"Khomeini Became A MONSTER" - Islamic Revolutionary Guard Founder CONFESSES How They Destroyed Iran
The founder of Iran’s most feared military force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard (IRGC), sits down with Patrick Bet-David to EXPOSE what really happened behind closed doors during the 1979 Iranian revolution.
Mohsen Sazegara, a former insider, reveals how the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps transformed from its original mission into a global power player—linked to Hezbollah, Hamas, and international conflicts.
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Patrick Bet-David is the founder and CEO of Valuetainment Media. He is the author of the #1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller “Your Next Five Moves” (Simon & Schuster) and a father of 2 boys and 2 girls. He currently resides in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.
How many people think it's directly and indirectly killed?
My weapon is teaching the students, talking about the constitution of Islamic Revolution, mobilizing the people, sending to our friends to help the classic army of Iran.
Everybody believed that Khomeini is a man of God.
Killing after killing after killing after killing after killing.
You should have seen glimpses earlier, no?
This is not what we want.
Gradually, I think that he became a monster, too.
If they can catch me, definitely they will kill me.
One of the guys that reported to you killed your boss.
Yeah.
You know what this sounds like?
Sounds a little fishy.
Conspiracy theory is attractive because it's like a story and you don't need to any fact.
When a problem is solved, then you think it's easy.
Their brains?
Yes.
How can it happen?
Mohsen.
Mohsen.
That smile on your face is cracking.
You may be a good poker player.
No, I'm not.
That smile is cracking.
I got like so many questions.
I think two hours is not enough.
But let me ask this question for you.
If you know the name Mohsen Salzagada, today's interview is going to upset you a lot because you're probably Iranian and you know the fact that he's the founder of IRGC, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
He started it in 1979 with Khomeini, never done a two-hour long form podcast, finally agreed to do this interview.
When you're talking about Hezbollah, Houthis, Hamas, any of those proxy wars, any of those proxy troops that they have in the Middle East that's causing chaos all over the place, he's the founder of that organization.
And the conversation today, the first hour, is super necessary for you to watch because it gives you the backstory, the history of what he did.
And at one point, when he's working there in the floor where the president and prime minister were killed by a man that reported directly to him, he was in that building when Masoud Kashmiri, who reported to him, he was one of the guys that worked for him, ends up killing the president of Iran at the time, Raji, and kills the prime minister at the time, Mohammed Javad Bahonar.
His direct report killed his boss.
So imagine he, founder of IRGC, is reporting to the president and prime minister.
His direct report killed them.
And then afterwards, he said that the person who killed them is dead.
They even did a funeral and later on they found out he was never dead.
That was not a true story.
He had to go to jail for it.
He talks about that.
It was a little bit contentious when I brought that up.
And when we talked about the Shah and some of the stories he told about the fact that he was the voice, like, you know, all the tapes in Iran, this was one of the greatest campaigns ever to cause a country to fall, a regime to fall.
Khomeini was in France recording the tapes, sending them to Iran to be able to play for people to hear on what he was saying.
And the first voice you would hear on those tapes was the gentleman that's here today as a guest.
I had him on for many different reasons.
Obviously, I'm a child born in the revolution.
I'm a revolution baby.
I was born three months before the revolution.
So to me, these are things that I'm very much tied to.
Events that I saw.
And as a father, I'd like to one day go back and show my kids and say, your father was born here.
That's not possible in today's regime.
We talk about sanctions.
We talk about Israel.
We talked about why the fall happened in 1979.
Like I said, the second half is extremely heated.
I think 45 minutes of the second half is extremely heated that we actually get to things.
One of the parts was about the fact that Trump came up, brainwashing came up.
He was not a fan of me using the word brainwashing, but I respect the fact that he was willing to sit down and have a long-form interview.
Nothing was off the table.
There was nothing he said you can't talk about.
Nothing.
I asked any and every question I wanted to ask.
And if the issue of Iran and the Middle East is something you're interested in, you're about to hear it from the founder of the organization called IRGC that's caused all the chaos in the Middle East since 1979.
With that being said, enjoy this podcast, this interview with Mohsen Sazagara.
Did you ever think you were making your way?
No, this life may for me.
Adam, what you think?
The future looks bright.
You are a one-on-one.
My son, John.
Okay, so I have a very interesting guest with me here today.
If you were to go online, Rob, and you just type in on Google, IRGC, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, if you type that on Google, you will see to the right where it says founders.
And if you go to founders, you'll see Khomeini, and you will see my guest who's sitting in our podcast set right now, Mohsen Sazagada.
Mohsen, it's great to have you on the podcast today.
Thank you, Pat.
And of course, so now when you look at this and you see, you know, around the world, when people think about Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and you're the founder of it, and when we think about being a founder of something that, you know, tied to funding, you know, starting Hezbollah, tied to supporting Houthis, tied to Jihad, tied to, we can go so many different places.
Like the average person goes to a place of saying, this start of this organization in 1979, right after the revolution of February, three months later with, you know, you and Khomeini, potentially could be the cost of millions of people's lives.
That's the average person says that's what happened.
For you, what is the backstory to you and Khomeini starting IRGC?
First of all, this IRGC is a monster.
And when I look at it, it looks like that you have a child, and when he or she grows up, become a killer, a murderer, or a thug, and somebody that you didn't expect it.
IRGC idea actually was the idea of making a people army, like the Army of Switzerland or Israel or National Guard in the U.S.
And it started from the days in Nofflet Château, Paris, France, about 110 days, Khomeini was over there, and I was one of the members of his staff over there.
At those days, we thought that we will have a long battle with the regime of Shah and especially U.S. who backed Shah.
What year is that?
77, 78.
78.
78, okay.
Yeah, the anthem of fall of 78 From October to January, that 2nd of February, that Khomeini were over there.
I joined him after a week, and I was one of the members of the team of the press, because he had more than 200 interviews during those days, and some other jobs that I did in that house.
But on those days, we thought that we will have a long battle with the regime of Shah, like Vietnam or Algeria.
And we had no understanding of civil resistance, peaceful resistance.
Although Islamic Revolution succeeded with civil resistance tactics, like strikes, like demonstrations, peaceful demonstrations, like giving flour to the soldiers in the streets.
But we thought that, okay, we should mobilize the people for a long battle.
But after victory of revolution, nobody expected, by the way, that just in three months, Shah will leave Iran and the revolution succeeds.
What do you think was the tipping point for you guys succeeding?
Was it Sina Marx?
What was the tipping point?
The tipping point was those huge demonstrations of the people in Tehran and other cities, more than a million and a half.
On those days, we claimed two million and a half out of four million population of Tehran came to the streets on Tarswa and Ashura to holidays, Shia holidays, and very peacefully people said that, okay, we don't want Shah.
And we said, okay, that's a referendum.
Everybody says that we don't want him.
And right after the day of victory, I mean, because at the last scene, last days of fighting with regime of Shah, two days, people attacked to garrisons, to police stations, took the guns.
And the day after victory of revolution, everybody had gone.
And the first priority for the country was how to keep it safe.
For this reason, the idea of a people army for fighting with the regime was converted to making a people army, first of all, to secure the country, collect the weapons from the hands of the people.
Second, to take the guns away from the Shah.
Because during the Shah, people had guns.
No, no.
People attacked to garrison.
It was prohibited during the Shah, like right now in Iran.
It's not like the U.S. Second Amendment does not exist in Iran.
No, right.
There is no Second Amendment.
So who are you guys trying to take weapons away from?
The soldiers that were under the Shah's military or the soldiers were in garrisons.
No, the ordinary people, even the old women, old men, there were some ridiculous scenes.
You could see an old woman taking a machine gun with lots of bullets, taking out of a garrison.
Why did you guys want to take the weapons away from citizens?
Because first of all, we had no idea that we can make it legalized like the U.S. Second, the security of the country.
There were lots of because police was absent, they went to their houses and it took time to bring them back to their duties.
And many of the Thai people, many of the armed groups, many of the guerrilla groups, communists, Fadoyan party, FADAYAN majority, minority.
there were some Maoists and some separatists, everybody had gone.
But you guys chose to take it away from everybody.
So it doesn't matter whether you were from a group or not.
Let's get the guns away from people.
Yeah, from the people and make the country secure.
And second idea was to defend the country if we will be under attack by a foreign country.
And those days we thought that the U.S. will attack to Iran.
We were wrong.
But a year and a half later, Saddam Hussein from Iraq invaded Iran.
And that idea worked, mobilizing the people, sending to war fronts to help the classic army of Iran to defend the country.
And the third idea was if we have two armed forces, then there will not be the danger of coup, military coup against the new Boer regime.
Why?
Because we had the bitter experience of coup against nationalist government of Dr. Musadawan 1953.
Because we knew that as soon as possible, we should rebuild the army and keep it for the country to defend the country.
But at the same time, we thought that we will be in danger if we don't have any idea how to prevent any coup.
Anyway, these three ideas all together ended to write a charter.
I was one of the writers of the charter.
And provisional board of commanders were elected by the government of Bas Argon, Provisional Government of Bas Argonne, and the Council of Revolution that acted on those days like the Parliament of Iran.
They allocated about $2 million as the first budget.
This is for IRGC.
Yeah.
Yeah.
To start IRGC.
I was with the Guard only three months because in that three months, first of all, I thought that, okay, it has been established.
And second, I found out that I don't like these types of jobs.
I was not a man of military and intelligence.
It was more journalism for you.
Yeah.
So I left the guard after three months on May 1979 and I went to National Radio and Television of Iran, the job that I liked that.
And after a while, I became head of national radio of Iran.
Is that kind of like VOA?
Not VOA, but NPR?
Would that be comparable to NPR in the U.S.?
No, that's governmental.
I mean, that it's owned by the government.
Yours wasn't owned by the government, or you were working with somebody that was owned by the government?
No, no, no.
The national radio and television of Iran during the Shah was the exclusive TV and radio station that owned by the government, like right now.
Right now, IRIB, Islamic Republic broadcast of Iran, this is an exclusive state run, national radio and television of Iran.
So nobody is permitted to have an independent TV station.
Yeah.
So you're there, and technically you would be, while you're there and you guys are creating IRGC, how much time are you spending with Khomeini?
With Khomeini during those days in Nufl Chateau, 110 days totally, I was with him, with totally, I can say, in that house, about 20 other people working in different jobs.
Who were some of the higher ups in the room that later on became leaders?
Who were some of the people in the room with you and Khomeini?
First of all, Dr. Yazdi, Ibrahim Yazdi.
