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Speaker 1: Seven of two Big Interview. With missile strikes, rising global tension,

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Speaker 1: even the words World War III have been used, you

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Speaker 1: might ask yourself, why does this region of the world

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Speaker 1: keep pulling the world back to the brink. It lies

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Speaker 1: in a long, complicated history, and so we often assume

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Speaker 1: that we all know how it all started. And today

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Speaker 1: we thought we'll have a bit of a history lesson,

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Speaker 1: if you will. We've invited doctor Eraj Abidian, who is

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Speaker 1: chiefly an economist, of course, the chief economist for Pan

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Speaker 1: African Investments and Research Services, but traces, of course his

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Speaker 1: lineage from Iran having come to this country, and so

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Speaker 1: we thought we'll put a political analyst historian hat on

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Speaker 1: him this morning and just go through some of the

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Speaker 1: details that have led us here. All is a pleasure

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Speaker 1: to have you on our show. Thank you for your time.

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Speaker 2: Good morning, Bania, and good morning to our listeners.

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Speaker 1: So let's start with the historical context. I was saying

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Speaker 1: earlier that I'm helping my daughter do grade eleven history,

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Speaker 1: and one of the things we were dealing with is

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Speaker 1: the first meeting of the Big Three Churchill, Stalin, and

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Speaker 1: Roosevelt as they set out to map what the world

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Speaker 1: could look like after World War Three. That meeting in

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Speaker 1: nineteen forty three happened in Tehran.

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Speaker 2: Exactly, and that was the mother of all problems ever since.

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Speaker 2: The imperialist involvement in that region as part of the

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Speaker 2: global geopolitics, which really has never stopped since nineteen forty three,

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Speaker 2: followed ten years later with Kuda Ta in Iran by

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Speaker 2: the CIA. At that time, the oil discovery of oil

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Speaker 2: in Iran and the Middle Is more broadly was the

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Speaker 2: biggest geopolitical and economic development, and America wanted to make

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Speaker 2: sure that they had they had access to as well

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Speaker 2: as control over this important reserve. At that time, British

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Speaker 2: petroleum was running the show, and the nationalist movements in Iran,

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Speaker 2: led by a very distinguished and respectedly and doctor Mossade,

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Speaker 2: opposed the colonial console over national reserves of the country

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Speaker 2: and that led to a Codeta nineteen fifty three that

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Speaker 2: brought the shot back to Iran. And yeah, then the

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Speaker 2: hostilities ever since it's been growing on then what.

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Speaker 1: So, Yeah, I'm going to keep interrupting you just so

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Speaker 1: that make sure we're cuping up. So essentially, the seeds

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Speaker 1: of anti West sentiment in Iran can be traced certainly

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Speaker 1: at the earliest two nineteen fifty three, where there's this

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Speaker 1: coup d'eta against a democratically elected leader in Iran because

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Speaker 1: of course the Western powers wanted access to the oil.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Correct, that's one leg of anti westernent sentiments from

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Speaker 2: a nationalistic point of view. Then came the second league

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Speaker 2: in nineteen seventies, where where Iran was secularizing, modernizing, industrializing.

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Speaker 2: Book Peque had been formed by the late Shah of Iran,

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Speaker 2: and Iran was growing rapidly at that time, and I

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Speaker 2: was as a student in Iran at that time. But

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Speaker 2: at the same time, the clerical of the religious more

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Speaker 2: specifically the Sheer clerical network in Iran were vehemently opposed

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Speaker 2: to secularization, modernization and the alliance that they show of

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Speaker 2: Iran had with the West that they saw they regarded

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Speaker 2: it really as a kind of unadult traded imperialism. So

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Speaker 2: then by mid seventies, in fact late sixties, two parallel

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Speaker 2: anti westerns had developed, one as a result of nineteen

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Speaker 2: fifty three Ku data, a second one more on the

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Speaker 2: religious ground. And therefore by mid mid nineteen seventies it

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Speaker 2: was quite clear that Iran had two groups. Secular democratic,

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Speaker 2: young and nationalistic movements against the West because of the Kuduitar.

