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Noam Chomsky discusses the heroic contributions Daniel Ellsberg made by releasing the Pentagon Papers and revealing the madness of American nuclear war plans. Ellsberg uncovered shocking information about the planning for nuclear war in the 1950s, during his time within the system and with high-level access. He revealed details about the planning documents and the existence of a "Doomsday Machine," a system designed by both the United States and Russia that would ensure total destruction in the event of communication failure. He also discovered the delegation of authority to launch nuclear wars, with lower-level military officials interpreting instructions in a way that allowed them to initiate nuclear bombings.

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On the flip side, E.U. developments and the rise of right-wing populism"} Anas El Gomati is the founder and director of the Libyan think tank, the Sadeq Institute. He discusses how so much of Libya’s history has been shaped by European colonial powers and other foreign states meddling in its affairs. On the flip side, E.U. developments and the rise of right-wing populism and racist anti-migrant sentiment cannot be disentangled from what transpires in Libya. In light of the ongoing fighting between rival government structures, how can the control of oil resources and state assets shift from elite strongmen to civilian bodies? .kt-post-loop_f70033-54 .kadence-post-image{padding-top:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px;}.kt-post-loop_f70033-54 .kt-post-grid-wrap{gap:30px 6px;}.kt-post-loop_f70033-54 .kt-blocks-post-grid-item{border-top-width:0px;border-right-width:0px;border-bottom-width:0px;border-left-width:0px;border-top-left-radius:0px;border-top-right-radius:0px;border-bottom-right-radius:0px;border-bottom-left-radius:0px;}.kt-post-loop_f70033-54 .kt-blocks-post-grid-item .kt-blocks-post-grid-item-inner{padding-top:10px;padding-right:25px;padding-bottom:25px;padding-left:9px;}.kt-post-loop_f70033-54 .kt-blocks-post-grid-item header{padding-top:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px;margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;}.kt-post-loop_f70033-54 .kt-blocks-post-grid-item .entry-title{padding-top:5px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:10px;padding-left:0px;margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;font-size:16px;line-height:17px;}.kt-post-loop_f70033-54 .entry-content{padding-top:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px;margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;}.kt-post-loop_f70033-54 .kt-blocks-post-footer{border-top-width:0px;border-right-width:0px;border-bottom-width:0px;border-left-width:0px;padding-top:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px;margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;}.kt-post-loop_f70033-54 .entry-content:after{height:0px;}.kt-post-loop_f70033-54 .kb-filter-item{border-top-width:0px;border-right-width:0px;border-bottom-width:2px;border-left-width:0px;padding-top:5px;padding-right:8px;padding-bottom:5px;padding-left:8px;margin-top:0px;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;} Libyans Caught Between Warring Elites and Foreign Powers Modern Iran: National Identity as a Tool of Resistance or Coercion? 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Israeli Intel. Chief Says Palestinian Israeli Conflict Greater Risk than Nuclear Iran Pt 2/4 Vietnam War Created Middle East Activist – Phyllis Bennis on Reality Asserts Itself Pt 1/4 Syria’s Six Wars and Humanitarian Catastrophe – Phyllis Bennis on Reality Asserts Itself Pt 3/4 Did Bush Cheney Create a Culture of Not Wanting to Know – Sen. Bob Graham on RAI Pt 7/7 Revealing 9/11 Conspiracy Would Undo U.S. Saudi Alliance – Sen. Bob Graham on RAI Pt 5/7 Saudi Government’s 9/11 Connection and the Path to Disillusionment – Sen. Bob Graham on RAI Pt 4/7 Transcript Listen Donate Subscribe Guest Music Talia Baroncelli Hi, I’m Talia Baroncelli, and you’re watching theAnalysis.news. I’ll shortly be joined by Libyan analyst, Anas El Gomati, to speak about the situation in Libya as well as Libya’s role in the conflict in neighboring Sudan. If you enjoy this content, please consider donating to the show by going to theAnalysis.news and hitting the donate button at the top-right corner of the screen. You can also get on the mailing list so that you’re informed every time a new episode is published. Also, go to our YouTube channel, theAnalysis-news. Hit like on all the videos you want to watch and hit subscribe so that you’re notified every time a new episode drops. See you in a bit with Anas. Joining me now is Anas El Gomati. He’s the founder and director of the Libyan think tank, the Sadeq Institute. Thank you so much for joining me, Anas. Anas El Gomati Thanks, Talia. I appreciate it. Talia Baroncelli There’s so much I want to speak to you about today, but I think we should start off with what happened after the NATO intervention in Libya in 2011, where Muammar Gaddafi was ousted from power. He was killed, and fighting continued afterwards. There was a UN-led process which tried to establish elections and a functioning government. I think it’s safe to say that the process has unfortunately failed and that there are two rival governments now; one in the West and one in the East. What’s going on right now in Libya? Anas El Gomati Well, it’s a really complicated story, and it’s always good to start from where you picked things up. It’s difficult to look back in retrospect and try to condense those ten years together. But I would say for the first three years, things were not as bad as they are now. There was an episode of violence that was fairly limited in comparison to the last two conflicts that Libya has endured—one in 2011, one in 2014, and one in 2019. But I don’t know whether or not Libyans would always consider what happened in 2011 to be a civil war. Of course, as you alluded to, NATO’s intervention was heavy on that. I think it also limited a lot of the potential violence that could have occurred, as we saw in Syria. I think that’s one thing that has to be said about the 2011 intervention. In comparison, the 2014 and 2019 interventions contained the very same players and contained more players. I think that’s where the UN remitted and turned a blind eye to the maligned influence of a lot of regional players and world players that have continued to destabilize Libya. That’s been forgotten. From 2011 to 2014, Libya was fairly stable, and its progress was actually quite positive in comparison to right now. So there were elections in 2012, with an 80% turnout, very high numbers for Libya’s first elections. There was so much pluralism in that first Parliament that Libya elected that it was a hung Parliament. There were so many different groups there because 60% of the seats were given to independent candidates not running on a party list. Forty percent were given to a party list. I think, in retrospect, some of those things might now look like a mistake. Maybe what Libya needed at the time was strong party affiliations so that a block could come to dominate and say, “This is the direction that we’re going to take after the elections.” Many argued at the time that we didn’t really know what the Libyans wanted. We don’t know who the Libyans are, so let them elect as many Libyans as possible and let them move forward. So in retrospect, the first couple of years were okay. Yes, there were militias that were on the ground at the time, but they were not conducting the violence that we’ve seen them conduct since 2014 and since 2019. So for the first three years, up until Libya’s second elections in 2014, the situation was fairly stable on the ground, and there was one single government. It was elected by the Libyan people en masse. I think, in that sense, there was much to be celebrated. I think Libya’s economic outlook, its political outlook, and its stability in the region were good. In 2014, we had a civil war, and it came down from the rise of this actor who many may know of and many may not know of, but his name is Khalifa Haftar. I think your viewer should know who he is. He has the longest-standing political career of anybody in the entire Middle East and North Africa. It spans 54 years. He emerged in 1969 with Muammar Gaddafi in a coup against King Idris. He has gone on to launch seven power grabs over a career now that spans, as I said, 54 years. Those power grabs are not just coups. They are defections from the very partners that he launched those coups with. If we start looking at today’s recent news, the last 24 hours of what has happened in Libya, which we may get into in a little while, you’ll see Khalifa Haftar’s fingerprints and his political DNA all over that. To set the scene, the first three years were not so bad. I think NATO’s biggest mistake was most likely abandoning Libya’s political future and the role of regional actors and not immunizing Libya from those two things. There was the creation of militias that needed to be integrated into a unified military and a subservient military, which Libya had never experienced. The reason why Libyans overwhelmingly overthrew the Gaddafi regime was that they wanted to live in a society, in a state that was not controlled by a family or by personal militias but by a neutral state security service that respects human rights and allows you to have the same level of freedom no matter where you’re from, what your surname is, what your tribe is, or what part of the country you’re from. Since 2014, that has been quite the opposite. Khalifa Haftar emerged and declared himself the leader of the self-styled Libyan National Army, or the Libyan Arab Armed Forces. With that, he launched this coup and a war on terror that split the country in two. He split the country between two rival parliaments, the first Parliament that was elected in 2012, a second Parliament that was elected in 2014, and then two rival administrations that were unified temporarily after Libya’s last war in 2019 that Khalifa Haftar launched, but has since, as you’ve mentioned, slipped back to another partition after he failed to have elections in late 2021. So it is a bit of Groundhog Day in Libya because there have been lots of changes in the middle of the last 12 years. At the same time, for so much change, it’s almost like old wine and new bottles. The same actors are still there from 2011, and they’re still here in 2023. Despite the unification process, the UN process that was supposed to unify all these different parts and put Humpty Dumpty back together again, you still have two different governments under different acronyms. You still have two rival military formations. You still have two rival parliaments. Talia Baroncelli Well, I would argue that the NATO intervention is what pushed Humpty Dumpty to fall off the wall, so to speak. Of course, Gaddafi was not liked by his people, or by some of them at least. Maybe some of them supported him, but a lot of people would argue that they were uprising against Gaddafi and they didn’t want him to be in power anymore. But the NATO intervention was not conducted in a way that would ensure that there would be something left of the country afterwards. In 2011, you had so many people fleeing the country and refugees trying to escape Libya and get to Europe. A lot of people, unfortunately, died in the Mediterranean trying to make those crossings. So the intervention wasn’t benign. I’m sure the mandate was not conducted or not designed in such a way to ensure that there would be functioning institutions. We’re still seeing that there is a power vacuum. Now you have, as you said, Haftar, who has his own interests, and you have these rival governments. Bringing it back to right now, you have a government in the West, the GNA [Government of National Accord], which is supported by the UN, but I think a lot of other European powers and by Turkey. Then in the East, you have a House of Representatives which has just suspended Fathi Bashagha. So what’s going on there? Why was he suspended? What was his vision, at least, of trying to unify Libya, or was he just trying to grab power and resources? Anas El Gomati Can I just touch on your point? I actually agree with you. But just on your initial point about NATO. Talia Baroncelli Sure. Anas El Gomati I think the question about NATO’s intervention, lack of planning, and the fact that members of NATO have since gone on to undermine Libya’s stability tells you a lot about the way that that organization functions. The reality is that why are these states, what we consider to be strong states, or thought were strong states, why are they so brittle? That’s really the reality. A lot of these states, the authoritarian states, the myth of the strong man, it comes down to Fathi Bashagha’s own personal story because that’s really the crux of this story with this parallel administration that was created. They’re brittle states. They look like they’re very strong, but the moment that you poke them, they start to disintegrate because there are no institutions. There is no plan for a day after, and they’re designed to be coup-proof. I think this is where a lot of these states, whether it be Saddam’s [Hussein] Iraq, whether it be Bashar al-Assad’s Syria, or whether it be Gaddafis Libya, or tomorrow, even Egypt’s [Abdel Fattah El-]Sisi, and as we’re looking at the fall of Saddam and its disintegration into a civil war, the rise of [Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo] Hemedti, these places, their institutions are so personalized. They’re so brittle that once there is any intervention from the outside or there is an uprising, they start to fall apart. But let me come to this question about Fathi Bashagha because it’s a really interesting point that you’ve raised about what are his motivations. His own personal story is fascinating. What you have with the story of Fathi Bashagha is an individual who joined the revolution in 2011. He was a former Air Force pilot and led a revolutionary armed group, a militia from the city of Misrata, which became famous during the revolution for being a real kingmaker and power broker in Western Libya, where the capital is in Tripolitania. He went on to then join, over several years, the political class. He was elected as a member of Parliament in 2014; that second Parliament that we spoke about, the House of Representatives. Then he was appointed as the Minister of Interior to the Government of National Accord that was established in 2015 during the UN process to unify this first division after Libya’s first civil war in 2014. Four months into the job, Khalifa Haftar attacks the capital. Now, we should remember that the GNA didn’t have a Ministry of Defense. It didn’t have a Chief of Staff. It didn’t have a Chief of Intelligence. So he was literally the last man standing in terms of Libya’s or Tripoli’s security. He goes on to defend the capital from Khalifa Haftar’s onslaught. What begins as just a normal war escalates into a nasty, brutal, personal war of words between Khalifa Haftar and Fathi Bashagha. Khalifa Haftar calls the GNA, the units, and the forces fighting underneath him that Bashagha was leading– he calls them terrorists; and says, “I will never enter into a dialogue with them.” On the other hand, Fathi Bashagha calls Haftar a putschist, a coup plotter, a war criminal, someone whom he will never meet with. In fact, on the record, he says, “There will be no peace in Libya whilst Haftar enjoys a political role.” Now, that was in 2019 and 2020. The civil war culminated in a stalemate around the summer of 2020. Within six months, there is a UN political process that says, “Well, there is a rival government here in the East. There’s a rival government here in the West. Let’s again unify these two separate halves.” They create a political dialogue forum where they bring in members of the status quo, Libya’s two rival parliaments, to appoint two figures, one president and one prime minister. Fathi Bashagha enters into that race with the head of the Parliament in the East, who is considered to be Khalifa Haftar’s staunchest political ally. So people start scratching their heads, and they start wondering, what happened to all this anonymity? Before the end of that year, before the end of 2021, Fathi Bashagha stood in Benghazi, the eastern city that has become infamous for the events in 2012, over the last ten years, and is the center of power of Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army. He shares a handshake with the man that he said there would be no political future for in the country and that there would be no peace with. Khalifa Haftar, the man who said that he emerged in Libya not for his own personal political gain or financial gain but to fight the scourge of terrorism, which he has said he will never enter into a dialogue with and shakes his hand. So the terrorists are shaking the putschist’s hand. It’s an unusual place in Libya, but it’s a place where there are friends with benefits, but there are also enemies with benefits. That’s what happened with this creation of the Government of National Stability. These two figures emerged, and they have this narrative that surrounds them. Everyone has called Khalifa Haftar, or many people have called him ‘the strong man of the East.’ Fathi Bashagha, after his role in the 2019 civil war, became labelled ‘the strong man of the West.’ What happens is that these two strong men come together and forge an agreement, but they’re not strong enough to take the capital. They tried to overthrow the Government of National Unity that was appointed in 2021 under Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh, the current sitting internationally recognized Prime Minister, and they failed to overthrow him. What happened beyond failing to overthrow him, it actually dispels a lot of the myths around the “Arab strongman.” They’re only as strong as their rhetoric suggests. In a place like Libya, where there are no angels on either side of these civil wars, I’ll be very clear about that, but there are militias that have emerged that fight for greed. There are certainly militias and armed groups out there that fight for grievance. There are those that are going to end up supporting the revolution, and there are going to be those that oppose it and support Gaddafi. The question is not who is right and who is wrong. The question is, what are they fighting for, and how do you get them to stop fighting? And so that deal that was cut between the two rival strongmen of the last civil war, the two political polls of the last civil war, failed. It failed because these two strongmen assumed that they could buy their way out of a civil war. Civil wars are there. There’s a lot of political rhetoric that is there. There’s always going to be financial gain. There are going to be geopolitical and economic interests that are there. In a place like Libya which has some of the highest levels of gold deposits and the highest levels of cash deposits in the world, of course, there’s going to be greed, but there’s also going to be grievances. Trying to meddle and mould both together and mesh both together has been one of the reasons why we’re struggling to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. You can’t buy out everyone. You can’t buy out people that may have supported Gaddafi’s regime. They’re principled, and they believe in what they fought for. In contrast, you might not be able to buy out those that fought against him and have now fought against Khalifa Haftar and have now fought against Fathi Bashagha. But as you can see, over a decade, one of the things that no one really looks at is how we turn away from these places for a decade, and we look back, and we say, “Oh, yeah, it’s Groundhog Day. It’s just two governments. It’s just two rivals. They’ll fix it eventually.” You forget that on a dusty Tuesday in a place like Libya, there are war crimes that are taking place on either side or any of the sides that we’ve just mentioned that have been there over the last decade. The build-up of those grievances makes those states even more brittle. It makes it even harder to then address the number of grievances that have been there for the last decade. So when you look at the rise and the fall and demise of a player like Fathi Bashagha, it tells you a couple of things– strong men beware, and those that are buying, beware of what you’re buying because, to be honest, that is a myth that has now come down crashing on the plate of analysts, diplomats, and commentators across the country and further afield. But also that the serious work that needs to go in, as you mentioned, the serious work and planning that needs to take place after the fact of an intervention like what happened in 2011 or two serious civil wars that have erupted in the aftermath, you can’t put them to bed through a handshake in Benghazi and assume there’s nothing else to see here, and everything will be rosy. Talia Baroncelli Well, yeah, why don’t we talk about that planning? Because you have this unlikely alliance, as you might call it, between Haftar and Bashagha. Are they in control of some of the oil reserves? Anas El Gomati Mhm. Talia Baroncelli Or is it the UN-led or the UN-supported government in the West in Tripoli that’s controlling those reserves? Because the Libyan Coast Guard, for example, receives an incredible amount of money from the E.U. and especially from Italy to ensure that people on the move, that asylum seekers don’t leave Libya and that they don’t arrive in Italy or in other parts of the peripheral area of Southern Europe. So they’ve been systematically pushed back. This is, of course, against international standards and against international norms. It’s [inaudible 00:18:00]. It’s pushing them back to Libya. The Libyan Coast Guard has been fully complicit in these crimes, and they’re receiving money from the E.U. to basically do the E.U.’s dirty work and ensure that people don’t leave the country. Anas El Gomati Mhm. Talia Baroncelli Who do these people represent? Are they from the West, so to speak, and are they also in control of some resources? The most important question would be, are the Libyans themselves, the Libyan population, are they benefiting from any of these resources and oil profits whatsoever, or are they just completely impoverished? Anas El Gomati It’s a number of questions you asked, and all of them are pertinent and straight to the point. So I’ll try and be as quick as I can to go through them. Number one, I think when it comes to the oil reserves and how they’re controlled, that is a really unusual game that reflects the ways in which wars are fought now in the 21st century and how different they were fought in the 20th century. Libya is littered with mercenaries and foreign mercenaries. There is Russias Wagner Group that operates in Libya. There are other sides and factions that have delivered their own mercenaries. Libya is littered with militias and tribes. If you ask Khalifa Haftar when he blockaded that oil, he said, “It wasn’t me that blockaded it. It was the Libyan tribes.” But then he’ll put out an order through the Libyan National Army to say that nobody can work from the Libyan military in any of those facilities. In late 2021, I believe, in September 2021, after Libya’s oil was blockaded at the end of the civil war in 2019 and 2020, that oil blockade was lifted through negotiations in Moscow. So there was an element there that was hinting at foreign control. It was blockaded again after Khalifa Haftar and Fathi Bashagha established their own GNS, the Government of National Stability, that parallel government we spoke about a few moments earlier. After they blockaded the oil, Khalifa Haftar negotiated with Dbeibeh, the Prime Minister in Tripoli, and again stabbed in the back his own political ally, Fathi Bashagha, and lifted the blockade through negotiations in the UAE between, as I said, Dbeibeh and Haftar. Now, Dbeibeh and Haftar each control portions of the oil wealth. None of the oil wealth goes to the Libyan people. They’re yet to see any of it. Basically, look at the pictures across the country. There is nothing that has been built in that country arguably since the late ’70s. That’s one of the things that Libya is desperately in need of. If you go to Libyan government estimates, Libyan is in the region of $100 billion of investment in its infrastructure alone, and that’s telling. What it’s telling is that the $100 billion is there. It’s in the Libyan coffers. They could spend that money if they wanted to. So much of that money goes into the hands and pockets of Libya’s unelected and expired political elite. When it comes to the Coast Guard, it’s a very different question. I think it’s really important. It is one of the things that the European Union is certainly guilty of. If you look at the UN panel of expert reports, not only are they training and equipping the Libyan Coast Guard in means that are deeply contrary to international humanitarian law, Libya’s own law, and Europe’s own responsibilities and maritime responsibilities, but more peculiar than that is that many of the individuals that are responsible for the smuggling of humans and human trafficking, they’re the ones that are now part of the Libyan Coast Guard. In the West of Libya, you have individuals known as [inaudible 00:21:45] and other people like that. The town of Az-Zāwiyah is a critical departure point for refugees and migrants fleeing to Europe. By the UN’s own admission and its own panel of expert reports, there are individuals that were smugglers that attended training courses under the E.U. and were received by the E.U. themselves. They’ve either taken material support or support of some kind from the E.U. What is getting worse now is that for the first time in the modern history of Libya, departures are exceeding in the East of the country where there has been a smuggling empire under Khalifa Haftar. Sixty percent of departures today, the 57,000 that landed on the shores of Italy over the last year, have come from Libya, at least 60% from Eastern Libya. Khalifa Haftar today has moved from being the commander of the Libyan National Army to being the commander of a smuggling network. You would think that this would also irk the European Union or member states. He was received by the Meloni administration two weeks ago and given red-carpet treatment in Rome. It’s one of those places where when you look at the political landscape, you look at the political fingerprints on the crimes that have taken place; Libya is like living in the upside down. Nothing makes sense. The more crimes that you pursue, the more spoiling that you pursue, the more reward you get. It also tells you a number of other things. The harder you push, the more you can get. For every Khalifa Haftar, you have a plastic one sitting behind him thinking, “I could be next,” and that’s damaging. That’s why what you were talking about, international norms, they’re not just words and abstract terms that people use to describe phenomena in textbooks. They matter on the ground because if you keep breaking these rules over and over again, then everyone thinks, “If he can do it, so can I.” Talia Baroncelli Unfortunately, it is a lot of the western actors, such as the E.U., are involved indirectly or directly with their money, perpetrating these crimes against humanity. There was a UN report saying that the crimes against a lot of the migrants and asylum seekers who are detained in Libya amount to crimes against humanity– rape and all sorts of inhumane conditions in which they’re detained. Yet the E.U. policymakers, as well as the U.S. policymakers, keep talking about this rules-based order, which they stand behind in European values. They’re just complete hypocrites when it comes to actually trying to implement policies that would foster those values. Another area that we could speak about is how the E.U. has welcomed so many refugees from Ukraine who have been forced to leave their country. They should accept these people and treat them with respect and give them asylum. At the same time, there have been no legal channels for people to leave Libya or other countries in Africa that have been stricken by conflict and other calamities and crises. Anas El Gomati Yep. Talia Baroncelli It’s just unfortunate to see that because the E.U. has been so present in those regions and in contributing to those crises. Yet there’s a racist element to it because when these people want to come to Europe and seek protection, then it’s, “Oh, these people are just economic migrants, so they’re not really deserving of any protection.” Anas El Gomati I couldn’t agree more, honestly. I think the dilemma that I have in my mind, there are two things. The first is that racial discrepancy; it’s certainly not lost on an Arab audience because they started scratching their heads and saying, number one, “How come we’re not received in that way?” Number two, they don’t want to be received in the first place. They want to stay at home. There’s no refugee on Earth that ever wants to leave their home and take a boat, most likely die, be ignored and forgotten about and be described as cockroaches by other European heads of state and otherwise. There’s something that is to be said about the fact that the best way and best policy for reducing a refugee crisis is to prevent violence from taking place in the first place. That’s where you find, unfortunately, the role of regional Arab states, the role of other European states, the role of the U.S., and Russia in Libya. They have their fingerprints all over that. I think some countries don’t care because they’re not on the receiving end. Libya is considered to be NATO’s southern flank and Europe’s soft underbelly. In many ways, the only thing that is of importance for a lot of policymakers today about Libya is to just stabilize it, and give it to someone to stop those boats from coming in. I think that’s really when you start to interrogate what their policies could have been over the last several years; why don’t you stop the malignant influence of regional actors? Why don’t you stop your own malignant influence of working with smugglers and calling them coastguards? I mean, there’s a lot more. I know this sounds strange saying this as a political analyst, but in a philosophical sense, there’s a lot of soul-searching that needs to be done when it comes to not only the policy-making on Libya but also the rhetoric. The rhetoric is deeply dehumanizing when it comes to places like Libya and places like Syria. If they’re called a human, that’s the best possible outcome. More often than not, they’re either, as it is, like a wink and nod or whatever, the idea that they’re either terrorists, terrorist sympathizers, or parts of criminal networks. It’s the most deeply dehumanizing thing to say about those that are fleeing from conflict and fleeing from terror, fleeing from criminal networks and fleeing from violence. Violence [inaudible 00:27:21] perpetuate. Talia Baroncelli It reminds me of Josep Borrell, the High Representative of Europe. He gave a speech; I think this was eight months ago or so, in which he characterized Europe as a garden which needed to be protected from the jungle. Just that metaphor; it’s so colonial. When he was called out as opposed to apologizing, he double downed on it and said that he didn’t mean it in a racist way but that Europe represents these lofty values that need to be protected from places like Libya, alluding to the warfare and the deaths and the horrible bloodshed that’s going on there. He missed out on the important part, and that’s how Europe has contributed to the perpetuation of these crimes in the region. I think the Arab regional actors also play a role. The Emirates, the United Arab Emirates have played a huge role. I think initially they did not support Haftar, and now they do support Haftar. If you look at– Anas El Gomati No, they were the first. Talia Baroncelli Oh, they were the first. Anas El Gomati Yep. Talia Baroncelli Okay. They’re also involved in a neighboring conflict in Sudan. So in Sudan, there’s a war between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, which are led by General Hemedti. Haftar and Hemedti are also buddy-buddy. Anas El Gomati They are fellows. Talia Baronce

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Her book \"State of Resistance: Politics, Culture, and Identity in Modern Iran\" examines top-down and bottom-up manifestations of national"} Historian, Assal Rad, explores identity formation in modern Iran, both under the Pahlavi dynasty as well as after the 1979 Revolution under the Islamic Republic. Her book “State of Resistance: Politics, Culture, and Identity in Modern Iran” examines top-down and bottom-up manifestations of national identity as narrated by state structures and popular culture, respectively. Her fascinating analysis is based on a historical assessment of how modern state-building in Iran inculcated a sense of national belonging in the population, as well as on interviews with people in Tehran and examples taken from popular music and film. Can national identity play a positive role in liberation struggles? .kt-post-loop_7d89d9-00 .kadence-post-image{padding-top:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px;}.kt-post-loop_7d89d9-00 .kt-post-grid-wrap{gap:30px 6px;}.kt-post-loop_7d89d9-00 .kt-blocks-post-grid-item{border-top-width:0px;border-right-width:0px;border-bottom-width:0px;border-left-width:0px;border-top-left-radius:0px;border-top-right-radius:0px;border-bottom-right-radius:0px;border-bottom-left-radius:0px;}.kt-post-loop_7d89d9-00 .kt-blocks-post-grid-item .kt-blocks-post-grid-item-inner{padding-top:10px;padding-right:25px;padding-bottom:25px;padding-left:9px;}.kt-post-loop_7d89d9-00 .kt-blocks-post-grid-item header{padding-top:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px;margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;}.kt-post-loop_7d89d9-00 .kt-blocks-post-grid-item .entry-title{padding-top:5px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:10px;padding-left:0px;margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;font-size:16px;line-height:17px;}.kt-post-loop_7d89d9-00 .entry-content{padding-top:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px;margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;}.kt-post-loop_7d89d9-00 .kt-blocks-post-footer{border-top-width:0px;border-right-width:0px;border-bottom-width:0px;border-left-width:0px;padding-top:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px;margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;}.kt-post-loop_7d89d9-00 .entry-content:after{height:0px;}.kt-post-loop_7d89d9-00 .kb-filter-item{border-top-width:0px;border-right-width:0px;border-bottom-width:2px;border-left-width:0px;padding-top:5px;padding-right:8px;padding-bottom:5px;padding-left:8px;margin-top:0px;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;} Modern Iran: National Identity as a Tool of Resistance or Coercion? 