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As protests, violence, and confusion continue to unfold and escalate in Iran, with media coverage somewhere between ignorance and propaganda, we try to break through the lies to learn about what’s actually going on.
We spoke to Iranian-Canadian journalist Samira Mohyeddin about why Iranians are protesting the government, how Israel’s Mossad is involved in those protests, the purposefully crippling and murderous effect of sanctions on ordinary Iranians, and why anyone who tells you they know what Iranians think is “full of shit.”
Useful Idiots: At this point, what’s your understanding of what’s happened with the protests in Iran: To what extent are they peaceful? Who’s responsible for the violence? And what is the extent of state repression?
Samira Mohyeddin: This is sort of unprecedented in Iran during the successive number of protests that we’ve had throughout the years. The merchants in the Grand Bazaar have never really protested until now. This happened because Iran’s currency just plummeted to its lowest that it’s ever been, which reduced their ability to import items.
And then things took a very decidedly violent turn, both on the part of the protesters and on the part of the state. All of a sudden you saw buildings being burned, police and security personnel being killed, some of them burned alive. This is very weird. We have been watching protests in Iran for decades. This is not how Iranians protest. I really need to just put that out there.
And then the state repression and violence started with Iranian security personnel using live ammunition on protesters.
Then the internet went out.
So it’s a very muddied story right now both because of the internet blackout, and because you have all these bellicose, reckless statements being made by people like Mike Pompeo and Israel’s heritage minister, Amihai Eliyahu, saying things like, “We were on the ground in June, you better believe we’re on the ground now, we have a hand in this.”
[In addition, on January 2, Mike Pompeo tweeted: Happy New Year to every Iranian in the streets. Also to every Mossad agent walking beside them...]
Making such statements really provides fodder to the Iranian government, who already thinks all of its grievances that its citizens have are something to do with a foreign hand. So it’s a really awful clusterfuck, to be honest.
Useful Idiots: It’s almost as if Mike Pompeo and people in the Mossad wanted to endanger the protesters to justify whatever their plans are for further bombings of Iran.
Samira Mohyeddin: I mean, it feels like that. This isn’t solidarity, this is sabotage. You can’t pretend to care about Iranians and then write “Happy New Year to the Mossad agents walking beside them.” You are putting a target on the backs of protesters when you say something like that.
Useful Idiots: This week at Davos, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent bragged that “President Trump ordered Treasury to put maximum pressure on Iran, and it’s worked! Their economy collapsed. They are not able to get imports. And this is why the people took to the streets. So this is economic statecraft. No shots fired. And things are moving in a very positive way here.”
Subscribe to hear Samira’s response to this blatant brag about murdering ordinary Iranians, plus how she landed on the “Top 4 Antisemites” list for calling out the most racist podcast clip you’ve ever seen.
And don’t miss this week’s news roundup, the Friday Free-For-All: Elon Musk Unknowingly Quotes Mel Brooks’ Hitler Character
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