“We Need Regime Change” - Elica Le Bon

There were so many videos. There was so many just of this sort of like universal voice that was saying, "We need help. We cannot fight this alone. These people are killing us with militaryra weapons."

I'm worried that the administration and others have called for people to rise up only for them to be killed for nothing. I think everybody understands and anticipates that they very well might not come home, but what else do you do? The war is one step, the uprisings, possibly armed uprisings is another, and defections is the other. And I think that those two things, if they're neglected, we're not going to have the regime change. And I think ultimately this is the time to do it. The worst case scenario is that the war ends and the regime remains in power. Would have been better that there was no war at all.

Elica, welcome back to the show.

Thank you for having me.

Uh, every time we put out an episode where the guest is somewhat critical of of the war in Iran, uh, all the comments are like, "You need to speak to an Iranian." So, you you here you are for diversity purposes.

Diversity. Oh my gosh. Or maybe authority.

Author. Okay. This is

Hit me with the diversity.

She's here for authority, guys. This is going to be an interesting one. All right. Uh, so welcome back. Obviously the subject is a serious one even though we're joking around. Tell us, you know, uh what your take is on everything that's been going on.

I think um my take is, you know, it's it's a very long take because this is something that has really built up built up into the moment that we are right now. Um obviously if you were following what was happening in Iran around January where we had this massacre um on January 8th and 9th where it's estimated well these numbers you know people want to war over these numbers but the numbers that came back from the hospitals was about 36,000 and that was just each hospital in every city listing how many casualties they had and that's not that's not including the people who were just executed on the streets who never made it to the hospitals. So suffice it to say that we're talking about tens of thousands at that point. Um from my perspective and from the perspective of people inside Iran, we are always sort of um hedging towards what what's going on in there and what do they need from us, right? Because that's the only role we play. They don't have internet. They can't communicate with the outside world. So we want to know what is it that you want. So through that period of time, there were so many messages. There were so many videos. There was so many just of this sort of like universal voice that was saying we need help. We need help. We cannot fight this alone. These people are killing us with militaryra weapons. How do you defeat militaryra weapons? And so that was the call for help.

Now where things get tricky is that okay so then you you have the US and Israel coming into this picture and people sort of give this sort of um condescending attitude of oh you think that these people are just here to save you and save your country. Well none of us ever said that right? None of us ever believed that any nation was acting anything but in their own interest. And it really that is the way that things are. Everybody understands that nations act in their own interests. But because of this backdrop of since October 7th, this radical anti-ionism, anti-Israel, anti-anti anti anti-western, which stems back to Soviet infiltration, right? We've had that conversation. I think it came to a point now where this war which was supposed to be seen through our eyes as a rescue mission perhaps through the US and Israel's eyes as you know um decapitation of an enemy whatever has now turned into something where people are being almost radicalized in support of the regime and so it's getting really dark.

Well, I think there's probably some people who are being radicalized and support, but there's also I mean cards on the table. Francis and I um recorded a conversation will go out a couple of days from now from the from when this goes out where we are basically saying it doesn't look to us like any of the objectives any of us might have wanted to be achieved i.e. Iran doesn't get nuclear weapons i.e. the protesters who you were talking about get justice or have a regime that replaces the current regime that doesn't treat them the way that

Regime change. I don't think that's going to happen. It's clearly not happening at the moment

And there's a possibility of a global recession. So

You you can also be concerned about what's happening without being radicalized in support of the regime.

Well, yeah, of course those are two completely different things. there's obviously a well-meaning sort of skepticism about what are the objectives of this war and when do we know if those objectives have been achieved I think one of the main issues that's sort of and it's something that I can't even get my head around is that I don't think that there's ever been a time where war by itself would affectuate regime change there are other things that need to sort of unite like for example uprisings um defections within the ranks and the person that has been mostly largely been responsible for that is the crown prince resopi. So when he called people out into the streets in January they went out in their millions. When the internet got shut down his views went down in the millions. So there was a a strong evidence that there was a strong connection there. And so I think where this war has gone sort of been negligent is in not pulling in the other actors that would affectuate regime change. Right. Also, Resa Pathi, I think there's I can't I can't say the numbers for sure, but I think there's like 150,000 uh people within the ranks that are looking to defect to him. And so,

What what are you basing that on? How do we know that? That's

His team says that.

How do we know? I mean, I I can only tell you what his team says, but what I can tell you is that

But do you see what I'm getting at, right? But but we have enough evidence of his support, right? We have enough evidence of the people chanting his name in the streets. We have enough evidence of millions of people coming out when he called them to come out. So that's that's good enough that we know that there are a ton load of people inside of Iran who support him. But either way, it's not about this isn't this isn't making a case about who supports him, who doesn't. It's making a case that why aren't we taking the necessary steps towards regime change. It's it's not going to be just the war in isolation. It's going to be the war does what the war needs to do. Then Reszo Palavi calls the people into the streets. The regime is significantly weakened. There's been defection within the ranks and then the regime falls. So I think it's almost like we're doing step one, but if we're not going to do step two and three, then what's the point?

I mean, that's a fair point. When we interviewed Ted Cruz, he talked about arming the protesters. But I'll be honest with you, Alica, you know, I feel about the war in Ukraine very much the way you feel about Iran. It's personal to me. family involved and whatever. But I have never called for people in Russia to rise up against Vladimir Putin because I always knew that if they did that that they just get slaughtered and nothing good would come of it. And I'm and you know as I was on Dire of a CEO a couple of months back and he when this whole conversation about Iran was starting. I think the protests were just happening and I I was kind of saying at the time I'm really not certain that calling people into the streets is going to create a positive outcome here and I'm worried that that I mean the way things are going now I I don't see it I I don't see this working

Well. I mean, it really speaks to the brutality of the regime, right? It's because like when you think about 1979 when there were these uprisings in Iran and the sha just he left because he was like I don't want this type of bloodshed of what it would take to sustain this regime right and so now it's that is the situation this regime is so brutal that there really is no length no ends that it would go to to not suppress the uprisings but at the same time it's like they're going to die anyway right so that's the way that they look at they look at it like they have nothing left to live for everybody in Iran has been affected by this regime. Now, somebody's parents has been hanged. Somebody's children have been shot. You know, this isn't this isn't a life for anybody. So, when you tell people at that point, you know, to go into the streets to fight for their freedom, at that point, it's like what? They might as well die fighting. That's the way that they see it. I think everybody understands and anticipates that they very well might not come home. But what else do you do? And then the only other option is is outside help. Now, outside help is like the worst thing that you could possibly do because this is American imperialism and Israel's plan for greater greater Israel or greater Iran or whatever the hell it is. So, it's like it's like we're fighting a battle on so many fronts and it's just it's impossible.

