Analysis of the US-Israel War on Iran with Hooman Majd — A Public Affair

Hi, this is Esti, host of the Friday A Public Affair. I hope you help us by contributing to WORT, and you can also subscribe to the podcast. Bye! And hello, welcome to A Public Affair. I am Esti Dinor. First of all, thanks to all who pledged and donated the last two weeks. The final numbers are not out yet, but I can tell you we did very well the first week. The second the week, I am not sure yet, but I think that we did very well. Even if we didn't raise the exact amount that we were expected to, but I believe that we had 18 people calling or donating during that hour, and I think that is definitely wonderful. Thank you so very much to all of you who supported the station and this show specifically. We are talking today, as you might have guessed, about the war. It's no longer just a US-Israel war on Iran, though it still is mostly that, but it has, of course, extended to Lebanon, to the Gulf states, and beyond. With us to discuss the many issues and the changing landscape of that war is Houman Majd. He is an Iranian-American writer and the author of 3 books on Iran, including the New York Times bestseller The Ayatollah Begs to Differ. His new book is a memoir, is titled Minister Without Portfolio: Memoir of a Reluctant Exile. Majd has also written for the New Yorker, GQ, Newsweek, The New York Times, The New Republic, Time, Vanity Fair, The Financial Times, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, Politico, and Interview magazine, among others. He is a contributor to NBC News. He has also published short fiction in literary journals such as Guernica and The American Scholar. He lives in New York City, and that's where he joins us from, I believe. Hello, Hooman. Thank you so very much for joining us today.

My pleasure, and thank you for having me.

So let's start with, like I said, the situation changes very rapidly. Can you give us just an overview of the current situation writ large across the Middle East?

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, the situation isn't very good. What is happening is the war is continuing. There are bombs and missiles going off on Iran. Israel is attacking Lebanon. 700,000 people, I believe, in Lebanon have been displaced by Israeli attacks. Many, many killed in Israel. Many in Iran have been killed. When I say many, the exact numbers aren't very clear yet. The Iranian Red Crescent the equivalent of the Red Cross, puts out numbers. As of yesterday, I think it was a little over 1,500. There's bound to be more as these missiles fall. Iran today was celebrating, um, uh, Quds Day, the Friday before— Quds means Jerusalem in Arabic. Uh, the Friday before the end of Ramadan is Quds Day, uh, and Quds Day is a celebration of Jerusalem for Muslims. The idea is that one day the Muslims will be controlling running Jerusalem. And that started at the revolution with Ayatollah Khomeini. Usually you have huge crowds of people, whether they're 100% supporters of the regime or are religious and believe in the liberation of Jerusalem, or believe that Jerusalem should be on some level shared, even those who believe it should be shared with other religions. Anyway, usually most years it's a big crowd, it's a very big crowd. This year, and of course all the politicians, all the leaders come out and march in rallies. This year they did the same thing. Many people came out. I don't know if it was millions of people, it's hard to tell. We saw videos today by state TV, Iranian state TV, pretty much the top leadership except for the new Supreme Leader, but the Supreme Leader never used to march anyway. The top leadership were marching on the streets today. Some people were very surprised, saying, you know, how is this top leadership just marching down the streets of Tehran with literally tens of thousands of people behind them and that they could be a target easily? I mean, if Israel had chosen, they could have easily. And in one video I saw, there was actually a missile that landed away from the rally, not on the rally itself. And I don't know if there were any injuries, but this was Iran projecting unity, projecting power, projecting defiance in what is now almost 2 weeks of war. Tonight will be 2 weeks of war, Iran time. Tomorrow morning, Saturday, will be the time that Israel initiated the war and Iran— I'm sorry, Israel and the US initiated the war by assassinating the Supreme Leader in his compound with some of the top military generals who were there for a daytime meeting. So I mean, basically, Iran is still firing drones and missiles, less than they were in the early days of the war. It's possible that they are waiting to use their stockpile of missiles or some of their better missiles, but more accurate missiles later on. The Strait of Hormuz is still technically open, but also closed because tankers don't want to travel through it. Pete Exos, the US Secretary of War, was saying, yeah, the Strait is open. The only reason they're not going through it is because Iran is firing missiles or potentially firing missiles, which is sort of obvious. Yes, it is open. You can say it's open, but it's not open because of that. And so yeah, the ships are backed up. Oil is over $100 a barrel. There is at this time no sign that either Israel or the United States is going to stop the war bilaterally. Those two countries, there is no sign that Iran is unilaterally going to surrender, capitulate. There is no sign that Iran even is looking for a negotiated end or even a ceasefire. They have denied that they want a ceasefire. And from the perspective of the Iranians, you know, we can and talk about that. It makes sense that they would say that at this time. The US and Israel, and they have, the two countries have probably different goals in Iran. But they started this war, whether Israel is pleased with what's going on in the war is hard to say, harder to say, because Benjamin Netanyahu and the cabinet are proclaiming that it's growing great, and that, you know, eventually Iran will have to be the loser in this. Of course, the United States, it does appear here that our government, the Trump administration, is looking perhaps to see if there's a way to stop this before the market crashes, the stock market goes into even more of a decline, that the gas prices start inching up to $5 a gallon. When he was promising lowering gas prices rather than raising them. And once prices go up, they don't come down overnight. So there is reason to see, because of the conflicting messages that the Trump administration sends, on the one hand, President Trump says, yeah, I think we've already won. So that would give him an out to say, well, I declare victory and we're done. On the other hand, he says, yeah, but we could also go on for another month. So it's hard to say what exactly the message is. I think there is a little bit of confusion. There have been reports, as you know, that the Trump administration wasn't anticipating that the Strait of Hormuz was going to be closed, which, as they say, it isn't, but that this threat would cause all these tankers to not go through. As we know, President Trump suggested they should have some guts. These tanker owners and captains should have, you know, be more brave. And just run through them. Like him.

