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After October 7th happened, I'm like, okay, well, these are proxies of the regime. These are the same terrorists that have killed my family and my people. Obviously, I'm not going to stand with this. What people in the West seek to do is that they try to rationalize fundamentalism. They think that there's like a cause and effect to fundamentalism. They don't understand that fundamentalism is just insanity. So this is a...
religious fundamentalist ideology that believes that in order to achieve the prophecy, it has to get rid of Israel. And these guys are trying to develop nuclear weapons. That's pretty scary.
Elika, I've been following you, well, not literally, been following you online for a while. Oh, you haven't been actually following me? No, no, I haven't been stalking you. You haven't been stalking me? No, I haven't. That's good to know. Only because I'm in London, you're in LA. That's what every stalker would say. But we've been talking for a while.
Well, your commentary is very interesting, actually. We wanted to have you on, first of all, to tell us your story, because that's very interesting, and then to talk about the Middle East, Iran, and so on. So who are you, and what's been your and your family's journey? My family, like a lot of Iranians here in the diaspora, left around or after the revolution, or should I say the coup. that happened in 1979 in Iran. I think most people are somewhat familiar with the story.
I don't know that they are, actually. Oh, okay. Okay. So you had, it was under the Shah's regime. The Shah was the king of Iran at that time. And then there was, well, actually, this is very, very relevant to the conversation because there was... a revolution, an uprising I guess, that overthrew the Shah.
But what people don't understand is that a lot of the same factions and the same elements that were involved in that movement are the same elements that are involved in what's going on now in the Middle East. And we can get into this. I don't want to get distracted, so we'll put a pause and come back to it. But it was the movement of the... It was that jihadist-Marxist alliance.
Islamist leftist alliance where these ideologies of communism were being taught in the universities in Iran and they kind of had this I guess what the Alliance is based on is this idea that the jihadists are this kind of reactionary force that will come in and dismantle, you know, Western imperialism and capitalism, you know, so that the leftists align with them in that capacity.
So basically the same thing happened there. The Islamists come in and of course the Communists, the Tudor party, are the first people they kill. So that's how the Islamic revolution came to Iran in 1979. My dad at the time was in London. He was getting his PhD at Oxford. So under the Shah's regime, the Shah's regime was sending out students, like the top university students, to be educated abroad because it was like part of...
kind of progressive movement, right? He was getting international studies and things like that to come back to Iran. So then the revolution happened in 1979. And I guess he had to drop out of Oxford because they cut off his bursary because that was a change of government. My mum and my mum's entire family were still in Iran at that time.
So they kind of experienced firsthand everything that happened after the revolution. My mom told me, you know, they would like throw acid in women's faces if they weren't wearing the hijab. So pretty much immediately after the Islamic Republic came to Iran, after Khomeini came into power, they started enforcing, you know, mandatory hijab, mandatory dress codes and things like that.
There were a lot of dissidents. There was a lot of uprising against this new regime that people were like, oh, actually, we made a mistake. We don't want this. And so then there was like a huge crushing of dissent. of people were executed, a lot of my family members. My mom was in Evin prison briefly. My aunt was in Evin prison as well. So Evin prison is the notorious prison in Iran. where basically it's like the prison of no return basically and um
In the early 1980s, in the kind of nascent years of the regime, where it was like at its most brutal, they would have a row of hanged bodies lining the walkway at the entrance of the prison. So people would understand kind of what... they were going into. So my aunt was in prison, my mom's sister, and she was pregnant with my cousin. And her husband was also in prison. They ended up executing him. They let her go to give birth. My cousin now, she has epilepsy because they...
you know, fed her so much poison when she was in prison. And then eventually, you know, my mum got really sick after that time. She got a medical visa to go to the UK. That's where she met my dad, who applied for asylum. became a British citizen, got married, brought her family over. We all lived together in a very dysfunctional household. I was born. All right. Yeah. You know, it sounds...
It's so weird that people don't understand this, but you see pictures from Iran before the revolution. And it's literally like if people are listening to this in America or in the UK, it's like you have your fairly progressive society.
and then just there's a revolution and suddenly you as a woman now have to wear a hijab or even a burqa or whatever and you get beaten or killed if you don't that's really what happened was like overnight you went back a few centuries basically and i think you know what a lot of people say was that it was in fact becoming so progressive that it was almost like a backlash or jihad lash, you know, to the amount of progress that the Shah was implementing. Like he had all of these reforms, like...
the white reform where he was kind of rapidly progressing to the extent that he was putting women in high positions in government. You know, it was like really developing. And so that, you know, that was an affront. to the kind of burgeoning Islamist movement that was in Iran and the Middle East at the time, where they were just like, oh, this is Western imperialism. Because every semblance of progress or modernity or equality is Western imperialism. to these people right so it was like
We need to get rid of this Western imperialism. We need to get rid of the cinemas and the bars and the equality for women and the right to exist and the right to wear what you want and be in government. And we just need to replace it with this oppressive regime to oppose. Western imperialism. Why didn't the Shah crack down on this? Or did he try and then it didn't work? No, no. His attitude was very much like, if the people don't want me, I'll go. Yeah. Wow. So it was actually very liberal.
Yeah, he didn't fight to stay. But also you have to remember that he was very sick. He was very sick at the time he had cancer. And it's actually a very interesting story, the Shah's illness. They've made multiple documentaries about it. So he's basically hopping from country to country because he's being kicked out of every country after he left Iran.
