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Ongoing Iran Protests Response
00:09:07
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unidentified
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The escort committee will please come forward to the rostrum and escort the governor from the chamber. | |
| This afternoon, President Trump travels to Michigan to deliver remarks on the state of the U.S. economy. | ||
| Speaking from the Detroit Economic Club, you can watch it live at 2 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN 3, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, and online at c-span.org. | ||
| I'll focus now on the ongoing nationwide protests in Iran, potential U.S. response. | ||
| We're joined again by Benim Ben Taliblu. | ||
| He serves as senior director of the Iran program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. | ||
| And Benham Ben Taliblu, it was back on January 4th that you had a column in the free press in which you said there's something different about these protests. | ||
| These protests have only grown and the government response has grown since you wrote that piece. | ||
| Take us back to the origination of these protests. | ||
| How did they start and what is different about them? | ||
| Sure, absolutely. | ||
| And great to be with you and belated Happy New Year to you and your viewers. | ||
| You know, as long as there's been an Islamic Republic, there's been protests against an Islamic Republic. | ||
| That is not new for you or the viewers. | ||
| But this protest was triggered on December 28th when the Riyal, which is the Iranian currency, reached a historic high, significant inflation, hyperinflation in that country. | ||
| The Riyal was valued then at 1.43 million to a single U.S. dollar. | ||
| So people's savings, people's earnings, people's ability to actually generate income from even having a menu on a restaurant all basically evaporated. | ||
| And protests began in the Tehran Bazaar. | ||
| Tehran actually has the biggest bazaar in the modern Middle East, has played a historic role in previous protest movements, including the 1979 revolution. | ||
| But then within a day, it developed a contagion effect across society. | ||
| And then within two days across Iran entirely, such that by the time you got into a week of protests, protests had touched all of Iran's 31 different provinces. | ||
| And then they began to spiral. | ||
| And as you know, just like we've talked about in the past, what starts as an economic protest, what starts as an environmental protest, what starts as a social protest, quickly morphs into a political protest because this has been the trend of anti-regime protests since December 2017. | ||
| People have mass grievances. | ||
| People have pushed past reform. | ||
| People are looking to use every opportunity to push past the state and actually talk about the one thing that Washington very often for the past decade, decade and a half, is very keen to avoid in the Middle East, which is fundamentally regime change. | ||
| And what was triggered by an economic crisis became basically the latest installation of a movie we've been seeing for eight, nine years in Iran, which is Iran's National Uprising. | ||
| Stu, is there an opportunity for regime change? | ||
| How likely is that to happen? | ||
| And what would be the U.S. role in that? | ||
| Well, much does ride on the U.S. role. | ||
| You know, we're having this conversation today where President Trump will be convening senior national security officials, including defense officials, trying to tailor U.S. response. | ||
| We can get to the potential red line that he drew a bit later in the conversation. | ||
| But make no mistake, this is very, very different from neighboring Iraq or neighboring Afghanistan or even the past two, three decades of the U.S. experience in the Middle East. | ||
| This is not about something being imposed from abroad. | ||
| This is if the world can support something that has been happening organically from within. | ||
| So we know that you and the viewers may know 1999, 2009, the Green Movement, again, major anti-regime protests. | ||
| But again, I want to stress since 2017, since 2018, Iranians have been protesting en masse not to change the exchange rate, but to change the regime in its entirety. | ||
| And when you have fundamentally a more progressive, a more secular, a more nationalist, a more young, a more liberal population that is unarmed, that keeps going up against a much more regressive, a much more authoritarian, a much more Islamist and autocratic dictatorship that is armed to the teeth. | ||
| And as we've seen in the past few days, willing to throttle and then later shut off the internet under the cover of darkness they can kill. | ||
| I just saw a horrifying report from a major Iranian diaspora news outlet that confirmed up to 12,000 killed under the cover of the internet blackout over the past four days. | ||
| Really horrific. | ||
| This is the most significant protest crackdown in the history of the Islamic Republic. | ||
| Of course, the people are going to lose their best and their brightest in every single iteration of protests. | ||
| So much will ride on if regime change is possible, can Washington help put the squeeze on the regime from the top so that the people can continue to put the squeeze on the regime from below. | ||
| What is the news outlet that you talk about? | ||
| I ask because people are trying to get an understanding of what's actually going on. | ||
| There's a picture on the front page in the New York Times. | ||
| This image on the front page, verified by the New York Times, showing the apparent body bags in Iran. | ||