Yeah, the brave man.

Yeah, as brave as he is.

Yeah.

And they, of course, are not going to do that because, one, they don't want to be shot at and/or have their ship with all its oil be potentially damaged and/or sunk. And secondly, who's giving the guarantee that— Iran isn't giving a guarantee. Now, there is a report that the Indian government is talking to the Iranian government, and they are friendly, two friendly countries, to allow some of these ships to freely pass through the straits so that India can get its oil, because India gets most of its oil from, from the Persian Gulf. And, you know, we're starting to affect the world economy, not just the US economy, and/or US and Iranian economy. Those two are the most affected. I imagine that the Israeli economy is affected as well. There's a massive expenditure on arms and there's— I don't know what— I haven't checked to see what the Israeli stock market is doing or how people are reacting or prices have gone up or gasoline prices have gone. I don't know. I can't give that information. But undoubtedly it's being affected. Israel is being affected. We know that on Thursday, I believe it was Thursday evening, quite a number of Hezbollah missiles, not Iranian missiles, made their way past the Iron Dome and landed in Tel Aviv. We should point out that both Iran and Israel do have restrictions on journalists, foreign journalists. Foreign journalists, only a very small handful have been able to— foreign news organizations have been able to be in Iran, including CNN, which was there last week, had a correspondent in Tehran last week and reporting from Tehran. His visa expired, so he left. In Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, as we know, most Western news agencies have bureaus, have offices, have reporters, but under wartime conditions, and you can speak more to it than I can, Israel has military censorship. So I think there's some restrictions on that.

Let me ask you about that because you mentioned earlier that there are, I think you said many deaths in Israel. And I don't know that any of us knows the numbers, but if you watch videos that I think are taken by drones and therefore, you know, they can be watched, it seems like there's a lot of destruction in Israel. There are some reports that there's quite a few people who died. Like you said, no doubt that it is affecting the Israeli economy. What do you know? I mean, you may not know any more than me, but if you do, share it with us.

No, unfortunately I don't. I mean, I have I know people, journalists who are in Tel Aviv and in Jerusalem, and they say what you just said. They have witnessed some of these buildings being destroyed by, by Iranian or Hezbollah missiles, either one. And the assumption is there, but the Israeli government is not putting out exact figures. I think at the very first few days of the war they did. There were 9 people killed in one particular suburb, I believe. But these are not military people. These are ordinary Israelis who are dying in the same way that ordinary Iranians are dying. But like I said, in both cases, we're not going to know exactly, mainly because, mainly because the both governments have some restrictions on what can be reported at this point. Yeah.

Yeah. So let's talk about the leaders of the countries. There is a new supreme leader. He is the son of the previous Supreme Leader. We have not seen him yet, but he has released a very stern, we are not going anywhere, and beware kind of warning. In the meantime, we have Trump and Netanyahu, and like you already noted, they may have different goals. How do you understand the ultimate goals of these two? And also, it seems like Trump, of course, doesn't understand anything about planning, preparing. He seems to be following Netanyahu's agenda here, but I think he's starting to understand that that's not necessarily good for him. While Iran seems to have really prepared and planned and is ready for what they're doing. So talk about these things.

