The Limits of Power

Hello everyone and welcome to the Amon Poor Hour. Here's where we're headed this week.

I'm the boss.

A victory lap from the US President. But is Iran's Islamic regime making hay? As a memorandum of understanding is signed between them. The President of the United Nations General Assembly, Annalina Baerbach, joins me on the diplomatic fallout. And has anything changed for the Iranian people? Journalists Yegane Turbati and Bozormeh Shahrafeddin on the current state of the regime. and their new book, Stolen Revolution. Also ahead.

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Then on World Refugee Day, star of the pit, Sepide Mouafi, talks about her journey from Iranian refugee to TV's hottest show. She joins us with the International Rescue Committee's Shireen Ebrahim.

I have lived with the stories and the journey of my parents and the pain of displacement and exile my whole life and this has fueled my advocacy work and my work as an artist.

From my archive. What a refugee crisis looks like up close, my report from the Mediterranean at the height of this crisis in 2015.

Welcome to the programme, everyone. I'm Christiana Wanpoor in London. And it seems that some of the world's largest powers are learning a bitter lesson. Do not underestimate your less powerful foes. In their memorandum of understanding this week, Iran seemed to get almost everything it wanted out of Washington, the immediate ability to export its oil and a potential future lifting of all sanctions.

Thank you so much for having me on the show.

So there are big issues that are being talked about right now. Issues that are not just global but also very pertinent to the United Nations. Let me ask you first about what you think is going to be the result of this MOU between the United States and Iran. What do you think it's going to lead to?

Hopefully to more peace and uh ending the consequences all round the world, uh because ending hostilities, ending a war is always a good thing. yet we have to be very honest to ourself, uh, to see where the world stood uh before February twenty eighth and some of the dramatic consequences will be felt uh even in months after.

Let's talk about Ukraine, which you were very involved with when you were Germany's foreign minister in the aftermath of the uh full scale invasion by Putin. But it appears that Russia is becoming, I don't know, it's being described as maybe more desperate, maybe Putin more paranoid. All sorts of activities are being blamed on Russia, right here in the UK, for instance.

This is the big challenge of the United uh Nations. This institution was as one Secretary Sen General said at the beginning, not built uh to bring humankind to heaven but to prevent it from hell. And it's uh in the hands of the Member States, one hundred and ninety three to follow up on the principle they all signed.

We're talking at a time when the UN has been struggling to assert its legitimate and historic positions on the world stage. Uh the United States current administration kind of s sidelines the UN to a great extent. It's the United States which has cut all of this aid.

The heavy cuts by Member States which you mentioned are dramatic and we should not sugarcoat. people are dying because of that. And we even have aid in warehouses which cannot b be delivered uh to uh infants for example and uh we have to ask also ourselves. At this moment, why are we endangering all the successes from the past? I mentioned Ebalo. Another example is HIV 8.

Annalina Baerbach, President of the UN General Assembly, thank you for being with us.

Thank you.

So the UN really needs to get back and up being fit for purpose. And coming up next, the US promised regime change in Iran, but Their agreement to end the war falls far short of that goal. How it fits into more than a century of Iranians rising up against their rulers. And on this Father's Day weekend, how the beautiful game is helping bereaved dads heal.

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Welcome back to the program. It began as an effort to break the regime, but the war on Iran seems to be ending with a return to the status quo. This week, President Trump claimed he quote, never cared about regime change. So where does this leave the Iranian people? Recent history suggests that moments of crisis have only served as opportunities for the state to adapt and endure.

Thank you so much, Christian.

So what do you think, given the title of your book is Stolen Revolution, and we'll get more into that, what do you think immediately will be the political manifestation of a post war Iran vis a vis the people of Iran?

eh for the Islamic Republic it's going to be a difficult task to sell this D deal internally because it's for the hardliners we see that they are very kritical of the deal. And uh for them it doesn't make sense for uh for the Islamic Republic to make a deal with the US only a few months out after they killed the their leader, the supreme leader. I see that the way they are trying to sell the deal is that this is going to give the Islamic Republic a breathing space to rebuild its

Yeegoni, you know very well that many uh of the opponents of this regime, uh inside Iran, outside Iran, never believed in reform. They said it's just a joke, it's just a ruse. Uh there's no way of reforming this particular system. Um I don't know whether you have a comment on that, but I'm really interested in your view.

It is true that over the last hundred plus years of Iranian history, we've seen these repeated kind of aborted attempts at greater freedom, starting from the constitutional revolution, going through Mossad Dev's movement. through nineteen seventy nine, which you know, we document in the book and and many others have as well that

So Bozumer, finally, uh you don't just r uh you know, focus on on leaders and and and the like, but also on ordinary people. For instance the story of Hila Sediri A teenager who you report was trying to organise poetry nights only to have it shut down over and over again. But she keeps pushing, eventually One of the bureaucrats signs the permit and tells her, I'm lighting this fire both for you and for me.

