00:04:02.220So we've had millions around the country.
00:04:04.720And if the military have started killing people, as we've seen, things are going to get very bad tonight.
00:04:10.920And everybody is now looking at President Trump.
00:04:14.660I mean, it was a really brilliant summation there, Maya, because President Trump has been hypercritical of the Iranian regime and their handling of this particular crisis.
00:04:26.000There was also an incident with a hospital, wasn't there, which was absolutely horrific.
00:04:32.020Could you just explain to the audience watching what happened with the hospital?
00:04:36.380So it's happened three times now over the last 12 days, three different hospitals.
00:04:41.300This is a tactic that they've used many times.
00:04:43.800So because, again, this is my observation, because they didn't want to be seen openly, that they're killing people on the streets.
00:04:49.460They didn't want any evidence to be out there.
00:04:51.040And what they do is they injure people.
00:04:55.220So they are forced to go to the hospital.
00:04:57.260Then they raid the hospital and start kidnapping them.
00:05:02.040And the first couple of days, they did the same thing.
00:05:05.400There was a city in the western parts of Iran, I forgot the name, where actually the Iranian people managed to find where they were taking these people.
00:05:13.640There was a temporary kind of jail that they created, and they went in and they actually liberated everybody.
00:05:23.960The problem is there are also just normal patients in the hospitals when they are attacking the hospitals, which is completely chaotic.
00:05:30.300They are alienating even some of their own, I would say minority of people who are supporting the regime, which, yeah, I mean, this is literally right now, crime against humanity.
00:05:38.040And we're not really seeing anything from the United Nations.
00:05:42.880And when you look at the reasons for the uprisings, why do you think they are?
00:05:49.060Is it because of the brutality and the cruelty of the regime?
00:05:52.120I was reading that last year, and these are the official figures, the Iranian regime killed more people than ever before.
00:06:01.380Or is it the fact that economically, Iran has hit a point where the simple economics no longer work?
00:06:10.500What used to be a nice middle class life simply doesn't buy you eggs, breads, the very basic essentials.
00:06:17.440So if you ask self-appointed experts and a lot of people who actually some of them have been on your shows before and you've challenged them, people want to analyze things, right?
00:06:29.180You know, and even the BBC would probably say economic protests.
00:06:32.300But all I would say is don't even listen to me.
00:06:35.080Listen to what people in Iran are saying from day one.
00:06:58.940One is chanting against the Islamic Republic to go away.
00:07:02.600And secondly, for the Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi to come back to his country.
00:07:07.160All the things that you mentioned, they are just part of the overall package of the Islamic Republic.
00:07:15.140Everything from lack of free speech, arresting journalists to not being able to run the economy and sending the taxpayers' money to Hezbollah and Hamas.
00:08:18.960As I've been saying, the regime hasn't fallen, but it is falling.
00:08:22.100Before we ask the next question, Francis, just make sure you have the right microphone selected, please, because it sounds like you're actually coming to us live from Iran at this point.
00:08:32.760So make sure you've got the Yeti selected, please.
00:08:35.620Maya, you mentioned that the eyes of the world are on President Trump.
00:08:39.740What options are actually available to him?
00:08:44.060Like, what could the United States actually do?
00:08:46.880And has he said anything about what might be the consequences if they continue to brutalize protesters in this way?
00:08:53.840So a few days ago, President Trump came and gave a warning saying, if you start killing people, then obviously we'll take action.
00:09:05.300Earlier today, he doubled down again and he said that we will hit them very hard if they start killing.
00:09:12.900Obviously, there are a lot of Iranians who will tell you, well, they've already been killing because they killed about 30, 40, maybe more.
00:09:19.200But I observe it in a different way, because if a president of the United States is about to say something like this, he doesn't mean, I know it sounds bad, but he doesn't mean if you kill 20, 30 people.
00:09:29.280He means if you start basically, in a very uncontrollable way, start killing hundreds, which I believe tonight might be that night, unfortunately.
00:09:38.440But in terms of actions, right now, I don't know how we can see an action directly because there are millions of people on the streets.
00:09:45.880Not that the U.S. is going to hit residential areas, that they're not Russia.
00:09:48.900But the two things that can be done, whether it's a partnership between the Mossad side and the U.S. to go and hunt down the leadership, and they also have some people who have allegedly defected from the top of the regime, quietly and privately.
00:10:04.640They could do that, or they could just hit the main bases, the main government buildings and the main IRGC bases and destroy them.