Well, it's kind of what I'm saying. I'm not sure that this can get solved the way that people want and therefore encouraging more people to rise up against the regime. I take a point. Look, if I was living in an authoritarian country and I felt the regime was evil, I'd rise up against it. And look, it'd be up to me do I get killed or not, whatever.

But from outside, I'm worried that the administration uh and others have called for people to rise up only for them to be killed for nothing.

But I think that it's they're killed for nothing if if there isn't if everything isn't locked in place, right? I think if you have the war which is you know decapitating the regime, if you have um protesters who are coordinated in rising up, if they are armed, if uh there are defections, if there if because that point of defection almost always happens where it seems that the instability is at a tipping point that it could go one way or the other and then then then there's personal stakes. There's personal stakes where it's like okay this is going this way so I'm going to this how how it's always been with regime change, right? And we even saw with Syria like it was 11 days. Nobody could have everybody said, "Oh, this brutal regime decades long, the Assad regime, there's no way that this is coming down." But somehow it did. I think the mistake

After a brutal civil war that lasted God knows how long and killed hundreds of thousands of people. Do we want that for Iran?

No, but that when when it came down, it was in 11 days.

But but you had to have the civil war first.

Yeah. I mean, we've we've basically had I mean, we've basically had the worst of it as far as I'm concerned. I just think I think what doesn't make sense is to half halfass these things. That's what I think doesn't make sense. I don't think it makes sense to have a war and to not be sort of collaborating with with people like Resi or, you know,

Collaborating in ways that can help make the protest successful. Maybe if it involves arming, I don't know, something that involves defection. I just think that this needs to be a covered in much more much a broad much more broad way for it to work.

And also look, nobody's ever really been honest about what it takes to turn a country that is authoritarian to a country which is a liberal western style democracy. For example, take Venezuela. My family have been involved in protest time and time and time again going out on the streets demonstrating. But what we have in Venezuela is something called the collectivos and they're essentially chavises of the the regime's armed thugs and they suppress. In order for you to gain freedom, you need to get rid of all the collectivos in the Iranian case is the IRGC.

Yeah. And I think what this really speaks to is how much ideology can really destroy nations, right? So you you talk about socialist dictatorships, Islamist dictatorships. In either case, these are people who are convinced to the death of them that their ideology is the right ideology. Even in the face of of of contradictory evidence, right, with socialism, I mean, it's the worst ideology in human history, basically the deadliest ideology in human history. And you see that these people are are so totalized in their worldview that they are willing to live and die to maintain that system. The same with Islamism, right?

I think to push back on what you're saying, Elica, I think Islamism is actually far worse. So I take what happened in Venezuela with Deli Rodriguez. Now people talk about regime change, but Deli was an integral part of Maduro's government, but you know, you talk about socialism and all the rest of it. She's not that ideological cuz she was happy to kick him to the curb and become leader herself cuz what she's really interested in is power and status and the money. Whereas you look at, you know, some of the lads in charge of Iran, you know, they're pretty

They really believe,

You know, you know, they're true believers.

They are true believers. They are true believers. And that's why that's why and it it really to me speaks to how much and I I guess this is why I have such a hard time now in the world that we're in where radicalization is happening because it's like I know the story of the other end of that so well, right? Once that radicalization is entrenched, you can't convince. You can't push back on them. There's nothing you can do because in their minds, they have this story, right? This is my fight. This is my fight and God wants me to fight this and to defeat the bad people to bring the good things to the world. And it's like, you see what you're bringing to the world. You see this is just death and destruction. Oh, but they're martyrs. They're martyrs for a greater cause. There's always some way to spin it in your mind. And so, it's just that's really what we're looking at. We're looking at an ideology that refuses to leave Iran. And it's like, how do you kill an ideology?

Well, the if you look at history, the only way of doing it, if you look at Japan or Germany, is to essentially decimate the country, bring it to its knees, and then and then have a process of dradicalization like we did with Germany.

And and that's why I'm worried about this conflict, Delica, because we're not going to do that, right? And no one's advocating for that. And that means, you know, some of the conversations we've had while we've been here, it's likely that you end up in a trap where you're not prepared to do the actual thing that you need to do cuz it's terrible. Like what we did to Germany and Japan was awful. You don't want to do that to Iran.

But that means you don't have

A way of achieving your objectives. Yeah.

You don't have a way of getting rid of the nuclear material. They've taken it. They've dispersed it. We don't know where it is. You're not going to get it with air strikes. Uh and now also the other thing is they've got control over the you know a hell of a lot of oil, gas, fertilizer, helium, etc. And there are a lot of people are now saying actually they've got all the trump cards.

I mean I don't know. I feel like they've they've had all the cards for the past 47 years. I just wonder where this goes. Do you know what I mean? Like at some point this regime has to fall, but when is it going to fall?

Well, it can't last forever. Nothing lasts forever.

Okay. Sure.

Even the British Empire didn't last forever.

Oh, I'm very sad about that.

And and and that pretty much owned the whole world. But I I

You see what I'm saying though? Like it could last another 50 years.

I think the I think the way that these regimes typically end themselves is because I mean, we just have to remember that these people aren't really exactly in their right minds. They're not reasonable people. And so when you think of like Hitler for example, right, he was not reasonable. He was drunk on power. Eventually he was going to

He was killing the Jews and nobody really did anything. Nobody cared. Holocaust, whatever.

Finally, when he invades Poland, people are like, "Oh, this is a real threat." And then so comes the war. I think the the the thing about actors like this, like the regime, is that they won't stop. They won't stop with the, you know, the October 7th and the massacres and the sort of, you know, imperialism out into the Middle East that draws these forever wars. They won't stop. And so my thing is that one of these days they're going to do something that's the last straw. They've already done something that's the last straw according to the United States. It's just that this last straw wasn't enough to go all the way. I just don't see I think the reason that this regime has to fall like every bad faith regime in history is because it will eventually do something that invites the world wanting to attack it.

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Look, that very may very well be the case. But the problem is, if you look at it at a purely practical level, what we are doing and what we're talking about is simply not going to enact regime change. It just isn't. And that is the unfortunate situation.