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Speaker 2: And then you had largely literate, very religious under the

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Speaker 2: control of the sheer clerical groups who were opposing the

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Speaker 2: West on a completely different ground. So that is where

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Speaker 2: another event happened, and that time of for America and

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Speaker 2: the old USSR, we're fighting it at the global level

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Speaker 2: and the Iran.

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Speaker 1: Let me come in there again. I mean, this is

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Speaker 1: of course reference to the Cold War. So you're saying

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Speaker 1: the seeds of anti Western sentiment planted with a coupdata

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Speaker 1: in fifty three. There's also this other side, which is almost,

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Speaker 1: you know, the antithesis of what the Shah represented. It's

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Speaker 1: important also, though to underscore that, you know, under the

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Speaker 1: Shah's rule there was also a lot of unease or

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Speaker 1: even unhappiness around the corruption of that government. But I'm

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Speaker 1: fascinated by the idea that the first Ayatola essentially led

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Speaker 1: the revolution from Paris at least for a time in

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Speaker 1: the seventies, and you don't you almost don't get a

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Speaker 1: more Western city than that.

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Speaker 2: Of course, you're referring to Homany. He had been banished

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Speaker 2: from Iran because of his opposition to the show on

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Speaker 2: religious ground, as I mentioned, on a sort of fanatic

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Speaker 2: religious antibest and anti democratic, anti secularization. He was banished

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Speaker 2: to Iraq first. He was in Iraq for for many

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Speaker 2: years before he was invited by the French to locate

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Speaker 2: himself from Baghdad to from Iraq to France, which you're

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Speaker 2: absolutely right, but the context of that Gungani is very important.

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Speaker 2: The reason he was pushed or invited to Paris was

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Speaker 2: because between France, the United States led by Jimmy Carter

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Speaker 2: and UK and Calahan at that time, and Germany, the

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Speaker 2: four of them had decided that Iran was too important

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Speaker 2: a region, a country and the only country that could

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Speaker 2: kind of stop the influence of USSR into the region.

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Speaker 2: So the best that they thought a communist an ecommunist

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Speaker 2: group will do is a fanatic, sheer clerical rule. So

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Speaker 2: they decided to put all the forces behind So Rocomenia

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Speaker 2: invited him to Paris, gave him all the publicity, and

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Speaker 2: it took about eighteen months to orchestrate a very complex

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Speaker 2: regime change in Iran, and they did it successfully, led

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Speaker 2: by Jimmy Carter of the United States and nineteen seventy

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Speaker 2: nine became the fourth, the third intervention by the US

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Speaker 2: in Iran, which has been going on ever since.

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Speaker 1: I mean, it's extraordinary, and we perhaps don't have much

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Speaker 1: more time to get into all of the history. But

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Speaker 1: if you think of at least three countries, Iraq and

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Speaker 1: the initial support for Saddam Hussein, you think of Afghanistan

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Speaker 1: and what the Americans did there to support the anti

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Speaker 1: Soviet revolution there, if you will, And now essentially what

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Speaker 1: they're fighting against is a beast of their own making.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, wan Ghani. In the literature, it's referred to

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Speaker 2: as the Frankenstein monster. You create them and they turn

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Speaker 2: on the creator. And that happened already in less than

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Speaker 2: a year. The regime was brought in by Americans in

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Speaker 2: nineteen seventy nine, supported by Fraus Germany and the Uclaire

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Speaker 2: as I mentioned, but within less than nine months, the

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Speaker 2: regime attacked the American embassy to hostages. And that's just

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Speaker 2: a matter of history that we don't have time put

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Speaker 2: to detail. And ever since, death to America, death to Israel,

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Speaker 2: as they aid, the local regional agent of the United States,

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Speaker 2: has been the order of the day.

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Speaker 1: What happens now, doctor Billion I mean, we are now

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Speaker 1: here in the middle of this conflict. Trump says, our negotiations.