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An edited version will be arriving shortly. Talia Baroncelli Hi, I’m Talia Baroncelli, and you’re watching theAnalysis.news. Assal Rad, a historian as well as the author of a recent book State of Resistance, will be joining me today to speak about national identity formations in Iran. Assal Rad But then, in a lot of cases, as I said, I didn’t say I was doing an interview. I would just go to a store, I wanted to buy a CD. If there was a dance party and you wanted to give somebody a CD of all the best songs right now, what is that? Chat up the person who’s going to sell you what is, by the way, not an official CD. It’s like an underground CD because it’s officially allowed to be sold. Talia Baroncelli If you enjoy this content and would like to contribute to the show, please go to our website, theAnalysis.news, and make a donation by hitting the button at the top right corner of the screen. You can also get on our mailing list; that way, you’re notified whenever a new episode drops. You can also like and subscribe to all of the videos on our YouTube channel at theAnalysis-news. See you in a bit with Assal. Joining me now to speak about Iranian national identity is Assal Rad. She’s a historian and author of the new book State of Resistance. Thanks so much for coming back onto the show, Assal. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Well, your book is a really fascinating excursion into Iranian national identity, and it juxtaposes different identity formations, such as top-down formations led by the former Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and the Islamic Republic. It sets that up against different bottom-up formations and ways in which Iranians contest these limited notions of identity. Before we get into the details, I wanted to ask you why you wrote this book in the first place. Assal Rad Well, it was a very personal project, if I’m being honest. As an Iranian American, as someone who was born and raised in the United States but to parents of Iranian immigrants, my own navigating that hyphenated identity made me really interested in the notion of belonging and identity. When you grow up, especially within that generation where there’s a lot of anti-Iran sentiment in the United States that creates a sense of alienation, you want to always have this idea of belonging. I travelled to Iran as an adult, thinking in my mind, I’m like, oh, I’m going to go to this place where I’m going to get that sense of belonging for sure, because this is really where my core identity comes from. I travelled there, and I realized that that’s just not the case. It’s not that it wasn’t wonderful for many reasons, visiting your family, being with people who understand certain aspects of your culture that might not be understood in the state that you live in. My idea of Iranianness was so distinct from theirs. It was so far removed. What I had expected when I visited there because I had grown up in this bubble of not only my own Iranian household but the community that we had built here, that’s really what I expected. It was a very different situation. So I became very interested in understanding that more and understanding Iran more. It also made me realize if I, as someone of Iranian heritage in the United States, didn’t really understand the complexity of the population, the culture, and the politics of that country, then how can I expect an American of non-Iranian heritage to understand? I became really fascinated with trying to understand those things. As someone who decided to study history, there is that ubiquitous phrase, “History is written by the victors.” You understand the importance and the power of narrative, how important the story is, and people believing that story. It’s almost the story, and whether or not people believe it is more important than the reality on the ground. People in religious studies and historians of religion do this all the time, they’re like, “Oh, such and such story that’s in this religious text is disproven by this information.” It doesn’t matter oftentimes to the believers. So all of that I found really fascinating. I wanted to, as much as possible, try and understand how those narratives played into contemporary Iran. I tried to trace that back to how having a national narrative and condition of nationalism was tied to the idea of the modern nation-state. In order to have a modern nation-state, you had to have the trappings of a modern nation-state in terms of modern infrastructure, an organized military, a bureaucratic state, all of those types of things. The story was so important, too, that people understood how they belonged to this, as [Political Scientist and Histortian] Benedict Anderson has put it, “imagined community.” That was such an integral part of that project. You could see that unfolding under both the Pahlavi dynasty and then continuing under the Islamic Republic. Talia Baroncelli These historians, like Benedict Anderson, and [Historian] Eric Hobsbawm, play a really important role in how you make sense of identity making and identity formation. I think the Haitian anthropologist [Michel-Rolph] Trouillot also plays a big theoretical role in terms of looking at how certain narratives are silenced over time and which contested narratives actually have supremacy or are more recognized as being valid or authentic over other ones. I think in your book, by reading it, it seemed like you weren’t trying to argue that any one identity is actually more authentic than the other. If you have all these different identities, which one do you then choose? Or is it all relative? Assal Rad I think there’s definitely the idea of it being relative. Yeah, I would never want to. I think anybody who tries to choose a definitive or authentic identity is doing a disservice to understanding the whole point. The point of it is, in scholarship, at least, there’s this idea that the nation-state is a construct, race is a construct, and gender is a construct. Sometimes to the nonacademic, that’s a meaningless statement. It’s like, what do you mean that there are social constructs? What it means is basically that they can change their dynamic—someone who’s wielding power at the top. A state can try and wield that narrative, and people can do the same thing. There’s a negotiation that goes back and forth. Nobody has the power to control that narrative because it’s so dynamic and fluid, and it can change over time. But then what happens is if you take that argument to an extreme, the idea that it’s a construct, you see sometimes in scholarship the idea that then it’s inauthentic, that it’s not real, it’s fake, or it’s made up. I think that also does a disservice because the reality of it is once you as an individual psychologically attach yourself to an identity, it’s very real. It’s a very real experience, and it has very real consequences. You can say that borders are made up, and they are. If you look at a picture of the Earth, there are no borders on it. We’ve created those borders. But the experience of existing in those borders is very real. The inability to move across those borders is very real. I wanted to be on that fence of understanding both sides of the argument, that it’s constructed in the case of, say, Iran, where I’m looking at national identity. Those national identities are constructed both from above and from below, but it’s still a certain set of characteristics and symbols that they can choose from. An Iranian identity is not… it’s going to take different symbols that are part of its very long and rich historical and cultural history. That was really what I wanted to get at. Yes, it is imagined, and yes, it is constructed, but it’s still very real, and it has very real consequences for those who are experiencing it. Talia Baroncelli Yeah, and you were looking at the former Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and how he would use certain cultural or historic symbols from Iran’s pre-Islamic age, so to speak. He kept referring to the 3,000-year history of Iran and how it was this Aryan civilization—trying to sanitize Iranian history from Islam, basically. Whereas I guess after the revolution, there was resistance to that. An opposite identity formation was taking place but in the same manner. Assal Rad Yeah, so one thing to be clear about with the Shah is that the cultural pillar that he tried to use in terms of the national narrative was tied to monarchy. Remember that when he’s asked, “What ties the nation together?” He literally responds with himself, the monarchy, the monarch, the king is like the father of the nation. So in seeing that identity for himself, he tied the identity of the nation-state to this history of the monarchy; that predates Islam. He was also very much a Muslim himself. Especially with the recent protests, the anti-compulsory hijab protests that we saw in Iran, although those protests obviously went beyond the concept of the hijab, but the idea that there is this compulsory hijab in Iran, a lot of people brought up the fact that, “Oh, the former Shah outlawed the veil.” The reality of it is that it was his father. Reza Shah outlawed the chador in the 1930s when he tried to enforce this idea of westernization. But his son, who would become the last Shah, didn’t enforce those restrictions on whether or not women could wear the veil. You could say culturally, those groups may have felt more alienated because westernization and westerners were set higher in terms of something to aspire to. He wasn’t anti-Islam; that’s not the point of it. It’s more that that’s the cultural factor that he tried to bring into his national narrative. I bring up two other elements to these three elements that make up his nationalism. It’s the concept of revolution, ironically, and the concept of independence. You see those same threads go into the revolution itself by 1979. Revolutionaries are using the idea that Iran is not an independent state, not a fully independent state. Going back to the coup of 1953, going back to the idea that they see some of these tendencies, the appetite towards westernization that the Shah had as being alien to a lot of the indigenous cultures within Iran. Obviously, they are revolutionaries. But he’s using this discourse in a historical context where you have a lot of anti-colonial national independence movements around the world. So you see that rhetoric everywhere around, and he’s trying to tap into that. You see that in the White Revolution of the 1960s. He has an entire book called The White Revolution. So he’s using revolutionary discourse, he’s using the discourse of independence, and he’s infusing cultural symbols that predate Islam and go back to the Iranian monarchy as far back as the Achaemenid monarchy, that of Cyrus the Great, and really directly tying his own dynasty to that era. Iranian revolutionaries then use Islam as a counterpoint in a certain way. It’s someone like [Iranian Revolutionary and Sociologist] Ali Shariati, whose discourse becomes very popular, especially in the 1970s, when he is saying we need to go back to our indigenous roots. Now, who is he getting influenced by? It’s a figure like [Psychiatrist and Political Philosopher, Frantz] Fanon. This is quintessential anti-colonial resistance. But whereas Fanon is saying we have to leave history behind and forge new identities; Shariati is saying, “No, we have to reclaim our indigenous identities and take pride in those identities rather than trying to emulate the West.” And that’s a sentiment that you see in other thinkers at the time. Someone like [Author and Anthropologist, Jalal] Al-e Ahmad, who writes the classic Westoxification—the idea that this obsession with the West, wanting to emulate the West, is almost like a malady that exists within Iran and within maybe the greater region arguably. So that’s the historical context in which the Shah is creating this narrative. Talia Baroncelli I mean, you do see the Shah’s obsession with the West, and that’s probably what was one of the factors in leading to his downfall and leading to the Iranian Revolution; his constant reference to the West being more modern and that Iran is, because of its history, also a modern civilization, they just needed to emulate the West to drag themselves out of the impoverishment that had been brought on them by imperialists. Not that Iran was ever colonized, but its resources were colonized. I think in the ’70s, he had more of an anti-imperialist rhetoric when speaking about the oil crisis, for example. Assal Rad Right. I mean, he did. There are interviews with the British. Up until 1953, Iranians tend to have a very positive view of the United States. Their negative view, vis-à-vis colonial powers or foreign powers trying to exert control over Iran, is really against Imperial Russia and the British Empire. In the ‘Great Game,’ these are the powers that are trying to influence and really control resources and even land in Iran. It was after 1953 that Iranians start to have a negative view of Americans because that’s when Americans start to impose their will as well. He has these interviews in the 1970s where he is very much talking about a confrontation with the attempt of British control over Iranian resources. Talia Baroncelli Well, you mentioned Ali Shariati, and he was an Islamic Iranian thinker. I’m wondering how you think he would have influenced modern Iranian identity because he did say that Islam was the greatest victim of colonialism. I wonder if that idea of being a victim plays into the Islamic Republic’s idea of itself as being the underdog, as having to stand up for revolutionary struggles around the world, stand up for Palestine, whether they actually do so or not is, of course, a different story. I’m not trying to equate Shariati with the Islamic Republic or with [Former Supreme Leader of Iran, Ruhollah] Khomeini, but do you think some of his views imbued the identity of the state which came after the revolution? Assal Rad Well, what I think the state does, the Islamic Republic does, is it really appropriates that language from revolutionaries. Shariati is someone who’s influencing that discourse very much so. You point to something that’s really important, and it’s actually [Professor and Author] Hamid Dabashi and his book on Shi’ism where he writes about this. He says, and I thought this was so fascinating, it’s basically this idea that Imam Husayn in the Battle of Karbala in the seventh century when he’s martyred with his 72 companions, he is victorious in his defeat. It’s the fact that he’s fighting against tyranny and dies fighting for justice that makes him this heroic figure. What happens with the Islamic Republic, especially, is when you become the person in power, when you become the power, you’re now the flip side of that. You become the symbol of injustice. You very much see that with the Islamic Republic. The reason it appropriates that language is that it tries to maintain this image that it is a continuously revolutionary state. As such, it is supporting resistance movements worldwide. You mentioned the Palestinian cause is one cause. You see Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei talking about figures like Malcolm X or mentions of things like BLM. Why? Because they’re trying to take this facade of the… They’re like the modern day among Hussain’s. They are fighting injustice all while trying to divert from the fact that they are carrying out their own injustices and they’re actually the ones in power. That language is very much, I think, taken up by the Islamic Republic. And there’s this attempt to pretend like they’re the guardians of among Hussein. But why tap into that imagery? I mean, arguably, one of the reasons is because it’s so powerful. It’s really powerful imagery. Shia motifs and symbols lend themselves very easily to resistance, whether it’s through stories that were told to galvanize Iranian troops after Iran was invaded in 1980 by Saddam Husain, or whether it was the revolutionary cause itself because that’s the story that that’s the story of the Martyrdom of Cahir Bala. And this isn’t unique to Shia. It’s this story, this l ower, is ubiquitous in other cultures. It’s the David and Goliath story. It’s the Battle of Thermopoli in 300 Spartans against, in this case, thousands of Persians. So you see this a story because the images are so powerful. So they really tap into that. Revolutionaries tap into that imagery. And then later, the Islamic Republic appropriates that and tries to use it as one of the ways to get that rally around the flag effect in order to fight back against the Iraq’s invasion of Iran in 1980. Of course, that’s also infused with a lot of nationalist rhetoric. It’s not just these symbols, it’s not just Shiaism, but it’s Iranian Shiaism. You’re not just defending the religion, you’re defending the land. And that’s very much the sentiment that so many of the people who fought in that war had. It was a very, very nationalist cause because it was defined by these two nation states that were fighting each other. So even though Iraq had a large Shia population and Iran, although did not have a large but still had, especially in the Southwest where Iraq originally invaded, an ethnic Arab population. But neither fought for the other side. Shia didn’t fight for Iran and Arab Iranians didn’t fight for Iraq because they were very much defined within these national borders. It’s fascinating. Sharia, of course, dies in ’77, so it’s before the revolution even happens. You would imagine that all of the revolutionaries who died before or soon after the revolution would take issue with the way that the Islamic Republic has manifested because it really flies in its actual actions, not its rhetoric, but its actual actions fly in the face of A, why Iranians had a revolution. They had a revolution to dismantle tyranny, not to replace it with another one. And also that it was based on this idea of justice. And so many injustices are carried out in its name right now. Talia Baroncelli Well, Iran is an incredibly diverse place. Farsi isn’t the only language that is spoken there. I think many different languages are spoken. And the Shah did embark on this nation building project in which he made Farsi the official language of the country. And you could argue that that erased a lot of the cultural diversity. Would you say that the Islamic Republic’s equating Iranianness with Islamicism, essentially, another way of trying to