1
00:00:02,440 --> 00:00:05,559
Speaker 1: This is the introduction of the podcast Behind the Bastards

2
00:00:05,640 --> 00:00:09,600
Speaker 1: by Robert Evans. I've forgotten and anything that I ever

3
00:00:09,640 --> 00:00:12,240
Speaker 1: knew about how to introduce podcasts, and over the next

4
00:00:12,320 --> 00:00:14,319
Speaker 1: couple of weeks, as with the last couple of weeks,

5
00:00:14,320 --> 00:00:17,000
Speaker 1: I'm going to kareem through a variety of different styles,

6
00:00:17,520 --> 00:00:20,520
Speaker 1: none of which are good ways to start a podcast.

7
00:00:20,680 --> 00:00:23,319
Speaker 1: And that's where we are right now at the start

8
00:00:23,320 --> 00:00:26,440
Speaker 1: of this episode, Behind the Bastards, the show about terrible people,

9
00:00:26,680 --> 00:00:30,680
Speaker 1: with Robert Evans a terrible person. My guest today is

10
00:00:30,720 --> 00:00:34,919
Speaker 1: Anna Hasnia, host co host of the Ethnically Ambiguous podcast

11
00:00:35,040 --> 00:00:43,040
Speaker 1: podcast producer here at iHeart Radio and Liquor Baron. What

12
00:00:43,440 --> 00:00:47,280
Speaker 1: Liquor Baron like like like you? I am? I imagine

13
00:00:47,320 --> 00:00:49,879
Speaker 1: if it were the Rolling twenties, you would be one

14
00:00:49,920 --> 00:00:52,680
Speaker 1: of the people who would be like smuggling liquor in

15
00:00:52,760 --> 00:00:57,040
Speaker 1: bowling balls to speak, easies. I'm sorry who booked me

16
00:00:57,120 --> 00:01:00,200
Speaker 1: on this show. I really need to talk to my agents.

17
00:01:01,240 --> 00:01:04,000
Speaker 1: Just joking. I don't know what you're talking about, and

18
00:01:05,440 --> 00:01:07,160
Speaker 1: I will not comment further. I don't know where you

19
00:01:07,240 --> 00:01:09,280
Speaker 1: got this information, but I made it quite clear I

20
00:01:09,319 --> 00:01:14,160
Speaker 1: did not want it out there. I don't know. How

21
00:01:14,160 --> 00:01:15,880
Speaker 1: are you doing this week? I'm good? How are you?

22
00:01:17,040 --> 00:01:21,480
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not good, like I'm alive, not great. Uh.

23
00:01:21,680 --> 00:01:24,560
Speaker 1: We we've had some fun news this week vis a

24
00:01:24,640 --> 00:01:29,520
Speaker 1: vis the United States, UH and Iran. UM not been

25
00:01:29,560 --> 00:01:34,280
Speaker 1: a high point in our in these two countries international relations.

26
00:01:34,360 --> 00:01:37,200
Speaker 1: I think would be safe to say no, I don't

27
00:01:37,200 --> 00:01:42,160
Speaker 1: think we've been doing well at all. Um. And of course, uh,

28
00:01:42,240 --> 00:01:44,440
Speaker 1: most of that has to do I mean most of

29
00:01:44,480 --> 00:01:47,000
Speaker 1: that right now at least has to do with the

30
00:01:47,000 --> 00:01:51,320
Speaker 1: fact that on Friday, January third, twenty, Iranian General Kassam

31
00:01:51,400 --> 00:01:55,160
Speaker 1: Sulimani was assassinated via missile by the United States as

32
00:01:55,360 --> 00:01:59,400
Speaker 1: motorcade rolled out from the Baghdad airport. Stories that came

33
00:01:59,440 --> 00:02:02,040
Speaker 1: out in the wake of the attack revealed that he

34
00:02:02,080 --> 00:02:04,120
Speaker 1: had been on his way to an official meeting with

35
00:02:04,160 --> 00:02:14,000
Speaker 1: the Prime Minister of Iraq. So UM shot to call yeah, um,

36
00:02:14,040 --> 00:02:19,160
Speaker 1: not a great move necessarily if you care about iraqs

37
00:02:19,600 --> 00:02:27,640
Speaker 1: sovereign rights as a nation, UM or a or anyone. Yeah,

38
00:02:28,720 --> 00:02:33,880
Speaker 1: yeah um A move with some some complications and consequences,

39
00:02:34,360 --> 00:02:37,000
Speaker 1: most of which we don't know yet. UM. So I

40
00:02:37,040 --> 00:02:39,440
Speaker 1: don't I'm not going to really speculate on them. Um,

41
00:02:39,840 --> 00:02:43,440
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about like the the assassination itself much

42
00:02:43,560 --> 00:02:46,680
Speaker 1: or the fallout from it much. UM. Instead, I thought

43
00:02:46,720 --> 00:02:49,440
Speaker 1: something productive to do would be to really dig into

44
00:02:49,600 --> 00:02:53,760
Speaker 1: Mr Sulimani's life, um and and try to like figure

45
00:02:53,800 --> 00:02:57,360
Speaker 1: out who he was as a person. UM. Yeah, I

46
00:02:57,400 --> 00:02:59,120
Speaker 1: kind of think in terms of like what I do,

47
00:02:59,200 --> 00:03:01,280
Speaker 1: that's the one place I can make a difference. UM.

48
00:03:01,360 --> 00:03:03,079
Speaker 1: One of the things I saw online that was really

49
00:03:03,120 --> 00:03:06,120
Speaker 1: frustrated to me. In the immediate wake of the attack, UM,

50
00:03:06,360 --> 00:03:10,920
Speaker 1: CNBC published an article declaring the newly dead general the

51
00:03:10,960 --> 00:03:15,919
Speaker 1: world's biggest bad guy, um, which correct quite a take.

52
00:03:16,480 --> 00:03:20,280
Speaker 1: And then they later revealed that that column was an

53
00:03:20,320 --> 00:03:23,200
Speaker 1: op ed that they hadn't labeled it as such originally,

54
00:03:23,320 --> 00:03:26,080
Speaker 1: which is great. Uh, just like the Washington Post had

55
00:03:26,080 --> 00:03:29,520
Speaker 1: a column being like this, actually, killing Suleimany opens up

56
00:03:29,560 --> 00:03:32,200
Speaker 1: some like new avenues for diplomacy for the United States,

57
00:03:32,200 --> 00:03:33,760
Speaker 1: And it then turned out that the guy who wrote

58
00:03:33,760 --> 00:03:36,600
Speaker 1: it worked for Raytheon, the company that designed the guidance

59
00:03:36,600 --> 00:03:40,800
Speaker 1: systems for the missiles that killed Sulamani. Guys, it's really

60
00:03:40,800 --> 00:03:42,960
Speaker 1: great for us, like we can sell a lot of

61
00:03:43,000 --> 00:03:45,960
Speaker 1: weapons for this upcoming doom war. We're like kind of

62
00:03:46,000 --> 00:03:48,160
Speaker 1: heading towards so hey, stop looking at it in such

63
00:03:48,160 --> 00:03:52,320
Speaker 1: a negative light. Yeah, it's uh. You know, if he'd

64
00:03:52,320 --> 00:03:54,000
Speaker 1: framed it as this is going to be great for

65
00:03:54,040 --> 00:03:57,560
Speaker 1: selling weapons, I would say, totally honest column. The fact

66
00:03:57,640 --> 00:04:00,400
Speaker 1: that it was framed in terms of diplomacy where I

67
00:04:00,480 --> 00:04:03,240
Speaker 1: start to have an issue. Um. But it wasn't just

68
00:04:03,280 --> 00:04:05,920
Speaker 1: sort of the right wing and centrist media that had

69
00:04:06,080 --> 00:04:10,680
Speaker 1: unbelievably bad takes about Sulimani and his career. On the

70
00:04:10,760 --> 00:04:14,200
Speaker 1: left wing, people started spinning yards about Cossum's legacy uh

71
00:04:14,240 --> 00:04:17,880
Speaker 1: and portraying him as an anti imperialist fighter. On Twitter,

72
00:04:17,920 --> 00:04:20,360
Speaker 1: people like Ranya Kalek and Ben Norton with the Gray

73
00:04:20,440 --> 00:04:23,480
Speaker 1: Zones started claiming that the Iranian general had defeated ISIS

74
00:04:23,520 --> 00:04:25,960
Speaker 1: and Iraq uh in Tens of thousands of folks on

75
00:04:26,000 --> 00:04:29,600
Speaker 1: the left retweeted and shared variations of this take. And

76
00:04:30,000 --> 00:04:31,919
Speaker 1: one thing I think we can be sure of is

77
00:04:31,920 --> 00:04:34,280
Speaker 1: that about of the people on the left and the

78
00:04:34,360 --> 00:04:35,960
Speaker 1: right in the middle who have come out with takes

79
00:04:35,960 --> 00:04:38,320
Speaker 1: on Cossum Sulimani in the last week or so had

80
00:04:38,360 --> 00:04:41,840
Speaker 1: not heard his name prior to his assassination UM, and

81
00:04:42,040 --> 00:04:47,039
Speaker 1: could not have identified a picture of him. Um, I'm

82
00:04:47,080 --> 00:04:49,200
Speaker 1: not an expert on the guy. I can say I've

83
00:04:49,240 --> 00:04:51,640
Speaker 1: known about him for a little over four years, since

84
00:04:51,680 --> 00:04:54,279
Speaker 1: I started studying and traveling to Iraq. He's kind of

85
00:04:54,279 --> 00:04:56,200
Speaker 1: impossible to miss if you go to that part of

86
00:04:56,200 --> 00:04:58,120
Speaker 1: the world. A lot of people in Iraq joked that

87
00:04:58,200 --> 00:05:00,240
Speaker 1: he was the Prime Minister of Iraq like that was

88
00:05:00,400 --> 00:05:04,000
Speaker 1: a common joke, particularly in the South. Um. But the

89
00:05:04,040 --> 00:05:05,839
Speaker 1: fact that I've known who this guy was for four

90
00:05:05,920 --> 00:05:08,120
Speaker 1: years puts me in the same basket as the man

91
00:05:08,160 --> 00:05:12,480
Speaker 1: who ordered his assassination our president. In two thousand fifteen,

92
00:05:12,600 --> 00:05:15,160
Speaker 1: then candidate Donald J. Trump appeared on the talk show

93
00:05:15,200 --> 00:05:18,400
Speaker 1: of right wing radio icon Hugh Hewitt, who asked him,

94
00:05:18,680 --> 00:05:23,120
Speaker 1: are you familiar with General Suleimanny. Trump replied yes, and

95
00:05:23,120 --> 00:05:25,159
Speaker 1: then made it clear that this was a lie by saying,

96
00:05:25,400 --> 00:05:29,159
Speaker 1: go ahead, give me a little you know, tell me so.

97
00:05:29,240 --> 00:05:31,800
Speaker 1: Hewitt went on to explain to the future president that

98
00:05:31,880 --> 00:05:35,760
Speaker 1: Sulimany ran Iran's famous KOD's Force, which is essentially kind

99
00:05:35,760 --> 00:05:37,800
Speaker 1: of like the CIA, mixed in with the Green Berets

100
00:05:37,800 --> 00:05:40,960
Speaker 1: a little bit. Um, and Trump clearly had no idea

101
00:05:41,040 --> 00:05:44,240
Speaker 1: what the Kods Force was because His immediate response was,

102
00:05:44,440 --> 00:05:46,520
Speaker 1: I think the Kurds, by the way, have been horribly

103
00:05:46,560 --> 00:05:50,880
Speaker 1: mistreated by US. So he clearly heard Kurds instead of

104
00:05:50,960 --> 00:05:55,680
Speaker 1: Kods force and Hugh Hewitt had to correct him on that.

105
00:05:55,800 --> 00:05:58,719
Speaker 1: So that's that That's where Trump's level of knowledge of

106
00:05:58,760 --> 00:06:02,440
Speaker 1: this guy was four years for ordering his assassination, which

107
00:06:02,480 --> 00:06:06,280
Speaker 1: is fun which is like, yeah, no, toads love that guy.

108
00:06:06,480 --> 00:06:11,479
Speaker 1: Great guy, He's great. I honestly I've never heard anything negative, wonderful.

109
00:06:11,760 --> 00:06:13,919
Speaker 1: It would have been funny if Hugh Hugh Wit hadn't

110
00:06:13,920 --> 00:06:15,800
Speaker 1: have been a right wing hill, if he had just

111
00:06:15,880 --> 00:06:18,240
Speaker 1: kept running and like seeing how much he could get

112
00:06:18,279 --> 00:06:21,640
Speaker 1: Trump to say about General Sulimani in context of like

113
00:06:21,960 --> 00:06:24,479
Speaker 1: thinking he was occurred like you could have gotten thirty

114
00:06:24,480 --> 00:06:27,560
Speaker 1: minutes of fun radio out of that question. Did he

115
00:06:27,600 --> 00:06:32,120
Speaker 1: correct him? Was he like, oh, oh yeah, yeah, and

116
00:06:32,120 --> 00:06:34,880
Speaker 1: it was Trump said, oh I thought you said curts.

117
00:06:34,920 --> 00:06:39,080
Speaker 1: Of course, well, I guess also not to be that

118
00:06:39,200 --> 00:06:42,679
Speaker 1: person who defends Trump in anyway. But if you don't

119
00:06:42,680 --> 00:06:45,719
Speaker 1: know like Iranian Revolutionary Guard and you don't know the

120
00:06:45,760 --> 00:06:50,440
Speaker 1: shirt go by q U d S, could it's I

121
00:06:50,440 --> 00:06:53,080
Speaker 1: guess it's wouldn't I mean, if you just have no

122
00:06:53,360 --> 00:06:58,440
Speaker 1: understanding of like Middle Eastern anything. You would never make

123
00:06:58,480 --> 00:07:02,200
Speaker 1: that connection. For for for a normal person, that's a

124
00:07:02,240 --> 00:07:06,159
Speaker 1: perfectly fine mistake to make. I would say, I think

125
00:07:07,080 --> 00:07:09,680
Speaker 1: of the people who run for president, especially who are

126
00:07:09,720 --> 00:07:11,480
Speaker 1: running through President two thousand and sixteen, should know who

127
00:07:11,520 --> 00:07:17,600
Speaker 1: cost him. Sulimani like, yes, um, yeah he was. He

128
00:07:17,640 --> 00:07:20,080
Speaker 1: was a big guy, and the story we're gonna tell

129
00:07:20,120 --> 00:07:23,240
Speaker 1: today is the story of how he became a very

130
00:07:23,360 --> 00:07:26,320
Speaker 1: very big dude. Um. And one of the things that's like,

131
00:07:28,800 --> 00:07:32,120
Speaker 1: you know, when when you're talking about like actors at

132
00:07:32,120 --> 00:07:34,560
Speaker 1: this level on the national stage who are responsible for

133
00:07:34,680 --> 00:07:38,600
Speaker 1: horrible things and for good things, um, you don't often

134
00:07:38,680 --> 00:07:41,520
Speaker 1: run across some people who are as competent as this

135
00:07:41,560 --> 00:07:45,000
Speaker 1: guy was. Um. Or at least that's the prevailing theory.

136
00:07:45,040 --> 00:07:47,280
Speaker 1: There's a couple of different theories that maybe like yeah,

137
00:07:47,360 --> 00:07:49,120
Speaker 1: well we'll we'll get into that a little bit. But

138
00:07:49,320 --> 00:07:52,600
Speaker 1: um he's an interesting dude. He's like a character from

139
00:07:52,920 --> 00:07:56,400
Speaker 1: um uh, like like a like a Cold war spy novel.

140
00:07:56,440 --> 00:08:01,120
Speaker 1: He's like like like that level of like um uh,

141
00:08:01,160 --> 00:08:04,400
Speaker 1: like genius at school duggery. He's very good at what

142
00:08:04,440 --> 00:08:07,640
Speaker 1: he did, and so he's an entertaining guy to read about. Um,

143
00:08:07,680 --> 00:08:10,160
Speaker 1: if you can kind of put yourself in the head

144
00:08:10,200 --> 00:08:12,679
Speaker 1: of like reading it as a story and not reading

145
00:08:12,680 --> 00:08:15,280
Speaker 1: it as like a tale of history where actual human

146
00:08:15,280 --> 00:08:17,960
Speaker 1: lives were affected. But it's interesting as hell, and I

147
00:08:18,000 --> 00:08:21,800
Speaker 1: really recommend um. There's one particularly good article about this

148
00:08:21,800 --> 00:08:23,120
Speaker 1: guy that we'll get to in a bit. But he's

149
00:08:23,120 --> 00:08:25,640
Speaker 1: he's he's worth reading about, and you'll understand more about

150
00:08:25,640 --> 00:08:28,760
Speaker 1: what's going on if you do. Yeah, he's started from

151
00:08:28,760 --> 00:08:35,520
Speaker 1: the bottom. Now we are here type yes, yes, uh.

152
00:08:35,559 --> 00:08:37,720
Speaker 1: And I won't quote the rest of that song because

153
00:08:37,720 --> 00:08:40,760
Speaker 1: there's a bad word in it. Uh. This is this

154
00:08:40,920 --> 00:08:44,240
Speaker 1: is a clean shows a clean sew now no, but

155
00:08:44,400 --> 00:08:47,600
Speaker 1: not that one. Um. So yeah. I one of the

156
00:08:47,600 --> 00:08:49,480
Speaker 1: things I did when I was doing my research on

157
00:08:49,520 --> 00:08:52,200
Speaker 1: Sulimani is I made sure to avoid I tried to

158
00:08:52,200 --> 00:08:55,240
Speaker 1: avoid as much as possible using sources that were written

159
00:08:55,600 --> 00:08:59,679
Speaker 1: after the assassination, because everybody writing anything after the assassination,

160
00:08:59,720 --> 00:09:01,720
Speaker 1: at LEAs right now. I assume new Ship will come

161
00:09:01,720 --> 00:09:03,520
Speaker 1: out at some point, but everyone right now is just

162
00:09:03,679 --> 00:09:06,200
Speaker 1: rewriting the couple of good articles there were about this

163
00:09:06,240 --> 00:09:09,920
Speaker 1: guy before he was killed. Um, and getting stuff wrong

164
00:09:10,080 --> 00:09:13,080
Speaker 1: in the translation. So I avoided that for the most part,

165
00:09:13,120 --> 00:09:15,640
Speaker 1: and I would caution people to be very hesitant to

166
00:09:15,640 --> 00:09:18,560
Speaker 1: trust much that you hear about this dude in the

167
00:09:18,600 --> 00:09:20,880
Speaker 1: next couple of months, maybe years, because it's going to

168
00:09:21,000 --> 00:09:22,720
Speaker 1: take a while for us to get much more good

169
00:09:22,720 --> 00:09:26,680
Speaker 1: information out on him. He's a very politicized figure. I

170
00:09:26,720 --> 00:09:30,480
Speaker 1: also recommend reading, uh, what Middle Eastern writers are writing

171
00:09:31,760 --> 00:09:35,440
Speaker 1: during this time. Although one of the things, like some

172
00:09:35,520 --> 00:09:37,600
Speaker 1: of the Middle Eastern writers I found writing on this

173
00:09:37,679 --> 00:09:41,160
Speaker 1: guy right for places like the American Enterprise Institute UM

174
00:09:41,320 --> 00:09:44,160
Speaker 1: so like, which is like a right wing thing tank.

175
00:09:44,200 --> 00:09:47,079
Speaker 1: It's like a neo conservative think tank. In the article

176
00:09:47,080 --> 00:09:51,079
Speaker 1: on him there isn't terrible, but like everything you find

177
00:09:51,080 --> 00:09:56,079
Speaker 1: on this guy is very political UM, which is like, so, yeah,

178
00:09:56,160 --> 00:09:57,800
Speaker 1: do your do your best to find a variety of

179
00:09:57,800 --> 00:09:59,800
Speaker 1: sources and avoid anything new if you're going to do

180
00:09:59,840 --> 00:10:04,280
Speaker 1: your own research on this UM is my recommendation, so Um.

181
00:10:04,400 --> 00:10:08,400
Speaker 1: Kassam Sulimani was born on March eleventh, nineteen fifty seven,

182
00:10:09,000 --> 00:10:13,560
Speaker 1: seven not fifty seven, in the village of Rabbar raybar

183
00:10:14,080 --> 00:10:17,160
Speaker 1: r A b o r Uh in Kerman Province, Iran.

184
00:10:17,720 --> 00:10:19,920
Speaker 1: His father was a farmer and when Kossum was small,

185
00:10:20,000 --> 00:10:22,400
Speaker 1: his dad took out an agricultural loan from the government

186
00:10:22,440 --> 00:10:26,600
Speaker 1: of the Shah, Mohammed Reza Palavi. Now the Shaw, born

187
00:10:26,600 --> 00:10:29,200
Speaker 1: in nineteen nineteen, had come to power in nineteen forty

188
00:10:29,240 --> 00:10:32,040
Speaker 1: one after his father, the previous Shaw, had refused to

189
00:10:32,080 --> 00:10:34,840
Speaker 1: support the Allies during World War Two. In the early

190
00:10:34,920 --> 00:10:37,760
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, before Cossum was born, the Shah fought a

191
00:10:37,800 --> 00:10:41,320
Speaker 1: brutal power struggle with his Prime minister. Palavi, was briefly

192
00:10:41,320 --> 00:10:44,080
Speaker 1: ousted and returned to power only with the express backing

193
00:10:44,120 --> 00:10:46,880
Speaker 1: of the United States and Great Britain. I'm I'm leaving

194
00:10:46,880 --> 00:10:49,320
Speaker 1: out a lot of detail because that's a paragraph there,

195
00:10:49,760 --> 00:10:54,240
Speaker 1: but I think we're hitting the highlights. Um. Now, upon

196
00:10:54,400 --> 00:10:56,920
Speaker 1: his return, the Shaw established what many would consider a

197
00:10:56,920 --> 00:10:59,040
Speaker 1: brutal and repressive police state with the help of his

198
00:10:59,120 --> 00:11:02,400
Speaker 1: secret police, the savak Uh. The show treated the entire

199
00:11:02,480 --> 00:11:05,040
Speaker 1: nation as basically his bank account, or an extension of

200
00:11:05,080 --> 00:11:07,760
Speaker 1: his bank account, and by the time Kasum would have

201
00:11:07,760 --> 00:11:09,800
Speaker 1: been a young boy, the problem was so bad that

202
00:11:09,840 --> 00:11:12,600
Speaker 1: even British observers were shocked by the level of corruption

203
00:11:12,640 --> 00:11:16,000
Speaker 1: within the Iranian government. Here's a selection I picked almost

204
00:11:16,000 --> 00:11:18,520
Speaker 1: at random from the nineteen seventy six New York Times

205
00:11:18,600 --> 00:11:22,760
Speaker 1: article talking about the Shah's government quote to under secretaries

206
00:11:22,800 --> 00:11:26,320
Speaker 1: the handsome Hussain Alzetta and the scholarly doctor Mohammed Ali

207
00:11:26,440 --> 00:11:30,400
Speaker 1: Serifa or Serafi have been dismissed for alleged sugar purchasing

208
00:11:30,400 --> 00:11:32,920
Speaker 1: irregularities which are said to have involve the Iranian government

209
00:11:32,920 --> 00:11:36,520
Speaker 1: and unneeded expenditures of forty five million. To underscore the point,

210
00:11:36,559 --> 00:11:39,720
Speaker 1: Tehran newspapers, which are indirectly controlled by the regime, have

211
00:11:39,800 --> 00:11:41,800
Speaker 1: piously pointed out that this money could have been used

212
00:11:41,800 --> 00:11:45,960
Speaker 1: to build thirty thousand country schools or three thousand hospitals. So, like,

213
00:11:46,400 --> 00:11:49,679
Speaker 1: that's the kind of shady deed dealings that are like

214
00:11:50,240 --> 00:11:53,600
Speaker 1: daily news. Um when the Shah is in power and

215
00:11:53,640 --> 00:11:56,880
Speaker 1: the United States has involved in quite a lot of this. Grumman,

216
00:11:56,960 --> 00:11:59,840
Speaker 1: which at that time was a long island aerospace concern,

217
00:12:00,000 --> 00:12:02,120
Speaker 1: it is now Northrop Grumman, which is like a major

218
00:12:02,200 --> 00:12:08,360
Speaker 1: part of our like uh security industry, like security industrial complex.

