{"id":28348,"date":"2026-03-20T10:07:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T10:07:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/?p=28348"},"modified":"2026-03-20T10:07:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T10:07:14","slug":"the-lies-that-sell-the-iran-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/?p=28348","title":{"rendered":"The Lies That Sell the Iran War"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>    <!-- BLOCK(acast)[0](%7B%22componentName%22%3A%22ACAST%22%2C%22entityType%22%3A%22SHORTCODE%22%2C%22optional%22%3Afalse%7D)(%7B%22id%22%3A%22liberate-their-bodies-from-their-souls-the-lies-that-sell-th%22%2C%22podcast%22%3A%22intercept-presents%22%2C%22subscribe%22%3Atrue%7D) --><\/p>\n<p>\n  <iframe src=\"https:\/\/embed.acast.com\/intercept-presents\/liberate-their-bodies-from-their-souls-the-lies-that-sell-th?accentColor=111111&amp;bgColor=f5f6f7&amp;logo=false\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" class=\"acast-player__embed\"><\/iframe>\n<\/p>\n<p><!-- END-BLOCK(acast)[0] --><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"has-underline\">From the White House<\/span> to Iran\u2019s former crown prince, proponents of the U.S.\u2013Israel war on Iran sell it to the American people \u2014 and Iranians themselves \u2014 as a crusade for liberation. Instead, the regime remains in place as the death toll grows, environmental hazards proliferate, and civilian infrastructure is decimated.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>As if the destruction inside Iran itself wasn\u2019t enough, the war is starting to have serious ramifications for the global economy and, more to the point, expanding into neighboring countries.<\/p>\n<p>Lebanon, in particular, has come into Israel\u2019s crosshairs, with increasing Israeli incursions and missile strikes deeper into the country. The number of dead there is approaching 1,000 with Israeli missiles razing entire apartment blocks in central Beirut this week and a ground invasion getting underway. More than 1 million Lebanese people have been displaced.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think the Lebanese are suffering now, and there\u2019s not really anyone who\u2019s trying to save them,\u201d says <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/staff\/afeef-nessouli\/\">Afeef Nessouli<\/a>, a Beirut-based journalist, speaking to The Intercept Briefing. \u201cThey know that, and they know that they\u2019re just political pawns who are always at the worst end of the stick along with Palestine.\u201d He adds, \u201cThe fear is that [Israel] will occupy south of Litani [River] \u2026\u00a0and just take people\u2019s homes, take their land, and never give it back, make settlements for their country.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s been really stunning to watch that so many people fall for this idea of \u2018This is a human rights intervention\u2019 \u2014 and yet it\u2019s accomplished through massive human rights violations,\u201d says Ali Gharib, a senior editor at The Intercept. Commenting on Israel\u2019s strategy of making failed states out of its adversaries in the region, he notes, the Israelis \u201cdon\u2019t need [Reza] Pahlavi to work. They don\u2019t need him to go in there and become this democratic leader. They just need him to lead a movement that damages the regime enough to put Iran into some kind of fractured state or state failure where it\u2019s not a threat to Israel anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ve had in the last 20 to 25 years, especially since the Iraq War in 2003, a lobby pushing for regime change in Iran,\u201d says Sanam Naraghi-Anderlini, a veteran peace strategist. \u201cThe Iraq version of regime change ended up being a catastrophe from a U.S. perspective, but actually from an Israeli perspective and from a Saudi perspective, and even from a UAE perspective, the decimation of Iraq has been a success because if Iraq had turned out to be a liberal democracy, it would\u2019ve challenged Israel on the question of Palestine. It would\u2019ve challenged Saudi Arabia on the question of Islam and what is Islam.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s a region in upheaval, and at the center are Israeli and American fictions about liberatory bombs.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve been on podcasts with Israeli journalists where they\u2019re telling me the Iranians wanted us to go in and liberate them,\u201d says Naraghi-Anderlini, \u201cAnd my response to them is: Liberate their bodies from their souls?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on <a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/the-intercept-briefing\/id1195206601\">Apple Podcasts<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/show\/2js8lwDRiK1TB4rUgiYb24?si=e3ce772344ee4170\">Spotify<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/playlist?list=PLW0Gy9pTgVnvgbvfd63A9uVpks3-uwudj\">YouTube<\/a>, or wherever you listen.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-transcript\">Transcript<\/h2>\n<p><strong>Ali Gharib:<\/strong> Welcome to The Intercept Briefing. I\u2019m Ali Gharib, and I\u2019m a senior editor at The Intercept. The U.S. and Israel\u2019s war on Iran is stretching into its third week, with attacks having started on February 28. The bombardment of Iran has remained relentless. At least 1,400 people have been <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2026\/3\/1\/us-israel-attacks-on-iran-death-toll-and-injuries-live-tracker\">killed<\/a> and more than 18,000 have been injured.<\/p>\n<p>Civilian infrastructure has taken a hit too, including Iranian hospitals, pharmaceutical plants, educational centers, and civilian energy depots. Iran, for its part, has retaliated by launching missiles and drones into Israel itself, as well as attacking U.S. bases in the region. It has also targeted <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2026\/03\/17\/iran-war-uae-energy-gas-field-oil-fujairah-strait-of-hormuz.html\">energy infrastructure<\/a> in the nearby Gulf Arab states.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, Israel has increased its attacks on Lebanon, killing more than 900 people and displacing more than 1 million, and it\u2019s preparing for a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2026\/3\/17\/mapping-israeli-attacks-and-the-displacement-of-one-million-in-lebanon#:~:text=Nearly%20one%20in%20five%20people,Lebanon%27s%20Ministry%20of%20Public%20Health.\">ground invasion <\/a>against the paramilitary group Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>On Wednesday, Israel expanded its <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/world\/israel-airstrikes-beirut-iran-9.7132819\">airstrikes into central Beirut<\/a>, the capital of Lebanon, where it razed residential buildings.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/staff\/afeef-nessouli\/\">Afeef Nessouli<\/a>, is a journalist and Intercept contributor based in Lebanon, where he has been reporting since November. He joins me now from Beirut.<\/p>\n<p>Afeef, welcome to The Intercept Briefing.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Afeef Nessouli:<\/strong> Yeah, thanks for having me, Ali. I appreciate it.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>AG:<\/strong> Afeef, what can you tell us about what it\u2019s actually been like in the parts of Lebanon where you\u2019ve been reporting, since Israel increased its attacks on the country following the strikes against Iran?\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>AN:<\/strong> So I\u2019m in an area of Beirut called Tayouneh. Tayouneh is hundreds of meters away from the evacuation orders that have been all over the southern suburbs \u2014 it\u2019s just right north of the southern suburbs \u2014 so it\u2019s very loud here. Right outside of my area, there\u2019s hundreds of tents lined up.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s right outside of the park. Horsh Beirut is this public space, and families from the southern suburbs have just lined up their tents and have had to make do with such little resources. <\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s really so hard to see so many people without shelter. It\u2019s just a catastrophic situation.