00:16:46.520Then it just got more and more and more.
00:16:49.420And this year, again, just like my answer to your question earlier about, well, to Francis' question about what are these, what's the uprising for?
00:16:58.520And I said, just listen to the people.
00:17:00.460Right now on the streets, they are only chanting his name.
00:17:06.720Nobody is saying the Mujahideen, who are a small group of communist Islamic opposition technically, but nobody takes him seriously.
00:17:14.480But nobody is calling anybody else's name.
00:17:16.620There is a massive unity behind one name because he's finally obviously made it clear, because obviously after a few years of waiting to see if there is appetite.
00:17:34.800And they've realized actually the best solution for the culture in Iran is constitutional monarchy as a safety net and to be able to actually have stability and democracy, parliamentary democracy.
00:17:46.620So, the consensus is the crown prince.
00:17:51.740And he's made it clear that, yes, I've received your call, your request.
00:17:55.840I will be leading the revolution and I will be leading the transition government.
00:17:59.880The idea is to avoid the power vacuum or anything like that, which won't happen in Iran because it's not Iraq or Syria.
00:18:08.040Lead the transition government and conduct a referendum on the future constitution.
00:18:13.060And the way it's going, it seems that if there is a question on the ballot paper about constitutional monarchy or republic or whatever else, well, based on the current feeling, constitutional monarchy would win.
00:18:26.620But, of course, that's about the campaigns and referendums and everything else that will happen afterwards.
00:19:00.920Maya, so one of the things, obviously, is the regional situation.
00:19:05.860Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and also Israel are all sworn enemies of the Islamic regime in Iran.
00:19:13.240They are all very concerned about the direction it's been taking in recent years, their support for terrorism in the region.
00:19:20.460These countries, historically speaking, have been natural.
00:19:23.160Not Israel, but the Sunni and Shia divide is obviously very strong.
00:19:27.560Is there a role, do you think, here for Gulf countries and Israel as well, in addition to President Trump and the United States?
00:19:37.680Well, in terms of action, well, I don't think that will be necessary, but there is an opportunity here because, firstly, the Israelis, until now, until like last year, for the past four decades, five decades, they never admitted any involvement on the ground.
00:19:57.260They never said, oh, yeah, of course, we've got Mossad doing things.
00:20:00.440But over the last year, they've been actually boasting about it.
00:20:04.240Yeah, we've got over 100 Mossad operators, they were doing this, we were watching everything, and they've been quite open about it now.
00:20:11.880Everybody knew that Mossad have always been, obviously, doing disruptions in Iran over the last few decades.
00:20:18.320But the main thing here is that Saudi Arabia, for example, is a huge rival or enemy to the Islamic Republic.
00:20:28.480But they don't want to be seen as that sort of superpower in the region.
00:20:33.840They have been taking a different approach.
00:20:36.440They never want to be directly involved in any war, apart from Yemen.
00:20:40.240But that's also so indirect, even though they're basically hitting the IRGC proxies.
00:20:44.700They never release any statement against the Islamic Republic.
00:20:47.820It's a very cold, cold war between those two.
00:20:50.920Israel is the only one that is more kind of outspoken, mostly because since 1979, the Islamic Republic declared war on Israel, saying, you know, we have a bit of a problem with you.
00:21:04.460I mean, it's a tiny difference, obviously, in terms of opinions between the Iranian regime and Israel wiping off.
00:21:09.900So I don't think there's any need for any sort of coalition involvement in that sense, because I think Israelis, if they do anything, that will be considered as a self-defense because they're in constant war with Iran anyway.
00:21:24.500The Americans, well, that's the American empire.
00:21:26.880It's the world police, whether you like it or not.
00:21:28.580People would say, oh, boy, is America always involved?
00:22:04.620So, but yeah, I mean, the region, there's just an opportunity for everybody, most power players to finally be on the same level playing field.
00:22:13.260Saudi Arabia, Israel, UAE, the future Iran.
00:22:16.420So you could actually have a peaceful Middle East, which could also help the rest of the world.
00:22:47.780But my point is something else, which is tens of thousands of people are watching a live stream with, let's be, you know, generous to former comedians, Amir Francis and a YouTuber in you.
00:22:59.760And because they're not getting this information on the mainstream media, I opened the BBC website as we were talking.
00:23:08.800It's this Minnesota officials talking about the FBI and the ice shooting.
00:23:15.020The fifth most read story or the fifth most ranked story on the BBC is weight loss jabs are affecting Greggs.