Ibrahim Yazdi was a pharmacologist, a professor of Baylor University, and one of the founders of LMI, Liberation Movement of Iran Abroad.
The political party of Bazargan.
It was founded in 1960s.
But out of Iran, there were three prominent figures for LMI.
Yazdi, Saudeir Ghotzadeh, and Mustafa Chamran.
Mustafa Chamran was in Lebanon on those days.
He founded Harikatul Mahroumin with Musa Sadr and Amal Afoji Mohavamat al-Lubnaniya, the armed force of Harikatul Mahroumin.
Qudzadeh lived in France and Yazdi lived in Houston, Texas.
Actually, that was, I was a member of LMI, besides to Muslim Student Association.
With Ibrahim Yazdi.
Yeah.
Got it.
LMI was a secret organization because in Iran it was illegal.
And we had about totally in the US and in Europe maybe 20 members at most.
And when I, Yazdi, actually that was Ibrahim Yazdi who brought Khomeini to Paris from Najaf when Saddam Hussein forced him that you should leave Iraq.
You can't stay here and invite the people against Shah because Saddam actually signed the peace agreement with Sean 1975.
And so you should leave.
And that was Yazdi who joined him and helped him to come to Paris, a free country, to France.
And when they reached over there, he called me.
I was studying in Chicago, Illinois, and told me that, Mohsen, we have brought the Ayatollah here and we need you.
I remember it was 4 o'clock in the afternoon, Chicago.
I borrowed $250 from one of the Iranian doctors and bought a ticket.
On those days was only $200 to Chicago.
And 8 o'clock at night, I was in the plane.
And the day after, I was in France.
And I joined the team.
Yazdi later became the foreign minister of Iran.
And Ghotzadeh was over there too.
He became foreign minister of Iran as well, but he was executed by the order of Khomeini.
This is who?
Saader Qutzadeh.
So he was executed by Khomeini.
So who else was in that room with 20 people?
Was Ghassam Soleimani a player yet or not yet?
No, no, no.
Qasam Soleimani, maybe later during the war between Iran and Iraq.
That's when he became a figure.
Yeah.
Raf Sanjani, is he in the room or no?
No, Raf Sanjani was in Iran.
Okay.
But he was a key figure for Khomeini.
He was almost amongst the clergy, he was almost the closest person to Khomeini.
Raf Sanjani was the closest person to Khomeini.
Yeah.
In Iran.
And later, during the revolution and after victory, he was famous amongst Khomeini's friends that he is the favorite of Khomeini.
And whatever he says to Khomeini, Khomeini listen and doesn't say no.
Okay.
So he was an E.F. Hutton.
He was an influencer in Khomeini's life, Raf Sanjani, at that time.
Now, at the time, who is Khomeini to you?
And now looking back, at this age, who is Khomeini to you?
So first impression, because you were not a person supporting Shah.
You were one of the students that was out there doing whatever you could to prevent the Shah from staying there.
You wanted to get rid of the Shah.
You were not a fan of his.
And then he leaves.
You go to support him.
In your eyes, who was Khomeini then?
First of all, I was a Muslim and, you know, in Shi'ism, we have a source of emulation.
Grand Ayatollah, that you follow the religious orders from one of the grand Ayatollahs.
So I followed Khomeini as a source of emulation.
Second, everybody believed, including me, that Khomeini is a man of God.
He is very pious.
He has been with God and practiced mysticism.
And he's a divine person somehow.
Third, I can say that while I was with him in Nufle Shatu, he was very smart.
Very smart.
In what way?
Like when you say very smart.
When you talk to him, you know, especially with when you talk about some subjects that are new for somebody, from his questions and understanding and get the idea that you are talking, you find out that how smart is that guy?
He was very clever.
And first of all, listened very carefully, took his hand, looked down, and listened very carefully to whatever you wanted to talk to him about.
And then he asked very good questions and absorbed whatever you said.
And he was very decisive.
He could make decisions just in 10 minutes and stand for that.
And in personal relationship, he was very kind.
On the contrary to his face in the world, that was a grumpy person and looked very tough at everybody, but against the US, against the Shah.
But in personal relationship, he was very kind.
Very To a person like me, 22, 23 years old, young student, he was talking very mild, very kind, or especially to children when some of the people who came to meet him had small children.
He was very kind to them.
But later, when we returned to Iran, very seldom I saw him.
Once when I was at the head of radio and maybe one more time, if I'm not wrong, when I was in heavy industries of Iran.
No, two times more.
But gradually I think that he became a monster too, because he ordered killing the people, execution of the political prisoners in 1988.
4,000 political prisoners were executed by his order just in three months.
That's a crime.
Why did he do that?
What was his intentions when he did that?
I think that there is a very, very, I have to say, horrible statement from him that says that these guys are the members of the organizations that are against Islam and should be executed.
I don't know really how he made such a decision.
There are many gestures about that.
Maybe his son Ahmad wanted to do that.
Maybe Minister of Intelligence.
By the way, the members of MKAO, Mujahideen Akhar, and communist prisoners were massacred in Iran prisons in 1988 and several other things.
He made big mistakes.
You know, this is how despotism works.
He became a despot.
And I think that I can say three big mistakes while he was at the top for 10 years, then he passed away.
First was hostage taking, supporting the students who attacked to the American embassy.
Instead of kicking them out of the embassy, he supported them for hostage taking, and that was against any international regulation and changed, you know, started a fight with the U.S. that is still going on.
And second, the war between Iran and Iraq.
Although Saddam attacked Iran, but after one year and a half, he succeeded to kick his forces out of Iran and liberate our lands.
That was the time that he could go for a peace, ceasefire.
But he continued the war six years and a half more.
And we lost 235,000 more lives in the second period of the war.
At the first period, we lost about 30,000 lives and we liberated our lands.
But at the second part, he continued a useless war.
And third is that massacre in prisons and suppressing the opposition very brutally.
I can say that leftists of Iran, communists and other leftists and other groups, actually were massacred by the hands of Khomeini and the Islamists who took power.
By the way, Yeah, like IRGC, I can say that this IRGC is not that IRGC that without that we are creating something in the benefit of the people defending the country.
When you guys started it, and you were there at the beginning, okay, it's not hard to see right off the bat, people were getting killed left and right under Khomeini, right?
Military leaders, many of them that were under the Shah, who were loyal to him.
You know, the one guy that, you know, they cut his arm because he shook hands with he didn't salute him, so they ended up cutting his arm.
Do you know who I'm talking about?
I'll pull this up and give you the name here in a minute.
Baha'i people who were afraid to be there.
They were running away left and right.
He was killing Baha'is left and right.
There was fear in that community.
Wouldn't you ask somebody that's there early on realizing they're killing everybody they can get their hands on that disagrees with them early on to realize this is not a good regime?
Because you said the first time you realized that it was bad was in 1988 when it was the 4,000 political prisoners.
But you should have seen glimpses earlier, no?
Yes, I can say that first time that I found out that something is wrong.
It's not what we wanted.
You know, at the first two years of victory of revolution, I was so busy with the country and, you know, bomb blasting in prime minister office, for instance, by MKAO.
I was working with Rajoy, the prime minister, and he became president.
But after two, three years, I went to Industries of Iran.
I became head of IDRO, Industrial Development and Renovation Organization, the biggest industrial complex of Iran, owned 140 huge manufacturing companies.
In Industries of Iran, that was 1982 and 1983, for the first time I found out that, okay, this is not what we wanted.
We didn't expect, we didn't know, better to say, we didn't know that a revolution is how wild, how wild is a revolution and brutality in the nature of revolutions,
especially an Islamic revolution that thinks that it's the hand of the God, so they can put themselves instead of God and do whatever they want and do any crime.
So in 1983, 1984, I resigned from my position.
84.
84.
And resigned from what?
Resigned from IRGC?
No, no.
IRGC I left it after five months from industries of Iran.
I was the head of IDRO and promised to myself that I should re-study, reread the books of the founders of this revolution to see what we wanted, why we were against Shah, and why it's going in this way.
It took about a year that at last I resigned and started to reread.
The first book that I reread was Khomeini's book about Velayati Fari, about the rulership of the Fari.
And this time, I was 30 years old.
Now I was, you know, not an emotional young revolutionary, leftist young revolutionary.
You are or you're not?
When I was 30 years old.
You are.
I was not.
You were not.
No.
You were when you were younger.
Yeah.
When I was 22 years old, like many younger students on those days, the dominant, you know, not like in the Shah, he's the rich guy.
He, you know, he did the big party.
You should never have done this.
He doesn't care about us.
The dominant discourse is leftist, revolutionary, ideological aspect of the world.
Just by some, you know, simple lines, you try to draw everything to refuse, for instance, all the Western civilization.
We will have a new way in front of the humanity by Islamic regime and blah blah blah.
But when I was 30 years old, this time, when I started to reread the books of the founders of revolution, like Khomeini, like Dr. Sharia, actually, the teacher of the revolution, and the others, this time I found out that, wow, the problem of this revolution is not accidental.
It's essential.
It's in the theory of this regime.
Essential or intentional?
No, it's in the theory of this regime.
When you are Islamist, when you put yourself in the foot of the shoe of the God, then you can do any crime.
intentionally you can do any crime and the nothing is you don't care about human rights Right, human rights is something that comes from the modern world.
The modern people, after John Locke and the other thinkers, gradually people, instead of duties in religion, now the people have rights.
But in that type of thinking, I mean Islamism, a revolutionary ideologic version of Shiism, there is no room for rights of the people.
People should obey the leaders, the religion, the religion that is represented by a person at the top.
this time when I found out that okay this is something that I don't like it for this reason I started to I found out the answer of my question why it went wrong why it is started to kill the people why it's so much brutality
So when I found out the answer, that, okay, it goes back to the essence of this revolution, and the people, gradually the brutal people, ruthless people will take the power, including Khomeini himself.
That kind person, religious man, became a monster.
So I said to myself that, first of all, I should test my, examine my idea.
So I started to study history, because history is the laboratory of social sciences theories.
Because my major field was mechanical engineering and physics.
But I started to study history and I tested that idea and I saw that, yes, it has been repeated in other countries and even in Iran.
When we have running the when we run the country with religious theories, give and take, we had the same results somehow.
Or Middle Ages in Europe.
When it was, you know the, the Catholic Church, actually running and had power.
So on 1988, when the war between Iran and Iraq was finished, and from 1986 I was not in key positions, just advisor to some of my friends that were in the cabinet.
But after 1988 I said to myself that okay, enough is enough, I don't work with this regime anymore in any way.