And that was because Khomeini from Iran was calling upon the Ummah. I don't know if you know what the Ummah is. No, explain. It's like this concept of one collective Muslim body. So, you know, we as Muslims are all kind of moving together at the same time. So when the Shah's in Egypt or Morocco, wherever he is, the Ummah needs to rise up.
and have him removed. So because it was causing so much problems wherever the Shah would go, like the Ummah was rising up in Egypt and where he was being housed and he would have to go. So then he was going to America, to Morocco, Egypt, all different places. Anyway, so what ends up happening is that...
He needs to do this surgery on his spleen. And he has the best doctor in America do this surgery, the best spleen surgeon in America. Now, at this time, let's rewind and talk about the fact that Jimmy Carter... who was the president of the USA at that time, betrayed the Shah, who was a close ally to Qatar. And he betrayed the Shah by kind of conspiring with Khomeini.
to bring this revolution to Iran and to overthrow the Shah. And this was revealed in declassified documents that were produced in 2016 that revealed this correspondence between Khomeini and the White House, where Carter agreed to basically suppress the Iranian army and to help disseminate this propaganda against the Shah.
ultimately fermented this revolution. So just keeping that in mind because, and I don't know how much of a conspiracy theorist we want to be about this, I think it's just open to consider, the Americans really didn't want the Shah to survive and ultimately potentially come back to Iran. So he undergoes this spleen surgery by apparently the best spleen surgeon in the USA at the time, but the surgeon doesn't drain his spleen.
And then when you do all of these documentaries, when you see all these documentaries, You have these surgeons from everywhere, from Mexico, here, there, and the other. They're like, there's no such thing as not draining the spleen after a surgery. You would get an infection and die. Everybody knows this. That's exactly what happened to him. He got an infection and he died. So we fast forward to 2024. What is life like in Iran now for the average person and for women in particular?
I mean, for women in particular, it's obviously extremely oppressive it's extremely repressive you have this forced um dress code this forced hijab but you know the situation with the hijab is really just the tip of the iceberg you know that the degree of oppression And repression in Iran is so...
that that's really just like the veneer on top of all of it. You know, you have a lack of political autonomy. The economy is in ruin because of all the sanctions that have been placed on the regime because it's constant violations. over the decades. You have no ability to oppose the regime because they kill you, torture you, rape you. And you... can't even vote meaningfully because every candidate is handpicked by the supreme leader and so
I always just refer to the state of Iran now after the Islamic regime came into power as just that it just went black. You know, like everything shut down and there's just no life there. There's just like no life. But bearing that in mind... There have been very brave people, brave women, who have stood up. So that gives me hope because it makes me think that actually there are people pushing back, like this student.
That story is incredible. Tell it to our listeners and viewers who might have missed it. So, last week there was a woman whose name is Ahu Dariyayi, and she was essentially accosted by the morality police for not wearing her hijab correctly. She was a PhD student in... at a university in Iran. Elika, sorry, you've just used morality police. People might not be aware of that. Who are the morality police? Okay, so the morality police in Persia, in Gashda Ershad, they are the police.
that are specifically employed for ensuring that women comply with the dress code. There was a period of time that the media was reporting that the Moralesi police had disbanded, which was not true. They had moved to kind of surveillance instead of patrol, but I guess...
They're back on patrol again. So in response to being accosted by the morality police, she decides to take off not just her hijab, but... all of her clothes she decides to undress and just roam around in the streets in her underwear basically which is um you know a lot of people would say is like a suicidal mission but she did this in defiance of of the regime. And what would happen to a woman like that who chose to protest?
Not only to protest, but protest in the most explicit manner. So what they're basically already saying is that she's been forcibly institutionalized. And the amnesty actually reported today that they are... of the tactics that the regime has used when they forcibly institutionalize women for defiance of the hijab laws, which can include like electric shocks, forced drugs.
um intravenous drugs just just stuff that you would think of when you think of like the early 1900s of you know what they used to do to women for hysteria um which involved a lot of the same things like
electroconvulsive therapy, ice baths, lobotomies, even in the extreme cases. And so there's a lot of concern right now about, you know, what the regime is doing in response to that. Alec, let's talk a little bit about what... the regime wants because this is something that people in the west just i don't think people in the west are capable of understanding the mindset of of passionately deeply religious people which is who runs iran yeah
So what do they want? What is their objective? Why are they doing many of the things they're doing? You know, I think you bring up a good point because what I often find about what people in the West seek to do is that they try to rationalize fundamentalism. So they come up with these stories like, well, you know, I guess if, you know, America did this, then obviously.
they would do that they think that there's like a cause and effect to fundamentalism they don't understand that fundamentalism is just insanity like there's no there's no why there's no reason it just it is what it is and there's no rationalizing it so they're all They're kind of imputing their own rationality onto fundamentalism, which just fundamentally doesn't work. I get why they do it, by the way, especially as we're sitting here in L.A. You look outside, the sun is shining.
All you need to do is make money and live. Why would anyone go and blow themselves up? Well, they must be really annoyed. They must be really upset. They must have a good, you know, I would only blow myself up if blah, blah, blah, right? And I think it's a failure of imagination.
It's also just a failure to understand, like... true evil in this like people don't think that it's possible to just be evil they don't think like they're like but i wonder why hitler does that i'm sure he was just abused and i'm sure i just but like but he was just evil you know like just give up looking
for the why. Because sometimes people are just bad people who do bad things. So come back to what they want. Because one of the things that might be strange to people who are familiar with the Middle East is Iran is very far away from Israel. Mm hmm. Right.