Yeah, I think the the way I see the Iranian society is like like a like a frozen river. So because on the surface we see this uh ice and we see the political system is very, very rigid, but deep inside we see a a flow, a stream, a s very strong stream of cultural and social life. And I think Hilo Satir Sadiri represents that and that culture that how Iranians in deeper layers of the society are fighting for freedom. In in the book we didn't want to limit ourselves to the political level because

Yeegane, obviously one of the biggest was women life freedom. Do you have hope for Iranian women?

I think you know, we point out in the book that although woman life freedom failed in its political um efforts to unseat the regime. It had a lasting and huge social impact, possibly more than any other movement we've seen in in Iran's modern history. And I think that shows you the strength of um the Iranian women's movement and the the their their willingness to keep fighting for their what they believe are their rights.

And they are bound to keep fighting. Coming up, the beautiful game: how football is helping dads to bear the unbearable. That report next.

I'll be honest with you, if it wasn't football, I never would have made the phone call, sent the message kind of thing.

Welcome back. Now, just about everyone everywhere is being swept up in World Cup fever. We're seeing the unifying power of soccer or football as it's called all over the world. The beautiful game is rallying people at a time of great division. Now in this special report, we see how it's able also to build community and become a place of healing in even the most heartbreaking circumstances.

Football has given these men a reason to be here, perhaps a way in the door without admitting vulnerability or weakness.

I'll be honest with you, if it wasn't football, I never would have Mae'n ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud.

Jaden died after a long battle with cancer, eighteen. What has it been like sharing your story with these guys?

Them them all hearing what I've been through and me hearing what they've been through. Do you you realise you're not alone with this?

That's exactly what founder Sean Coleman hoped for when he started the club last year.

It's okay to grieve, it's no stigma and that's what we're trying to break like the stick we're off. Men's grief, men's mental health and baby loss itself. It's all stigmas that need to be broken.

While we're there, the team receive a message from Premier League player and local Aaron Ramsdale. His wife Georgina miscarried on a flight home. England's twenty twenty two World Cup campaign.

Yeah, I thought I'd give you a message and and just say well done and we're we're all in different situations but when um when things like this happen we're all in the same boat.

We we we were at the

Support.

Support from players like Aaron is a small step towards Forget Me Not FC's new goal, expanding from Portvale Football Club to other professional football clubs across the U. Okay. Last year, Aaron and his wife Gemma suffered the tragic loss of their baby girl. Here in the place where Willow should have been, precious memories spent with her are cherished.

We haven't got willow. weren't able to watch her. change or grow. The only things we have got or those memories from the time that we had with her. She's our daughter. She lives in everything that we do.

In the darkest months of their lives, Aaron said the club pulled him out of a spiral of gambling and depression. and enabled them as a couple to try again for a baby.

Without having Forget Me Not and having the dads that are involved and especially like the likes of Sean who helped set it up, I don't actually think I'd be here in in But it's also to know that you're around like-minded men that have gone through exactly the same

Amen.

Christina McFarlane, CNN, Stoke on Trent, England.

So sports and football of course has the power to really gather a community. And even in the United States where there were so many concerns about what this World Cup might look like there, it has certainly this first week energized and uplifted people's spirits there and around the world. Coming up, it is World Refugee Day. I speak to actress Sepide Mouafi about how her family's escape from Iran and her work with the International Rescue Committee.

Welcome back. Now how about this stat? Every minute, 20 people are forced to flee their homes in search of safety from war, persecution, violence, and other crimes. It is a situation that no one would choose. And yet today, as we mark World Refugee Day, some hundred and eighteen million people are displaced. That's one in every seventy people on this earth. And in a year of record high levels of armed conflict, the crisis is expanding.

Thank you for having us.

Let me start with you, Shireen. I want to get your your reaction to what the EU has just legislated. The Parliament there has approved the strictest ever migration uh, you know, law in decades this week. It apparently allows the EU countries to set up deportation centers outside the EU itself. Sort of return hubs they're calling it. Do you know what this is all about and and and what is your assessment of it?

So thank you, Christian. Uh obviously we are still trying to understand the implications of uh of uh these decisions, but we as the IRC governments um where whether they are the US or within the European Union to make sure that they preserve access to asylum and refugee resettlement programmes and people uh who uh who seek that asylum or seek that resettlement opportunity have safe and dignified pathways to

Do so.

Because what we are do we are seeing is that people go to great lengths and risk their own lives to get to other shores. So uh so that is important for the IRC to make sure that asylum and refugee resettlement are safeguarded.

So just to continue, because there need there are uh millions of refugees who need to be um settled. Uh the UNHCR Shireen says that for the first time though in a decade. The total number of forcibly displaced people has declined. Uh do you buy that? I mean declined, you know, over the last year.

So...

I think um

There is room for optimism, but we also have to see the nuance of uh of these figures. UN figures are telling us that there are one hundred and eighteen million forcibly displaced people globally. Uh today, you know, as we look at twenty twenty six numbers. We can celebrate that fourteen million people have returned to their homes, so displacement figures are declining.

We'll keep an eye on that. Let me turn to you, Sepide. You are now incredibly well known in the United States. Uh Uh for many things, but on the back especially of the pit on HBO. But you also have been a refugee. You were apparently born in a refugee camp after your parents fled the Islamic uh revolution of nineteen seventy nine. So talk to me about what you remember from that experience and why you decided to become a special ambassador for the IRC.