So I left any position, didn't accept any position and I went to started publishing magazines, newspapers and starting a publishing company.
All of them were shut down by the way by the regime after a while and gradually they were.
I became a tough opposition.
I was imprisoned four times totally by the regime in Iran, and one time you were even imprisoned without being there right, there's a name for it for six years I don't know what the name of that is when you were absentia.
Absentia, you were, but but the time that you were arrested there, did they not prevent you from eating for 70 days where you lost 50 pounds?
No, I went on on a hunger strike while you were in prison.
Yeah, last time that I was arrested, you know, they come to your apartment suddenly, you know, disconnect the telephones and keep you over there and show you just a piece of paper.
You are under arrest, and in that piece of paper I saw that they have the order to arrest my son.
He was a Ivahid University OF Tehran student.
He was studying economics.
My second son was in England, so if he was in Iran, I think that he was arrested too.
But this time they searched the house for four hours everywhere to take every paper, even the electricity bills.
I said that.
I told the guys that why do you take the electricity bills?
What's inside that?
By the way, from that time I said that okay, as a protest for arresting me, I go on hunger strike.
Why were you trying to, were you trying to kill yourself?
So that could be a statement to the world on how much you're standing up against them.
Yeah, I wanted to, honestly, I didn't want to be killed or to die, but I wanted to resist in front of them and have something in interrogation to bargaining.
Because I was almost famous and many students knew me.
They arrested 800 students, including my son, with me at the same time.
Because they were tied to you.
Yeah.
800 students.
800 students.
How long did they stay in jail?
Some of them one month like my son.
Some of them three months, 100 days, or some of them longer, six months.
While they had you and you're not eating, are they abusing you?
Are they trying to embarrass you?
Are they doing any public humiliation ritual?
Are they doing anything to you?
No, no.
Because they knew this time, and if they arrest me right now, definitely they will not be polite.
If they can catch me, definitely they will kill me.
But in those days, because that anyway, I was a person that came to Iran with Khomeini and I was one of the founders of IRGC.
I was deputy prime minister for a while at the first decade of revolution.
And many of the top people in Islamic Republic knew me.
Many of the members of the parliament and many people in the society.
So they knew that at last they should release me after 10 years, say.
But so they didn't torture me.
But some, I can't say psychological pressure, yes.
For instance, one day they said that your son is in the room.
Because you are blindfolded when they take you to interrogation and sit you in front of the wall and you can't see the room.
But they said that your son is here and he has become very slim.
We may release him.
And they wanted to show to my son that I'm not on hunger strike.
Because I talked to my wife, my wife is a doctor.
When they arrested me, I told her that from now on, I go on hunger strike and announce it to the world that I'm on hunger strike and day by day count it.
So they wanted to anyway, you know, say that this is that I have broken my hunger strike.
So when they said that your son is in the room, I thought to myself that, okay, if I said that I'm on hunger strike, they may not release him because they want to send him out to say that my dad is not on hunger strike.
And if I say send anything and I say, no, I'm not on hunger strike.
I have given a false fact to him.
Anyway, I just kept silent.
Or one day they told me that we have arrested your wife as well.
While you're in there, they're saying this to you.
You know, they wanted to...
I had six accusations according to what they put pressure on me.
They wanted to tell me that, okay, you have been an agent of the United States.
You have been, because that some of the top senators in the US have supported you after arrest, you are an agent of the United States.
Second, they wanted to tell me that, okay, one day one of those two interrogators told me that, Dr. Sazagarabi, we know that you are a good entrepreneur and you can make hundreds of factories.
Why don't you go for that?
We can support you if you agree not to oppose the regime and go out of politics.
I said, no, thank you.
Is this at the Evan prison when you were on?
Can you pull up Evan Prison?
Can you, to the audience, explain what Evan Prison is?
Like, Evan Prison, if you just pull it up and I'll just read it.
So zoom in a little bit.
Prison located in Evan neighborhood of Tehran, Iran.
The prison has been the primary site for the housing of Iranian political prisoners since 1972, before and after the Iranian revolution and a purpose-built wing named Evan University.
Due to the high number of students and intellectuals detained there, Evan Prison has been accused of committing serious human rights abuses against its political dissidents and critics of the government.
That's what this was built for.
Evan Prison actually was built in the 1960s by the regime of Shah.
And before that, it was a garrison, if I'm not wrong.
It was converted to a prison during the Shah.
It's the most notorious prison in Iran.
Is this what the SAVAC used?
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
So the 3,000 political prisoners that Jimmy Carter was talking about with the Shah was at this prison, Evan Prison?
Mostly.
Mostly were here.
Yeah.
When he was talking about human rights, you have to let those political prisoners go.
It was people like you.
And the Shah was holding a lot of people from the Today in the Communist Party because his fear was well.
Right.
Some clerics, some.
Which some of them ended up being extremists later on, to be fair with the Shah, right?
That what happened.
So some of the people he held was actually he could have prevented.
He, you know, it was actually a good move to hold some of them that later on they ended up causing some havoc around the world.
Some of them were members of guerrilla groups, yes.
Right.
Definitely.
I think that on those days they were heroes of guerrilla wars, but today they are called terrorists.
Maybe he was right, but not torturing them because he was torturing the political prisoners as well by SAVAC.
But no.
Stop doing it.
He said in the one.
Some of them were not fighting with Shah with arms.
Some of them were writers.
Some of them were just opposition, like Paul Zargan, for instance.
Or some of those clerics that were in prison were just only against the Shah.
This is what I said to Islamic Republic as well, that I have nothing but my interviews and my voice and writing the articles.
Why should I be arrested?
Okay, I'm in opposition of this regime.
I'm against Veloyate Fari.
I'm against the leader.
But I don't do anything violently.
And my weapon is teaching the students, talking about the constitution of Islamic Revolution that is wrong.
It should be changed.
Why should I be arrested?
It's a pretty heavy statement, though, to try to change the constitution.
And you're teaching that.
You're a menace to society.
You're a menace to the regime.
But the part I want to go back to is when you're in, you're seeing it.
And you're saying you were at one point deputy minister, right?
That was your job.
And you said for how many years?
How long did you have that job as a...
Totally in different positions in Islamic Republic in one decade.
I was in different positions like head of radio or deputy prime minister or deputy minister of heavy industries, head of IDRO or vice minister of planning.
Who are you reporting to?
Who are you reporting to?
My boss, for instance, when I was deputy prime minister, I worked with Rajai, the prime minister.
Rajai got assassinated with a bomb in his room.
That's an interesting story because what's his name who assassinated him with the bomb that he put in the room?
Masoud Mashmi.
Mas'oud Kashmiri.
Mas'oud Kashmiri.
And I have an impression of what happened there.
But so he was your boss.
And Masoud Kashmiri, who is a friend of yours at the time, I believe, based on what reporting I've learned.
He was working in our office first, the office of political deputy.
But then he was transferred to another office in prime minister office.
He was with the intelligence deputy of Rajoyee office.
So this is Masoud Kashmiri.
Yeah.
Right?
And he assassinated President Rajoyee and Prime Minister Bahonar.
Right.
And again, what is your impression of what happened?
Did you have knowledge of this taking place, this assassination attempt?
No, definitely no.
I remember that I was in my office at the fourth floor.
I heard a bomb blasting, a big noise.
And I was talking on phone.
I hanged up and I went to the opposite office that had a window to the garden.
And I saw that, wow, fire is coming and the smoke is coming up out of the room that I knew was the high national conceal of security conceal of the country that president and prime minister and minister of Israel.
I actually found a clip from Associated Press, Rob, if you want to pull it up.
There's a clip I just sent you.
But please continue.
Yeah.
So you're on the fourth floor.
You're on the phone.
You hear the explosion.
You go in, cannot believe what's going on.
I'm going to give you a visual so the audience can also see what it looks like.
Please continue.
Yeah.
And I knew that Rajoyee and Bahunar are because Rajoy became president after the first president of Islamic Republic that left Iran, Bani Saad, Rajoy was elected as the president.
It was only one.
is it right this is the yeah yeah exactly and this is how How far are you away from that room when the bombing happened?
Yeah.
I knew that these guys are in that room.
So I used the stairs coming down to the first floor that that room was to approach the room.
Maybe I can rescue that.
You're in the same building on fourth floor.
Yeah, yeah.
While this explosion, while the bomb is dropped by a colleague of yours.
Yeah.
And when I entered the first floor, there was everything because the electricity was disconnected, it was dark, and lots of smoke.
I tried to reach the room at the end of the hall, but I couldn't breathe.
Later, I found out that I could sit down because the smoke goes up.
Anyway, I didn't reach that room.
And I came out and went to the level, to the two streets.
Maybe I can approach the room from the window, from the street.
But again, it was not doable.
And, you know, the fire department reached over there.
By the way, Rajoy and Bauhonar were killed and some other people.
I remember that the head of the police was killed as well because he was in elevator and suffocated.
Anyway, yeah.
So I called a few people because from my end, you know, I've interviewed and spoken to a lot of people from the Iranian side and I wrote a fiction book called The Academy.
And in the story of the Academy, a lot of the Iranian revolution is depicted in the book.
It's a story about a secret society that recruits young kids and develops them into leaders.
Anyways, this is a part of my life that I lived in Iran.
So, you know, some of it is in there from a kid that's Assyrian and Armenian.
But when I call these different people, you know, people who were there at the time, people who send me clips and articles quoted by you, they said when this happened,
you claimed that your friend who got killed, who killed the president and the prime minister, we're talking Kashmiri, Masood, who killed Raji and Bahonar.
You came out and said he's dead.
And there's even some articles that said you put ashes to say he's dead.
He's no longer there.
And that was falsifying your friend's death, that he died.
And then later on they found out that he was alive and you had to go to prison for it.
Is that all true?
Yeah, not that time.
It was the explosion happened at 3.20 in the afternoon.
I remember because the clock stopped, the electrical clocks everywhere.
But the day after, and that time, until late at night, that night, nobody knew that how many people were in that room, how many were alive, how many were wounded, and how many were killed.
It took about eight hours, nine hours, that at last, the list of the people attending that meeting, how many people were seen alive, how many were in hospital, and at the end of the night said that, Okay, we have three absent and two bodies that are not recognized because they have been burned.
These three people were Rajoyi, Paul Honar, the president prime minister, and Kashmiri, who was actually the secretary of those meetings.
The day after, when the people gathered in front of the parliament of Iran at the end of the alley that prime minister office was at the beginning of that alley, at the end of that alley was the parliament of Iran, and on the other side of the parliament was Sepah Street, that people gathering, thousands of people mourning their bodies.
