0:10In February 1984, Beirus Gamari Tabrizi was a prisoner on death row at Evian Prison in Thrron. He was alone in an infirmary cell weak with advanced lymphoma. He had been arrested three years earlier for membership in a radical Marxist organization that sought to overthrow the Islamic Republic. He had been sentenced to death four months after his arrest. Now to himself and his guards, he appeared to be dying. The regime of Saddam Hussein, locked in a bitter war with Iran that began in the summer of 1980, was bombing Thrron, an attempt not unlike the recent bombing by Israel and the US to disrupt Iranian
0:52morale and compel Iranians to overthrow the government. But like most Iranians, Gamari Tabrizi, although sentenced to death, would not transfer his loyalty to a foreign aggressor. In 1985, after the high judicial court enulled his death sentence, he was granted medical parole, left Iran, and was treated at Stanford University Hospital with aggressive chemotherapy. He went on to get his doctorate and was the chair of the department of Neareastern studies and director of the center for Iran and Persian Gulf studies at Princeton University from 2020 to 2024.
1:35In his latest book, The Long War on Iran, he implodes the myths used by US administrations to demonize Iran and impose not only crippling sanctions, but twice in the last year wage an unprovoked war. Since its inception in 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran has exercised its own sovereign power to extend its regional political authority.
2:03He writes, "The enduring question of the last four decades is Iran's sovereignty, its refusal to become a client state aligned with American interests in the region. The United States and its European allies instrumentalized the Islamic Republic's repressive state apparatus, its appalling violations of human rights, though arguable much less so than Western allies in the region, patriarchal legal system, and its limitations on civil liberties to justify their attempts to force Iran to submit to their demands. Joining me to discuss this latest iteration of the long war on Iran waged by Israel and the
2:45United States is professor Beirus Gamari Tabi who is currently a visiting scholar at the center for place culture and politics at the Cooney Graduate Center in New York. Um let's let's begin with the uh which you write about in the book the assumption by western leaders that the use of sanctions and in the last year the use of brute military force is uh uh an effective method uh by which uh Iranians will reject the regime and institute what in of course what they on is a kind of pro-american uh you know ruling ruling class.
3:37First thank you Chris for having me on the program. Um you know the logic of uh sanctions uh goes like this that that if we put enough pressure uh on a society and uh and uh and communicate that with the people there that we are inserting this pressure on you because of the fault of your government. Then at some point when the pressure gets too much people will rise up and overthrow their own government.
4:11Uh sometimes this logic changes and they say that you know we are not actually sanctioning the people we are sanctioning the state. But that sort of second logic is uh somewhat difficult to subscribe to because inevitably when you uh sanction state it would affect people's lives.
4:34In reality however uh that stated objective never is realized in the way that the proponents of this policy advocated.
4:47Possibly the first thing that happens with sanctions is that the uh impoverishment of people of all walks of life. Middle classes would go down in in imiseration and lose their means of livelihood. Working class would lose its means of livelihood. and uh and and the idea that when people are losing the means of their livelihood would then go and mobilize and organize against their own government is just a fantasy.
5:23The more people think about their uh bread and butter issues, the harder it becomes to go out and mobilize and and and form a formidable political movement.
5:36Uh the second thing uh that happens is uh that it securitizes society. I I've had a number of conversations with people in the uh American government who were promoting this policy and uh and they always say that you know we are doing this to help to democratize society and I always say that you know uh in if you go and look at the consequences of these policies you always realize that that uh these policies actually securitize the society and and enhance enhances the power of those repressive forces inside the societ inside the state that you are trying to contain. And u and last but not least u it creates a nontransparent
6:31form of economy that is the hot bed and a very fertile ground for the emergence of economic corruption.