So their objective and their desire to wipe Israel off the map, which is one of the objectives, seems to a lot of people kind of difficult to understand. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, we can talk about that. So basically, Iran, there's two types of Islam. There's Shia Islam and... Sunni Islam. The regime in Iran subscribes to 12 Ashia Islam. So the reason it's called 12 Ashia Islam is because they believe that the descendants of the original prophet
Muhammad is not the correct lineage of the prophets. It's of his son-in-law and cousin. So the 12th Imam, which was... Prophet Mahdi, so there's this theory called Mahdiism. This Prophet Mahdi was said to have gone into oculation, so he went into hiding, around 937 CE. So he's gone into hiding, he's gone into oculation, and the theory is that the final prophet emerges once there is...
once justice and equality has been achieved in the world. And the thing that achieves this justice is that the last drop of blood of Israel falls. So the end of Israel brings back the final prophet. Oh, I've never heard this. That's fascinating. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's a religious thing. It's a prophecy thing. Yeah, yeah. So they need to destroy Israel. They need to destroy Israel, correct.
So that's why the prophecy to be fulfilled. Exactly. So that's why that's now how you get into the the proxies of the regime. Right. So you have the regime almost immediately after the regime comes into power within the next. So it comes into power in 1979. within the next two years between that 1981, they create Hezbollah. So Hezbollah is essentially a second IRGC, which was created for the purpose of destroying Israel from the closest possible border. Because as you said...
Iran's not close enough to Israel to be able to accomplish that. So they were like, okay, let's take Lebanon. Let's put an army of the IRGC in Lebanon, which is the war of Israel. What is the IRGC? The Islamic Revolutionary Guardian Corps. Okay. So this is okay. So the system in Iran is like this. You have a regular government, which is for all intents and purposes, just symbolic because it's under the...
So you have the supreme leader. The system is called velai atifagi. You have the supreme leader and underneath the supreme leader, you have the IRGC, which... protects the supreme leader. And then you have the regular government, which is parliament, judiciary, and executive president. But all of these are under the rule of the supreme leader. So the IRGC essentially protects this system of Velayatifaki, the supreme leader system. So...
The second IRGC is created in Lebanon, which is Hezbollah. So after the revolution is successful, Assad comes to Iran to congratulate Khomeini. and says, what do you need? And Khomeini says, we need a passage to Lebanon to create this second army to destroy Israel. So they go through Syria and they come down in northern Lebanon. At the same time, this is like around the same time that, remember, Israel's now in southern Lebanon.
And this is why the Western world often says that Hezbollah was created in response to Israel's occupation. Well, that's completely false. First of all, Israel was occupying the south of Lebanon at the time to remove the PLO. that were fighting, that were throwing rockets into Israel. And in fact, the Lebanese in the south were actually allying with Israel to help take out the PLO, the SLA.
Hezbollah's coming down in the north, and it's basically killing everybody who's not submitting to their rule. Even Shiites, even Shiite Muslims, Sunnis, Christians. basically everyone. They start engaging in a series of terrorist attacks, bombing the American embassy in Beirut, kidnapping Americans, killing them.
Then it goes into like the kind of Iran-Contra affair, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Whatever. Anyway, the whole point is that this regime creates its proxies in order to start satisfying its goal, which is the destruction of Israel. And that's how it ends up also funding and providing training and assistance to Hamas and the Houthis, basically one in furtherance of the same goal. So I'm guessing that they...
don't really particularly care the Iranian regime, which is funding all these proxies, about civilian casualties. It's not just that they don't care. It's that they need civilian casualties. It's part of the propaganda machine.
So you can't turn Israel into a pariah state, right, which is the goal, that everyone thinks this is the most evil state in the world, unless Israel is... its hand is forced into striking areas where they've put, you know, munitions in schools and in hospitals and places like that, right? So it's actually part of their strategy to maximize civilian casualties. And in fact, this was something that they read in Sinwar's leaked report of something that Sinwar had even...
admitted himself that they need as many civilian casualties as possible. Because when they have civilian casualties, then the rest of the world is like, Israel's evil. We need a ceasefire. We need to end all of these things. And then Hamas lives to see another day.
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Learn more at monetary-metals.com or scan the QR code below. The thing that I find really interesting about all of this is that Biden gave Iran A lot of money. Now, I don't understand why that is. Could you explain the amount of money that you gave? Yeah. And there must have been a rationale behind it. So what was the rationale?
So in August of 2023, About two months before the October 7th, Biden ends up giving six to seven billion dollars to the regime as part of a hostage, a prisoner exchange deal where you get a couple of Iranians from American prison. a couple of Americans from Iranian prisons. Now, we've done these prisoner exchanges in the past without any transfer of money. So under the prior government, under Trump, they exchanged.
They got back two American prisoners, Xi Wei Wang and Michael White, with no exchange of money. So this was very curious. We were like, why are you giving them $7 billion? Mind you, they also didn't get, they also didn't retrieve. One American national, Jamsheet Sharmaet, who I don't know if you heard about this, they executed him last week.
This is a man that the regime had kidnapped. He was a dissident to the regime like the rest of us. They tried to assassinate him in California in 2009. And when they failed...