00:23:21.780And there's nothing about this issue for 12 days.
00:23:26.440I am lacking in explanation, I think, is a very gentle way of putting it, Mike.
00:23:30.820Yeah. So one would have said, well, maybe after the third, fourth day, they will jump on a bandwagon.
00:23:37.400But I've realized the sickness in the media, the mainstream media, the profession as a whole, it's not necessarily even that they have some sort of like evil proactive agenda.
00:23:47.860They have a meeting, everybody in the mainstream media is it.
00:23:53.000So we've created the world where back in the day, and I'm literally talking about maybe 50 years ago before, probably not that long ago, journalism, including newspapers and broadcast media was about.
00:24:08.260Essentially, they were all anti-establishment.
00:24:17.060We created such a structured mainstream media culture.
00:24:20.520So in the UK, we've got the Westminster Lobby in the US, we've got the Capitol Hill guys and everybody else.
00:24:25.780Everybody is acting the same way, which is very professional, but very controlled and lazy, which means for the BBC and CNN, they have been reporting a couple of times.
00:24:37.880But what have they been reporting over the last 12 days?
00:24:42.500So for the Iranian people, they would see it as you guys are the mouthpiece of the Islamic Republic.
00:24:47.300But the reality is, because of the world order of the media, they would only consider, they just sit in their offices, on their computers, they would only consider official sources as states.
00:24:59.780So the health minister in Gaza or the IRGC, they are official sources because they go to the UN, for example.
00:25:06.600So they have selected a very limited number of official sources.
00:25:11.600Instead of them going out to find stories like back in the day, they are just sitting back like robots and they've been told the script.
00:25:19.960You know, it's not even just because they love the IRGC, but they're like, well, I can't verify this.
00:25:24.880I don't have journalists on the ground.
00:26:09.780And you can check the date because most of the time when Iranians are filming these videos, they say, because they're smart, they say this is Tuesday, the 6th of January, for example, at 10 p.m.
00:26:19.820Just check everything and then hopefully look for a different video from a different angle.
00:26:25.680Don't wait for the Islamic Republic official sources to tell you what's going on in Iran.
00:26:29.220Well, what's fascinating to me in this whole thing as well is we have seen with the conflict in Gaza that the BBC routinely reports stories that then turn out not to be true precisely because of the approach you described, where they will take information from the Gaza Health Ministry.
00:26:46.800Let's be honest, not the least unbiased media source in the world, right?
00:26:51.640And they will rush to publish it in order to get ahead of the story.
00:26:56.880So to me that they don't have anything on this at all.
00:27:01.120And at this point, with the wide availability of information in the new media, it just looks it's an incredibly bad look for institutions that I don't know how you feel about it.
00:27:11.680But I've always made the argument that we need a good BBC in this country because we want to be well informed about world events.
00:27:18.680And the BBC has more resources than Trigonometry or Maya Tusi TV, Maya Tusi, to go after and cover this stuff is just extraordinary.
00:27:57.920For example, we do work on Trigonometry TV.
00:28:00.160We do work with some Reuters journalists who obviously outsource things.
00:28:06.600We still have to verify things and we double check everything.
00:28:09.140But even if you're not the BBC, there are basically credible sources out there that you can still work with as a small channel to do this.
00:28:17.940But we are working on creating, for example, an all-party parliamentary group, an APPG for new media, for news, because there's still a gatekeeping situation.
00:28:26.980But if there is a channel that's new media but does news and is actually doing okay in terms of their balance or objectivity, you need to be allowed to be let in into Downing Street press conferences and things like that.
00:28:43.100It's happening in the White House, but not, for example, in the UK.
00:28:45.780Okay. But the problem that we said, you mentioned the Gaza Health Ministry, to be objective, the same problem will happen for the BBC and CNN when they will get something from the Israeli government.
00:29:04.640Because that's why some Ukrainians have a problem with the BBC, but also Russians have a problem with the BBC, because the BBC gets only the statements from the Ukrainian government and the Russian government.
00:29:27.400One of the things we've obviously seen the last time Francis and I did a stream was just me and him talking about the events in Venezuela.
00:29:35.740I wonder, given that we know Mossad has deep penetration into the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps,
00:29:44.900they probably know exactly where everyone is at every moment in time.
00:29:49.340Do you think there is a Venezuelan style scenario to be played out here where U.S. special forces go in, you know, capture several of the key people in charge?