<\/p>\n<p><strong>AG:<\/strong> It\u2019s not entirely surprising to hear that you might be seeing people there in tent cities, given that, I think I read that 1 in 5 Lebanese people were displaced now, and especially with Israel expanding its attacks into Beirut and central Beirut, as we saw on Wednesday, decimating parts of central Beirut and imploding with missiles buildings in the center of town.<\/p>\n<p>So what have you been seeing, what have you\u2019ve been talking to people there, internally displaced people?\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>AN:<\/strong> So on Wednesday, Israeli airstrikes hit central Beirut. They <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/live\/2026\/mar\/18\/iran-war-live-updates-oil-prices-hormuz-trump-larijani-key-leader-killed-israel-strikes?CMP=share_btn_url&amp;page=with%3Ablock-69ba77b78f082eba12ba24e5\">killed at least 12 people<\/a>, wounding 41 people.<\/p>\n<p>Going to the strike areas is really just awful to see and awful to witness. Buildings are rubble. It\u2019s causing panic and fear among people in places that were not told to evacuate. <\/p>\n<p>I talked to a mother who was displaced from the southern suburbs, a neighborhood called Bourj Al Barajneh. She\u2019s been staying under this huge statue of a crescent moon right outside of Al Amin Mosque in downtown Beirut. She\u2019s mostly just worried for her kids \u2014 worried that they\u2019re not getting enough to eat, worried about them just being terrorized, and also it\u2019s just so cold.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>You have to understand: Everything is all hands on deck. So a lot of schools are being turned into shelters. The stadium has been turned into a shelter.<\/p>\n<p>One I visited in Ras, Beirut, which is in northwestern Beirut, over 200 families I think were in and out of that shelter. People are sleeping on the floors. I spend a lot of time with an organization called Truth Be Told that\u2019s passing out hot meals from donations and prescription medication around Horsh Beirut, where all the families are lined up in tents.<\/p>\n<p>What you\u2019re mostly hearing is that people don\u2019t have anywhere to go. They have nowhere to sleep. And everywhere they do have to sleep is incredibly uncomfortable. There are men sleeping in their cars. There are cars everywhere. People are struggling. They\u2019re struggling to survive in an economy that was already just decimated from the last few years.<\/p>\n<p><strong>AG:<\/strong> I\u2019m curious, on the geopolitics, Afeef \u2014 how do you think these attacks have affected Hezbollah, the Lebanese paramilitary group from the south of the country but has become a central player in Lebanese politics and obviously a group closely linked with Iran? Is your sense that Hezbollah has been weakened by these attacks? Is the group continuing to be diminished or are they holding pretty firm at this time?\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>AN:<\/strong> I can say that a lot of people inside of Lebanon and a lot of people outside of Lebanon had seemed to count Hezbollah out, for the most part. They had seemed decimated, especially after the Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah was killed. It seemed like they were taking a long rest period.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>So a lot of the criticism is, Israel had had over <a href=\"https:\/\/www.middleeastmonitor.com\/20251121-unifil-reports-over-10000-israeli-violations-in-lebanon-since-last-year\/\">10,000 ceasefire violations<\/a> \u2014 and it took the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to be assassinated for the group to push into the war and take decisive action.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>AG:<\/strong> And of course, you\u2019re talking about Hassan Nasrallah, the late leader of Hezbollah who was killed by Israel during an <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2024\/10\/01\/israel-invasion-lebanon-iran\/\">earlier round of its war with Lebanon<\/a> \u2014 [after] <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2024\/09\/19\/israel-pager-walkie-talkie-attack-lebanon-war-crimes\/\">a pager attack<\/a> that Israel lodged against Lebanon, where it loaded pagers with explosives and meticulously distributed them to Hezbollah officials, killing scores of Hezbollah officials as well as countless civilians. And Ali Khamenei was the supreme leader of Iran until <em>he<\/em> was <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2026\/03\/02\/trump-regime-change-iran-venezuela\/\">assassinated by Israel<\/a> at the outset of this latest war with Iran.<\/p>\n<p><strong>AN:<\/strong> After the supreme leader was assassinated, I went to the public mourning in Dahiyeh. It was literally the evening of when Israel started striking the southern suburbs, and you could tell that the emotion was palpable. People were crying, people were wailing, people were chanting, people were angry. It was extremely well attended, it was extremely big.<\/p>\n<p>Ultimately, the same night, I was awoken in the middle of the night by two really loud strikes on Dahiyeh. It was really clear that Hezbollah had decided to take Lebanon into the war. And a lot of Lebanese people were pretty upset at that. They felt like they weren\u2019t given any consent; they were not able to consent to this sort of act. It\u2019s become a pretty polarizing subject.<\/p>\n<p>A year ago, when Hezbollah entered the war <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2024\/06\/19\/intercepted-podcast-israel-lebanon-hezbollah\/\">on behalf of Gaza<\/a>, I think people were more amenable to the idea. They understood that Israel wanted to make <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2024\/10\/01\/israel-invasion-lebanon-iran\/\">incursions into the country<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2024\/12\/10\/israel-syria-golan-heights\/\">occupy land<\/a>. I think in the last year, having not really responded to a lot of ceasefire violations in the south, but responding to Ali Khamenei\u2019s assassination was just a disappointment to a lot of Lebanese people who felt, \u201cWell, are you acting on behalf of Iran, or are you acting on behalf of our best interest?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It seems like they\u2019ve lost some support on the ground. So there is that, there is a decimation of their reputation right now, from what I am at least gathering on the ground. But also there\u2019s a lot of people who understand or the people who are on the front lines, they\u2019re the ones who have to self-help when all of their houses are demolished. And there\u2019s military access roads for Israeli occupation soldiers to literally making their demolished houses gone forever because now there\u2019s military access roads paved on top of them.\u00a0<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-right\">\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cIt feels like this big psychological operation done to Lebanese people for decades to separate them into sects, into tribes, and to get them destabilized.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n<p>In Lebanon, there\u2019s so many political opinions. And when something like this happens, it really feels like the people of the country are pitted against each other. It feels like this big psychological operation done to Lebanese people for decades to separate them into sects, into tribes, and to get them destabilized, while all of these outside forces are manipulating their lived experience, their day-to-day experience. I think most people really just want to have a Lebanon that they can depend on economically, that they can depend on politically, and that they can depend on in general for having a life that isn\u2019t burdened by cycles of violence every few months.