Yeah, sure. I mean, you know, Iran immediately, I mean, one of the interesting things about the choice of the Supreme Leader, it was done through the mechanism of the constitution, the Islamic Republic's constitution. When a Supreme Leader dies, or is killed, in this case was killed, the Assembly of Experts, which is a body of 88 ayatollahs, senior clerics, who are elected by the people, actually. The people elect them really to monitor the Supreme Leader, to monitor the Supreme Leader and to monitor his performance, but also, which they really don't do on a day-to-day basis, but when a Supreme Leader dies, they're the body that has to elect a new later. When this Supreme Leader was killed, 24 hours later, Iran admitted that he had been dead. They didn't at first admit that he was dead, but when they confirmed that he was dead, they said that there's going to be a 3-person council, again according to the Constitution, who will perform the duties of the Supreme Leader until a new one is elected. Those 3 people are the head of the judiciary, the president of Iran, and one ayatollah from the Assembly of Experts, that body that's going to choose the next. So they got together, and they were doing the job of the Supreme Leader while the military was handling the war, basically pretty independently handling the war. They've been given, you know, wide latitude to attack, respond based on, as you pointed out, months of planning ever since the 12-day war in June, knowing that they could be attacked again. So they picked this new Supreme Leader a few days later, as we know. Between the time that this first Supreme Leader died and the council was formed, President Trump said, "I have to be involved in the picking of the Supreme Leader." And when people asked him, reporters asked him, "Well, what if it's the, you know, Mushdab Khamenei, who's the son of the Supreme Leader. And he said, well, that's unacceptable to America. So he actually name-checked the president— I'm sorry, the current Supreme Leader. So many people in Iran believe picking him was an act of defiance, basically telling Trump, you know, we're not afraid of you. You don't want him as a Supreme Leader. Guess what? You're going to have him as Supreme Leader.

You don't make decisions here.

Yes. And we do know that this current Supreme Leader, the son of the Supreme Leader, whose mother, father, sister, wife and child were all killed in that same attack. He himself has been injured. Iran has suggested that it was his legs that have been injured, that he is under medical care, which is one of the reasons he hasn't come out. Perhaps he could be in very shocking shape. We don't know. He could be injured in a way they don't want to show video of. But that's the extent that we know, is that he hasn't appeared in public. He hasn't spoken. So you have to assume that the injuries are severe, because he could have done a recorded voice, for example, if they— even if he had lost a leg, you know, in a hospital, he could be— he could have done that. But his statement, which you referred to, was read out loud on national television by a reporter, not by himself. So So that's where Iran is in terms of the leadership right now. In terms of, you know, Israel has threatened or promised actually to kill the next Supreme Leader. So that's another reason why they may be not showing the Supreme Leader where he is, trying to keep his whereabouts as secret as possible, given that Israeli threat. Trump himself has also given threats, threatened to eliminate any Supreme Leader that he doesn't approve of. But in terms of, you know, goals, which you mentioned, Netanyahu is way too experienced and smart of a politician, whether you like him or dislike him. And we know there are people, Israelis and people across the world who hate him, and they're handful of people who like him.

When I say handful, in comparison to the rest of the world, it is a handful. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Um, diehards are— but you cannot deny that he is not stupid. He knows what he's talking about. Um, we can disagree with what he's talking about, but we know that he did not think— he may have believed that by attacking Iran, he was going to weaken it, perhaps to the point where the regime collapses. But that's fine. As far as he's concerned. As far as Netanyahu is concerned, he just wants to have Iran never be anything of a threat to Israel under any circumstance. And he's done that, you know, methodically, whether it's trying to get rid of Hamas, which he's been unable to do after 2 years of bombing Gaza. We should remember that. And we've only had 2 weeks of bombing in Iran. So with a much more powerful army and military than Hamas ever was. So Hamas is still there 2 years later, but very weakened. Hezbollah is still there, but also very weakened. However, by this demonstration of, you know, firing 200 missiles into, or some number of missiles into Israel, have shown that they're also not completely defeated. So, but I think that it's enough for Netanyahu in order to stay out of jail, being, for one, because of his corruption trials and all that, to keep the attention off the potential for a two-state solution is to constantly talk about these other threats, not the threat that is basically homegrown, which is you can't go on forever never talking about how you're going to have a Palestinian state. It's just not going to— it's just always going to be a threat to Israelis. But this is, you know, not just me. A lot of other people say this, that for, for Netanyahu, who is smart and does understand Iran to a large degree, has people who can explain things to him for things that he doesn't understand about Iran. He has Iranian Jews who have immigrated there, who know the country very well, are fluent in Farsi, you know, are in the IDF, are in Mossad. These are people who know Iran, have family in some cases back in Iran even. And so it appears that Netanyahu's goal is, if it's regime change that is pro-Israel, great, fantastic. If it's just regime collapse, fine, that's great. If there's chaos, if the Kurds start going for a separatist nation in the northwest, if the Arabs in the south, if the Balochis in the southeast go, and Iran is is occupied with fighting these insurgencies and it's sort of like a serious situation, and if Israel has complete control over the airspace of Iran whenever it wants to fly there, that's also fine. But Benjamin Netanyahu does not care about democracy in Iran. He doesn't care about the people in Iran. He doesn't care about what he cares about. And to be fair, that's what every country's like. That's what Trump is like. They don't care about democracy. They say, "Oh, you know, go out and demonstrate. Go out and take over your government." You know, that's what Netanyahu is still saying. "We're preparing the ground for you, Iranian people. You," and he always says, "you wonderful people with a great culture, a great history. Go and take over from these terrible people who have been oppressing you for 47 years." But he doesn't say, "Well, let's say we take over the television station. Let's say we take over an army." barracks, then who's going to run the country? What's going to happen? Who's the leader? Where is the person that's going to come and lead the country, lead this revolution? You can't just arbitrarily do that. And beyond that, if you're bombing someone and missiles are falling on their heads, it's hardly a time for them to go out on the streets and take over from their leaders. So I think that's all very—