6:41uh because you know the state is not going to throw their hands up and say okay now you sanctioned us we are going to submit to your demands. They're going to find ways to go around sanctions and and operate their economy and their trade. And uh since there is they do this in in secret then you know they uh create this network of cronies who have access to trade and economic resources and no one knows exactly how this trade is happening and who owns the businesses and corporations factories and that's why we see in the past 15 to 20 years in Iran a very rapid and deep economic uh corruption inside the state which partly
7:34uh for the most part actually I should say is the result of these sanctions and uh and of course you know people take advantage of the opportunity that's provided to them by these sanctions and and distribute economic resources towards their own sort of networks of uh uh nepotism grows and sons and daughters and cousins and all and all that uh would benefit from this kind of very nontransparent economic activities.
8:08I think a fundamental point that you make several times in the book is the utter misreading of Iranian society and the Iranian revolution which of course was a coalition of groups including leftist university students, Marxists uh yes those groups were crushed later actually fairly quickly um and fairly brutally by the Islamic regime but you make the case that that revolutionary spirit still exists.
8:37within Iran and of course we saw it with the latest street demonstrations in uh January uh and a fairly brutal response on the part of the regime and a fairly uh you know counterproductive uh insertion of armed units apparently by the US and Israel into those uh protests. Um talk about our misreading of Iranian society.
9:02>> I think the source of this misreading I mean part of it is intentional. I mean that that's a sort of a fabricating and manufacturing a kind of state of being in Iran that that uh that justifies uh the US and his allies policy towards Iran. And some of it therefore is is very intentional. Some of it is misreading on the part of a lot of mass media and and others other observers who talk about Iran that they constantly see that that uh every few years, two years, 3 years, four years, we see a massive protest movement in Iran and uh and it ends up any time that this happens uh we read that on the front pages of the New
9:48York Times, the Washington Post, all major newspapers uh And uh and that kind of protest movement uh sometimes suggests that the situation in Iran is so brutal, so unbearable and so difficult to manage that constantly people are pouring into the streets and and protesting.
10:15Um I think that's the source of misunderstanding that there is of course that protest movement and this kind of revolutionary uh consciousness among people in Iran, but that's not necessarily an indication that the Iranian state is so extraordinarily brutal and extraordinarily repressive that forces people to come to the streets as the last result result of expressing their grievances.
10:51U actually it's always the other way around. If the regimes are so brutal and don't they don't leave any possibility of expression of any kind of grievances, we don't see that often people coming to the streets. Uh Iran, Islamic Republic is as repressive as any other country in the region. Uh possibly less than other countries in the region. At least there are processes of electoral um electoral processes in in elections.
11:28We might argue that they are not real.
11:30They are fake. They are all these things. But but nevertheless, in no shape or form, Iran is more repressive than than its neighboring countries and possibly in most other countries in the world actually. Um and uh and the reason we see this kind of uh protest is actually that kind of what I call the transfer of collective re revolutionary consciousness uh generation after generation. I think this is possibly the most important um achievement of the revolution in 1979 that people came to this realization that they can express their grievances, they can express their demands by marching on the streets. And we need to
12:22remember that Iranian revolution of 1979 was the largest most populist revolution in world history and uh they defeated the fifth largest military in the world at the time. So that is >> let me just interrupt. One of the most brutal secrets Savak one of the most brutal uh Israeli trained uh largely Israeli trained uh secret police network uh in >> Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. Msad was a major sort of part of training of Savak CIA had advisers in Iran during the reign of the Sha. So, so that consciousness that that people could actually overthrow for for the most part by nonviolent means, you know, this was
13:15not an armed revolution. This was a revolution that asserted its power through the sheer numbers you know and uh in 1978 uh population of Thran was around 4 million people and there were demonstrations rallies that more than 1 million people participated in this. So uh basically one out of four people were participating in revolutionary rallies and uh and that's I think that kind of subjectivity that kind of collective consciousness we see that has been transferred uh at least now three generations after the revolution and the reason we see all these protest movement is uh that that uh that that revolution
14:10of 79 continued in a sense in the mind of Iranian people rather than you know a reflection of the extreme brutality of the Iranian regime.
