#370 — Gender Apartheid and the Future of Iran

to the Making Sense Podcast, this is Sam Harris. Well, I launched my own sub stack last week. I'm now officially in both Podcasts to Stand and Substack a Stand. So for those of you who support the podcast and may also be subscribed to WakingUp, I want to clarify what I'm doing over on Substack.

As I said in my announcement, I wanted to get back to writing while speaking it is easier and reaches more people and is a better business. Writing is a discipline that improves everything I do. So Substack will essentially be my workshop for writing, but it will also be a place for me to quickly respond to current events and amplify other people's work across a larger network, which is what I actually miss having left Twitter. I might start writing a book over there and solicit feedback from readers.

I might eventually commission the work of other writers and scholars and fund some original research. I'm told the sub stack is also building the capacity to stream live video, which I'm looking forward to experimenting with. But whatever happens, I'm going to do my best to create something interesting there. However, if it doesn't succeed as a business, it won't make sense for me to stay there.

As I've discussed on this podcast before, no one knows what the best digital business model is and what seems right today could be disastrous in the future. The truth is no one has figured this out, even if some of us are succeeding financially. Yet I believe I've found the best business model available. However when we announced my arrival on Substack last week, some of you got annoyed at being asked to pay for another subscription to gain access to my work.

Of course, I feel your pain, but I don't quite understand it. Working on Substack is a new venture. Just as going on and speaking to her or writing another book would be. And I doubt anyone would think that those things should be included in the price of my podcast.

I've decided to spend time working on something new, but not less time at making sense or over waking up. Of course, many of you know this, but let me briefly clarify my digital business model. Here's the bottom one. I never want anyone to have to do any math to figure out if they can afford to subscribe to my digital work.

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It is an extraordinary luxury to be able to give my work away for free without having to rely on ads and to still be building a successful digital business. But as you might imagine, there is a reason why most content creators and platforms aren't rushing to copy what I'm doing here. They worry, of course, that offering everything for free will discourage people from actually paying. Unfortunately, this is a totally rational fear to have.

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And it's one that I will always strive to return to you by speaking and writing honestly about some of the most challenging issues of our time. Once again, please email support at SamHairSedWork if you need any assistance. Okay. The topic of today's podcast is Gender Apartside.

Bill Maher actually did a great closing essay on this topic last week. It's really worth watching. I recommend you go to YouTube and search for Bill Maher and gender apart that you'll find it. And there he actually refers to my co-host today, Yasmin Muhammad.

And she's been on the podcast before. He has been as a founder and president of Free Hearts, Free Minds, a nonprofit charity that provides mental health support for free thinkers living in Muslim-majority countries where the so-called crime of renouncing religion can be punished by death. Her book, which we discussed on this podcast, is titled Unveiled. And it's a memoir that recalls her experience growing up in a fundamentalist Islamic home and her arranged marriage to a member of al-Qaeda.

And energy sheds light on the religious trauma that so many women still experience today and are unable to talk about. The book has been widely translated and versions of it in Arabic and Farsi and Urdu and Indonesian can be accessed for free courtesy of the Richard Dawkins Foundation. Yasmin is also the host of the Yasmin Muhammad podcast where I recently appeared. And actually my experience in the Q&A with her audience afterwards inspired me to do this episode of my podcast because so many of the Iranian dissidents on that call seem to have a quite positive attitude toward the prospect of an American intervention in Iran because they so desperately want a regime change.

Anyway, we cover that topic and others with today's guest. And she is Masi Alinajad. Masi is an Iranian-American journalist and a campaigner for women's rights. She's the author of the best-selling memoir, The Wind in My Hair.

In the 2023 Time magazine named her one of its Women of the Year and she was elected president of the World Liberty Congress. Masi is one of the most prominent and vocal figures challenging the Islamic Republic of Iran. And in 2014 she launched the My Stelty Freedom Campaign. This is a campaign for women's rights in the Muslim world and against compulsory veiling.

And it became the largest civil disobedience movement in the history of the Islamic Republic. Today Masi continues to write and host Tablet, which is a satirical weekly show on The Voice of America. And she continues to campaign to end gender apartheid in Iran and Afghanistan in particular. And you can support her work over at mystealthyfreedom.org.

In today's episode, Yasmin and I talk to Masi about gender apartheid in Iran. We discuss the Iranian Revolution, the hypocrisy of Western feminists, the morality police and the significance of the hijab, her My Stelty Freedom Campaign, the kidnapping and assassination plots directed against her, lack of action from the US government, the effect of sanctions, the cowardice of Western journalists, the difference between the Iranian population and the Arab street, the unique perspective of Persian Jews, Islamism and immigration, the infiltration of universities and other topics. There's no paywall on this one, as I consider this another PSA. And I bring you Yasmin Muhammad and Masi Alinajad.

I am here with Masi Alinajad and Yasmin Muhammad. Ladies, thanks for joining me. Thank you so much for having us. I'm very excited this is the first time that I see Yasmin in person.

And I'm very excited to be with you, Sam. I hadn't realized that. I've seen you in person. So I've seen both of you in person, but I knew you guys knew each other.

But I was unaware that it was totally virtual. So it was great to get you together in real life. Yeah, it's weird that it's been totally virtual because we've, I feel so close. We've known each other for so long and it just feels like it doesn't feel like we're meeting for the first time, but it's nice to get our very first talk finally.

I needed this talk, especially in this beautiful day. Nice. Well, I'm 3000 miles away, unfortunately, but I hug you both from afar. And I want to talk about Iran, Masi, and about the regime and about popular sentiment in Iran because Iran has been a very big deal for many decades, but it's really been off the radar of most Americans, certainly, until fairly recently because for the first time Iran directly attacked Israel in his ongoing war in Gaza and has been obviously funding proxies and so it's been in a proxy war with both Israel and with the US for quite some time.

But it's also been widely reported that unlike many other Muslim societies, we might think about there really is a significant gulf between the religious radicalization of the regime and the people. And so I wanted to get someone on the podcast who could speak to that and to speak to how we should think about Iran because we just, we in the West and in America in particular seem profoundly confused and ineffectual. I mean, among many other issues, I think we're witnessing just a total failure of deterrence with respect to Iran. I'll just list a few things that we know Iran has been up to.