potentially erase some of the cultural and religious diversity? And I’m also asking this question, given that my mom’s out of the family is Baha’i, so they’re a religious minority from Iran. They had to escape Iran and go to Canada during the revolution, unfortunately. And so I’m asking this question from that position of knowing that there was and there continues to be large scale persecution against certain minorities in Iran. Assal Rad Absolutely. And I mean, you bring up one of the most important examples of that silencing. And that’s one of the things that Shriyo is talking about, right? By inherently, when you elevate one narrative, you’re silencing others. And both states, both the monarchy and the Azan Republic participate in that erasure. It was actually the father, Ratha Shah, who establishes Farsi as the official language. And it’s not unique, right? That’s part of a nation state project. In order to bring people under this umbrella of the nation when you have so much ethnic language, religious diversity, there has to be something that formalizes that. It’s formalized through, for instance, secondary education. The United States is a country that has lots of different ethnicities and languages and minorities, but we tend to have a formalized system where everybody learns, where everybody is educated at least. Now we see a lot more dual language programs, but still English is the dominant language in which everybody is educated in. So something that’s interesting about that on the language front, by the way, just to understand how new this actually was is, for instance, for me, my maternal grandparents are Azati Turksks. And so my maternal grandparents, this is not so many generations ago, this is two generations before me, spoke Pr asian with an accent. They spoke it with an Azati accent, right? It was their second language. Their first language was Turkish. For my mother, Pr asian became her first language, and she spoke Turkish with an accent, so it reversed. But in terms of the minorities that you’re speaking of, yeah, I mean, the Islamic world tries to present itself as a country that is tolerant of or actually has religious freedom. If you are Christian, there’s a large Iranian population in Iran. If you are Sunni, if you are Jewish, Iran is home to the second largest Jewish population in the Middle East is actually in Iran. Zoroastrians, these are all supposed to be protected religions. Well, let’s start with them. First of all, they’re not really. They’re treated differently. Anytime you have a country that identifies itself as a particular religion, I mean, it’s the Islamic Republic. You’re automatically second class if you’re anything else because you’re not part of the identifying feature of the state. But Baha’i specifically are persecuted. This isn’t just you don’t get the same treatment. This is you are basically not recognized. It is difficult to get an education. It’s difficult to own property, which is to the point that you just made why many Baha’is have left Iran. Iran is the home of Baha’ism. It’s a religion that emerges in Iran in the 19th century. That group, unfortunately, has been persecuted from the very beginning, from the 19th century, in part because they’re seen as heretics because obviously, anything that comes before Islam is different. But when you have the seal of the Prophet, anything that comes after Islam is considered heresy because Islam is the last religion, and Muhammad is the last Prophet. Anything that comes afterwards is considered in theory heresy. That’s one of the reasons why Baha’is are targeted the way that they are. Also, of course, it threatens when you have a new religion emerge and you have a clergy, a Shia clergy in Iran, that even in the 19th century have already become an autonomous body, already wield a certain amount of power, maybe not political power at the time, but they have their large landowners, they have mosques, they have religious taxes that they collect, they have a significant following. Anything that might compete with that also creates challenges to the power of the clergy. These are the reasons why Baha’is are persecuted, unfortunately, from the very beginning, and it continues. In a much harsher fashion under the Islamic Republic. Talia Baroncelli There’s a part of your book where you’re talking about different symbols and military symbols. You’re speaking about the Iran Iraq War and the Basj Siege. The Basj Siege being a paramilitary group which formed during the Iran Iraq War. Then you were also speaking about the Museum in Tehran, the war museum. There’s a photo of different people who represented… Sorry, different religious symbols and how they are representative of the different Iranians who engaged in this struggle. So again, emphasizing their Iranianness, even though they had or they came from different religions and how they were all fighting together to face Saddam represented as Yezid in a way. But of course, Baha’is were not included in that, so that was significant. But I guess there was a time when it maybe wasn’t as bad as today, and I think that might have been under President Khahtami in the early 2000s, where I think he was even talking about extending certain social rights to Baha’is at the time, whether that was implemented. Assal Rad I’m actually not sure about that. I’m not specifically privy to Khahtami wanting to expand rights for Baha’is. But I will say I find it believable. I don’t know personally and so I don’t want to speak to it in that sense. But it would fit with the general change that occurs with at least the rhetoric of someone like a figure like Khahtami. He gets a lot of criticism for his failure to fundamentally change the system or to change the system, really, in any significant way. But I think that also misses the fact that he was very different than previous leaders in the country, and his vision of the country was quite different. And things did change under him in terms of at least newspapers opening, artistic expression, a lowering of repression. And so there’s this ebb and flow in Iran since the 1979 revolution, depending on who is the President and which political faction has more power. It’s always a repressive state. It’s always an authoritarian state. I’m not saying that any of those things change, but the atmosphere on the ground does change to a certain extent. And so what we’ve seen in the last five years or so is this consistent trend towards more repression. That’s why I’m saying this fits in, I think, with that logic. You’ve seen that with the Baha’i community as well, that increased repression on the further persecution of the Baha’i community. We’ve seen it in terms of arrests and punishments of human rights activists. You had someone like Nasim Suthurda, who I believe had been arrested under the Ahmedinejad presidency, was released in 2013. And then again, I think it was in 2008, if I’m not mistaken, somewhere in the last five year span that she was rearrested again. So in the last five years, you see crackdowns on labor movements, crackdowns on protests, crackdown on any voice of really dissent, and then further repression, I think, of groups like the haze as well, unfortunately. So I think that all fits into that trend. And it’s just gotten worse under the RACI administration who took over in 2021. One of the things that they tried to implement more strictly was the hijab. And this is in part, of course, course not. Again, the hijab law has always existed and women have always been stopped in order to have it enforced. The morality police. I should say, the so called morality police predate, of course, the RACI administration. But it is under this stricter enforcement that we see young woman, Gina Massa Amini, killed by the so called morality police. And that’s the spark of the most recent iteration of protests that we’ve seen in Iran. So that further repression is. Not forcing Iranians to stay quiet. They continue to come to the streets, they continue to protest, and they continue to show different forms of resistance to whether it’s the state as a whole or particular policies within the state? Talia Baroncelli Well, we will come back to the current iteration of Iranian identity or iterations. But I did want to ask you about the method you used in writing this book because you’re a historian, so typically historians will spend countless hours sitting in archives and just pouring through different documents. But you actually went to Iran multiple times and interviewed people. So your work almost comes across as being a bridge between a historical endeavor as well as being very sociological and looking at culture. So maybe you can talk about your first experiences going to Iran. When that was, I don’t know if it was actually under President Khatun, MD, or if it was already in the Ahmedina J arred period. And also explain how you decided to interview certain people. Like, how did you pick those people? Assal Rad So one of the things is when I was doing my graduate research, I had an anthropologist on my committee, very intentionally, because I wanted to do field work. And to your point, yeah, I wanted it to be a history text, but I also wanted to have very contemporary elements to it. And so that’s where I think the interdisciplinary approach comes across. And that’s why I wanted to do interviews and use really contemporary art. My archive is not the same dusty archive that we think of. I’m listening to contemporary music, films, television, and specifically in terms of interviews. So there’s a couple of things that went into it. The most important part was accessibility, right? The ability to access people. And one of the things I tried to avoid when possible was the formal interview process because I came to notice that once you’re discussing these topics, especially like identity and things like that in a very formal setting, the tone and the responses become much more politicized. Whereas in a lot of cases, I’m like, I’m not asking for your political identity. I’m just asking, how do you identify? What does it being Iranian mean to you? In some cases, they were very formal. I went in with the idea of I want to interview people, for instance, families of. People who were either involved, who were soldiers in the Iranian Rock War, or families of people who were murdered in the war. Those were much more formal because I didn’t have that access myself. And then in other cases, I really started with a small network. And I think it’s called the snowball method. I tried to expand from that network, and it started with people that I knew. And then from there, I tried to get. As many different perspectives as I could, but that’s why in the book I also give a basic description of the person I’m talking to. And a lot of the reasons why I don’t use their names is because of the nature of the research, the fact that it’s very contemporary and it could be very contentious. And in an authoritarian state like Iran, that’s the other layer of it, right? Accessibility in terms of people you can get to and in terms of people who are willing to talk to you. There becomes an unwillingness for a lot of people to speak because you’re in an environment that might feel like it’s dangerous. Assuring that anonymity is very important. But then also in a lot of cases, like I said, I didn’t say I was doing an interview. I would just go to a store. I wanted to buy a CD that would have… There was a dance party and you wanted to give somebody a CD of all the best songs right now. What is that? Chat up the person who’s going to sell you… Was, by the way, not an official CD. It’s like an underground CD because it’s officially allowed to be sold. Chatting with someone who’s a taxi driver. Finding other situations where you could interact with people. And talk as much as you can, but get a much more organic conversation that way. So the central limitation, though, is accessibility because I didn’t want it to be… I wanted it to be as under the radar as possible, both for myself and for anybody who would be willing to speak to me. Well, one of. Talia Baroncelli My favorite parts of the book is where you’re talking about popular culture and pop music. And there’s this one section where you’re speaking about Black cats and Andy. These are very famous Iranian pop singers or pop bands from the 90s, early 2000s. And there’s this one part that just really struck me because you’re speaking about Andy’s song, Dohtar Iranit, like the Iranian girl, and you’re explaining how the lyrics paint this picture of Iranian women in general, like the figure of the Iranian girl and how that ties and plays into certain stereotypes or notions of national identity. And in the next breath, you then bring up the Frankfurt School theorist Theodore Adorno and his manuscript on popular music from 1941 in which he’s talking about how pop music really standardizes the idea of individual identity and national identity. So I just thought that was so brilliant how you took this pop culture example and then analyzed it through the cultural lens or theory of the Frankfurt School. But my question would be, looking at these really popular artists, Andy, Black cats, when you were in Iran, did young Iranians think of these artists as being Iranian, or were they considered to be artists who were then traders or from the diaspora because they had left Iran and gone to the US? Assal Rad Well, I never got a…First of all, thank you. That’s a great anecdote about somebody who read the book. I never got the sense that they were seen in a negative light in that sense, like a traitor or anything like that. But they were also distinct. So there’s a period in which obviously soon after the revolution, music is outlawed at the beginning, and then it’s very limited. There’s very limited space. For any musical both production and consumption. Of course, it’s still limited to this day. For instance, women cannot be vocalists. Women can still not be vocalists. I talk about a band, Arianne Band, that emerged in the late 90s, early 2000s that used women and men, but the women vocalists were just background vocalists. They couldn’t sing lead. But that was a big deal at the time because it was like, oh, look, women are back in the scene. And this is a country before the revolution that had, maybe you can’t necessarily say the most popular artists, but at least some of its most popular artists were women. You have a singer like Bubush or Haideh, just pop staples of pre revolutionary Iran. And they still tend to be popular figures because they’re these famed female vocalists of that era. So in the 80s and 90s, especially when you don’t really have a burgeoning musical scene in Iran. They relied a lot on these diaspora artists. And they were very popular in the consumption of that music. I don’t remember the theorist right now, or I don’t remember the author that wrote this, but it’s not my… I want to just clarify, this is another author who wrote about this. And the author is cited in the book at least, who basically talks about how this consumption of this music in and of itself was a form of, I don’t know if she calls it resistance, or it’s more like it’s a way of pushing the limitations that they have because you’re listening to this pop music that’s not even allowed to be consumed in the country. But this has evolved over time. Like I said, when you have a period like K otame in the late 90s and early 2000s, you see the beginnings of the Iranian musical scene inside of Iran really start to flourish. And you get all sorts of genres, which was much less popular. The diaspora had its own just pop music genre. Whereas inside of Iran, when the musical scene starts to evolve, you have rock, heavy metal. In the early 2000s, you have a lot of rap music that becomes very popular. Of course, you still have the pop ballads and melodies and things like that as well. Later, you see a lot of infusion of traditional vocalists, people like Shahjarian, who then his son, Homaun Shahjarian, uses those traditional styles but then meshes them with more contemporary styles. And so you get this very diverse musical scene in Iran. And when that happens, I think they start to shift away from the diaspora musicians a little bit more. But what I saw when I was there just in the field work and when you would ask if it was a DJ or if it was somebody who was selling music and it was for parties that they were having at the time, just things that you consume in passing. This is not a political statement at all. It’s just what do you listen to when you’re at a party? Then you’d see these songs like, like, would be playing, or they would have a song if it was at the time popular by Black cats or something like that. So the diaspora music was still, and I assumed to today that would be the case. I haven’t been. My field research ended in 2015, so it’s now been several years, so I don’t want to speak to that. But you would assume, like, if you look at a site like Radio Javan, which is basically like an iTunes type site for… It’s like a music… No, it’s Spotify. Maybe that’s a better equivalent. It’s like a musical streaming site for Iranian and Brazilian music. They have artists inside of Iran as well as diaspora artists. And they have a lot of views and listens and all of that from both sides of the spectrum. But I think inside of the country, they’re more heavily. Listened to artists inside of Iran because the musical tastes in the country have evolved probably distinctly than that within the diaspora, which would make sense. I mean, the cultural center is the country itself, and so it has a lot more diversity within it. Talia Baroncelli And you spoke to so many young people when you were there, I wonder how they think of their own history. And now I’m generalizing, but young people are generation Zed as a group. How would they see the