14:22Let's talk a little bit about Iranian consciousness of western aggression which you write about uh the fact that the United States not just the United States the French and others uh uh supplied Iraq uh during the 8-year war with Iran. Uh the Iran used of course chemical weapons which the Iranians did not respond with chemical weapons. Um I don't know the the numbers were staggering. I mean probably a few hundred thousand people were affected by sarin and these toxic uh chemical agents. Uh and uh and the west looked away. Not only looked away, but in the case of the United States and their famous visit of Rumsfeld traveling to
15:09Baghdad and shaking Saddam's uh hand, they they they funded and sustained this effort. And that's even now I mean that's embedded into the consciousness I think of most Iranians.
15:23>> That is so true. I mean when uh it it always puzzles me when there is a conversation about trust and uh and during these negotiations and uh and uh as if Iran Iranians are the ones who need to build trust and uh while the recent historical record actually points to the other direction that it's uh the Americans and their allies who need to build trust for Iranians because that has been repeated over and over again in in the in the past half century that um that Iranians uh cannot really trust Americans. And the la last you mentioned the Iran Iraq war which was you know at the time of course Saddam Hussein in 1979
16:141980 was a client state of the Soviet Union but nevertheless the whole kind of you know the countries of the west um came to rescue uh because once they realized that the war was not going to directions that they envisioned Americans, Germans, French, the UK, all Arab countries with the exception of Libya and and Syria, they all helped Saddam Hussein and they delivered even chemical weapons. You know, the German companies delivered chemical the material for chemical weapons. the US provided the means of delivery of chemical weapons at the time and even when Iran um um uh put a grievance in the national the
17:08United Nations Security Council to condemn Iraq's use of chemical weapons.
17:14The country that vetoed that was the United States. And uh and uh and I think that you know this this has left a scar for for Iranians that that that every time that they try to uh uh to u think about a pushman or a dead tant and uh and we see in the recent years that in the middle of negotiation they attack you know and they are in their attack they are very indiscriminate and and they they to all these kind of things that is amounts to war crime and and is very openly exercised this kind of both in rhetoric and in practice is is exercised. So so you know I think Iranians have good reasons to be
18:02skeptical of intentions American intentions and uh and the need to build trust sort of falls in the court of Americans rather than the other way around.
18:14Well, you mentioned the fact that Israel and the United States bombed in the midst of negotiations both in Aman and Geneva. It's not in your book, but you can go back all the way to the Alger agreement, which was the agreement after 1979, which uh the United States promised not to carry out aggressive policies towards Iran and then immediately violated it. And then as you do write about in your book the uh fact that Iran was an ally uh in terms of the installation of the Carzai government that Iran has enmity or is with the Taliban. Uh and then also the fact that uh when the uh Americans were fighting
18:57the Sunni insurgency in Iraq, Iran physically had troops on the ground, militias on the ground that were tacid allies of the United States to crush that insurgency.
19:13>> That is so true. And and I think that that goes back to this idea that that Iranians I mean one of the justifications of this current war is that uh no matter how hard Iranians tried to change their own situation uh they faced you know dead ends and and that's the only alternative left was an external intervention which is far from truth and and and we see in the past 40 years particularly at the end of Iran Iraq war Iranian society has gone through major transformations and uh and uh when 911 for example happened uh Iran uh both at the state level and at society level was the only country in
20:05the Middle East that had they organized massive public mourning for the victims of 9/11 in New York City. And uh and not only that, this was not a kind of a sort of a veneer of some other sort of sinister policy behind it. actually you know as you mentioned u in Iranians helped the US to overthrow the Taliban and in uh in 2002 in the bond uh conference when they're deciding about the future of Afghanistan the US delegation was very open about the fact that without Iran they could not have toppled the Taliban that easily and u but this was a kind of a reformist government under President Katami at the
20:56time and uh and uh there were some high hopes riding on this moment and uh and uh Iran wanted to Iran and the Islamic Republic wanted to show that sort of they're putting that kind of revolutionary fervor behind and ready to engage the US with mutual respect as equal partners and uh and then suddenly you know in state of the union speech George W. Bush comes out this is after Iran was a partner in uh war on terror George W.