| This is out of Tehran. | ||
| But people are trying to figure out what's going on. | ||
| There's been reports over the weekend that it was hundreds. | ||
| You could say 12,000. | ||
| Just what sources do you trust? | ||
| So about 500,600 have been confirmed by independent human rights monitors. | ||
| Then there are reporters in particular. | ||
| This outlet that I mentioned was called Iran International. | ||
| They actually have an English webpage as well. | ||
| They're headquartered in London and headquartered in INS as well. | ||
| They basically have talked to a whole host of reporters. | ||
| People have actually been providing some of these images, more importantly, medical staff, nurses, doctors, morgues in Iran, sources within the government, sources within city councils that basically have been dealing with this issue. | ||
| And I think the most horrific thing that I've seen is actually reading something in print. | ||
| I've seen a lot of those images over the weekend. | ||
| But the most horrific thing I've seen is a text saying someone just woke up one morning, went for a stroll in the street to see if there were protests that a.m., and instead saw just city cleaners, government employees, laborers power washing blood off of the streets after the crackdown from the night before. | ||
| So there is so much imagery, but there is so much still that has yet to come out. | ||
| And again, if folks want to check out that report that just a few hours ago said up to 12,000 killed, which would be the most significant crackdown from the state against the street in the history of the 46, 47-year Islamic Republic, that is at Iran International. | ||
| You mentioned Donald Trump's red line. | ||
| Remind us what that is, what he said here. | ||
| So one reason why these protests are different is because Trump is actually choosing to make them different or choosing to really touch the issue. | ||
| If you will, these protests didn't come out of a vacuum. | ||
| They are six months after the 12-day war, which was when the U.S. and Israel struck Iran's nuclear program. | ||
| Many so-called experts then said that there would be a rally around the flag effect. | ||
| There was not only no rally, Iranians in these protests have been taking down and burning regime flags. | ||
| So for many reasons. | ||
| And putting up a different flag. | ||
| Precisely, putting up the pre-1979 flag, you know, in terms of chants and slogans we've seen since 2017 steadily, increasingly call for a more nationalist orientation in terms of what the protesters want, but also increasingly calling for the exiled crown prince and his family. | ||
| So there's a significant difference. | ||
| If you go Islamist, I go nationalist. | ||
| They found the exact foil to the identity and the ideology to the regime. | ||
| But back to Donald Trump, he on Truth Social very early this year had said that if the regime cracks down, and he says, as is their custom, because Trump actually has the most popular tweet in the history of the Persian language on Twitter from his first term when he stood with Iranian protesters famously drawing a very sharp contrast with his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama, when it came to the 2009 protests. | ||
| And he said that there would be a U.S. response, and he used the word locked and loaded. | ||
| So people assumed a potential military response. | ||
| In the ensuing days, in his media clips, in his media statements aboard Air Force One, to the press, and again on Truth Social, he reiterated that claim. | ||
| And what was a historic standing with protesters early this January is now reaching a point of diminishing returns because he's talked about potentially standing with protesters and holding the regime accountable, but at the same time, unfortunately, has kind of watered it down, saying that the reports of deaths he had received were due to a stampede rather than this massive regime crackdown. | ||
| And only just two days ago, I believe, aboard Air Force One, he said that they appear to be crossing his red line. | ||
| And that's why today's meeting with senior national security officials about how, if, when, and at all will they respond is going to be key to dictating the success of this movement as well as what level of U.S. support will be provided, if any. | ||
| One of your colleagues at the Foundation for Defense of Democracy writing in today's Wall Street Journal alongside a member of the Council on Foreign Relations urging the president to not repeat Obama's mistake when it comes to Iran. | ||
| What they're referring to when they say Obama's mistake is a Syrian red line that Barack Obama had set, and then Syria crosses that line and the lack of U.S. response. | ||
| Is that your feeling here as well? | ||
| There's also talk of another comparison with the Obama administration, which is aboard Air Force One in the same interview where Donald Trump was talking to the press about potentially enforcing that red line, and he said that the Iranians appear to be crossing it. | ||
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Iran-Obama Negotiations
00:00:22
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| He also mentioned for the first time that the Iranians had reached out to negotiate with him amidst all of this crackdown. | ||
| And a comparison that actually comes to mind is not just Syria-Obama 2013, but Iran-Obama 2009, when there were protests on the street, where protesters were calling for Obama, are you with us or are you with them? | ||
| And because the Obama administration was looking to draw a sharp contrast with the regime change. | ||