219
00:12:08,400 --> 00:12:11,079
Speaker 1: I guess you say, um Like they did a bunch

220
00:12:11,160 --> 00:12:13,719
Speaker 1: of like shady bribes to middleman in Iran in order

221
00:12:13,720 --> 00:12:15,640
Speaker 1: to get the Iranian government to like buy a bunch

222
00:12:15,679 --> 00:12:19,520
Speaker 1: of airplane parts and stuff from them that were necessarily like,

223
00:12:19,600 --> 00:12:24,040
Speaker 1: actually useful. Um And so Grumman was basically funneling corporate

224
00:12:24,040 --> 00:12:26,320
Speaker 1: money into the hands of individual members of the Shah's

225
00:12:26,360 --> 00:12:28,760
Speaker 1: government so that they would spend huge amounts of defense

226
00:12:28,800 --> 00:12:31,680
Speaker 1: money on ship they didn't need, which would be profits

227
00:12:31,679 --> 00:12:33,960
Speaker 1: for Grumman. Um. And all of the money that was

228
00:12:34,000 --> 00:12:37,120
Speaker 1: spent on this was of course money that normal Iranian

229
00:12:37,160 --> 00:12:41,520
Speaker 1: people like Cossum's dad paid to the Shah's government in taxes. Um. So,

230
00:12:41,640 --> 00:12:44,560
Speaker 1: Cossum grew up as an into an adolescent watching his

231
00:12:44,600 --> 00:12:47,440
Speaker 1: father play crippling taxes and interest on a loan to

232
00:12:47,520 --> 00:12:50,560
Speaker 1: a central government that basically stole money from its people

233
00:12:50,600 --> 00:12:55,200
Speaker 1: for their own personal enrichment. Um Now, when his father's

234
00:12:55,240 --> 00:13:02,760
Speaker 1: agricultural Iranian can't comment further, Hey, you do what you

235
00:13:02,760 --> 00:13:07,600
Speaker 1: gotta do, you know, yeah. Um So, when his father's

236
00:13:07,640 --> 00:13:10,720
Speaker 1: agriculture alone came to the Shah's government offered no forgiveness

237
00:13:10,800 --> 00:13:13,439
Speaker 1: or respite costumes, father wind up owing the equivalent of

238
00:13:13,440 --> 00:13:15,680
Speaker 1: about a hundred U S dollars, which was enough debt

239
00:13:15,720 --> 00:13:18,679
Speaker 1: to have rendered his family destitute at that point in time. So,

240
00:13:18,720 --> 00:13:21,120
Speaker 1: at age thirteen, Cossum and his cousin ah Mad had

241
00:13:21,160 --> 00:13:23,480
Speaker 1: to leave home without their parents knowing, in order to

242
00:13:23,480 --> 00:13:26,320
Speaker 1: go work in the city of Kerman. He later recalled,

243
00:13:26,520 --> 00:13:28,760
Speaker 1: at night, we couldn't fall asleep with the sadness of

244
00:13:28,760 --> 00:13:31,280
Speaker 1: thinking that government agents were coming to arrest our fathers.

245
00:13:31,280 --> 00:13:33,560
Speaker 1: We were only thirteen and our bodies were so tiny.

246
00:13:33,559 --> 00:13:36,080
Speaker 1: Wherever we went, they wouldn't hire us until one day

247
00:13:36,120 --> 00:13:38,439
Speaker 1: when we were hired as laborers at a school construction

248
00:13:38,480 --> 00:13:40,920
Speaker 1: site on Kaju Street, which is where the city ended.

249
00:13:41,080 --> 00:13:43,480
Speaker 1: That paid his two tom nd per day, which is

250
00:13:43,520 --> 00:13:46,160
Speaker 1: the currency at the time, I guess. So it took

251
00:13:46,200 --> 00:13:48,160
Speaker 1: eight months for the boys to save up enough money

252
00:13:48,200 --> 00:13:50,679
Speaker 1: to make a meaningful dent in their father's debts. Uh

253
00:13:50,720 --> 00:13:53,520
Speaker 1: And unfortunately, by the time they had saved up enough money,

254
00:13:53,600 --> 00:13:55,120
Speaker 1: it was late enough in the year that the mountain

255
00:13:55,160 --> 00:13:57,960
Speaker 1: passes back home were covered in thick snow. The boys

256
00:13:57,960 --> 00:14:00,040
Speaker 1: had to find a local man with a car I

257
00:14:00,120 --> 00:14:03,319
Speaker 1: named Palavan Uh and he drove them back. And according

258
00:14:03,320 --> 00:14:06,600
Speaker 1: to Sulimani's later recollections, this guy really hated the shaw

259
00:14:06,920 --> 00:14:09,640
Speaker 1: and he was the first person to express seditious political

260
00:14:09,720 --> 00:14:13,520
Speaker 1: views to the young cossum. Poulavan was particularly furious that

261
00:14:13,600 --> 00:14:15,800
Speaker 1: small children have would have to work full time to

262
00:14:15,800 --> 00:14:19,280
Speaker 1: pay off a relative's debt to the already wealthy. Shaw Uh,

263
00:14:19,320 --> 00:14:20,920
Speaker 1: this is the time for them to rest in play

264
00:14:20,960 --> 00:14:23,000
Speaker 1: and not work as a laborer and a strange city.

265
00:14:23,120 --> 00:14:24,920
Speaker 1: I spit on the life they have made for us.

266
00:14:25,160 --> 00:14:29,000
Speaker 1: Cosumercalled this guy saying, Um, so this is like clearly

267
00:14:29,000 --> 00:14:31,880
Speaker 1: an important moment in his young life, and it makes

268
00:14:31,920 --> 00:14:36,760
Speaker 1: his like his personal memoirs um. And again it's hard

269
00:14:36,800 --> 00:14:38,520
Speaker 1: to say how true that all is, because again he's

270
00:14:38,520 --> 00:14:40,840
Speaker 1: a very politicized figure. These are the memoires he came

271
00:14:40,840 --> 00:14:43,160
Speaker 1: out with, and you get the hint with some of

272
00:14:43,200 --> 00:14:45,320
Speaker 1: them that he's trying to sort of like inculcate some

273
00:14:45,400 --> 00:14:49,800
Speaker 1: values that he wants to spread in the populace. Um.

274
00:14:49,840 --> 00:14:51,880
Speaker 1: But most of what we know about costums early life

275
00:14:51,880 --> 00:14:54,080
Speaker 1: came from either a book that he wrote or that

276
00:14:54,160 --> 00:14:57,040
Speaker 1: might have been ghost written about his life. Um. And

277
00:14:57,080 --> 00:14:59,440
Speaker 1: then you know a few interviewers who have kind of

278
00:14:59,480 --> 00:15:02,800
Speaker 1: like around folks in that region, some historians and stuff,

279
00:15:02,800 --> 00:15:06,680
Speaker 1: but there's there's not a huge amount out there. Um.

280
00:15:06,800 --> 00:15:09,360
Speaker 1: The experts who have analyzed Cossum's early life outside of

281
00:15:09,360 --> 00:15:11,800
Speaker 1: his own book do agree that he grew up very poor,

282
00:15:11,880 --> 00:15:13,880
Speaker 1: and he would have been working heavily from a young age.

283
00:15:13,960 --> 00:15:16,400
Speaker 1: The story about his father's debt meanten that he had

284
00:15:16,440 --> 00:15:18,040
Speaker 1: he and a cousin had to go to the city

285
00:15:18,120 --> 00:15:21,600
Speaker 1: to work it off. That's almost certainly true. Um. We

286
00:15:21,640 --> 00:15:24,200
Speaker 1: know Cossum got no more than a high school education.

287
00:15:24,240 --> 00:15:27,600
Speaker 1: He's been about five years in school maybe, um. And

288
00:15:27,640 --> 00:15:29,480
Speaker 1: by the time he was a young adult, he'd managed

289
00:15:29,520 --> 00:15:31,880
Speaker 1: to get himself a job working for the water department

290
00:15:31,960 --> 00:15:34,440
Speaker 1: in the city of Kerman. Now, by this point it

291
00:15:34,440 --> 00:15:36,840
Speaker 1: was the nineteen seventies and the twilight of the Shah's

292
00:15:36,920 --> 00:15:40,040
Speaker 1: period of control. Revolutionary fervor had gripped many sections of

293
00:15:40,080 --> 00:15:43,200
Speaker 1: Iranian society. Various movements rose up to question the royal

294
00:15:43,240 --> 00:15:47,760
Speaker 1: grip on power. Cossum meanwhile, dedicated himself to getting swollen

295
00:15:48,040 --> 00:15:51,680
Speaker 1: as hell. Uh. He became a dedicated weightlifter and began

296
00:15:51,760 --> 00:15:54,920
Speaker 1: socializing with a group of equally swollen and equally frustrated

297
00:15:54,960 --> 00:15:58,600
Speaker 1: young men. Um. So he's not a revolutionary initially, he's

298
00:15:58,640 --> 00:16:02,280
Speaker 1: a He's a gym rat. Comes into his like late teens,

299
00:16:02,280 --> 00:16:04,600
Speaker 1: early twenties. Right. Based on my understand he wasn't very

300
00:16:04,600 --> 00:16:08,400
Speaker 1: religious either. I think Um, yeah, he grew up kind

301
00:16:08,400 --> 00:16:13,600
Speaker 1: of not necessarily secular, but it wasn't the most present

302
00:16:14,480 --> 00:16:19,000
Speaker 1: in his childhood growing up. No, And I you don't

303
00:16:19,000 --> 00:16:21,480
Speaker 1: get the feeling. You hear different things about this guy.

304
00:16:21,520 --> 00:16:24,240
Speaker 1: Some who will say he was extremely pious, a lot

305
00:16:24,240 --> 00:16:27,840
Speaker 1: of folks who like knew him and talked. You get

306
00:16:27,840 --> 00:16:30,440
Speaker 1: the feeling kind of openly about it. It wasn't a

307
00:16:30,440 --> 00:16:32,800
Speaker 1: big deal to him. Like I do think it would

308
00:16:32,800 --> 00:16:37,120
Speaker 1: be accurate to say his religion was the Iranian state

309
00:16:37,320 --> 00:16:40,480
Speaker 1: and like the revolution as he saw it. Like, I

310
00:16:40,760 --> 00:16:42,680
Speaker 1: think he was that kind of dude as opposed to

311
00:16:42,720 --> 00:16:46,880
Speaker 1: like being super pious, but he was. He was Funny.

312
00:16:46,920 --> 00:16:50,080
Speaker 1: You say he's pious because he was a pisces, which

313
00:16:50,080 --> 00:16:53,560
Speaker 1: means he's very kind of has some intensity, and but

314
00:16:53,600 --> 00:16:57,640
Speaker 1: he's adapted, so he you know, he adapts to his situation.

315
00:16:57,720 --> 00:17:00,800
Speaker 1: And you know, when you're trying to to fight to

316
00:17:01,040 --> 00:17:03,920
Speaker 1: what payoff loan for your father or just trying to

317
00:17:03,960 --> 00:17:06,080
Speaker 1: survive when you're poor, and you just adapt to your

318
00:17:06,160 --> 00:17:07,960
Speaker 1: environment and do what you need to do to get by,

319
00:17:08,119 --> 00:17:12,560
Speaker 1: and if that is joining U army, you do what

320
00:17:12,640 --> 00:17:18,080
Speaker 1: you can. Yeah, he's adaptive, so he as as a

321
00:17:18,080 --> 00:17:20,480
Speaker 1: young man he Um. Yeah, he starts getting swollen hell

322
00:17:20,840 --> 00:17:23,840
Speaker 1: um and that that's mostly his social group for a

323
00:17:23,880 --> 00:17:27,879
Speaker 1: little while. And Uh, he does start attending a series

324
00:17:27,880 --> 00:17:30,680
Speaker 1: of sermons by a traveling preacher who worked with one

325
00:17:30,720 --> 00:17:34,359
Speaker 1: of the future Ayatolas. And this is where Kasum first

326
00:17:34,359 --> 00:17:38,280
Speaker 1: became seduced by the idea of Iran without its shaw Um.

327
00:17:38,359 --> 00:17:41,040
Speaker 1: So he's not again, he's not a part of the

328
00:17:41,040 --> 00:17:43,760
Speaker 1: There is like a revolutionary movement. There's like a revolutionary

329
00:17:43,840 --> 00:17:48,920
Speaker 1: leftist movement in Iran and a revolutionary like Islamist movement. Um.

330
00:17:48,960 --> 00:17:51,160
Speaker 1: And obviously the Islamist movement is the one that actually

331
00:17:51,200 --> 00:17:55,840
Speaker 1: like overthrow, succeeds in overthrowing the Shah. Um. But he's

332
00:17:55,840 --> 00:17:57,680
Speaker 1: not really a part of any of that. Like he's

333
00:17:57,800 --> 00:18:00,600
Speaker 1: entranced by some of the speeches of some of these

334
00:18:00,600 --> 00:18:04,200
Speaker 1: guys who are pro that, but he never really gets involved. Um.

335
00:18:04,280 --> 00:18:08,160
Speaker 1: And so in nineteen seventy nine, uh Ayatola Ruhola Komeni

336
00:18:08,280 --> 00:18:11,560
Speaker 1: overthrows the Shah's government. Uh. And it Claire's an Islamic

337
00:18:11,560 --> 00:18:14,760
Speaker 1: republic in Iran or a bunch of people backing Uh

338
00:18:14,920 --> 00:18:17,119
Speaker 1: the Ayatola I should say he didn't he didn't do

339
00:18:17,160 --> 00:18:20,320
Speaker 1: it on his own UM. Now, one of the new

340
00:18:20,359 --> 00:18:23,280
Speaker 1: Ayatola's first orders of business was to secure this new

341
00:18:23,320 --> 00:18:27,200
Speaker 1: regime from being overthrown, particularly by elements in the military

342
00:18:27,200 --> 00:18:28,879
Speaker 1: who might still have been loyal to the Shaw or

343
00:18:28,880 --> 00:18:32,119
Speaker 1: at least who weren't necessarily loyal to the Ayatola. And

344
00:18:32,200 --> 00:18:36,040
Speaker 1: to this end he established the Revolutionary Guard, which is

345
00:18:36,119 --> 00:18:39,159
Speaker 1: essentially was essentially a separate branch of the military that

346
00:18:39,240 --> 00:18:42,480
Speaker 1: was loyal directly to the clerics who now ran the country.

347
00:18:42,960 --> 00:18:45,480
Speaker 1: UM and young Kassam left his gig at the Water

348
00:18:45,560 --> 00:18:48,439
Speaker 1: department to join the Revolutionary Guard. He found himself like

349
00:18:49,119 --> 00:18:51,159
Speaker 1: called to get involved with this new thing. And this

350
00:18:51,240 --> 00:18:53,040
Speaker 1: is a smart move. You see this a lot in

351
00:18:53,119 --> 00:18:56,680
Speaker 1: history when you have revolutions, most of them will set

352
00:18:56,800 --> 00:19:00,960
Speaker 1: up a military like side structure. Like if they don't

353
00:19:01,000 --> 00:19:04,639
Speaker 1: outright just destroy the military, the military stays intact, but

354
00:19:04,720 --> 00:19:06,880
Speaker 1: nobody really trusted. You see this with like a lot

355
00:19:06,880 --> 00:19:09,639
Speaker 1: of revolution see revolutionary governments. You don't see it like

356
00:19:09,680 --> 00:19:12,439
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union so much because they did kind of

357
00:19:12,480 --> 00:19:16,320
Speaker 1: destroy everything that it existed before UM, but you see

358
00:19:16,359 --> 00:19:18,520
Speaker 1: it in a lot of revolutionary movements where like they'll

359
00:19:18,560 --> 00:19:21,920
Speaker 1: have to set up a side sort of security structure

360
00:19:22,000 --> 00:19:24,600
Speaker 1: outside of what had existed before, because they can't do

361
00:19:24,680 --> 00:19:26,919
Speaker 1: away with that entirely, but they don't trust it. And

362
00:19:26,960 --> 00:19:29,080
Speaker 1: when you have this new kind of thing, like the

363
00:19:29,119 --> 00:19:32,520
Speaker 1: Revolutionary Guard was, you have an opportunity for like a

364
00:19:32,520 --> 00:19:35,600
Speaker 1: young man with no history to make a big name

365
00:19:35,800 --> 00:19:40,320
Speaker 1: for himself because like the military or like the intelligence

366
00:19:40,359 --> 00:19:44,480
Speaker 1: agencies like those are like really ossified, strict structures. Were like,

367
00:19:45,240 --> 00:19:46,919
Speaker 1: you know, there's a certain way they do things, and

368
00:19:46,960 --> 00:19:49,240
Speaker 1: they tend to hire from certain groups of the population,

369
00:19:49,400 --> 00:19:51,199
Speaker 1: and if you don't know anybody, you're probably not going

370
00:19:51,280 --> 00:19:53,920
Speaker 1: to get much of a shot there. Um, whereas the

371
00:19:53,960 --> 00:19:57,040
Speaker 1: Revolutionary Guard, nothing's written. And so this guy, this poor

372
00:19:57,119 --> 00:20:00,240
Speaker 1: kid from carmen Um can join it any as a

373
00:20:00,320 --> 00:20:03,879
Speaker 1: chance to actually like build a career for himself, and

374
00:20:03,920 --> 00:20:08,720
Speaker 1: he immediately distinguishes himself as very intelligent, um, very ambitious,

375
00:20:08,920 --> 00:20:12,919
Speaker 1: and he starts to rise within the Revolutionary Guards by

376
00:20:12,920 --> 00:20:18,360
Speaker 1: the time he's because he's extremely loyal, because he's a Pisces. Yes,

377
00:20:18,480 --> 00:20:22,040
Speaker 1: that's exactly what he credited to as well. Yeah, big

378
00:20:22,119 --> 00:20:29,080
Speaker 1: big zodiac guy. I remember that about him. So by

379
00:20:29,080 --> 00:20:31,440
Speaker 1: the time Suleiman, he's twenty three years old, he'd earned

380
00:20:31,480 --> 00:20:33,480
Speaker 1: himself enough trust that he was sent with a group

381
00:20:33,480 --> 00:20:37,240
Speaker 1: of guardsmen to suppress pretty brutally a Kurdish uprising in

382
00:20:37,320 --> 00:20:41,000
Speaker 1: West azer Baijan in a place called Mahabad. Now in

383
00:20:41,040 --> 00:20:43,480
Speaker 1: the late nineteen forties, Mahabad had been the site of

384
00:20:43,480 --> 00:20:46,480
Speaker 1: a short lived Kurdish Socialist Republic which had fought for

385
00:20:46,520 --> 00:20:49,600
Speaker 1: its independence briefly, but was abandoned by the U s

386
00:20:49,760 --> 00:20:52,600
Speaker 1: SR it's only hope of survival and then eaten up

387
00:20:52,600 --> 00:20:55,440
Speaker 1: and destroyed. UH. In the wake of the Shah's overthrow,

388
00:20:55,560 --> 00:20:58,919
Speaker 1: Mahabad's Curds had decided to basically give independence another go.

389
00:20:59,160 --> 00:21:01,640
Speaker 1: If you know anything about Kurdish history, this happens all

390
00:21:01,640 --> 00:21:05,680
Speaker 1: the time, UH, and it never works out, so UM,

391
00:21:05,720 --> 00:21:07,760
Speaker 1: and it did not work out this time. UM. We

392
00:21:07,800 --> 00:21:11,720
Speaker 1: don't know much specifically about Sulimani's individual actions to crush

393
00:21:11,800 --> 00:21:14,560
Speaker 1: this uprising. UH. It's not part of his backstory that's

394
00:21:14,600 --> 00:21:18,120
Speaker 1: often emphasized, particularly since he wound up dealing very frequently

395
00:21:18,160 --> 00:21:20,600
Speaker 1: with Kurds in Iraq and in Syria on a diplomatic

396
00:21:20,600 --> 00:21:22,800
Speaker 1: basis over the course of his career. So it wasn't

397
00:21:22,840 --> 00:21:26,199
Speaker 1: a great thing to go into detail about. UM. But

398
00:21:26,480 --> 00:21:30,800
Speaker 1: this action against the Mahabad uprising by the Revolutionary Guard UM.

399
00:21:30,840 --> 00:21:33,520
Speaker 1: It was really like the first big action taken by

400
00:21:33,560 --> 00:21:38,200
Speaker 1: the Revolutionary Guard UM. And participating in the Mahabad rebellion

401
00:21:38,440 --> 00:21:41,560
Speaker 1: UM becomes seen as like if you do that, like

402
00:21:41,600 --> 00:21:44,399
Speaker 1: that's kind of what makes you UM like marks you

403
00:21:44,520 --> 00:21:47,320
Speaker 1: out is like a big name and o g in

404
00:21:47,359 --> 00:21:50,000
Speaker 1: the Revolutionary Guard Corps. You were a part of this

405
00:21:50,000 --> 00:21:52,679
Speaker 1: this like force that was deployed to Mahabad, and it

406
00:21:52,760 --> 00:21:55,639
Speaker 1: sets you up for success and for promotion and stuff

407
00:21:55,640 --> 00:21:59,280
Speaker 1: within the organization. UM. And so because he's there at

408
00:21:59,320 --> 00:22:02,000
Speaker 1: this time, like it puts him in a really good

409
00:22:02,000 --> 00:22:05,080
Speaker 1: position for what comes next. Uh you know what's you

410
00:22:05,080 --> 00:22:09,960
Speaker 1: know what's going to come next? Domination? Well, kind of

411
00:22:09,960 --> 00:22:16,000
Speaker 1: the opposite actually a crippling and unbelievably destructive invasion by Iraq.

412
00:22:17,119 --> 00:22:20,240
Speaker 1: Oh that old, that little old thing. You know. It's interesting.

413
00:22:20,280 --> 00:22:22,880
Speaker 1: My father fought in the Uran Iraq hoarn. So did

414
00:22:22,880 --> 00:22:25,359
Speaker 1: my mother. Well, she didn't fight. I think she was

415
00:22:25,400 --> 00:22:28,920
Speaker 1: more unlike whatever, the women do not fight. Yeah, based

416
00:22:28,920 --> 00:22:31,040
Speaker 1: on my understanding, she said she played a drum, which

417
00:22:31,080 --> 00:22:34,080
Speaker 1: I think she's lying. But that's casual Persian parent thing.

418
00:22:34,160 --> 00:22:36,920
Speaker 1: They'll never tell you the truth. But anyway. I mean,

419
00:22:36,960 --> 00:22:39,439
Speaker 1: aren't you know that I'm mistaken. There's some stories of

420
00:22:39,480 --> 00:22:42,800
Speaker 1: like people like women who would like run with explosives

421
00:22:42,840 --> 00:22:45,480
Speaker 1: under Iraqi tanks and blow them up and themselves up

422
00:22:45,480 --> 00:22:49,720
Speaker 1: and stuff like. It was a pretty desperate war, especially

423
00:22:49,760 --> 00:22:53,600
Speaker 1: in the early stages. Um. Yeah, I believe my father

424
00:22:53,720 --> 00:22:58,199
Speaker 1: rode horses. That was his thing. He I don't. He

425
00:22:58,320 --> 00:23:01,520
Speaker 1: just told me. He's not so very forthcoming about his

426
00:23:01,640 --> 00:23:05,560
Speaker 1: war days. I mean, it's we don't it's not very

427
00:23:05,640 --> 00:23:08,399
Speaker 1: much known in the West, but it's like one of

428
00:23:08,440 --> 00:23:10,600
Speaker 1: the worst things that happened in the latter half of

429
00:23:10,600 --> 00:23:13,680
Speaker 1: the twentieth century. Like, there's a lot of bad wars

430
00:23:13,680 --> 00:23:15,800
Speaker 1: in the latter half of the twentieth century, but that one,

431
00:23:15,960 --> 00:23:21,000
Speaker 1: that one's up there, um and it was um. It

432
00:23:21,960 --> 00:23:25,680
Speaker 1: would prove to be like um a foundational moment, obviously

433
00:23:25,760 --> 00:23:28,760
Speaker 1: for the modern nation of Iran, um, but also for

434
00:23:28,840 --> 00:23:32,719
Speaker 1: Kasum Um. So for a little bit of a background

435
00:23:32,760 --> 00:23:35,800
Speaker 1: on this war. In nineteen eighties, Saddam Hussein, you might

436
00:23:35,840 --> 00:23:43,520
Speaker 1: know him for his romance novels. He also was the dictator. Yeah. Uh.

437
00:23:43,600 --> 00:23:47,639
Speaker 1: Saddam Hussein launched an invasion of Iran. His goal seems

438
00:23:47,640 --> 00:23:49,919
Speaker 1: to have been to take advantage of political chaos in

439
00:23:49,920 --> 00:23:52,280
Speaker 1: the country following the revolution to make a quick, quick

440
00:23:52,320 --> 00:23:55,440
Speaker 1: grab for land and power. UM. Now, there are rumors

441
00:23:55,480 --> 00:23:57,480
Speaker 1: that you'll hear to this day that Saddam invaded with

442
00:23:57,520 --> 00:24:00,119
Speaker 1: a green light from the United States, And there's actual

443
00:24:00,240 --> 00:24:02,159
Speaker 1: very little hard evidence for this. Most of what we

444
00:24:02,200 --> 00:24:04,879
Speaker 1: have suggests the Carter administration was too busy dealing with

445
00:24:04,920 --> 00:24:08,720
Speaker 1: the Iranian hostage crisis, UM, and they were actually really

446
00:24:08,800 --> 00:24:13,600
Speaker 1: unhappy that Saddam invaded, and complicated matters from internal Iraqi documents,

447
00:24:13,640 --> 00:24:16,360
Speaker 1: we know Saddam expected the US to impose the invasion.

448
00:24:16,600 --> 00:24:19,119
Speaker 1: We'll talk about the fun, funked up ship the United

449
00:24:19,160 --> 00:24:23,320
Speaker 1: States did here shortly. UM. But what's important is that

450
00:24:23,359 --> 00:24:27,320
Speaker 1: Saddam Hussein launches this fucking invasion of Iran thinking it's

451
00:24:27,359 --> 00:24:29,800
Speaker 1: going to be easy. It's kind of the same reasoning

452
00:24:29,840 --> 00:24:34,280
Speaker 1: you see with UM with like Hitler in UM Operation Barbar.

453
00:24:34,320 --> 00:24:37,520
Speaker 1: Also when he invades Russia, where there's just been this revolution,

454
00:24:37,840 --> 00:24:41,440
Speaker 1: everything is unsettled, the old order has been torn down

455
00:24:41,440 --> 00:24:43,639
Speaker 1: in a place with a new one, and this neighbor

456
00:24:43,960 --> 00:24:46,520
Speaker 1: who's belligerent is like, oh, it'll be really easy to

457
00:24:46,600 --> 00:24:49,679
Speaker 1: kick their asses UM, And it works out kind of

458
00:24:49,720 --> 00:24:54,840
Speaker 1: the same. It works out similarly to that one. Um, yeah,

459
00:24:56,200 --> 00:24:58,600
Speaker 1: Iran doesn't turn out to be a pushover. The war

460
00:24:58,640 --> 00:25:01,400
Speaker 1: would company known and I think this, Yeah, the sacred

461
00:25:01,440 --> 00:25:06,240
Speaker 1: defense is the term used. Sacred defense. Do you have

462
00:25:06,280 --> 00:25:10,560
Speaker 1: a translation for that? Um? I don't have it in Farsi.