21:42Bush state of union comes out and and calls Iran the axis of one of the axis of evil and uh and I think that really again we speak speaking of the question of trust you know that that uh that really uh inflicted irreparable damage to Iranian reformist movement because if you show that much flexibility if you show that much readiness to engage on different terms with the United States and and the result is being called axis of evil then you know how possibly could you justify any kind of rahman after that you know I mean they again justified it they again tried to try that road unsuccessfully up to this
22:38uh point and uh and I I think that's uh again it's very important to remember that uh all these US policies towards Iran although the stated stated objective always has been that we want to help democratic elements inside Iran um in reality every single policy that the US adopted u undermined democratic elements inside Iranian state and Iranian society. you.
23:11>> Well, and of course the the the perhaps the most illustrative example of that is the coup that overthrow the prime minister Muhammad Moseday who attempted to uh take control of Iranian oil uh which was controlled by the British. Um and I think as I remember from your book the Iranians didn't even know how much oil was being exported out of their country.
23:36uh workers in the oil fields were paid slave wages. Uh and of course the CIA and the British came and destroyed one of the most vital democracies in the Middle East.
23:49>> That's so true. I mean I think in so many different ways uh I mean the US and Iran has a long history together but I think if we want to understand this um situation today I think the year zero is 1953 for Iran and the US and uh there were a lot of hopes after at the end of second world war that the US is going to emerge as a force for good you know whether that was true or not but At least that was the perception in many corners of the world because the US US's posture was a anti-colonial posture against the British Empire against the French Empire and uh but that never materialized and and even Musad at the
24:39beginning of this movement for nationalization of oil thought that the US would support his initiative against the British oil company which was a you It's a very colonial kind of uh contract that oil was discovered in Iran in 1908 and uh and the British basically controlled the production, distribution, everything. And uh and by the time that oil was nationalized in Iran, the share of Iran, the profit that Iran shared of the oil production was only 18%.
25:16uh 82% of the profit went to the British, 30% of them of that was directly to the British government, you know, and uh so u that really sets a kind of tone in the next 25 years for Iran US relations and uh and in so many different ways. In my other work, I argue that uh that the Iranian revolution was Iranian's response to 1953 coup. And uh and uh it's impossible to understand the revolution without having 1953 coup and MI6 coup in mind because without that it's impossible to understand the Iranian revolution. without that because a lot of Americans uh uh the only thing they remember of of Iranian revolution
26:15is the taking over of American embassy in Tehran the hostage crisis and uh and I think without 1953 coup the hostage crisis is incomprehensible not justifiable I don't think it was justified but one needs to understand the the mindset that of of those students who took over American embassy that that they were thinking about 1953 coup and and the possibility of the US and the CIA attempting to sabotage the revolution once again. So um but this is so important that's year zero it's 1953 and we need to really give enough attention to that time in order to understand what happened uh in 1979 revolution hostage crisis and to the to
27:13uh and to a certain degree what's going on today in this is basically the foundation of a colonial imperialist relations between the two countries that needs to be overturned. And this is the whole kind of debate there that that that the revolution basically changed the map of the Middle East. and uh and the struggle the the point of contention today is to go back to the pre-1979 map of the Middle East with Iran as a client state and Iran as a state whose uh political authority does not exercise a political authority does not undermine American interest or Israeli interest in the region.
28:06Yeah, very close parallels with Cuba, wouldn't you say?