it's also not likely that they would like these people who are raining all these bombs on them.

There's that. The other aspect is that generally speaking, people, especially as people start knowing people who have died or knowing people who have been injured, you know, the bombing of the, the missile attack on the schoolchildren killing 160-some-odd school kids aged 7 to 15. That's horrific. And Iranians on state television saw that. They saw the grieving mothers, you, you know, you're not going to really feel as an Iranian, particularly, you know, friendly towards America in that case, and Israel, which is raining down missiles on Tehran. So yeah, it's, um, the messages that Netanyahu sends to Iran, I think, are mostly for a domestic audience in Israel, not really for the Iranians. They're not really listening or paying attention to those messages. Now, Donald Trump, you know, he did follow Netanyahu. We have those reports, I mean, admitted by Lindsey Graham that he, a senator of South Carolina, was flying to Tel Aviv every couple of weeks, or Jerusalem, to meet with Netanyahu, coaching him how to persuade Trump to attack Iran. So, you know, I don't know that Netanyahu needed a lot of coaching, but he certainly has a lot of influence with with Trump, and we know people like Miriam Adelson do, and you know, there's some very powerful American Israelis who do have influence, who are pro-Netanyahu and anti-Iran in this particular instance. But I think Trump, you know, was probably misled by his own negotiating team. The reality is, you know, he said he wanted to make a deal. He sends two people who are very good real estate developers, but have no diplomatic background, no nuclear background, to negotiate with a team of Iranians who are all not just seasoned diplomats and negotiators, but even bring their nuclear experts along so that whatever, you know, whatever proposal they give, they can explain what it actually means. But you can't do that to someone who doesn't understand than even what the last nuclear deal, which Obama made with the Iranians, did. So, you know, there's that problem that we have, that there was a misunderstanding, miscommunication between, I guess, his nuclear negotiating, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who were negotiating with the Iranians, and what Trump was hearing, what he was hearing from some of his advisors. And so he made the decision along with, you know, Netanyahu saying that we're just going to attack. And this is the opportunity. Iran is at its weakest and we're going to attack. And I hate to say Netanyahu dragged him into the war. He definitely seemed enthusiastic enough to try to go to the war without that much persuasion. And we have to remember, this came after Venezuela. And this is, again, not me saying it, Trump himself has said it, you know, "Wouldn't it be great to have something like Venezuela happen?" The difference is that there was no Delsi Rodriguez in Iran. Delsi was clearly, we now know, in contact with the Americans before Maduro was, or on some level they knew that she would be a replacement. The regime wasn't replaced, the person was replaced. And in killing the Supreme Leader, perhaps Trump in his mind thought, "Oh, then one of the other leaders will call me and say, 'I want to make a deal.'" and we'll say, great, done. That was never going to happen in Iran. That just, with anybody who told him that was even possible, had no idea what the Iranian regime was like.

Yeah, yeah.

We certainly know that Netanyahu didn't think that.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's quite amazing the level of ignorance that is being displayed right now. But let me reintroduce you. My guest is Hooman Majd, an Iranian-American writer, the author of 3 books and various other things. And we are talking, of course, about the Israel-US war on Iran and its consequences so far. So one thing I was thinking, actually, let me ask you a very quick question that you can answer by yes or no. Mojtaba, is that the Iranian version of Mustafa?