But regime change can happen now if the circumstances are right. And so the question is, why aren't we aligning the circumstances to make it right? We we have this window in time. We have this window in time where we can get the Iranian people out into the streets, possibly arm them, possibly go for, you know, they're doing the precision strikes are so incredible. Why can't they go for the weaponry that they're using on the protesters?

This is just assault rifles. Alica,

Well, can't they target that?

No,

They're targeting the booths. They're literally they're targeting the booths where they're doing the checks.

I know, but you're not going to take out every single AK-47 in Iran. It's not going to happen. And this is the thing. It's like the IRGC are still going to have guns at the end of the day.

Yeah. Well, maybe then it maybe then it involves arming the protesters. I don't know. Maybe it involves arming the protesters. Maybe it involves more coordinated riots. You know, the the funny thing is that this is literally America's specialtity. Every time it's done these coups and things like that, even 1953, that that was exactly what they did. They coordinated protesters. They armed them. I don't actually don't know if they armed them, but they coordinated them. They they made it a serious thing and it was from that tension that regime well regime change mosa fell whatever um but they know how to do that. That's I I find it odd that there's no investment in that end of it which is where the regime change happens. I think it's very odd. There's a part of me that wonders do you want regime change?

Well, this is kind of the problem here because uh as we talked in that conversation that that's coming out shortly, we've talked to a lot of people. Some of them work in the administration. Some of them know things. Don't want to go into the details how they know them. But there is no plan here. There's no grand strategy here from what we understand. I'm not saying we know. We're not experts on this, but that's what we're being told. There's no great strategy here. This is just like, oh, we did Venezuela, now we can do this. And and what you're pointing out is the same thing that we are concerned about, which is it hasn't actually been thought through to that level or pre-planned to that level, which is why you're not seeing the things that were promised or you'd want. Do you see what I'm saying?

Yeah. I don't know. I think that there I think that this whole thing um needs to be revisited, shall we say?

Yeah. Um, but I do think that I do think that those are the three steps to regime change. It is the war is one step, the uprisings, possibly armed uprisings is another, and defections is the other. And I think that those two things, if they're neglected, we're not going to have the regime change. And I think ultimately this is the time to do it. If there is a window in time, it's now. And so I really don't understand why this this isn't being coordinated in that way. It's also political in that the Americans have no stomach for regime change, especially after Iraq, especially what happened with Afghanistan.

But those are not the same.

They're not.

They're not the same.

This is this is kind of worse in a way, though,

Because Iraq wasn't holding the world ransom

Economically. Iran can and is

True, but the the the fear that people have over regime change is that, you know, it's going to be another Iraq, it's going to be another Afghanistan, it's going to be another failed state. Well, it's not a failed state. It's or it's like a thousand years old nation state. You're not the the what those regime changes did was that they tried to impose an outside government and build effectively build a state that didn't exist. Uh because those were new countries at the time as well. And so Iran, you have this like really old um kind of a nation state that is unified behind language, behind a flag, behind culture, behind all of these things. You you don't we don't want a foreign imposed government. That's not what this is not Iraq. We want

Well, you do though. You do want a foreign imposed government.

No, we don't want a foreign imposed government.

Well, if you cause regime change and then replace it with one of your puppets, which is what you want to happen.

No, that's not what we want to happen.

Okay, maybe I'm resolving a transitional leader. So, this has been articulated so many times. I don't know why people don't get this. He's a transitional leader that comes into the country once the regime falls to facilitate moving the country into a democracy where people can vote for their own leader.

What if they vote for an Islamist regime?

Well, no one's going to vote for an Islamist regime because we know the statistics of what people favor.

Oh, okay. I I actually don't. What are the statistics?

Um 90% of people in Iran are against it.

Against the regime.

Against the regime. Um

Wait, how do we know that? because there's studies like the Gammon study which is in uh I think the Netherlands conducted and it um speaks to people inside Iran obviously anonymously and uh they collect data about their public sentiments and um they they say that um 90% or is it 85% or 90% um there's 10% that support the regime still is a country of 90 million still a lot

And uh

And they have the guns but your point about 90% is very powerful. I mean, we've had people on the show, uh, Aean Dean, who's a former al-Qaeda MI6 double agent, for example, he kind I mean, he gave a very different assessment of it, which was like 25% people support the regime, 25% hate the regime. To me, for I give you an similar example for Russia, which which is easy for me to explain. So, I am someone who's a fierce critic of the Russian regime in the way that you are a fierce critic of the Iranian regime. But I would not say that I know what percentage of people in Russia.

Maybe you don't know

Because nobody does.

Yeah. But you can you absolutely can have a fair assessment about the sentiments of a country through extensive polling over time. And for the past 46 decades, repeatedly polls have shown that it's a very high percentage almost 90% of of Iranians who are against this regime. And it's I just think it's just like who would want who would like this regime? It just it's you do have this minority of course you have a minority of extremists, but this is where it's like you you do not know Iranians if you think that that's who the majority of Iranians are. They don't identify that way. They don't identify with Islamic extremism. It's not part of our culture. It's not part of our cultural personality. It's just it's so it's so obvious to us that when people ask these questions, it's like we even give you the statistics, right? We even give you the polls, but it's like people just believe what they want to believe. I don't know what to tell you. It's not a country that's 50% Islamist radicalist. It's just it's not who the Iranian people are.

Oh, sure. No, no, I'm I'm certainly not saying that. But I I again, example from my own experience, which sort of makes it easier for me to think about these things. The Soviet Union was deeply unpopular by the time it collapsed. But that doesn't mean that 90% of people living in the Soviet Union were opposed to the Soviet Union.

I think,

You know, if you took a poll in the Soviet Union around the time that it actually collapsed and there was regime change, there was still a ton of people who supported it, it just became weakened economically and morally and in other ways. But to me, when someone says 90% of people in a country agree on something that to me, you may be right. I'm not disputing it. I'm just saying it to me that's a bit of an alarm bell because that seems

It's not an alarm

Unprecedented.

It's not an alarm bell. It's a terrorist regime that everybody hates and has destroyed the country. It's brought it to ruin to economic collapse. Every everything about them that they do, they take the money and they give it to proxies. They are so radicalized. They don't care take care of the country. They kill people for protesting. The methods of torture are medieval. They hang people. Nobody likes this regime. I'm not saying that 90% of Iranians agree on other things. Iranians never agree on anything. It's actually disturbing how much they disagree. But

I and if you want to include the diaspora, 99% are against the regime statistically.

Well, the diaspora are the people who left, right? So that would make sense that they'd be against the regime.