We thought, I have said that we were foolish, we thought that, okay, Kashmiri, nobody doubted about him.
He was not a suspect person for us on that time, because he was one of the honest people working in that office and very good staff.
Everybody thought that, okay, these three people are killed.
And that night, at last, with the dentist and their family, they recognized that these two bodies are for Rajoye and Baal Honar.
But the third person, we didn't find anything.
So we thought that he has been killed.
But you didn't know.
No.
We thought that he has been burnt so badly that didn't find anything.
So we asked some of the clergy in, when I say we, I mean not only me, a group of workers in a prime minister office, that we thought that, okay,
we can collect the ashes and a part of his body will be over there so it can be his body and be mourned by the people and transferring to for a funeral and transferring to cemetery.
That was the day after at night when I went to a group of our friends, we had a gathering together once a week.
I was very sad and when I talked about bomb blasting yesterday and what happened, how Kashmiri was burnt, nothing was earned.
I remember one of my friends in that meeting said that, Mohsen, what are you talking about?
Didn't he have any belt, ring, some metal things?
I said, yes.
He said that, okay, why didn't you find them?
And besides, he was a biologist said that a person, say 140 140 pounds, if he's burned, even in very, very high temperature, at least 15, 30 pounds will remain, especially the bones.
So it's not possible that you didn't find anything.
I said that, yes, you are right.
He laughed and said that maybe he was the guy that put the bomb and fled the room.
So the day after, I remember that when I went to prime minister office and the committee in that division of intelligence division of the office started to investigate the bomb blasting, I went early in the morning, that was 7 o'clock in the morning, I knocked at the door that they were talking and investigating.
One of them came out and I told him that it seems that we were wrong.
Kashmiri can be the guy.
He said that, oh, don't say anything because we have reached the same result and same idea because we didn't find his car around in any street.
Yeah, but why are you so swift?
And his family is not at his home.
I get that, but why are you so swift to say he's also dead?
Here's his ashes.
You're a pretty smart man.
You're, you know, so what this makes me think about, because I pulled up to kind of see, because what I want to know is who benefited from this, right?
That's what everybody wants to know.
So who benefited from it?
Khomeini benefited from it, okay?
Khomeini long-term benefited from it, right?
IRGC benefited from it, right?
There's quite a few people that benefited from it.
So if you're on the inside and this happened in 81, you're 24, 25 years old at the time.
You're still supporter of what they're doing.
You haven't yet flipped and turned out.
It almost gives me the vibes of the Italian mob when somebody is taking out the boss to get a promotion and get a job because it's going to be a lot of favors and everybody keeps your mouth shut and don't say anything.
And let's just say, yeah, he was also killed.
He's no longer here.
Sounds a little fishy.
To the average person listening to this, it makes it seem like maybe you knew and maybe you were being a loyalist and maybe you wanted to defend to not say anything and then you went away and you got arrested.
You know, in Farsi we say that the ma'amoto halyashed Osan Shavat.
When a problem is solved, then you think it's easy.
On that day, the day after explosion, nobody first of all was suspicious to Kashmiri.
Later, it was found out that, oh, he was a secret member of MKAO, Mujahidin Khalch, that penetrated in the offices.
And we were, you know, the emotional.
So you're saying MKAO, this is the People's Mujahideen of Iran, M-E-K, a militant opposition group, which they claimed that were the beneficiaries of this taking place.
Yeah.
They were fighting with the regime.
But you're friends with this guy, right?
You've spent time with this guy.
Is that fair?
Have you spent 100 years?
For two months, I was boss of this guy.
He worked for one of the offices that was under my mind.
So one of the guys that reported to you killed your boss.
Yeah.
Do you know what this sounds like?
This is the reason that, you know, because there was, you know, internal competition in, you know, power, better to say power struggle inside the newborn.
Were you very ambitious at the time?
No.
No, I prefer to leave every job to go to start a political party and publishing papers.
But I went to industries.
That was one of the reasons that I decided not to be in political positions.
Well, let's say here.
So I want to finalize the story and move on from this.
So some reporters told me that there was actually a funeral for the guy.
Yeah.
And they actually thought he was dead.
So this is like Kaiser Sosi type of a situation.
Not only us, we thought that he's killed and that ashes from the room contains a part of that, but millions of people who, you know, mourn those two bodies and that.
But during that time, while his funeral is being held, have you spoken to him?
Have you met with him?
Have you talked to him at all?
Before that?
No, while everybody is thinking he's dead, did you and him at all have an interaction or talk?
No, just my colleagues, because we were busy with our colleagues and making, we wanted to make sure that funeral is going very well.
And let me tell you something worse, that we thought that, oh, this poor Kashmiri is not a top person.
Those two guys are very top people, so we should pay attention that he will be respected like those two president and prime minister as well.
And, you know, these types of scenes are very...
Did you ever see him again?
Did you ever meet him, see him again at all?
No, no, he's, I think, definitely protected by MCAO.
Nobody has seen him.
Since then?
Since then.
And some are saying that he died last year, 2023, or he died two years ago in 2023.
I don't think so.
You think he's still alive?
Yeah.
But you haven't spoken to him?
No, nobody.
I think that if regime of Iran finds him, definitely will kill him.
You know, because two years ago, I think that you are pointing to another person.
His name was Kolahi.
Kolahi was the person who was in charge of a member of MEK or MKAO.
He was the person who carried the bomb and bomb blasting in the headquarter of Islamic Republic political party.
Beheshti, head of judiciary power, and 72 people were killed.
Some ministers, some members of cabinet, some top officials were killed in that bomb blasting.
Kolahi was not found until two years ago.
I'm not sure yet that a person was famous as no-name person with another name was assassinated in Netherland.
And I read that everybody said that, yes, he was Kolahi, that at last regime of Iran found him and killed him in Netherland.
And I think that if Regime of Iran finds Masroud Kashmiri, any place in the world.
How does this guy stay alive for 44 years?
I mean, it's not hard.
You have to eat something.
You have to live somewhere.
No, maybe, you know, they have changed his name and surgery and all that stuff.
Under protection.
Beheshti, what was Beheshti's connection to KGB?
Oh, no, I don't think so.
Okay.
He had any relation to KGB.
Behdi was one of the top clergy and educated not only in seminary schools, but in Germany as well.
When you're with Khomeini at the beginning stages of IRGC, from the moment you're helping found IRGC, how many people were you in rooms or talks where you know they're being killed left and right?
What was the first instance where you're like, oh my god, we're killing a lot of people right now?
It should have been pretty quickly, no?
IRGC at the beginning was a very small organization.
For instance, totally, I brought about 60 people, most of them were well educated, not only in the University of Ari Amer, Sharif University today, but from my friends from that university, but some of the members of the MSA, Muslim Student Association from Europe and the United States.
And at the beginning, IRGC was a very weak organization that was not able to keep its headquarter.
Totally, I can say maybe 100, 120 people were working in IRGC.
And the idea of IRGC was to keep it small, at most 500 people, professional people, and 50,000 people as the semi-professional and mobilizing, training the people for defending the country, maybe 20 million of the people.
That was the idea of that people army.
When I left the guard, as I say, it was about maybe 120 people.
So was not powerful enough to fight in different parts of Iran.
Many, you know, some people make mistakes between IRGC at the beginning with commité in every mosque.
Because after victory of revolution, people in every neighborhood, in every city, they gathered their weapons and made a garrison, better to say, in every mosque.
They called them commité imam.
And when the name of Pasdar was invented by Sapah Pasdaran, by IRGC, they called themselves Pasdar as well.
They were the guys that actually attacked to the people's houses or get that, you know, capture everything.
After a while, after a few years, those committees were dissolved in the police of Iran.
They don't exist anymore.
Yeah, I guess, and by the way, for the average person that's watching this, this is now an organization that's got 190,000 soldiers, give or take, army, navy, Hezbollah, they indirectly fund Houthis, they fund Hamas, they fund who else can I say?
Oh, many other things.
Right now, I can say that IRGC, as I said, is a monster, like a dragon with seven heads.
How many people think it's directly and indirectly killed?
By IRGC or directly and indirectly.
So directly themselves as well.
If you say that Groatsforce, for instance, one of those heads is Oatsforce, a terrorist organization.
If you count the people who have been killed in Syria, for instance, half a million people were killed in Syria.
So 500,000 people.
That's just one.
One.
They were killed by regime of Assad and the help of Groat's force and IRGC and Russia altogether.
Or maybe in Lebanon or in Israel, the last thing that IRGC was supporting was October 7.
You know, what Hamas did in Israel and the consequences of that.
Totally about 50,000 people were killed from both sides.
So, I mean, yes, this IRGC is, I can't say that a unique organization.
Why?
Because it's like a classic army right now, Air Force, Navy, and ground force.
It's like at the same time, a terrorist organization, a branch Grossforce, outside Iraq.
It's like a KGB now, IRGC intelligence, that is two times bigger than Minister of Intelligence of Iran.
Last time, by the way, I was arrested by IRGC intelligence.
At the same time, it's in mafia types of activities, production of Captagon, which is famous as jihadized pills, and heroin and smuggling the drugs from Kabul to Caracas.
And at the same time, IRGC is involved in the economy of Iran.
They are in several huge projects of Iran in the business of smuggling of the oil of Iran to bypassing the sanctions.
And at the same time, they are in atomic project of Iran.
And this is why I say that this is a monster that maybe, you know, we don't have such an organization in any other country to be like a Western, you know, cartel or KGB at the same time, Red Army at the same time, a terrorist organization, Al-Ahada, at the same time, and blah, blah, blah.
This is a monster that is working.
And, you know, the leader of Iran, the present leader of Iran, Khamenei, runs this organization dependent to himself.
This is not a unified organization.
Every part does and report to Khamenei directly.
I mean, IRGC intelligence is not reporting to the chief commander of IRGC.
Anyway, this is something that I have to say that is not only a danger for the world, but is a danger to Iran as well.
Because as soon as they feel that they don't benefit anymore, they may get the gun and fight with the people or with each other.
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And by the way, you're the co-founder of it with Khomeini.
Like this is something that started from there to where it's at now.
And obviously, you said you did not see it getting this big, as big as it is today.
But I got like so many questions.
I think two hours is not enough.
But let me ask this question from you.
So say, looking back when you were a young leftist, you want to do right, you're thinking noble and money people are all the greed and all they care about is money and the Shah and all this stuff, how evil he is and Margbar Omrikal and all the stuff that's going on, right?