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Speaker 1: Iran says that no negotiations. Meantime, they're sending what it

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Speaker 1: looks what looks like marines to the region. What happens next?

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Speaker 1: Is this thing going to escalate? Are the rest of

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Speaker 1: the golf countries going to get involved? Or will it

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Speaker 1: end as quickly as it started?

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Speaker 2: Banana on half of me says, I wish I knew,

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Speaker 2: because nobody can predict. But how would be pretentious to

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Speaker 2: say I know or I can know that. The reality

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Speaker 2: is that we're dealing with two very very unpredictable and

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Speaker 2: to some extent, existential confrontations. One is the regime in

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Speaker 2: Iran has lost this legitimacy is a matter of fact,

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Speaker 2: their own admission and their participation of people and the

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Speaker 2: real hardship that people have and what we cannot in

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Speaker 2: this historic or geopolitical analysis ignore is the incredible suffering

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Speaker 2: that ninety odd people in Iran ors a million new

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Speaker 2: mean yes, exactly, ninety two to ninety three million is

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Speaker 2: the estimates of the population. They have been hostage to

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Speaker 2: this anti democratic, apocalyptic kind of regime which has been

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Speaker 2: caught between a confrontation with Israel. On the one hand,

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Speaker 2: remember this regime from right from the beginning started whenever

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Speaker 2: they took controlling ninety seventy nine, they started declaration of

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Speaker 2: war against the United States. Then they got into a

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Speaker 2: war with Iraq, and ever since they have never stopped.

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Speaker 2: This is the regime whose apocalyptic is religious has got

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Speaker 2: no rational or even at times self interest measures and

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Speaker 2: or policies, So the people have been subjected to believe

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Speaker 2: it or not, lack of electricity in a country that's

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Speaker 2: got the second hot source of energy on the planet,

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Speaker 2: natural gas and oil, water resources and jobs, they basic

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Speaker 2: living costs and so on and so forth, and availability

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Speaker 2: of some basic items of medicine and food. So I think,

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Speaker 2: and all of that means that over the past forty

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Speaker 2: six years, and definitely over the past thirty years, national

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Speaker 2: resources bit oil and gas or anything else have been

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Speaker 2: used for one and one purpose only militarization of the country.

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Speaker 2: That as we can see, the whole place has become

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Speaker 2: like the military camp. And to just think of wan

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Speaker 2: Ghani and I'll watch it with horror and every selling

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Speaker 2: my body shivers. That over the past three weeks between

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Speaker 2: America and Israelis. They have blown up, according to their

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Speaker 2: own statistics, over eighteen thousand locations that they've bombed. Okay,

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Speaker 2: Iran is a bit ten percent larger than South Africa.

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Speaker 2: But imagine if in South Africa we had eighteen thousand

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Speaker 2: bombs in three weeks. They're making everything around. It's just

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Speaker 2: there's like a doomsday scenario. But be as it may,

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Speaker 2: whatever the Trump or President Trump's ideas and got the

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Speaker 2: vert Iranian regimes and israelis what gets sacrificed in this battle.

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Speaker 2: The people are inputs. Thousands of Pan thousands get killed,

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Speaker 2: millions are suffering, and I'm surprised, Moan Ghani that nobody

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Speaker 2: actually pays attention to that side. They're all excited to

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Speaker 2: know what Trump is doing, or what are it all

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Speaker 2: us are doing, or what's in Natanyaga are doing. But

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Speaker 2: these are all the same type of people who are

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Speaker 2: all mangering and all they know is fight and battle.

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Speaker 2: But they forget people young and old whose lives are wasted,

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Speaker 2: and that, to me is deserves a lot of attention

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Speaker 2: globally and regionally.

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Speaker 1: That's the tragedy. Appreciates your time, Doctor Iraj Abelian, Chief

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Speaker 1: Economists of PAN African investments and research services. That little

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Speaker 1: history just tells you how complicated all of this is,

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Speaker 1: and that we have no idea what comes next.

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Speaker 2: Do we