revolution? And do they think of their history in terms of this historical rupture of pre, post revolution? Assal Rad The people that I interviewed, I didn’t make it to Gen Z because most of Gen Z was born. After the 2000s. When I was there, they were far too young to be part of the group that I… And I would be fascinated to actually go back to Iran if it was possible to do that field research because I do think that… And it’s not unique to Iran, but that this new generation Gen Z is changing things everywhere. That’s just the nature of generational change and transition. Whereas I think previous generations, the post revolutionary generation, which is a lot of the subjects that I spoke with, I spoke with post revolution generation who are probably now in their 30s and early 40s, and folks who were there before the revolution, a slightly older generation, people, 50s and 60s. Gen Z, as opposed, I think, to the previous generation in Iran, which was more open or more, I think, strategically thought more in terms of reform, less in terms of revolution, like having another revolution. And if they had grievances and discontent with the system, they thought more in the idea of reform, which is why we saw so much engagement with the political system for so many years after the revolution. This generation, and we can’t paint everybody with one brush and draw this conclusion or generalize, but there’s at least a significant portion, and we saw this in the protests in 2022 into 2023, that believes that reform is not possible and as such have gone a step further. And the way that they protest and the way that they air their grievances. So I’d be very interested in really looking at that group distinctly. What you mentioned, though, the abla Zengelob badla Zengelob, before and after the revolution, that’s very much of the people that I interviewed, that’s very much of the people that I interviewed. That’s very much a language that they would talk about. There was two periods that they would always, if you wanted to have this conversation. That would be talked about in very unique ways. And one was that puritization before and after the revolution, and also the war. The war was such a huge thing. I knew people were born in 1986. This is the tail end, the last two years of the war. You would think they have no recollection of the war. You were toddler when the war ended, and they were very much like, No, I remember this. The war was also very much, I think, a part of that generation’s experience. It affected, especially for those who were children during it, it affected their childhoods and they have these childhood memories from it. It literally changed the landscape. So many of the murals, if you go anywhere in Iran, this is not just Tehran, this is anywhere in Iran if you go, you will see street signs, street named after Martyrs of the War. Murals everywhere, either about the revolution or especially the war. That’s changed as well over time. The amount that you can really allow that, the more history is removed from it, the further away we get from that history, the less it resonates with people. But you still see something like that Museum in the middle of Tehran. It’s like a giant piece of land that’s been dedicated to the war, to the revolution and the war. But I’ll tell you, somebody who visited it wasn’t a lot of people there. How popular was this was in 2015. I would not describe it as it’s certainly not like the Louve, where you go and you have a lot of people. So the state can still try to use those stories, but how Iranians themselves consume more stories. Talia Baroncelli Is also very different. And you can see that in the cinema of it. Yeah, I think the state probably exaggerates the importance of some of those symbols. It’s like they play a role in this cultural sense making, as you call it. But they’re not the only symbols that matter, and pop culture does matter. My other question would be, your book really looks at identity as a construct. But of course, you mentioned that people who identify in certain ways or live these identities have a very visceral, a very real experience of it. So I wonder what your prescription would be because identity, it seems to me, can have disadvantages and advantages in terms of how you strategize in a political struggle. Would you say that national identity in the current context of the protests could maybe serve a political ideal of liberation, or would other forms of identity, maybe across. Assal Rad Class lines or other shared universal experiences, would that be more important? It’s a great question. And it’s hard for me to answer because on the front of nationalism, let’s say this about nationalism, using nationalist rhetoric can be liberating or extremely dangerous, really depending on who is wielding it and how they’re doing it. That’s very. Important to say because, yes, in terms of resistance movements when you are the state of India in the 1940s and you’re trying to liberate it from British colonialism, then Indian Nationalism can become a force for resistance. When Partition happens, it can become something that’s not as good. It can create that Indian Nationalism, can then create violence against other groups. So it depends on the situation. It’s really dependent on how it’s used. And it’s funny because when you talk about Nationalism, I think it’s like any other ideology. This happens a lot with religion. I think when you talk about religion, you’ll often get… And I’m not talking about in academia, I’m saying across the board, when people talk about religion, there’s a sentiment that religion is a wildly dangerous thing. Look at how many people have been killed in the name of religion. The counter argument to that is that people have been killed in the name of everything. Nonreligious Nationalism is not religion, but in the name of certain nationalisms, we’ve carried out genocide, many atrocities. These are tools in our repertoire that can be used for liberation, but can then also be used for oppression. When you use it as a way to silence minority voices, in the case of Iran, if you use it as a way to silence Baha’is, that’s a danger of of nationalism. In some circles, the nationalism you see about Iranian identity can elevate the idea of Iranianness is being tied to Arianism and Whiteness. That carries some dangers within it. When it becomes exclusionary of other groups, whatever those groups are, whether they’re religious minorities, racial minorities, ethnic minorities. I would tend towards in a revolutionary movement or in a social movement, especially one that uses discourse like liberation or democracy, inclusiveness, human rights, all this very powerful and just ubiquitous discourse. Everybody uses discourse now, right? That’s what everybody is claiming to be. But if you’re going to use it, then you have to actually execute that in reality. And that I think, for instance, class struggle, I think is very important for that. It’s one umbrella in which people can really be united across. And that also carries its own dangers. As soon as you say class struggle and then you bring in words like socialism and then it goes communism and then people… What I’m saying, what I’m trying to get at, essentially is any of these identifiers, any of these ideological tools, any one of them can be used in a way that’s potentially good, but also potentially bad. So it’s really the people who are wielding that identity and how inclusive they want to be. What I’ll say about these protests that we saw in Iran, inside of the country, inside of Iran, is some of the images that I saw that were heartening, at least, where I thought, Well, this is hopeful, right? Was images of women with their backs turned and you would see very different variations of how they were dressed. And that was actually very intentional and very symbolic. A woman in chador, a woman in hijab, a woman in nothing, dressed how she wants to, a T shirt and pants, holding hands. And that solidarity to me is much more positive because it’s creating that larger umbrella. And that’s not about national ism necessarily, it’s just about choice. It’s about freedom. That’s what they’re really trying to talk about. These aren’t protests that are anti Islam. They’re not anti hijab. They’re anti compulsory hijab. They’re anti repression. They’re anti authoritarianism. And so I think that positive messaging resonates more because it’s more inclusive. And if you want to be inclusive, I definitely think you have to take class into consideration. I mean, if you. Want a successful movement, you probably want to involve the workers of a country because they’re the backbone of that country, whatever country it might be. And Iranian workers. Have been organized politically since before the revolution and after the revolution. And in recent months, it’s a continuity. When we saw some attempts at labor strikes, these aren’t unique. This didn’t happen starting in September 2022. This has been happening for years. And remember that five yearish period where I said you’ve seen more repression? You see more repression of the labor movement as well. I don’t know if that answers the question fully because I feel like I’m evading the question just a little bit because it’s hard to articulate whether something is good or bad. It’s really the way that it’s used. But I would urge more, the more inclusive we can be, the more I think that reflects the ethos of the discourse that we hear people use. And if anything. Talia Baroncelli Even though the movement can be described as a feminist movement, it’s very inclusive because they’re not talking about women’s rights in terms of it being a zero sum game. It’s not women’s rights at the expense of the right of men or anyone else. It’s women’s rights so that everyone else can have more freedom as well. And it’s anti repression. So it’s repression of all groups and not just specifically Iranians or minorities such as curves. Assal Rad I also want to say, since you brought up women’s rights, these are conversations that transcend Iran’s borders. This isn’t just happening in Iran. That’s the solidarity that you can see. When it becomes nationalist, that’s one of the limitations of it. When it’s about your borders, then it limits the discourse to your borders. But when you look at it as women’s rights, there’s no border that it doesn’t transcend. Women’s rights is an issue everywhere in the world. Women’s rights is an issue right now in the United States. It’s a very important issue actually right now in the United States. Despite all of the freedoms that we have, this is a huge issue in the United States because we’re seeing those freedoms be stripped away. We’re seeing a regression of those things. And so when you can trans… Workers rights transcends borders. When you can look at these movements, these social movements and see parallels in other places in the world and build that solidarity, I think those also become in a very different way more inclusive and I think more effective. Well, I do have one. Talia Baroncelli Last question if you have time, if you have a few more minutes. And it’s just a very, maybe, I don’t know if this will elicit a short or a long answer, but what would you change if you had to or add to your book in light of the current protests? Because your book does such a good job in giving the historical context to understand the protests, but I wonder if there’s anything that you would maybe add now. Assal Rad Oh, yeah. Okay. And I think I touched on this earlier. There’s a whole generation that it’s now missing, right? And that generation emerged on the political scene in a very potent. Way starting in the protests in September 2022. And it’s not to say that they were never on the scene, but not in this fashion, right? And the saddest thing, the saddest evidence of that is in the people who were killed. When you look at the age of the people who were killed, right? Those are the people protesting. Something else you saw is you saw a lot more women killed because they were the ones out there again, right? So you f I wanted to add a chapter, and I would love to, it would be to look at this generation as another watershed moment, right? Not these protests even necessarily, but what these protests represent about a generational shift. And that’s where I think the field work in Iran would be invaluable because then you could actually be on the ground to see what the distinction is between this generation and previous generations. Talia Baroncelli Well, Assal, it was really great to speak to you. I hope everyone reads your book because even though you write it in a somewhat academic context, it’s not an incredibly dense, unreadable academic book. It is very easy to understand and it’s incredibly interesting. You also bring in these amazing historians, and you weave that in. I really loved reading it. I hope that everyone reads it. I don’t have a physical copy of it to show here, but I really hope that everyone reads it. Assal Rad Thank you. Talia Baroncelli Thank you for watching theAnalysis. If you’re able to donate to the show and contribute, you can go to theAnalysis.news. Hit the donate button at the top right corner of the screen and also get on the mailing list so that you’re notified every time a new show drops. Also, please go to our YouTube channel, theAnalysis-news, and hit like and subscribe. Hopefully, we’ll have Assal on again soon to speak about Iran. Assal Rad I would love to. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me and for the very generous review of the book. Talia Baroncelli You’re welcome. You really deserve it. Assal Rad Thank you. Talia Baroncelli Take care. Select one or choose any amount to donate whatever you like any amount $5 $15 $25 $50 $100 $500 $1,000 Custom Amount $ Make this donation each month (optional) User my donation to help support the upcoming documentary "How to stop a nuclear war" (optional) Donate with Credit Card var gform;gform||(document.addEventListener("gform_main_scripts_loaded",function(){gform.scriptsLoaded=!0}),window.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded",function(){gform.domLoaded

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Honest Government Ad | the Safeguard Mechanism Honest Government Ad | AUKUS Honest Government Ad | Julian Assange Honest Government Ad | Visit Western Australia Juice Media Satire: Australian “Values” News Corp Bargaining Code – Biting Satire From Juice Media Juice Media Nails Australien Government Climate “Policy” Juice Media Take Down of QAnon – we wish it was just satire Listen Donate Subscribe Music Select one or choose any amount to donate whatever you like any amount $5 $15 $25 $50 $100 $500 $1,000 Custom Amount $ Make this donation each month (optional) User my donation to help support the upcoming documentary "How to stop a nuclear war" (optional) Donate with Credit Card Never miss another story Subscribe to theAnalysis.news - Newsletter Email(Required) Name(Required) First Last Δdocument.getElementById( "ak_js_2" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); gform.initializeOnLoaded( function() {gformInitSpinner( 10, 'https://theanalysis.news/wp-content/plugins/gravityforms/images/spinner.svg', true );jQuery('#gform_ajax_frame_10').on('load',function(){var contents = jQuery(this).contents().find('*').html();var is_postback = contents.indexOf('GF_AJAX_POSTBACK') >= 0;if(!is_postback){return;}var form_content = jQuery(this).contents().find('#gform_wrapper_10');var is_confirmation = jQuery(this).contents().find('#gform_confirmation_wrapper_10').length > 0;var is_redirect = contents.indexOf('gformRedirect(){') >= 0;var is_form = form_content.length > 0 && ! is_redirect && ! is_confirmation;var mt = parseInt(jQuery('html').css('margin-top'), 10) + parseInt(jQuery('body').css('margin-top'), 10) + 100;if(is_form){jQuery('#gform_wrapper_10').html(form_content.html());if(form_content.hasClass('gform_validation_error')){jQuery('#gform_wrapper_10').addClass('gform_validation_error');} else {jQuery('#gform_wrapper_10').removeClass('gform_validation_error');}setTimeout( function() { /* delay the scroll by 50 milliseconds to fix a bug in chrome */ }, 50 );if(window['gformInitDatepicker']) {gformInitDatepicker();}if(window['gformInitPriceFields']) {gformInitPriceFields();}var current_page = jQuery('#gform_source_page_number_10').val();gformInitSpinner( 10, 'https://theanalysis.news/wp-content/plugins/gravityforms/images/spinner.svg', true );jQuery(document).trigger('gform_page_loaded', [10, current_page]);window['gf_submitting_10'] = false;}else if(!is_redirect){var confirmation_content = jQuery(this).contents().find('.GF_AJAX_POSTBACK').html();if(!confirmation_content){confirmation_content = contents;}setTimeout(function(){jQuery('#gform_wrapper_10').replaceWith(confirmation_content);jQuery(document).trigger('gform_confirmation_loaded', [10]);window['gf_submitting_10'] = false;wp.a11y.speak(jQuery('#gform_confirmation_message_10').text());}, 50);}else{jQuery('#gform_10').append(contents);if(window['gformRedirect']) {gformRedirect();}}jQuery(document).trigger('gform_post_render', [10, current_page]);gform.utils.trigger({ event: 'gform/postRender', native: false, data: { formId: 10, currentPage: current_page } });} );} ); theAnalysis.news theme music written by Slim Williams for Paul Jay’s documentary film “Never-Endum-Referendum“.   Never-Endum-Referendum Artist Website Paul Jay’s Documentaries

Renaud Lambert, journalist at Le Monde diplomatique, discusses the nationwide anti-pension reform protests in France, which have consisted of over a million people taking to the streets on more than one occasion. He underscores how French President Emmanuel Macron's tax cuts for the wealthy have increased the current deficit, exposing how workers will now need to work longer to make up for the decreases in government revenue.