I honestly don't know. I think it's an Arabic word. I don't think it's a version of Mustafa. Mustafa is a name, if I understand. I think Mushtaba means something in Arabic, some kind of, um, I'm not sure exactly what, a defiant something. I mean, he was named specifically in Arab with an Arabic name by his father, but I don't think it's most— I don't think so.

Yeah, but okay, just, I'm always curious about Words and languages and names and so on. So one thing that I don't hear discussed much, and maybe we don't have to talk about it very long, but to me, this seems more and more really like a religious war. We have it both in Israel and the United States. The governments are run really to a large degree by extremists. Extremist right religious groups, of course, in Tehran. It is still the extremist Islamist regime. Hegseth has a Crusader tattoo on his chest. He has had military commanders talk about this is basically the, what's will bring us to Armageddon and basically the end of times, which is a very, very scary thought. And then in Iran, it seems like these religious, very religious people are willing to do anything to not give up. So what do you think about that? And let's be relatively brief, There's many more questions.

I think from the— yeah, definitely. I mean, and I should point out Lindsey Graham also said this was where he actually used the word religious war.

Oh, okay.

So, and Lindsey comes from South Carolina and is religious, I believe, at least a Christian nationalist. I don't think from the perspective of Iran, they're looking at it as a religious war. I think there are And, you know, first of all, we should remember that Iran has a sizable, not huge, but has a sizable Christian community. It has a very small Jewish community. And neither of those communities are being attacked right now or being rounded up or anything like that. So by the regime, by the regime, yeah, the regime has some very— they may be very religious, those in the leadership, religious in the sense that they believe in their faith, they believe their faith. Islam doesn't have Armageddon in the same way that the bringing about Armageddon in the same way that Christianity does, or the rapture like, you know, like Huckabee and things like that. But they do believe in an end of times where, you know, the missing Imam, the Shias do anyway, the Imam is going to come with Jesus and and bring peace to the world, not a complete Armageddon, because Armageddon implies that everyone's going to die and then go to heaven, assuming that they're going to go, or most the good ones, the Heges. The Heges are going to, yeah. So I don't think it's from the perspective of the Iranians they're looking at. They're looking at it as a political war waged by their enemy. I don't even think they ever really looked at Israel very much in religious terms other than Jerusalem, other than the issue of Jerusalem, which for Muslims is the third most holy place. For Shias, less so, but for Sunnis, the most holy place, third most holy place in Islam. But just the idea of Jerusalem not being under the control of Muslims. So yes, in that respect, but otherwise it was more about Palestinians. Palestinians helped the revolution. Palestinian, the PLO, supported the Islamic Revolution in 1979. And the Iranian feeling was because Mossad and CIA had helped train, or had trained actually, SAVAK, the Shah's secret police, and all the torture and arrests that happened then, there was this antipathy toward Israel and the United States, which was much more political than religious, which is again why You hear certain Iranian leaders over the years say antisemitic things, no question, whether denying the Holocaust or talking, speaking with antisemitic tendencies, references. But in general, I don't think the Iranians view it. But we do see, as you pointed out, some members of the Netanyahu government, and some members of the United States government who do see it, and do see it in religious terms. And it is absolutely scary because when someone is that committed to it being a religious war, I mean, and Iran doesn't have nuclear weapons, but Israel and the US do. And they have tactical ones, really small ones. That they could use just to— if you want to bring about Armageddon, that's an easy way to do it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So as for how things are now, so we just learned this morning, or at least I learned this morning, that all the crew members of the airplane that was downed in Iraq have died. I'm sure there's more than the other 7 that we are told about, and very likely more than 140 who have been injured. The American radar system has been damaged. There are reports that Iran is mining the Hormuz Strait, and apparently mines are very cheap and, you know, not difficult to put there. According to Patrick Winter of The Guardian, Iranian officials have actually rejected two messages from Steve Witkoff who called for a ceasefire. And a spokesperson for Iran's military command, Ebrahim Zolfaghari, said, I don't know if it's— I don't know if you roll your Rs in Farsi. You tell me.

No, we don't roll our Rs.