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>AG:<\/strong> Touching on that a little bit, I\u2019ve talked to my friends, Lebanese friends, who admittedly are probably very self-selecting, but it seems they have sensed a resentment. You were sort of touching on this, a resentment of the fact that between the so-called ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, and the Israeli assassination of Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, there were some tens of thousands of Israeli ceasefire violations recorded, and none of these prompted a response from Hezbollah. But their willingness to go in retaliation for the assassination of a foreign leader \u2014 do you sense that kind of resentment? Is that one of the things contributing to Hezbollah\u2019s diminishing stature?<\/p>\n<p><strong>AN:<\/strong> Yeah, so I spoke to one woman last night. She\u2019s in her mid-30s. She has family from the south. Someone who theoretically supported Hezbollah getting into the war on behalf of Gaza after October 7. Someone who understands having land in the south \u2014 family homes in the south \u2014 that have been under fire for, really, decades. She says that, in the last year and a half, since the <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2024\/11\/26\/israel-lebanon-hezbollah-ceasefire-gaza\/\">so-called ceasefire<\/a> was brokered, after 10,000 violations from Israel, after Hezbollah really didn\u2019t respond to all of the violations, and yet they woke up on behalf of the supreme leader\u2019s assassination \u2014 just doesn\u2019t sit well with her. She doesn\u2019t see the reason why Lebanon would have to be in this fight.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But on the other hand completely, there\u2019s also this sophisticated understanding, obviously, that there\u2019s a neighbor to the south that has occupied an entire country and wants to have the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2026\/mar\/18\/fighting-intensifies-israel-hezbollah-southern-lebanon\">Litani River<\/a> be its northern border. There is this idea that Israel has been manipulating and manufacturing this feeling for a while, that they are coming in and they were going to come in and they were attacking Lebanon much before Hezbollah had ever come around.<\/p>\n<p>The fact of the matter is that Israel really does want to sow discord in the sectarian populations of Lebanon. They have <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/world\/lebanon-israel-propaganda-leaflets-9.7128940\">dropped leaflets<\/a> a couple days ago in central Beirut saying, \u201cLebanon is yours. You can inform on Hezbollah\u201d and like they shared a QR code. <\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-right\">\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cWhat ends up happening is that a lot of people discriminate against people from the south, people from Shia backgrounds, because they\u2019re basically afraid.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n<p>And then they target residential buildings and say, \u201cWe\u2019re coming after Hezbollah\u201d and cause psychological damage and physical damage and ruin so much peace for so many people. Ultimately what ends up happening is that a lot of people discriminate against people from the south, people from Shia backgrounds, because they\u2019re basically afraid that if they let them into their buildings or try to take care of them, they\u2019re going to be around people that are affiliated with Hezbollah and are going to be targeted.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>A lot of these people are just displaced. They\u2019re unhoused in rain, their houses have been destroyed, and then their fellow patriots are literally just terrified that being around them or letting them in is going to result in Israel killing all of them. That\u2019s a real fear on the ground right now.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s something that feels very beneficial to Israel and the U.S. to have: sects in Lebanon fighting each other all of the time not paying attention to the slow incursions \u2014 the slow pushing forth \u2014 on the southern border. Also, it\u2019s probably beneficial to countries like Iran to pour money, pouring arms, have proxies that are fighting its battles.<\/p>\n<p>Ultimately what happens is that the situation on the ground becomes unbearable. Everybody\u2019s trying to pressure the people to orchestrate some heroic political ends that is impossible for the people to do because they\u2019re obviously being manipulated by powers much larger than them. I think the Lebanese are suffering now, and there\u2019s not really anyone who\u2019s trying to save them. And they know that. They know that they\u2019re just political pawns who are always at the worst end of the stick \u2014 along with Palestine. So, yeah, it feels really dismal in Lebanon right now.\u00a0<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\">\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cMost people really just want to have a Lebanon that they can depend on economically \u2026 and that they can depend on in general for having a life that isn\u2019t burdened by cycles of violence every few months.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n<p><strong>AG:<\/strong> You mentioned in the south, the razing of people\u2019s homes to make roads for Israeli military infrastructure as they increase their ground incursions and seem to be making preparations for a full-scale ground invasion.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, this is all fraught with the history of the rise of Hezbollah in response to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, an occupation that lasted for nearly two decades with ongoing hostilities in the two and a half decades since 2000, when Israel officially left south Lebanon. What is the mood among people today in Beirut and also more broadly in Lebanon with regard to fears of what an Israeli occupation could mean for the future of their country?<\/p>\n<p><strong>AN:<\/strong> I think most people in Lebanon look at Israeli occupation as something that\u2019s just unacceptable. While there\u2019s a lot of opinions that are diverse politically in Lebanon, sometimes in contradiction of each other, one thing I think that is mostly true is that most Lebanese people do not want any normalization with Israel. There are some people who do, but it\u2019s not many.<\/p>\n<p>The fear is that they will occupy south of Litani \u2014 the Litani River is Israel\u2019s northern border \u2014\u00a0and just take people\u2019s homes, take their land, and never give it back, make settlements for their country. The feeling and the fear is that actually the more Israel does, the more it greedily takes up land, the less that anyone in Lebanon is going to stop fighting back. Because the fear is that there\u2019s always going to be violence, and being caught in a cycle of violence and a cycle of economic destruction. I think most people really just want a Lebanon that is peaceful. I think they want a Lebanon that they can feel safe in. And now half of the country really feels like Hezbollah has dragged them into this war.<\/p>\n<p>A lot of people know that Israel would\u2019ve done it anyway, and a subset is always going to fight back on the southern border because that\u2019s where they come from. So it just becomes a ripple effect for everybody in the country. Nobody wants the land to be occupied by Israel, but also not everybody at all wants to be in war constantly with Israel either.<\/p>\n<p>So you just have different lived realities where there are people who are losing their homes, they\u2019re displaced, they\u2019re suffering, they\u2019re fighting back as best as they can. Then there\u2019s people in Lebanon who are living in a totally different reality and are really mad because, admittedly so, their city is getting bombed, their economy is degrading, they have no chance for a future that feels at all stable. So you just have a society that is at the highest level of tension \u2014 and everybody, without fail, is afraid of civil war.<\/p>\n<p>Because the truth is that Hezbollah is part and parcel of society.