They kidnapped him from Dubai, took him to Iran. Biden's administration didn't try to get him back. And then they ended up executing him last week after Israel struck the regime's military bases. So... first of all we're like why are you giving them money second of all why aren't you bringing them all back um so then what we end up
finding out is that you have this lead negotiator in Qatar come out and basically say, you know, these are like laying the ground for getting back into the second JCPOA, which is to get back into another nuclear deal with the regime, which was what Obama...
did, if you recall, gave $150 billion to the regime to get into the JCPOA, the nuclear deal. And so what does that mean to get into the nuclear deal? Because there will be people who go, look, you've got two choices with these regimes you either isolate them and then they go into the arms of russia china whatever else or you try and work with them and hopefully bring them into the fold and then that way you can have soft power over your smiling
Because you think it's clearly bollocks. It's 45 years of a failed strategy of appeasement. And they tried the same thing with the Nazi regime. And they appeased for so long that they ended up having to kill 50 million people to take them out. You're just delaying the inevitable.
So that's exactly what Obama thought. He was like, oh, maybe if we just give them $150 billion, they'll stop committing terrorism and suddenly start liking us. And it's like, what part of terrorist regime do you not understand? They want you gone. They want you dead.
And they're trying to strategize every way they can to pull one over on you. So that's exactly what happened. They got into this nuclear deal, which didn't do anything, mind you, because the provisions of the nuclear deal expired after 10 years anyway. So they could then enrich to their heart's content. And they had $150 billion. And at that time, there was actually a revolution, another revolution in Iran, the Green Movement. And the regime was on its last legs. And...
They ended up empowering the regime once again. And Obama comes out a few years later and he's like, oh, you know what? I made a huge mistake. I should have stood with the people of Iran to help them take out the regime. But that was what they believed at the time. They thought diplomacy would... Yeah, they thought diplomacy would sort this out. And you said something which made me think that, do you think the war with Iran is inevitable?
between Israel and Iran at this moment. Between Israel and Iran. Well, it's kind of already happening, isn't it? Yeah, there kind of is a war already. Yeah. But, I mean... More. Yeah, more. I think more scumming, yeah. And do you think it's inevitable, really? Yeah, I do think it's inevitable because you have... It's at the point now where everyone is hitting back from the last hit. And, I mean, it's going to require...
One party is saying, you know, I'm completely just abdicating this. I'm not going to continue with this. And I don't see why either one of them would do that. So, yeah. And the regime has already come out and said that it's going to strike back. on Israel after the previous attacks. But what's so interesting about this is when I hear people who are talking about this, particularly people on the left, and look, they've got their concerns about Israel's conduct during this war.
But they never talk about Iran. They never talk about these Islamic fundamentalists who are funding this. And let's be honest about it, tragic as it may be. The Palestine situation, the Lebanon situation, they're essentially proxy wars for this coming conflict, which is going to be really serious. And there's...
And you think this could actually spark something even more serious as a result. So I guess my question is, why are they not talking about that instead of talking about... what's going on in palestine well the thing is you know it's all linked and so when people think that this is like a gotcha where they say to me like oh but what about the casualties and in gaza and lebanon i'm like that's exactly what i'm saying you don't see what's at the root of this you like we're not
disagreeing that these casualties are a problem. We're disagreeing about what's the cause of these casualties because you're obviously only capable of one layer of thought. If the only thing that you can see is that this one is striking this one and that must be the problem, you can't see what's going on behind.
this you can't see like the amount of munitions that have been lined in these civilian homes you can't see the terror tunnels underground you can't see the fact that october 7th happened they kidnapped these people they've taken they've taken them to um
Gaza, they've refused to return the hostages. They've refused to disband. And they're strategically locating themselves. They're positioning themselves in and among civilians. They're putting their munitions around civilian areas where the camps are. so that when Israel does strike, you have these secondary explosions. Nobody wants to talk about any of that stuff, right? Nobody wants to talk about jihad being at the root of all of this. Much less, I mean, they won't even consider...
Hezbollah and Hamas being at the root of that, much less going back a third layer of thought to go back to the Islamic regime in Iran. They can just see that first layer and that's it. But the thing is, all of this is by design and it's so important to understand that the regime hasn't maintained power for 45 years with stupidity.
Right. This is like they've played the long game for a long time and they've come up with all of these strategies. Like they've come up with these strategies where they're like, OK, if we. play on public emotion by publishing these like gruesome pictures of you know like casualties and things like that people are going to have like an amygdala hijacked response where they're going to shut down their prefrontal cortex they're not going to be able to see wait a minute
This comes from Hamas, which comes from the regime. They're not going to be able to do that processing anymore because their emotions are triggered. And they're like, I'm horrified with this, and I'm going to blame the thing that's in front of me. So there's a very deliberate plan that's making sure that people are always looking over here so they never look over here and understand that the root of all of these casualties, all of these...
you know, horrifying things that we're seeing, it's coming from this constant involvement. It's coming from this constant push from the regime. And I guess the question is, Elika, so we're sitting here in LA. You have a... Stop showing off me. It's an Airbnb. He had to say that. Just in case anyone thought he was still in London. Yeah, exactly. No one would be able to afford that fire in London, let alone any of this.
Yeah, that would be against the law in London. Yeah, exactly. You can't burn energy. That's disgusting. Transphobia. That was a little break. Comedic break there. Comedic break. Let's talk about nuclear war. Yeah, nuclear war. This is less fun. So, why get involved is the question. Me? Yeah, you. Because... Yeah, yeah. So I think that there's something to the fact that I know very well, very, very well what it means to lose your country to a lie.