463
00:25:11,119 --> 00:25:12,879
Speaker 1: The two terms I've heard for it is the sacred

464
00:25:12,920 --> 00:25:16,600
Speaker 1: defense and the imposed Warum. I'll have to look into

465
00:25:16,640 --> 00:25:18,439
Speaker 1: that a little. I'm curious what it is. What did

466
00:25:18,480 --> 00:25:21,679
Speaker 1: you what did you grow up being told about it?

467
00:25:22,520 --> 00:25:26,320
Speaker 1: I wasn't told much. I a thing that goes on

468
00:25:26,400 --> 00:25:29,920
Speaker 1: and sort of, um, maybe it's just I don't want

469
00:25:29,920 --> 00:25:32,840
Speaker 1: to say, just blatantly immigrant families. But something I noticed

470
00:25:32,880 --> 00:25:37,800
Speaker 1: in my Persian family is that certain darker aspects aren't

471
00:25:37,840 --> 00:25:41,119
Speaker 1: spoken about, and you're kind of, um like guarded from

472
00:25:41,200 --> 00:25:44,000
Speaker 1: those things. So you're not really told about such things.

473
00:25:44,040 --> 00:25:46,480
Speaker 1: Like when I was told about the shaw like they

474
00:25:46,480 --> 00:25:50,720
Speaker 1: were like he was this lavish, you know king who

475
00:25:51,000 --> 00:25:54,280
Speaker 1: always wore like it was always like beautiful imagery of

476
00:25:54,359 --> 00:25:58,560
Speaker 1: like a man who was covered in gold basically, and um,

477
00:25:58,600 --> 00:25:59,920
Speaker 1: you know, later as I grew up and I started

478
00:26:00,080 --> 00:26:02,440
Speaker 1: him like always he was a deeply corrupt man who

479
00:26:02,520 --> 00:26:05,800
Speaker 1: you know, I had a father who basically ruined him,

480
00:26:05,840 --> 00:26:07,399
Speaker 1: so he was never really able to stand up for

481
00:26:07,480 --> 00:26:09,320
Speaker 1: himself and be zone. It's like all this stuff of

482
00:26:09,440 --> 00:26:12,280
Speaker 1: layers and layers of layers, but like my parents would

483
00:26:12,280 --> 00:26:13,960
Speaker 1: have never told me any of that, you know, Like

484
00:26:14,000 --> 00:26:16,359
Speaker 1: I always had like a very base understanding until I

485
00:26:16,359 --> 00:26:18,280
Speaker 1: went and did my own research and was like, oh,

486
00:26:18,760 --> 00:26:20,760
Speaker 1: I remember my father gave me the book All the

487
00:26:20,800 --> 00:26:23,480
Speaker 1: Shah's Men, and I was like, oh my god, this

488
00:26:23,560 --> 00:26:26,960
Speaker 1: is not how I expected it to be. Like wait

489
00:26:26,960 --> 00:26:29,680
Speaker 1: a second, like what happened here? And you know, they

490
00:26:29,760 --> 00:26:32,000
Speaker 1: just kind of they like to sugarcoat it because they're

491
00:26:32,000 --> 00:26:36,600
Speaker 1: trying to protect you from I guess internalized genetic trauma,

492
00:26:36,720 --> 00:26:41,080
Speaker 1: which you're like, what are you gonna do? There's an

493
00:26:41,080 --> 00:26:43,840
Speaker 1: extent to which that kind of sounds like my upbringing,

494
00:26:44,040 --> 00:26:46,880
Speaker 1: like just in terms of like you know, you hear

495
00:26:46,960 --> 00:26:50,080
Speaker 1: like Thomas Jefferson was this great scholar of liberty and

496
00:26:50,160 --> 00:26:53,560
Speaker 1: this great like this this this great thinker and like

497
00:26:53,640 --> 00:26:55,720
Speaker 1: the nature of like human freedom, and it's like, oh,

498
00:26:55,840 --> 00:27:01,440
Speaker 1: he also raped a slave for decades like you know, yeah,

499
00:27:01,760 --> 00:27:05,200
Speaker 1: I mean, but basically, my whole understanding of the Iran

500
00:27:05,280 --> 00:27:08,400
Speaker 1: Iraq war was that my parents were in it because

501
00:27:08,560 --> 00:27:11,320
Speaker 1: of the two year draft, which is still in place

502
00:27:11,359 --> 00:27:13,199
Speaker 1: in Iran. They were like, hey, we went and did it,

503
00:27:13,560 --> 00:27:16,240
Speaker 1: but now we're in America and we are looking forward.

504
00:27:16,320 --> 00:27:18,440
Speaker 1: And that is about all I understood. And I just

505
00:27:18,480 --> 00:27:21,400
Speaker 1: saw photos of my parents like in their like ear

506
00:27:21,560 --> 00:27:24,680
Speaker 1: like out doing things like my dad on a horse

507
00:27:25,640 --> 00:27:28,600
Speaker 1: or eating. You know what doesn't have a two year

508
00:27:28,680 --> 00:27:31,280
Speaker 1: draft on a you know what, won't draft your parents

509
00:27:31,440 --> 00:27:33,639
Speaker 1: for two years to fight in a war against Iraq?

510
00:27:36,080 --> 00:27:40,800
Speaker 1: What the products and services that support this show? Hell yeah,

511
00:27:40,880 --> 00:27:43,560
Speaker 1: they have no legal power to do. So that's what

512
00:27:43,560 --> 00:27:45,560
Speaker 1: I would hope for. There's some bills were putting up

513
00:27:45,560 --> 00:27:48,560
Speaker 1: in the House that will hopefully that will hopefully give

514
00:27:48,560 --> 00:27:52,600
Speaker 1: our our supporters the right to draft US citizens. I am.

515
00:27:52,640 --> 00:27:55,080
Speaker 1: I am a very supportive of that. I said, we

516
00:27:55,160 --> 00:27:58,040
Speaker 1: cut out the middleman, get rid of that state. Just

517
00:27:58,160 --> 00:28:02,760
Speaker 1: let advertisers directly compel people in the military service. I'm sorry,

518
00:28:02,760 --> 00:28:04,399
Speaker 1: I have one quick question before we go to break

519
00:28:04,480 --> 00:28:08,119
Speaker 1: what was the draft ages when the original draft in

520
00:28:08,119 --> 00:28:11,320
Speaker 1: the US was on geez, I think it was, I

521
00:28:11,359 --> 00:28:13,560
Speaker 1: mean what it might have been seventeen when he started

522
00:28:13,600 --> 00:28:15,760
Speaker 1: eighteen and then it went to how old, like when

523
00:28:15,760 --> 00:28:18,760
Speaker 1: did they cap it? I believe I think thirty five

524
00:28:19,920 --> 00:28:24,639
Speaker 1: five damn about to get drafted. I mean, to be honest,

525
00:28:24,680 --> 00:28:27,480
Speaker 1: I think it should start at like thirty and go

526
00:28:27,640 --> 00:28:33,080
Speaker 1: up to seventy. No, seventy, they're can you just killing

527
00:28:33,080 --> 00:28:38,719
Speaker 1: our people like that? If the boomers? If you think

528
00:28:38,760 --> 00:28:41,400
Speaker 1: about how think about how different the Iraq War would

529
00:28:41,400 --> 00:28:43,520
Speaker 1: have been if we'd sent the boomers out to fight

530
00:28:43,560 --> 00:28:46,400
Speaker 1: at first. I mean, we would lose a lot of boomers.

531
00:28:46,480 --> 00:28:50,560
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess, oh, dear, I should say that.

532
00:28:51,760 --> 00:28:53,840
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know. I mean it seems

533
00:28:53,880 --> 00:28:58,160
Speaker 1: like it's just seventeen seems too young. I could see

534
00:28:58,520 --> 00:29:01,320
Speaker 1: twenty to thirty, because after thirty, that's when you start

535
00:29:01,320 --> 00:29:04,200
Speaker 1: to be like my back, and then it's like I

536
00:29:04,240 --> 00:29:07,480
Speaker 1: think you should be I support like, I think twenty

537
00:29:07,560 --> 00:29:09,680
Speaker 1: two would be a good minimum age. You're you're old

538
00:29:09,800 --> 00:29:11,680
Speaker 1: enough to where we're like you you should I don't know,

539
00:29:11,720 --> 00:29:14,120
Speaker 1: maybe twenty you can't rent a car until you're twenty five.

540
00:29:14,240 --> 00:29:16,720
Speaker 1: That seems like why should you be able to drive

541
00:29:16,720 --> 00:29:20,400
Speaker 1: a tank? Yeah, that's true. If if fucking I mean

542
00:29:20,440 --> 00:29:22,480
Speaker 1: not that. I I don't want there to be a draft.

543
00:29:22,520 --> 00:29:24,479
Speaker 1: To be clear, I was just curious because I've been

544
00:29:24,520 --> 00:29:26,959
Speaker 1: thinking about it, because it's been people have been talking

545
00:29:26,960 --> 00:29:29,920
Speaker 1: about drafts and draft dodging. I was just curious. I

546
00:29:29,960 --> 00:29:31,840
Speaker 1: don't want to draft, to be clear. Please, I don't

547
00:29:31,840 --> 00:29:34,400
Speaker 1: oppose a draft, but if you're going to have a draft,

548
00:29:34,600 --> 00:29:37,960
Speaker 1: start with people who are fifty and older. That's that's

549
00:29:38,000 --> 00:29:43,160
Speaker 1: my my thinking on the matter. But speaking of the draft,

550
00:29:43,920 --> 00:29:54,360
Speaker 1: draft these products into your lifestyle. We're back and uh,

551
00:29:54,440 --> 00:29:57,120
Speaker 1: this is a fun moment. Um. We don't often have

552
00:29:57,160 --> 00:30:01,200
Speaker 1: a news break while we're recording an episode, but as

553
00:30:01,280 --> 00:30:05,360
Speaker 1: we went off to break, the news dropped that a

554
00:30:05,480 --> 00:30:09,640
Speaker 1: series of missiles were fired at all Assad Air Base,

555
00:30:09,680 --> 00:30:12,480
Speaker 1: a US air base near air Bill in northern Iraq.

556
00:30:13,240 --> 00:30:17,120
Speaker 1: Uh and our government is saying they were fired by Tehran.

557
00:30:17,400 --> 00:30:20,280
Speaker 1: Obviously I don't think from Tehran, UM, but it looks

558
00:30:20,280 --> 00:30:23,840
Speaker 1: like it was probably the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps who

559
00:30:23,880 --> 00:30:27,160
Speaker 1: fired the missiles. UM. Now, a number of these missiles

560
00:30:27,800 --> 00:30:31,520
Speaker 1: were fired, like most recently a day or two prior

561
00:30:31,640 --> 00:30:35,800
Speaker 1: prior to that, by members of an Iraqi uh Sia

562
00:30:35,880 --> 00:30:38,560
Speaker 1: Milicius supported by Iran, so it's kind of not clear

563
00:30:39,200 --> 00:30:45,320
Speaker 1: how different this all is from that, but it seems like, uh,

564
00:30:45,360 --> 00:30:47,960
Speaker 1: this is at least continuing to happen, So I guess

565
00:30:48,040 --> 00:30:54,640
Speaker 1: we'll see how it goes. That's fun news. Yeah, great times. Yeah,

566
00:30:54,720 --> 00:30:57,720
Speaker 1: everything's great. I love it when all of the people

567
00:30:58,240 --> 00:31:03,080
Speaker 1: in charge your level headed, insane. UM. So yeah, when

568
00:31:03,080 --> 00:31:06,960
Speaker 1: we were talking in the past about horrible violence between

569
00:31:06,960 --> 00:31:10,800
Speaker 1: Iraq and Iran, Uh, we're talking about the Iraqi invasion

570
00:31:10,840 --> 00:31:14,240
Speaker 1: of Iran, the Iran Iraq war. Uh, that continued for

571
00:31:14,320 --> 00:31:18,120
Speaker 1: most of the eighties. So at the start of this war, um,

572
00:31:18,160 --> 00:31:19,600
Speaker 1: you know, saidam and hoped it would be an easy

573
00:31:19,680 --> 00:31:22,240
Speaker 1: victory due to the technical superiority of its forces, but

574
00:31:22,280 --> 00:31:25,120
Speaker 1: stiff Iranian resistance quickly turned the war into a World

575
00:31:25,160 --> 00:31:28,800
Speaker 1: War One style meat grinder. Uh. Kosum Sulimani was at

576
00:31:28,800 --> 00:31:31,600
Speaker 1: the front almost from the beginning. Now, there are two

577
00:31:31,600 --> 00:31:34,040
Speaker 1: different versions of this story, and I found both collected

578
00:31:34,040 --> 00:31:37,520
Speaker 1: by the American Enterprise Institute, a neo conservative think tank.

579
00:31:37,560 --> 00:31:39,600
Speaker 1: And again I must note that since Kasum's life is

580
00:31:39,720 --> 00:31:42,560
Speaker 1: very politicized, you're going to have trouble finding sources on

581
00:31:42,640 --> 00:31:45,320
Speaker 1: him that don't have some sort of clear bias. The

582
00:31:45,360 --> 00:31:48,960
Speaker 1: AI report sites at sources and seems pretty in line

583
00:31:49,000 --> 00:31:51,280
Speaker 1: with the other stuff I've read, uh, it doesn't seem

584
00:31:52,560 --> 00:31:55,200
Speaker 1: I'm not saying anything crazy in here at least um

585
00:31:55,240 --> 00:31:58,120
Speaker 1: and it describes two different theories as to how he

586
00:31:58,240 --> 00:32:00,560
Speaker 1: sort of got his career started the beginning of the

587
00:32:00,560 --> 00:32:03,880
Speaker 1: war uh quote. Sulimani reveals that he was given the

588
00:32:03,920 --> 00:32:08,160
Speaker 1: task of administering the Kerman Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps could's

589
00:32:08,160 --> 00:32:10,600
Speaker 1: garrison upon his return from Mahabad. In the face of

590
00:32:10,600 --> 00:32:13,720
Speaker 1: the Iraqi invasion of Iran, Sulimani train and expedited several

591
00:32:13,760 --> 00:32:16,960
Speaker 1: contingents from Kerman to the Southern front against Iraq. Later,

592
00:32:17,000 --> 00:32:19,320
Speaker 1: the i r g C sent a company under Sulimani's

593
00:32:19,320 --> 00:32:22,600
Speaker 1: command to Susan gard where it resisted Iraqi advances and

594
00:32:22,640 --> 00:32:27,360
Speaker 1: the Malikia Front. Malik provides an almost Who's an Iranian

595
00:32:27,400 --> 00:32:30,959
Speaker 1: scholar provides an almost entirely different account of Sulimani's participation

596
00:32:31,000 --> 00:32:33,800
Speaker 1: in the war against Iraq. According to Malak, Sulimani was

597
00:32:33,800 --> 00:32:36,080
Speaker 1: sent to the front as merely a participant and a

598
00:32:36,200 --> 00:32:39,320
Speaker 1: very casual mission transferring water to the front. He was

599
00:32:39,360 --> 00:32:40,920
Speaker 1: sent to the front for only two weeks, but the

600
00:32:41,000 --> 00:32:43,440
Speaker 1: enlightened and heavenly atmosphere of the front left such an

601
00:32:43,480 --> 00:32:45,480
Speaker 1: impression on the heart of the young and pier workman

602
00:32:45,560 --> 00:32:48,360
Speaker 1: or technician that he, rather than spending only two weeks

603
00:32:48,360 --> 00:32:50,720
Speaker 1: of his mission at the front, spent almost the entire

604
00:32:50,800 --> 00:32:54,200
Speaker 1: eight year long period of war there. Now, it's not

605
00:32:54,240 --> 00:32:58,120
Speaker 1: possible to verify either account Sulimani's own account gives the

606
00:32:58,120 --> 00:33:00,640
Speaker 1: impression of a young man with a clear purpose in life,

607
00:33:00,680 --> 00:33:05,880
Speaker 1: while Malick's account is sort of like uh idealistic, like

608
00:33:06,600 --> 00:33:10,640
Speaker 1: uh okay. So basically you've got the two different versions

609
00:33:10,640 --> 00:33:12,760
Speaker 1: you've got of how this guy starts the Iran Iraq war.

610
00:33:12,920 --> 00:33:16,080
Speaker 1: One is kind of like a pretty standard military story.

611
00:33:16,120 --> 00:33:17,960
Speaker 1: This guy is in charge of a military unit, he

612
00:33:18,040 --> 00:33:21,720
Speaker 1: is sent up to the front, and he distinguishes himself

613
00:33:21,760 --> 00:33:24,400
Speaker 1: self there, so he stays stationed there and fighting at

614
00:33:24,440 --> 00:33:26,400
Speaker 1: like the head of things for the entirety of the

615
00:33:26,440 --> 00:33:29,320
Speaker 1: war pretty much. And the other account is that he's

616
00:33:29,320 --> 00:33:32,000
Speaker 1: sent up there on like a non aggressive mission to

617
00:33:32,040 --> 00:33:34,680
Speaker 1: like deliver water to soldiers, and he just falls in

618
00:33:34,760 --> 00:33:38,160
Speaker 1: love with being up at the front line. UM. And

619
00:33:38,280 --> 00:33:42,240
Speaker 1: I don't know which of these is true. UM. I

620
00:33:42,280 --> 00:33:46,280
Speaker 1: can say that the most trustworthy Western account, UM comes

621
00:33:46,280 --> 00:33:48,760
Speaker 1: from a two thousand thirteen New Yorker article The Shadow

622
00:33:48,800 --> 00:33:52,080
Speaker 1: Commander by Death Dexter Filkins. It's the article you'll probably

623
00:33:52,120 --> 00:33:56,160
Speaker 1: see have seen shared on Sulimani after his assassination. Um.

624
00:33:56,200 --> 00:33:59,640
Speaker 1: It's a pretty balanced and well written article. UM. And

625
00:33:59,720 --> 00:34:02,760
Speaker 1: it those with the water Carrier sort of version of

626
00:34:02,800 --> 00:34:04,680
Speaker 1: events that he was sent up there to deliver water

627
00:34:04,720 --> 00:34:06,800
Speaker 1: to the front and that he like fell in love with,

628
00:34:06,960 --> 00:34:10,760
Speaker 1: you know, the culture of sort of frontline sacrifice and

629
00:34:10,920 --> 00:34:14,520
Speaker 1: you know, gradually got more and more and more involved. Um.

630
00:34:14,560 --> 00:34:16,520
Speaker 1: I do, I do think it's worth digging into, like

631
00:34:16,640 --> 00:34:19,279
Speaker 1: kind of what the motivations behind both variations on this

632
00:34:19,360 --> 00:34:22,799
Speaker 1: story might be. Um. I think the water Boy backstory

633
00:34:22,920 --> 00:34:25,279
Speaker 1: is kind of the one both the Iranian government and

634
00:34:25,320 --> 00:34:29,840
Speaker 1: Sulimani himself wanted people to believe. And I believe I

635
00:34:29,880 --> 00:34:37,440
Speaker 1: think yeah, Um, I I think that like, like clearly

636
00:34:37,440 --> 00:34:39,640
Speaker 1: obviously the government has a definite interest in pushing like

637
00:34:39,719 --> 00:34:41,520
Speaker 1: this view of like a guy going up to the

638
00:34:41,560 --> 00:34:45,719
Speaker 1: front and being kind of uh like inspired by the

639
00:34:45,760 --> 00:34:49,000
Speaker 1: heavenly atmosphere. It like that he that he feels there

640
00:34:49,000 --> 00:34:51,200
Speaker 1: that's like atmosphere of sacrifice. You kind of see that

641
00:34:51,239 --> 00:34:54,800
Speaker 1: in any sort of like government, Um, Like you compared

642
00:34:54,800 --> 00:34:58,320
Speaker 1: to like the movie American Sniper. UM. But it also

643
00:34:58,480 --> 00:35:02,920
Speaker 1: is is kind of worth outing that. Um. The official

644
00:35:03,040 --> 00:35:05,799
Speaker 1: version of Cossum's biography doesn't make him out to have

645
00:35:05,880 --> 00:35:08,440
Speaker 1: been like an early radical support of the Ayatola. It

646
00:35:08,440 --> 00:35:10,279
Speaker 1: admits that he was like kind of just working out

647
00:35:10,280 --> 00:35:13,160
Speaker 1: at the gym when all that was going on. UM.

648
00:35:13,200 --> 00:35:17,200
Speaker 1: So it is it is like entirely possible that this

649
00:35:17,280 --> 00:35:19,640
Speaker 1: is an accurate depiction of events that like when he

650
00:35:19,719 --> 00:35:25,200
Speaker 1: kind of really gets radicalized and inspired and and uh

651
00:35:25,239 --> 00:35:28,400
Speaker 1: like okay, finds his calling in life is at the

652
00:35:28,440 --> 00:35:32,839
Speaker 1: front line during this war. Um. And it's like there's

653
00:35:32,880 --> 00:35:34,440
Speaker 1: a lot of reason to believe that a lot of

654
00:35:34,600 --> 00:35:38,239
Speaker 1: young men find their first experiences with combat at like

655
00:35:38,320 --> 00:35:40,840
Speaker 1: a front line like that to be kind of intoxicating.

656
00:35:40,880 --> 00:35:44,239
Speaker 1: It tends to either like break young people or be

657
00:35:44,440 --> 00:35:49,760
Speaker 1: something they find like almost addictive. UM. And it seems

658
00:35:49,760 --> 00:35:52,240
Speaker 1: like it would be fair to say that Cossum wound

659
00:35:52,280 --> 00:35:55,200
Speaker 1: up on kind of the addicted side of that. In

660
00:35:55,239 --> 00:35:57,400
Speaker 1: the mid odds, while delivering a speech at the site

661
00:35:57,440 --> 00:35:59,560
Speaker 1: of one of the Iran Iraq Wars major battles, he

662
00:35:59,600 --> 00:36:03,960
Speaker 1: said this to a reporter, The battlefield is Mankind's lost paradise,

663
00:36:04,000 --> 00:36:06,600
Speaker 1: the paradise in which morality and human conduct are at

664
00:36:06,640 --> 00:36:09,200
Speaker 1: their highest. One type of paradise that men imagine is

665
00:36:09,200 --> 00:36:12,600
Speaker 1: about streams, beautiful maidens, and lush landscapes. But there is

666
00:36:12,640 --> 00:36:17,799
Speaker 1: another kind of paradise, the battlefield. So that's that's I mean,

667
00:36:18,040 --> 00:36:20,360
Speaker 1: it's one of those things. It's definitely the angle he

668
00:36:20,400 --> 00:36:23,120
Speaker 1: wants to portray about himself. It also might be true

669
00:36:23,120 --> 00:36:26,600
Speaker 1: because he spent the whole of his life in war zones. Basically, well,

670
00:36:26,640 --> 00:36:29,280
Speaker 1: I mean, I think some people, and it's just based

671
00:36:29,880 --> 00:36:33,520
Speaker 1: off my understanding of like career military people, like they

672
00:36:33,560 --> 00:36:36,400
Speaker 1: are they feel the most. I mean, it's weird to

673
00:36:36,440 --> 00:36:38,560
Speaker 1: say they feel the most at home at war, Like

674
00:36:38,680 --> 00:36:42,080
Speaker 1: that's where they thrive. It's what they understand best. Like

675
00:36:42,400 --> 00:36:44,080
Speaker 1: you take them and put them on a dinner table

676
00:36:44,080 --> 00:36:46,359
Speaker 1: and you're like, so how is your day, and they're like,

677
00:36:47,800 --> 00:36:49,560
Speaker 1: I mean, like they don't even know what to say

678
00:36:49,600 --> 00:36:51,480
Speaker 1: to you because they're like, look, I mean I fight wars,

679
00:36:51,560 --> 00:36:53,799
Speaker 1: I come up with strategy. This is the work I do,

680
00:36:53,960 --> 00:36:56,120
Speaker 1: And they don't really know how to deal with other

681
00:36:56,239 --> 00:36:59,200
Speaker 1: things outside of that. This is how they are. That's

682
00:36:59,200 --> 00:37:02,000
Speaker 1: how they're wided. I can I can I've had a

683
00:37:02,000 --> 00:37:04,680
Speaker 1: lot less experience at front lines than this guy, but

684
00:37:04,800 --> 00:37:08,760
Speaker 1: it is addictive. Um, Like the atmosphere out there, the addention,

685
00:37:08,920 --> 00:37:11,719
Speaker 1: the additional sense of like meaning everything is imbued with

686
00:37:12,520 --> 00:37:14,920
Speaker 1: and I do you know, I try to be like

687
00:37:14,960 --> 00:37:16,920
Speaker 1: critical whenever you're trying to figure out, like what do

688
00:37:17,000 --> 00:37:19,400
Speaker 1: these people want you to believe about them? Like what

689
00:37:19,440 --> 00:37:22,520
Speaker 1: are they putting out into the media versus what is true?

690
00:37:23,280 --> 00:37:26,759
Speaker 1: But I kind of think the version of events that

691
00:37:26,880 --> 00:37:31,720
Speaker 1: Cosum relates about his early war experiences are more honest

692
00:37:31,800 --> 00:37:34,040
Speaker 1: than not, just because it tracks with the rest of

693
00:37:34,040 --> 00:37:36,839
Speaker 1: the guy's life. Um, I think this is a dude

694
00:37:36,840 --> 00:37:41,080
Speaker 1: who falls in love with battle and sacrifice and makes

695
00:37:41,120 --> 00:37:45,320
Speaker 1: that his life for the next thirty years or whatever. Um.

696
00:37:45,360 --> 00:37:49,320
Speaker 1: That that That's how it seems to me. Um. Yeah.