No, okay, so I shouldn't either. He said, get ready for oil to be $200 a barrel because the oil price depends on regional security, which you have destabilized. Iran, of course, continues to strike all oil storage facilities in the Gulf states and has succeeded to some degree, or maybe to a large degree. Israel is being attacked. Where are we now? I mean, who is—

Well, I think Patrick Wintour is correct. You know, Steve Witkoff has the Iranian foreign minister's direct tab. They've admitted in the past before the war, that they can text each other and they do text each other, I believe, on WhatsApp. So, Whitcoff is probably the only American official who can talk directly to an Iranian official. So, it is absolutely believable that he may have texted the Foreign Minister, Araghchi, and said, hey, listen, what about a ceasefire? Can we stop this now? And it would have been rejected because they're very clear about that they are not interested at all with a ceasefire. And there's a reason why they're not interested in a ceasefire. The last time they agreed to a ceasefire was during the 12-day war. They agreed that they wouldn't attack Israel and the United States, and Israel and the United States agreed that they would stop attacking Iran. They showed restraint in their reaction to that war by— or they claimed they showed restraint by firing off some missiles at an American base, which had already been evacuated in Qatar. And they felt like, that's our restraint. We don't want to escalate this. And then they did go back into talks with the US administration. US administration did the same thing again, attacked Iran with Israel in the middle of those talks, literally 48 hours after the talks ended in Geneva, and scheduled to be restarted on the Monday after the Saturday when the bombing started. And they believe right now if they agree to a ceasefire, nothing will happen other than they will be vulnerable to another attack 6 months from now. So a ceasefire doesn't mean anything to them. It doesn't— a ceasefire means— for Iranians to mean anything, has to go along with something, either sanctions relief, let them start selling their oil, a pledge to not attack them, some kind of non-aggression pact, So they believe that just agreeing to stopping the war is worse than continuing the war, even though they're going to get hit more. Because the longer they continue, the more pain they cause for the United States, the more pain they cause for Israel, the more pain they cause for all the allies of these countries.

And the world generally.

And the world generally. The more pain, the better they will be in a negotiating position when the war does stop. When Trump says— when Netanyahu says, okay, I'm done, when Trump says, I'm done, we're not attacking anymore, they can say, okay, well, you want to talk now? What are you going to talk about? And meanwhile, Iran can still fire some missiles off even after Trump stops, just to keep the Strait, for example, of Hormuz closed, or technically open but not traversable. So Iran's goal here is very different from Trump's goal, and it's very different from, um, Israel's goal. So, you know, we, you know, we could talk about who's going to win in this war. There are going to be no winners, as you and I discussed before the show. Um, there are going to be losers all around in terms of the economy, deaths, destruction in, in, in all three— in, in two cases, and and also in the case of US allies in the Persian Gulf. But in terms of a win, if anybody has a win, you could argue, one could argue, and the Iranians will argue that Iran is actually in a better negotiating position at the end of this war than they were when they were negotiating before the war. Because before the war, they were very weak. They were willing to give up a lot on their nuclear program, a lot, with the idea that if they got sanctions relief and that was successful, that then they could talk about missiles some other time, right? That was what the Iranians had said, and that's what the Americans said, that they were willing to talk only about the nuclear issue first, about the stockpile and about the centrifuges, et cetera. Now their demand is going to be bigger. What they don't want is a ceasefire that just leaves them weaker than they've been with no guarantee that they won't be attacked again. And with no sanctions relief, how are they going to improve the economy for their people if they can't sell oil and repatriate the money that that oil sale gives to them? So they have, the Iranian government has had billions and billions of dollars outside Iran in banks, just frozen, sitting there because of sanctions. Frozen by the United States, that, and they can't have access to. So they're going to argue that they need to have some of that money to get the economy going. I mean, Iran faces, we haven't talked about it, but it faces other problems, domestic economic problems, which caused the initial protests in January, which then turned into anti-regime protests. But certainly, the Iranian regime is well aware that it needs to address that issue of the economy for its people. We're seeing some measure of rallying around the flag now. We've seen some reports in the Financial Times and a few other places that people who were welcoming of this war initially, even those who were welcoming just to—

Oops. Human is— Yes, you're back with us. Okay. You were frozen there for a moment. Let me Since we have very little time left, just 14 minutes, let me throw at you several questions and see what you can do with it. So for one thing, early in the show Maurice called and he says he saw a news story about a demonstration of several dozen people at Library Mall, which is part of our UW-Madison campus, and he says the folks were holding pictures of the Shah's son Reza Pahlavi. And he wants to know about how widespread the support of the Shah family is in Iran and the diaspora. And the other questions that I would love to be able to respond, for you to respond to before we're done. I read the speculation that the US and Israel are trying to foment a war between Iran and Arab countries. So that's an interesting additional scenario. I also wanted to ask you about Gaza and Lebanon, not just Gaza, Palestine and Lebanon, and how they are affected. And then also, and believe me, I have 100 more questions, but one thing, I mean, here is Trump fighting anyone who, or trying to get rid of anyone who has ever come to this country and is not American born, or maybe that will also extend to American-borns eventually. But what's being done here is it's causing a lot more refugees who at this point are internal refugees, but many of them are going to try and get to the United States and to Europe. So yeah, that situation too. So I know it's many questions.

