Watch our full, unpaywalled interview with Iranian-American Professor Afshin Matin-Asgari
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This week, amid volatile tensions, deadly protests, rumors of Mossad infiltration, and threats of war, the US and Iran are scheduled to have diplomatic talks, though one side pulling out would not be surprising as the US can’t seem to stop bragging about how sanctions destroyed Iran’s economy all while threatening to bomb them.
For some much-needed clarity on the issue, we spoke to Professor Afshin Matin-Asgari, author of Axis of Empire, who participated in leftist protests during Iran’s 1978-79 revolution.
He gives a history of Iran-US relations, mocks JD Vance’s obvious misunderstanding of how Iran’s government works, debates Aaron on which side is really responsible for the violence in recent Iranian protests, and analyzes Marco Rubio’s “unpredictable” diplomacy proposal.
Useful Idiots: Secretary of State Marco Rubio laid out the terms for what he says would be ‘meaningful talks.’ Do you think that Iran will accept those terms?
Afshin Matin-Asgari: To go back to the background of these talks, when Trump canceled the so-called Obama nuclear deal, he said that he did it to force a better deal on Iran. That was during his first term. And that never happened. All the pressure, sanctions, threats, and assassination of Iranian military personnel didn’t work.
So he joined Israel’s war on Iran.
What happens at this point? The Islamic Republic is in its weakest position it has ever been because of an accumulation of a lot of problems: it has domestic unrest, the axis of resistance, including Hezbollah in Syria, is gone, it’s more vulnerable than it ever was to military attacks.
So Bahrain has accepted to come to negotiations. If Trump can make the Islamic Republic accept some of his terms, he could claim victory, impose the new deal on Iran, and kind of walk away from this, which may not be a bad thing because it at least averts a full-scale military confrontation, something that everyone knows would be a disaster. But it can’t be predicted.
Our full interview with Professor Matin-Asgari is free to all. As an independent media team, we rely on your support to keep going, so please subscribe and join the Useful Idiots community!
You’ll also get our Friday Free-For-All: Jeff Epstein, the Russian Spy.
And stay tuned for a bonus interview tomorrow with Palestinain-American law student Ahmad Ibsais for an update on Israel’s latest attacks on Gaza.