Christian, my lens on the world was forged by how I entered it. Um, my parents were both political activists in Iran fighting for democracy. Um my father was actually imprisoned under the reign of the Shah and then after the Islamic Revolution with the rise of the Islamic Republic, um, as you know, repression became much more brutal. Um many of my my parents' friends were imprisoned, executed, and yet they continued their activism until they were forced to flee.

Did this experience you've just told me about Uh was it did it inform your role in the pit? You play in the pit in the second season, Dr. Baran al Hashimi, and before you you know you come to the pit Your story is that you worked uh with Doctors Without Borders in Afghanistan. So the whole humanitarian landscape where you would have met, you know, all all these people who we're talking about right now, refugees and the most vulnerable.

Yes, absolutely. I mean it takes a a particular kind of person, character, to do such selfless acts, to go to places like Gaza and uh Lebanon and Afghanistan, um, some place that my character serves. Um and and go to these areas where in some cases entire cities are seemingly one continuous emergency department where

And coming up, my report from the heights of the European migration crisis, when I joined a refugee rescue mission in the Mediterranean. It is incredible to see with your own eyes a boat like that, not big. It's been crammed with 290 people, and of them 21 are children.

Welcome back. A decade after the peak of Europe's migration crisis. Thousands are still risking everything to cross the Mediterranean and indeed other seas. Twenty twenty-six was the deadliest start to a year since records began, according to the UM. It follows years of efforts to tighten asylum rules, strengthen border controls, and crack down on smuggling networks.

The crews are dressed in masks and hazard suits in case of infectious disease.

Amen.

It is incredible to see with your own eyes a boat like that, not big. It's been crammed with 290 people. and of them 21 are children. Now the Italian Navy has offloaded them all and now the last batch that's been unloaded by the Italian Navy is ready to get on one of these warships and safety. What do you think of the Italians who Saved you.

It is very good. We are a nice people, a nice country. We know that before uh when you are coming, we know that.

And then we walk over to the other side where women and children were separated, seeking shade and sleep where they could. 25-year-old Jury fetches water for her travel companions and their kids. She says they all spent a long time waiting for this in cruel conditions in Libya. Were you afraid on the sea?

They are safe, our lives.

So God came in the form of the Italian Navy.

Yeah, I like it too.

Yes!

É um rap.

Back on the busy bridge of the Fazan, Commander Marco Bagni directs this and other operations, and every rescue takes place. Hours to accomplish, even on calm waters. There are up to 1,000 crew at sea all the time. Task Force Commander Admiral Ribufo has one special mission aside from saving lives, stopping these merchants of death by keeping emptied fishing boats out of the traffickers' hands. You have called these boats. Weapons of mass destruction. What do you mean that?

are because of course it's quite pro provocative but uh in terms of uh human losses uh they have been uh causing just one journey is uh extremely um fruitful for criminal organization. We're talking about one uh million uh euro per journey.

Really? Yes. One million euros per journey. Indeed, heavily armed special forces and marines take off at top speed.

Amen.

Soaking us. But making sure no trafficker was coming back for this wooden boat. And while they all await further orders under a new EU military mission, the human toll on young crews and even experienced naval commanders is immense.

I think that uh Italy and uh Europe uh uh in the next future uh will do the right thing. So um Proud of that. Yeah.

I can see it makes you emotional.

Uh I would say yes, because um uh confronting um yourself uh with uh people uh is uh quite uh heartbreaking sometimes.

Christiana Manpur, CNN aboard the Virginio Fazan in the Mediterranean Sea. Now, when I spoke to then Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi about that crisis, he told me, quote, We must absolutely avoid the Mediterranean becoming a cemetery. It's a sea, not a cemetery. And yet, It is still a cemetery for so many people in the Aegean Sea, around Greece, for instance, in the English Channel that separates France.

And finally, this weekend, many Americans are celebrating Juneteenth. It commemorates when enslaved people in Texas finally learned they were free in 1865 on June 19th, which was more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation. The activist and lawyer Brian Stevenson explained its many complexities best, telling me how he celebrates while also remembering the enduring pain of the legacy of slavery.

We are the heirs of yes, a lot of that trauma and abuse and degradation, but we also are the heirs of people Who learned to persevere, people who were resilient, people who found a way to resist, people who knew their humanity and their dignity despite what the law said about them. And that is something to celebrate. The strength and power of enslaved people I feel

And just to note, of course, Brian Stevenson has created incredible, powerful memorials to the legacy of slavery in Alabama. And this year, Juneteenth, comes amid an unprecedented rollback of progress. The Voting Rights Act eroded, diversity initiatives designed to counter centuries of racism are being undone, and even black history faces erasure, perhaps making this historic weekend of celebration more important than ever.

From the descendants of history makers involved in the Louisiana Purchase to the Lewis and Clark Expedition, discover the untold stories of American expansion in the CNN original series This Land, now streaming on the CNN app.