{"@context":"http:\/\/schema.org\/","@id":"https:\/\/theanalysis.news\/yemen-bidens-hypocrisy-and-possible-peace\/#arve-youtube-evqef5tezf064627701e2968721786202","type":"VideoObject","embedURL":"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/evqef5TEZF0?feature=oembed&iv_load_policy=3&modestbranding=1&rel=0&autohide=1&playsinline=0&autoplay=1&enablejsapi=1","name":"Yemen: Biden\u2019s Hypocrisy and Possible Peace?","thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/theanalysis.news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Shireen.jpg","uploadDate":"2023-05-12T12:55:12+00:00","author":"theAnalysis-news","description":"Shireen Al-Adeimi, Professor of Language and Literacy at Michigan State University, lays out the U.S., U.K., and Canada\u2019s role in perpetuating the brutal Saudi-led blockade of Yemen. She exposes Biden\u2019s continued military support of Saudi Arabia, despite the administration\u2019s pledge to only send defe"} Shireen Al-Adeimi, Professor of Language and Literacy at Michigan State University, lays out the U.S., U.K., and Canada’s role in perpetuating the brutal Saudi-led blockade of Yemen. She exposes Biden’s continued military support of Saudi Arabia, despite the administration’s pledge to only send defensive support, and calls into question the misleading dichotomy of “offensive” vs. “defensive” military support. Is a peace deal more likely now that the Houthi and Saudi representatives have met in Sana’a? .kt-post-loop_ee59a0-ff .kadence-post-image{padding-top:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px;}.kt-post-loop_ee59a0-ff .kt-post-grid-wrap{gap:30px 6px;}.kt-post-loop_ee59a0-ff .kt-blocks-post-grid-item{border-top-width:0px;border-right-width:0px;border-bottom-width:0px;border-left-width:0px;border-top-left-radius:0px;border-top-right-radius:0px;border-bottom-right-radius:0px;border-bottom-left-radius:0px;}.kt-post-loop_ee59a0-ff .kt-blocks-post-grid-item .kt-blocks-post-grid-item-inner{padding-top:10px;padding-right:25px;padding-bottom:25px;padding-left:9px;}.kt-post-loop_ee59a0-ff .kt-blocks-post-grid-item header{padding-top:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px;margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;}.kt-post-loop_ee59a0-ff .kt-blocks-post-grid-item .entry-title{padding-top:5px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:10px;padding-left:0px;margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;font-size:16px;line-height:17px;}.kt-post-loop_ee59a0-ff .entry-content{padding-top:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px;margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;}.kt-post-loop_ee59a0-ff .kt-blocks-post-footer{border-top-width:0px;border-right-width:0px;border-bottom-width:0px;border-left-width:0px;padding-top:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px;margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;}.kt-post-loop_ee59a0-ff .entry-content:after{height:0px;}.kt-post-loop_ee59a0-ff .kb-filter-item{border-top-width:0px;border-right-width:0px;border-bottom-width:2px;border-left-width:0px;padding-top:5px;padding-right:8px;padding-bottom:5px;padding-left:8px;margin-top:0px;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;} Yemen: Biden’s Hypocrisy and Possible Peace? U.S. Interference in the Middle East – 20 Years Since the U.S. Invasion of Iraq – Col. Larry Wilkerson Censorship in Germany, Israeli Hacking & Saudi-Iran Peace Deal – Dr. Shir Hever Significance of China-Brokered Iran-Saudi Agreement – Trita Parsi Saudis Hedge Bets, Iran Risks Increasing Isolation – Trita Parsi The Iranian Revolution: The Fall of the Shah and the Rise of Khomeini Iranian Women-Led Resistance Independent of Western Imperialism Why the Media is Now Supporting Julian Assange? – Paul Jay pt 2/2 Retired US Army Colonel on Ukraine, Iran & the State of the US Empire Anti-Regime Protests and the Devastating Effects of US Sanctions in Iran Paul Jay on 9/11 Biden Bows to the Saudis – Trita Parsi & Annelle Sheline Pt 2/2 – Paul Jay & Abby Martin on Afghanistan, 9/11 & Climate Change Pt 1/2 – Paul Jay & Abby Martin on Afghanistan and 9/11 Why David Clennon Refused Audition for Hit & Run, a Netflix Israeli Co-pro After Forty Years of U.S. Destruction of Afghanistan, it’s Time for Reparations Is BDS Effective Strategy? – Shir Hever Pt 3/3 U.S. Sanctions Strengthen Iranian Theocracy – Hamid Dabashi Fighting for Peace and Equality in Israel – Rula Daood and Alon-Lee Green Who Rules Israel – Shir Hever pt2 Why Did 72% of Israelis Want Attack on Gaza to Continue? Is Israel a Strategic Asset or Liability? – Wilkerson Abby Martin’s “Gaza Fights for Freedom” Israel’s War on Palestine – Ali Abunimah Does the U.S. Owe Reparations to Afghanistan, Should U.S. Troops Leave? – Bennis & Wilkerson Biden’s Syria Deception: The Norwegian Connection US Bombing in Syria Illegal; Biden Should Rejoin Iran Agreement Now – Bennis/Wilkerson Is Protecting the Murderous Crown Prince in the National Interest? – Phyllis Bennis and Larry Wilkerson Biden’s Doublespeak About Ending Yemen War -Abby Martin The Oil Interests Behind the War in Yemen The Disintegration of Israeli Politics Ending the War on Yemen? Biden’s Scary Foreign Policy Picks: A Blast From War Crimes Past – Abby Martin Empire Update: Did Trump Order Iran Assassination? – Abby Martin Empire Update: Afghanistan/Somalia Withdrawal Scam; Trump Weighs WWIII – Abby Martin Elliot Abrams Tries to Tie Biden’s Hands on Iran – Trita Parsi Trump & Neocons Want to Destroy Iranian Society – Trita Parsi Israel Wants U.S. to Weaken and Isolate Iran – RAI with Trita Parsi Pt 3/3 U.S. Attempts to Destabilize Iran Have Failed – RAI with Trita Parsi Pt 2/3 U.S. Refuses to Accept Iran as a Regional Power – RAI with Trita Parsi Pt 1/3 Does Israel Have the Right to Exist as a Jewish State? – Ali Abunimah on Reality Asserts Itself (3/5) Gaza Under Siege – Eva Bartlett on Reality Asserts Itself Pt 2/2 Gaza Under Siege – Eva Bartlett on Reality Asserts Itself Pt 1/2 Class Struggle in Palestine – Ali Abunimah on Reality Asserts Itself (4/5) Palestinians can Learn From the African America Struggle – Ali Abunimah on Reality Asserts Itself (2/5) Awakened by the Palestinian Intifada – Ali Abunimah on Reality Asserts Itself (1/5) Justice Requires an End to Israeli Jewish Supremacy Over Palestinians – Ali Abunimah on Reality Asserts Itself (5/5) From a Zionist Youth to Outspoken Critic of a Jewish State – Michael Ratner on RAI Pt 2/7 Are the Saudis Fueling a Sunni-Shia War? – Toby Jones on Reality Asserts Itself (2/2) Al Qaeda and the Saudi Agenda – Toby Jones on Reality Asserts Itself (1/2) One State or Two, Solution Must be Based on Palestinian Rights Phyllis Bennis on RAI Pt 4/4 Fmr. Israeli Intel. Chief Says Palestinian Israeli Conflict Greater Risk than Nuclear Iran Pt 2/4 Vietnam War Created Middle East Activist – Phyllis Bennis on Reality Asserts Itself Pt 1/4 Syria’s Six Wars and Humanitarian Catastrophe – Phyllis Bennis on Reality Asserts Itself Pt 3/4 Did Bush Cheney Create a Culture of Not Wanting to Know – Sen. Bob Graham on RAI Pt 7/7 Revealing 9/11 Conspiracy Would Undo U.S. Saudi Alliance – Sen. Bob Graham on RAI Pt 5/7 Saudi Government’s 9/11 Connection and the Path to Disillusionment – Sen. Bob Graham on RAI Pt 4/7 Transcript Listen Donate Subscribe Guest Music Talia Baroncelli Hi, I’m Talia Baroncelli, and you’re watching theAnalysis.news. I’ll shortly be joined by Professor Shireen Al-Adeimi to speak about the war in Yemen and the role of the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and Canada in fueling this conflict. We’ll also speak about the history which led up to this conflict and potential ways to put pressure to ensure that it is brought to an end. Shireen Al-Adeimi The only reason Yemenis needed humanitarian aid was because they were blockaded and prevented from trading. It’s because their water facilities were being bombed. It’s because their hospitals were being bombed. It’s because, heck, even their schools, their homes, and cars were being bombed. Talia Baroncelli But first, please consider donating to the show by going to our website, theAnalysis.news, and hitting the donate button at the top right corner of the screen. Most importantly, get on our mailing list. That way, you’ll be emailed every time a new episode drops. You can also go to our YouTube channel, theAnalysis-news, hit the subscribe button and hit the bell; that way, you’ll get notifications if you have your notifications enabled every time a new show is published. See you in a bit. Joining me now to speak about the war in Yemen is Shireen Al-Adeimi. She’s a Professor of Language and Literacy at Michigan State University and is a non-resident Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. So thank you so much for joining me, Shireen. Shireen Al-Adeimi Thanks for having me, Talia. Talia Baroncelli A few weeks ago, on April 9, we saw a positive image. We saw a handshake between the Houthi political leader, [Mahdi] al-Mashat and Saudi Ambassador to Yemen, Al-Jaber. Did you think we’ve reached a sort of breakthrough in this war right now? Shireen Al-Adeimi I think the peace talks have been very encouraging. Of course, we know that a ceasefire was reached back in April of 2022. For about a year, or more than a year now, there have not been Saudi-led airstrikes in Yemen, and that’s a positive development. That’s what we’ve been asking for, one of the things that we’ve been asking for so many years. It represents a change, at least in the war. The war is still ongoing, but it represents a significant change in the war. I think the handshake and the meeting are certainly positive. I think it surprised a lot of people because it represents a Saudi recognition of the de facto rule of the Houthis. For the Saudi representative to go right into the heart of Houthi control, which is in Sana’a, and to meet with them, recognizes, I think, or shows that the Saudis finally understand who they’re dealing with. They’re not dealing with rebels, as they’ve been calling them for the last several years, even though, of course, the title still fits in many ways. They have organized themselves into a government over the last several years. They have been the de facto rulers. They control an area of Yemen where over 70% of the population, close to 80% of the population resides. I do think it’s positive. There’s still a long way to go before peace can be achieved. I think anytime people are talking to one another instead of dropping bombs, that certainly is a development that we should be looking at positively. Talia Baroncelli Do you think this potential peace deal would have legs if it doesn’t really incorporate some of the other political actors who have been involved in this conflict, actors besides the Saudis and the Houthis? Shireen Al-Adeimi I think for lasting peace, it absolutely has to include everybody. There is no getting rid of the Islah Party or members of the GPC Party, which is the party of President Hadi or former President Hadi, or the Southern Transitional Council, which is the separatist group, or the Houthis. There is no getting rid of any of these elements, no matter what people or how people feel about them. I do think that a lasting peace settlement needs to include all of these parties. Now, the other thing we have to realize, too, is that the Houthis have been fighting all of these factions alongside those who are in the same camp as the Saudi-led coalition. So the STC is only powerful because they are backed by the United Arab Emirates. The Islah Party and President Hadi– President Hadi is not powerful, but members of his party and the Islah Party are only powerful because the Saudis have been funding them over the last several years. They’ve been based in Riyadh for the most part. I think we have to understand that when the Saudis are speaking to the Houthis directly, they’re not just representing themselves. In a way, they’re representing these other groups that they have been training, backing, funding, and hosting in their countries over the last several years. Now, after a Houthi-Saudi settlement is reached, and if these foreign entities stop funding these groups and other groups, then I think there’s hope for Yemenis to actually sit around the table with one another and discuss a settlement and reach an agreement that works for all of them. As I said, nobody’s leaving the country. Nobody’s going to give up arms. Nobody’s going to give up their claims. Yemenis have to live with one another. They have to reach some agreement among themselves. Talia Baroncelli What do you think led to this particular moment right now where we’re seeing more dialogue, we’re seeing different leaders and representatives meeting in Sana’a? What led to this particular moment? Shireen Al-Adeimi So, if you remember, in early 2022, there were strikes in Sana’a that disabled Yemen’s internet for four days. No country has ever done this to another country and outright shut down its communication with the rest of the world. In that same week, there were attacks that killed 70 people at a detention center. There was this escalation of attacks, and it followed the UN not renewing this expert group which was supposed to hold the Saudi-led coalition accountable for some of what they were doing in Yemen. There were escalations on the part of the Saudi-led coalition, but at the same time, the Houthis escalated their strikes against both Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. For the very first time in the last several eight years, they were able to successfully, I would say, target some areas. There was an oil refinery in Jeddah that was hit. There was also a facility in the U.A.E. that was hit and it was not rebuffed by the U.A.E. or Saudi in time. So I think everybody had a reason to talk to one another. The Houthis were not able to rest Marib, which is a gas and oil-rich province, out of the hands of the Saudis and their coalition. At the same time, the Saudis were not able to move forward. There’s been a stalemate for several, several years, and now they saw that the Houthis were actually going to be able to cause some economic disruptions in their countries. I think everybody was incentivized to actually sit down and come up with an agreement that’s negotiated and mediated by Oman and come up with some kind of agreement that would work for all sides. The Saudis, I think, have been exhausted by this. They have spent, by some accounts, $200 million a month on this war over the last several years. To spend that amount of money and not see your goals achieved in any way. They weren’t able to reinstate President Hadi’s power. Eventually, they ended up setting him aside. They weren’t able to recapture territories from the Houthis. What is it all for? I think there’s a recognition that, well, there’s all this pressure from U.S. Congress not wanting to support the Saudi-led coalition anymore. The Saudis are seeing that this was actually a war that they could not win. The Emiratis have a big question mark about their interests because they remain entangled in Yemen. I don’t think anybody’s really focused on their role or focused as much on their role. I think, at the very least, on the Saudi side, there’s an interest in extracting themselves from this war. Talia Baroncelli Yeah, the Emiratis are occupying an island just south of Yemen, and I know that they have played a role in this conflict. What has the role of China been given the recent rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which was in large part negotiated by China, but also by Oman? You also referenced Oman’s role in these negotiations. What is China’s role? Shireen Al-Adeimi I think it would be interesting to see what their role could be. China did not sell weapons to the Saudis or the U.A.E. They didn’t get involved in any way in the war. I think Oman is one of those other countries, and uniquely Oman, because every other Gulf country and many other Arab countries and African countries joined the Saudi-led coalition in one way, shape, or the other. Oman stayed neutral and has been hosting these talks for several years. This is not the first time they’ve hosted talks. China worked with Iran and Saudi Arabia directly and reached some kind of agreement to reinstate diplomatic relations and whatnot. I think that’s a positive role. As for what they’ve done in Yemen, I would say, sure, any kind of peace talk or recognition of the resumption of relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia is a positive move and does relieve some of those tensions. Iran’s role in Yemen has been overstated over the last several years, so it doesn’t directly affect the peace talks that have been happening between the Saudis and the Yemenis themselves. Although, of course, it does help that a major ally of the Houthis, Iran, is now not in conflict with Saudi Arabia. Talia Baroncelli Do you think Iran’s, I would say, economic isolation, as well as the backlash against Iran, given the protests a few months ago, does this play into negotiations at all? Are the stakes higher for them to see peace in Yemen now, more so than before? Shireen Al-Adeimi I’m not sure what the Iranian intentions are. Again, I think that Iran’s role has been overstated in Yemen. When the war began, this was just a few months after the Iran deal was negotiated with the Obama administration. So for Iran to risk the Iran deal, I think, would have been foolish. There have been allegations by the U.S. that Iran has been involved. The Houthis have always said that they are not acting on behalf of Iran. There have been key moments where, for example, when the Houthis took over Sana’a in late 2014, the Iranians were very vocal about their stance against that takeover. The Houthis were like, well, who are you to tell us what to do? That was a pivotal moment. That is what set the spark that eventually led to this war in Yemen. So, of course, they’ve been supporting them in some ways, but not to the extent that they would be considered a proxy war or not to the extent that they were supporting, let’s say, the war in Syria. There are no Iranian Generals on the ground. The country has been under blockade– air, land and sea blockade for the past several years. Journalists have to smuggle themselves in to report from inside Yemen. People are starving to death. There’s no medicine that’s allowed to enter the country that has been approved. Pharmaceutical companies have been trying to send medicine, for example. Aid has been rotting in ships because they’re not allowed to enter the ports of Yemen. Fuel that has been rerouted to Jeddah. Yet these allegations that Iranians are somehow getting through all of these blockades and supporting the Houthis have just been preposterous. They’re supporting them in other ways, just not in that way. Whatever