697
00:37:49,560 --> 00:37:53,239
Speaker 1: And even the sources that hate Cosum Sulimani are consistent

698
00:37:53,640 --> 00:37:55,840
Speaker 1: that he served with distinction at the very front of

699
00:37:55,880 --> 00:37:58,480
Speaker 1: the Iran Iraq War for pretty much the entirety of

700
00:37:58,520 --> 00:38:00,879
Speaker 1: the time that it went on. And I'm gonna quote

701
00:38:00,880 --> 00:38:03,840
Speaker 1: from The York The New Yorker. Now, Sulimani earned a

702
00:38:03,840 --> 00:38:06,360
Speaker 1: reputation for bravery and a lawan, especially as a result

703
00:38:06,360 --> 00:38:09,520
Speaker 1: of reconnaissance missions he undertook behind Iraqi lines. He returned

704
00:38:09,520 --> 00:38:12,200
Speaker 1: from several missions bearing a goat, which his soldiers slaughtered

705
00:38:12,200 --> 00:38:14,840
Speaker 1: and grilled. Even the Iraqis our enemy admired him for this,

706
00:38:14,920 --> 00:38:17,800
Speaker 1: a former Revolutionary Guard officer who defected to the United

707
00:38:17,800 --> 00:38:21,120
Speaker 1: States told me on Iraqi radio, Sulimani became known as

708
00:38:21,120 --> 00:38:24,719
Speaker 1: the goat Thief, and recognition of his effectiveness, Alafona said,

709
00:38:24,800 --> 00:38:26,680
Speaker 1: he was put in charge of a brigade from Kermen

710
00:38:26,760 --> 00:38:30,120
Speaker 1: with men from Jim's, where he lifted weights. The Iranian

711
00:38:30,200 --> 00:38:33,240
Speaker 1: army was badly overmatched, and its commanders resorted to crude

712
00:38:33,239 --> 00:38:35,799
Speaker 1: and costly tactics. In human way of assaults, they sent

713
00:38:35,840 --> 00:38:38,399
Speaker 1: thousands of young men directly into the Iraqi lines, often

714
00:38:38,400 --> 00:38:41,319
Speaker 1: to clear mine fields, and soldiers died at a precipitous rate.

715
00:38:41,560 --> 00:38:44,720
Speaker 1: Sulimani seemed distressed by the loss of life. Before sending

716
00:38:44,760 --> 00:38:46,719
Speaker 1: his men into battle, he would embrace each one and

717
00:38:46,719 --> 00:38:49,920
Speaker 1: bid him goodbye, and speeches he praised martyred soldiers and

718
00:38:49,960 --> 00:38:53,359
Speaker 1: begged their forgiveness for not being martyred himself. When Sulimani's

719
00:38:53,360 --> 00:38:56,400
Speaker 1: superiors announced plans to attack the Fall Peninsula, he dismissed

720
00:38:56,400 --> 00:38:59,960
Speaker 1: them as wasteful and foolhardy. The former Revolutionary Guard officer

721
00:39:00,040 --> 00:39:02,840
Speaker 1: recalled seeing Sulimani in nineteen eighty five after a battle

722
00:39:02,840 --> 00:39:05,000
Speaker 1: in which his brigade had suffered many dead and wounded.

723
00:39:05,239 --> 00:39:07,080
Speaker 1: He was sitting alone in a corner of a tent.

724
00:39:07,360 --> 00:39:09,920
Speaker 1: He was very silent, thinking about the people he'd lost.

725
00:39:10,040 --> 00:39:16,680
Speaker 1: The officers said, this is a rough time. Yeah. Now,

726
00:39:17,360 --> 00:39:21,240
Speaker 1: from the best information available, Sulimani again was a dedicated soldier.

727
00:39:21,640 --> 00:39:24,520
Speaker 1: Rule Mark Correct was a young CIA officer in a

728
00:39:24,560 --> 00:39:27,640
Speaker 1: Stanbul during the war and he interfaced with many wounded

729
00:39:27,680 --> 00:39:30,400
Speaker 1: Iranian soldiers who were sent there on leave to recuperate,

730
00:39:30,520 --> 00:39:32,680
Speaker 1: and he met Sulimani there during one of the times

731
00:39:32,680 --> 00:39:34,920
Speaker 1: when the general was wounded. And correct job in the

732
00:39:34,960 --> 00:39:38,160
Speaker 1: CIA was basically to like meet these young Iranians away

733
00:39:38,160 --> 00:39:40,640
Speaker 1: from home to like recover and try to recruit them

734
00:39:40,640 --> 00:39:42,960
Speaker 1: as like CIA informants. So he met a lot of

735
00:39:42,960 --> 00:39:48,359
Speaker 1: these guys. Um said this later. I think he I mean,

736
00:39:48,360 --> 00:39:51,279
Speaker 1: he definitely talked to him. Um, I don't think it

737
00:39:51,320 --> 00:39:53,640
Speaker 1: took He was like, sorry, bro, I'm a high sees

738
00:39:53,840 --> 00:39:57,319
Speaker 1: you know how that be. Can't you know exactly what

739
00:39:57,360 --> 00:40:02,080
Speaker 1: he said? Hell? Yeah? And and Correct was a Gemini.

740
00:40:02,280 --> 00:40:08,480
Speaker 1: So okay, alright, I'm a Gemini. Oka correct said, You'd

741
00:40:08,520 --> 00:40:10,879
Speaker 1: get a whole variety of guardsmen. You'd get clerics, You'd

742
00:40:10,880 --> 00:40:12,840
Speaker 1: get people who came to breathe and horror and drink.

743
00:40:12,880 --> 00:40:15,680
Speaker 1: There were the broken and the burned out, the hollow eye,

744
00:40:15,680 --> 00:40:17,719
Speaker 1: the guys who had been destroyed, and then there were

745
00:40:17,719 --> 00:40:19,480
Speaker 1: the bright eyed guys who just couldn't wait to get

746
00:40:19,480 --> 00:40:23,160
Speaker 1: back to the front. I'd put Sulimani in the latter category.

747
00:40:23,920 --> 00:40:27,520
Speaker 1: So death estimates from the Iran Iraq War ranged from

748
00:40:27,520 --> 00:40:30,120
Speaker 1: around half a million to over a million, and over

749
00:40:30,160 --> 00:40:34,840
Speaker 1: a million honestly seems like the most credible UH estimate. UM.

750
00:40:34,880 --> 00:40:37,799
Speaker 1: It was, yeah, one of the most brutal conflicts of

751
00:40:37,840 --> 00:40:41,000
Speaker 1: the latter half of the twentieth century. Um and living

752
00:40:41,000 --> 00:40:42,840
Speaker 1: through the carnage it caused would have been a pretty

753
00:40:42,920 --> 00:40:45,680
Speaker 1: radicalizing experience for a guy like Suleimani, who saw both

754
00:40:45,719 --> 00:40:49,600
Speaker 1: wars beauty and its horror. Now Cosin rose rapidly through

755
00:40:49,640 --> 00:40:51,960
Speaker 1: the ranks, and by his mid twenties he was commanding

756
00:40:52,000 --> 00:40:55,160
Speaker 1: an entire division, and his lofty position in the military

757
00:40:55,200 --> 00:40:57,920
Speaker 1: would have made him aware of the incredibly shady dealings

758
00:40:57,960 --> 00:41:01,040
Speaker 1: going on in the background. I am speculating here, but

759
00:41:01,080 --> 00:41:04,160
Speaker 1: it is my suspicion that American policy during this period

760
00:41:04,200 --> 00:41:06,000
Speaker 1: would go on to have a major impact on the

761
00:41:06,000 --> 00:41:09,240
Speaker 1: man Kasum Sula mony became and the tactics he engaged

762
00:41:09,280 --> 00:41:12,479
Speaker 1: in for the rest of his life. In nineteen ninety two,

763
00:41:12,520 --> 00:41:15,600
Speaker 1: The New York Times published a bombshow report titled the U.

764
00:41:15,719 --> 00:41:18,239
Speaker 1: S Secretly gave aid to Iraq early in its war

765
00:41:18,320 --> 00:41:21,320
Speaker 1: against Iran or it should have been a bombshell report,

766
00:41:21,480 --> 00:41:23,239
Speaker 1: but since it was about the Middle East, and it

767
00:41:23,360 --> 00:41:26,120
Speaker 1: wasn't during one of the cumulative eleven weeks that our

768
00:41:26,320 --> 00:41:29,480
Speaker 1: nation nation has cared about stuff happening in the Middle East.

769
00:41:29,560 --> 00:41:32,280
Speaker 1: No one really noticed the article, but it was damning

770
00:41:32,480 --> 00:41:33,799
Speaker 1: and I'm going to read a quote from it now.

771
00:41:34,480 --> 00:41:38,560
Speaker 1: The Reagan administration secretly decided to provide highly classified intelligence

772
00:41:38,560 --> 00:41:40,560
Speaker 1: to Iraq in the spring of nineteen eighty two, more

773
00:41:40,560 --> 00:41:43,960
Speaker 1: than two years earlier than previously disclosed, while also permitting

774
00:41:43,960 --> 00:41:46,160
Speaker 1: the sale of American made arms to Baghdad and a

775
00:41:46,160 --> 00:41:50,440
Speaker 1: successful effort to help President Saddam Hussein avert imminent defeat

776
00:41:50,440 --> 00:41:53,040
Speaker 1: in the war with Iran. Former intelligence and State Department

777
00:41:53,080 --> 00:41:56,279
Speaker 1: officials say the American decision to lend crucial help to

778
00:41:56,280 --> 00:41:59,160
Speaker 1: Baghdad so early in the nineteen eight i Ran Iraq

779
00:41:59,200 --> 00:42:02,840
Speaker 1: war came after American intelligence agencies warned that Iraq was

780
00:42:02,840 --> 00:42:05,160
Speaker 1: on the verge of being overrun by Iran, whose army

781
00:42:05,280 --> 00:42:08,000
Speaker 1: was bolstered by the year before by covert shipments of

782
00:42:08,040 --> 00:42:12,520
Speaker 1: American made weapons. So, in other words, Iraq invades Iran,

783
00:42:12,840 --> 00:42:15,200
Speaker 1: and as soon as Reagan comes to power, we sent

784
00:42:15,280 --> 00:42:17,360
Speaker 1: I Ran a bunch of guns illegally. We actually have

785
00:42:17,440 --> 00:42:21,920
Speaker 1: Israel sell them the guns in order to bolster contra.

786
00:42:22,440 --> 00:42:25,719
Speaker 1: Oh this is before that ship. That's even that's a

787
00:42:25,800 --> 00:42:31,040
Speaker 1: different thing. Yeah. Wait, wait we did this twice. He

788
00:42:31,239 --> 00:42:34,879
Speaker 1: kept doing this. Yeah, you couldn't stop Ronald Reagan from

789
00:42:34,880 --> 00:42:37,840
Speaker 1: selling arms to Iran, well in buying them. Wait, so

790
00:42:37,880 --> 00:42:41,279
Speaker 1: what did he use the money to do this time? Well,

791
00:42:41,320 --> 00:42:43,480
Speaker 1: this was not about this first time. I don't think

792
00:42:43,480 --> 00:42:45,680
Speaker 1: there was even a profit. They were just first time.

793
00:42:45,680 --> 00:42:48,600
Speaker 1: It was like a geopolitical thing. Yeah, he didn't want

794
00:42:48,640 --> 00:42:52,160
Speaker 1: Iraq to overrun Iran, so we sent weapons to Iran.

795
00:42:52,600 --> 00:42:54,799
Speaker 1: And then because the way the Iran Iraq war goes

796
00:42:54,840 --> 00:42:58,799
Speaker 1: is Saddam invades Iran and it's a debacle for him him,

797
00:42:58,800 --> 00:43:01,680
Speaker 1: and he loses a huge number of men. But then Iran,

798
00:43:02,040 --> 00:43:06,680
Speaker 1: once they push Iraq out, invades Iraq as sort of like, well,

799
00:43:06,719 --> 00:43:08,880
Speaker 1: let's see how far we can take this ship, and

800
00:43:08,920 --> 00:43:11,799
Speaker 1: then it's a disaster for Iran. And what happens is

801
00:43:12,200 --> 00:43:16,000
Speaker 1: Saddam invades, then he gets pushed back, in large part

802
00:43:16,040 --> 00:43:17,520
Speaker 1: due to the fact that the US gave Iran a

803
00:43:17,520 --> 00:43:19,960
Speaker 1: bunch of weapons, and so the US is like, ship,

804
00:43:20,160 --> 00:43:23,040
Speaker 1: now Iran is going to overrun Iraq. So we send

805
00:43:23,120 --> 00:43:26,319
Speaker 1: Iraq a shitload of weapons. And not just do we

806
00:43:26,400 --> 00:43:29,759
Speaker 1: send them weapons, we send them high level intelligence on

807
00:43:29,800 --> 00:43:33,440
Speaker 1: the positioning of Iranian troops and military divisions with the

808
00:43:33,520 --> 00:43:36,600
Speaker 1: specific knowledge that Saddam Hussein is going to deploy chemical

809
00:43:36,640 --> 00:43:39,920
Speaker 1: weapons against those people. So we did not give Saddam

810
00:43:40,000 --> 00:43:43,560
Speaker 1: his chemical weapons, although his chemical stockpile was made with

811
00:43:43,680 --> 00:43:47,200
Speaker 1: a lot of help from European scientists, um, but we

812
00:43:47,520 --> 00:43:52,239
Speaker 1: specifically helped Saddam's military target the Iranian military, including uh

813
00:43:52,320 --> 00:43:55,440
Speaker 1: Sulimanis units, because his unit lost thousands of men to

814
00:43:55,520 --> 00:44:01,359
Speaker 1: chemical weapons with chemical weapons. So during this war, Sulimani

815
00:44:01,600 --> 00:44:04,160
Speaker 1: is at a high enough level that I'm pretty sure

816
00:44:04,200 --> 00:44:06,200
Speaker 1: if he doesn't know while it's going on. He knows

817
00:44:06,239 --> 00:44:09,400
Speaker 1: immediately afterwards that the United States is arming both sides

818
00:44:09,440 --> 00:44:12,319
Speaker 1: of this conflict. Um, and it is. It is a

819
00:44:12,480 --> 00:44:14,320
Speaker 1: very This is not I want to I want to

820
00:44:14,320 --> 00:44:16,279
Speaker 1: be clear here. This often gets like played as like

821
00:44:16,320 --> 00:44:19,960
Speaker 1: the CIA fucking around. This is not the CIA fucking around.

822
00:44:19,960 --> 00:44:25,799
Speaker 1: This is the state, state government. This is state money,

823
00:44:26,000 --> 00:44:29,719
Speaker 1: not like US. It's like, because he's been watching the

824
00:44:29,840 --> 00:44:35,600
Speaker 1: US for years, fuck with everybody. That's wild now one

825
00:44:35,719 --> 00:44:39,120
Speaker 1: former Yeah, I think it's interesting here because it's specifically

826
00:44:39,600 --> 00:44:42,000
Speaker 1: one they're like one of the State Department officials that

827
00:44:42,040 --> 00:44:44,879
Speaker 1: The New York Times talked to like specifically laid out

828
00:44:44,920 --> 00:44:47,480
Speaker 1: that this was not a ci A rogue initiative, but

829
00:44:47,520 --> 00:44:49,400
Speaker 1: that had been approved of the highest levels of the

830
00:44:49,400 --> 00:44:52,480
Speaker 1: Reagan administration. The exact quote he gave them was, we

831
00:44:52,520 --> 00:44:57,000
Speaker 1: wanted to avoid victory by both sides. UM. So basically

832
00:44:57,000 --> 00:45:00,400
Speaker 1: we wanted there to be a bloody stalemate. Um. It's like,

833
00:45:00,680 --> 00:45:02,840
Speaker 1: we're trying to be like really neutral about this, but

834
00:45:02,880 --> 00:45:06,960
Speaker 1: at the same time, we are going to give everybody weapons. Yeah,

835
00:45:07,040 --> 00:45:09,440
Speaker 1: We're going to give everybody weapons. And like the way

836
00:45:09,480 --> 00:45:11,600
Speaker 1: we did it was really shady. We basically looked the

837
00:45:11,680 --> 00:45:15,800
Speaker 1: we sold weapons uh to Jordan's Saudi Arabia and Kuwait

838
00:45:15,840 --> 00:45:18,160
Speaker 1: and then looked the other way while Jordan's Saudi Arabia

839
00:45:18,200 --> 00:45:24,879
Speaker 1: and Kuwait sent those weapons to Iraq. Yeah. Um from

840
00:45:24,920 --> 00:45:27,680
Speaker 1: the Times quote, American officials made no effort to stop

841
00:45:27,719 --> 00:45:29,839
Speaker 1: these sales, known to many in the administration, even though

842
00:45:29,880 --> 00:45:32,960
Speaker 1: American export law forbids the third party transfer of American

843
00:45:33,040 --> 00:45:37,680
Speaker 1: made arms without Washington's permission. So if Sulimani wasn't aware

844
00:45:37,680 --> 00:45:39,040
Speaker 1: of this all at the time, he was aware of

845
00:45:39,040 --> 00:45:41,480
Speaker 1: it by nineteen ninety two when this report came out

846
00:45:41,520 --> 00:45:43,560
Speaker 1: in the New York Times, I'm going to guess a

847
00:45:43,560 --> 00:45:45,960
Speaker 1: guy like him would have read it. It was not

848
00:45:46,200 --> 00:45:50,080
Speaker 1: a secret New York Times article alredating I assume Iran's

849
00:45:50,080 --> 00:45:52,399
Speaker 1: got a couple of subscriptions. Um, That's what I'm gonna say.

850
00:45:52,440 --> 00:45:57,959
Speaker 1: So now, when the war ended in nineteen eighty eight,

851
00:45:58,040 --> 00:46:00,800
Speaker 1: Sulimani and his division were post toe to the chaotic

852
00:46:00,840 --> 00:46:04,000
Speaker 1: eastern frontier of Iran, where gangs of narcotic smugglers laden

853
00:46:04,080 --> 00:46:06,719
Speaker 1: with Afghan opium had rendered much of the region wild

854
00:46:06,800 --> 00:46:10,400
Speaker 1: and uncontrollable. For several years. Kasum fought a brutal bloody

855
00:46:10,400 --> 00:46:13,480
Speaker 1: but ultimately successful war on drugs in that part of

856
00:46:13,480 --> 00:46:16,759
Speaker 1: the country. Among other things, he gained a reputation for

857
00:46:16,800 --> 00:46:19,520
Speaker 1: being incorruptible. He also spent a lot of time fighting

858
00:46:19,560 --> 00:46:23,160
Speaker 1: against the Taliban Um, who were enemies of Iran at

859
00:46:23,200 --> 00:46:24,680
Speaker 1: that period of time. And he spent a lot of

860
00:46:24,680 --> 00:46:27,680
Speaker 1: time like backing and moving in agents and like supporting

861
00:46:27,680 --> 00:46:30,880
Speaker 1: militias in the area that we're anti Taliban, including a

862
00:46:30,920 --> 00:46:34,080
Speaker 1: militia called the Northern Alliance who you might have heard

863
00:46:34,120 --> 00:46:37,040
Speaker 1: about when we invaded Afghanistan because they're the guys we

864
00:46:37,080 --> 00:46:42,440
Speaker 1: allied with two so now in ninet, based on all

865
00:46:42,440 --> 00:46:45,440
Speaker 1: of this experience, Kasum Suleimani was a natural choice to

866
00:46:45,440 --> 00:46:47,320
Speaker 1: put it put to put at the head of Iran's

867
00:46:47,400 --> 00:46:51,280
Speaker 1: notorious Kods Force. The Koods Force is an elite division

868
00:46:51,320 --> 00:46:54,560
Speaker 1: within the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and essentially serves as

869
00:46:54,560 --> 00:46:56,839
Speaker 1: a serves in a mix of functions a bit like

870
00:46:56,880 --> 00:47:01,120
Speaker 1: the CIA cons across with like Joint Special Operations command Um.

871
00:47:01,160 --> 00:47:03,320
Speaker 1: The Iran Iraq War had ended after a series of

872
00:47:03,400 --> 00:47:06,200
Speaker 1: durrass of disastrous offenses into a rat cost hundreds of

873
00:47:06,200 --> 00:47:09,120
Speaker 1: thousands of Iranian lives, and this debacle had convinced the

874
00:47:09,120 --> 00:47:13,200
Speaker 1: government that their military future lay in asymmetrical warfare. UM.

875
00:47:13,239 --> 00:47:15,840
Speaker 1: You can't compete with like the big Western nations and

876
00:47:15,920 --> 00:47:19,040
Speaker 1: like straight up tank battles, and it's incredibly wasteful to try.

877
00:47:19,520 --> 00:47:22,319
Speaker 1: So instead, let's let's get smarter about this, you know,

878
00:47:22,400 --> 00:47:26,480
Speaker 1: fund insurgencies get better at that sort of fighting. UM,

879
00:47:26,560 --> 00:47:29,480
Speaker 1: And they, in this way, Iran kind of guesses what

880
00:47:29,600 --> 00:47:32,080
Speaker 1: the warfare is going to be like in the twenty

881
00:47:32,120 --> 00:47:35,680
Speaker 1: first century. They're definitely ahead of the United States UM

882
00:47:35,719 --> 00:47:39,359
Speaker 1: in figuring that part out so UH. In the wake

883
00:47:39,520 --> 00:47:42,360
Speaker 1: of the Gulf War. As US influence expanded across the

884
00:47:42,400 --> 00:47:46,120
Speaker 1: Middle East, UH, the Kood's Force became increasingly important important

885
00:47:46,120 --> 00:47:49,920
Speaker 1: to Iran's geopolitical strategy. It was basically responsible for projecting

886
00:47:49,920 --> 00:47:53,840
Speaker 1: power outside of the Islamic Republic, so Costum's appointment to

887
00:47:53,840 --> 00:47:55,840
Speaker 1: the head of this force was the sign of the

888
00:47:55,880 --> 00:47:59,320
Speaker 1: deep trust the Ayatola placed in him over the years

889
00:47:59,320 --> 00:48:01,120
Speaker 1: he held the judg ab Sulimani would prove to be

890
00:48:01,160 --> 00:48:04,000
Speaker 1: a dedicated supporter of the conservative clerical elements in the

891
00:48:04,040 --> 00:48:08,560
Speaker 1: Iranian government. In nineteen a series of student protests racked

892
00:48:08,560 --> 00:48:12,280
Speaker 1: the country and pushed for reform within the nation's harsh

893
00:48:12,320 --> 00:48:15,760
Speaker 1: religious laws. President Mohammed Khatami, who had come to power

894
00:48:15,840 --> 00:48:19,000
Speaker 1: as a reformer, was unwilling to crack down on these students.

895
00:48:19,320 --> 00:48:23,120
Speaker 1: Costam Sulimani and several other Revolutionary Guard commanders signed a

896
00:48:23,200 --> 00:48:25,719
Speaker 1: letter promising they would depose the president if he did

897
00:48:25,800 --> 00:48:29,560
Speaker 1: not brutally crushed the demonstrations, which were brutally crushed in

898
00:48:29,600 --> 00:48:34,240
Speaker 1: the wake of this um And speaking of brutally crushing

899
00:48:34,840 --> 00:48:40,600
Speaker 1: student demonstrations for liberty, okay, you know who won't do that?

900
00:48:41,000 --> 00:48:46,440
Speaker 1: An ad? An ad sponsor, a sponsor unless it unless

901
00:48:46,480 --> 00:48:50,080
Speaker 1: it's one of our Ray Theon sponsored ads. That kind

902
00:48:50,080 --> 00:48:54,840
Speaker 1: of their business. Yeah, although Raytheon does also need uh

903
00:48:54,880 --> 00:48:58,880
Speaker 1: insurgent movements in order to stay profitable. So really, you know,

904
00:48:59,120 --> 00:49:01,960
Speaker 1: if you're an insert argent, Raith Theon is your best friend?

905
00:49:02,640 --> 00:49:09,200
Speaker 1: Um y by ray I do not stand by that.

906
00:49:12,280 --> 00:49:14,319
Speaker 1: Then it cuts to immediately we got a ray Theon

907
00:49:14,360 --> 00:49:17,280
Speaker 1: ad because we have horrible I am. I am hoping

908
00:49:17,320 --> 00:49:19,439
Speaker 1: for the day we get a Raytheon AD. That's gonna

909
00:49:19,520 --> 00:49:22,200
Speaker 1: be fun. I mean, don't be surprised. We were getting

910
00:49:22,200 --> 00:49:26,160
Speaker 1: Coke bro ads and we're getting Fox News ads. We

911
00:49:26,280 --> 00:49:39,240
Speaker 1: get random acts it's beautiful. I'm just excited we're back.

912
00:49:39,880 --> 00:49:41,960
Speaker 1: So we've been talking about the Koods Force a bit,

913
00:49:41,960 --> 00:49:46,360
Speaker 1: which Cosum Suleimani has just been appointed to head. UM.

914
00:49:46,400 --> 00:49:48,960
Speaker 1: The Kods Force is named after the Farsi word for

915
00:49:49,040 --> 00:49:52,400
Speaker 1: Jerusalem UM, which gives you some idea as to what

916
00:49:52,600 --> 00:49:56,040
Speaker 1: it's seen as its ultimate purpose UM. And there's definitely

917
00:49:56,120 --> 00:49:58,600
Speaker 1: like a big angle that's sort of like Iran is

918
00:49:58,640 --> 00:50:02,560
Speaker 1: the head of this axis against Israel UM and against

919
00:50:02,560 --> 00:50:04,600
Speaker 1: the United States. And in fact, the term access of

920
00:50:04,640 --> 00:50:06,879
Speaker 1: resistance is used a lot to like what they're trying

921
00:50:06,880 --> 00:50:09,760
Speaker 1: to build in the Middle East in opposition to Israel

922
00:50:09,800 --> 00:50:14,160
Speaker 1: in the United States UM. And the Koods Force headquarters

923
00:50:14,280 --> 00:50:18,080
Speaker 1: is very notably UM on the former US embassy campus

924
00:50:18,080 --> 00:50:20,640
Speaker 1: in Tehran, the embassy that was taken over UM during

925
00:50:20,640 --> 00:50:24,440
Speaker 1: the Iranian Revolution and stuff, which is like that's a

926
00:50:24,520 --> 00:50:29,520
Speaker 1: move right there. UM. So now that he's in charge

927
00:50:30,120 --> 00:50:32,840
Speaker 1: of the Kods Force, Kasam Sulamanni embarks in a policy

928
00:50:32,840 --> 00:50:36,360
Speaker 1: of recruiting and training agents all across the Middle East. UM.