In addition to the proxy wars, the funding of Hezbollah and Hamas and the Houthis, we have a habit on the part of Iran of directly targeting foreign nationals and dissidents in foreign countries and you have been one of those targets. You're truly, yeah. So I've been given second life. So I'm celebrating my life every single day.

But Sam, when you say that, when you call it a proxy war, I have to say that when Islamic Republic directly attacked Israel, so no longer is a proxy war. Islamic Republic for years and years, we've been warning the US government and Europeans that the Islamic regime is a great sponsor of terrorism. And if you don't take strong actions against them, they're going to come after you. You know, I grew up in a very, very tiny village and I remembered from my childhood that I was forced as a school year to shout death to Israel, death to America as loud as the Tel Aviv would shake.

You know, this is what we've been brainwashed in burning the flag of America, burning the flag of Israel. So this is the mindset of the Islamic Republic. These are the main pillars of the Islamic Republic, you know, like death to America, death to Israel and women. Yeah, but that mindset doesn't actually reach the Iranian people.

I think that's the key here. So a lot of people hear that from the Islamic Republic of Iran. They hear the chance and then they assume that that's what the people believe and that's what the people feel. But that's not true.

Exactly. I remember that when I was invited to go to school to give a talk, a lot of school girls, like young teenagers, when they heard about Iran, they were really like kind of scared. Like, you know, do you really hate America? And I explained to them about how I as a little girl was forced to cover myself and chanting death to America.

So I actually told them, you know, in the map, you might see one country Iran, but there is actually two. One is the other one is Iran. So the other one is Iran. So the whole nation hostage.

Now you hear from all the teenagers, the school girls chanting death to Islamic Republic. And they don't want to actually be isolated or hate Israel or America. But yeah, you're right. People sometimes get confused and conflicting Iran with Islamic Republic.

No, it's a huge gap. Talk to me about the ratio here. Like how many people do you think just in your opinion, how many people do you think support the Islamic regime of Iran of Iranian people? I don't think that I have to say this based on my opinion.

The fact is the election. They say that, okay, maybe 25% showed up to the election, recent election. But we see empty stations. We see that they don't actually have proper footage as they show.

So they use like, you know, fake footage just from previous elections to actually show it off to the rest of the world that we still legitimate. But that actually telling the rest of the world that this regime is in a serious crime. Even among their own supporters, those who back to Islamic Republic, those who actually like like, like my own parents, they were supporting the regime. Now they are the victim of the same regime.

My own sister was on TV to denounce me publicly. My own brother was a target of Islamic Republic. He wasn't jailed for two years, just because of being my own brother. So my family members, they see this as a regime that they supported.

There are many teachers, workers, you know, now they're working class or not backing Islamic Republic anymore. They're backing teenagers who are getting killed for the crime of simply showing their hair. Mazah, get me a little bit more of your background. I mean, when did you leave Iran?

I know you were born just before the fall of the Shah, so you don't really remember Iran before the Islamic Republic came into being, but many of us have seen footage of what it was like in Iran in the 60s and 70s before the fall. It looked like San Francisco, practically. I mean, maybe it was San Francisco plus secret police, but it looked like a unrecognizable society given what has since happened. What's your sense of what public sentiment?

I mean, there's a ton of resentment toward the Shah for understandable reasons, but just what was the level of religiosity among the Persian people at that point and when Khomeini came into power and created a proper theocracy, just how popular was it at that point? To be honest, I was only two years old. I don't remember anything. Yeah.

But as you said, when I look at the pictures of my own parents, my mom, she was covering her hair clearly. She was a Muslim woman, but in a beautiful, colorful, traditional way. But immediately when Khomeini took over the whole country, her picture, even her job has changed, became absolutely black. And you just see my mom's nose.

That's it. Yeah, my beautiful mom was like very oppressed in the way that Khomeini asked everyone to cover themselves. So, but I have to say, when I asked a lot of people that was a reason that he took part to overthrow the Shah's regime, many of you know that I was a reformist journalist as well. So many of the politicians, the reformist actually told me that for lack of political freedom, so we actually demanded greater freedom.

That's why we overthrew the regime. So what happened? Not honestly, what happened? Now, not only we didn't gain any political freedom, we lost all the social freedom that we already had.

You know, people are suffering from poverty, still. People are suffering. I mean, people like as I said, my own parents, they are still suffering. So I strongly believe that the Islamic revolution became a revolution against women, against minority.

That's why I always say to my father who supported the revolution that this is my time now, I'm going to launch my own revolution against your revolution. By coming from a tiny village traditional family, it was not easy. I had to start my own revolution from my family's kitchen. Let's go back a little bit to that question that Sam was asking, because I think it's really important, you know, the parallel of what's happening today, because the left-wing Iranians, the communists, the socialists, right, they were all supporting, well, they were allied with the Islamic regime in the same way that you see a lot of the left allying with the Islamic regime and Hamas and Houthis and, you know, tell us a little bit what happened there.

You say that they were, some of them still, and that breaks my heart, you know. Nowadays, through social media, you see that how the young generation is suffering in you, remember yourself when I launched my campaign against compulsory job, who were the first group attacking me in the West? The left, before the Islamic Republic, like attacking me, I was on the attack by the left outside Iran telling me that this is causing Islamophobia. And I think that's why it's important to identify that, because when the left were allied with the Islamic regime in Iran, as soon as the regime took power, tens of thousands of people were killed from the left or imprisoned.

That's why I thought they changed. That's why I was expecting them to change their mindset and at least listen to the young generation in Iran for this. I don't want to curse anyone here. But I want people to see how they get treated when they ally themselves, what they think, you know, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

They think they can ally themselves with some Islamic theocracy and they think that they're going to be friends in the end, you know, skipping off into the sunset together when in actuality, they're all going to be slaughtered, right? They're all going to be. So what we see how they're all going to be butchered and what we see happening here now in the West is almost like, it's such a parallel. It's almost the exact same thing.

And the same useful idiots are making the same mistakes when they're allying themselves with, you know, what we see very clearly with Hamas, which are basically an Iranian proxy, you know, group of terrorists. So it is quite dangerous and people need to be aware of the history of what can happen when you ally yourself with terrorists and butchers. But first, they putting the lives of those who really living under authoritarian regimes, like Islamic Republic and then I believe that yes, they are going to be the next target of the same terrorist group, like Hamas is Islamic Republic. But I don't I don't want to say that I don't care, but they are putting the lives of teenagers like me call like sorry, not only 16 year old girls in danger.