Do you now regret?
And are you at a point where you're able to say if the revolution didn't happen and the Shah stayed there, the Middle East would not only be more at peace, but millions of other people would still be alive?
Are you comfortable saying that if the Shah stayed and they still ruled, not allowing the revolution to happen with Khomeini, it'd be a lot more peaceful place?
Yes.
You can say that.
Yeah, I can say that.
You know, I believe in democracy right now.
And Shah was a military dictator, yes, but he was secular.
And he was like the other dictators in the Middle East right now.
Look at Mohammed bin Salman or King Abdullah or the others in that region of the world.
But by the way, he was working, he believed in modern world, in modernity, in running the country in the way of joining the modern world.
But this regime, I mean, Islamic Republic is a regime that is against modern world.
This is one of the main reasons that now Iran has gone backward.
And a revolutionary regime is a totalitarian regime, I have to say, is much more brutal than a simple dictatorship.
So, yes, you're right.
Let me put it on this way.
I believe in democracy.
But if you tell me that, okay, you have only two choices.
Forget about democracy.
You can't reach democracy.
But you have only two choices.
First, a military dictator like Shah that is toward the modern world or an Islamic regime like Islamic Republic of Iran against modern world.
Which one do you choose?
Definitely, I choose the first one.
How many people died directly or indirectly while the Shah was in charge and he was developing Iran and making it more modernized, making it more industrialized?
You know, the relationships he was creating with Israel, with Saudi, with Iraq.
Even you said yourself that Saddam Hussein said, hey, you got to leave my country, Khomeini, because I have a treaty with the Shah and we have a good treaty here, so we're good.
How many people did he kill?
Like if you're saying, you know, the Shah did what he did, What were the worst events that took place in the Middle East under Mohammed Reza Shah Bahlavi?
Inside Iran, in the region, fortunately, we did not have any war during the Shah.
That's very simple what you just said.
Yeah, unless that Shah intervened in Oman, sent the troops to Oman to suppress the communist rebels in Oman.
Army of the Shah was fighting over there.
But no, Iran was not involved in any war during Mohammed Rezar Shah.
But his father, Rezar Shah, came to power after World War I.
That Iran was invaded by foreign troops, Russians, Ottomans, British troops.
And in that event, totally about one-third of Iranian population lost their lives.
About the population of Iran was about 8.5 million on those days.
And 2 million lost their lives before Reza Shah.
During the period that we had a failure state in Iran, after constitution revolution, because we had a constitutional revolution 110 years ago, very similar to French revolution in Iran.
People died because of many things, disease, Spanish flu, typhoid.
That's not what I'm talking about.
That's not what I'm talking about.
Yeah.
Anyway, during the Shah, totally, those Pahlavi dynasty, let's say father and son, Rezar Shah and Muhammad Azar Shah, estimation shows about 3,500 people maybe were killed.
Some people tried to find out that how many people were executed.
Think about what you just said.
Think about what you just said.
It's very important because we're talking about from 25 to 79, okay, give or take, right?
If we look at imperialist state of Iran, Ezra Nosadabi Sopanj to 1979, 54 years, 3,500, give or take is what you're saying, right?
And then you think about around the Middle East, what the tensions were like.
You know, and you know how they say, you know, Iran is the agent of chaos and all this other stuff, IRGC, and what they've done.
And some of that is true of what took place.
But that wasn't the case under the Shah.
So when I have a lot of people here like Reza Aslan, I don't know if you should, I'm sure you know who Reza Aslan is.
If you don't, he used to be with CNN and he did a lot of different things.
This fellow right here, who is a very educated guy, wrote a book called Zealot.
And he's written a lot of good, a lot of books that I've done well.
He himself, his family escaped Iran after the Shah.
And he still can't stand the Shah, right?
But he sits there and says, look, it was a better place under the Shah than it was now.
I go through this because I'm curious.
I'm born October 1878.
So I'm in October 1870.
Mehrebi Shishom.
I'm an October 1878 baby.
My dad's taking my mother to the hospital.
Water breaks.
Curfew.
They hold my dad up.
What are you doing?
It's 10 o'clock at night.
You know you can't be outside.
My wife is pregnant.
Baby is due.
Can you take the escort my mom to the hospital?
And then I'm born, right?
At the height of tensions and chaos.
You was born with the revolution.
I was born with the revolution.
I came out with the revolution energy, right?
But the reason why I'm saying this to you, this is an aspect of my life that I'm very, very curious about for my own self.
Everybody has certain things I want to get answered.
I want to get it answered for myself.
This is why I like these debates and discussions.
But going back to it, when we're talking about this, everybody benefits from something.
Like, I want to know who benefited from Khomeini coming back to Iran.
So in my mind, I go through different things.
I want to ask you before I give you mine.
Because you know the accusations of him being a double agent.
You know the accusations of France, media indirectly started giving him so much time on TV that other people in Iran could watch him and start liking him and the way they build him up and the way they edified him.
And he's such an amazing man and he's such a gentle this.
And oh my God, he's so this and he's so caring.
And what if one day he returns back to Iran and Iranian people are just watching it on French TV and Romano, wow, this is such an incredible thing.
So who benefited from Khomeini coming back to Iran?
Is it France?
Is it UK?
Is it Russia?
Who benefited from Khomeini coming to Iran?
Khomeini?
If you're talking about foreign countries, definitely Russia benefited, not Western countries.
You know, although Soviet Union in those days, they didn't know the Islamists that were close to get the power.
But from November 1978, gradually they found out that, wow, by the hands of the people of Iran, millions of people, and leadership of Islamists, the regime of Shah, who was an ally to West, especially the United States, is going to be overthrown.
So they changed their tone and gradually Radio Moscow Farsi started to talking against Shah because they had a good relationship with regime of Shah on 60s and, based on deterrent policy of Khrushchev and, I have to say, good foreign policy of regime of Shah that had good relationship with West and East.
At the same time they didn't think about overthrowing the Shah.
Maybe Tudah party was in Eastern Germany wanted overthrowing Shah, but that was not the policy of the Soviet Union government.
But on November 78, gradually they found out, wow, something big is happening in Iran.
So they changed their tone.
And I can't say that right after victory of revolution, that they found out that, okay, these guys, the Islamists who took the power, they are against communism and West at the same time.
We were the generation that we were against communists and Westerns at the same time.
You know, people on those days shouted death to U.S. and death to Soviet Union at the same time.
They found out that, okay, we should change our policy.
They started to approach Iran at the first years of victory of revolution, but by the hands of Eastern Germany, that Iranians had no problem with Germany.
And after decline of communist regime, that they were not communists anymore, and the Putin regime, they approached Iran easier.
And gradually, I think that they penetrated everywhere in Iran.
And I can say that the strategy of Russia, communist Russia or Putin Russia, during the last 46 years was to keep Iran in a distance from Western countries,
European countries and the US, so that none of the Western countries can trust Iran, can come to Iran, invest in Iran, and especially in oil and gas industries of Iran, because Iran is the only country that gas reservoirs of Iran is second in the world after Russia.
Or maybe some people believe that maybe more than Russia.
So Iran should be in a distance from Western allies to make sure that is at the hands of Russia.
So if you ask about who benefited from Iran revolution, I say that right now Russia has benefited more than any country.
Iran, let me put it on this way, especially during Khameneiyee, the present leader, Iran has gradually become a member of the incorporation.
I borrowed the word from Anna Pelbaum last book.
She has written a good book.
Its name is Autocracy Inc.
She explains that there is an incorporation from dictatorships, autocracy regimes, that all of them are kaleptocracies.
The leadership, there are about 36, 37 countries, including, at the leadership are China and Russia.
And the members are Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, say Belarusia, and blah, blah, blah.
She explains very well that how they unite each other, how they support each other, and how they have only one theory against the liberal democracy of West, especially the United States.
And what they do, keeping the dictators in power, helping each other and their kaleptocracy regimes.
Now Iran is in that club.
Islamic Republic of Iran is a member of the club of incorporation of kaleptocracies or dictatorships under leadership of Russia and China.
And definitely they are benefited from Iran right now.
China, for instance, Iran smuggles oil to China because of the U.S. sanctions, sometimes 50% underprice.
And they don't give to Iran any hard currency.
They say, oh, no, this is under sanction, U.S. dollar, no.
And Iranians should buy Chinese goods with Yuan.
And even they don't give you their qualified goods.
They say, okay, you should take this one instead of that one.
And this is how the Chinese actually milk the cow.
You ever read the book Committee of 300?
Have you ever read that book?
300 Committee of 300.
Committee of 300.
No.
You ever read that book?
So in the book, Committee of 300.
No.
It talks about that Khomeini was the making of MI6.
So the same way CIA helped the Shah get in To replace Mossadegh, they say Khomeini was helped by MI6.
This is why BBC would put him up, etc., etc., etc.
Now, hang tight before you give your rebuttal.
But that's the story you hear about with MI6 and Khomeini.
Two, you hear about the U.S. Green Belt theory.
You're familiar with the Green Belt Theory because what is it?
It's Kissinger and what's the guy's name?
What's the lady's name who was with MSNBC, was married to Joe?
What's her last name?
Brzezinski.
Brunka Brzezinski.
Brzezinski.
So the father and Kissinger, they sat there and they were worried about what was going on with Russia and Brezhnev.
And they said, hey, you know, if we have the lesser of the two evils, we need somebody to go against them because Russia is getting too powerful and we need a pain in the ass in a Middle East.
So let's put Khomeini there because we can no longer control the Shah.
The Shah has become so powerful that we may no longer be able to do what we want to do with them, right?
So Khomeini is a little bit more of a person that we can control, maybe.
We won't be able to control the Shah.
Your impression of those two stories that we hear about, claims.
No, but I call them conspiracy theory.
It's very common amongst Iranian, by the way, that Karkarengeli sust British conspiracy everywhere.
Do you think the Shah came in because of CIA?
That coup on 1953 was designed by British MI6 and CIA together.
So watch this.
So here's the thing.
With the leftist Iranians, this is what the leftists, because you said it's famous with the Iranians.
On the leftist Iranians, that maybe they're a little bit more supportive of NAIAC and that community, they'll typically say, yeah, the CIA was involved with, you know, Mossadegh and preventing him from coming in.
But no, when it comes down to, you know, getting rid of the Shah and Khomeini coming in, MI6 was not involved.
That's just some of the people that like the Shah say stuff like this.
So the liberals want to believe one of them, but say, no, it's a conspiracy on the other side.