\u00a0So when the Israelis and the U.S. pressure the government to disarm Hezbollah, a lot of Hezbollah is in all sorts of society. A lot of them are in the army. So it\u2019s not an easy fix here. <\/p>\n<p>I think the idea is that the Israelis want to make it seem like the government can just easily disarm Hezbollah, and if they don\u2019t, they\u2019re going to get punished for it. But it\u2019s obvious that\u2019s impossible. So it\u2019s made people feel completely disenchanted with all of the leadership that\u2019s involved and the leadership in the state as well, because the response has been mostly inadequate. It\u2019s just something out of a horror show.<\/p>\n<p><strong>AG:<\/strong> Given what we\u2019ve seen, pretty clearly seems to be Israel\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/the-intercept-briefing\/\">strategy of making failed states out of its adversaries in the region<\/a>, you have to wonder if Israeli\u2019s strategic thinking is exactly to stoke that resentment. So yeah, a complicated situation.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Afeef, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us. It\u2019s really a pleasure and really appreciate all your insights and also your excellent reporting. So thanks so much for joining us on the Intercept Briefing.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>AN:<\/strong> Ali, I really appreciate you for covering Lebanon and having me on your show.<\/p>\n<p><strong>AG: <\/strong>After a quick break, I\u2019ll be speaking to Sanam Naraghi Anderlini about Iran. Sanam is a peace strategist and founder and CEO of International Civil Society Action Network, or ICAN. She has served around the globe as expert for the U.N. on conflict mediation and was architect of the Women, Peace, and Security agenda.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ll be right back.<\/p>\n<p><!-- BLOCK(newsletter)[0](%7B%22componentName%22%3A%22NEWSLETTER%22%2C%22entityType%22%3A%22SHORTCODE%22%2C%22optional%22%3Atrue%7D)(%7B%7D) --><\/p>\n<div class=\"newsletter-embed flex-col items-center print:hidden\" id=\"third-party--article-mid\" data-module=\"InlineNewsletter\" data-module-source=\"web_intercept_20241230_Inline_Signup_Replacement\">\n<div class=\"-mx-5 sm:-mx-10 p-5 sm:px-10 xl:-ml-5 lg:mr-0 xl:px-5 bg-accentLight hidden\" data-name=\"subscribed\">\n<h2 class=\"font-sans font-light uppercase text-[30px] leading-8 text-white tracking-[0.01em] mb-0\">\n      We\u2019re independent of corporate interests \u2014 and powered by members. 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I\u2019m\u00a0Ali Gharib.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The war in Iran is deepening. Instead of finding ways to tone down the conflict, all the sides are doubling down on ultimatums and escalation. The cost has come in human lives, including to Gulf residents, Israelis, and American troops, but most notably in Iran, where Israel and America have been expanding their bombing campaigns, including carpet bombing in densely populated cities.<\/p>\n<p>Joining me now to discuss all this is Sanam Naraghi Anderlini, a peace strategist and the head of the civil society network <a href=\"https:\/\/icanpeacework.org\/\">ICAN<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>And full disclosure here: This is gonna sound familiar to members of the family WhatsApp group, because Sanam is actually my cousin.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>She\u2019s also a veteran peace builder and has been working on conflict resolution for decades. She intimately knows Iran and is an analyst on these issues as well. Thanks for joining us, Sanam.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sanam Naraghi Anderlini:<\/strong> Thank you for having me.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>AG:<\/strong> I wanted to talk to you a little bit about the trap that the war is falling into \u2014 this kind of logic of \u201cescalation of all sides.\u201d There are all these interested parties that are involved in the war \u2014 which is basically the Iranians, the Israelis, and the Americans \u2014 and they all have different interests. Can you talk about how all of those different interests right now point to this conflict escalating, rather than finding any off ramps?\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>SNA:<\/strong> So the way we have to understand this is that you have an Iranian regime that is basically focused on survival. They\u2019ve always been \u2014 their logic has always been survival.<\/p>\n<p>In a conflict like this, with two nuclear states, they are fighting a war of asymmetry. So their tactics have been, \u201cHow do you escalate the pain for the other side?\u201d to actually bring it to an end quicker. We call it the \u201churting stalemate\u201d: How do you get into a stalemate of some sort that is hurting the various parties, so that you end up with some kind of resolution? But at the moment, it\u2019s the logic of escalation to get to that point of pain.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>For the Israelis, the logic has always been to try and decimate Iran as a regional power and as a power that would challenge them on the question of Palestine more than anything else. We saw that for them, the decimation of Iraq \u2014 or basically Iraq falling to its knees, as opposed to turning into a liberal democracy or Syria or Libya or any of these countries. Their fragmentation and essentially the destruction of the state in those countries was beneficial to the Israeli cause of both Greater Israel, but also vis-a-vis specifically the Palestinians.<\/p>\n<p>So right now, with the Iran war going on, they also want to do as much damage as possible, and we\u2019re seeing that on a daily basis. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2026\/3\/11\/iran-reports-hospitals-civilians-affected-during-war-with-us-israel#:~:text=The%20Israeli%20army%20said%20on,stop%20further%20harm%20to%20civilians.\">Hospitals have been hit<\/a>, civilian sites have been hit, residential areas. When they went after Larijani, the national security adviser, over 100 civilians were killed.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ve just heard on Wednesday about a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bnnbloomberg.ca\/business\/2026\/03\/18\/irans-huge-gulf-gas-field-is-struck-in-major-escalation\/\">petrochemical plant<\/a> that\u2019s been hit. This is de facto chemical warfare now being played out, using the sources that are on the ground. So they are going full on and essentially escalating.<\/p>\n<p>Iran is retaliating and is doing a sort of matching retaliation. You hit a petrochemical plant, they say, we\u2019re gonna hit yours. So then comes the U.S. The U.S. \u2014 as we have repeatedly now heard from different U.S. officials \u2014 <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2026\/03\/05\/trump-iran-war-plan-cia\/\">doesn\u2019t really know why<\/a> it\u2019s doing this. Iran was not a threat to them. There was no nuclear threat, there was no ballistic missile threat. They got <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2026\/03\/03\/rubio-trump-iran-israel-war\/\">dragged into this war by Israel<\/a>, and they are now in it.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The problem is that as a major power \u2014 as a superpower, frankly \u2014 they can\u2019t be seen to lose. So it\u2019s a little bit like the situation of Russia and Ukraine. Russia can\u2019t be seen to lose to Ukraine. So the U.S. is now caught in that kind of trap. So they\u2019re also escalating at the moment.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\">\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cThe problem is that as a major power \u2014 as a superpower, frankly \u2014 they can\u2019t be seen to lose.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n<p>But actually what I\u2019m really worried about is that there are no guardrails. We don\u2019t have anyone standing and actually being the grown-up in the room saying, \u201cThere are nuclear plants. They shouldn\u2019t be hit.\u201d The implications of a <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/iran-bushehr-nuclear-power-plant-war-us-israel-38ad4e7ae4c934a499cae9c0b16f8fd2\">Bushehr plant<\/a>, which something was lobbed there. No damage was done. But the implications of this kind of damage and radioactive spillage for the entire Gulf region is really significant. And yet there is no real attention to this kind of escalation or trying to put, as I say, guardrails around essentially what are war crimes happening now.