I remember that when, you know, I launched my stealthy freedom campaign, their argument was like, Massey, you're causing a homophobia, you're feeding trumps camp, you're feeding the fascist, the right people. What is my stealthy freedom? Oh, because the Yasmin is sitting here, I know that everyone now knows what my stealthy freedom you can be I want you to say what is my stealthy freedom campaign? Yeah, that's what we know how we know each other.

So my stealthy freedom campaign started almost by accident. Massey just took a picture of herself without hijab on under this beautiful, actually was a cherry blossom tree. If you know Massey, you know, she's got this glorious mane of hair and she took the picture and she posted it and suddenly she was inundated with pictures of Iranian women. Bob Bardet by photos, videos, pictures, women walking on their face, showing their face, not like, you know, those who call themselves activists and dissidents covering their face supporting Hamas, but my girls in Iran, my women in Iran, they were showing their face and saying no to compulsory hijab, which is a punishable crime.

So after, you know, me sharing their videos, I got attacked by the Islamic Republic and the left outside telling me that this is causing Islamophobia. You know, they were saying that hijab is part of the culture of Iran and we should not ask the leaders of democratic countries, especially those high ranking members, female politicians of the West to interfere in internal matter. Wow. And it was even worse than that, though, because you also have Western activists and so-called feminists who imagine that the hijab is a symbol of female empowerment.

It's removing the male gaze and you have people like Linda Sarsour, who, you know, being inducted as one of the leaders of the Women's March on Washington, right? I mean, I don't know, Linda. I just appreciate her. I know.

I know. I know. Let me be very honest with you. I want to admit that.

I was very excited about Women's March. I was very, very, very happy to be part of Women's March. I remember I was shouting my body my choice. I put a head of scarf on a stick.

I was waving that in the streets. They're the opposite of that. They put the scarf on their mascot, on their posters. But I thought it's all about my body, my choice.

So that's why I joined them. And I remember that, yes, me and Sam, I was calling my girls and women in Iran. I was like, can you believe this is the first time in my life? I mean, the street protesting, but I'm not getting arrested.

I'm not getting shot in, you know, getting killed. I was very excited. Then I asked them to join me and the women of Iran. I asked Linda Sarsour.

I asked Ilhan Omar. I wrote an article for Washington Post for different media inviting them to join White Wednesday's campaign to join my South Korean campaign. No, they, some of them blocked me. Some of them bullied me.

Some of them went after me to cancel me. Some of them called me the mouthpiece of Trump. And I was like, I don't really care who's in power in America. I do what I care.

I don't want the terrorist regime to be in power. Exactly. That's nothing to do with Trump and it has nothing to do with American politics. I was like, this is hypocrisy.

I was with you saying my body, my choice. And recently, oh my God. Now, all of them saying that now we stand with the people of Iran. You know why?

Because when we are the warriors, they don't care. But they want us to be victims and own our narrative and saying that, you know, Ilhan Omar was like, I'm standing with the people. I said, no, you're not standing with us. You're standing in the wrong side of history by bullying Iranian women.

So I'm saying Islamophobic. And I was like, wow, you're calling me Islamophobic. First of all, phobia is an irrational fear. My fear of Islamic ideology.

My fear of Taliban. My fear of Islamic Republic is rational. And you should be stupid if you don't have any fear of being raped or getting killed if you say that I'm not Muslim anymore. Can you help the audience understand this moral confusion?

Because I have to admit that it really is very difficult to sympathize with the psychology of someone who can't see the contradictions here. It's like a failed moral intelligence test or something that many, many millions of people are failing. Is it possible that many of these people believe that the women of Iran, even when they're hearing about the morality police, you know, throwing people in prison and, you know, women getting tortured and killed. And they still believe that most women love to wear the veil and imagine that it's empowering for them in the same way that it would be empowering for a girl at Brandeis or Barnard to just decide to culturally appropriate this affectation, just as a statement of her own empowerment.

What do you think explains the fact that you have people who think they are feminists simply not caring about the obvious oppression of women in Iran and doing not only averting their eyes from it, but adopting the most salient symbol of that oppression as meaning it's opposite? To be honest, I don't think that we can call those feminists. If, I mean, when it comes to the women of Iran, they absolutely failed by actually empowering and emboldening, like empowering the oppressors to go after women. For instance, when I was actually doing interview with the high ranking members of revolutionary guards in Iran and the clerics in Iran, and I was telling that why you've bitten up women in the street, why multipleist or industry harassing women for not covering their hair, they were telling me an audio interview, you can listen to their voices saying that, who are you?

How dare you to challenge Islamic, this is before you left, you were a journalist in Iran before you left. Yeah, and they were saying that they were saying that when the high representative of EU wearing the job respecting our culture, who are you? How dare you to remove your job? And they were actually when I left in Iran, I do this interview again, they were referring to Catherine Nashon to Federico MacRini because they go to my beautiful country, they wear a job and they call themselves feminists.

And when I challenged them, they say that, you know what, this is a culture and we have to wear it out of respect to your culture. This one insults to a nation when they call a barbaric loss part of our culture. And when they wearing a job, so they actually, Iranian regime using them to oppress us. They use them as an example.

And they say, look, even the European women wear their job and they recognize it as a form of empowerment. So what's wrong with you? Yeah. And there is a video, actually, I still get goosebumps when I talk about that video.

There are 11 morality police officers, all of them, women wearing black, bullying, one girl saying the same, using the same argument, telling her that cover yourself right now. And the girl says that, no, I don't want to cover my hair. They said, this is the law, you have to respect the law. They say, she said that, I don't want to respect the barbaric law, slavery used to be legal.

I'm not going to respect the law. And they say that, look, even the female politicians from the West, when they come to Iran, they're not Muslim, but they respect the law of the land. And I kept hearing this argument from a lot of Western feminists saying that, this is the law of the land. You know, all the journalists, Leslie Stahl of 60 Minutes, and they all, you know, it was a famous story.

I don't think I've seen video of it, but the Italian journalist, Oriana Falochi, she was wearing it and she took it off in front of the Ayatollah Khomeini and said, I'm getting rid of this medieval rag or whatever she was. She was the only one. What's wrong? Here, I'm not talking about a small piece of cloth.