support they’ve shown for the Houthis has been minimal compared to the ways in which the international community has supported the Saudi-led coalition. I think Iran wouldn’t want to risk it. I think it looks good for Iran to show that they are interested in peace in Yemen, even though the conflict itself has very little to do with Iran. It’s an internal conflict. It’s a conflict between Yemen and Saudi Arabia. It is a culmination of decades of intervention by Saudi Arabia in Yemen and decades of intervention by the United States in Yemen. This is not an Iran-Saudi conflict that’s happening at the borders of Yemen. This is a Yemeni-Saudi conflict that, unfortunately, is not even a war. It has been an asymmetrical attack on the country. Talia Baroncelli Well, before we speak about the humanitarian crisis in the country, you did touch on the history a bit. To give our viewers a bit more context, it would be good to speak about how this conflict came about. In 2011, there was an uprising in Yemen which ousted Ali Abdullah Saleh, if I got that correct. He was an authoritarian president, and he was forced to give power to his deputy, Hadi. So maybe you can explain what led to that and what people were protesting or uprising against, and how the Houthis came in to essentially take power from there. Shireen Al-Adeimi Yeah. Arab Spring, early 2011, Yemenis were watching what was happening in Tunisia and then Egypt. It seems like the protests were leading to positive change in these countries. I think for the first time, Yemenis, for the first time in a long time, not for the first time ever, because we have a history of uprisings and revolutions, but for the first time in a while, in, like, three decades, they found that maybe we could bring about change through these peaceful protests. In January 2011, Yemenis started protesting. Now, they weren’t necessarily protesting Ali Abdullah Saleh himself, and only Ali Abdullah Saleh. They were protesting the entire system, which Saleh used to keep himself in power and to enrich himself at the expense of the Yemeni people. Yemen is the poorest country in the Middle East, has been for many, many years, and is now among the poorest in the world. Yet Saleh was, by UN estimates, one of the richest men in the world. Where is this man getting his resources from? Obviously, there was a lot of corruption. There was a lot of wealth that he, his party, and the Islah Party, which he essentially created as a controlled opposition in the early ’90s; this is like the Islamist Party in Yemen; they were all part of that system that people were uprising against. Now, the movement was peaceful until members of the Islah Party saw this as an opportunity for them to co-opt the revolution from the people. Even though they were part of that system and they were long-time Saleh allies, they took the opposition. They went in opposition to Saleh himself and turned the conflict into a bloody mess. There was an assassination attempt. There was armed conflict. When he survived that assassination attempt, that’s when he agreed to transfer power to his Vice President, Hadi. Nobody wanted Hadi. They say he was elected if he ran in a one-man election, but that’s not an election; that’s an appointment. It was supposed to be a two-year term. It was extended by one more year. He resigned at some point and then unresigned. He was flailing around over the next few years, not knowing how to bring all of these different factions together. Now, one of these factions was the Southern Secessionists, who didn’t even want to be part of the Union, and they didn’t want to be part of the Union since 1994 when there was a civil war between the North and South. They eventually reorganized themselves into the current STC, which is, as I said, funded and trained by the U.A.E. They had legitimate concerns that weren’t addressed. The Houthis are a group from northern Yemen who initially started off in the late ’90s as a vocal opposition to Saleh’s corruption and Saleh’s rule, but also Saleh’s very close relationship to Saudi Arabia, which was becoming detrimental to Yemeni society. Here enters the sectarian conversation. This is not a sectarian war. The Houthis follow a version of Islam called Zaidi Islam, but they’re not a minority. Forty percent of Yemenis are Zaidi Muslims, and we don’t have a history of fighting along sectarian lines. What was happening in the late ’90s, early 2000s, and early ’90s as well is that Saudi Arabia was exporting their version of Islam, Salafi Islam and Wahhabi Islam, to all of these other countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Yemen. I remember when the textbooks changed in school, and they came printed from Saudi Arabia. Now, what that was doing was an attempt to erase Yemen’s rich history of both Shafi’i-Sunni Islam and Zaidi-Shi’a Islam. The Houthis were a family of scholars, and they had a representative in parliament. They were among the only people who were vocally outwardly speaking out against this, even though many people within Yemeni society did not like these changes that were happening. So that put them in opposition to Saleh, who, by the way, himself was a Zaidi, so this was not a sectarian issue. He didn’t handle critique very well, so he fought six different wars against the Houthis and was not able to get rid of them. In some of these wars, he enlisted the Saudis for help because he made the argument that these people are at your border, and they’re your problem as much as they’re mine. So that’s the history with the Houthis. They became one of the groups, in post-2011, who were trying to have their voices heard. You know, they come from a province that was severely underdeveloped. We’re talking about no running water or electricity in many parts of the province. They had economic concerns as well. All of these different groups had their own concerns. Hadi was just not bringing together people in any meaningful way, and that’s what led to a lot of tensions leading to 2014, when the Houthis up and took over the capital, Sana’a, in an attempt to force Hadi into doing something about it. I know I’ve spoken a lot, but I also want to highlight a key moment that happened between the Houthi takeover of Sana’a in late 2014 and the Saudi-led bombing in March 2015. During that time, there were still talks that were happening. The UN envoy to Yemen at the time, Jamal Benomar, writes about this in Newsweek. He writes about an agreement that was essentially reached between all of these different factions. He says it was ten painful weeks. He says the different parties agreed on the legislative and executive agreements. It was a power-sharing deal that was supposed to work for people. They were ready to sign the peace deal, and only two days later did Saudi Arabia start bombing. So that was the context. It wasn’t an all-out civil war. There was a lot of tension in the country. There was a Houthi takeover. There was a lot of resentment. There were a lot of parties who were left unheard, but they were still able to negotiate something. Now, we don’t know what would have happened with that, but they were able to negotiate a deal that was essentially derailed by Saudi Arabia intervening in 2015. Talia Baroncelli I have read about that. I was wondering, what was it that actually made Saudi Arabia intervene at that moment, what you say was two days after this potential peace deal had been negotiated? Did they already have U.S. support at that time, or did they think that they would be militarily supported and they were overly confident that they could push through their own agenda? Shireen Al-Adeimi I mean, they had U.S. support on day one. The day they announced their war, which was, by the way, in English from D.C., not in Arabic from Riyadh. They made the announcement that they were leading this war in Yemen called a ‘Decisive Storm,’ and that announcement was made in D.C. That very same day, the White House released a statement of support saying that they already created a Joint Planning Cell that they were supporting and that they were not at war because that was illegal. The Obama administration was very careful to say that they were not at war, but essentially everything they were doing signified that they were a party to the war and that they might as well have been part of that coalition because they were setting up Generals in the command room and supporting them with targets. Of course, most of the weapons that Saudi Arabia has comes from the U.S. So from the very, very first day of the war, they knew that they had full support from the United States, and the United States was very vocal about that. Now, why did they intervene? They intervened in Yemen in the past. They intervened in the civil war in the ’70s. They intervened when northern Yemenis were trying to oust the imamites: the father, son, and grandson monarchy that was taking shape and turned Yemen into a republic. Saudi Arabia supported the monarch for the next eight years, even though he was a Zaidi, so religion here didn’t matter. They just needed another monarch or another ally. So when the monarchy failed in Yemen, and we turned into a republic, we’re the only republic in that part of the region and part of that world. All of our neighbors are monarchies. They made sure that they had an ally in Yemen, a very close ally in Saleh. When Saleh was gone, they knew that Hadi was a very close ally. Now, they knew that the Islah Party would be allies as well. I don’t think they were too worried about the STC. The one group they certainly did not want in that agreement, in that power-sharing deal, was the Houthis because they had just spent the last several years fighting alongside Saleh to get rid of the Houthis and were really embarrassed by the fact that they weren’t able to control this group who has not backed away from speaking outwardly against Saudi interventions in Yemen or Saudi interference in Yemen. They didn’t want the Houthis in power, which is why they wanted to– what they said is intervene on behalf of the UN-recognized, legitimate president of Yemen, which years later, they had no problem setting aside, literally told him and woke him up in the middle of the night, said, hey, why don’t you resign and transfer power to these eight guys that we support? So that was the plan. Now, the miscalculation happened when they thought this was going to be a quick two-week war, and they didn’t realize that when you attack people, they fight back. That’s the calculation that they did not make very well. Talia Baroncelli What was the extent of the support of the Houthis in 2014? What would you say characterizes their group? Allah is also the other name of the Houthis. What characterizes them? Do they have a specific long-term goal or political ideology that you think engenders broader support, or are they just filling in this sort of power vacuum, so to speak, and just fighting against the Saudi-led invasion, and that’s what’s perhaps giving them some more popularity? Shireen Al-Adeimi I think it’s a bit of both. When they took over the capital Sana’a, they were still some small group from northern Yemen. Yes, they had been gaining a lot of sympathy from their general population because, frankly, they were the only group that was able to stand up to Saleh and who seemed to not back down. I lived in the South when the South declared secession from the North, and Saleh responded by bombing us for the next three months until all of the leaders in the South fled, and the South was forced back into unity. Southerners and secessionists are looking at this, saying, oh, wow, we weren’t able to succeed. When we spoke about Saleh, your average Yemeni could not speak about Saleh without getting disappeared or being assassinated or something. This was a country that was under political repression. The Houthis were seen as this group that raised armed conflict in response to Saleh’s attack on them because initially, they were speaking, and he attacked, and they fought back. They still weren’t anything significant. They weren’t a significant political party or anything like that. I think once they took over the capital in late 2014, people realized that they must have had support. Now, who did that support come from? It turns out it came from Saleh, which is very ironic here. They had been enemies for many years, but Saleh, even though he resigned, he wasn’t your average Arab Spring president. He wasn’t assassinated. He wasn’t kicked out. He wasn’t jailed. He, in fact, remained in Yemen. He negotiated a deal under the GCC that would prevent him from being persecuted for any crimes that people were accusing him of and remained in control over large parts of the Yemeni army. When the Houthis were able to very simply take over, march over from the North and take over with very little resistance, people felt like, well, Saleh’s telling the army not to act. That’s likely what happened because when the Saudis started bombing in 2015, very quickly, Saleh and the Houthis joined forces. He was able to mobilize parts of the Yemeni army that he still controlled, and they formed a unified resistance to the intervention. It didn’t last. It lasted for a good two and a half years. At the end of 2017, Saleh decided to switch sides. He saw that this was not going anywhere, and he thought maybe this was his second coming. He decided to switch sides, and within days, he was killed by the Houthis. The Houthis then found themselves in Sana’a, now forced to rule. They did form a political group, an alliance with people from Saleh’s party. Initially, I don’t think they had any ambitions to govern, but that’s the role they found themselves in. Over the years, there has been no security situation in northern Yemen where they rule. Now, if these were a very small group with no political power, every Yemeni would be armed to the teeth. You would see a lot of resistance against the Houthis. We don’t see a lot of that going on. In fact, we see the Houthis working with many northern tribes to gain their support and their trust. I think they’ve been able to do alliance-building work over the last several years and have been able to fold into their group many swaths of the Yemeni population who previously would not have been identifying with them at all. So they were seen as the people who stayed to defend the country, and that’s why I think a lot of people support them in northern Yemen. If the Saudis, U.A.E., and Americans were worried about the support that the Houthis had, well, now they really have something to worry about because now they have a lot of support from the population, whereas before, they didn’t. Talia Baroncelli Well, we can’t speak about this conflict without addressing the United States’ role in providing weapons to Saudi Arabia. If I recall correctly, the U.S. even sent in Green Berets at some stage in the conflict, and they’ve sent over $50 billion worth of military funds, weapons, and that sort of thing. Can you speak more about the role of the U.S. as well as the War Powers Resolution of 2019, which was vetoed by the Trump administration and which was recently rediscussed? I think Bernie Sanders was a bit reluctant and said that he wanted to speak to the Biden administration once more before putting it to a vote. Shireen Al-Adeimi Yeah, almost $60 billion have been sent from the U.S. alone to Saudi and the U.A.E. between fiscal years 2015 and 2021. So this doesn’t count (2022-2023). That adds up to about $22 million a day. We have that much in weapon sales just to those two countries. Then, of course, the Saudis and Emirates purchase weapons from Canada, Australia, Germany, Spain, Italy, Britain, and all of these countries. The other way that the U.S. supports the Saudi-led coalition and has throughout the years is through, as I said, the Joint Planning Cell. They actually have U.S. and U.K. commanders in the command room helping them with targeting. Up until late 2018, they were refuelling Saudi jets in midair. They weren’t only training their pilots and helping them with maintenance, spare parts and weapons, and helping them choose the targets, but these jets were flying midair over Yemeni airspace, and the U.S. was helping them refuel. That ended with the Trump administration in late 2018. So in every way, shape or form, logistics, intelligence sharing, choosing targets, weapons, every single way that a war operates, the U.S. had a hand in operating. Now that essentially amounted to a violation of the Constitution. There’s a 1973 bill that was passed called the War Powers Act, and it became federal law in 1973 when journalists found out that the Nixon administration was secretly bombing Laos. They found out that and said, well, actually, we should not allow this to happen. We need to make sure that war-making is something that only Congress can authorize and not a president. Now, of course, we know every president has violated that since 1973: maybe not every president, but most presidents. Congress never really stood up to any sitting president until 2019. This was years of effort by activists in the making. Finally, in 2019, War Powers was passed in a bipartisan way, you could say by both chambers of Congress. It was largely seen by Democrats as Trump’s war in Yemen. There was no recognition of Obama’s role when we tried during the Obama years to end this war and hold the Obama administration accountable for what they were doing in Yemen. It was easier for Democrats, at least, to see this as Trump’s war, and they had the willingness to stand up against it. Trump vetoed it, and we didn’t have the two-thirds majority needed to undo the veto, so that fell apart. That was an effort to end U.S. participation in the war. It wasn’t going to end up in sales because, apparently, those are separate transactions. It was going to end all of these other logistical ways that the U.S. was supporting the Saudi-led coalition. Now, Biden’s administration, here we go, 2021. In the very first policy speech that Biden gave, he made a promise to end what he called ‘offensive operations’ in Yemen. So this random dichotomy showed up in the vocabulary here,

Talia Baroncelli interviews Paul Jay; “The financial elites know how dangerous the climate crisis is, but they won't acknowledge the only solution is central planning, government regulation, and intervention. They know market mechanisms won't work within a time frame that matters, if at all. They're not against central planning. What is the Pentagon if not central planning? What is the Fed and bank bailouts if not central planning? Central planning in their interests and under their control is okay. But government planning that transforms the economy and phases out fossil fuel, is unacceptable. They hate any form of socialism more than they hate risking the end of civilization.”