So on on average, you're you're talking about about 95% of Iranians in this world at least agree on being against this regime. I've never even seen this type of like overwhelming evidence of people who support the regime. I when I go online I don't see anyone except for bots that support the regime. If they are people who support the regime they're here in the west anasparian and where are all of these massive you know spokespersons for the regime.

Well I mean look there there may be a lot of people in Iran who actually can't go online because there's been an internet blackout. Oh, they have internet. The ones who support the regime have internet.

Okay.

Yeah.

And also as well, look how um I don't know, but how many people get radicalized at school? Like

They don't get radicalized at school. It just doesn't work. I mean, yes, they do. They have to go to school and they say death to America, death to Israel, but it just doesn't work because they go home to their parents and their parents say, "Yeah, just say that." But you know, we're not like that. You know, they don't go home to radicalized parents. It's just this the culture inside of Iran is very different. It's it's a culture of tolerating this sort of infrastructure of extremism but also being outside of it because of you have a people who are um what's the word familiar I don't know what the word is it's like literate in this type of propaganda and so you bu you build propaganda literacy the more you live under this regime right and so it's just it gets to a point where everybody understands it everybody understands the manipulation the dishonesty the lies the danger everybody understands transit. I'm not saying that there aren't the extremes. Of course, there are the extremes. 10% of 90 million. That's millions. I'm not good at math, but pretty sure that's millions. That's millions of people. So, I'm not denying that those millions of people exist. It's just there's a huge, you know, disparity. And you even saw when um some of these uprisings were happening a couple a couple of years ago, they started to throw the turbons off of the Müller's heads when they were walking down the street and you know that was a little bit controversial. Some people said you know and others other Iranians said you know f you but um there's like there is a quite a strong divide there. They don't even like seeing them in the streets

Because the concern is going back to America. So they have said on like for instance on our show Ted Cruz said that if I think it was by November if the war if the war by the midterms >> if the war was still carrying on by the midterms they would have failed. Trump said at the very beginning four weeks maximum. Now we all know that Trump talks a lot of nonsense. There simply isn't the stomach elica to carry out a prolonged campaign in order to get rid of the regime and the regime's goons and everything that is needed in to keep the regime in place. Which is my concern because what could actually happen is Trump turns around in a week, two weeks, 3 weeks and goes, you know what, we've degraded their military capacity. We've bombed.

He's already said that.

We've got new leaders.

Yeah. We've d Exactly. So we've destroyed the the capacity to produce nuclear weapons. Tick tick tick. We've secured the straight of Hamuz. It's now up to the Iranian people. Ra Cuba next. That could very easily happen.

I mean, I think that's pretty much happened already.

Yeah.

He's already said that there's a regime change cuz everyone there is a new leader,

Right? So, this is kind of our concern. And look, I know we're pushing back on a lot of stuff you're saying. I'm going to sound like our mutual friend who we all admire, Dave Smith, here. Like, I really hope what we are saying is wrong.

No, I don't.

And we are rooting for the Iranian people to be free of the tyranny of the Islamic regime, but we're just really seriously concerned at this point that there is no great plan and given some of the the ways that we because of the conversations we've had understand the way this can escalate. We're just very concerned that basically what is likely to happen is Trump is going to pretend that he got this big victory, but actually what he's going to do is cut and run and I don't think the Iranian people are going to be better better off. I don't think the nuclear material is going to be eliminated. So the one thing you could say is, well, you've flattened the missile program, you've destroyed their military-industrial complex, you've set them back 10 years, let's say. Um, you know, may you know, some people will take that, I guess.

Yeah,

You you probably wouldn't.

No, I I think I think what they've said inside Iran repeatedly is that the worst case scenario is that the war ends and the regime remains in power. Would have been better that there was no war at all. Because after that, that's when they do the their most brutal crackdowns. That's when they start killing everybody and saying, "You were a Zionist. You were a Zionist. You were a Zionist." people who were just filming outside of their windows, whatever. So that's actually worst case scenario if they stop this war. But you know, you you can't deny how much public sentiment has shifted the direction of the war as well because it's considered generally a very unpopular war. And I think that I and this is why I think this is largely because of this backdrop of what the conversations that have been had in the Middle East over the past 3 years, especially the very very very very anti-Israel view of things which has sort of driven this conversation towards okay yeah some people are extreme and they're going to say oh the regime are the good guys but some people the more like Dave Smiths of the world are going to say well these people are not really bothering us you know these people haven't done anything wrong. They're just a regular government just just like my government and your government. And isn't America a terrorist government, too?

And that sort of really um manipulates public perception in a way that people don't are not willing to get on board with a war that they just fundamentally don't think has any purpose or benefit to them. Maybe not even in the long run, right? They I I genuinely do not think that the public, the American public think that the Islamic regime is a threat. But it because it probably isn't a threat to them really if you look about it. If you look at it and you analyze it objectively now it's far more of a threat to the UK. It's obviously a much greater threat to the Middle East and the stability of the Middle East. But to the average America living in Kansas City, why is Iran threatening them?

It's a threat. If the regime succeeds in its ambition, it's a threat, right? So

What's what is it its ambition?

Well, it's its ambition is death to America, death to Israel. And right now it's its um task is to remove Israel.

But that's kind of like my toddler saying death to daddy. It's not

Right. But there's but there's action. There's not just intent action.

So what is the threat that they pose to America? If

So.

Yes. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.

So the first stage is to remove Israel because the these are the two oppressors, right? The oppressors of the West and the oppressors of the Middle East. So they're they've put in action all of the state all of the stages necessary to remove Israel. They created a second IRGC called Hezbollah in Lebanon which is closest border to Israel. Have been attacking Israel non-stop ever since. Of course, Hamas, same thing. Houthis and all of this is part of the campaign to remove Israel. Now, Israel is relying on the United States for aid to defeat these proxy groups, which another thing that people are like, why should we have to pay money to Israel? Because they don't understand that Israel is the one that is holding down the fort against these forces. is because let's say if those forces did win, let's say the United States pulls out its funding. Let's say that they don't consider them allies anymore and Israel falls and the Islamic regime wins. Now the Islamic regime has exported its revolution out into the Middle East. Now you have the Islamic Republic of Lebanon, which already is a state within a state. It's just ready to go one way or the other. You have the Islamic Republic of Lebanon. You have the Islamic Republic of Palestine. You have the Islamic Republic of Yemen, the Islamic Republic of Syria, God knows where. And now you have these combined forces, right, with combined military, technology, all of these things. You don't think at that point they're going to go for the second thing that they stated in their charter, which was next we're going death to America. You don't think that's going to happen? So, but then you could say, well, I just don't think that's ever going to happen because Israel will always be there and we we're always going to support them. The public sentiment in this nation is that there should be no support for Israel, that Israel is the biggest terrorist state in the world. All of this stuff is just like a complete inversion. It's just total moral inversion of the situation. If you want to keep funding Israel for the rest of your life, then maybe the regime will never threaten you. Sure.