I'm not, you know, talking about hijab. hijab is the symbol, one of the most visible symbol of oppression. It's the two. It's the main pillar of a religious dictatorship.

It's the main pillar of gender apartheid regime. So when we talk about compulsory veiling, that doesn't mean that if we get rid of like, you know, compulsory job or moral difficulties, then we are okay here. It's the tip of the iceberg. Yeah, it is.

And that's why I want to actually use the opportunity to say that the teenagers in Iran, they're showing their middle fingers to the cameras, they're there to identify unveiled women, and they say the same word, no to compulsory hijab, no to Islamic Republic. So clearly hijab became a tool in the hand of regime to control the whole society through women. So these molas, the clerics, they're writing their own ideology on our bodies. And we use our bodies now to tell them, go to hell, get away, you know, get lost.

Do you have any sense of what is happening in the minds of these Western women that they can't understand this? Because we're talking about something very visible. We're choosing something that is should be very clear and understandable. And they're still not getting it.

Do you think that they're truly not getting it? Or do you think that they are maybe being strategic and just pretending that they don't get it so that they can, you know, I think all they care, it's their own political agenda. So they don't know that if they are a true feminist or human rights lover, freedom lovers, then they have to put freedom, human dignity, feminism, at first. They don't.

For example, the religion is more important. Like for instance, when Jamal Khashoggi was killed, they were all allowed to condemn Saudi Arabia. There are many Jamal Khashoggi in Iran why they were hesitating because they care about their own ally. Right now, right now, I actually challenge some of the Democrats, you know, those who actually launched the campaign bring our girls back about the girls of Bukhu Haran.

So, and I said, that's where are you now? Why you're not campaigning for the girls of Afghanistan who are being kicked out from schools. They are not even able to get an education. They're not even able to go and have their own job.

They own their normal life. So why you're not campaigning for them? You know why I hear? Then we are going to be seen as criticizing President Biden.

So what? For me, that's why I keep repeating that. Honestly, I don't care whether Biden is in power, Trump is in power, Obama is in power. This is a democratic country.

You have to be strong enough to challenge them and support your own sisters in Afghanistan. And you don't want to do that because you care about your political agenda? It's really sad. It breaks my heart.

We don't matter unless it's through the, you know, the narcissistic, naval, gazing, American lens and what matters to them. And then the people that happen to be there are the people that matter in that period of time, you know, but the rest of the people, if you're on the wrong side of the political spectrum, as far as they're concerned, then you don't matter. You know what? When I was a target of assassination plot, when the guy got arrested in front of my house by AK47, I was like, this is the moment that finally all the female Democrats, all the female politicians here, they would get united because I'm a woman.

And this is the first time Iran and regime hired someone to kill a woman on US. Just to summarize this, Masay, you, as I said, at the top, Iran has this habit of targeting dissidents and activists in other countries. And they've actually successfully kidnapped people and brought them back to Iran for a trial. There was apparently a plot, first a kidnapping plot against you and then an assassination plot against you.

And you were informed by the FBI about all this to take it seriously. So that's now what you're talking about. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But what I'm being very honest with you, what breaks me?

It's not the Islamic Republic sending killers here because you expect that from the transnational repression is in the DNA of the Islamic Republic, terrorizing, killing, torturing, executing people, kidnapping people. It's in the DNA of the Islamic Republic. So you expect them. But what breaks me?

What makes me frustrated? Is there a reaction of those who are at hope on them that they are going to support me because they're women? You know, it's funny you saying that because that's exactly how I felt on October 7th. Yes.

I thought, well, this is going to be very clear now. I mean, we all saw Shani Luke in the truck and I thought, well, this is there's going to be no question. When it comes to rape, we're all together to condemn that. No, there's no question about this.

How could there be any other side of this discussion? You know, why is it even a discussion? Why? Why?

Why when it comes to women's march? I am with you. What when it comes to raping Jews to killing Iranian women, kicking women, if I've honest on you or not with us? Why?

Can someone answer this simple question? Inexplicable. And I'm telling you, none of the female Congresswoman, none of them condemned the assassination plot of me as well. None of the, you know, Democrats, none of the female.

So what do you make of this? I mean, again, this comes back to a total failure of deterrence against Iran. It really seems that this is Iran targeting people in America individually. You have them funding proxies to attack both Israel and America in various contexts.

You have them directly attacking Israel last month. You have them, you know, threatening at any given month to produce a nuclear weapon. What do you make of the fact that the US seems more worried about a war with Iran than Iran does? I mean, it's just a complete breakdown of deterrence.

Yeah, they keep saying that when I asked them to be firm, to take strong actions because lack of action, you know, emboldened the regime to go after not only their own citizens to go after, you know, people in the region, they say that we are not at war with Islamic Republic. What do you expect us to do? And I was like, Hey, but the Islamic Republic is at war with you with, you know, the United State of America, with your own allies, with, you know, its own women. So then you should act like a true leader.

You have to take the leadership because America is it? I mean, is or was big enough hope for millions of us. I came here because I was like, this is the land of, you know, liberty, first amendment. We can do a lot here.

But on US soil, now I see San Monroshy was the target of this assassination plot because of the Islamic Republic, because of the fatwa was issued by a de-hominate. So the lack of actions actually giving sending signals to the regime that, Hey, you can do whatever you want. There is no punishment for you. There is no punishment for you.

So for millions of Iranians, now it's like they're very disappointed by the US government. And I don't want to say that, but they say that we sacrifice our life. We get killed in the street. We face rape.

But at the end of the day, this is the American government trying to save the Islamic Republic. And some of them actually makes jokes saying, I told Obama, I didn't know that. Well, there was that six billion deal. Right after that, actually, people were like, you know, marking, making jokes and but they are frustrated because they were like asking President Obama during 2009, calling him on his name, saying Obama, Obama, you either with us or with them.

I'm not sure whether you know it. Saying that a majority of Iranians would welcome an actual war with the United States and they would want the United States to try to intervene and force a regime change in Iran. Look, I'm not asking the American government to intervene, but they are interfering in our own internal matter while the people of Iran manage to shake the regime. What does handing out billions of dollars do here, saving them, protecting them Iranian people in bloody November, they took to the street and they were about to be successful to overthrow this barbaric regime.