But God forbid if the others say that, you know, the Shah came in and maybe, you know, it's what the people wanted.
No, no, that was actually CIA.
can't both be true let's no can't both here we go first First of all, first of all, I tell you why.
First of all, you're young leftist.
No, I'm not.
But let's put it, let's follow your simple rule.
Who benefited?
From what?
From 1953, bringing back Shah to Iran that fled Iran.
And 1979, I can give you my opinion.
Khomeini came to power.
The first one, after that, U.S. had very good relationship with Iran.
For instance, British embassy in Iran had about 300 staff.
And they had lots of, for instance, in industries of Iran, we had lots of contracts with Western companies and blah, blah, blah.
But on 1979, when Khomeini returned to Iran and Islamic regime, gradually, I remember that once while I was in Iran, I talked to one of the British diplomats.
He said that we have only 27 staff because we don't have any relationship, any commercial relationship with Iran.
That's kind of like when, but that's kind of like saying...
benefits from Islamic Republic Russia right now no I'll give you who benefits from the what American company have any any contract they do No, it's not about the.
Who benefits from Islamic Republic?
Okay, you want me to tell you?
I'll give you that.
And let me, sorry, finish that.
The other thing are when we talk about the historical event, we should talk about the facts.
I'm going to give you facts.
And I want you to push that.
So far, for 1953, it has been published several documents from foreign ministries, from the intelligence services, including the foreign minister of the United States, Martin Albright, once said that, okay, we apologize from the people of Iran for that coup.
Top officials, lots of hundreds of documents have been published so far that shows that, yes, British Secret Service and U.S. Secret Service were involved in that coup.
But 1979, now it's after 45 years, 46 years, several documents have been published and several memoyards, including President Carter, including the prime ministers of the British government and many other documents have been released so far.
And there's no document that they supported Khomeini.
And besides to that, what they got very wisely, you know, Shah was a very close friend to U.S., to England, to Western countries.
Why should they remove him and replace him with the guys that they didn't know them?
And after a while, they became against them.
Okay.
So.
Why should they do that?
Okay.
Do you remember when you first met Khomeini and you were like, what a gentle, kind, sweet man he was?
And then, boom, killing after killing after killing after killing after killing.
And then you decide to step away in 1988.
And you go to jail.
They have you in prison at the Evan prison in Tehran.
And then you realize, wow, maybe I got spooked.
Maybe I got fooled.
Maybe I got bamboozled by Khomeini, right?
Okay.
I want to go a little bit deeper with this thing.
When you said who benefited from 1953 to 1959, what major contract and agreement came about between those 26 years?
Can you go to 1954 oil consortium agreement?
1954 oil consortium agreement.
Okay.
That was in 1954.
Do you know how long the contract was?
I don't know how long it was, but 40% the American companies got from that contract for oil of Iraq.
Okay, so the 1954.
And after a while, on 1960s, I guess that Shah actually, that was expired and Shah again announced that the oil of Iran is nationalized.
Right.
So the contract was a 25-year contract.
Okay.
So the 25-year contract expired in 1979.
And Iran, under the Shah, became so powerful that he was becoming more and more assertive about what they were producing.
Iran education was improving.
Women had freedom that they way more than what they have today.
The age of marriage for women came down to nine years old, 10 years old under the Shah.
I think it was 18 or 16 or 15 years old.
Now it goes back down to numbers.
He's being asked by Wallace.
He says in five years, we're going to be what you are right now, Britain, because he was seeing the strength that was coming up.
And what happens when, under the Shah, there's no wars for 25 years?
Who doesn't make money if there's no wars?
Who doesn't make money?
You mean that the Western countries removed their allies, brought a regime that they didn't know what they will do, and this regime will go to Russia to power, to make wars in the region for what?
For what?
To sell equipment, you see.
So you think Eisenhower was a dummy?
No, he was not.
So what did Eisenhower say at the end of this?
Hold the equipment that they have sold.
To Iran, they have sold nothing.
Iran bought about $15 billion at the last years of Shah from the United States only.
But to Iran, not Britain, not U.S., none of them sold anything to Iran or Western countries.
But to region, say Saudi Arabia, for instance, $65 billion a year, totally say $500 billion.
If I'm not just an estimation, is it just for opposing Iran, Islamic Republic of Iran, or Saudi Arabia?
Because Saudi Arabia is a good ally to the U.S. and Western countries as well.
So I'm going to give you...
And compare it...
Suppose that's right.
Suppose, totally, the weapon industries of the United States and Western countries benefit from Islamic Republic and the country, you know, to sell the equipment to other countries.
Okay, suppose it happened.
Compare it to the other opportunities that they lost.
Iran is 90 million population.
If Iran was an ally to Western countries, now the huge amount of car manufacturing companies, home ambulances, especially the IT information, and many, many other...
I agree.
Many, many other companies benefited from relationship with Iran.
I think that even if without that, they thought like that.
Of course they think like that.
You think they play the game?
I can't say like you, of course.
When I don't see any documentary.
Do you think CIA is capable of creating a coup in Iran to replace Mossadegh and put Shah in?
On those days, yes, but they can't do that.
You can't be that naive because if you go, can you go back to the 1954 oil consortium agreement, Rob?
Just go to the link to 1950.
I just want you to see this here real quick.
So this is the agreement.
Can you go a little bit lower?
Keep going lower.
Right there.
Terms.
The dispute was finalized with the incorporation of a 25-year international oil consortium agreement in 1954.
53 is Mossadegh.
Shah comes in.
25 plus 1954 is 79, dividing the aforementioned 50% ownership to foreign companies as follows, 40% to be divided equally, 8% each amongst the five major American companies, BP to have 40% share, Royal Dutch to have 14% share, CFP, a French company, to receive 6%.
Later, year later, 1958, U.S. government ordered the five companies to each transfer 1% of their 8% to several smaller companies because these companies have been complaining that they were left out.
So this is official.
That is taking place.
Okay, so there is nothing.
So 1954, 79, in 1954, Iran needs the world.
They desperately need the world.
In 79, the world needs Iran.
They're starting to realize this guy is creating a lot of momentum.
Okay, so now watch.
No wars.
So then, can you go pull up Eisenhower when he was president?
What years was he president?
I think it's somewhere around the same time, 53 to 60 or something like that.
What terms?
Okay, so there you go.
So 53 to 60, 61, he's president.
What's his last message?
Be careful with the military-industrial complex that he's giving the message.
Hey, you know, you just guys got to be careful because these guys want a lot of war so they can make a lot of money.
Is he naive or maybe he knows some things that you and I don't know because he's on the inside?
So then military-industrial complex, you look at the business now, the amount of money that's being made by having to sell weapons and more war.
Then for me, it goes to, let's just say, we're playing three-dimensional chess game.
What happens if you sit there and U.S. is realizing they can't control Russia because they have a relationship with Iran?
U.S. is sitting, they can't control some of those countries there that they don't need U.S., let's just say.
Sometimes you're a person that is not asking for help and you want to control them, especially in military types of situations.
You have to create chaos for them to call and say, hey, I need your help.
Bingo, now that you need help, now my terms.
Papa Pa.
This happens in the insurance business when I was working for 20-something years and companies did this.
What happened when Middle East became chaotic again?
All the neighbors need America.
And guess what?
America will come and build a military base, military-industrial complex.
All these other guys are making money.
I mean, to me, for us to sit here and just play one-dimensional, not two or three, but yet assume that the CIA helped get rid of Mossadar to Brink Shawn, we're assuming the CIA got weaker than they were in 1953.
I don't think you're that naive.
You know, conspiracy theory is attractive because it's like a story and you don't need to any fact.
You don't need to prove it.
Just a story you make and you don't have any fact for that.
This is what I say.
You just guess that, for instance, the U.S. has benefited from the wars, for instance, spent $1 trillion in Iraq by taxpayers of the United States.
Who did that benefit?
What did that $1 trillion go to?
To many companies.
Not only they, I understand what you say.
Don't be a conspiracy theorist, Mossen.
I don't like it.
Please don't do that on my show.
Don't say that these businesses made a trillion dollars because of the war.
Don't do that.
I don't like that.
Is it the only arm companies are the only companies in the U.S.?
Are they the only companies that have so much influence on the government?
Can't help the United States to do whatever they want.
You said it costs taxpayers a trillion dollars.
Do you really think these politicians that are controlled by these big military contractors, do you think they wake up in the morning saying, let me think about the taxpayers?
Do you really think they care about the taxpayers?
Do you know how much national debt that we have right now?
Do you know the fact that Musk and Trump and all these guys are trying to find a way to get us to be a little bit more efficient?
You know who's losing their shit?
The people that benefit from all this expenditure, wasted expenditure.
I mean, if I give you some of the numbers of how dumb expenditure we've done in U.S., our history of spending money on stupid things, we have a long track record of it, but why did that happen?
Because some politician signed off on it.
Somebody said this was good.
Somebody was bought off on the site.
Somebody said, I'll support your campaign if you help us create this thing and if you help us get rid of this guy.
For somebody that's been in this space this long and spent time with Khomeini, for you to not think this is the only thing that's happening.
I don't want to go through the U.S. policy because talking about the complex of the benefits in Washington and different political parties, different companies.
But what I can say, only I can say, that the arm dealers, arm companies, are not the only companies that benefit and they try to intervene in the politics.
What's your point?
I want to say that when you forget about the power of the other companies in the U.S., for instance, oil companies.
Iran exported 5.5 million barrel per day at the last years of Shah.
And oil companies benefited from that.
They lost it.
Oh, no, but he was threatening to raise prices because it was going to be a new country.
It was raised already.
And they were not.
That was not the only, that was not only shock, that was opaque.
And he was a person that could make deal on the contrary to these guys that got power.
That, you know, the oil income of Iran decreased.
And, for instance, British companies, British Petroleum, actually benefited from oil of Iran.
I mean, when you're talking about the benefits in politics, the arm manufacturing companies are not the only companies.
You can look at the, you know, Wallace Street 500 and Forbes 500 and the others.
The biggest companies are not the arm manufacturing companies.
There are many other companies.
And these days, for instance, a person like Elon Musk is the richest person in the world.
And they got lots of money from the car manufacturing company or the other branches.
So if you're talking about the politics of the United States in Washington, don't forget that there are different benefits from different companies.
They have their own lobbies and several other things that at the end of the day make the politics in Washington.
Anyway, that's the politics of the United States.
But I can talk about Iran.
That Iran, after victory of revolution, gradually went to the side of the Russia and now is manipulated by that incorporation of kaleptocracies.