<\/p>\n<p><strong>AG:<\/strong> Sanam, maybe you can speak a little bit to what you see on the broader international scene, because I think there have been some shifts in the past week where we\u2019ve seen <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/16\/world\/europe\/europe-iran-war-trump-hormuz-warships.html\">Europe pushing back<\/a> on a few things. But this has all been set up by a very long campaign that\u2019s largely centered around human rights as an idea for justifying this sort of intervention and interventions like it before. <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2021\/08\/26\/afghanistan-america-failures\/\">We saw this in Afghanistan<\/a>, we saw it in Iraq. We\u2019ve seen it in a lot of places.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>For you and I looking at this who\u2019ve worked in this world \u2014 you more than myself \u2014 it\u2019s been really stunning to watch that so many people fall for this idea of \u201cThis is a human rights intervention\u201d \u2014 and yet it\u2019s accomplished through massive, massive human rights violations. This targeting of civilian infrastructure and civilian facilities and homes and disproportionate casualties happening on things like the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/17\/world\/middleeast\/israel-ali-larijani-iran-death.html\">Larijani assassination<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>Can you talk about how we got to this place where this rhetoric is built up around human rights to justify something like, if not quite a total war, at least a massive full-scale destruction of a country that we\u2019re seeing in process right now?\u00a0<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-right\">\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cIf Iraq had turned out to be a liberal democracy, it would\u2019ve challenged Israel on the question of Palestine.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n<p><strong>SNA:<\/strong> We\u2019ve had in the last 20 to 25 years, especially since the Iraq War in 2003, a lobby pushing for regime change in Iran. They did it in Baghdad. It used to be said that men go to Baghdad, real men go to Tehran. The Iraq version of regime change <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=QYAlSNiFpTc&amp;rco=1\">ended up being a catastrophe from a U.S. perspective<\/a>, but actually from an Israeli perspective and from a Saudi perspective, and even from a UAE perspective, the decimation of Iraq has been a success because if Iraq had turned out to be a liberal democracy, it would\u2019ve challenged Israel on the question of Palestine. It would\u2019ve challenged Saudi Arabia on the question of Islam and what is Islam; we wouldn\u2019t have ended up with all this sort of Wahhabi\/Salafi versions of Islam being spread around the world. And it could have possibly challenged the UAE on being an economic powerhouse.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Iraq is an educated \u2014 was an educated population. They have oil, they were wealthy, et cetera, but it was decimated. And these other three powers rose.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Iran was always on their agenda, and especially on the Israeli agenda. And the first threat that was perceived was, let\u2019s make it a question of a nuclear threat. OK, so that was the big thing on the table. Nuclear negotiations happened; 2015 JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action] is achieved.<\/p>\n<p><strong>AG:<\/strong> The <a href=\"https:\/\/armscontrolcenter.org\/the-iran-deal-then-and-now\/\">Iran nuclear deal<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>SNA:<\/strong> We see a change in tactic. We started seeing massive propaganda using Iran International and other television stations into Iran with very gauzy nostalgic stories of the Pahlavi era. Then we see them co-opting the <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2022\/11\/30\/intercepted-iran-protests\/\">Women Life Freedom movement in 2022<\/a>. It was meant to be some sort of coalition opposition movement that was again, trying to co-opt Women Life Freedom.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Now, Women Life Freedom <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2022\/09\/24\/iran-mahsa-amini-protest-regime-collapse\/\">was authentic<\/a>. It was homegrown. It had nothing to do with the diaspora. The diaspora supported it because it was so beautifully nonviolent and so inclusive. It was women\u2019s rights, and we had men standing with women. Life and the question of life is both around economic livelihoods and justice and so forth. And then freedom. The question of, can we have democratic freedoms and dignity?<\/p>\n<p>The Iranian regime crashes down on that as they often do when they see protest movements. They crack down heavily, but ironically they also back down. So once the protest stopped, what we saw was that the mandatory nature of the hijab basically disappears. You see Iranian women walking around wearing whatever they want.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But the question of, how do we go about with regime change from the outside again? The focus shifts, and with Trump coming into power [in 2016] and getting rid of the JCPOA, that was about controlling and containing the nuclear program, but also removing sanctions so there would be economic relief for the Iranian public. Obama never got rid of the sanctions, and by the time Trump came in, he got rid of the nuclear deal \u2014 nuclear side of it.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The Iranians maintained and then they continued cooperating with the U.N. and the nuclear experts for a long time with inspectors. Then at some point it became clear that there was not going to be a new deal. And <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2022\/06\/10\/iran-nuclear-deal-cameras-war\/\">so the whole thing disappeared<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In the meantime, what was happening was that the shift in D.C. and again with Israeli support, became about \u201cmaximum pressure,\u201d which is around economic pressure. It was really strangling the Iranian economy and really hitting inflation and affecting very poor people.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>At ICAN, we did a report on sanctions in 2012. It was called \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/icanpeacework.org\/2012\/07\/killing-them-softly-the-stark-impact-of-sanctions-on-the-lives-of-ordinary-iranians-summer-2012\/\">Killing them Softly<\/a>,\u201d and we were looking at the humanitarian implications of sanctions back in 2012. In 2017 onwards, it comes in really, really heavily. We\u2019ve even had <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/reel\/DU01fe6iZWP\/\">Nancy Pelosi<\/a> in February of 2026 saying, we imposed these sanctions with the view of hurting the poor Iranians in rural areas so that there would be an uprising.<\/p>\n<p><strong>AG:<\/strong> It\u2019s worth mentioning too that this strategy really came out of Israel\u2019s closest allies in Washington, right? This was like the Foundation for Defensive Democracies \u2014 these Likud-oriented, right-wing pro-Israel think tanks that had literally called for a strategy of maximum pressure, which is what Trump put in place.<\/p>\n<p><strong>SNA:<\/strong> Exactly. This has been an ongoing fight between different think tanks, different leanings, et cetera. But of course those guys have a lot more money and a lot more resources because they\u2019ve literally got the backing of the Israeli government behind them.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>So you get maximum pressure. You get the <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2026\/01\/23\/podcast-iran-protests-greenland\/\">protests<\/a> back in December of 2025. They were economic protests. It was the bazaar and the traders and others, but people were really feeling the inflation level. So December protests start, and we don\u2019t really hear that much about them. There isn\u2019t really that much sort of repression of these protests. It\u2019s very much a domestic issue.