What happened? The government shot down the internet for three days and they killed 1,500 innocent people only in three days. We didn't hear anything from the US government saying that, you know, okay, now we're going to help the people of Iran by providing internet, kicking out the dictators from US technology, actually allowing the dictators to using social media. So the lack of action is something that emboldened the Islamic Republic.

No, I'm not asking the US government to bring change for us or to save the Iranian people. It's a very, very clear strategy is missing here. The United States of America doesn't have one strategy, one clear Iranian strategy on the table that shows to the people of Iran that if there are a public and or Democrats, we don't care. We have one policy towards Islamic Republic.

So that actually hurts the cause of bringing regime change in Iran. Otherwise, Iranian people are brave enough, powerful enough to bring democracy within the country, but this is 21st century unarmed people, armed less people cannot do it on their own. International Committee can provide support, technology support. Look, Putin, China, Maduro, Khomeini.

They are providing weapons for each other, technology surveillance. They're backing each other, helping each other at the United Nations, voting for each other. So providing, sharing information, how to press any uprising taking place in each authoritarian countries. What we want, the same unity among democratic countries, what is missing here?

Now United States of America cannot take a leadership to ask its own allies to put their evolutionary guards in the terrorist organization. Yeah. So these are some common actions which is missing here and empowering the Islamic Republic to kill more people. What about the history of sanctions here?

What has been the effect of sanctions and at least from the outside, it appears to have done no good at all in terms of deterring Iran from misbehavior? You know, sanction itself is not sufficient when they're not even applied to the oppressors. For instance, when Ibrahim Raisi was here, in his delegation, there were members of revolutionary guards coming to the United States of America while they were designated as a terrorist organization. So what kind of impact this kind of sanction can do?

And I remember that I might self-reach out to Jake Sullivan, the national security advisor of President Biden, and I informed him about this. And I had a meeting with Prime Minister Ruta in Netherlands, and I informed him that there are 52 companies in Netherlands. They know how to bypass sanctions in, you know, trading with the members of revolutionary guards. I want President Macron in France that sanction is not sufficient when the revolutionary guards, the high ranking member of this terrorist organization are really good at using Putin, Maduro, China to evade sanctions to bypass sanctions.

It's not enough. What is missing here, as I keep saying that dictators are more united than democratic countries. We don't see that, for instance, right now, the US citizen is in prison in Iran, British citizen, Swedish citizen, German citizen, French citizen, they are in Iran, being used like bargaining chip. Guess what?

All these democratic countries having a parallel negotiation with the terrorist, with the hostage takers, trying to find out how they can hand out money to get their national citizens free. This is not the way that hostage takers understand it. They only understand one language, language of pressure. You should get united, all of you, the democratic countries, downplay your downgrade, your diplomatic relation with the hostage takers.

This is how you can end hostage taking diplomacy. Similar to what we did with South Africa and the apartheid there. Exactly. And guess what?

President Biden, when he was young, he was pro-Bannings out Africa because of apartheid. You tell me if a regime killed women for showing their hair is not a gender apartheid, if a regime that actually kicked out half of the population from stadium is not gender apartheid, then how you call it? You know, I do not even allow me to write a bicycle, to dance, to sing, singing solo is forbidden for Iranian women. We cannot get a passport without getting permission from our own husband.

We cannot travel abroad without getting permission from our male relative. This is like handmade state. You know, and the people of Iran have been screaming really loudly, very clearly, making it very obvious that they want to see this entire regime dissolved and that they want to be free from it. But like you said, they can't do it on their own.

They are not armed and they especially can't do it when these other big powerful countries all around the world are actually negotiating with the regime of Iran. So negotiating right now, Abraham and Raisi was killed in a helicopter crash. Iranians are dancing. Iranians are showing their happiness.

The family members of those who got killed by the order of Abraham and Raisi making videos of themselves dancing. And guess what happened? United Nations Security Council having one minute of silence. The leaders of European, it was like with Soleimani.

Exactly. Calling the Muslim Soleimani National Hero. Oh my God, I never forget that they hearing some of my own heroes and different media calling the Muslim Soleimani National Hero of Iranian people. And I was like, he is a terrorist.

As a terrorist, not kill Iranian people. He killed Syrian children. Before ISIS even exists, he went to Syria to attack those who were trying to overthrow a Khashoggi. He killed the children in Iraq.

So for that, I don't want to say that the Western government actually collaborating with the terrorist regime. But how do you call it? How do you call it when now, the Raisi, the killers, the butcher of Tehran receiving sympathy from the leaders of democratic countries? How do you call it?

It really is confusing because it's just not obvious why we would have fallen into this particular trap. It's hard to see who is benefiting in America, certainly, for us to have this ineffectual policy. I mean, the only way I can interpret it is that we've got such war fatigue. We've drawn, I mean, basically we've drawn the lessons of Vietnam all over again.

Our longest war we ever fought in Afghanistan is widely acknowledged. It's been just an abject failure, both materially and morally. And so it was with Iraq. And this is so different.

This is what people don't get is the people of Afghanistan and the people of Iraq are very different than the people of Iran. Yeah. We had the history. I mean, they can't look at our history.

It's totally different. You know, this is the narrative of the lobbyists of the Islamic Republic. I remember that when I was a Muslim, Soleimani got killed. There were many analysts were showing up on CNN, different media saying that we should not helping those who are asking for regime change.

As a Muslim, Soleimani, Jabbar, Dariqis are like the reformists and heroes of the Iranian people because they don't want to be other Syria. They don't want to be other Iraq. And that's the narrative of the Islamic lobbyists outside Iran. But guess what?

This is the Islamic Republic turning Iran to another Syria. This is the murderous regime of my beloved homeland turning the whole country like a chaos. It would be like a prison break. And from the Iranians or hostages right now, the whole nations are hostage in the hand of a regime which telling women in 21st century that your second class citizen telling them that we rape you or you deserve to be raped if you simply showing your hair.

I keep saying that because I don't know whether your audience really get that. And that's what this Raisi guy, this president of Iran that just died in the helicopter, he was one of the people that I think it was his policy that young girls when they end up going to prison that they be raped to make sure that they're not virgins so that they don't go to heaven. That's what we're dealing with. Today is my happy day because Raisi is dead, but sometimes I really cry and I get frustrated when I see that they shake their hands, but they don't want to be seen with me, with people like me.