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But the one thing that I would say is that when we're talking about Iran, their death to America, Iran would have to be monumentally stupid. They would have they would have to be monumentally stupid in order to do a 9/11 type terrorist attack for example because that would mean their entire country gets obliterated.

Why they go around the side door? They didn't do October 7th. They went around the side door.

Yeah. But October 7th was done to Israel.

Right. In the same way that like the Taliban didn't do 9/11, but they let al-Qaeda

Right. You don't

Train and do other things. But then it was the Taliban that had the kicked out of them for that

And now the Islamic regime is having the kicked out of them. So it's not it's not gonna be, you know, so direct.

Yeah.

But you you move indirectly. You say, "Oh, as Dave Smith said, they had no idea about October 7th."

Yeah. I don't think that's true. Um uh no,

But I still don't know that if I were an American, I'd be sitting here quivering in my boots at the threat of Iran. I mean, some of the things that were said about this, you know, Iran is an imminent threat. I mean, come on. Really? Imminent? I I don't think it is. Right.

If it has a nuclear weapon, it's imminent.

Uh to whom?

To anyone.

If it has a nuclear weapon, you don't think it's an imminent threat?

To America? No, no, it could do whatever it wants with it.

Okay, but is North Korea an imminent threat to the United States?

No, I don't know.

North Korea got nuclear weapons so that they could just be left alone to have their dictatorship in peace effectively. Right.

That's what they did. And this is the thing is like I you know I remember I was very um curious and interested in the arguments you made last time you were on the show when you talked about the type of Islam that the um Islamic regime practices in Iran and the fact that you know there's the the maki coming back and all of this esqueologgical stuff which you know obviously that exists right but from Iran's perspective the much more rational reason to get nuclear weapons is to be a regional hedgeimon or at least to protect itself from what it perceives as the threat.

But that's exactly the problem, isn't it? Because then you cannot um you cannot control their behavior going forward because they're a deterrent state. Once you get nuclear weapons, they're a deterrent state. So yeah, you can march straight into Lebanon. Who's going to stop you? You can march straight into Gaza. You can go um do whatever you want with Israel. Who's going to stop you? That's the whole problem.

Well, Israel has nuclear weapons. So who's going to stop you? Israel. So, what if we going to have a nuclear war?

Uh, no. You Well, historically speaking, nuclear weapons appear to actually create peace, not stalemate.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I This is not me advocating for us to let the Iranians get nuclear weapons. My concern is, if I'm being honest, as I understand the situation on the ground, is like other than negotiations, which I don't think are going to work long term either, but they might work short term, there's actually no way of stopping the regime from getting nuclear weapons short of successful regime change and boots on the ground.

That's why we need a regime change. And that's why everything else, no matter how long you go down the rabbit hole, is just kicking the can down the road. It just makes no sense. We we want to get into this situation where both the regime and Israel have nuclear weapons but the regime this is the difference of what's in whose charter right in their charter it's that they they must eliminate Israel. So whether that escalates into a nuclear war actually becomes deterrent because they both have nuclear weapons or they just keep I mean what where does this end and isn't the US always going to be implicated in that war when it comes to the regime and Israel? So, I I just this is just dragging the October 7th nightmare on and on and on and on on and on. I just think that none of this is going to make any sense unless there is a regime change.

The problem is is I look, I don't think there is going to be a regime change simply because the Americans don't want it. I think the Israelis do want it.

I don't know that Americans don't want it. I just don't think they're doing the, as you say, they're doing the things to achieve it.

Yeah. So, therefore, you don't want it. If you're not prepared to do the things to achieve it, then you don't want it.

If he wanted to, he would.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

I don't get that reference, but it makes sense.

You don't get that reference.

No.

Oh, you didn't get it either.

Yeah, I got it.

What's the reference?

It's like with men, like when they don't call you or whatever you if you if you wanted to, he would.

I've been married for far too long to understand that.

So, the Americans effectively don't want it.

You look

At the Israelis, the Israelis do want it, but the problem is they can't.

The Iranian people definitely want it. Absolutely. But the Israelis can't do it without the Americans because the Americans are the senior partner. And also the more Israel goes down this path, the more it loses support in the United States. Yeah, you already see that there is a massive chasm between the way people of the ages 40 and over view Israel and the way people radicalization, which I'm I genuinely have serious concerns about where this ends. You know, like this is this is such, you know, it's such it's it's such Soviet disinformation, all of it. It's like this whole idea that, you know, the West is the source of all evil and Israel and and the US rep reflect that greatest evil and this like sort of perception hijack over time, right? And I think especially after October 7th, it has been most most deeply entrenched such that you can you literally look at all of these situations and the way that they see it is is the total opposite to the reality. And the fact is that the more that there are these wars, the more they see the the the bad guys as the good guys, right? Because they're constantly circling back to this same conclusion, which is that Israel is the source of all evil in the world. And to, you know, to to make that true, to make that conclusion true, everybody else has to be good. Everything that Israel is fighting has to be good or misunderstood or just reacting to Western imperialism, right? That's always the story. All of these people are always just reacting to Western imperialism. For 1400 years, they were reacting to Western imperialism, right? Zero agency.

Um, so what what I fear happens over time is that the more they're able to rewrite and invert these stories through war, because it's always happening through war. It happened through the Gaza war, it's happening through the Iran war, the more they're radicalizing people towards this really staunchly anti-Israel, like deranged anti-Israel um perspective. And that oddly enough is starting to really hurt the Iranian people because of how much they need to make the Iran the Islamic regime faultless by extension. So now you you're seeing like for example, they hanged three men, a young wrestler, right? And you see these people, leftists taking to the internet saying, "He murdered a a siege, he murdered an IRGC officer. Here's the video," and it's like some black grainy shadow that doesn't show anything. And they're literally just regurgitating state propaganda. And it's like, "Look at what you're doing. You you are romanticizing a terrorist terrorist regime just because of your hatred for Israel." Because if this really was a terrorist regime and you had to accept that, then you would have to also accept that Israel being at war with it might be justified. And you can't in any circumstance make Israel justified. So, so to make Israel never justified, the regime can never do any wrong. And so now this is directly affecting us and our morale because we're experiencing this where we're seeing, you know, thousands and thousands of people being killed. And you see see people going on Piers Morgan saying, "We think that Ayatollah was a very courageous man because at least he didn't capitulate to the Israelis." It's like, "What what what planet are you on? Who says that? It's like saying Hitler was a very courageous man." And so it's this is such a time of extreme distortion and moral inversion. And I think my fear at the same time is like you have a physical war, you have a narrative war, but where does this narrative war go? Where does that end?