It's many questions. You don't have to remind me. I mean, in terms In terms of the Shah's son, there's no question that he has support in the diaspora, in the Iranian diaspora. No question about it. How big is that support? When you think about the diaspora being some 2.5 million worldwide, something like that, they don't know the exact number. It's certainly not a majority, but he does have very vocal and loud support. Inside Iran, it's almost impossible to know how much support he has. He did have some support during the— some substantial, I would say, even support among the protesters who came out. In January, because they were calling his name, not necessarily because they were looking for a new Shah, for a new king, a new dictator, basically, but because he's the only one they know. He's the only name they know. And in some cases, in most cases I would even say, people were either too young or not even born at the time of the Shah.

Yeah, they don't know how bad it was.

They don't know exactly what it was like. They've seen film. They know that people have social freedoms. They had all kinds of freedom. Women could wear bikinis. They could, you know, hang out with their boyfriends, and life was great. And, you know, there were flights, you know, even El Al used to fly to Tehran. So, you know, you're going, okay, that was a good time. We weren't at war with anybody. Nobody hated us. Our passport was a great passport. I didn't need a visa to go anywhere in the world except, you know, a couple of countries. So that nostalgia, yes, you say yes. You could see that. It doesn't necessarily imply that he would have support. The bigger problem for the Shah, I believe, is that he doesn't, in the 47 years that he's been in exile, hasn't been able to create an organization on the ground so that when, if Netanyahu or if Donald Trump would decide at some point that he is a viable replacement for the Shah, that he would have a team that could take him in and install him. And then run the country and take over the ministries. You know, Khomeini had that. Ayatollah Khomeini, who was the founder of the revolution, Islamic Revolution in Iran, he had every mosque in Iran. Every single mosque was on his side. And in those mosques, they were able to organize and have community people. So when he landed in Tehran, there were like 3 million people escorting him, his car. And in fact, the car couldn't move, so they had to bring in a helicopter to take him get him out of the car. So, he had that organization which had spent a year creating. The Shah's son hasn't. So, that's the Shah's son. And we can see that Donald Trump has basically said, "No, that's not someone that we're looking to replace the regime with." Netanyahu, who has been less clear about it, but hasn't been promoting him. He hasn't mentioned him once in the last 12, 13 days. Other people in Israel And there have been people in Israel who support him, absolutely. But Netanyahu, no. The government of Netanyahu, no. Remind me of your next question. Was it to—

Well, I'll actually skip my next question so we have time to talk about Palestine and Lebanon and the way they have been affected and the creation of a new refugee crisis.

Oh yes, yes. I mean, the refugee crisis will happen. If there's a ground war. Right now, there isn't such a big refugee crisis from the perspective of, there's a refugee crisis in Lebanon, we know that. Yes, in Iran, there will be a massive refugee crisis if the threat that some in America have said in the American government that we might, the Americans might put boots on the ground and have an actual military attack.

Do you think that would happen?

I don't think so, but you know, Donald Trump is so unpredictable. You know, on the one hand, he could be taco. You know, Trump always chickens out, you know, and decide to just declare victory and say, I'm done. You know, I killed the Supreme Leader.

I prefer taco.

Yeah, we prefer taco.

Yeah.

But he also could get offended and get so, you know, riled up and say, oh, let's double down. Yeah. If we put in, you know, a few thousand troops, maybe we can— maybe we could take over Iran and impose on Iran. The regime we want. So it's hard. I don't know him. I know we only know him psychologically from what we've experienced him in the first term and the second term. So I do think he's unpredictable. I do think he can suddenly decide, you know, to do something. But the chickens out thing is also realistic too. But, you know, the truth is the regime change can only happen like that. So if they really want, if the US government or Israel Israel really wants, and they're not just joking or not just saying that because it's one of the things they can argue, they really want regime change. That is the only way that it's going to happen. Even that doesn't guarantee it, but yeah, if you have American troops in Tehran, yeah, they could overthrow the regime. And then yes, you would have a refugee crisis. You could have civil war. You could have all kinds of things happening. You could have attacks on Americans, and then the border to Turkey would be like, yes, people would be fleeing to Turkey and from Turkey, then Turkey would make sure that they all went to Germany.

