.380
and says, you know what, we'll go on funding al-Qaeda again. Not saying that's going to happen, but there has to be a
00:53:56.840
permanent fix to that. And we're working on it in Washington to see. The last thing that I would ask people to be on the
00:54:02.340
lookout for is the coverage that Middle East Forum has on the protests in Iran. If you want to get a bird's eye view, if you want to
00:54:10.480
see what's going on on the ground, if you want to understand the larger implications for this, like we talked about
00:54:14.960
with Turkey replacing Iran as the main Middle East antagonist, go to meforum.org, daily content, podcasts.
00:54:22.920
We have a lot of information that's out there. And I think that your viewers, listeners and readers and followers
00:54:27.540
on social media would find that informing to help them make decisions about the way that American policy is being
00:54:33.160
carried out in the Middle East. Wonderful. What a substantive, informative conversation, unlike many of the
00:54:39.560
conversations that we are exposed to on, you know, rapid fire television. Thank you so much for coming
00:54:45.680
on the show, Greg. Stay on the line so we can say goodbye offline and come back perhaps when your book