28:10>> Oh, absolutely, absolutely. I mean, I gave this talk uh uh a couple of weeks ago at the University of Maryland and one of my colleagues there who is a Cuba specialist. uh uh at the end of my talk you said that you know I just wanted to correct you one thing that that wherever you said Iran you should have said Cuba you know because I mean the similarity is is really astonishing that uh that this is the same policy this is the same points of contention and as we see in Cuba I mean what is the result of like 70 years of embargo you know and uh except you know uh emiseration of of an entire nation and uh and when that
28:57happens you know it's exactly the same when that happens you're actually empowering the ruling classes you are not disempowering them because you're empowering the ruling classes and and that can continue for decades after decades after decades as is example in Cuba and this is example in Iran as well that uh the more kind of uh free flow of ideas, trade uh political relations, the better it is for the emergence of democratic movements in any country.
29:36Before we talk about where we are now, you write that Iran's existence depended on creating a ring of fire around its borders as a deterrent to the American and Israeli ambitions to redraw the map of the region. What? Explain the ring of fire.
29:56Um you know for years uh Iranian uh state Islamic Republic argued that u that uh uh helping uh neighboring countries in Syria, in Lebanon, in Palestine uh is a deterrence for Americans and Israelis. is to bring the war directly to Iran. I remember when uh Hillary Clinton uh was uh circ secretary of state, there was a conference in Istanbul and the war in uh Syria had started and and she said that you know we in Syria we are going to clip the wings of the Iranians you know and uh it was very from the particularly after 911 2001 it was very clear that that that kind of project of seven countries in five years was the the the
31:04biggest reward for that policy was toppling the Islamic Republic in Iran.
31:11So Iranians consciously created that kind of what I called a ring of fire to as a deterrent to say that you know if you uh attack us if you pressure us we have the ability to respond in other places and uh of course I say this with a little bit of a caveat there that that doesn't mean that that there was no ideological commitment there as Well, I mean, Iranian I I believe that the Islamic Republic is committed to the Palestinian cause. They do instrumentalize it as well, but that doesn't mean that they don't genuinely believe that Palestinian right to return and statethood is uh must be defended. Um so but that kind of
32:08and and you know many years in 1984 I believe uh Henry Pre who was the uh uh in charge of the Iran desk at the state department uh in a piece he said that uh Iranians are basically are not interested in dominion abroad. They are interested in security and safety at home and whatever they do uh outside their borders is a way of protecting that stability and security at home. I don't believe that the Islamic Republic at any moment had this kind of uh um expansionist ambitions to go and and even about the question of Israel that they say okay they said death to Israel, death to America, but that really did not
33:06translate into a specific policy of going towards annihilation of the state of Israel. This was basically a rhetorical gesture.
33:19um and uh with no actual uh plan or uh or uh even uh I I want to mention this that during the war uh with Iraq, there was a battalion of of revolutionary guards who basically crossed the border from Iraq down to go to uh Lebanon and they said that we are going to just go down to Israel and liberate Palestine.
33:46and Kumeni at the time who was still alive immediately said just turn around turn around we don't want to go to Israel this is all about protecting our own borders this is not about going anywhere else so they all turned around and uh so basically you know at the beginning of the revolution there was this misunderstanding that that when they say that we are going to export the revolution we are actually going to go and arm and liberate other lands this was more of an inspirational kind of rhetoric rather than an an actual kind of plan military and offensive plan to go and liberate other countries.
34:29>> You're right.
34:32And we're talking I think you you wrote the book you're responding to the bombings in June, but they can of course it is current for the latest round of attacks. Fresh in the minds of Iranians was Israel's genocide in Palestine.
34:46Bombing Iranian cities immediately evoked the image of complete destruction of Gazan cities. Iranians knew that the Israelis possess no inhibition in committing war crimes and acts of genocide. They and their American backers wanted Iranians to have the image of Gaza in their mind of the atrocities they are capable of and to force them to surrender unconditionally in the first few days of the assaults.
35:12They also had hoped that the attacks would instigate regime change through mobilization from below led by domestic and diasporic uh dissident. You write a lot about the diaspora quite scathingly and correctly. Bombing Evan prison could be understood as a manifestation of the naive fantasy of the latter option.