And Iran is unfortunately against Western countries and has no relationship with the pioneers of modern technologies, that Iranians need that.
We have a 90 million population, young generation.
So are you for sanctions or you're not for sanctions?
Sanctions and the other things.
Even in 60s, Iran was not in 80s, Iranian 60s, that I was in the industry of Iran.
Because of the situation of revolutionary regime, none of the companies, Western companies, I was eager to work with Western companies.
They didn't come to Iran to invest.
For instance, Mercedes, Mercedes-Benz was the shareholder of Havar, our truck manufacturing company.
They were a shareholder of EDEM, the company in Tabriz that produced the engines, diesel engines of the trucks.
And we begged them, we insisted that we want to increase the investment.
Please come and make more investment.
At last they said, no, we don't see any future for industries in Iran and they left Iran at last.
But that's a byproduct of the average, when you said two and a half million out of four million people living in Tehran came out to march against the Shah supporting of Khomeini.
The real figure was about 1 million.
Whatever the number is, they were brainwashed.
They were brainwashed.
Like when you remember when Cinema Rex happened and they said, oh, SAVAC did it.
And then afterwards, you realize it was one of Khomeini's people that did it.
You haven't read that story?
Yeah, I have read it.
You know, can you say that a nation, say 30 million out of 35 million, no, 25 million people out of 35 million people at least were brainwashed?
Yes.
how can it happen what percentage of you got how many people how how can What percentage of Americans do you think are brainwashed?
You know, I think that this is an insult to the people of Iran.
Oh, not at all.
Let me tell you.
You know, look at the era.
I mean, look at that.
You asked me a question.
Let me give you my argument.
Then I want to hear from you.
So you're asking me a question.
Do I think it's possible to brainwash 25 out of 35 million people?
Really?
In how many instances do you see when somebody, everybody conspires in America to say, if I was to ask you in 2016 if Trump was tied to Russia collusion, you probably believed it, did you not?
You believed it.
You can answer that.
You believed he was tied to Russia collusion.
Yes or no?
I have read in some books, but I need more documents.
Did you believe it when they first said, did you think he was tied to Russia and he was tied to the United States?
I have read in at least two books about Putin that Trump was in the business of money laundering.
Mohsen, it's a very basic question.
Do you think Trump at the beginning, did you believe he was colluding with Russia?
No.
Mohsen.
Mohsen.
That smile on your face is cracking.
You may be a good poker player.
No, I'm not.
That smile is cracking.
How many people in America believe that he was colluding with Russia?
I don't know.
stop it can you run a would you say it's only 1% Would you say 70%?
Would you say it's 70%?
What percentage of Americans in 2016 believed that President Trump was colluding with Russia?
Can you ask it on ChatGPT?
If that doesn't come up here, ask it right here first.
Let's see what it does.
Right there, see if the answer comes up.
Because there was a poll.
Nearly half of all Americans believe President Trump worked with Russia to interfere in 2016.
The most educated country in the world, let's just say.
All the Harvard and all the Yale and Colombia and USC and UCLA and Wharton.
Half a million people believed that half of America believed this guy was colluding with Russia.
What happened a few years later?
$35 million dossier by Hillary Clinton.
Convinced, and then nobody talked about it anymore.
Everybody stopped.
So you don't think conspiracy theories work?
Look at this.
They just fooled half of American people.
So for you, now take it back to them.
This would have been 80% if there was no social media.
This would have been 90% if there was no social media.
If I only have two channels or three channels or four channels to listen to and competition for media wasn't high, 80% of Americans would have been brainwashed, including me.
A lot of us, we would have been like, holy shit, that's probably what happened.
Maybe his son did meet with him.
Maybe that did take place.
Maybe this did take place.
No, for you to say that 25 to 35, the power of propaganda is so flippant.
If somebody very powerful in a political party that hates you, if they want to put a campaign of propaganda against you to destroy your life, your life is destroyed.
Your life is destroyed.
If they want to convince the world, you even whisper and said, accusations of Mossen rape in 1989, boom.
Hey, accusations of pedophilia, boom.
Accusations of Russia collusion, he's tied.
Your reputation is tied to being an agent.
When I talk to people, some people say you're still dealing with mullahs.
Some people tell me you're still tied to Nayak.
Is that true?
I mean, if they want to do it, they can do it like this.
Maybe it is, maybe it's not.
All I'm saying to you, for us to sit there and assume that Iranian people— Can I answer now?
Of course.
You asked me a question.
I give you my answer.
When you are talking about brainwashing, definitely you should have the tools for that propaganda.
Especially now, we have social media that can create political turbulence that is a new era, by the way.
And mass media.
In Iran, during the Shah, the exclusive state-run TV belonged to Shah.
There was no propaganda for the Islamists who wanted to come to power except the mosques and the mullahs that they were, you know, preachering and blah, blah.
I mean, when you look at a huge event like Islamic Revolution, I believe that revolutions are not produced by one person or a group of people.
Revolutions are a big social event that happen.
You can go and say, so far it has been written more than 1,000 books in Western countries about Islamic revolution.
You can go and find the roots of the idea of Islamism.
Get the power by Muslims to 100, to before Euro constitutional revolution of Iran.
From this point of view, Islamic revolution in Iran is a part of a bigger event in the whole region of the Middle East and Islamic countries.
Why?
Because after decline of Ottoman Empire for the first time, Islamic nations found out that, oh, they are under power of colonialism.
So they started to, and their confrontation with modern world, they started to say that, okay, what can we do?
What should we do?
And I think that in mid-50s, Ikvanul Muslimin, Muslim brother who that was founded in Egypt, and the famous book written by Sayyidi Ghot or Qutub, they call him here, his famous book, 20th Century Ignorance.
In that book, Sayyidi Ghot says that, okay, why should we try to reach the Western civilization?
We should get rid of that.
That's the ignorance.
They are brutals.
They are criminals.
We should go back to genuine Islam, that is Islam of the Prophet and companions, or in Shi'ism, prophet and imams.
Then we will have paradise on the earth and we will become powerful again.
And we will not be under control of the Western countries.
That idea from 50s spread in all the Islamic countries.
And so far, that idea of Sayyidi Qutb is still the belief of all the fundamentalists like ISIS, Daesh, or Al-Qaeda, or Islamic Republic of Iran.
That if we go back to Islamic Shariat, Islamic Fiqh, the Islam of the Prophet and the first years of Islam, then not only we create paradise on the earth, but we become powerful and we can confront the Western civilization.
That's one of the roots of Islamic revolution.
Gradually from 50s and 60s, it became a dominant idea.
The second part that gradually came to Iran was go back to 60s, for instance, and early 70s, ideological revolutionary ideas, leftist ideas, that was dominant in intellectuality of not only Iran, but even in the US.
I was studying in the US from 1975 till 1978, especially European countries.
You were not intellectual if you were not leftists.
Ideological leftist ideas became dominant.
I can borrow the word from Thomas Cohn, paradigm, the era of some discourses.
That was a revolutionary paradigm.
Everybody thought that, okay, if we make a revolution, everything will be solved.
That was so powerful idea that Mohammed Reza Shah himself calls his reforms as white revolution.
If you read his books, he says that I am the true revolutionary, but my revolution is white, but so acceptable, the idea of revolution and revolutionary, that even Mohammed tries to say that I am the revolutionary.
Here's how you can do it.
I mean, these ideas got together, gradually became dominant in intellectuality of the country.
And a big mistake, I can't say by Shah, that closed all the political parties.
And 70s, he announced only one political party, his political party, Rastaqiz, that was a farsi translation of al-Baat in Arabic countries in Iraq and Syria.
And he closed any free political activities, but kept the mosques open and gave the way to mullahs.
Altogether, I mean, these besides to many other things.
For instance, Shah was ill.
He got cancer.
Nobody knew about it.
73, 74.
Yeah.
And even I asked when I was in the U.S. in a meeting in Washington Institute.
I think that I don't know, I don't remember some of the officials.
I asked him that, why didn't you know that Shah had cancer?
That was your ally.
He said that we didn't know that until 1978.
He succeeded to keep it secret.
I mean, maybe...
What's your point with that, though?
What's your point?
I want to say that when you look at a big event like Islamic Revolution that comes from a whole society, simple answer to say that people were brainwashed or people were, you know, that was a conspiracy of U.S. and intelligence of British MI6.
I say that such a big event takes decades to grow up and has roots in many events of the society and many other things.
For instance, let me tell you, Shah improved the middle class of Iraq, definitely.
By number and by quality of life.
Education, education, and income.
Right.
Especially in 70s.
Exponentially.
The number of people.
Especially in the 70s.
After the increase of the oil income.
And he made big mistakes to inject the oil income to the economy of the country without, you know, and, you know, declining the value of the money of Iran.
Anyway, he created lots of expectations from that middle class.
That middle class could be the power base of Shah, should be.
But why they were dissatisfied in 1977, 78 and turned against him.
Why?
Because he created lots of expectations for them.
According to a document that I read from Sawak when I was at head of radio, I found that a very good note, that was a small book written by Sawaka in November 1978 that explained that why people are against Shah.
One of the main reasons it says that that was true, that middle class should support Shah, but we have created the regime of Shah, we have created lots of expectations for them that no government can satisfy that anymore.
I think that's a fair assessment, meaning that you overpromise, under deliver on some of the things.
I say this example as an example that how different factors, different facts, different roots, ideological, social, economic, all together, illness of Shah, blah, blah, blah.
Get together, make a revolution.
That's not...
Khomeini was one person.
I don't believe that that revolution was created by Khomeini.
He's underestimating the power of a united front who wants to replace somebody.
By the way, the paper you read by Savak, was that a paper written by Nassiri or Parvis Sabeti or who was?
He has no author.
That was definitely, I think that that was a teamwork and was written.
Some of the Savak members were also not happy with the Shah not being too aggressive with the two-day party and not too aggressive with Khomeini.
Some of the Savak members were like, we got to take that guy out, right?
You know those stories where, you know, the Shah didn't think Khomeini could have that much momentum and power until he started seeing all the tapes, the millions of tapes being spread in Iran and those tapes getting people to listen to what Khomeini was saying.
They're like, wait a minute, you know, maybe we need this guy over here.
The tapes were very effective.
The tapes at the time were what social media is today.
You know that.
Yeah.
My voice is at the beginning of the tapes of Khomeini.
You're kidding me.
You know, whenever he talked, first of all, at the first days, he talked every night.
And he started to say bullshits, by the way.
Every night he was talking about, you know, when you want to talk every night, he did not have so much ideas to talk every night.