00:30:03.540And that is the way this ultimately gets resolved?
00:30:10.360But with Iran, you have to take out one main person, because if you somehow capture the head of the IRGC, it won't really change much, because that's literally what Israel did.
00:30:22.520The first day of the 12-day war, they just wiped out the whole leadership of the military and the IRGC.
00:30:26.920That doesn't really bring it down, because it's a cult of personality.
00:30:31.320It's like the Kim family in North Korea with Khamenei.
00:30:34.600But on the other hand, if you take him out, that's still not finished, because then you have to take out the head of the leadership of the IRGC.
00:30:40.860I don't see how, despite the Mossad intelligence and CIA, I mean, the Iranian regime have been very incompetent with this performance of crackdown until now.
00:31:17.400But I don't think Khamenei is going to make that mistake.
00:31:19.680But they can still technically, if they want to, I believe they can still get close enough to take him out, to assassinate him.
00:31:25.980But these are, again, just strategic decisions that, you know, people right now watching, some of the people who are against Khamenei, they say, yeah, let's do that.
00:31:33.440But that's not really how geopolitics works, because in any moment, a decision could be the opposite.
00:31:38.500So people were really angry at President Trump, for example, for doing the ceasefire in the 12-day war.
00:31:43.360But there are many other reasons that that had to happen.
00:31:45.760It wasn't just because Trump, like, saved the IRGC.
00:31:49.460The Israeli defense was being overwhelmed and many other issues as well.
00:31:53.580But so it's not really that black and white.
00:31:56.940I think the most obvious one is that the existing pressure, because there are sabotage operations happening, defections and everything else.
00:32:06.600The message from Tehran was, a few days ago, that the backup plan is to send Khamenei and 20 of his inner circle, including his wife and his son, to Moscow.
00:32:17.060So only if the uprising continues and if we notice that some or a lot of our own forces are no longer following the orders, essentially some sort of defection.
00:32:30.700So, and by today, I can say, based on observations, that there have been a few who have been seen not to be following orders and the uprising continues.
00:32:40.620So if tonight goes well for the people, because there seems to be a massacre right now on the ground, I think this could just finish it by itself in the next few days, hopefully.
00:32:50.360Mike, we talked about it a little bit already, but you mentioned Russia there.
00:32:55.140Russia has not been directly backing the Iranian regime quite in the way that it has others, in the sense that when the 12-day war was happening, Putin was basically saying, we're staying out of this one.
00:33:07.220What is the role of Russia and China with the regime?
00:33:12.640And has that changed due to recent events?
00:33:30.580Because the three top players, America, China, Russia, make decisions on many things, but based on who is winning, who's got the upper hand.
00:33:40.240If Khamenei was right now strong, yeah, it might have taken the risk.
00:33:46.020Putin also has the problem of negotiations over the Ukrainian situation.
00:33:49.480So I can imagine during the last few days and the 12-day war, the White House picking up the phone to call Putin and say, don't even mention anything.
00:33:59.800But maybe there's no need for that phone call because that will just be the Kremlin decision anyway.
00:34:04.740But my personal theory is also the way Russia and China act on the world stage overall, except for what's happening in Ukraine, is actually psychologically because they want to counter everything that the American empire does.
00:34:18.820And the American empire over the last few decades has been very interventionist, very open interventionist, especially now, ironically, with President Trump.
00:34:26.020I mean, there is not really a warmonger, but he's been doing interventions.
00:34:29.060And because they do the opposite publicly, but they basically do the same thing because people keep saying Western globalists, but I call them the Eastern globalists.
00:34:38.480It's not like they're the saviors against globalism.
00:34:42.100But they don't want to be seen as like the West or NATO that, oh, we will attack, we will do this, we will take over, even though they are doing behind the scenes.
00:34:54.320So China has been very quiet about their support for the Islamic Republic, but they still have been sending equipment and support.
00:35:00.040Russia, Russia, earlier on, there were a couple of cargo planes that landed in Tehran.
00:35:06.220We don't know what's in it, but there are some things in it that they still do those things, but not publicly.
00:35:37.940They would still try to come to Iran after the revolution to say, would you like some business contracts, for example?
00:35:43.940They will still try to do that because they're doing this soft power influence manipulation because I think they're saving that hard power for when it's needed for Taiwan, just like Russia's Ukraine war.
00:35:57.040But they can't afford to risk the world order over one tiny friend like the Islamic Republic.
00:36:04.820Can't go to war with America over Iran.