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This week we’re speaking with Iranian Professor Behrooz Ghamari, whose unique history gives him an important perspective that challenges Trump’s regime-change war-of-choice in ways few others can.
In the 1980’s, Ghamari was sentenced to death by the Iranian government for being part of a Marxist group trying to overthrow the Islamic Republic. He was held in Evin Prison’s death row, where countless political prisoners have been tortured, and was denied cancer treatment for his worsening lymphoma.
But, Ghamari explains in his excellent new book, The Long War On Iran, four decades after getting freed from a place he never thought he’d outlive, Israeli airstrikes hit the prison, along with over 17,000 other civilian sites. Ghamari “had this feeling as if my home was attacked.”
Today, we’re asking him why, after the horrible treatment he endured, does he still reject US regime change of a government he fought to oppose.
Useful Idiots: It’s fascinating that you were literally scheduled to be executed, you were on death row, you were deprived of cancer treatment, and yet your analysis is so clear-eyed. You are able to criticize regime change. You are even able to give credit to this government that wanted you to be killed.
Behrooz Ghamari: A political project cannot be the extension of your own trauma. We need to transcend that trauma in order to advance a political project. Unfortunately, I see a lot of people who are celebrating these military attacks. They’re supporting Israel bombing Iran, supporting President Trump bombing Iran.
There are actually people who use the trauma of others to justify their own celebration, which is a very bizarre kind of logic.
But I think it’s a sign of political maturity if one tries to transcend these things and understand: what price are we willing to pay? Because that’s the main question.
People always cite Immanuel Kant, saying ‘dare to know and speak truth to power.’ But people usually forget the second part of it: ‘Speak the truth to power and be willing to lose your head for it.’ And so I challenge those people who are celebrating in the US, if they’re willing to speak the truth and also willing to lose their head for it. Because they stand at a distance and are quite ambivalent about loss of life in Iran.
Subscribe to hear our full discussion with Professor Ghamari where we ask him to respond to the Iranian diaspora claims about foreign regime change, Iran’s treatment of its own people, and why Iranians should have to “pay the price for Palestine.”
Plus, don’t miss our Friday Free-For-All: Jake Tapper: Iran Wants Us to Bomb Them!
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