Okay, which is essentially how we lost him on to a lie. And that same lie is coming here now. And I'm like, I'm not gonna see that twice. What's the lie? You have to read my book to find out. Gladly. But you've got to tease people a little bit. No, but it's the whole thing. The whole thing is the lie, right? Like, I mean, it's just like, I'll be sitting here for hours to describe it. All right, tell them what your book is called. Oh, I can't say that.
Oh, your book is not out? No, it's not out yet. I know, but I wasn't trying to plug. I was just trying to say like it requires like a... She said, you'll have to read my book, but she wasn't trying to plug at all. The book's not here. What's the lie? What's the what? What's the lie? You lost your country to a lie. What's the lie?
The lie is essentially the entire thing that the jihadists have basically, you know, engaged in in order to convince people that they, you know. Which is what? Everything that they're doing. Everything that we're talking about right now. That's all the lie.
but it's like there's a whole thing to it you know what's the thing what we're talking about okay so like just for example what we just said right when we were talking about like the emotion and like that's an example of one well that is in terms of the western response i the way i think about it is kind of like the kindergarten teacher mentality she walks out into the into
the playground she sees two kids fighting one's on top that's the bad guy that and it never goes beyond that yeah i think i think with that example though there's a degree of um So I don't even want to use the word innocence, but there's a degree of just like, you know, making a snap judgment and then being nothing else behind that. I think that there's more to it where it's like. orchestrated in a way that you want this kid to look like the bad guy and there's extensive planning
and positioning and strategizing so that when the teacher comes out, they're like, oh, you're the bad kid. Oh, yeah, but that's what bullies do. Bullies are very good at making themselves look like the victim. Exactly. It's called Davo. I think, yes, exactly. The question I wanted to ask you, and it's something that we've had many, many people want to talk about this, but I've never asked this directly as this. What is jihad?
So this is a matter of contention, I guess. The term jihad quite literally means, it's an Arabic word, it means like struggle. and so a lot of people just you know say oh jihad just means like a struggle against oppression and you know regardless of what the kind of etymology of the word is or the root What it has come to mean, for most people's understanding, is it's a...
vying for power of Islamists over a region essentially in order to create a state under Sharia law. So they want a caliphate? So it depends whether you're talking about Sunni extremists or Shia. Sunnis want a caliphate. Exactly. What does Shia want? M-1-8. M-1-8, which is like what is in Iran in the Islamic Republic. Right. Yeah. So jihad is the struggle to achieve a single state under Muslim control in the Middle East? Or does it go beyond that?
I mean, if they're going to return to the prior caliphate, if that's the model that they're going to use, then I'm guessing the Middle East and North Africa. I don't know what their aspirations are beyond that. Why do the Iranian jihadis hate America? Why do they chant death to America? Is it American foreign policy? No, no, no, no, no, no. I mean, you could say that. You could say that. But I think in general, you have to remember that they really hate American values.
They hate American values because they're almost diametrically opposed to the values that they have, which are really, really very... I don't even want to say conservative because it's more than conservative. It's repressive. It's very...
It's extremism. And so this idea of liberalism in any form, and I know this word liberalism has come to be contentious when we talk about it in America, but to them, you know, it literally just means like... dressing how you want or whatever um the values that america has it's just really irksome to them um also the fact that you have to remember that America and the Western world.
in general, is constantly responding to this regime, this regime's acts of brutality and violence. And when you're that bully, right, there's something about when you have that mindset where you like, no matter what you do, when someone responds to you, you think they're the bad guy right like if you try to like go after someone and they defend themselves and hurt you you're like oh my gosh i've been attacked it's actually just the way they think
And they're not even capable of accountability or self-reflection. So when they create Hezbollah, for example, and Hezbollah commits all these suicide bombings and kills CIA agents and stuff, and then...
America does something like put sanctions on the regime, something like that, right? They're like, oh my gosh, I've been targeted by the big bad American wolf. It's like, but you know you did something, right? You know you did something first that was really bad, and then you got a reaction, right? You get that? It's like, but they don't get that. They don't see it that way. They're like, oh, I'm being oppressed by Western imperialists. I mean, in fairness to them, we have sanctions.
My mother's Venezuelan when sanctions were brought in Venezuela. It's never going to be the ruling class that suffer. It's always going to be the innocent civilians who've got no choice in the matter of the fact. They're ruled by these nutbags. Well, you know, that would be true if it wasn't for the case, if it wasn't for the fact that the regime is extorting the people anyway by taking, you know...
their money and everything they have. So like the supreme leaders, like his net worth is like, I don't know, like 100 billion or 200, like just ridiculous amounts of money that he's extorting from the Iranian people. So that would be a good argument if it was like a but-for argument, but-for sanctions. Iran would be flourishing, wouldn't be, realistically.
No, it wouldn't be. And it never is. The thing that I find really interesting about your story when you speak about it is you talk about the cyber attacks from Iran. Now, this is something that I've never really heard of. So explain to us what that is like. so um the regime so first of all let's remember that the regime has a long history of assassinating dissidents um
from the 80s through to the 90s in France, in Germany. And I guess what happened after a period of time, the international community was like, okay, we're going to do arrest warrants international, all of this stuff. They were like... This isn't ideal. So what they do now is they have more like a phased attack against dissidents and the first phase of the attack starts with character assassination. So...