Well, this is part of Francis and I's concern about all of this because I I think you described it very well what's happening and I think there's been a huge amount of propaganda and brainwashing and whatever. And also though, I think we also have to be honest and we've talked to lots of people off camera and on camera on this trip, a lot of people who are not anti-Israel and who are not anti-Semitic and all the things that people like to say whenever anyone has a a critique of Israel's foreign policy.

Uh, can we go some more water please? Yeah. That was so sweet. The way you were like, nothing. There seems to be no water in this cup. Oh. No. That's apparently how you're supposed to make I didn't even think of it, but that's how you're supposed to make men do things. Oh, totally. You just identify a problem. 100%. And you go, "Oh, something's missing here." There's no. Yeah. And you did it. Yeah. Yeah. I like the fact that you pretend you didn't know what you were doing. She didn't pretend. She described exactly what she's doing. I'm like, I'm just so innocent. Oh my god. No water. We will cut this bit out, I think. I think it's good. Oh, should we keep it in? Yeah. All right, cool. Well, she just manipulated me to get her some water.

Anyway, uh I guess the re the thing that I'm concerned about is I think there's also a lot of people who are not anti-Israel, who are not anti-Semitic, but who see that Israel and actually Saudi Arabia and the UEE as well, they have, as all countries do, their own agenda. And the agendas of those countries do not fully align with the agenda as they would perceive it of the United States for the reason that we tried to talk about earlier, which is there are different levels of threat that are presented to those countries versus America. Right? And because of that, and this is where a lot of people have like a brain spasm where I agree with you, the propaganda begins to take effect because they go, "Israel has tricked America." I was like, "How? How?" What is the mechanism? And they start to make all this up about the super powerful Israel lobby, which I just don't I don't think that's remotely true. I don't think President Trump can be like tricked into stuff like this. What he can be tricked by is like his own ego or his own political ambitions. These things might be very well possible. But I guess what I'm saying is there are more and more people now in America who feel that Israel has a tone agenda that's different from America's and they want their government to be pursuing the interest of the American people. That's fair. Which is totally fair and totally reasonable. And my worry is as well that one of the other things that starts to happen is whenever anyone expresses that point of view, there are far too many people online who instantly start calling them names and start saying they're anti-Israel.

I mean, we get all the names. Everyone gets the names. Everyone gets the names. There's no there's no option where you don't get the names anymore. That's true. But if you want to radicalize normies against a particular view, just start calling them names for expressing a view. Do you see what I'm saying? Yeah. I mean, I haven't I haven't personally seen that. I haven't personally because those people, in my opinion, don't speak up too much. I haven't seen pe I haven't seen really I've seen some videos where someone's like where I think I saw this video of a woman that she was like, "This is not our wolf," blah blah blah blah, and it was actually got loads of likes. Every time I've seen people say stuff like that, it's like very much liked. All the comments are like, "You're so right. This is so amazing. I've never seen somebody get backlash for saying that." I mean, there is a lot of people now who are in favor of this war calling anyone who disagrees with it, you know, I mean, you've seen that, you know, the micro penis discourse on Twitter and see the micro penis discourse. It's one of the intellectual discussions of our time. The Mark Levens of the world are going after the Megan Kellys of the world, and it's all just devolved to like literally micro penis. She's got a micro penis. She's a massive. I mean, I just like this is I find it incredibly sad that actually this is where the level of the discussions got to.

Body shaming. I think you can shame someone with a micro penis. I'm I'm still on board with that. I'm I'm old school. You can what? You can shame someone for. I think so. But how would you know? I I mean, that's a good question. How does Megan Kelly know Mark Levin has a micro penis? Yeah. The shame has to be at least accurate. Yeah. Yeah. That's fair. Otherwise, it won't live in the body. And so, what have you really achieved? That's a fair point. You might have MPE, micro penis energy. All right. Well, I'm I'm glad this episode has taken this turn. Yeah. Great stuff.

Um, no, but I think that I think this is all this is all, you know, sometimes when I just look at the internet and I try not to these days because it's so bad and it's getting worse, especially there's so many bots on X now and I don't know if they've just targeted my account. I think it's the regime is specifically targeting my account because every time I post, it's just like so many comments that are just like, "You for this, that and it's always like zero um zero followers, zero post, zero." Oh, and I'm sure you heard about the whole beheading thing. The beheading thing. The beheading thing. You didn't you guys didn't hear about that? No. No. Um, so Goldie and I, do you know Goldie? Uh, right, okay. We got an email saying, uh, from this hacker group saying that, uh, they had commissioned, uh, Mexican cartel to behead us for $250,000. So, um, I obviously went to the FBI and, uh, they opened the investigation. DOJ determined that it came from the Ministry of Intelligence in Iran. Wow. Yeah. So, and that was, and just get this, because it gets worse. After I had been on a on an episode of Piers Morgan, right? And Anakasparian had taken a clip of me and Goldie laughing at Shank because he was going, "Israel's to blame for 9/11. Israel's to blame for Iraq. Israel." Like, it was just funny. Like, we were laughing. And then she manipulates the clips and takes our laughter and says essentially that we were laughing at war and she calls us laughing hyenas. So the Ministry of Intelligence in its email that it was going to behead me used Anakasporian's thing and said, "We were laughing like hyenas at war," just quoted her word for word. And it's like, is is this? Oh, and then they have her in their Telegram group chats. So that Fast News, which is one of the states media, they have her, they're promoting her, doing her like anti-Israel stuff within their group chats. And it's like, and they've also, you know, they've had Shank Huga on their um, which is their broadcasting channel, and of course Tucker Coulson. The gray man himself. And it's like, is is there not a point where people are going to see like how how on god's earth these are people that are going out there saying like, "Oh, we're pro-American. You are literally being used by the enemy of of the United States. They agree with your talking points. They follow you and fan girl over you and the FBI is concerned about me against you. Do you know what I mean? Like you you're not pro America. You've gone so far the other way. And it's and this is this moral inversion that terrifies me because where does that go? Right. And I just I don't think that people understand like I don't I don't know why, but I keep thinking about Nazi Germany because I get it now. Because I get that during that period of time, the buildup, no matter what you said to these people, they would have been like, "What are you talking about? This isn't extreme. She this person is just saying their opinion and that opinion is true." Like there's there would have been no way to get through to people the more and more people were radicalized until something like that happened. And I just I it it kind of just me puts me like paralyzed in a way because I'm like, what do we do about this growing extremism which isn't extremism anymore because it is the sentiment of a lot of the country now.