Like I was in Germany meeting with the policymakers, with ministers and members of parliament. I was very excited to meet with the foreign minister. She's a feminist and her team was like, okay, but in private because now we're trying to negotiate with the Republican, it might change the mindset of the Republican public. Not only that, I'm not sure whether this is the right place to say or not.

You know, Krista, I'm a true is my hero. When I was in Iran, she was my hero. When my sister was brought on TV to denounce me publicly, it happened that I was with her in a party, Persian, a no-loos party. When I saw her, I screamed out of chewy and I opened my arms to hug her and I was very excited.

I said, oh my God, you're my hero. I'm seeing you here. And I started to explain to her what happened to me, my sister, my family. And I said, can I have a picture with you?

And she said to me in front of a lot of Iranians that, yeah, let's get a picture, but can you not publish the picture? Because I'm going to have an interview with a Brian Ray C. So you're a little bit controversial. So she, but you know, we've seen with him, she'll sit with him.

And she'll wear a good job with him too. I smiled. I smiled among Iranians. I was a lot of Iranians.

And I said, of course, yeah, I understand, I totally understand, but I lied because it broke my heart that because of getting an interview with a Brian Ray C, you're a powerful woman. So I took the picture, but I never published that. I want one day to see her and I want her to say that you can publish about it. I was wrong.

I want a lot of journalists and families like her to understand that the killers of my country they understand only one language, language of power, pressure, and stand in solidarity with your sister. Don't call me radical. I'm not radical. Radical or those who are lashing women, radical or those who are raping women.

I'm just saying that my dream is to walk shoulder to shoulder with my mother in my beautiful country. I just want to have the same freedom that you take it for granted here in America. So is that too much to ask? One return to this gulf between the Iranian population and the regime.

And I want to, I can't imagine we actually have opinion research that we could rely on here, but I think it's important to understand the degree to which the population of Iran is different or is likely to be different than the Palestinians under Hamas, to say. I mean, it's quite fashionable to draw a bright line between Hamas and the Palestinian people. But every indication I've had over the last 40 years is that there's a fair amount of support for theocracy among Palestinians. It's not everybody, but it's also not nobody.

And it's, if I had to guess, I would think it's somewhere around 50% of Palestinians are fairly in line with Hamas's worldview. And if you look at support for suicide bombing among Palestinians, it's always been very high, around 70%, and much higher than other people in the region. And however you want to discount that for the political emergency they have been suffering with Israel, it's obvious that there are a lot of theocrats beyond the formal membership of Hamas. There have to be a lot of theocrats in Iran for the regime to have successfully kept the veil over the whole society since 1979.

I mean, there are people, you know, man in the Republican guard, there are people in the morality police. What is your sense of how large the support would be for the end of theocracy in Iran? And how is, I'm wondering, and I'm speaking to someone who really is just purely ignorant of the details here. I'm wondering if there are any important differences between Persian and Arab culture that might be relevant here.

Can you both of you speak to that? The difference between the Iranian population and its support for theocracy and any other population we have meddled in, you know, Afghanistan, Iraq, among Palestinians, et cetera? I already passed a lot of red lines here. I live it to you some in time, second this question.

But to be honest, Iranians, especially the young generation, they're very progressive now. And I have to say that in my country now, the majority of the young generation, they are against not only Islamic Republic, they are against Islam because of, you know, the oppression that they have been facing for years and years. Yeah, absolutely. I think it's important to remember people see now that, you know, there's 57 Muslim majority countries, it's called the Islamic Republic of Iran, and they forget that these people have all been colonized, that these cultures, these nations, these people have all been colonized and indoctrinated.

And what's really unique about Iranians is they have always remembered their Persian core. They didn't lose it in the way that so many of us, my family from Egypt included, you know, like my people from Egypt included. You lose everything. You know, Egypt now calls itself the Arab Republic of Egypt.

What are you doing? You're in North Africa. You have your own civilization. You have your own culture to be proud of, but they have just become colonized and they now call themselves Arabs.

Iranian people didn't do that. You didn't lose your traditional holidays. You didn't lose your, yeah. Although it was a crime.

It was a crime to celebrate, like, you know, the birthday of, yeah, to going to, it's funny that sometimes I hear in the West saying that, you know, like, your job or Islam is your culture. Are you educating me about my own culture while I'm seeing that Iranian people facing punishment by celebrating the Persian culture rather than, you know, the Islamic culture or Islamic culture that became criminalized. Yeah, it is a crime still as a crime in Iran. You will face punishment for celebrating our own culture.

So, but yeah, I mean, I leave it to an Arab woman to actually to say that because it's beautiful when I see someone at the end of the day, recognize this because a lot of Western people here, when I see them, they don't recognize that they, you know, put all the difference. No, yeah, they think it's all the same. They think Iranians are Arab, Pakistanis are Arab, Indonesians are Arab. They just think anybody who is Muslim must be an Arab.

So they don't really get that very important point that these are all people that have been colonized by Arabs, by Arab Muslims. So I think that's really, I think that's, I think that's the point here, Sam, is that because they are so deeply proud of their roots and they've never forgotten their roots and they've held on to their roots, that's why they can fight against the Islamic regime of Iran because they see this Islamic regime as their oppressor, as their colonizer. They really believe that as the enemy of the Iranian culture. Exactly.

Yeah. And that's why I, I, I don't see it that way. No, I, I believe that the Islamic Republic and Islamic culture is a minority in Iran. And but yeah, as I said that they have the power, money, you know, everything to change the narrative in the West to downplay the young generation, to downplay the Iranian culture.

But I'm sure, I'm sure, you know, we will change this. Yeah. I must say that in speaking about jihadism to Western audiences, I'm always amazed at the amount of confusion. There is about it and how difficult people are to persuade that, that it's even a thing.

And you know, even many, many Western Jews are totally confused about jihadism and are, and are quite concerned, not the guilty of Islamophobia. But one population that I find is not at all confused are Persian Jews. I've never, I've never met a first victim of this. I've never met a confused version, Jew at this point.

And they're basically right next to ex-Muslims as, you know, understanding what I'm talking about. When I came to America, I mean, to be honest, the first allies that I found were the version Jews. Why? Because they have suffered from the beginning when the Islamic Republic took the whole nation hostage.