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Then all of a sudden we see Reza Pahlavi coming into this domain and calling out to people and saying, go out 7th and 8th of January, go out into the protest. Go out in your millions. We are with you.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>AG:<\/strong> Reza Pahlavi, of course, the former crown prince of Iran, who\u2019s become a central figure of the right-wing Iranian opposition, and who has <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2026\/01\/13\/iran-reza-pahlavi-protests-israel\/\">claimed for himself the role as the head of the transition<\/a> to a purported democracy that\u2019s soon to be coming in Iran.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>SNA:<\/strong> We start seeing Mossad or Israeli-aligned assets on Twitter saying, we\u2019re there, we\u2019re on the ground with you. We are there to help you. So these messages need to really be investigated. Because if you know the Iranian regime, you know that their instinct when feeling threatened is to crack down, and they will crack down heavily on their own population. <\/p>\n<p>So how can you sit in Virginia or in Maryland and tell people to go out onto the streets and say, we\u2019re going to be there with you, and actually expose them to what became a very violent crackdown coming on the back of the Twelve Day War, the Israeli American war in June?<\/p>\n<p>Again, it had been during nuclear negotiations, and the attacks on Iranian leadership was pretty significant. So you\u2019re dealing already with a regime that is going to be paranoid about infiltration. In January, you say to people, go out onto the streets. People\u2019s kids are going out, and they go out into the streets, and then we see the internet blackout. Again, during the Twelve Day War, there was [an] internet blackout because banks were being attacked. There were <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/opinion\/predatory-sparrow-hacks-irans-financial-system-attack-stablecoins-ad6e79b5?gaa_at=eafs&amp;gaa_n=AWEtsqfGv5-DmuCjcvNZV3vKbPJipmrws31Pox46nMIzQZwgqCPqbIOFJE5Adnii4_E%3D&amp;gaa_ts=69bc7ab7&amp;gaa_sig=cKG2Q39F8gHsXAsNMA0aW6QLQoikD-CGI_jnpxDbyOv-G76OIoXTW1BlLMvNCRh4ym3xxt43BlNKJ7hbhjjAhA%3D%3D\">cyber attacks<\/a> against Iranian banks by Israeli assets. So you\u2019re dealing, as I say, with a regime that is already on hyper alert and paranoid, and so they react very violently.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>How many people were killed? This becomes a big topic of debate and discussion. The human rights organizations, and the one that I follow is an organization called <a href=\"https:\/\/www.en-hrana.org\/the-crimson-winter-a-50-day-record-of-irans-2025-2026-nationwide-protests\/\">Harana<\/a>, they did a very meticulous verification of people who died, families verifying and so forth. They had reached the number of about 7,008 people who had been killed during those two nights of protests. That\u2019s a lot of people. But the machinery of propaganda \u2014 news, whatever you want to call it \u2014 started inflating the numbers. And it became 12,000 and then 20,000 and then 30,000 and then 40,000 and then 50,000.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>AG:<\/strong> The 7,000 number is bad enough.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>SNA:<\/strong> Yes.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>AG: <\/strong>Here we were in 2013 or whatever it was, completely outraged about Sisi\u2019s counter-coup against the Muslim Brotherhood killing 1,500 protesters in one day. And that was outrage. We got talks in Washington about cutting off weapons to Egypt, cutting off Egypt from aid.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>These numbers were already staggering. So to just watch it balloon out of proportion like this with no basis and evidence, it really showed you that some of the opposition at this point was really just absolutely going for it and willing to stop at nothing, in a very Trumpian way,\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>SNA:<\/strong> It was Trumpian, but it was also very \u2014 suddenly it started to look like the Gaza playbook, right? Because it was very much like the horrific things that happened on October 7 in Israel. It was using that horrific incident to then rile up and get emotionally charged around what the response should be.<\/p>\n<p>In the case of Iran, it became about, well we need to go and protect people. We started subtly seeing Iranians in the diaspora using certain talking points. Because I was hearing it from different places. First it was somebody would say, \u201cThis is a war of liberation. These people who were on the streets were fighting a war of liberation.\u201d That\u2019s a dangerous thing to say, because if you\u2019re claiming that the protesters who went out on a Friday night and a Thursday night out of frustration, out of anger, whatever, were soldiers and it\u2019s a war \u2014 then you are putting them directly at risk.<\/p>\n<p><strong>AG:<\/strong> This is part of the opposition, from the opposition perspective, the Pahlavi perspective too. Pahlavi, as we know, has been traveling to Israel the past few years, is really \u2014 I think it\u2019s safe to say at this point \u2014 has become a stooge of the Israelis. This was absolutely his strategy too. You heard him during the January protest crackdown.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The January protests were effectively a nonviolent movement. One of the things that was so shocking about the breadth of the crackdown was that this was a nonviolent movement. Sure, OK, setting the occasional police station on fire, but that is not what the movement was about.<\/p>\n<p>And you had Pahlavi here saying everybody in the regime is legitimate targets, even civilian officials. That\u2019s calling for a civil war. That\u2019s calling for war crimes.<\/p>\n<p><strong>SNA:<\/strong> That\u2019s the problem that you\u2019re sitting, again, you\u2019re sitting in Potomac, Miami, or wherever he happened to be when he said all this, and he\u2019s sending out people. And either you know your opposition, you know the force that you\u2019re fighting against the regime, in which case you have to be mindful of what you\u2019re doing. We have known for 47 years that this is a regime that will use violence and it has used violence throughout time. So if you\u2019re claiming to be the leader of the opposition, do you put your followers at risk like that? That, to me, is a question of responsibility. That\u2019s definitely an issue.<\/p>\n<p>If you don\u2019t know the nature of your adversary, then that\u2019s also admitting incompetence of some sort. How could you not know this could happen? So what was the intent of telling people to go out into the streets and then having all these Mossad voices on Twitter? What was the intent of it? Was the intent creating this space where this violence would come out so that then the <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2026\/03\/02\/trump-regime-change-iran-venezuela\/\">next excuse for regime change<\/a> becomes this is a regime that is killing its own people, it\u2019s awful to its own people? We\u2019ve had all the propaganda all these years. People, they\u2019ve had it up to here with the economics, with the corruption, with all of the things that are going on, and the answer becomes well, yeah, it needs military attack.<\/p>\n<p><strong>AG:<\/strong> This is where you really see the Israelis start to step up and say, rise up. And for whatever reason, because of the desperation of Iranian people, people really latch onto this. It\u2019s incredible for us to think, like many of our relatives have enough sense, certainly our relatives who are inside Iran, many of whom are geriatric and the rest of whom are just sensible, aren\u2019t going out in the street and listening to Reza Pahlavi. But you listen to anecdotes from them about their friends. These people were actually listening to these messages and going into the street and being shot at and slaughtered. Meanwhile, Pahlavi and the Israelis are saying, do it, rise up, overtake the government.