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Well, the worry is you say you're worried about where it ends. I I'm going to tell you where it ends and we're already seeing it now, which is a growing rise of of radical extremism and terrorist attacks. That's where it's that's where we're seeing it. We've been here a matter of weeks. We saw a terrorist attack in Austin. We saw a happily awed terrorist attack on a synagogue in Michigan, which could have been horrific. A truck loaded with explosives. We saw a nail bomb attack happen in New York. And the more this war carries on, the more people get radicaliz radicalized, the more Iran starts to fund terrorism abroad, which I'm sure it will do at certain points, the more we're going to see this.

But this is exactly what the regime has been planning all along. The regime is planning all along to subvert the western left and now it's happened. No, I don't know. I don't know how it happened to the Western right who would just We're pro America apparently not. I don't know how you get Tucker Coulson and the Islamic regime. I genuinely don't. Wrote a whole article about it. Oh, you did? I didn't want to make you sneeze again. I heard that. I heard that inhalation. I heard that inhalation. I I wrote a whole article about a long time ago, Tucker Carson and the woke right. Um, and I kind of lay out what what I think is going on. And I I mean that point that you make, Alec, is actually really important and I totally agree with it, which is I think there is a an honest critique of this war, for example, to be made. Of course. And we've made it today. I mean, it's war. But there's a difference between that and where people are getting to now, where Tucker Carson is literally on camera saying, "Oh, you know, Sharia law has made all these Arab countries brilliant." And you're going, "What the are you talking about?" What the are you talking about? But you know what's so funny about even when I saw that was that he he starts and he's like, "Yeah, our problem here is just it's self-hate. We we hate the West." And it's like, "You're so close." But you're the one that's doing it. Which is actually the point that I I actually wrote in my article, which is a lot of people on the well, not a lot, some people on the right have become so disillusioned with where the West was going, particularly during the woke period, they they started to almost hate the West, but in a different way. So the left hates the West for its ideals, whereas this section of the right hates the the West for failing to live up to its ideals, and and they they kind of became radicalized this way. But you would have think you would think that, and and the funny thing is, the reason that conversation came up is all the evidence shows that the American right considers radical Islam to be the number one problem. Not anymore. Well, the bulk of it still does, but some of these people who've taken trips to various parts of the Middle East, they are now trying to make that not the argument. And by the way, as three people who who come from Britain, I mean, we can tell you how this is going to go. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And and and and for for someone like Tucker who keeps slagging off Britain for mistakes that it's made, to be fair, in terms of immigration policy and other things, to then not see that that is going to also happen in America. I just I don't get it.

I think yeah, there's so there's so many moving parts here. I think, you know, we have the part of like, you know, the the Soviet ideological subversion where it sort of comes into the US in the 60s and 70s and starts to sort of radicalize people towards this Marxist slant. And unfortunately, there was that fusing of the social justice movement at the time, right? The civil rights movement, which was obviously a legitimate movement, but once it becomes fused with Marxism, it's kind of like inextricably intertwined. And so that's why we have this Marxist foundation in modern social justice, which is inherently anti-Western. It is anti-West, anti-imperialism because this is the root of all evil. Well, imagine if they saw what the Soviets did, right? Imagine if they knew what communism did. Then they would know that there's a very different route of evil. Um, and then I think another thing which is like really showing up for me right now. That sounded so therapy. Like another thing that's showing up for me. Um, but is I keep thinking about Renee Girard's scapegoat theory. I don't know if you know it. Tell everybody. Okay. So, um, and and and mixed in, I've sort of like have this hybrid model with Carl Jung's shadow. But essentially, Renee Girard talked about something called mimetic rivalry, where two people, two sides would um rival each other because they want the same thing. And and the wanting of that same thing is what assigns value to it. Like two kids wanting the same toy. Oh, if you want it, I want it. So, this kind of like mimetic rivalry is something that exists, you know, maybe between political sides, like the left and the right, the East and the West, whatever. Um, so what he talks when he talks about scapegoat theory, he basically explains that these two sides that are rivaling each other, let's say the left and the right in the United States, they eventually reach a point where where there's imminent violence. It's like there's nothing that can happen here except one of us has to kill the other. In that moment, uh, what will happen is that they'll find a scapegoat and they will project all of their social problems onto this scapegoat and they will eliminate that scapegoat and then feel or believe that all of their problems have been resolved. Obviously, this has happened numerous times. And the Reneer Girard actually created this theory because of the Jews, like the Jews being the convenient scapegoat throughout history, throughout Nazi Germany, blah, blah, blah, blah. And, you know, um, then there's this other side of it where, so that's kind of like, um, a macro kind of look at it, but I think there's another side of it that it's the same thing that's happening on an internal level. So when you think about these people who are so so like these Candace Owens, Anakasparians, these people that it's like it's like their life and soul to destroy Israel is very clear that there's something in them, some type of wound, some type of trauma, some type of pain that they are projecting outward to avoid confronting that whatever is in that shadow, right? And by eliminating that thing, you feel like you've eliminated that that shadow within you, right? So that's also Carl Jung's theory, and and it matches perfectly with Renee Girard's theory. And what I feel like we're seeing is people who have some degree of like really deep interpersonal problems, and they've they are now doing this whole scapegoat theory. But the difference is now instead of saying Jews, they say Israel. And you can really feel, you see it in these people's eyes. They genuinely believe that they will finally get peace or what the world will finally have peace once Israel is uh abolished. And you know that it's a fallacy because you know all of the things that are around Israel that they continue to ignore. You know that they continue to ignore this terrorist regime in Iran, ISIS, Hamas, Hezbollah. Oh no, they're not that bad. You know, they continue to ignore the worst of it. And that in itself is kind of like an admission that what they're doing with Israel is some form of scapegoatism, which is both political in my opinion and personal.