929
00:50:36,400 --> 00:50:40,400
Speaker 1: His biggest success is probably Hezbollah, an Iran supported militia

930
00:50:40,440 --> 00:50:42,759
Speaker 1: and political party in Lebanon that spent most of the

931
00:50:42,840 --> 00:50:45,680
Speaker 1: last couple of decades chucking rockets into Israel and being

932
00:50:45,719 --> 00:50:49,520
Speaker 1: bombed by Israel in response. UM. Hezbollah started as a

933
00:50:49,560 --> 00:50:54,160
Speaker 1: resistance to the Israeli occupation because Israel occupied a lot

934
00:50:54,200 --> 00:50:57,440
Speaker 1: of Lebanon up until about two thousand UM, and constant

935
00:50:57,480 --> 00:51:00,359
Speaker 1: Hezblah and surgeon attacks were a big part of why

936
00:51:00,560 --> 00:51:04,759
Speaker 1: Israel eventually like gave up on that occupation. UM. So

937
00:51:04,920 --> 00:51:08,160
Speaker 1: it's it's again. I'm not gonna be doing justice to

938
00:51:08,280 --> 00:51:10,280
Speaker 1: all of this history. I'm trying to provide the broad

939
00:51:10,320 --> 00:51:15,160
Speaker 1: strokes UM. And a lot of the ability of Iran

940
00:51:15,280 --> 00:51:18,560
Speaker 1: to get weapons too has Blah in Lebanon, and particularly

941
00:51:18,560 --> 00:51:21,200
Speaker 1: to send them the rockets that has Blaw like intermittently

942
00:51:21,239 --> 00:51:26,440
Speaker 1: fires into Israel. Um is possible because Iran's ally is Syria,

943
00:51:26,520 --> 00:51:29,840
Speaker 1: and so Iran is able to move rockets and support

944
00:51:30,000 --> 00:51:34,319
Speaker 1: in like money and weapons up through Syria. So keep

945
00:51:34,360 --> 00:51:37,319
Speaker 1: that in mind because that's going to be very important later.

946
00:51:38,200 --> 00:51:41,799
Speaker 1: So Kasson was also busy in Afghanistan. The Taliban are

947
00:51:41,800 --> 00:51:45,000
Speaker 1: sworn enemies of Iran's clerical regime, and for years before

948
00:51:45,120 --> 00:51:47,880
Speaker 1: nine eleven, Sulimani was integral in backing and supporting the

949
00:51:47,960 --> 00:51:50,719
Speaker 1: resistance to the Taliban, and I'm gonna quote now from

950
00:51:50,760 --> 00:51:55,080
Speaker 1: a report in West Points Combating Terrorists Terrorism Center quote.

951
00:51:55,640 --> 00:51:59,520
Speaker 1: In August, a few months into Celimonies, Uh Tenor at

952
00:51:59,560 --> 00:52:01,960
Speaker 1: the head of the KOD's force, Taliban forces swept into

953
00:52:01,960 --> 00:52:04,960
Speaker 1: the northern Afghan city of Missouri Sharif, home to a

954
00:52:05,000 --> 00:52:08,960
Speaker 1: substantial community of ethnic Hazaras far as He speaking Shia Muslims.

955
00:52:09,200 --> 00:52:12,560
Speaker 1: The Taliban initiated a brutal pogrom against members of the minority,

956
00:52:12,600 --> 00:52:15,560
Speaker 1: trashing homes, raping women and girls, and massacring hundreds of

957
00:52:15,560 --> 00:52:17,879
Speaker 1: Shia men and boys. Among the dead was a group

958
00:52:17,920 --> 00:52:20,920
Speaker 1: of nine Iranians, eight diplomats and a journalist. At this

959
00:52:21,040 --> 00:52:24,520
Speaker 1: naked provocation, factions on both sides turned white hot for war.

960
00:52:24,880 --> 00:52:27,120
Speaker 1: The I r g c S overall commander at the time,

961
00:52:27,200 --> 00:52:33,000
Speaker 1: Yah yah Rahim Sava Safawi, requested Supreme Leader khamenes Uh

962
00:52:33,120 --> 00:52:36,320
Speaker 1: permission for the punishment of the Taliban to advance to Harat,

963
00:52:36,400 --> 00:52:40,640
Speaker 1: a city in western Afghanistan, annihilate, punish, eliminate them. Iran

964
00:52:40,719 --> 00:52:43,160
Speaker 1: began massing an invasion force of almost a quarter of

965
00:52:43,200 --> 00:52:46,640
Speaker 1: a million soldiers along the Afghan border. Reportedly, it was

966
00:52:46,680 --> 00:52:49,800
Speaker 1: Sulimani who stepped in and diffused the situation without resort

967
00:52:50,000 --> 00:52:53,560
Speaker 1: resorting to further violence. Instead of confronting the Taliban directly,

968
00:52:53,719 --> 00:52:57,360
Speaker 1: Sulimani opted to throw increased Iranian support behind the opposition

969
00:52:57,440 --> 00:53:01,000
Speaker 1: Northern Alliance, personally helping to direct the groups operations from

970
00:53:01,040 --> 00:53:05,200
Speaker 1: a based across Afghanistan's northern border and Tajikistan. It was

971
00:53:05,239 --> 00:53:07,560
Speaker 1: a model of proxy warfare to which he would return

972
00:53:07,600 --> 00:53:11,319
Speaker 1: again and again. So this is really important. There's this

973
00:53:11,440 --> 00:53:14,600
Speaker 1: the Taliban murders a bunch of people, including Iranians, and

974
00:53:14,600 --> 00:53:18,040
Speaker 1: there's this huge outrage within Iran calling for an invasion

975
00:53:18,080 --> 00:53:21,040
Speaker 1: of Afghanistan in the late nineteen nineties, and they have

976
00:53:21,080 --> 00:53:23,160
Speaker 1: a quarter of a million men mass to do it.

977
00:53:23,840 --> 00:53:26,719
Speaker 1: And Solimani says, no, no, no, no, funk that we've

978
00:53:26,760 --> 00:53:30,200
Speaker 1: seen what mass invasions look like. We've seen what like

979
00:53:30,680 --> 00:53:33,720
Speaker 1: war on that scale looks like, particularly against an enemy

980
00:53:33,760 --> 00:53:35,800
Speaker 1: like the Taliban that's never going to stand and fight.

981
00:53:36,239 --> 00:53:37,800
Speaker 1: He's kind of predicting, like what would happen in the

982
00:53:37,880 --> 00:53:40,920
Speaker 1: United States later, Like that's a bad idea. The smart

983
00:53:40,960 --> 00:53:43,799
Speaker 1: thing to do is send in support and trainers and

984
00:53:43,840 --> 00:53:47,799
Speaker 1: commandos and bolster one of the militias that of Afghans

985
00:53:47,840 --> 00:53:51,160
Speaker 1: that are already fighting the Northern Alliance or that are

986
00:53:51,160 --> 00:53:53,839
Speaker 1: already fighting the Taliban, and like that's that's the way

987
00:53:53,880 --> 00:53:57,200
Speaker 1: to actually make progress in Afghanistan. There's no benefit to

988
00:53:57,280 --> 00:54:01,919
Speaker 1: invading Afghanistan, um, which you know, looking at the history

989
00:54:01,960 --> 00:54:08,640
Speaker 1: of invading Afghanistan, not a dumb play um now. Obviously

990
00:54:08,920 --> 00:54:12,000
Speaker 1: in two thousand one, UH later in two thousand one,

991
00:54:12,320 --> 00:54:15,680
Speaker 1: nine eleven, nine eleven, all over everybody's asses, uh, and

992
00:54:15,719 --> 00:54:18,840
Speaker 1: the US committed itself to invading and then never leaving

993
00:54:18,840 --> 00:54:23,520
Speaker 1: Afghanistan for reasons which are still unclear. Uh. Kasam Sulimani

994
00:54:23,600 --> 00:54:25,799
Speaker 1: was only too happy to lend his forces support to

995
00:54:25,800 --> 00:54:28,600
Speaker 1: the American military effort in that country. He and his

996
00:54:28,640 --> 00:54:31,480
Speaker 1: KOD's force and their proxies in Afghanistan worked closely with

997
00:54:31,560 --> 00:54:35,160
Speaker 1: US Special forces, in particular, could Force soldiers and US

998
00:54:35,200 --> 00:54:38,400
Speaker 1: special operators fought side by side against the Taliban, and

999
00:54:38,400 --> 00:54:40,279
Speaker 1: one of those chapters of the War on Terror that

1000
00:54:40,320 --> 00:54:43,359
Speaker 1: we do not talk about very much anymore, But this

1001
00:54:43,480 --> 00:54:45,319
Speaker 1: is where things are at the start of the war

1002
00:54:45,400 --> 00:54:48,200
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan is Iran in the United States very much

1003
00:54:48,239 --> 00:54:53,640
Speaker 1: working together against the Taliban. So as the Bush administration

1004
00:54:53,680 --> 00:54:56,319
Speaker 1: began to ramp up the propaganda campaign that preceded the

1005
00:54:56,360 --> 00:54:59,600
Speaker 1: totally successful and widely praised invasion of Iraq. There was

1006
00:54:59,640 --> 00:55:02,440
Speaker 1: reason to believe that the United that US Iran relations

1007
00:55:02,480 --> 00:55:05,360
Speaker 1: had turned a corner. The government of Iran and Kassam

1008
00:55:05,400 --> 00:55:09,120
Speaker 1: Sulamani hated both the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, and there

1009
00:55:09,160 --> 00:55:10,880
Speaker 1: are a few better ways to turn a nation from

1010
00:55:11,000 --> 00:55:13,560
Speaker 1: enemy to friend than fighting two back to back wars

1011
00:55:13,600 --> 00:55:16,320
Speaker 1: as allies. I mean, it worked for the United States

1012
00:55:16,320 --> 00:55:20,120
Speaker 1: in England. Um, So the question is how did things

1013
00:55:20,360 --> 00:55:22,600
Speaker 1: get fucked up from this point? Like that seems like

1014
00:55:22,600 --> 00:55:24,719
Speaker 1: a pretty great spot to be and you're fighting alongside

1015
00:55:24,719 --> 00:55:26,640
Speaker 1: each other. You're like fucking up two of their big

1016
00:55:26,760 --> 00:55:31,600
Speaker 1: enemies in a row. Uh, what turned things bad? Do

1017
00:55:31,640 --> 00:55:35,960
Speaker 1: you have any guesses? I'm gonna say, um, white people

1018
00:55:36,200 --> 00:55:42,480
Speaker 1: because they're never happy, yeah, color or grown grown up

1019
00:55:42,480 --> 00:55:44,759
Speaker 1: with immigrants. You just take what you can get and

1020
00:55:44,800 --> 00:55:46,640
Speaker 1: you understand and you go, I'm not going to cause

1021
00:55:46,680 --> 00:55:49,160
Speaker 1: more trouble because, like, I see what the situation is,

1022
00:55:49,200 --> 00:55:50,799
Speaker 1: and I know it might not be better for us

1023
00:55:50,800 --> 00:55:52,440
Speaker 1: in any other way. This might be as good as

1024
00:55:52,440 --> 00:55:54,640
Speaker 1: it gets. So I'm gonna fucking shut up and keep

1025
00:55:54,680 --> 00:55:56,960
Speaker 1: my head down and not speak out where I'm not

1026
00:55:57,000 --> 00:55:59,200
Speaker 1: supposed to not supposed to speak out. And maybe I'm

1027
00:55:59,239 --> 00:56:01,600
Speaker 1: speaking a little too much from how my father would

1028
00:56:01,640 --> 00:56:05,799
Speaker 1: talk to me, But that's what it had always felt like. Well,

1029
00:56:05,840 --> 00:56:08,279
Speaker 1: you know who didn't worry at all about speaking out

1030
00:56:08,840 --> 00:56:11,200
Speaker 1: recklessly because he knew that none of it would ever

1031
00:56:11,239 --> 00:56:14,319
Speaker 1: harm him was was was George Bush, and one of

1032
00:56:14,320 --> 00:56:18,440
Speaker 1: his speech writers. In January two thousand two, President George W.

1033
00:56:18,640 --> 00:56:21,040
Speaker 1: Bush delivered his first post nine eleven State of the

1034
00:56:21,120 --> 00:56:24,360
Speaker 1: Union address. He named Iran as part of an access

1035
00:56:24,400 --> 00:56:27,920
Speaker 1: of evil, alongside Iraq and North Korea, three nations which

1036
00:56:28,000 --> 00:56:31,520
Speaker 1: notably did not collaborate or work together in any meaningful

1037
00:56:31,520 --> 00:56:34,880
Speaker 1: sense of the word. This declaration took Iran by surprise,

1038
00:56:34,960 --> 00:56:38,560
Speaker 1: considering their soldiers were literally fighting alongside the United States

1039
00:56:38,560 --> 00:56:42,920
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan. Now. Ryan Crocker was deputy chief of the

1040
00:56:42,960 --> 00:56:45,600
Speaker 1: American Embassy in Kabul at the time. As a result

1041
00:56:45,600 --> 00:56:48,600
Speaker 1: of this position, he communicated regularly with the representative of

1042
00:56:48,640 --> 00:56:51,000
Speaker 1: the Iranian government, a guy who was basically the direct

1043
00:56:51,080 --> 00:56:55,360
Speaker 1: mouthpiece for Kosum Sulamani Uh. Crocker had not been warned

1044
00:56:55,400 --> 00:56:57,839
Speaker 1: that the United States was about to declare Iran part

1045
00:56:57,840 --> 00:57:00,440
Speaker 1: of an access of evil in a speech, and he

1046
00:57:00,520 --> 00:57:03,160
Speaker 1: was very unpleasantly surprised when he realized this is what

1047
00:57:03,239 --> 00:57:06,280
Speaker 1: had gone down. And here's how Crocker recalled the hours

1048
00:57:06,360 --> 00:57:09,719
Speaker 1: after the Access of Evil speech and Kabul quote. He

1049
00:57:09,760 --> 00:57:12,560
Speaker 1: saw the negotiator, the Iranian negotiator the next day at

1050
00:57:12,560 --> 00:57:14,960
Speaker 1: the U N compound in Kabul, and he was furious,

1051
00:57:15,160 --> 00:57:18,919
Speaker 1: you completely damaged me, Crocker recalled him, saying, Sulimani isn't

1052
00:57:18,920 --> 00:57:22,600
Speaker 1: a tearing rage. He feels compromised. The negotiator told Crocker

1053
00:57:22,640 --> 00:57:25,520
Speaker 1: that at great political risk, Sulimani had been contemplating a

1054
00:57:25,560 --> 00:57:30,960
Speaker 1: complete reevaluation of the United States. Say why wouldn't he?

1055
00:57:32,280 --> 00:57:35,520
Speaker 1: Maybe it's time to rethink our relationship with the Americans.

1056
00:57:35,840 --> 00:57:38,560
Speaker 1: The Access of Evil speech brought these meetings to an end.

1057
00:57:38,600 --> 00:57:41,320
Speaker 1: Reformers inside the government who had advocated a rapproach ma

1058
00:57:41,480 --> 00:57:44,200
Speaker 1: with the United States were put on the defensive. Recalling

1059
00:57:44,200 --> 00:57:47,000
Speaker 1: that time, Crocker shook his head. We were just that close.

1060
00:57:47,360 --> 00:57:53,280
Speaker 1: One speed word and one speech changed history. Great Bush,

1061
00:57:53,360 --> 00:57:55,400
Speaker 1: but hey, no bushes are cool people to hang out

1062
00:57:55,400 --> 00:57:58,800
Speaker 1: with Ellen, and we should we should. I want to

1063
00:57:58,840 --> 00:58:02,520
Speaker 1: note bus should get some blame for that speech, but

1064
00:58:02,600 --> 00:58:04,400
Speaker 1: we should throw a lot of blame too on the

1065
00:58:04,440 --> 00:58:06,960
Speaker 1: guy who wrote The Access of Evil Speech and The

1066
00:58:07,000 --> 00:58:09,560
Speaker 1: Acts as of Evil Speech. Writer was a fellow you

1067
00:58:09,640 --> 00:58:13,680
Speaker 1: might know from the Internet today named David Frome, now

1068
00:58:13,840 --> 00:58:17,000
Speaker 1: from is currently a staff Yeah, he's currently a staff

1069
00:58:17,040 --> 00:58:20,520
Speaker 1: writer at The Atlantic and a never Trump idiot grifter king.

1070
00:58:21,120 --> 00:58:23,400
Speaker 1: He wrote a stupid book about how Trump is bad

1071
00:58:23,720 --> 00:58:26,520
Speaker 1: and despite the fact that all of his previous work

1072
00:58:26,560 --> 00:58:28,760
Speaker 1: as a neo con was laying the ground for Trump anyway.

1073
00:58:28,840 --> 00:58:31,480
Speaker 1: Fun David Frome. Uh, you can find him on Twitter

1074
00:58:31,520 --> 00:58:34,160
Speaker 1: at at David Frome, but you probably shouldn't because this

1075
00:58:34,240 --> 00:58:36,240
Speaker 1: ship bird has done more than enough damage to the

1076
00:58:36,240 --> 00:58:38,360
Speaker 1: world and should not be listened to by anyone on

1077
00:58:38,400 --> 00:58:41,880
Speaker 1: any subject ever. Again, I will admit that it's pretty

1078
00:58:41,920 --> 00:58:44,600
Speaker 1: hilarious that his current pinned tweet, which I think he

1079
00:58:44,680 --> 00:58:47,320
Speaker 1: means is a reference to the Trump administration, is the sentence.

1080
00:58:47,560 --> 00:58:49,800
Speaker 1: When this is all over, nobody will admit to ever

1081
00:58:49,880 --> 00:58:59,360
Speaker 1: having supported it. I fucking hate David Frum. He's a yeah,

1082
00:59:00,400 --> 00:59:05,360
Speaker 1: but infair. It is debatable as to whether or not

1083
00:59:05,440 --> 00:59:08,800
Speaker 1: Iran was ever actually seeking reproache ma with the United

1084
00:59:08,800 --> 00:59:12,200
Speaker 1: States Cossum was again, I can't emphasize this enough a

1085
00:59:12,280 --> 00:59:14,960
Speaker 1: spy chief, and every piece of information that he allowed

1086
00:59:15,000 --> 00:59:16,760
Speaker 1: to get out about him carries the risk of being

1087
00:59:16,760 --> 00:59:20,040
Speaker 1: a piece of disinformation, because that's what spies do. Now,

1088
00:59:20,240 --> 00:59:22,120
Speaker 1: maybe he wanted to spread the rumor that the access

1089
00:59:22,120 --> 00:59:24,920
Speaker 1: of evil speech is why relations broke off. It's impossible

1090
00:59:24,960 --> 00:59:27,080
Speaker 1: to prove this to a point of certainty. All that

1091
00:59:27,120 --> 00:59:28,800
Speaker 1: I can prove to a point of certainty is that

1092
00:59:28,880 --> 00:59:32,400
Speaker 1: David Froume is an idiot. Now, whatever the truth behind

1093
00:59:32,400 --> 00:59:35,040
Speaker 1: all this, By two thousand four, Saddam Hussein was out

1094
00:59:35,080 --> 00:59:37,960
Speaker 1: of Iraq and Sulimani's Good's Force was committed to ensuring

1095
00:59:38,000 --> 00:59:40,760
Speaker 1: that the US followed him. They began to manufacture and

1096
00:59:40,840 --> 00:59:44,680
Speaker 1: export huge amounts of explosively formed projectiles or e f

1097
00:59:44,840 --> 00:59:48,120
Speaker 1: p s. These are basically roadside bombs that launch a

1098
00:59:48,160 --> 00:59:52,040
Speaker 1: molten copper slug into armored vehicles. E fps were miles

1099
00:59:52,040 --> 00:59:54,840
Speaker 1: ahead of the indigenous improvised explosives in Iraq, and they

1100
00:59:54,880 --> 00:59:58,200
Speaker 1: could only have been manufactured in Iran and sent into Iraq.

1101
00:59:58,840 --> 01:00:02,400
Speaker 1: And in short order, rough of American combat deaths in

1102
01:00:02,440 --> 01:00:05,840
Speaker 1: Iraq were blamed on these weapons. Um So this is

1103
01:00:05,880 --> 01:00:09,520
Speaker 1: like what a lot of US military planners, uh will

1104
01:00:09,800 --> 01:00:13,360
Speaker 1: will like really point to as to why they hated Sulimani.

1105
01:00:13,800 --> 01:00:15,680
Speaker 1: And it's one of those things there were There have

1106
01:00:15,680 --> 01:00:18,240
Speaker 1: been a lot of people in the United States military

1107
01:00:18,360 --> 01:00:20,880
Speaker 1: establishments since Bush was in office who wanted us to

1108
01:00:20,920 --> 01:00:25,960
Speaker 1: assassinate this guy, and both Bush and Obama were intelligent

1109
01:00:26,040 --> 01:00:29,440
Speaker 1: enough to be like, it's just not worth the fallout. Um.

1110
01:00:29,440 --> 01:00:31,200
Speaker 1: There's a part of me that thinks the reason he

1111
01:00:31,280 --> 01:00:33,880
Speaker 1: was assassinated is that eventually enough of those guys got

1112
01:00:33,880 --> 01:00:36,400
Speaker 1: forced out by Trump that some of the military people

1113
01:00:36,400 --> 01:00:39,280
Speaker 1: who were just thinking of like they're dead friends, were like,

1114
01:00:40,200 --> 01:00:43,680
Speaker 1: we've got a chance, he doesn't know what the consequences

1115
01:00:43,720 --> 01:00:45,080
Speaker 1: will be, and we can get rid of this guy

1116
01:00:45,120 --> 01:00:50,760
Speaker 1: that we hate. Uh I think that might be what happened. Yeah,

1117
01:00:49,720 --> 01:00:56,320
Speaker 1: now and not true logic, Yes, yes, And it's one

1118
01:00:56,320 --> 01:00:59,400
Speaker 1: of those things. I don't morally blame a military leader

1119
01:00:59,440 --> 01:01:01,000
Speaker 1: who had friends is killed by an e f P

1120
01:01:01,360 --> 01:01:04,240
Speaker 1: for wanting that guy to be killed. It's what you

1121
01:01:04,320 --> 01:01:06,760
Speaker 1: do if your friends got killed. But part of the

1122
01:01:06,800 --> 01:01:09,400
Speaker 1: reason why the military doesn't run the show in our

1123
01:01:09,440 --> 01:01:12,680
Speaker 1: government is because you shouldn't have those people making the

1124
01:01:12,760 --> 01:01:16,560
Speaker 1: calls you should have civilians with a level of separation

1125
01:01:17,240 --> 01:01:19,800
Speaker 1: from all of those sort of calls and a level

1126
01:01:19,800 --> 01:01:24,640
Speaker 1: of emotional separation making decisions, Which is why we didn't

1127
01:01:24,880 --> 01:01:28,360
Speaker 1: assassinate this guy earlier, because the powers that be, the

1128
01:01:28,400 --> 01:01:31,440
Speaker 1: civilians who are running our military as it is supposed

1129
01:01:31,480 --> 01:01:34,479
Speaker 1: to be, We're like, I know you're pissed, but that's

1130
01:01:34,480 --> 01:01:37,880
Speaker 1: a bad call. Like it's going to endanger more lives.

1131
01:01:38,000 --> 01:01:39,840
Speaker 1: And I think one of the stories of the Trump

1132
01:01:39,880 --> 01:01:44,160
Speaker 1: administration is again, those norms that existed for a good

1133
01:01:44,200 --> 01:01:49,560
Speaker 1: fucking reason going away. Um yeah, now, um, some of

1134
01:01:49,600 --> 01:01:53,400
Speaker 1: that's my own speculation, but we do know that the

1135
01:01:53,480 --> 01:01:55,760
Speaker 1: e f P s in particular, are why so many

1136
01:01:55,840 --> 01:02:01,080
Speaker 1: US military people really hated Sulimani. Now, Kassam Suleimani's war

1137
01:02:01,080 --> 01:02:03,680
Speaker 1: against the United States in Iraq was a textbook case

1138
01:02:03,840 --> 01:02:07,480
Speaker 1: of how to wage a successful insurgent conflict. He and

1139
01:02:07,480 --> 01:02:10,800
Speaker 1: his Kods force succeeded in briefly bridging the Sunny Shiite

1140
01:02:10,840 --> 01:02:14,040
Speaker 1: divide among insurgent groups, supporting both in their efforts to

1141
01:02:14,120 --> 01:02:17,240
Speaker 1: kill American soldiers. One way he did this was by

1142
01:02:17,320 --> 01:02:19,840
Speaker 1: using his connections to the head of Intelligence and Assad

1143
01:02:19,920 --> 01:02:23,240
Speaker 1: Syria to allow Sunny extremists to move through Syria and

1144
01:02:23,280 --> 01:02:27,240
Speaker 1: across Iraq's porous border. This provided huge numbers of foreign

1145
01:02:27,240 --> 01:02:31,080
Speaker 1: fighters to battle American soldiers. It also helped establish the

1146
01:02:31,120 --> 01:02:34,280
Speaker 1: networks of Sunny extremists in that region, in Syria and

1147
01:02:34,320 --> 01:02:36,920
Speaker 1: in northern Iraq that years later would coalesce into what

1148
01:02:37,000 --> 01:02:40,160
Speaker 1: we now know as isis Um. So this is again

1149
01:02:40,640 --> 01:02:44,280
Speaker 1: a decision with profoundly mixed consequences, and I'm gonna quote

1150
01:02:44,320 --> 01:02:47,400
Speaker 1: again from that New Yorker article. In many cases al

1151
01:02:47,440 --> 01:02:49,760
Speaker 1: Qaeda was allowed to degree of freedom in Iran as well.