They start by saying, like, you know, this person is a Mossad agent, a regime spy, a this, that, or the other terrorist, which is what they said about Jamshid Sharmad, who they just executed last week. And then they move into the phase of attempted...
um kidnap or assassination and the whole point is that once they cause you this harm they've already laid that foundation of character assassination so essentially no one will care right and so this is exactly what happened so after they executed him and they told the world you know You see the New York Times and all of this media posts like, oh, this man was assassinated on terrorism charges. And it's like...
Where are you getting this information from? Did you actually review the fact that he was convicted alongside Biden and Trump and every American official of terrorism and sentenced to death? Has Biden done that then? Did you investigate that? And so then it's like, then you're like, oh, well, I mean, I guess it doesn't matter if he was a terrorist, right? And that's how they...
how they whitewash their crimes and get people to look the other way. Because they're like, oh, well, I guess it's not really that bad if this person was a Mossad agent or a CIA or a regime spy or a terrorist. I guess it's not that bad. And it's interesting because they don't also, they assassinate character in a different way as well. Like some of the things they've accused you of, didn't one of them accuse you of being Simon Le Bon's daughter?
so that one was funny that one was funny because first they said that um First, they said that I was hiding the fact that I was Simon Le Bon's daughter because he was a raging Zionist and I didn't want everyone to know that I was the daughter of a Zionist. The lead singer of Duran Duran, is he a raging Zionist? I don't know, is he? I've never heard he's a...
opinions on Israel, I'm going to be honest with you. I have no idea. You're probably the only person in the world that hasn't given his opinion on Israel. Yeah. I have no idea. He probably is a Zionist. Yeah. So, yeah, probably. Yeah. Don't sue us. It's just a joke, mate. No, we don't know. We don't know. Disclaimer, we actually have no idea what Simon Le Bon's views are. But you're not his daughter. I'm really sorry, Simon Le Bon. Yeah, no. Real, like, huge apology.
to Simon Le Bon, who's gotten the salty end of this campaign against me. He doesn't have a daughter that's, you know, me. And then afterwards they switched it to saying that. So they like had created this whole reputation that I was like secretly Simon Le Bon's daughter. And then when that became like accepted. Then they were like, she's not even Simon Le Bon's daughter. She just lies about it for fame.
i was like that's good that's pretty good yeah but it just shows like how ridiculous it is and it also shows the currency of the internet where you only have to say something and if it gets retweeted enough times yeah people
Like, I can't believe what Simon the Bomb's daughter said now. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We were actually just talking about this, where I had, like, put up this post about Jamshid Sharmad, where I was like, there was no evidence of this claim that he was a terrorist. And then someone, like, the...
journalist of press tv which is the regime's media comments in my thing like no evidence laughing face and then they attach the article and the article is again just repeating the accusations without evidence and i'm like Number one, they will say the most ridiculous thing in the world. They won't substantiate their claims. There's never any evidence, which is like already something. But then the other thing is like people still go for it.
It's like, it would be fine if everybody understood that this was ridiculous, but people still go for it, and that's why they do it, because they're like, what's the point of trying harder when this is, you know, successful? And it's interesting when you compare it to, for instance, the case of Salman Rushdie, and because the Ayatollah, I think, was it 81, 82, issued the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, and then never rescinded it. Yeah.
And everyone kind of forgot about it and went, well, I think, you know, everything's fine now. And then someone rushed, she was nearly killed. Yeah. So it just shows that, you know, there's real power to these threats and to these accusations. There's real, real, I mean, this is extremely, extremely dangerous work. It's almost like there's like a...
There's like a double edge to it where it's like the more you speak about it, the more you become known, the more, you know, of a target you become. But then also at the same time, the more you become known, the more it's... for them a little bit of a problem if they try to go after you because they also don't want the international community realizing that they're terrorists.
You mentioned before we started that talking about this has caused a lot of your British friends to react to it. What's going on there? I mean, you guys are from London, so you know that, you know, being pro-Palestine is kind of part of the culture and you really can't stray from that or you're just evil and horrible. So after October 7th, for me, there was, you know...
an obvious overlap, because I've been talking about Iran for the past year, since the revolution in Iran following the killing of Masashina Amini. And so after October 7th happened, I'm like, okay, well, you know... These are proxies of the regime. These are the same terrorists that have killed my family and my people. Obviously, I'm not going to stand with this. But my friends took a very different...
A very different approach. They were very supportive of October 7th. I mean, just obviously, right? Like on October 7th, they posted like Palestine flags and just stuff that was, you know. And so the thing is, for me, that's obviously very dark for me because you're supporting the terrorists that, you know...
are an extension of the same terrorists that have killed my family. For you, there's no meaning behind it, right? And so as it just developed that, you know, they would post stuff in defense of Hamas.
They would repost like Gabor Marte quotes that would be like, oh, Hamas hasn't even done 1% of what is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, this is... this doesn't even mean anything to you you don't even know what you're talking about this is like they weren't even willing to hear me despite me having like an obvious connection to this conflict you know
It was just a decision that there's something wrong with you. You must be a raging Zionist if you don't support Hamas. And we just don't want to know you anymore. And Elika, one of the things that we've touched briefly on... But actually, now that I'm putting together several of the things that you're saying, so this is a religious fundamentalist ideology that believes that in order to achieve the prophecy, it has to get rid of Israel.