In part two, Michael Hudson discusses his new book "The Collapse of Antiquity." Hudson challenges the traditional beliefs about the fall of the Roman Empire, arguing that it was caused by a financial crisis brought on by excessive debt, wealth inequality, and the concentration of economic power. Hudson draws parallels to modern-day economies and highlights the dangers of financialization and wealth concentration.

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Spending – Wilkerson Will Jan 6 Committee Investigate Christian Nationalism? – Gerald Horne Rising Fascism and the Elections – Chomsky and Ellsberg Biden’s Bill has Significant Funding for Climate but 10% of What’s Needed – Bob Pollin Why Give a Damn About Pelosi? – Paul Jay pt 1 Progressive Running Against a Corp Dem in Boeing Country Chris Hedges, Edward Snowden, Noam Chomsky, Paul Jay and Daniel Ellsberg on Assange JFK’s Canadian Coup Fascism and the Democratic Party – Paul Jay pt 3/3 Weaponized National Identity, War and an Orgy of Profits – Paul Jay pt 2/3 Paul Jay on 9/11 Trump Saved Christian Nationalist Billionaires a Bundle in Taxes Why I am Opposed to the War in Vietnam – Martin Luther King What U.S. Foreign Policy and Pro Wrestling Have in Common – Paul Jay Resource Limits to American Capitalism & The Predator State Today A Failed Coup Within a Failed Coup – Paul Jay Ellsberg & Assange: Exposing Lies of the National Security State – Paul Jay Why I am Opposed to the War in Vietnam – Martin Luther King In 2020, Trump Propped Up His Rural Vote with Massive Subsidies to Agribusiness – Tom Ferguson Pt 4/4 Jan 6th: The Real Threat is Christian Nationalism in the Military – Mikey Weinstein Is Biden Risking War by Pushing Taiwan Independence? – Larry Wilkerson theAnalysis.news in 2022 – Paul Jay In 2020, Elites Bailed on Trump, Not on Republican Party – Tom Ferguson Pt 2/4 Nuclear War is the Most Urgent Threat – Andrew Cockburn pt 2/2 Risking Apocalypse for the Spoils of War – Andrew Cockburn pt 1/2 A Perfect Storm for Democrats in 2022 – Tom Ferguson Pt 1/4 Julian Assange & the National Security State | Interview with Paul Jay – Part 2 Is the U$A a Democracy? with Tom Ferguson Why Are Tensions Rising in Ukraine? – pt 1/2 YouTube Censorship & the Threat of Nuclear War With Paul Jay Corporate Dems Won’t Push the Real Wedge Issue and Lose – Paul Jay Daniel Ellsberg on Assange Extradition Hearing Paul Jay on Assange Extradition Hearing Running to be Detroit’s Mayor – Against Democratic Party Machine A Conversation With Paul Jay – Pt 4 The Whole Country is the Reichstag Pt 2/2 – Paul Jay & Abby Martin on Afghanistan, 9/11 & Climate Change Pt 1/2 – Paul Jay & Abby Martin on Afghanistan and 9/11 A Conversation With Paul Jay – Pt1 A World Without Police A Failed Coup Within A Failed Coup – The Story YouTube Doesn’t Want You to See Bill Black pt 9/9 — The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One Full Interview – Powerful Christian Nationalists in Military See Trump as Vehicle for Authoritarian Religious State – Mikey Weinstein Confessions of a New York Times Washington Correspondent – Bob Smith Pt 2/2 Confessions of a New York Times Washington Correspondent – Bob Smith Pt 1/2 Washington Post Confirms Fear of Attempted Trump Coup – After Google Bans theAnalysis.news Ads Why the Right Attacks Critical Race Theory – Gerald Horne To Get Us Out of Poverty, We Need a Massive Infrastructure Plan – Ann Morrison / Wisconsin How Billionaires Pay Millions to Hide Trillions – Chuck Collins Unanswered Questions About the Jan 6 Coup Attempt – Paul Jay Liz Cheney & GOP: A Split Between the Hard Right & Far Right Reagan, the Media and the United States of Amnesia – “The Reagans” Part 5 “Why Should We Vote for a Party that Holds Us in Contempt?” – A Viewer Comment Is Biden a Transformational President? Rightwinger David Brooks Thinks So Should Trump Be Charged With Treason? Paul Jay on Talk World Radio Workers and Communities vs Amazon Is Trumpism Fascism? – Paul Street Google Bans theAnalysis.news from Advertising on YouTube January 6th was the Final Act of a Failed Coup – Paul Jay Progressives Must Revitalize the Labor Movement – Noam Chomsky Trump’s Treason and McConnell’s Mayhem – Paul Jay Reagan’s Racism the Model for Trump – Matt Tyrnauer (Pt3) No Honeymoon for Biden – Jeff Cohen Rashida Tlaib – Remove Members of Congress Who Incited Riot and Demand Real Change From Biden Financialization, Fascism and the Jan 6th Riots – with Paul Jay Matt Taibbi and Norman Solomon on the Progressive Movement and Rising Fascism Racism and a Failed Coup – Gerald Horne Did Trump Walk Into a Trap? – Wilkerson and Jay Polarization, Then a Crash: Michael Hudson on the Rentier Economy Democrats Stuck Between “BlackRock and a Hard Place” – Rana Foroohar and Mark Blyth Economics Not Culture Wars Drove Most Trump Voters – Thomas Ferguson Potential Biden Cabinet Picks Lean Right Election Crisis and the Electoral College Trump’s Coup, Biden’s Dilemma, and the Chinese Challenge – Foroohar and Blyth A Dangerous Moment for the Democratic Party – Matt Taibbi The Significance of the “Shit Show” Debate – Panitch, Day, Horne & Jay Why Criticize Biden Now, When Trump Fascism is a Threat? – with Paul Jay NBA Players Resolved to Fight Systemic Racism – Gerald Horne Biden Blurring Almost Everything – Thomas Ferguson If Biden Picks Rice as VP, It Strengthens His Worst Instincts The Promise and Limits of Black Lives Matter – Cedric Johnson Trump a Unique Danger; Unaccountable to Ruling Elites or Public – Phyllis Bennis Vijay Prashad: Cut the Umbilical Cord to the Democratic Party Convert Military to Green Production, or Perish – Daniel Ellsberg on RAI Pt 13/13 Dismantle the American Doomsday Machine – Daniel Ellsberg on RAI Pt 12/13 The Doomsday Machine and Nuclear Winter – Daniel Ellsberg on RAI Pt 11/13 A Strategy of War Crimes, Killing Civilians to Win a War – Daniel Ellsberg on RAI Pt 10/13 The Discovery That Should Have Changed the Cold War – Daniel Ellsberg on RAI Pt 9/13 Once Fired, There’s No Calling a Nuke Back – Daniel Ellsberg on RAI Pt 8/13 U.S. Refuses to Adopt a Nuclear Weapon No First Use Pledge – Daniel Ellsberg on RAI 7/13 U.S. Planned Nuclear First Strike to Destroy Soviets and China – Daniel Ellsberg on RAI Pt 6/13 Russian Doomsday Machine an Answer to U.S. Decapitation Strategy – Daniel Ellsberg on RAI Pt 5/13 The Largest Act of Terrorism in Human History – Daniel Ellsberg on RAI Pt 4/13 Truman Delayed End of WWII to Demonstrate Nuclear Weapons – Daniel Ellsberg on RAI Pt 3/13 Hitler Wouldn’t Risk Doomsday, But The United States Did – Daniel Ellsberg on RAI Pt 2/13 The Doomsday Machine: The Big Lie of the Cold War – Daniel Ellsberg on RAI Pt 1/13 The Rich Have an Escape Plan – RAI with Rana Foroohar Pt 5/6 Sociopaths Rise to the Top RAI with Rana Foroohar Pt 4/6 Clinton’s ‘Committee to Save the World’ Unleashes Wall Street – RAI with Rana Foroohar Pt 3/6 Apple, Market Manipulation and the Cult of Personal Finance – RAI with Rana Foroohar Pt 2/6 The Rise of Finance and the Fall of American Business – RAI with Rana Foroohar Pt 1/6 Harvey Weinstein, the Democratic Party and the Power of the ‘Creative Class’ – Thomas Frank on RAI (9/9) Obama Chose Wall St. Over Main St. – Thomas Frank on RAI (8/9) Clinton and Obama Helped Make the Democrats a Wall Street Party – Thomas Frank on RAI (7/9) Prisoners of Hope – RAI with Thomas Frank (6/9) From Ronald Reagan to Bernie Sanders – RAI with Thomas Frank (5/9) Clinton Democrats Hate the Left – RAI with Thomas Frank (4/9) Liberal Elite Doesn’t Care Much About Inequality – RAI with Thomas Frank (3/9) Clinton Attacks Sanders in New Book – RAI with Thomas Frank (2/9) Corporate Democrats Have a Vested Interest in Not Listening to Workers – RAI with Thomas Frank (1/9) Reaganism and Thatcherism were Intellectually Dishonest – Heiner Flassbeck on RAI Pt 1/5 Black Nationalism and the Peoples’ Movement – Glen Ford on Reality Asserts Itself Pt 3/5 Kennedy Was A Cold War Warrior to the Core – Glen Ford on Reality Asserts Itself Pt 5/5 Credibility of the Ruling Elite is Being Shredded – RAI with Chris Hedges The Pathology of the Rich – Chris Hedges on RAI (1/2) The Kennedy Brothers Thought the Civil Rights Movement Was a Nuisance at Best – Glen Ford Pt 4/5 Did Bush Cheney Create a Culture of Not Wanting to Know – Sen. Bob Graham on RAI Pt 7/7

We get a first look at the new book by renowned political economist Michael Hudson on the age-old battle between creditors and the real economy. Ancient Rome refused to adopt the practices of debt forgiveness and land redistribution previously understood to be essential. Instead, they instituted a rigid pro-creditor legal system, assassinating anyone who remotely threatened it--including Tiberius Gracchus, Julius Caesar, and Jesus. The empire devolved into a rentier economy, ultimately collapsing from within. Today's neoliberal establishment increasingly defends this failed state framework, even as the same disastrous dynamics intensify.