1152
01:02:50,120 --> 01:02:52,120
Speaker 1: Crocker told me that in May two thousand three, the

1153
01:02:52,200 --> 01:02:55,000
Speaker 1: Americans received intelligence that al Qaeda fighters in Iran were

1154
01:02:55,040 --> 01:02:58,640
Speaker 1: preparing to an attack on Western targets in Saudi Arabia.

1155
01:02:58,920 --> 01:03:02,600
Speaker 1: Crocker was alarmed they were there under Iranian protection planning operations,

1156
01:03:02,600 --> 01:03:04,920
Speaker 1: he said, he flew to Geneva and passed a warning

1157
01:03:04,960 --> 01:03:07,480
Speaker 1: to the Iranians, but to no avail. Militants bombed three

1158
01:03:07,560 --> 01:03:11,959
Speaker 1: residential compounds in Riad, killing thirty five people, including nine Americans.

1159
01:03:12,520 --> 01:03:14,720
Speaker 1: As it turned out, the Iranian strategy of a betting

1160
01:03:14,760 --> 01:03:18,640
Speaker 1: Sunni extremists backfired horrendously. Shortly after the occupation, began, the

1161
01:03:18,680 --> 01:03:22,080
Speaker 1: same extremists began attacking Shiite civilians and the Shiite dominated

1162
01:03:22,120 --> 01:03:24,560
Speaker 1: Iraqi government. It was a preview of the civil war

1163
01:03:24,600 --> 01:03:27,280
Speaker 1: to come welcome to the Middle East. The Western diplotin

1164
01:03:27,320 --> 01:03:30,040
Speaker 1: Baghdad told me Sulimani wanted to bleed the Americans, so

1165
01:03:30,080 --> 01:03:34,120
Speaker 1: he invited in the Jihadis and things got out of control. Now,

1166
01:03:34,280 --> 01:03:36,120
Speaker 1: one of the things that's really frustrating to me right

1167
01:03:36,160 --> 01:03:38,000
Speaker 1: now is that you'll see and like a lot of

1168
01:03:38,000 --> 01:03:41,400
Speaker 1: the anti war left people celebrating Sulimani as like an

1169
01:03:41,480 --> 01:03:44,600
Speaker 1: enemy of ISIS and Islamic extremism. And it's true that

1170
01:03:44,680 --> 01:03:47,080
Speaker 1: his forces fought against ISIS and that he helped in

1171
01:03:47,120 --> 01:03:50,360
Speaker 1: the campaign to destroy ISIS, but he was also integral

1172
01:03:50,400 --> 01:03:52,959
Speaker 1: and helping ISIS come about and kind of the same

1173
01:03:52,960 --> 01:03:55,080
Speaker 1: ways that the United States were. And this is one

1174
01:03:55,080 --> 01:03:57,040
Speaker 1: of the things that I think ironic to me is

1175
01:03:57,080 --> 01:03:58,440
Speaker 1: that if you look at like a lot of the

1176
01:03:58,480 --> 01:04:01,200
Speaker 1: mistakes that the US made that allowed ISIS to get

1177
01:04:01,200 --> 01:04:03,360
Speaker 1: a foothold in Syria and Iraq, and a lot of

1178
01:04:03,360 --> 01:04:06,120
Speaker 1: the mistakes Iran made that allowed ISIS to gain a

1179
01:04:06,120 --> 01:04:10,040
Speaker 1: foothold in the same region, they're not entirely different. Um.

1180
01:04:10,120 --> 01:04:13,120
Speaker 1: And I think they're both based in this kind of

1181
01:04:14,200 --> 01:04:16,840
Speaker 1: an attempt to use these forces for your own gain

1182
01:04:17,000 --> 01:04:20,640
Speaker 1: that backfired. Um. It's an interesting story, UM, but it's

1183
01:04:20,640 --> 01:04:22,600
Speaker 1: a lot more complicated than a lot of people on

1184
01:04:22,640 --> 01:04:25,800
Speaker 1: Twitter are giving it credit for being. So that's that's

1185
01:04:25,840 --> 01:04:29,720
Speaker 1: my take on it. Now. In two thousand eleven, when

1186
01:04:29,720 --> 01:04:32,480
Speaker 1: the Syrian Civil War started up, Sulimani ordered members of

1187
01:04:32,520 --> 01:04:35,600
Speaker 1: the Iraqi Shiite militias that he'd formed to help resist

1188
01:04:35,640 --> 01:04:39,160
Speaker 1: the US into Syria to support Assad's beleaguered and still

1189
01:04:39,200 --> 01:04:42,880
Speaker 1: incompetent military. UM. And this is again like there's quotes

1190
01:04:42,920 --> 01:04:45,280
Speaker 1: that you get from like members of the Iranian government

1191
01:04:45,280 --> 01:04:47,360
Speaker 1: at the time that are, like, if we lose Damascus,

1192
01:04:47,400 --> 01:04:54,160
Speaker 1: we lose Tehran. Um. Because like Syria connects uh Iran

1193
01:04:54,280 --> 01:04:57,720
Speaker 1: to Lebanon, and like Hezbollah is a hugely important chunk

1194
01:04:57,760 --> 01:05:01,680
Speaker 1: of like Iran's international Paul. He's particularly like in terms

1195
01:05:01,720 --> 01:05:04,000
Speaker 1: of like what they consider to be the resistance to Israel.

1196
01:05:04,120 --> 01:05:07,560
Speaker 1: So there's very much this understanding that we cannot let

1197
01:05:07,840 --> 01:05:12,200
Speaker 1: Asad in Syria fall or it's the end of us. UM.

1198
01:05:12,280 --> 01:05:14,560
Speaker 1: And there's also another one of the things that you hear,

1199
01:05:14,600 --> 01:05:17,880
Speaker 1: you'll hear quotes along the lines of unlike the Americans,

1200
01:05:18,040 --> 01:05:21,480
Speaker 1: we stick by our friends. And obviously I hate me

1201
01:05:21,560 --> 01:05:24,640
Speaker 1: some Bashar al Assad. But there's a point there that

1202
01:05:24,760 --> 01:05:27,280
Speaker 1: I think gets to like why the United States is

1203
01:05:27,320 --> 01:05:30,960
Speaker 1: doomed to always lose whenever it gets involved in conflict

1204
01:05:31,000 --> 01:05:33,800
Speaker 1: in the Middle East. Is a country like Iran under

1205
01:05:33,800 --> 01:05:36,080
Speaker 1: a guy like Sulimani and whoever is going to come

1206
01:05:36,120 --> 01:05:39,400
Speaker 1: next to him is capable of portrait of of of

1207
01:05:39,400 --> 01:05:42,360
Speaker 1: of thinking in terms of decades, in terms of we

1208
01:05:42,400 --> 01:05:45,200
Speaker 1: have been supporting this regime in Syria for years, and

1209
01:05:45,200 --> 01:05:48,000
Speaker 1: we will continue to and we will gain certain long

1210
01:05:48,120 --> 01:05:51,320
Speaker 1: term benefits from being solid as a rock in our

1211
01:05:51,360 --> 01:05:53,160
Speaker 1: support of this regime. And they did things like they

1212
01:05:53,200 --> 01:05:57,240
Speaker 1: loaned Asad seven billion dollars, they sent thousands of soldiers

1213
01:05:57,240 --> 01:05:59,880
Speaker 1: in to fight, a significant chunk of whom died fighting

1214
01:06:00,000 --> 01:06:03,720
Speaker 1: for Assad um. Whereas in the United States you never

1215
01:06:03,840 --> 01:06:07,160
Speaker 1: get plans that go much further than four maybe eight years,

1216
01:06:07,560 --> 01:06:10,160
Speaker 1: and nobody who we back, as we've the Kurds in

1217
01:06:10,200 --> 01:06:13,080
Speaker 1: Syria have most recently seen nobody can trust that will

1218
01:06:13,120 --> 01:06:16,440
Speaker 1: stay there for any length of time. Um, Which is

1219
01:06:16,480 --> 01:06:19,960
Speaker 1: like when you're looking at why we continually funk up

1220
01:06:19,960 --> 01:06:22,520
Speaker 1: in the Middle East. I think that is as much

1221
01:06:22,520 --> 01:06:24,680
Speaker 1: of a reason as anything, is the fact that, like

1222
01:06:25,320 --> 01:06:30,360
Speaker 1: nobody can really trust us to hang around um. And meanwhile,

1223
01:06:30,360 --> 01:06:33,200
Speaker 1: with a country like Iran, if you're Iran's ally, you

1224
01:06:33,320 --> 01:06:36,200
Speaker 1: kind of can know what they're going to do, like

1225
01:06:36,440 --> 01:06:39,640
Speaker 1: and and it's not because you know, it's because of

1226
01:06:39,720 --> 01:06:42,920
Speaker 1: national self interest. Is because Iran sees Syria as an

1227
01:06:42,920 --> 01:06:45,760
Speaker 1: integral part of its national defense and its foreign policy.

1228
01:06:46,200 --> 01:06:49,560
Speaker 1: But like, if you're Syria, you can trust Iran to

1229
01:06:49,680 --> 01:06:52,280
Speaker 1: do certain things to back your ass up. And if

1230
01:06:52,280 --> 01:06:54,560
Speaker 1: your US ally in the Middle East, you can never

1231
01:06:54,680 --> 01:06:57,240
Speaker 1: trust the United States further than about four years out.

1232
01:06:57,880 --> 01:07:01,760
Speaker 1: And that's just the way it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

1233
01:07:01,840 --> 01:07:05,040
Speaker 1: that's uh yeah yeah. I mean it's like the American

1234
01:07:05,120 --> 01:07:07,400
Speaker 1: way is to always just have your own back and

1235
01:07:07,480 --> 01:07:11,680
Speaker 1: not consider um. The consequence is in a weird way.

1236
01:07:12,800 --> 01:07:15,840
Speaker 1: Ah yeah, I don't. I don't care for this. It's

1237
01:07:15,880 --> 01:07:18,360
Speaker 1: this problem of like, like, obviously I'm not in favor

1238
01:07:18,400 --> 01:07:20,560
Speaker 1: of I think it's good that we get to vote

1239
01:07:20,560 --> 01:07:23,680
Speaker 1: regularly on a new government, but there are aspects of

1240
01:07:23,720 --> 01:07:26,600
Speaker 1: it that are dumb. And one of the things that's

1241
01:07:26,680 --> 01:07:28,840
Speaker 1: dumb about it is that it means our entire foreign

1242
01:07:28,880 --> 01:07:31,200
Speaker 1: policy changes on a dime every four to eight years,

1243
01:07:31,840 --> 01:07:34,840
Speaker 1: And maybe there's a way to have a government where

1244
01:07:34,880 --> 01:07:38,160
Speaker 1: we still get to vote out leaders regularly, but also

1245
01:07:38,600 --> 01:07:41,120
Speaker 1: we don't whiplash our allies every time someone with a

1246
01:07:41,120 --> 01:07:43,600
Speaker 1: different opinion winds up. I don't know, maybe maybe there's

1247
01:07:43,600 --> 01:07:45,840
Speaker 1: a way to figure that out. God you would think

1248
01:07:46,080 --> 01:07:50,280
Speaker 1: or like, yeah, just keep it. I don't even know,

1249
01:07:50,400 --> 01:07:53,880
Speaker 1: Like it's so it's so tough to think about, because, like,

1250
01:07:55,080 --> 01:07:56,920
Speaker 1: I mean more so, when you were talking, I started

1251
01:07:56,920 --> 01:08:00,680
Speaker 1: thinking a lot about my Iranian family and hoping. I

1252
01:08:00,720 --> 01:08:03,560
Speaker 1: feel like the best outcome would be that the US

1253
01:08:05,240 --> 01:08:08,760
Speaker 1: understands that the attacks were the missiles that were just

1254
01:08:08,840 --> 01:08:15,040
Speaker 1: fired are in retaliation of them killing Slemani, and they

1255
01:08:15,080 --> 01:08:17,679
Speaker 1: just take it as that they go, Okay, that's enough,

1256
01:08:17,760 --> 01:08:20,040
Speaker 1: and that they don't retaliate into your on because I

1257
01:08:20,080 --> 01:08:26,519
Speaker 1: feel like, um, this country can't I don't even know

1258
01:08:26,560 --> 01:08:30,600
Speaker 1: like what to think, Like we can't stand here and

1259
01:08:30,640 --> 01:08:33,360
Speaker 1: then be like okay, well let's just all vote. Like

1260
01:08:33,439 --> 01:08:36,080
Speaker 1: it doesn't nothing makes sense anymore. And I'm really starting

1261
01:08:36,080 --> 01:08:39,519
Speaker 1: to become a little unraveled as we go on. Um,

1262
01:08:39,600 --> 01:08:42,719
Speaker 1: I don't know, I I really it doesn't even feel

1263
01:08:42,720 --> 01:08:44,479
Speaker 1: like just being like, well, we gotta get out there

1264
01:08:44,479 --> 01:08:46,800
Speaker 1: and vote them out is enough. It's like, why is

1265
01:08:46,920 --> 01:08:51,439
Speaker 1: no one taking this person out of the control? Like

1266
01:08:51,720 --> 01:08:56,679
Speaker 1: it seems so I feel so lost currently. I don't

1267
01:08:56,680 --> 01:08:58,920
Speaker 1: know what I want. I just want it to be done.

1268
01:08:59,120 --> 01:09:01,360
Speaker 1: I want this man to be out, and I don't

1269
01:09:01,400 --> 01:09:05,639
Speaker 1: want I don't want anyone else to die. Is that fun?

1270
01:09:05,920 --> 01:09:10,840
Speaker 1: Is that like just to like I mean, like right now,

1271
01:09:11,000 --> 01:09:13,840
Speaker 1: the most recent news that just came out after the

1272
01:09:15,000 --> 01:09:19,360
Speaker 1: Iran launched missiles into the Al Asad air base near

1273
01:09:19,640 --> 01:09:24,080
Speaker 1: or Bill is that um, one of the advisors to

1274
01:09:24,120 --> 01:09:28,240
Speaker 1: Iran Supreme Leader Aguin named said Jollily, posted to Twitter

1275
01:09:28,520 --> 01:09:31,400
Speaker 1: a picture of the Iranian flag. And if you'll remember

1276
01:09:31,400 --> 01:09:35,799
Speaker 1: when Trump announced Trump announced the killing of Sulimani basically

1277
01:09:35,800 --> 01:09:39,640
Speaker 1: by just tweeting a picture of the American flag. Um,

1278
01:09:39,720 --> 01:09:45,120
Speaker 1: And it's just keeps getting dumber, like like, don't that's

1279
01:09:45,120 --> 01:09:47,080
Speaker 1: not the direction it should be heading, where we just

1280
01:09:47,160 --> 01:09:50,160
Speaker 1: post flags and shoot missiles at each other, Like that's

1281
01:09:50,320 --> 01:09:58,240
Speaker 1: that's not a boy. Um, I'm not happy with that development. Um. Yeah.

1282
01:09:58,240 --> 01:10:00,280
Speaker 1: And also it just came out that on the In

1283
01:10:00,320 --> 01:10:03,280
Speaker 1: officials are warning that if the U S retaliates to

1284
01:10:03,360 --> 01:10:05,800
Speaker 1: the strikes that are on just launched has below will

1285
01:10:05,800 --> 01:10:09,280
Speaker 1: fire rockets at Israel. So that's this is all going

1286
01:10:09,320 --> 01:10:16,120
Speaker 1: great in real time. Everybody fun one super cool. I mean,

1287
01:10:16,160 --> 01:10:18,800
Speaker 1: I think the best we can do is understand that

1288
01:10:18,840 --> 01:10:21,880
Speaker 1: we did something we shouldn't have done without a plan,

1289
01:10:22,080 --> 01:10:23,960
Speaker 1: and now we have no plan, and now we're here,

1290
01:10:23,960 --> 01:10:25,479
Speaker 1: and it's like, what are we supposed to do. You

1291
01:10:25,560 --> 01:10:28,519
Speaker 1: can't go into Iran. You just can't do it. You

1292
01:10:28,600 --> 01:10:31,479
Speaker 1: cannot go start a war with Iran. You definitely can't

1293
01:10:31,520 --> 01:10:34,320
Speaker 1: go started like a foot war with Iran. You're not

1294
01:10:34,520 --> 01:10:37,240
Speaker 1: this isn't this is absurd. We were No one's going

1295
01:10:37,280 --> 01:10:40,960
Speaker 1: to survive this. You're not gonna put these poor military.

1296
01:10:41,120 --> 01:10:44,599
Speaker 1: The US military does not deserve this. They do not

1297
01:10:44,760 --> 01:10:48,559
Speaker 1: deserve to have to fly troops out there while they're

1298
01:10:48,560 --> 01:10:51,679
Speaker 1: literally telling troops to get the funk out of here.

1299
01:10:51,760 --> 01:10:56,320
Speaker 1: This is not good, and here we are. It's it's

1300
01:10:56,360 --> 01:10:58,960
Speaker 1: fundamentally like. One of the things that was really frustrating

1301
01:10:58,960 --> 01:11:01,360
Speaker 1: in the lead up to the fucking election is that

1302
01:11:01,400 --> 01:11:03,479
Speaker 1: there would be all these guys who are ostensibly on

1303
01:11:03,520 --> 01:11:06,640
Speaker 1: the left who would be like, well, Donald Trump at

1304
01:11:06,720 --> 01:11:08,720
Speaker 1: least is like our best bet, Like this is someone

1305
01:11:08,720 --> 01:11:11,839
Speaker 1: I really respect. Otherwise that Jeremy Scahill over the intercept

1306
01:11:11,920 --> 01:11:14,519
Speaker 1: something said something like Trump is the best might be

1307
01:11:14,560 --> 01:11:17,960
Speaker 1: our best bet for like not any getting America involved

1308
01:11:17,960 --> 01:11:20,559
Speaker 1: into any new wars, And it was like, if you

1309
01:11:20,600 --> 01:11:22,960
Speaker 1: listen to his actual rhetoric, he was never anti war.

1310
01:11:23,360 --> 01:11:27,400
Speaker 1: He was just anti actually like committing Like he was

1311
01:11:27,439 --> 01:11:29,960
Speaker 1: never anti war. He was anti the only thing about

1312
01:11:30,000 --> 01:11:32,879
Speaker 1: war that isn't all negative, which is like the ability

1313
01:11:32,920 --> 01:11:36,320
Speaker 1: to build long term relationships and potentially stability in areas

1314
01:11:36,320 --> 01:11:38,599
Speaker 1: at the cost of lives and in a significant amount

1315
01:11:38,600 --> 01:11:41,679
Speaker 1: of money. Um, like what we had helped to achieve

1316
01:11:41,720 --> 01:11:44,960
Speaker 1: in chunks of northeast Syria, Um, Like what we helped

1317
01:11:44,960 --> 01:11:47,760
Speaker 1: to achieve in chunks of northern Iraq. Um. He was

1318
01:11:47,760 --> 01:11:51,120
Speaker 1: against that stuff. He was not against murdering people and

1319
01:11:51,400 --> 01:11:53,599
Speaker 1: sending in troops as long as he got to steal

1320
01:11:53,680 --> 01:11:56,400
Speaker 1: oil from people like that. That was the thing that

1321
01:11:56,439 --> 01:11:59,599
Speaker 1: Trump said is like number one, he's fine with fucking

1322
01:11:59,640 --> 01:12:01,600
Speaker 1: bombing the ship out of people, and number two, he

1323
01:12:01,640 --> 01:12:04,519
Speaker 1: thinks when we're involved in the country militarily, we should

1324
01:12:04,520 --> 01:12:07,280
Speaker 1: get to take half their oil. Like he was always

1325
01:12:07,320 --> 01:12:10,840
Speaker 1: just a pirate Um, just a bunch of idiots tricked

1326
01:12:10,840 --> 01:12:13,160
Speaker 1: themselves into thinking he was anti war because they hated

1327
01:12:13,200 --> 01:12:18,879
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton. It's just so frustrating, Um, how dumb people were. Uh,

1328
01:12:19,080 --> 01:12:21,639
Speaker 1: and now we're seeing like, yeah, he's just sending more

1329
01:12:21,640 --> 01:12:23,599
Speaker 1: troops into the Middle East and they're getting shot at

1330
01:12:23,600 --> 01:12:27,160
Speaker 1: by rockets and he's bombing sovereign nations that are on

1331
01:12:27,240 --> 01:12:31,360
Speaker 1: paper are military allies. Because it's just so dumb. It's

1332
01:12:31,400 --> 01:12:34,479
Speaker 1: so dumb. Yeah, there's no lodging, But do you think

1333
01:12:34,520 --> 01:12:40,280
Speaker 1: there's an adult in the room anywhere in this situation? Uh?

1334
01:12:40,520 --> 01:12:44,040
Speaker 1: Not not anymore, not anymore. I Mean the problem is

1335
01:12:44,080 --> 01:12:46,880
Speaker 1: that like everybody's convinced they're the adult in they're like

1336
01:12:46,880 --> 01:12:49,839
Speaker 1: these military guys, the guys who I suspect like pushed,

1337
01:12:49,880 --> 01:12:52,640
Speaker 1: We're you're part of what was pushing the assassination of Sulimani.

1338
01:12:53,200 --> 01:12:56,120
Speaker 1: Would say that, like, no, we are the hard nosed adults.

1339
01:12:56,160 --> 01:12:58,479
Speaker 1: We understand the realities of the world. And this guy

1340
01:12:58,520 --> 01:13:00,519
Speaker 1: was a bad guy and he killed our men, and

1341
01:13:00,600 --> 01:13:02,719
Speaker 1: like sometimes you've got to take it to the bad guys.

1342
01:13:02,720 --> 01:13:04,960
Speaker 1: And I think Sulimani was a bad guy. I think

1343
01:13:04,960 --> 01:13:06,600
Speaker 1: he did some terrible things. I think he's backing of

1344
01:13:06,600 --> 01:13:09,840
Speaker 1: the Assad regime was awful. But the right answer and

1345
01:13:09,880 --> 01:13:13,639
Speaker 1: the smart answer, is not always killing everybody who does

1346
01:13:13,680 --> 01:13:16,800
Speaker 1: bad things, especially since for as much ugly ship as

1347
01:13:16,800 --> 01:13:19,720
Speaker 1: Sulimani did, you can find American generals who did a

1348
01:13:19,720 --> 01:13:22,400
Speaker 1: lot of similar things who are alive today, and Costum

1349
01:13:22,400 --> 01:13:24,439
Speaker 1: Suleimani doesn't have nearly as much blood on his hands

1350
01:13:24,439 --> 01:13:27,800
Speaker 1: to say Henry Kissinger does. Like that's just a reality

1351
01:13:27,880 --> 01:13:30,400
Speaker 1: of the world, is that if you go around missile

1352
01:13:30,479 --> 01:13:33,680
Speaker 1: striking everybody who has done bad things, you will be

1353
01:13:33,720 --> 01:13:36,880
Speaker 1: at war with everybody and a lot more people will die.

1354
01:13:37,400 --> 01:13:40,599
Speaker 1: And it's not satisfying when you've lost a friend as

1355
01:13:40,640 --> 01:13:43,719
Speaker 1: a result of something that guy did, but that guy

1356
01:13:43,800 --> 01:13:45,880
Speaker 1: lost friends as a result of something some of your

1357
01:13:45,960 --> 01:13:49,320
Speaker 1: buddies did, because like, that's the fucking way this game

1358
01:13:49,520 --> 01:13:52,760
Speaker 1: is played. And I hate all of the people who

1359
01:13:52,800 --> 01:13:55,080
Speaker 1: actually consider it a game, which is most of the

1360
01:13:55,080 --> 01:13:57,880
Speaker 1: people that we talk about in stories like this, Like,

1361
01:13:58,000 --> 01:14:01,600
Speaker 1: I hate them all, um. But I was thinking the

1362
01:14:01,680 --> 01:14:07,240
Speaker 1: other day how circular history is, like it's I had

1363
01:14:07,280 --> 01:14:09,559
Speaker 1: a very dark thought where I was like, oh, this

1364
01:14:09,600 --> 01:14:13,479
Speaker 1: will never end, like we will maybe relations will get better,

1365
01:14:13,760 --> 01:14:17,000
Speaker 1: maybe they won't, but we will be in this cycle forever,

1366
01:14:17,880 --> 01:14:20,120
Speaker 1: and it feels like it just happens and happens and

1367
01:14:20,240 --> 01:14:24,439
Speaker 1: happens we we do whenever I get too trapped in

1368
01:14:24,479 --> 01:14:26,160
Speaker 1: that kind of thinking. One thing I like to think

1369
01:14:26,200 --> 01:14:30,920
Speaker 1: about is France and Germany, um, and France and England,

1370
01:14:31,080 --> 01:14:34,080
Speaker 1: which are all countries that were trapped in a centuries

1371
01:14:34,120 --> 01:14:38,960
Speaker 1: long cycle of constant and incredibly bloody warfare, and now

1372
01:14:39,120 --> 01:14:41,840
Speaker 1: all of their teenagers fuck each other every summer and

1373
01:14:41,920 --> 01:14:45,000
Speaker 1: get drunk and take ecstasy and dance to electronic music

1374
01:14:45,320 --> 01:14:47,040
Speaker 1: and there's never going to be a war between those

1375
01:14:47,040 --> 01:14:51,439
Speaker 1: three countries again. Um, and a ton of ugly blood

1376
01:14:51,439 --> 01:14:56,400
Speaker 1: between them. UM. So I don't think it's hopeless. That's

1377
01:14:56,439 --> 01:14:57,960
Speaker 1: a good way to look at it. I can see

1378
01:14:57,960 --> 01:15:02,799
Speaker 1: that it does require a number one. It requires being like, well, okay,

1379
01:15:02,920 --> 01:15:04,800
Speaker 1: you have guys on your side who killed a lot

1380
01:15:04,840 --> 01:15:07,360
Speaker 1: of our guys, and the ship they did was fucked up.