35:32raising the prison gates with the masses storming Evan carrying freed political prisoners on their shoulders and celebrating the end of the Islamic Republic in a replay of the fall of the Bastile. I I think that is what they thought and I think it's a probably another example of the complete uh corrosion or disintegration of our the US diplomatic corps. Uh in a sense you you have to rely on diplomats who to a certain extent are by cultural. Um but let's talk about the latest assault. um what you've you know what you think it's done within Iran and what you think the uh Iranian regime will do from here on
36:22out. M uh the last part of your question is very hard to tell you know and we don't know uh uh but I want to emphasize this that uh I uh truly believe that uh without genocide in Gaza we will not been talking about this war in Iran. M >> the genocide in Gaza I think was an exercise in impunity the transformation of the so-called rulebased world order through this genocide in Gaza opened up this possibility of um of u war crimes that otherwise could have been unthinkable. I mean it was unthinkable to to to do such thing to to have a president of the United States openly saying that we are going to
37:29annihilate an entire civilization.
37:32Uh I don't think we could imagine anything like this like five years ago, 10 years ago. uh and I think that was made possible by uh genocide in Gaza and Israelis I think were very much aware of this uh and and for for that reason I I blame much of I put much of the responsibility of what's happening in Iran on the shoulders of Biden administration because they had the opportunity to intervene and uh stop that genocide at its very very early stages. And they they re not only didn't they do it, they not only they refused to do so, they helped to carry that out. And uh and I think that really changed the face of war uh in
38:4121st century and u and I think that I the word impunity is very key there to and Israelis tried it and I think they tried it successfully that uh that the genocide that unfolded in front of the world's eyes could be um carried out for two years without any kind of consequences. I mean there is a you know ICC indictment and but you know these are really not something that could ever stop that war machine in in against Palestinians in in Gaza. So, and they knew that the only way they could attack Iran, declare war on Iran was through a similar campaign of blanket bombing and destruction of civilian infrastructure
39:45uh that they did in in Gaza and um and that's what they did and and even today they understand that there's no other option. What are they going to do? I would imagine even they they might go as far as God forbid to drop a nuclear bomb on Iran, you know, because what other options do they have? They can't invade Iran. And the only option they have is to basically what exactly President Trump is saying to annihilate the entire nation and uh and to do so very openly.
40:25uh and uh so I think for Iranians this was a moment of uh a great lesson because for many years when these kind of protests in Iran were happening and people were very dissatisfied with their own state and there was a lot of publicity about the diversion of Iranian resources to help the axis of resistance. the Palestinians in Hezbollah in Syria and Iranians. A lot of these protests uh people were uh shouting that uh uh no for not for Gaza, not for Lebanon. My heart only, you know, uh uh is for Iran. My my I sacrificed my life for Iran. uh and uh and now they realize that all those things that the state was saying came to
41:27be true that if they don't have this fight in the streets of Damascus, they have to do it in the streets of Tehran.
41:39And uh it doesn't it might not sit well with the Syrians who live in Damascus.
41:46And I for good reasons, you know, but uh but that was the reality uh that uh in the absence of Hezbollah, in the absence of uh Palestinian resistance, uh I mean Iran doesn't have a very strong relations with Hamas and that's another misunderstanding of of this whole thing. But but with Palestinian resistance um then you know now the war uh has come to Iran and Iranians have to deal with it. And I think uh this was a moment that a light went on in Iranian many Iranians mind that uh that there was some truth to that that this was a project in the making for the past at least for the past 20 years to bring
42:36this war to Iran and as Netanyahu always said to cut the head of the snake and that snake that that head is Iran. on and that that's the major reward for this sort of reinvisioning the Middle East and uh and that's why we see that um a very strong rallying around the flag in Iran and these nightly gatherings congregation congregations in in public squares in Iran that started as a state initiative uh but then it turned very quickly uh into a kind of a civil society movement that people show up all night waving flags and with families, with kids, with elderly, with you know disabled people, everyone is uh showing that kind of
43:34support. But where it leads uh that's a major major question because we really don't know what's going to happen at the end of this war. uh with uh I mean the economic situation in Iran was already very hard and uh the inflation is between 60 to 70%.