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>SNA: <\/strong>Yeah.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>AG: <\/strong>The people on the ground themselves can\u2019t be blamed for thinking that there\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2026\/03\/05\/trump-iran-war-plan-cia\/\">some sort of plan in place<\/a>. This connects back to what you were saying about the Israelis, where this kind of is the plan, right? It\u2019s that they don\u2019t need Pahlavi to work. They don\u2019t need him to go in there and become this democratic leader. They just need him to lead a movement that damages the regime enough to put Iran into some kind of fractured state or state failure where it\u2019s not a threat to Israel anymore.<\/p>\n<p><strong>SNA:<\/strong> Yeah. So what I started seeing, and I think this is the situation we\u2019re in now, unfortunately, is that you have a regime that has sacrificed the country and the nation for its own survival, and they\u2019re continuing to do that. Then we have an opposition led by the Israeli sort of mentality \u2014 but now very much owned by Iranian diaspora themselves \u2014 that is so driven by getting rid of the regime that they\u2019re also willing to sacrifice the nation.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The rhetoric that we hear it\u2019s just heartbreaking because when the <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2026\/03\/11\/iran-school-missile-investigation\/\">girls\u2019 school was hit <\/a>some people were <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2026\/03\/09\/iran-trump-hegseth-bomb-girls-school\/\">saying<\/a>, \u201cOh, it\u2019s the regime\u2019s own rockets.\u201d Exactly like what we heard in <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2023\/11\/21\/al-shifa-hospital-hamas-israel\/\">Gaza when the hospital was hit<\/a>. Then it became \u201cThis is collateral damage. There\u2019s a price for freedom.\u201d I find that really quite revolting because I\u2019m thinking, it\u2019s not your kid. Those children did not sign up to be the price for freedom, whatever freedom means.<\/p>\n<p>Then we started seeing Israeli journalists. I\u2019ve been on podcasts with Israeli journalists where they\u2019re telling me, \u201cThe Iranians wanted us to go in and liberate them.\u201d And my response to them is: Liberate their bodies from their souls?<\/p>\n<p><strong>AG:<\/strong> Liberate them from their pharmaceutical factories and their hospitals and their girls\u2019 schools.<\/p>\n<p><strong>SNA:<\/strong> So many schools now, I think it\u2019s 60 schools have been hit. Schools, homes, energy sources, flour depots for making bread and corn, food, water, energy. All of these things are being hit. Police stations.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ali Gharib:<\/strong> Homes \u2014 residential towers with hundreds of apartments.<\/p>\n<p><strong>SNA:<\/strong> Thousands, right? So they\u2019re hiding behind this language of freedom and this language of human rights and then causing incredible mass human rights assault going forward in terms of atrocities. It\u2019s all war crimes as well.<\/p>\n<p>Again, at the forefront of it, we have Reza Pahlavi, who to me, is not only a puppet, he\u2019s like a pied piper. He\u2019s the one who led this diaspora into: I\u2019m gonna give you heaven. And it\u2019s now pretty hellish for the people on the ground in Iran. So this is something that we have to reckon with. I think diasporas \u2014 I\u2019ve worked on conflicts for many years \u2014\u00a0diasporas often play a significant role in terms of shaping the policy.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But what I always felt with Iranians was that no matter what differences we may have had politically, what drives us is a love of country. The targeting right now has been against the state and the nation. When you hear that something like 50 <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/unesco-iran-war-heritage-sites-bff566d6bc1fb7167614b43690277414\">heritage sites<\/a> have been damaged, for each of us, when we think about Isfahan or when we think about iconic buildings in Tehran, whether it\u2019s the Azadi Tower or the Azadi Stadium, these are places and things that have meaning to us as a nation. They are part of how communities are formed and imagined and created. Iranians have a deep sense of nationhood, yet in this context, in the way that this polarization has happened, as I say, you have people who are saying, \u201cWell, we will rebuild.\u201d Are you now saying that in this war, another 30,000 people can die for freedom?<\/p>\n<p>This is pretty despicable when you\u2019re sitting outside the country. If you want to fight the war then by all means, fly to Istanbul, take the bus, and go straight to Tehran and be on the streets with the people. But to sit outside and wage war is horrific.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-right\">\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cThose of us who sit outside have a particular responsibility. \u2026 People living inside, they may not have the same information.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n<p>Those of us who sit outside have a particular responsibility. We have <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/collections\/the-911-wars\/\">seen what the United States has done<\/a> in these countries. We have access to all of the information \u2014 whether it\u2019s Syria, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan \u2014 we know what kind of entity we deal with and in the international space, when these countries get embroiled in conflict. I think we have a particular responsibility in terms of trying to prevent that happening to our own country. People living inside, they may not have the same information. As I say, they are so traumatized by what the regime has done that it\u2019s easy to say, \u201cI want something else.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>One last point, which I think is really significant, is that there\u2019s a generational issue here. My generation is probably the last generation that remembers the revolution and the Iran\u2013Iraq war. I was 11 when that happened. And for the years that I was returning to Iran to do my research and understand what was going on, I remember in the 1990s, there were student protests. And the taxi drivers, I would say to them, \u201cDid you go to the protests?\u201d And the taxi driver would say, \u201cNo, ma\u2019am, we\u2019ve already been out there once to be against something. I\u2019ll go out there when I know it\u2019s for something.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>So this idea of everybody united against the shah, thinking the day after was going to be better and then they got the Islamists. People have been inoculated against that. They remember the Iran\u2013Iraq war. That was a pretty horrific war for eight years, and Iran had no allies in the world except for Israel and Syria. Israel was giving weapons to Iran throughout the 1980s. So it\u2019s interesting the shifts that have happened.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But what I\u2019m saying is that I\u2019m in my 50s now, so the generations that come after me, they don\u2019t remember the revolution. They don\u2019t remember the war. And this rallying around the Pahlavi name as an alternative to the regime \u2014 \u201cwhatever it is, it\u2019s gotta be better than the regime.\u201d That\u2019s exactly the parallel that we\u2019re seeing. And it\u2019s a very dangerous one, I think.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>AG:<\/strong> This is something that you said when we spoke on the phone earlier that I do want to get to because I think this is very important and it actually speaks to both sides. What you said is that inside of us all\u2014 And I think this both animates the people inside Iran who, I don\u2019t want to take away their agency. There are people there who are calling for these bombs and celebrating them.