1381
01:15:07,600 --> 01:15:09,040
Speaker 1: We have guys on our side who killed a lot

1382
01:15:09,080 --> 01:15:11,200
Speaker 1: of your guys, and that ship is fucked up, and

1383
01:15:11,240 --> 01:15:13,439
Speaker 1: at some point we have to stop taking vengeance on

1384
01:15:13,479 --> 01:15:16,439
Speaker 1: each other. Otherwise we're just going to keep killing each

1385
01:15:16,439 --> 01:15:19,120
Speaker 1: other and nothing's ever going to get better. And that is.

1386
01:15:19,200 --> 01:15:22,280
Speaker 1: Eventually France and Germany and England stopped counting who had

1387
01:15:22,320 --> 01:15:25,000
Speaker 1: killed more of the other sons and they just started

1388
01:15:25,280 --> 01:15:28,599
Speaker 1: taking ecstasy together in dance clubs and that made things better.

1389
01:15:29,080 --> 01:15:32,439
Speaker 1: Um and yeah, we've had a digression a bit. We

1390
01:15:32,439 --> 01:15:37,960
Speaker 1: should get back to talking about gossip. Sulimani um so UH.

1391
01:15:38,000 --> 01:15:39,840
Speaker 1: In two thousand and eleven, when the Syrian Civil War

1392
01:15:39,920 --> 01:15:43,320
Speaker 1: started up, Sulimani ordered members of the Iraqi Shiite militias

1393
01:15:43,320 --> 01:15:47,200
Speaker 1: he'd formed to resist the us uh UM into Syria

1394
01:15:47,240 --> 01:15:50,880
Speaker 1: to support Assad's beleaguered military, which was, as it is now,

1395
01:15:51,040 --> 01:15:53,760
Speaker 1: completely incompetent. I was just watching a video the other

1396
01:15:53,880 --> 01:15:57,000
Speaker 1: day of like thirty soldiers of the Syrian Arab army

1397
01:15:57,080 --> 01:16:02,160
Speaker 1: supported by a tank fleeing from nine UH like jihadi

1398
01:16:02,240 --> 01:16:05,280
Speaker 1: fighters in it lip. It's just like, you guys still

1399
01:16:05,320 --> 01:16:08,320
Speaker 1: haven't figured out to be a fucking military fleeing they

1400
01:16:08,360 --> 01:16:12,439
Speaker 1: were just like there their their conscripts, they're poorly trained,

1401
01:16:12,479 --> 01:16:14,679
Speaker 1: they don't know what they're doing. They're poor, like they're

1402
01:16:14,720 --> 01:16:18,320
Speaker 1: only led by corrupt Like the only competent fighters in

1403
01:16:18,320 --> 01:16:21,639
Speaker 1: in Uh in Syria on the side of the Syrian

1404
01:16:21,640 --> 01:16:25,640
Speaker 1: government are like Hezbollah and other like Iranian backed militias

1405
01:16:25,680 --> 01:16:27,760
Speaker 1: like they have a lot of competent fight and that's yeah.

1406
01:16:27,760 --> 01:16:29,439
Speaker 1: I'm gonna read a quote from The New Yorker about

1407
01:16:29,439 --> 01:16:33,040
Speaker 1: that quote. Sulimani also set up additional Shia militia groups.

1408
01:16:33,400 --> 01:16:36,240
Speaker 1: These included a group of Afghans resident in Iran, the

1409
01:16:36,240 --> 01:16:40,759
Speaker 1: Fatimiyun Division, in a Pakistani outfit, the zeb Nyabian Brigade.

1410
01:16:40,920 --> 01:16:44,120
Speaker 1: The very names of these groups announced Iran's sectarian intentions.

1411
01:16:44,240 --> 01:16:46,960
Speaker 1: Shia Muslims accord Fatima, the daughter of the Prophet, a

1412
01:16:47,040 --> 01:16:50,040
Speaker 1: status comparable to that of the Virgin Marrian Catholicism, while

1413
01:16:50,160 --> 01:16:53,519
Speaker 1: Zineb Fatima's daughter was the sister of Hussain, Who's whose

1414
01:16:53,560 --> 01:16:55,800
Speaker 1: death at the Battle of Karbala formed a pivotal moment,

1415
01:16:55,800 --> 01:16:59,040
Speaker 1: and as soon as Shia Skism, forces under his command

1416
01:16:59,040 --> 01:17:01,320
Speaker 1: were instrumental in many of the major offensive during the

1417
01:17:01,320 --> 01:17:04,680
Speaker 1: Syrian War, including the recapture of Kassar from the rebels.

1418
01:17:04,680 --> 01:17:09,120
Speaker 1: So most experts view Iran support as embodied by Cossum Sulimani,

1419
01:17:09,160 --> 01:17:12,160
Speaker 1: because he is completely in charge of the Iranian effort

1420
01:17:12,160 --> 01:17:15,960
Speaker 1: in Syria is absolutely critical to Bashar al Assad's staying

1421
01:17:16,000 --> 01:17:18,639
Speaker 1: in power, and Cosum Sulimani is really the man who

1422
01:17:18,760 --> 01:17:23,360
Speaker 1: runs the Syrian Civil War for the regime for a

1423
01:17:23,439 --> 01:17:25,240
Speaker 1: lot of the war. Like he is one of the

1424
01:17:25,280 --> 01:17:29,680
Speaker 1: top players and maybe the only competent one um or

1425
01:17:29,680 --> 01:17:32,960
Speaker 1: at least like the I mean, there's other competent Iranians involved.

1426
01:17:33,000 --> 01:17:35,120
Speaker 1: Nobody in the Syrian Aram Army is very good at

1427
01:17:35,120 --> 01:17:38,400
Speaker 1: what they do UM Now. Today the s a A

1428
01:17:38,560 --> 01:17:41,160
Speaker 1: is obviously still not great, but the entrance of Iranian

1429
01:17:41,160 --> 01:17:44,360
Speaker 1: back militias, including the Lebanese Hezbollah, provided the regime with

1430
01:17:44,479 --> 01:17:47,800
Speaker 1: enough competent fighters to recapture critical cities like Aleppo and

1431
01:17:47,840 --> 01:17:50,519
Speaker 1: swing the type of war back in Assad's favor. And

1432
01:17:50,560 --> 01:17:53,120
Speaker 1: it's it's hard to exaggerate how much human misery this

1433
01:17:53,160 --> 01:17:55,840
Speaker 1: has been responsible for. Uh. The siege of Aleppo alone

1434
01:17:55,880 --> 01:17:58,280
Speaker 1: costs thousands of lives, and the fact that Assad's regime

1435
01:17:58,360 --> 01:18:01,200
Speaker 1: survives has allowed them to, among their things, incarceraate and

1436
01:18:01,240 --> 01:18:04,040
Speaker 1: torture to death to death around a hundred thousand people.

1437
01:18:04,360 --> 01:18:06,400
Speaker 1: This is all done, or at least the support of

1438
01:18:06,400 --> 01:18:10,880
Speaker 1: the Assad regime by Sulimani was done for nationalist motivations.

1439
01:18:10,880 --> 01:18:15,080
Speaker 1: He was fighting for Iran more than anything else. Um

1440
01:18:15,120 --> 01:18:18,200
Speaker 1: And yeah, yeah, so we we we've gone into why

1441
01:18:18,760 --> 01:18:21,360
Speaker 1: that's critical, for for why they see it as like

1442
01:18:21,479 --> 01:18:24,160
Speaker 1: a matter of sort of like national survival to support

1443
01:18:24,200 --> 01:18:28,040
Speaker 1: Syria in this war. Um So, yeah, I I I

1444
01:18:28,080 --> 01:18:32,840
Speaker 1: think that's important to understand. Uh So. While almost every

1445
01:18:32,920 --> 01:18:35,760
Speaker 1: US attempt at projecting power and influence UH in the

1446
01:18:35,760 --> 01:18:37,640
Speaker 1: Middle East over the last twenty years has in an

1447
01:18:37,640 --> 01:18:41,680
Speaker 1: object failure, mass death and unspeakable expense, Kasam Sulimani and

1448
01:18:41,680 --> 01:18:44,840
Speaker 1: his Kods force have been extremely successful in spreading Iranian

1449
01:18:44,840 --> 01:18:48,160
Speaker 1: power across the region thanks to a network of militias

1450
01:18:48,200 --> 01:18:52,240
Speaker 1: and an incredibly successful political influence campaign. Iran near now

1451
01:18:52,280 --> 01:18:55,439
Speaker 1: has deep connections to the government of Iraq, basically owns

1452
01:18:55,479 --> 01:18:58,200
Speaker 1: the government of Syria, and maintains a sizeable base of

1453
01:18:58,240 --> 01:19:01,519
Speaker 1: power in Lebanon. Uh In addition to that, they also

1454
01:19:01,600 --> 01:19:04,360
Speaker 1: have a huge base of control and support in Yemen

1455
01:19:04,400 --> 01:19:07,519
Speaker 1: because the Hoothy militias that are currently fighting against the

1456
01:19:07,560 --> 01:19:12,120
Speaker 1: Saudi led coalition are backed by Iran, and it costs Iran.

1457
01:19:12,479 --> 01:19:15,759
Speaker 1: You know, they spend millions per week supporting the Hoothies

1458
01:19:15,800 --> 01:19:18,920
Speaker 1: and the Saudi spend billions per week bombing them. Um

1459
01:19:18,960 --> 01:19:21,320
Speaker 1: And it's kind of the opposite of the case. In

1460
01:19:21,320 --> 01:19:25,160
Speaker 1: in Syria and in Syria, Iran is definitely on support

1461
01:19:25,160 --> 01:19:27,639
Speaker 1: of the side that has killed the most innocent people.

1462
01:19:28,160 --> 01:19:30,800
Speaker 1: In Yemen, they are on support of the side that

1463
01:19:30,960 --> 01:19:33,680
Speaker 1: is fighting against the people who are murdering civilians by

1464
01:19:33,800 --> 01:19:36,240
Speaker 1: the thousands. The Saudi led coalition has been responsible for

1465
01:19:36,240 --> 01:19:38,080
Speaker 1: the vast majority of the deaths and the Yemen So

1466
01:19:38,520 --> 01:19:41,360
Speaker 1: there's always very fucking complicated when we talk about these

1467
01:19:41,360 --> 01:19:44,480
Speaker 1: different conflicts. And I'm not going to give the Iranian

1468
01:19:44,560 --> 01:19:47,080
Speaker 1: campaign sort of in Yemen as much time as it

1469
01:19:47,240 --> 01:19:51,160
Speaker 1: deserves UM, but it's important to see, like when Kasum

1470
01:19:51,280 --> 01:19:54,080
Speaker 1: comes to power in charge of the goods force UM

1471
01:19:54,400 --> 01:19:57,400
Speaker 1: like other than like Hezbollah, which is still at that

1472
01:19:57,400 --> 01:20:00,599
Speaker 1: point kind of nascent in Lebanon, UH, they don't have

1473
01:20:00,680 --> 01:20:02,880
Speaker 1: a lot of influence in the rest of the region.

1474
01:20:03,280 --> 01:20:06,640
Speaker 1: And by the time Kassam Sulimani is killed, the Iraqi

1475
01:20:06,680 --> 01:20:09,640
Speaker 1: government is on his side. There are a hundred and

1476
01:20:09,680 --> 01:20:13,080
Speaker 1: fifty thousand Shia militiamen backed by Iran living who are

1477
01:20:13,080 --> 01:20:18,679
Speaker 1: like iraqis UH. There are Iran backed militias in Syria

1478
01:20:18,720 --> 01:20:21,040
Speaker 1: that have been responsible for keeping the government in power,

1479
01:20:21,080 --> 01:20:24,960
Speaker 1: and the government owes around billions of dollars. Hezblah is

1480
01:20:24,960 --> 01:20:28,559
Speaker 1: one of the most dominant forces in Lebanon. UM, and

1481
01:20:28,600 --> 01:20:31,120
Speaker 1: they also Iran has a huge amount of influence and

1482
01:20:31,160 --> 01:20:33,120
Speaker 1: dominance and Yemen as a result of their support of

1483
01:20:33,120 --> 01:20:36,240
Speaker 1: the Hoothies. That's all Sulimani is doing. Like, that's a

1484
01:20:36,439 --> 01:20:39,960
Speaker 1: huge amount of power and influence. And you have to

1485
01:20:40,040 --> 01:20:43,760
Speaker 1: compare how Iran's ability to project power in the Middle

1486
01:20:43,760 --> 01:20:45,920
Speaker 1: East has changed in twenty years to how the United

1487
01:20:45,960 --> 01:20:48,639
Speaker 1: States has has where we you know, in a lot

1488
01:20:48,640 --> 01:20:51,800
Speaker 1: of ways, it's completely collapsed, Um, as a result of

1489
01:20:51,800 --> 01:20:55,000
Speaker 1: the fact that, like we're we're incredibly inconsistent. We don't

1490
01:20:55,040 --> 01:20:58,120
Speaker 1: tend to run our campaigns competently. Like it's one of

1491
01:20:58,160 --> 01:21:02,599
Speaker 1: those things. Um. On a purely intellectual level, he's very

1492
01:21:02,640 --> 01:21:06,080
Speaker 1: good at what he did. UM. He had an incredibly

1493
01:21:06,120 --> 01:21:10,920
Speaker 1: successful career, almost breathtakingly so UM. Yeah, he did so

1494
01:21:11,120 --> 01:21:17,040
Speaker 1: pretty wild. Yeah, it's it's he's a very influential fellow now. UM.

1495
01:21:17,160 --> 01:21:20,600
Speaker 1: For most of twenty years, Kasum traveled with near impunity

1496
01:21:20,680 --> 01:21:23,760
Speaker 1: from Baghdad to Damascus to the suddenly front line outposts

1497
01:21:23,760 --> 01:21:27,280
Speaker 1: in battlefields of the Iraqi and Syrian civil Wars. In

1498
01:21:27,320 --> 01:21:29,439
Speaker 1: the years since two thousand eleven, he went from a

1499
01:21:29,520 --> 01:21:32,760
Speaker 1: silent background figure which is appropriate for a spymaster, to

1500
01:21:32,800 --> 01:21:36,400
Speaker 1: a highly public war hero, constantly photographed standing on trucks

1501
01:21:36,439 --> 01:21:39,920
Speaker 1: surrounded by fighters. His image grew even more prominent after

1502
01:21:39,960 --> 01:21:43,080
Speaker 1: two thousand thirteen, when Isis began its bloody march across

1503
01:21:43,080 --> 01:21:46,000
Speaker 1: the Middle East. The Shia militia's that Cossum had spent

1504
01:21:46,080 --> 01:21:48,719
Speaker 1: years building were some of the few capable forces interact

1505
01:21:48,760 --> 01:21:51,280
Speaker 1: during the early stages of the Civil War, when the

1506
01:21:51,320 --> 01:21:53,880
Speaker 1: soldiers of the Islamic State were at the gates of Baghdad.

1507
01:21:54,360 --> 01:21:57,200
Speaker 1: The role these militias played in stopping ices is wildly

1508
01:21:57,240 --> 01:22:00,400
Speaker 1: overstated now online, but in the early days of the

1509
01:22:00,439 --> 01:22:03,000
Speaker 1: civil war they were quite important. As the war drove

1510
01:22:03,040 --> 01:22:05,759
Speaker 1: on and the Iraqi Army reformed and retrained other units,

1511
01:22:05,800 --> 01:22:09,639
Speaker 1: including the famous Golden Division and the counter Terrorism Forces UH,

1512
01:22:09,680 --> 01:22:12,200
Speaker 1: these forces did the vast majority of the actual fighting

1513
01:22:12,240 --> 01:22:15,320
Speaker 1: to retake Iraq from dash Um. When I was there,

1514
01:22:15,360 --> 01:22:17,479
Speaker 1: we ran into the Hasht al Shabbi militias, which is

1515
01:22:17,520 --> 01:22:20,320
Speaker 1: sort of like the popular mobilization forces. The Iranian back

1516
01:22:20,400 --> 01:22:24,120
Speaker 1: militias um now and again, but it really was like

1517
01:22:24,200 --> 01:22:26,600
Speaker 1: most of the fighting, like the recapturing of Fallujah and

1518
01:22:26,680 --> 01:22:29,479
Speaker 1: Mosle like it was. It was like Golden Division and

1519
01:22:29,479 --> 01:22:32,400
Speaker 1: and you know CTS forces more than anything else that

1520
01:22:32,479 --> 01:22:34,840
Speaker 1: did a lot of that fighting um and kind of

1521
01:22:34,880 --> 01:22:39,320
Speaker 1: like where the popular mobilization forces were critical was like

1522
01:22:39,680 --> 01:22:42,400
Speaker 1: kind of when when when Isis was moving on Baghdad

1523
01:22:42,439 --> 01:22:44,960
Speaker 1: and stuff, as the kind of the West struggled to

1524
01:22:45,000 --> 01:22:47,799
Speaker 1: get its act together and providing you know, useful support.

1525
01:22:48,160 --> 01:22:49,840
Speaker 1: So you don't want to denigrate and say that they

1526
01:22:49,840 --> 01:22:52,080
Speaker 1: didn't have an impact in stopping the spread of ISIS,

1527
01:22:52,120 --> 01:22:55,320
Speaker 1: because they absolutely did. But like the idea that that

1528
01:22:55,479 --> 01:22:58,599
Speaker 1: sulamani Is militias beat Isis, I mean it it ignores

1529
01:22:58,800 --> 01:23:02,240
Speaker 1: thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of Sunni Iraqis

1530
01:23:02,240 --> 01:23:08,639
Speaker 1: who did the bulk of the actual fighting against dash Um. Yeah. Anyway, uh,

1531
01:23:08,640 --> 01:23:11,679
Speaker 1: And I should note that my source on this take

1532
01:23:11,920 --> 01:23:14,320
Speaker 1: is not just due to my own biased recollections from

1533
01:23:14,320 --> 01:23:16,799
Speaker 1: my time in Iraq. It's also due to other sources

1534
01:23:16,840 --> 01:23:20,240
Speaker 1: within the Iranian government. Because The Intercept recently published a

1535
01:23:20,320 --> 01:23:23,479
Speaker 1: leaked archive of secret Iranian spy cables that they got

1536
01:23:23,520 --> 01:23:26,439
Speaker 1: their hands on. Something These cables came from members of

1537
01:23:26,439 --> 01:23:29,439
Speaker 1: the Iranian ministry of Intelligence and Security, which tends to

1538
01:23:29,439 --> 01:23:32,640
Speaker 1: be pretty antagonistic towards the Koods Force because again, and

1539
01:23:32,640 --> 01:23:35,360
Speaker 1: this is another frustrating thing, like you read about like

1540
01:23:35,400 --> 01:23:37,640
Speaker 1: coverage of this, and it like around this, around that,

1541
01:23:37,840 --> 01:23:39,920
Speaker 1: and like to a certain extent, it's hard not to

1542
01:23:40,040 --> 01:23:43,320
Speaker 1: when you're like talking about multiple different nations, but like

1543
01:23:43,439 --> 01:23:45,640
Speaker 1: there are a number of different forces within the Iranian

1544
01:23:45,640 --> 01:23:49,760
Speaker 1: government that want different things. To me, why the intelligence

1545
01:23:49,840 --> 01:23:55,280
Speaker 1: is not fans of the Kuds, Yeah, as I understand it,

1546
01:23:55,280 --> 01:23:57,200
Speaker 1: it kind of goes back to like we were saying,

1547
01:23:57,240 --> 01:24:00,400
Speaker 1: when you know, you have you have the revolution and

1548
01:24:01,280 --> 01:24:04,320
Speaker 1: the shaw is out and the new government doesn't really

1549
01:24:04,320 --> 01:24:08,040
Speaker 1: trust the military or the existing security apparatus, Like you're

1550
01:24:08,040 --> 01:24:09,640
Speaker 1: not going to tear all of that down because it's

1551
01:24:09,680 --> 01:24:11,160
Speaker 1: too much of a pain in the ask to do so,

1552
01:24:11,520 --> 01:24:14,120
Speaker 1: but you also don't trust them. So the Revolutionary Guard

1553
01:24:14,240 --> 01:24:16,160
Speaker 1: and the Koods Force come out as a way for

1554
01:24:16,240 --> 01:24:19,240
Speaker 1: the clerics to kind of have their own military and

1555
01:24:19,320 --> 01:24:23,920
Speaker 1: intelligence machine. The Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security is

1556
01:24:23,960 --> 01:24:28,560
Speaker 1: like basically the descendant of like the older standing security

1557
01:24:28,600 --> 01:24:31,920
Speaker 1: services in Iran um and so they're they're not the

1558
01:24:32,000 --> 01:24:33,800
Speaker 1: Koods Force, and in a lot of ways they view

1559
01:24:33,880 --> 01:24:36,360
Speaker 1: them as kind of an enemy because they're like opposed

1560
01:24:36,400 --> 01:24:41,520
Speaker 1: sort of forces. Um like that they're they're more antagonistic.

1561
01:24:41,560 --> 01:24:44,040
Speaker 1: Opposed isn't quite the right word, but like I hope

1562
01:24:44,040 --> 01:24:46,040
Speaker 1: I've gotten that across to some extent. I'm not an

1563
01:24:46,040 --> 01:24:49,840
Speaker 1: expert on this, and I've ever the understand like read

1564
01:24:49,920 --> 01:24:52,000
Speaker 1: up on that or even really thought about it. It

1565
01:24:52,040 --> 01:24:54,679
Speaker 1: never occurred to me, but it really makes sense because

1566
01:24:54,720 --> 01:24:58,479
Speaker 1: there's so many working, like you said, forces in Iran

1567
01:24:58,800 --> 01:25:02,519
Speaker 1: that you know, I tend to forget sometimes that like

1568
01:25:04,479 --> 01:25:08,200
Speaker 1: the whole era before the revolution was just a different time.

1569
01:25:08,240 --> 01:25:10,519
Speaker 1: And while they did try and eliminate the majority of

1570
01:25:10,520 --> 01:25:14,320
Speaker 1: that influence, like certain things are still kind of like

1571
01:25:14,720 --> 01:25:21,120
Speaker 1: working within the Uran just because they're needed to be. Yeah, yeah,

1572
01:25:21,160 --> 01:25:23,519
Speaker 1: you're not gonna like you're not gonna fire all of

1573
01:25:23,560 --> 01:25:26,280
Speaker 1: the police and stuff overnight, especially since you need those

1574
01:25:26,280 --> 01:25:30,160
Speaker 1: people to like help you like assert your power. Now,

1575
01:25:30,360 --> 01:25:33,280
Speaker 1: Like it's just like but then you don't trust them

1576
01:25:33,280 --> 01:25:35,559
Speaker 1: and you build your own structure and like things move

1577
01:25:35,560 --> 01:25:37,960
Speaker 1: on from there. That that's the understanding that I have.