They were the first minority group who have been facing executions. And when you talk to them, they really know the pain and the struggle. And I'm so happy that I had them on my side. And that's why maybe when the Islamic Republic and Hamas, they had a coordinated attack against the civilians.

From the beginning, when I heard, I was like, this is the time now we, the people of Iran should stand on their side to support them, to be their voices. And to be honest, among all the countries in the region, Iran was the only country that you didn't see even a moment of hesitation among Iranians to stand with their sisters, to condemn the attack, to condemn Hamas, to condemn the brutality of the Muslim. Even in the West. Oh, yes.

Even in the West. And I remember that when I made a statement about how women in the West didn't condemn it, Iranians didn't know that. My people in Iran were telling me that who you're criticizing, really? Like women didn't condemn the rape.

So because we always say that. That can be real. Yeah. When it comes to rape, even in the Jewish, the Jewish controlled media and the Jewish controlled Hollywood failed to condemn the rape of Jewish women.

Can someone tell me why? Yeah. Because I really don't know. I really don't know.

It's like watching through the videos that they clearly wanted to show the rest of the world that this is who we are. We rape women. We grab their naked bodies everywhere. We film them.

We show them that we can do whatever we want. And then the West keep quiet. It's the exact same reason why they keep quiet when the Iranian women are being raped and killed by the regime. Because it's the wrong oppressor.

If the oppressor is American, that's different. Or Israeli, of course. Yeah. But if your oppressor is Muslim, even if it's a Muslim terrorist, then you are the wrong kind of victim and you won't get the support.

So what Jewish women went through recently with recognizing this and that the shock and the horror that they felt, I knew that pain. I just wanted to embrace them because I know how you feel. I know how it feels to be so betrayed by people who you think, who they think that they're on the right side of history. They think that they're feminist.

They think that they're good people. And then look how they treat us. And let's not forget Jews were always supporting their sisters in America, anywhere. And then I actually think that, yeah, you're right.

This was a total betrayal to our sisters who face rape. But at the same time, seeing no reactions from one non-human rights organizations, one known activists, the actress in Hollywood. But that actually empowered the Islamic Republic to say that, okay, now we don't need proxy war. We can go directly after Israeli.

And that's beyond sad because this is going to actually put democracy in danger. This is going to actually put the mindset of the youth in the West in danger. I don't think people in the West really understand how empowered the terrorists are right now and all of their supporters. I don't think they get the morale boost.

I don't think they understand how much October 7th. I mean, after 9-11, people didn't have smartphones, right? People didn't have their GoPro cameras. You kind of heard murmurs of, oh, people are celebrating in the Islamic world over 9-11, but there wasn't really evidence of that.

Now you see it. Now you see it. And the way that it's shared in the WhatsApp groups, the jubilation and just really there's it's such a morale boost. They feel on top of the world right now.

And I don't think the West really recognizes what they're up against at this point. And that's beyond sad because recently when I heard that how even Osama bin Laden became a hero through TikTok. I mean, the young generation suddenly found a letter from Osama bin Laden to America. And I was like, this is dangerous because very soon they can actually find a letter from Ali Khamenei to America.

And then Ali Khamenei is going to be another hero of the youth in America. Why? Because of the division here. What are both of your thoughts on the public and the Democrats?

They putting the mindset of the youth in danger. The youth are in agreement. They hate America too. I think Sam is calling us, but we are really enjoying our own conversation.

There's some latency here. So yeah, you got half of what I just said. What are your thoughts on immigration? When I look at Western Europe, when I look at the level of Islamism in London, and the degree to which the government there and the police force there is quite visibly terrified even acknowledged the scope of the problem.

I mean, it's pretty obvious that they don't have an answer to the problem. They simply have too many Islamists in England to have a ready answer for the problem, which suggests an immigration failure and also just a failure to contain the spread of dangerous ideas or to successfully combat those ideas, so as to discredit them. They just left the crazy mosques to be crazy for far too long. They left their borders open for far too long.

And now they simply have the wrong people in their society. They have committed Islamists and even jihadists in their society. And so now you have parliament, quite obviously bending its procedures so as to keep its MPs safer than they perceive themselves to be because they're getting inundated with death threats if they don't vote one way or the other. I mean, again, I'm not I don't live there, but view from the outside.

It looks totally intolerable. So the question is, how do we avoid that outcome in the States? I mean, I think all of our security concerns, given our various jobs, would be worse if we lived in Paris or London. And I think we're happy that there's a difference between what's real on the ground in the US, not to say there aren't real dangers, especially for someone like yourself, Massey.

But it's better here and I don't know where Canada falls. Yasmin, probably somewhere between the US and Western Europe. But how do you think about immigration and what should we do on that front? I mean, you mentioned about the UK and there's some extremists there, but I was actually recently in Canada.

So I think Yasmin knows the pain. There are more than 700 members of revolutionary guards there. So they're not like illegal, immigrant. They've been welcomed without any background check by the Canadian government.

And that's a disaster that the high ranking member of IRGC receiving visa by Canadians and now leaving their luxury lives there. The relative of the Ayatollahs, the relative of the killers, some of the Bos-Juchems' instigators were seen in Canada. So you see, and in America, the same story. So I actually talked about this.

I provided a list. I gave it to two administrations saying that these are the former officials of the Islamic Republic now actually teaching in different universities here at the United States of America, the former ambassador of the United Nations for Islamic Republic, who was covering up the massacre, the executions, now teaching peace and security in university here, Mahalo and another one is Musabian, who is part of the team of the Islamic Republic for negotiation, nuclear negotiation. He was the one covering up all the massacres and killings. He is praising Hamas.

He is supporting Hamas. Now he's here. Do you think that's just an abject failure of the vetting process? I mean, politically, no, the US government, the UK government, Canadian government, are trying to be politically correct.

They are trying to bring more people from the name of diversity and being politically correct. They're welcoming terrorists. They are actually giving platform to terrorists to brainwash the youth here in America. Musabian, I really want to talk about him.

Musabian, he's a terrorist. You say he's a university? Yeah, he's actually teaching at Harvard University. And now there is a group of Iranians demanding the US government to get him out from university, prison university, full of Islamic Republic agency.

And that's beyond sad because these are the people who worked for the Islamic Republic government and here promoting the Islamic ideology. But the family members, let's just say, very, very sad stories here. You know, Nadaras Sultan, the well-known symbol of Iranian protesters during 2009 Green Movement who got killed in front of the eyes of the free world because the video of her getting killed went viral. Obama, President Obama, talked about her.