So, you know, Lebanon is terrible.

I don't, yeah.

Just, there'll be a high cost for American soldiers, correct? Oh, of course. The Iran will fight.

Yes.

Yeah. Yeah.

Iran will fight. They fought before, they fought invaders before, they fought Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq War. And they, you know, obviously they were fighting even fellow Shias, Iraqi Shias who were on Saddam Hussein's army, who were in, and they had no hesitation to fight, you know, crusaders coming in. Christian crusaders coming into.

Humans, what a species we are. But anyway, so yeah, Palestine and Lebanon and the way they're affected. And I guess that'll be it for today.

Yeah, Palestine and Lebanon are affected badly. I would say right now Lebanon probably worse than Iran in a way, because of the number of deaths that we know, and also that 700,000 refugees, and that Israel hasn't said they're stopping it in Lebanon unless— and the Lebanese government is unable to defeat or get Hezbollah to you know, give up its arms. It's unable to, and that's just a reality. And so, yeah, unfortunately, you know, we're going to have a situation like, uh, potentially like the Syrian refugees during the Syrian civil war.

So it's, uh, yeah, none of this is closed again.

Yep, yep.

Uh, which is, I mean, that, that tragedy has been going for so fast, so, so long. But okay, so maybe we have a question, a time to ask you about the question that they skipped, which is, uh, the speculation that the United the United States and Iran are trying to foment war between Iran and the Arab countries, or shall we say the Gulf countries, the Gulf states. Any, that makes any sense to you?

I don't, you know, I think that clear, I don't, I'm not sure that they are really. I mean, you know, Lindsey Graham goes on television and says, you know, the Saudis, come on, you guys need to attack Iran because they're attacking you. We're disappointed in you. Lindsey Graham. There's a few people doing that. Iran, you have to remember, has had long relationships with these countries in the Persian Gulf, at least, and definitely had ups and downs with Saudi Arabia and with the Emirates. But other countries, they've had very good relations— Qatar, Oman, Kuwait. Those relations have been good. But they have communications, so between the president and the foreign minister and the secretary of the the Supreme National Security Council, who is sort of one of the people who's running the war, and he's also a former IRGC commander. These people travel to these countries. Right now they're on the phone with other leaders on a daily basis, with those leaders. So I don't think it will succeed, even if that's partly a goal. Would America like all these Arab countries to join the fight? Sure. I mean, of course they would, because it would just take some of the pressure off America, and they've sold them these arms and airplanes, go ahead and bomb them. But also, I think the Saudis are smart enough to know they spent 2 years trying to defeat the Houthis in an air war, and they were unable to. And the Houthis are just a ragtag militia in Yemen right next door, and they were unable to, you know, sort of like the Gaza situation. You can bomb the hell out of them, but, you know, are you going to get rid of the government just by bombing? You know, it's— you're not. So really, I don't buy it that that's an active goal. I think the goal for Netanyahu, as we talked about before, for Israel, is to weaken Iran to the point that he can be satisfied, that he can tell the Israeli people, look what I did for you. I eliminated this threat from Iran that I've been talking about for 35 years. Yeah.

So, one more. Very quick question. So like you said, before we got on the air, we talked about there's no winners, but our engineer, Samer, mentioned there are winners, the corporations that make war very profitable. I was just wondering when he said that, and of course, when they said that, and that of course is very true. But in Iran, those who build the drones and the missiles, are they also making money or is that part of the government?

That's part of the government.

Yeah.

There are no—

It's really uniquely, or not uniquely American, but very much the way capitalism works.

Yes, it's almost uniquely American.

Yeah, it's mostly American.

Mostly American arms that are at play here. You know, an Iranian company inside Iran may be, you know, used to create like an engine to go on the drone, but they're not, you know, there's no stock market. There is a stock market in Tehran, but they're not looking to make profit. It's really very much controlled by the government.

And so it's also cheaper, right?

Yeah, the drones, some people say they cost as much, as little as $7,000 or as much as $20,000. I mean, we saw, you know, just yesterday, I believe there was a report that a US ship started firing on an Iranian ship that was getting too close to it in the Persian Gulf. And they kept missing from missing the boat from their machine guns on board on deck. So they had to send a helicopter up to fire a $3 million missile at an Iranian boat.

And we'll pay for it, you and I and everybody listening. Hooman Majd, an Iranian-American writer, thank you so very much for joining us today. Of course, we didn't get to a lot of other things, but I really appreciate hearing what we have.

It was my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.

Thank you. And thanks to Sarah and Samer and Lainey. I'm Esti Dinor. We'll be back next week. Bye-bye.