1578
01:25:38,680 --> 01:25:41,160
Speaker 1: Um So, anyway, a bunch of these cables from the

1579
01:25:41,200 --> 01:25:44,120
Speaker 1: Ministry of Intelligence and Security about these guys talking about

1580
01:25:44,200 --> 01:25:48,080
Speaker 1: Sulimani and his malicious in Iraq leaked out and these

1581
01:25:48,080 --> 01:25:50,400
Speaker 1: are all from two thousand, two fifteen, and I'm gonna

1582
01:25:50,439 --> 01:25:54,040
Speaker 1: quote from that Intercept article now. Well, the Iranian led

1583
01:25:54,040 --> 01:25:57,320
Speaker 1: war against Diceis was raging. Iranian spies privately expressed concern

1584
01:25:57,360 --> 01:25:59,960
Speaker 1: that the brutal tactics favored by Sulimani and his Iraqi

1585
01:26:00,040 --> 01:26:02,840
Speaker 1: proxies were laying the groundwork from major blowback against the

1586
01:26:02,880 --> 01:26:06,600
Speaker 1: Iranian presence in Iraq. Sulimani was also criticized for his

1587
01:26:06,640 --> 01:26:09,280
Speaker 1: own alleged self promotion amid the fighting photos of the

1588
01:26:09,280 --> 01:26:12,400
Speaker 1: Iranian commander on battlefields across Iraq had helped build his

1589
01:26:12,520 --> 01:26:15,880
Speaker 1: image as an iconic military leader, but that outsized image

1590
01:26:15,920 --> 01:26:17,760
Speaker 1: was also turning him into a figure of terror for

1591
01:26:17,840 --> 01:26:22,519
Speaker 1: many organized Iraqis, for many ordinary Iraqis, and some documents

1592
01:26:22,520 --> 01:26:26,439
Speaker 1: intelligence officers criticized Sulimani for alienating Sunni Arab communities and

1593
01:26:26,479 --> 01:26:29,320
Speaker 1: helping to create circumstances that justified or a newt American

1594
01:26:29,360 --> 01:26:33,080
Speaker 1: military presence in Iraq two thousand fourteen m o I

1595
01:26:33,280 --> 01:26:36,840
Speaker 1: S document Limit limited that partly because Sulimani broadcasted his

1596
01:26:36,920 --> 01:26:39,200
Speaker 1: role as commander of many of the Iraqi Shia militious

1597
01:26:39,200 --> 01:26:42,320
Speaker 1: fighting Isis. Iraqi Sunni's blamed the Iranian government for the

1598
01:26:42,360 --> 01:26:44,479
Speaker 1: persecution that many were suffering at the hands of these

1599
01:26:44,479 --> 01:26:47,719
Speaker 1: same forces. The document discussed a recent assault by Iran

1600
01:26:47,760 --> 01:26:50,639
Speaker 1: backed forces against ISIS fighters in the Sunni farming community

1601
01:26:50,680 --> 01:26:53,559
Speaker 1: of Jurf al Sakar. The attack had included a number

1602
01:26:53,640 --> 01:26:56,559
Speaker 1: of Shia militia groups, including a notorious outfit known as

1603
01:26:56,600 --> 01:26:58,519
Speaker 1: a Syb al al Hawk, which is also the guys

1604
01:26:58,520 --> 01:27:01,040
Speaker 1: who fired missiles at those u US bases a couple

1605
01:27:01,040 --> 01:27:03,080
Speaker 1: of weeks ago and a couple of days ago. The

1606
01:27:03,080 --> 01:27:05,880
Speaker 1: militia succeeded in routing the Islamic State, but their victory

1607
01:27:05,960 --> 01:27:09,200
Speaker 1: soon gave way to a generalized slaughter of locals, transforming

1608
01:27:09,200 --> 01:27:11,880
Speaker 1: the sweetness of Iran's triumphanto bitterness. In the words of

1609
01:27:11,880 --> 01:27:15,040
Speaker 1: one case officer, this is that case officer talking. It

1610
01:27:15,120 --> 01:27:17,759
Speaker 1: is mandatory and necessary to put some limits and borders

1611
01:27:17,760 --> 01:27:20,519
Speaker 1: on the violence being inflicted against innocent Sunni people in

1612
01:27:20,560 --> 01:27:23,520
Speaker 1: Iraq and the things that Mr. Sulimani is doing. Otherwise,

1613
01:27:23,520 --> 01:27:25,800
Speaker 1: the violence between Shia and Sunni will continue. With the

1614
01:27:25,880 --> 01:27:29,040
Speaker 1: mos I m I support report continued. At the moment,

1615
01:27:29,080 --> 01:27:31,720
Speaker 1: whatever happens to Sunni's directly or indirectly is seen as

1616
01:27:31,720 --> 01:27:34,040
Speaker 1: having been done by Iran, even when Iran has nothing

1617
01:27:34,080 --> 01:27:36,680
Speaker 1: to do with it. And this is another part of

1618
01:27:36,720 --> 01:27:39,920
Speaker 1: like the complexity here, and we're talking about, like you know,

1619
01:27:39,920 --> 01:27:42,040
Speaker 1: if you're trying to get like a fair assessment of

1620
01:27:42,120 --> 01:27:45,799
Speaker 1: Sulimani's role visa the isis Um, you have to account

1621
01:27:45,800 --> 01:27:48,200
Speaker 1: the fact that he formed these militias which were a

1622
01:27:48,240 --> 01:27:50,280
Speaker 1: part of defeating Isis. You also have to take into

1623
01:27:50,280 --> 01:27:52,120
Speaker 1: account that a big part of y Isis gate a

1624
01:27:52,160 --> 01:27:56,200
Speaker 1: foothold in Iraq is because the Shia Melissa militias, particularly

1625
01:27:56,200 --> 01:28:00,800
Speaker 1: in places like Mosul, brutally suppressed and executed Sunni Um,

1626
01:28:00,840 --> 01:28:03,400
Speaker 1: based in a large part on like long standing local

1627
01:28:03,479 --> 01:28:06,960
Speaker 1: different like like arguments and hatreds between Sunni and Shia.

1628
01:28:07,240 --> 01:28:09,760
Speaker 1: But like Iran then supported those guys by giving them

1629
01:28:09,800 --> 01:28:12,640
Speaker 1: weapons so they were able to carry out these blood debts,

1630
01:28:12,720 --> 01:28:16,920
Speaker 1: and that provided fuel for the Sunni uprising. Uh that

1631
01:28:17,040 --> 01:28:19,800
Speaker 1: like Isis really represented in Iraqs that then some of

1632
01:28:19,800 --> 01:28:22,320
Speaker 1: these like these Sunnies could get guns and kil Shehia's

1633
01:28:22,439 --> 01:28:24,920
Speaker 1: and it's like and a lot of what I saw

1634
01:28:24,960 --> 01:28:27,559
Speaker 1: when I was over in Mosele, was people complaining about

1635
01:28:27,600 --> 01:28:30,599
Speaker 1: these the Iran back militias and like the violence they

1636
01:28:30,640 --> 01:28:34,360
Speaker 1: were carrying out against Sunnis again in response for a

1637
01:28:34,360 --> 01:28:36,599
Speaker 1: lot of violence that like Sunnis who had supported Iraq

1638
01:28:36,640 --> 01:28:38,760
Speaker 1: had carried out, and like this is just gonna cause

1639
01:28:38,840 --> 01:28:41,519
Speaker 1: another cycle of violence between Sunni and Shia and Mosel.

1640
01:28:41,600 --> 01:28:44,160
Speaker 1: And it's like it's like fuck this ship, Like this

1641
01:28:44,200 --> 01:28:51,200
Speaker 1: is all very messy. Um now in those yeah, um.

1642
01:28:51,240 --> 01:28:53,960
Speaker 1: In these documents, Iranian officers speculated that much of the

1643
01:28:53,960 --> 01:28:57,080
Speaker 1: propaganda campaign to turn Suleimani from a secretive spy chief

1644
01:28:57,120 --> 01:28:58,880
Speaker 1: into a public hero had to do with his hopes

1645
01:28:58,920 --> 01:29:01,800
Speaker 1: of a future campaign to be president of Iran. And

1646
01:29:01,840 --> 01:29:04,080
Speaker 1: this is one angle you're going to hear about Sulimani

1647
01:29:04,120 --> 01:29:05,960
Speaker 1: a lot. That he was being groomed or at least

1648
01:29:05,960 --> 01:29:09,000
Speaker 1: grooming himself to become the next president of Iran. This

1649
01:29:09,200 --> 01:29:12,679
Speaker 1: is possible, but I think some other theories might also

1650
01:29:12,720 --> 01:29:16,840
Speaker 1: be Possibly, maybe he would take on the next supreme leadership.

1651
01:29:18,280 --> 01:29:20,880
Speaker 1: That's yeah, I think that's really possible. Like what there's

1652
01:29:20,920 --> 01:29:23,679
Speaker 1: the two real possibilities is that a he was pushing,

1653
01:29:23,800 --> 01:29:26,280
Speaker 1: he was being groomed and sort of like pushing himself

1654
01:29:26,320 --> 01:29:28,639
Speaker 1: to either be the president or the next supreme leader

1655
01:29:28,800 --> 01:29:32,240
Speaker 1: of Iran. Totally possible. He had the kind of reputation

1656
01:29:32,240 --> 01:29:36,200
Speaker 1: where that could have happened. I think the other possibility

1657
01:29:36,439 --> 01:29:39,519
Speaker 1: is that the Iranian government and Sulimani himself were preparing

1658
01:29:39,560 --> 01:29:41,840
Speaker 1: for him to be killed by the United States and

1659
01:29:41,880 --> 01:29:45,000
Speaker 1: wanted him to be a potent symbol when it happened,

1660
01:29:45,080 --> 01:29:46,880
Speaker 1: that they were assuming it was going to happen, and

1661
01:29:46,880 --> 01:29:49,559
Speaker 1: that he was trying to provoke that assassiny. I think

1662
01:29:49,600 --> 01:29:54,559
Speaker 1: it's possible. I think, Wow, you just blew my mind.

1663
01:29:55,520 --> 01:29:57,840
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, obviously I don't know, but

1664
01:29:58,439 --> 01:30:02,559
Speaker 1: but I think both are possible. Starting in two thousand

1665
01:30:02,680 --> 01:30:05,840
Speaker 1: thirteen with that New Yorker article, Cosum Suleimani's most frequent

1666
01:30:05,880 --> 01:30:09,120
Speaker 1: public appearances were at funerals for deceased Goods Force soldiers.

1667
01:30:09,640 --> 01:30:11,680
Speaker 1: For years, Cosum made a point of meeting with the

1668
01:30:11,720 --> 01:30:14,200
Speaker 1: families of martyrs, and here's an excerpt from one part

1669
01:30:14,200 --> 01:30:16,280
Speaker 1: of the article talking about his visit to the funeral

1670
01:30:16,280 --> 01:30:19,680
Speaker 1: of a comrade who died fighting in Syria. Quote. He

1671
01:30:19,720 --> 01:30:22,320
Speaker 1: has a fierce attachment to martyred soldiers and often visits

1672
01:30:22,360 --> 01:30:25,080
Speaker 1: their families. In a recent interview with Iranian media, he said,

1673
01:30:25,240 --> 01:30:27,040
Speaker 1: when I see the children of the martyrs, I want

1674
01:30:27,080 --> 01:30:29,639
Speaker 1: to smell their scent and I lose myself. I think

1675
01:30:29,640 --> 01:30:31,719
Speaker 1: that's something that probably made more sense in the original

1676
01:30:31,760 --> 01:30:35,400
Speaker 1: Farsi than it does translated into English. Um. As the

1677
01:30:35,439 --> 01:30:38,040
Speaker 1: funeral continued, he and other mourners bent forward to prey,

1678
01:30:38,120 --> 01:30:40,479
Speaker 1: pressing their foreheads onto the carpet. One of the rarest

1679
01:30:40,520 --> 01:30:42,519
Speaker 1: people who brought the revolution in the whole world to

1680
01:30:42,600 --> 01:30:45,320
Speaker 1: you is gone there as a panihan, the m mom

1681
01:30:45,360 --> 01:30:48,200
Speaker 1: told the mourners. Suleimani cradled his head in his palm

1682
01:30:48,240 --> 01:30:51,880
Speaker 1: and began to weep. So In public appearances number one,

1683
01:30:51,920 --> 01:30:55,599
Speaker 1: Suleimani is constantly at the funerals of martyrs, constantly honoring

1684
01:30:55,600 --> 01:30:58,680
Speaker 1: these soldiers who have died in his command. Um. And

1685
01:30:58,720 --> 01:31:00,840
Speaker 1: he's very humble about his own his story, even mocking

1686
01:31:00,920 --> 01:31:04,320
Speaker 1: his short stature by describing himself as the smallest soldier.

1687
01:31:04,960 --> 01:31:07,400
Speaker 1: He's infamous for refusing to let audience members kiss his

1688
01:31:07,439 --> 01:31:10,479
Speaker 1: hand at public appearances. Um, But online he was a

1689
01:31:10,520 --> 01:31:14,160
Speaker 1: lot less humble and he can't be having a random

1690
01:31:14,400 --> 01:31:18,559
Speaker 1: kiss your hand. Maybe there's a lot of random kissing.

1691
01:31:18,920 --> 01:31:22,000
Speaker 1: Uh in that part of the that part of the world. True,

1692
01:31:22,040 --> 01:31:24,200
Speaker 1: but cheek to cheek, he keeps like, keep it like

1693
01:31:24,400 --> 01:31:28,679
Speaker 1: cheek to cheek, keep it like practice at this. Don't

1694
01:31:28,720 --> 01:31:34,240
Speaker 1: kiss my hands now. Uh So, So he's he's he's

1695
01:31:34,240 --> 01:31:36,639
Speaker 1: trying to be humble like in person and at these events,

1696
01:31:36,640 --> 01:31:38,400
Speaker 1: and that's clearly a big part of his image. But

1697
01:31:38,439 --> 01:31:40,640
Speaker 1: he also has a big online presence, and before it

1698
01:31:40,680 --> 01:31:43,280
Speaker 1: was shut down in two thousand nineteen, his official Instagram

1699
01:31:43,280 --> 01:31:48,120
Speaker 1: had more than eight hundred thousand followers. Um, pretty good Graham.

1700
01:31:48,160 --> 01:31:52,360
Speaker 1: Now it's part. Pretty good to Iran, Pretty good Graham

1701
01:31:52,479 --> 01:31:55,000
Speaker 1: for it's part. The government of Iran devoted significant resources

1702
01:31:55,000 --> 01:31:58,240
Speaker 1: to burnishing a cult of personality around Sulimani. The Supreme

1703
01:31:58,320 --> 01:32:01,280
Speaker 1: Leader of Iran referred to Kastam sula on a preassassination

1704
01:32:01,400 --> 01:32:06,240
Speaker 1: as a living martyr of the revolution. Now martyrdom became

1705
01:32:06,280 --> 01:32:09,400
Speaker 1: an increasing theme in later public appearances of Suleimani. In

1706
01:32:09,439 --> 01:32:12,200
Speaker 1: two thousand and fourteen, Defa pressed at i R, which

1707
01:32:12,200 --> 01:32:16,439
Speaker 1: is a website popular among internal Iranian security insiders, published

1708
01:32:16,439 --> 01:32:18,240
Speaker 1: the text of a speech Sulimani and made back in

1709
01:32:18,280 --> 01:32:21,960
Speaker 1: two thousand seven. They republished in praising the martyrs of

1710
01:32:21,960 --> 01:32:23,800
Speaker 1: the Iran Iraq War, and I'm gonna read it from

1711
01:32:23,800 --> 01:32:26,840
Speaker 1: a right up in the Middle East Media Research Institute here.

1712
01:32:27,400 --> 01:32:30,439
Speaker 1: Sulimani stressed, while praising martyrdom that he himself yearned to

1713
01:32:30,479 --> 01:32:32,680
Speaker 1: gain the exalted status of a martyr, and added that

1714
01:32:32,760 --> 01:32:35,400
Speaker 1: jihada is a supreme value in war that allows Iranian

1715
01:32:35,439 --> 01:32:38,720
Speaker 1: fighters to compensate for their technological inferiority and lack of

1716
01:32:38,760 --> 01:32:41,840
Speaker 1: operational readiness and to defeat the enemy. He emphasized that

1717
01:32:41,920 --> 01:32:44,479
Speaker 1: absolute obedience to the regime of the rule of the

1718
01:32:44,560 --> 01:32:47,760
Speaker 1: jurisprudence was also a decisive factor in war. In light

1719
01:32:47,800 --> 01:32:50,000
Speaker 1: of the prestige earned by the martyrs, he said, I

1720
01:32:50,080 --> 01:32:52,240
Speaker 1: pray to God from my own end to be martyrdom

1721
01:32:52,280 --> 01:32:54,240
Speaker 1: as well, and that he will not deny me this

1722
01:32:54,360 --> 01:33:01,719
Speaker 1: mighty blessing granted to outstanding individuals. So I think there's

1723
01:33:01,720 --> 01:33:05,200
Speaker 1: an an argument that maybe and that because like one

1724
01:33:05,200 --> 01:33:06,960
Speaker 1: of the things that you know, the the U S

1725
01:33:07,000 --> 01:33:11,080
Speaker 1: will argue provoked our assassination of Sulimani. Um is the

1726
01:33:11,080 --> 01:33:15,120
Speaker 1: fact that a few days before uh that that like us,

1727
01:33:15,360 --> 01:33:19,920
Speaker 1: that whatever, that that Iranian backed militia in Iraq, um

1728
01:33:20,080 --> 01:33:22,680
Speaker 1: like the same one that committed one of the massacres

1729
01:33:23,040 --> 01:33:26,280
Speaker 1: Uh during the fighting against ISIS fired missiles at a

1730
01:33:26,439 --> 01:33:30,240
Speaker 1: US Iraqi joint base and killed an American contractor. And

1731
01:33:30,280 --> 01:33:31,840
Speaker 1: that was like, that's sort of like part of what

1732
01:33:31,960 --> 01:33:36,639
Speaker 1: the US used to justify this, like killing Sulimani. Um,

1733
01:33:36,680 --> 01:33:40,320
Speaker 1: And I part of me wonders, like it seems clear

1734
01:33:40,360 --> 01:33:42,920
Speaker 1: as being set up for something. It was either politics

1735
01:33:43,120 --> 01:33:46,280
Speaker 1: or because they wanted this guy to be famous and beloved,

1736
01:33:46,760 --> 01:33:49,200
Speaker 1: um and well known, and they wanted to provoke the

1737
01:33:49,280 --> 01:33:52,439
Speaker 1: U S to doing something dumb um to take him

1738
01:33:52,439 --> 01:33:54,840
Speaker 1: out because then he's a martyr and then you can

1739
01:33:54,920 --> 01:33:57,920
Speaker 1: use him to galvanize resistance to the United States, which

1740
01:33:57,960 --> 01:33:59,920
Speaker 1: is a big part of Iran's foreign policies, to gall

1741
01:34:00,080 --> 01:34:03,880
Speaker 1: an eze resistance to the United States. And right now,

1742
01:34:04,040 --> 01:34:06,800
Speaker 1: Kasam Sulimani has become a symbol of resistance to the

1743
01:34:06,880 --> 01:34:09,679
Speaker 1: United States two millions of Shiites across the Middle East.

1744
01:34:09,960 --> 01:34:13,040
Speaker 1: His picture hangs over streets on banners from Beirut to

1745
01:34:13,080 --> 01:34:17,920
Speaker 1: Baghdad right now. Um, so I don't know, I don't

1746
01:34:17,920 --> 01:34:21,800
Speaker 1: know what the actual cases. Um. It's also he's like

1747
01:34:21,880 --> 01:34:24,120
Speaker 1: his funeral has been used by the government to kind

1748
01:34:24,120 --> 01:34:26,080
Speaker 1: of try to unify people in the wake of there's

1749
01:34:26,120 --> 01:34:28,800
Speaker 1: just a bunch of massive protests in Iran and the

1750
01:34:28,880 --> 01:34:31,880
Speaker 1: Koods force, you know, under the command of Sulimani, had

1751
01:34:31,920 --> 01:34:36,639
Speaker 1: like something a fifteen hundred anti government protesters killed UM

1752
01:34:36,720 --> 01:34:40,960
Speaker 1: during like this uprising. UM, And now I think they're

1753
01:34:41,040 --> 01:34:44,200
Speaker 1: kind of using his assassination and like this aggression by

1754
01:34:44,200 --> 01:34:47,200
Speaker 1: the United States the attempt at least is too kind

1755
01:34:47,280 --> 01:34:53,719
Speaker 1: of pull the country back together. UM. It's uh fucking

1756
01:34:54,360 --> 01:34:57,880
Speaker 1: um hard to say what the actual plan was, or

1757
01:34:57,920 --> 01:34:59,760
Speaker 1: if there was a plan, or if I'm breeding too

1758
01:34:59,840 --> 01:35:03,200
Speaker 1: much into this. He's a spy commander, chief guy. So

1759
01:35:03,640 --> 01:35:06,519
Speaker 1: part of me is like, you know, maybe there was

1760
01:35:06,560 --> 01:35:09,120
Speaker 1: a deep plan here. Maybe he just wanted to be

1761
01:35:09,280 --> 01:35:12,720
Speaker 1: supreme leader or president and uh, he never thought that

1762
01:35:12,760 --> 01:35:16,680
Speaker 1: we would do something this dumb. Either way, I'm just

1763
01:35:16,720 --> 01:35:19,160
Speaker 1: seeing now that the president is going to address the

1764
01:35:19,200 --> 01:35:21,400
Speaker 1: country later tonight, so that's probably not going to be good.

1765
01:35:23,880 --> 01:35:27,879
Speaker 1: I hope it's him saying he is tapping out, because

1766
01:35:29,840 --> 01:35:37,679
Speaker 1: God damn, I don't think that is what's happening. God, Well,

1767
01:35:37,760 --> 01:35:41,280
Speaker 1: here's hoping for the best. UM. Pray for the people

1768
01:35:41,280 --> 01:35:44,479
Speaker 1: of Iran. Pay for pray for the people of Iraq. Uh,

1769
01:35:45,479 --> 01:35:47,559
Speaker 1: pray for the people in the Middle East who will

1770
01:35:48,160 --> 01:35:51,800
Speaker 1: suffer because of what is to come thanks to the

1771
01:35:51,880 --> 01:35:57,360
Speaker 1: lack of adults in the room. Pray for Yeah, the

1772
01:35:57,479 --> 01:36:05,439
Speaker 1: lack of adults in the room. Well, h well, I

1773
01:36:05,439 --> 01:36:08,840
Speaker 1: would say more, but I have I'm a bit of

1774
01:36:08,880 --> 01:36:12,120
Speaker 1: like a in a bit shock in a bit, I'm

1775
01:36:12,160 --> 01:36:15,519
Speaker 1: in a bit shock over everything that's kind of slowly

1776
01:36:15,600 --> 01:36:19,200
Speaker 1: pouring out in the news. And um, I need to go,

1777
01:36:19,680 --> 01:36:23,400
Speaker 1: uh talk to my Iranian family members and make sure

1778
01:36:23,400 --> 01:36:25,960
Speaker 1: everyone's good to go, because that's all I have is

1779
01:36:27,320 --> 01:36:31,680
Speaker 1: a telegram app to make sure they're okay, because it's

1780
01:36:31,720 --> 01:36:34,040
Speaker 1: it's that's the way it goes sometimes when your entire

1781
01:36:34,080 --> 01:36:36,000
Speaker 1: family lives in Iran and you have no sense of

1782
01:36:36,040 --> 01:36:39,640
Speaker 1: communication and this is the darkest fucking times and we

1783
01:36:39,720 --> 01:36:43,639
Speaker 1: can only um pray for this to end soon and

1784
01:36:43,800 --> 01:36:47,920
Speaker 1: for no more people to die. Yeah. Well, the US

1785
01:36:48,000 --> 01:36:50,439
Speaker 1: just banned all civilian flights over the Gulf regions, so

1786
01:36:50,520 --> 01:37:00,240
Speaker 1: that's not Jesus yea interesting yep. Yeah, I mean everyone

1787
01:37:00,360 --> 01:37:06,040
Speaker 1: needs to tone it down. That's just my that is

1788
01:37:06,120 --> 01:37:14,120
Speaker 1: my final thought is to down yeah, yep, which is

1789
01:37:14,160 --> 01:37:16,559
Speaker 1: It's well, I feel like now there's a lot of

1790
01:37:16,560 --> 01:37:20,160
Speaker 1: people are gonna get stuck in Iran, like American nationalists,

1791
01:37:20,200 --> 01:37:24,439
Speaker 1: because you have to go over the Gulf, right. Yeah.

1792
01:37:24,600 --> 01:37:27,200
Speaker 1: And there's a bunch of journalists there who were there

1793
01:37:27,240 --> 01:37:30,760
Speaker 1: from the United States to like report on the funerals

1794
01:37:30,760 --> 01:37:35,720
Speaker 1: and stuff, which I mean, on one end, assuming they

1795
01:37:35,720 --> 01:37:39,280
Speaker 1: don't get taken into custody by the security forces. Uh.

1796
01:37:39,360 --> 01:37:40,960
Speaker 1: It's kind of a sweet position to be in as

1797
01:37:41,000 --> 01:37:42,960
Speaker 1: a journalist if you're the only people on the ground

1798
01:37:43,439 --> 01:37:47,679
Speaker 1: when something like this happens. Um, but I think it's

1799
01:37:47,760 --> 01:37:56,160
Speaker 1: I think it's it's going to be pretty horrific all around. Yeah. Well, um,

1800
01:37:56,200 --> 01:37:58,880
Speaker 1: if you're listening, and if you're in any of those places, um,

1801
01:38:00,000 --> 01:38:04,800
Speaker 1: you're in our thoughts and just stay safe. That's all

1802
01:38:04,840 --> 01:38:12,520
Speaker 1: you can do. Yep. I wish this could be more uplifting,

1803
01:38:12,600 --> 01:38:18,240
Speaker 1: but I don't know. Mm hmm, yeah, I mean yeah.

1804
01:38:18,280 --> 01:38:21,080
Speaker 1: The big question is this going to be a series

1805
01:38:21,280 --> 01:38:25,840
Speaker 1: of terrible air strikes and missile strikes on Iran or

1806
01:38:26,120 --> 01:38:29,120
Speaker 1: is Donald Trump going to actually send in ground troops.

1807
01:38:31,200 --> 01:38:40,760
Speaker 1: Either way, probably a bad idea. Yes, yep, yes, this

1808
01:38:40,840 --> 01:38:46,720
Speaker 1: is not this. This not good. This not good, And

1809
01:38:46,800 --> 01:38:52,200
Speaker 1: those are my final thoughts. This not good m back

1810
01:38:52,240 --> 01:38:56,320
Speaker 1: to you, Robert, What if I was this the worst?

1811
01:38:58,320 --> 01:39:02,679
Speaker 1: This not good? So you can find us on Twitter

1812
01:39:02,720 --> 01:39:04,680
Speaker 1: and Instagram at Bastard spot. You can find us on

1813
01:39:04,720 --> 01:39:09,080
Speaker 1: the Internet behind the bastards dot Com. Uh. Keep the

1814
01:39:09,120 --> 01:39:14,679
Speaker 1: people of a Rock in Iran and Syria, Lebanon, Yemen

1815
01:39:16,840 --> 01:39:23,200
Speaker 1: all in your hearts. Uh. And I hope that the

1816
01:39:23,200 --> 01:39:26,280
Speaker 1: fewest possible number of people die and what's about to happen.

1817
01:39:26,520 --> 01:39:32,120
Speaker 1: There's really nothing else to say. Yeah, we also fuck

1818
01:39:32,200 --> 01:39:36,160
Speaker 1: David Froum. Yeah, because he's he's tweeting about all of

1819
01:39:36,200 --> 01:39:38,800
Speaker 1: this ship right now and he should not be shut

1820
01:39:38,840 --> 01:39:45,760
Speaker 1: the funk up about the Middle East, David truly. Um okay,

1821
01:39:45,760 --> 01:39:48,360
Speaker 1: Well the episodes over, thank god.