And these guys are trying to develop nuclear weapons. That's pretty scary. Yeah. Now, the obvious question, therefore, is how close are they to having nuclear weapons? Do we know? That I don't know. I know they've been a nuclear threshold state for a few years. I don't think that's something that they've...
come out and revealed. It's kind of like the same thing with Israel. They don't say... Well, we know about Israel. We know. Yeah, we know. Israel's... I love it. Israel's position on nuclear weapons is hilarious. It's like, we don't have them, but if the state of Israel is a threat, we're definitely going to use it.
If it's a threat, then we have them. But if it's not a threat, we don't have them. We don't have them. But Israel has nuclear weapons. But we don't know how close Iran is. Yeah, I don't know. Because I'm guessing that... From Israel's perspective, if what you're saying is accurate and if it's understood to be like that in Israel, I just don't see why they haven't bombed the shit out of Iran's nuclear facilities already.
Yeah. Because that's what I would do, objectively. If there was a guy across the street whose prophecy would only be fulfilled when I'm dead. I'd go and take care of it. You know what I mean? Yeah, but then you know what would happen to you? You'd be on trial and get convicted of murder because this poor innocent man who just wanted to be your friend and has never done anything wrong because they're just so good and kind.
just so evil that you decided that you wanted to end his life because you're mean and jealous and miserable. Sounds like me. But I see your point. Preemptive action is very difficult to justify, at least because sometimes it is unjustified. Iraq didn't have weapons of mass destruction. I think that's part of the skepticism in the West about this stuff.
But I think another thing that I was going to say to answer your question is that, you know, Israel is very much restrained by the international community, especially America. And because America has this strategy, this failed strategy of... appeasement for the past 45 years it's very much just like anti any type of escalation and so even if israel wanted to do its escalation a little bit further it would be punished by america and if it's punished by america that's a problem so it has to
really operate within the confines of what America decides is appropriate. And that's why another reason why this election is going to be very... Well, by the time this goes out, the election's happened. So either we're all dead or we're... Or Kamala Harris is in charge. Yeah. You're laughing just like her. No, no, no, no, no, no. I'm kidding. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. It was a joke. I'm sorry. I apologize. It's okay. I apologize.
That was rude of me. No, it's okay. It was rude of me to talk about the President of the United States in that way. Is that what you think? It doesn't really matter what I think. No, it doesn't matter. By this time it's happened, so we'll find out. So... But I don't understand why more people aren't aware of this stuff, right? Because if it is a religiously motivated agenda and you've got this nation... I think that's one component of it. I wouldn't say it's like entirely that.
You know, they're just feuding, they're rival. Yeah, and they want control of the region too, right? That's why they're feuding with the Sunni states. Well, I think also like another huge part of it is that the Jewish state... disrupts the Islamic hegemony in the region, right? So you can't have any type of caliphate or united...
Islamic rule where the Jewish state exists there, even if it wasn't a prophecy. There's many reasons why the Jewish state is a huge problem to kind of usurping power in the region. But it's also as well, you talk about Islamic hegemony. they don't like each other anyway. Because the moment they get rid of Israel, the Sunnis are going to look at the Shias and they're going to be like, well, you're the problem. And then they're going to have a fight amongst themselves because they're mental.
Well, this is the thing, like a lot of people... Diagnosis from Dr. Foster there. One billion Muslims in the world are mental. No, I'm saying the extremists who want to... Oh, the extremists. Yeah, please don't get anywhere. Well, the funny thing is, like the funny thing is... I was just reading about something the other day that when the US began its negotiations for the nuclear deal with the regime...
They actually concealed this from Israel and the Persian Gulf states because they were like, basically Israel and all the Arab states really hate the regime and they don't want it to become empowered. And I was just thinking it's really funny how people don't know that everyone actually hates the regime. Like these people in the West that are like, oh, axis of resistance. Like you don't know that all of these countries in the Middle East like really despise.
Saudi, UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, like all of these countries hate this regime because it's like psychotic extremists. Like no one like, no, it's just weird. People, people don't get that. So yeah.
They do not want to merge with the regime. Definitely not. No, they don't want to merge with the regime. And let's say the regime was, like I said, got its wish to wipe Israel off the map, there wouldn't then be this peace in the Middle East because it would be Sunni versus Shia and then that would be a whole new thing and then they would all be at war with one another.
If you can convince them, you know. I think I should. Yeah. Elika, what would happen if the West stopped supporting Israel? If the West stopped supporting Israel?
I guess this question is a little bit dynamic because I wonder if Israel can sustain itself. I'm actually not sure the answer to that question. So I don't know if you mean militarily or... emotionally or philosophically well i guess i mean militarily and this comes back to our conversation about nuclear weapons because i guess if the west stopped supporting israel israel would be weakened by this right necessarily
Which would mean that its enemies would be emboldened which would mean that they would be more likely to attack which would mean that Israel would Find it more difficult at the very least to defend itself which would mean that if it turned bad for israel eventually israel might be in a position where its survival is at state yeah at which point israel might feel that it has to use nuclear weapons which would would do very reluctantly of course um
So I guess that's kind of like the two pathways, right? So if Israel were to use nuclear weapons, obviously it would be catastrophic in the region. That might be the situation if it feels like it has nothing else that it can do. The alternative where Israel actually loses, hypothetically, then what would happen is that we...