43:56And it's going to get worse. Now there is an estimate that 4 million people have lost their jobs uh because of the war.
44:06uh and uh and the uh unemployment rate was already above 15% before the war and uh so all those uh economic grievances that uh started pass in in past in January uh and December and January last year um now I think it's going to resurface at the end of this war and I don't know whether the government has the resources to offer any kind of satisfactory um alternative to how they are going to deal with uh that kind of uh uh very grave economic crisis. It all depends on how the war ends and what kind of agreements they make. uh and uh if all the sanctions are lifted, maybe there is a possibility that the government can cope with the
45:09economic consequences of this war. But uh but I truly worry about uh what's going to be left uh in in those ruins in relation to the state exercising its authority and the people who are trying to find a way to uh to uh continue their means of subsistence.
45:35It does appear that the Iranian regime has a high degree of leverage over the strait of Hormuz. And of course, if they can get the Houthis to shut down the Baba Mandab, that will uh block Saudi oil that is u being shipped through a pipeline and shipped out, not through the straight. Um, and I'm just asking it also appears uh to me anyway that uh there are certain non-negotiable demands on the part of the Iranian government that is one uh reparations to the freezing unfreezing of Iranian assets which are at least hundred billion dollars. Uh the guar some kind of UN guarantee that they won't be attacked
46:17again. They've been attacked twice within uh the last year. And then also this ability to collect tolls, if you want to call them that, in usually in Chinese currency, uh I think exclusively in Chinese currency. Um which are a kind of backdoor form of reparations perhaps.
46:36Um but just your take on on the Iranian position, the re Iranian negotiating strength and I know I'm not asking you to predict the future. That's a dangerous thing to do. But at least the trends.
46:50>> Yeah. Uh I mean the the last uh uh proposal Iranians sent uh which they tried to separate nuclear question from the crisis of uh straight of Hormuz and they said that you know we lift the uh we uh lift the uh blockade blockade of Hormuz and then the US lift the blockade and then and then you uh uh unfreeze our assets and then we're all good to go, you know, like but of course, you know, that's uh for the US, I think that's a non-starter. I don't think the US is going to accept separating the nuclear issue from terms of ending this war and uh because if they if they do this is a very open admission of defeat for the US because
47:44that was the whole idea of this war and uh although no one knows what the idea of this war was objective of this war um and um but I think Uh up to this point I think Iranians have the upper hand and uh and uh the uh uh they always knew that this trait of Hormos is their winning card and uh and they uh wanted to save that for for for for a day like this. and uh and now they're using it and uh and the and they're basically holding the whole world economy hostage and uh and the world also knows that uh this hostage crisis is caused by the US not by the Iranians and uh I don't know if you heard the
48:39German chancellor the other day yesterday you know that >> that uh I mean if the Germans are blaming the US for this then then you know uh we can say with a certain level of uh confidence that the world believes that this uh the responsibility of this situation is on the shoulders of the US.
49:01So, Iranians have the upper hand and how they're going to use this upper hand uh uh is uh not quite clear and I believe that uh they're ready and they have said so before this war start that they're ready to agree to a certain amount of year number of years of freezing their enrichment program and I believe that at the end this is the kind of agreement that they can sort of work with that Iran would freeze for a certain number of years uh their enrichment program and the sanctions are lifted and uh some confidence building and so on and so forth. Um and uh and then uh we go back to where we were uh last year that uh
49:54without any of I mean the the painful part of it is that we could have achieved this without all this destruction and death and uh and now our hope is that that we could get to an agreement that is something close to what we could have agreed on a year ago.
50:17>> Great. Thank you, Beirus. Uh, I want to thank Max and Sophia Bruce the show. You can find me at chris edges.substack.com.
50:25>> Thank you so much, Chris.
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