Nadaras Sultan's family applied for visa twice. Canadian refused to give them visa. But they gave visa to the chief of the police of Tehran. And he was seen in a gym in Canada standing next to an unveiled woman.

As I said to you, the killers of Iranian people, 700 of them received visa. Here we are. Let's not go far in America. Masume Yupakar was the spokesperson of the group of students who took American diplomats hostage.

Guess what? Now her own son living here and she is welcomed on CNN. She's a regular guest on CNN. She is part of the government in Iran.

And now you're hearing your terms when you can't tell me, but they go after Masume Yupakar and interview her. So this is the mindset of some of the activists, journalists, the government here, the United States of America, trying to be politically correct. And they are not even aware of the danger of that. It is when it comes to terrorists, do not people that are going to be correct, name them who they are.

Stop giving democratic titles to terrorists, calling them president, calling them scholars at university, calling them activists, dissidents. They're not, they're normalizing. What can we do about this? It seems like there has to be some kind of response to this.

On one level, there certainly needs to be some proper journalism done here. It's a long-form journalism that just exposes all of these people and all of the networks and all of the funding. Exactly. I mean, Sam, this is a very, very simple thing.

There is no need for me and you to educate anyone. There should be an investigative reports about the family members, the relatives and the members of IRGC living here at the United States of America, taking the platforms, going to universities, educating the youth here in America about the peace of Islam and Islamic ideology. There should be, you know, there is an investigative report about the relative of Putin. What is different?

How many is the biggest ally of Putin? How many is the one providing drones for Putin to kill innocent Ukrainians? The Wagner group is in the terrorist list. Revolution in the terrorist list.

What is different between the relative of the Wagner group and the members of the revolution in the guards? That's very dangerous. Believe me, I'm going to warn you that if you don't join us, the woman of Iran, to end this regime and trying to be politically correct here in America, you will face more of the terrorists here on US soil targeting the US citizens. And you actually mentioned about the kidnapping plot of me.

That happened three years ago. So what happened when the FBI stopped the kidnapping plot, then year after they sent killers, they hired killers and they sent it in front of my house. Why lack of action? They got back.

They started with killers. I don't know what's going to happen for me in the third attempt. I don't want President Biden to do anything after I get killed by the Islamic Republic agents here. I want them to take actions before.

So if people wanted to support something, some organization, some effort, what is there to support that might influence us in some auspicious way? There are a lot of different organizations actually documenting about the crime against humanity that the Islamic Republic has been committed for 40 years. I actually want to specifically mention about a new campaign, which we, the people of Iran, the women of Iran alongside the women of Afghanistan launched called United Against Gender Apartheid. And I don't think this is difficult.

The Islamic Republic is a gender apartheid regime. All of those who supported banning Africa during apartheid, they have to join us to criminalize gender apartheid. And it's not difficult. Members of the states here at the United Nations, unfortunately, I don't have any hope in the United Nations, became a place to United States, but still we're calling on different countries to join us to expand the definition of apartheid in all existence to include apartheid as well.

That will make our work a little bit easier to kick these barbaric regimes and take them to international court to ICC. But you have the Islamic regime lobbyists, not only in the UN, but in each one of our different governments, whether it's America, UK, Canada, etc. And they are pushing back against you and they have a lot of money. They have a lot of political clout.

So you are grassroots activists up against basically regime proxies all over the West. I was actually under attack by the same lobbyists saying that a massive is being paid by the US government. I was like, wow, as a journalist, my salary is like the same salaries the teachers here in America receive. You even blaming the victims, my dream is to be a journalist in my own homeland, Iran.

You should blame, put the blame on them kicking me out from my country. And El Hanomar, which I wanted to again name her, she shared the article saying that massy al-inertial is being paid by the real government. I was like, voice of America is a respectable platform. And I worked with for them when President Obama was in power, when President Trump was in power, and now when President Biden is in power, it means that I'm using the platform to echo the voice of voices, people, why are you bullying me?

I am not the enemy. Why are you fighting with me? Instead of fighting against the Islamic Republic. So yeah, the lobbyists trying to use the social media, spread misinformation, fake news against us.

When you go to my social media, you will see I'm under attack every single day. They send letters to different organizations to cancel us. So for us, it's not easy to fight against them. That's why I always say that we should be united, the way that the Islamic Republic and their proxies and their lobbyists are united against us.

We launched the campaign. You remember about not being canceled, like not Yom or Rod, the noble peace for our CZ women, was trying to go to Canada to give a talk and they canceled her talk. Why? Because they the day when I was very happy because the guy got arrested with AK47 in front of my house, some of the organizations immediately they canceled me for the safety of their own attendees, their own employees.

I was like, wow, you interview a Brian Racy, but you canceled me because I've been part of the killers. You're raising the Yazidi case is kind of painfully ironic here because I just noticed that I'm all Clooney, the famous humanitarian lawyer, wife of George Clooney, who represented the Yazidi woman's name. Nadia Murad. Yeah, Muradia.

And obviously that was quite heroic, but she is now the one of the quarterbacks at the International Criminal Court of Justice to issue arrest warrants for Sinwar and Netanyahu, as though these were equivalent. So can I use the opportunity to call on her to join the women of Iran? I really want Amal Clooney to join the women of Iran to help us to take the Islamic Republic to gender apartheid regime who actually raped women in prison, who actually killed women for simply walking on veils who blinded women, gas the school girls, so she can help us to take the Islamic Republic to the International Criminal Court. I mean, this is not me asking her.

This is Nargis Mahamadid, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, within prison alongside more than 60 women in prison calling her and calling the Western activists to help us to take the gender apartheid regime in Iran to International Criminal Court. Is that too much to ask? I think this phrase, gender apartheid is quite useful. It's a very clever weaponization of the term, and I hope it's effective because it can obviously...

No, no, no, it's not because I'm being bombarded now by some of the West who actually attacked our anti-compulsory veiling campaign now saying that apartheid carries historical pain and it comes with a baggage and don't use it. No, no, but it is. It's a term like slavery. Everyone knows they're against it.

Yeah, you think. And it's accurate. It's not a misappropriation of the concept. It's not a distortion of the concept.