Well, the goal, right, is that Hamas would create a second Islamic Republic across historic Palestine, so across Israel and the Palestinian territories, which would be like a second Iran, basically, would turn into a second Islamic Republic. And that would be deeply problematic. And then you have two Islamic republics stationed here and here. And then they would go, the next mission would be Lebanon.
turn Lebanon into Islamic Republic. And now everyone is, you know, asking for assistance to the people on the ground who are trying to rise up and defeat their terrorist regimes just as they've been doing in Iran, right? And then where does that end, you know? And what would happen to the Christians, the Jews, the atheists, the women, if that were to happen?
So we can just rely on history for that. So under the caliphate, they were basically relegated to dimitude, dimistatus, which is basically that you, if you're a person of the book, Christian Jew otherwise. You can exist on this land, but you have to trade. Basically, we'll give you protection, as in the right to live on this land, in exchange for subordination to Islam.
So basically, as long as your subordinate to Islam will let you be here, they would just be relegated to dimmies again. After, I imagine, quite a lot of them being slaughtered first. Because it seemed to me like when the... when ISIS took over parts of the Arab area, they didn't just... make people subordinate, they also tortured, raped, murdered on a mass scale, right? Yeah, well, I mean, at the end of the day, most people won't accept that. And that's why there's so much...
murder and and slaughtering and raping all of this stuff is because people are just like no I don't want to do that and they're like okay well then we'll kill you so that's the that's the result if you don't want to submit to that but if you I mean if anyone whether you're in Iran whether you're Jewish whether you're Christian
whatever you are, if you just agree to shut up and stop existing and don't you dare resist this regime and the rule, then they probably would just let you be small. What does that mean, submit? to islam so there's various tenets that apply to dimitude i mean i guess it changes over time because we have to look back then it would be like for example you can't own property you can't
ride horses. I mean, we don't have horses now. I don't know what the modern day equivalent would be. You can't be in positions of power. You can't be in government. You can't have any meaningful power. in society. You can't be a meaningful participant in society. And you have to pay the jizia. You have to pay the jizia, which is the tax. How much is that, the jizia? I don't know. It's 25%.
Oh, okay, I didn't know that. Trust the duty. And then you would, like, in Iran, they were beheaded if they didn't pay the tax. So it's not, you know, it's bad. Yeah. What would you like to see the West do in all of this? Because I know that there's the Shah's descendants ready to kind of go back and start leading their people again.
But then again, a lot of people will look at the Middle East and go, do we really need to overthrow another regime here type of thing? Do you know what I mean? Yeah. So I think the thing is like this idea of like... no regime change because of the bad regime changes that we've seen has created like i i like to describe this period as like a war hangover people have like a war hangover where they're like never again with war and it's like okay but
Like your failure to take action in a lot of these places has literally resulted in the worst case scenario. And not only that, but America had a hand, a huge hand in putting like Taliban in Afghanistan. the islamic republic in iran it's like you can't just do that and then walk away and be like oh war hangover you know
I think this puts us in a difficult position, a precarious position, because first of all, people are like, okay, war's really bad. Okay, agree, war's really bad. What's the alternative? And this is the thing that frustrates me more than anything, is that people... because of their desire to literally just like feign moral superiority, they're like, oh, I'm so against war. It's like, oh, are you?
Who loves death? Of course, everybody doesn't want that. But my question is, what do you propose in the alternative? I would have so much more respect for people that were like, look,
We don't need to do war. We can do this system of de-radicalization. We can do this system of like... economic sanctions we can do this system where blah blah like they don't have an answer so i'm just like what okay you don't want to do war that's great but what will you do because you know you have to do something and the problem is most people believe that you just
don't do anything. And while this threat continues to rise and increase as it has, I think one of the most tragic things of our time is that we'll just... times in general is that people can never see what's happening as it's happening. They can only see it in hindsight. And I guarantee you, during Nazi Germany...
The rest of the world that were not in Germany were probably just looking at it like they're looking at the Middle East now. Like, oh, I guess it's quite bad. But I mean, we're not going to go to war, are we? I mean, I'm sure it'll fix itself. And it was just that continuously ignoring it and it getting more and more and more and more and more. You know, this strategy of appeasement where they're like, well, maybe if we give a few more parts to...
To the Nazis, a few more parts of Europe, maybe they'll just be satisfied with more Lebensraum, more living room. And then based on that appeasement strategy, Hitler's going and like invading all these other... um countries because he can do it right and so i feel like this is kind of like the plague of the the human experience is that we never see how bad it is as it's happening only in hindsight
So I don't actually have the answers of what to do at this point. I know that there's that saying that's like, if I wanted to get here, I wouldn't start here, which is very much how I feel about this. Where it is that I would like us to be, which is that there's no... Islamic Republic, the proxies are gone and there's freedom and stability in the Middle East. I have no idea how to get there from here because where we are now is 45 years deep.
of appeasing and giving money to this regime. And I don't know what to do at this point. well thanks for coming on the show uh before we head on over to substack where we ask you our audience's questions the last question we always ask is what's the one thing we're not talking about that we should be
I think we're not spending enough time talking about Iran, to be honest. Well, we just did. I know. So you've got your money's worth. Exactly. Now head on over to Substack where we ask Elika your questions. It spoils the most significant issue that the West gets wrong about radical Islam. Jeremy F says, how can we convince people in the US that their own lives are truly blessed by comparison to others?