They also feel that essentially Israel activates all of these different countries. And if you took Israel out of it, everything would calm down. It would be like turning just the hob off and all of a sudden the the Middle East would stop being this boiling pot of resentment and anger. You killed all the Jews. Yeah. Well, yeah. Israel didn't exist. Well, they wouldn't even say that. They would just go, "Oh, we need to change what what Israel is." And you actually drill down on what they mean by that. They can't explain it. But basically, what they what they want is for the state no longer to exist. And then once it does, and we're it's utopian thinking. We're going to reach this nana, which is obviously nonsense. Yeah. Well, it's it's the idea that once the state stops existing, they will be absolved. Yeah. Right. They will be absolved of all of that white guilt of western imperialism, like the original sin, right? It's like this Israel is the original sin, yeah, of western imperialism, colonialism, and all of the the things that they've ascribed to it, which also came from the Soviets, mind you. Um, and it's this sort of spiritual renewal that they want to experience through it, which is just such a sort of leftist privileged luxury belief, you know, it's like, I I'm going to have spiritual renewal by dismantling the state of 9 million people, including Arabs and Muslims.

Well, Israel is the is the perfect um, it fits very, very well into the woke theory of everything, because the narrative about Good book title. The woke theory of everything. But if you think about it, what is the woke idea? What is the core of the woke ideology? The idea is that everything is best understood through oppressor and oppressed groups. There is a group that is oppressing everybody. There's a group that's oppressed. U within original Marxism, that was about class and economics. Obviously, they updated it to race and ethnicity. So, you talk about it in my book. You've got these white people, the Israelis, they're white. Yeah. Uh, oppressing the brown people who are also clearly oppressed because they're losing because that's that's how you know who's oppressed. Right? And and I've always said this is like it's the the teacher in the playground mentality where she hears some screaming, she turns up, there's a kid hitting the other kid. That's that must be the kid that's the bad kid. Right? Whatever happened before that, nobody pays any attention to. And so he's wrong. I don't think teachers are allowed to hit. No, no, no. The kids are hitting each other. I glitched in the middle of. I thought I was explaining myself very well. Apparently not. What I mean is, you were. It was my my fault. Your fault. Mhm. Okay, we'll go with that. So, it it it fits very well with this mentality, and and Israel is therefore the perfect vehicle for expressing what is ultimately their anti-westernism. That's what this is really about because they just see Israel as like the Colonial outpost. Yeah. And so the people who live here in LA who've got that "No one is illegal on stolen land" sign. Yeah. They don't leave their house, but they can say Israel should leave its house, right? Because it the spiritual renewal has to come from afar. Yeah. Of course. Cuz you don't want to leave your house. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, and and how far the moral inversion goes is that, you know, you say, well, there would be peace in the Middle East if it wasn't for Israel or, you know, activating all of these groups that it's never the responsibility is never on the other end, like, can these groups stop trying to kill Israel, and then everyone will be safe and free? Because no, but they would say, and I know because I've heard it and I've had conversations with them, they would say that this is an uprising because they're oppressed. October the 7th was an uprising. That's how they would see it. The other countries. How? What? How? What are you gonna say about Lebanon? What are you gonna say? They're fighting. It's an uprising. That's what it is. Well, then why can't we go to war with Iran then? Cuz we're we're fighting a colonial. No, because they're not colonialists. They're brown elegant. They can't be. They can't be. It's not possible. Well, but but but that's you. You laugh. That is how they think. Yeah, I know that's so funny. Because when they look at the Middle East, they don't know that it wasn't all Muslim before. Yeah. No, they don't understand that. So, they don't understand that Muslims colonized all of that. Even Iranians, so we were colonized by Islamism, right? So, why can't we say that this war is fighting a colonial empire? Cuz they're brown. Yeah. And they've got. That's literally what it is. He's Jewish. He's actually Jewish. Is he? Well, no, but we should. Then they'd say, "Well, he deserves to get bombed." That's why I say we should say he's Jewish. I think he might have a few or white. I think he might have a few issues. I think he is white. I think we can make an argument for that. And it's also there's there's the America is the evil empire. As a result of them being the evil empire, everybody else is oppressed. Nothing like just like nothing about it ever makes sense. You talk about the you talk about Hezbollah, you talk about the Houthis, you talk about the regime. You're like, "Yeah, they're fighting oppression, but they are committing more oppression than anybody else." Yeah, but they're they're doing it for good. They're doing oppression in their own lands for good. Yes. Okay. Yeah. Cuz to suppress the Mossad agents. Cuz they're brown. Yeah. And oppressed by evil Israel. It's good we're agreeing. Finally. Yeah. Finally. All of the all of the debate is logic is airtight. It's airtight logic. They win. We just I think we have to go forward as leftists because we clearly see that that is the superior world. Fine. I'm gay and trans. We've done it. I don't think we'd be accepted. What do you mean? I self-identify as a woman. You self-identify? Yes. I think it's a good note to end the episode on. Elica, what's the one thing we're not talking about that we should be? Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Um. Ideological subversion. Should I say more? Yes. Oh, okay. I thought that was the end of the episode. So manipulative. Again, she knows that. So, should I say more? She knows what she's doing as well. You said the end of the episode. I thought it was like boom and then No, you've watched our episodes. Come on, Alica. Tell us more. Okay. Um, I think that what people aren't talking about enough or what people aren't seeing enough of is the way that bad faith actors um use periods of vulnerability such as war um to try and turn p the public in their favor using tactics of ideological subversion and propaganda and how that, you know, radicalizes people, even people far, far away, people in the West, people in the United States. And that radicalization changes the nature, the fabric of the society that we live in. And ultimately, what happens is that this sort of, you know, becomes like a Trojan horse of humanity where you keep saying that you keep siding with these people who have subverted you, right? You keep keep saying these are the good guys or these are the people that we need to have some understanding for, and then that sort of, you know, you you you usher in authoritarianism into our societies through this Trojan horse of humanity. And so now authoritarianism, terrorism, all of those things start to become normalized when we see these terrorist attacks, we're like, "Well, I mean, this poor guy was probably like really just upset over something that happened, so we really have to have more understanding for it." And so our tolerant societies are now being lost to intolerance because of that normalization of authoritarianism, which is coming from this ideological subversion that these bad faith actors are doing to the Western world. Delica, thank you so much. Uh, head on over to triggerpod.co.uk where she's going to answer your questions. The focus of Iranian female suffering is often on the ber or the nikab, but what does life for an Iranian woman actually look like beyond that that we do not or fail to understand? Heat. Heat.