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I think that now we\u2019re getting to a point where some people are waking up to what that actually means. Something you\u2019d mentioned before is that the Twelve Day War last June seems now like it might have been a prelude to calm people\u2019s nerves, that this won\u2019t be as bad as you think. So when the call for more bombs and war comes, \u201cbomb this regime into submission,\u201d people won\u2019t get what it is \u2014 I think now people increasingly are starting to get a grip on it \u2014 but still there are people who are diehard for it. Diehard for Pahlavi. Part of this is polarization and information compartmentalization where people are watching Iran International, the Fox News of the Iranian diaspora that beams into the country. They\u2019re getting bad information. There\u2019s conspiracy theories about the girls\u2019 school bombing \u2014 all this stuff that we don\u2019t need to get into all this detail about. But those people really are just looking for something to grasp, to hope for, right?<\/p>\n<p>Then you\u2019ve got people on the outside throwing up their hands, and I think, like we\u2019ve seen this in our family discussions where people say, \u201cGod, I hope it ends soon.\u201d And what you said to me earlier in our pre-interview is that hope is not really a strategy. What can be our strategy on the outside that\u2019s not just hope? How do we look at this conflict in a way that can advance things for the country and for the people inside that we think is morally sound for us to push?<\/p>\n<p><strong>SNA:<\/strong> I genuinely think that if we care about Iran and Iranians, we need to be really advocating for very serious guardrails around the type of weapons that are being used and the type of targets that are being hit. As I said, if they go after Bushehr nuclear plant, there\u2019s going to be radioactive spillage in Iran and in the Gulf. This is dangerous. This is really dangerous. Petrochemical plants, oil plants, these are the kinds of things that have been hit, and Iran is retaliating. So there needs to be a collective voice of saying, \u201cEnough, stop this, we have to put some limits on this.\u201d The weapons and the targets, that\u2019s number one.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\">\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cIf they go after Bushehr nuclear plant, there\u2019s going to be radioactive spillage in Iran and in the Gulf. This is dangerous.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n<p>Number two is that at this point, I would like more of us \u2014 and those people who have a larger platform than I do \u2014 to be talking about the political prisoners. There are thousands and thousands of people who were arrested in January who need to be released, but there are also the long-term ones and the dissidents and others who have had the courage, despite everything that\u2019s going on, to actually issue statements and speak out about what they want change to be.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>So there\u2019s been a pretty vibrant conversation inside Iran from within the regime and from the periphery of it and the opposition around referenda and changing things and so forth.<\/p>\n<p>Third thing. We need to take a page out of the book of the countries that have done this before and learn some lessons. The first place I go back to is South Africa, where the opposition to the apartheid regime gathered together in the 1950s, all sorts of communists and ANC [African National Congress] and all sorts of liberation fighters and others. But they got together, and they articulated the people\u2019s charter, and it was a vision of the South Africa they wanted to create. That document became a roadmap and a destination, if you want, for what they were fighting for. What is it that we are fighting for? What unites us? This is the kind of thing that I wish Pahlavi had done, or I wish that we could now do and actually open up the space for conversations.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-right\">\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cWhat is it that we are fighting for? What unites us?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n<p>Related to that is the acceptance amongst all of us that Iran is now a country of 93 million people. Even if 5 percent of those people are regime supporters, that is a population of 4.5 million, 5 million people. We have to say that this is a country in which they also have a role. The future of Iran, I would like if it was my choice, I would like a future of Iran where I get to go and visit my father\u2019s grave without fear of being arrested or being detained, where I could take my children to visit the country and see the beauty of my homeland without fear. But I also want other people to be able to go live back home there, and the folks that are living there, who have had to be part and parcel of the system that is there \u2014 for them to also feel safe.<\/p>\n<p>All the horrors that this regime actually played out on us, I don\u2019t want to become them. That to me is the question. So it\u2019s really thinking about it in this way of: What does it mean to live with the lens of human rights and inclusivity and plurality? Then what do we do with the most egregious elements, whether it\u2019s in the prisons and the torturers, <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2023\/03\/15\/iraq-war-where-are-they-now\/\">whether it\u2019s the leaders who ordered the violence<\/a>, those kinds of things need investigation.<\/p>\n<p>Again, South Africa had a tribunal. They also had a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Other countries have done that. Yemen had a national dialogue process for two years where they brought people from all sorts of political parties and tribes and young people and women to actually imagine the future that they were going to have. These are the kinds of things that we need to have in Iran.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s remove the embedded violence that has shaped this regime and has infiltrated into society, and actually bring it back to the Iran that we all love and the history of pluralism and frankly, secularism, that goes back 2,500 years. Secularism means Muslims \u2014 diehard Muslims \u2014 also get to live and practice their lives, right? It\u2019s that kind of a vision that I think we need to be thinking about.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>AG:<\/strong> And we\u2019re going to leave it there. Thanks for joining us on the Intercept Briefing, Sanam.<\/p>\n<p><strong>SNA:<\/strong> Thank you, Ali.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>AG:<\/strong> That does it for this episode.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. Ben Muessig is our editor-in-chief. Maia Hibbett is the managing editor. Chelsey B. Coombs is our social and video producer. Desiree Adib is our booking producer. Fei Liu is our product and design manager. Nara Shin is the copy editor. Will Stanton mixed our show. Legal review came, as always, from the great David Bralow.<\/p>\n<p>Slip Stream provided our theme music.<\/p>\n<p>This show and our reporting at The Intercept doesn\u2019t exist without you, our loyal readers and listeners. Your donations, no matter the amount, makes a real difference. Keep our investigations free and fearless at <a href=\"https:\/\/join.theintercept.com\/donate\/Donate_Podcast?source=interceptedshoutout&amp;recurring_period=one-time\">theintercept.com\/join<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>And if you haven\u2019t already, please subscribe to The Intercept Briefing wherever you listen to podcasts. And leave us a rating or a review, it helps other listeners to find us.<\/p>\n<p>Let us know what you think of this episode, or If you want to send us a general message, email us at podcasts@theintercept.com.<\/p>\n<p>Until next time, I\u2019m Ali Gharib.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js\"><\/script>#Lies #Sell #Iran #War<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From the White House to Iran\u2019s&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28349,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[246],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28348"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}