He was talking about the previous constitution and very boring one.
By the way, one of the top clergy, Murtazamu Tahari, when he came to Nofle Chateau, he recommended him that, Masra, talk only once a week.
And every Sunday, he talked about an hour or less.
And when we took Masudomanion, one of my friends over there was in charge of that, taped him.
And we took that tape, the mother tape, and my voice was at the beginning of that Sohandron Nier Eda Azam Imam Khomeini.
On every tape.
Every tape, yeah.
I said that the speech of...
Are you serious?
You're the first voice in every tape that caused the revolution?
Yeah, that was not the only cause of the revolution, but that was my voice over there that I said that Sohandron Nier Ra'eda Azam Imam Khomeini, Nofle Chateau, then the date.
And then that one was duplicated one to three.
We had a small box tool and produced it one to three, then sent it to Iran by phone because one of the engineers in two engineers actually in Telecom of Iran opened the international line every night for one hour.
And through the mullahs sent it to their friends in Rome.
And then in Iran, it was duplicated and distributed amongst the people.
Yeah, on those days, the tool was tapes, cassette tapes, and radio, shortwave radio.
BBC was listened by the people.
You just validated my point.
Meaning, to be able to get everybody brainwashed, you guys did it successfully.
So you get credit for running one of the best viral campaigns ever.
Really?
Really?
You know what you did?
You're laughing.
No, I say that I don't like the word of brainwash for a nation.
This is what I oppose you.
I say that.
Not liking it because people listen to that and make their decisions.
No.
No.
When you have majority of people, people listen to the documents.
Maybe later, you know, about the President Trump that you say.
I'm a historian.
So history is nothing but facts.
I have not.
Not necessarily.
Not necessarily.
No, not necessarily.
It's who's writing the history that controls the power.
There's a quote.
What is this quote?
There is a very, very powerful quote about what you just said.
And by the way, continue.
I'm going to find this quote.
Please, go for it.
Yeah, I mean, you're a historian.
Then you are a historian.
I know about the philosophy of history, methodology of history.
Yes, the historian can choose the facts and make the story an event.
But when you say something, maybe now I say something and have some facts about that.
But after a while, at least 35 years later, or 50 years later, because that's a generation in history, 35 years.
And 50 years is the time that we historians say that now a historian can go to an event, join the history.
The documents come out, the memoirs come out, many other things that people don't know about that.
When they come out, and historians go collect them, write it down, then the real event gradually will be appeared, like a submarine that comes out of the water.
So I mean about the you mentioned President Trump is close to Russia or have some relationship with Putin, the oligarchy.
Maybe.
I have read it in two books, as I said, written by two researchers, that on 2003, 2004, money laundering was done by President Trump through the housing projects or in Atlantic City or other places.
That's just it.
You asked me, do you believe?
I said no.
Why?
Because I should wait as a historian.
I don't think that right now, we don't have, if there were any documents about that, definitely FBI and the other agencies could discover that.
But if you want to judge, have good judgment and say that, is it true or not, I think that you should wait at least 35 years or 50 years from now to everything will be gradually come out and then the future historians can write about that.
I found this.
This is what I say about the Islamic Republic as well.
Islamic Revolution, now 46 years ago, now it is going to join the history.
Regime of Shah has joined the history too.
And many documents have been published.
Memoirs of President of the U.S. or Prime Minister, foreign minister, and on Iranian side, like Rafsan Johnny memoirs or YASD or the others.
And many documents have been published from foreign ministries of these countries was released.
And a part of the secret services have been released.
Nobody trusts the Secret Service.
Are you kidding me?
We had 51 Secret Service intelligence officers signed off saying there's nothing in the Hunter Biden laptop.
And we find out what it was to the point that Biden had to pardon his entire family and everybody else.
So to me, where you're going with this, sometimes people, my experience, people who are such scholars and educators, they are in such a big box that they don't see the three dimension.
And that may offend you.
I understand.
It was intended to offend scholars.
I'm not saying it in a way to try to make friends.
Sometimes there's a box, okay, that people have.
They're living in a box.
There's the quote that I was referencing.
History is always written by the winners.
The two cultures clash.
That's the sentence of Hitler.
The loser is obliterated and a winner writes the history books, books which glorify their own cause and disparage the conquered foe.
As Napoleon's once said, what is history but a fable agreed upon the Da Vinci Code, right?
Here's how simple it was for me.
Imagine if Kamala Harris wins.
Okay?
Let's just kind of play this along.
By the way, Napoleon, maybe he thought about himself something else.
But now, after 200 years.
Well, because he lost that.
More than even the winners.
Winston Churchill is the winner of the war, okay?
Yeah.
Now we can judge about Churchill, what he has done.
Many documents have been published, his weaknesses, what he lost in World War I, what he won in World War II.
But what I'm saying is if— I want to defend the historians, by the way.
You know, I don't— By the way, respect to the historians, it's very important.
But all I'm saying is who are historians reading, you know, it's selective.
If I just sit there and read Karl Marx and all those guys, okay, am I going to study the historians based on the facts from a leftist book recommendation?
Because both the left and the right can give a top 100 book recommendations to give.
And I'm going to see it on this side.
I'm going to see it on this side.
There's some biases there.
But all I'm saying is if Kamala Harris would have won in 2024, let's see she wins.
Obama would have been able to come out and say 2016 when Trump was a fluke.
He got lucky.
And what he says, nobody's interested in what MAGA's interested in.
Let's just say.
And they would have destroyed his legacy is what they would have trying to do.
Okay.
And we would have had to sit there and say, no, DEI is, that's what we got to do, Mohsen.
No, no, transgender, LGBTQ, that's what we have to teach to our kids, right?
No, no, no.
Guess what?
We have to do all this other.
No, no, no, no.
These guys, and they would have had that chokehold on everybody.
This was about to be a revolutionary era for us.
And all I'm saying to you is, when you go back, and I like what you just said right now, you said, if after 35 years, you're going to be able to recite history and see what happened.
You know what we do know between the two?
From the person that started IRGC, yourself, with the Khomeini together, an organization that at the time you thought you were helping Khomeini because you thought he was a good guy.
Took you less than 10 years to realize this guy's not a good guy because you were in your early 20s.
You said that yourself.
And you were one of the students that was protesting against the Shah because you wanted to get rid of the Shah.
You succeeded.
The tapes worked on you.
You were in the sounds of those tapes.
Tens of millions of people listened to those tapes.
Fantastic.
Fast forward to 2025.
All the shit they said about Mohamed Reza Pahlavi and how noble Khomeini was.
Now we have data.
Now we can see how chaotic it was in the Middle East under Khomeini and his regime, and Khomeini.
And we know how things were under the Shah.
There is plenty of data to be able to say only this many people died when he and his father were there.
Oh, Reza Khan was a terrible man.
He was a dictator and a half and the enemies feared him and he was just such a fine.
I'd much rather have a guy like that on my end if we're somewhat at peace.
Oh, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, all he cared about was the money and ta-da-da-da-da, and all the castle and all the stuff that he built.
Education improved, middle income improved.
Maybe he was a little bit too ambitious.
Maybe you're right.
Maybe if he had cancer, he needed to expedite the process of replacing himself with somebody else.
Maybe he should have done that.
I think that's a very good point you're making.
With whom?
I don't know.
His son was a little too young.
Maybe he was waiting behind closed doors for a few more years.
We don't know that.
But the reality of it is right now: Israel, Hamas, Middle East, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, all of that is with the help of whoever helped Khomeini to come back in with IRGC and Iran, all that stuff.
Iran produced chaos in the Middle East.
That part cannot be disputed.
Is that fair?
Yeah, that's fair.
So, let me say, first of all, Reza Khan or Reza Shah, in my view, was a genius.
Which one?
Both of them or Reza Shah.
The father, yeah.
Yeah, he was a genius, although he was illiterated and was not educated.
But you can see from the history right now that he was a genius.
And second, this is what I say about history.
Maybe when you are living right now, you have some judgments about Trump, Harry, or in my era, Khomeini, Shah.
But when it passes 45 years from that era, and I compare Shah with Khomeini, let me say my judgment now: that many documents have come out.
You know, for instance, on those days, opposition claimed that 100,000 political prisoners, Shah has, there are 100,000 political prisoners in Iran.
That was false.
It was only 3,000, 3,500.
3,000, a few hundred.
Now that if I compare Shah with Khomeini, definitely, I already said, first of all, his personality, Shah, was a better guy than Khomeini.
First.
Second, what he did for Iran, because he believed in the modernization of Iran, was definitely better than the Islamic Republic.
As I said, that if you tell me that you have only two choices: a military dictator like Shah, but want to modernize Iran, and a religious regime like the Islamic Republic, and a guy like Khomeini or Khomeini, which one do you choose?
You have no other option.
I say, okay, definitely I choose a military dictator that wants to modernize Iran.
But we found out, now that we go back and look at what happened in Iran, I can say that if Shah was more democrat, if Shah, let me say something, quote you, when I was in Iran and I went to different universities, I had lots of lectures and classrooms for students.
That was the reason, one of the reasons that they arrested me.
Once in the University of Kerman, I said to students in auditorium, maybe 1,000 students were over there.
I said that if I had my today's knowledge at the days of Islamic Revolution, Which is impossible, but suppose that I had that knowledge and that wisdom.
Then on 1977, when Shah has started a little changes i in his regime, I definitely recommended him that, Mr. Shah, now that you are going to remove Hawaii and want to bring Ahmu Zegar to power, this is a reform in your regime.
Inject some other things in your reform injection.
Open the prisons, let the political prisoners come out, not the terrorists, but the ordinary opposition.
Go for a free election.
Let them run for a free election.
That he already did it in 1960.
And because that he knew that had cancer, I said to a student that I was volunteer to write his speech as well to say to the people that, okay, I'm ill.
I wanted to do for you the best, people of Iran.
Now, I'm going, I'm dying.
This is my son and the Council of Monarchy.
They run the country.
And so open the doors a little bit.
And I said that, do you know what happened if he did that in 1977?
Millions of people came to streets and said that, oh, don't go.
We forgive you for whatever we have heard about you.
But he, even until November 1978, he still was not, you know, thinking that he can, for instance, talk about Mossadegh or accept until December or January 1978.
I mean, yes, if you're comparing these two regimes, definitely the regime of Shah was more successful and had more benefit for the people of Iran.
Why?
Because wanted to modernize Iran.
What was the big mistake?
I think that democratization.
You can't have economic development.
That's a fair assessment.
If you don't have any political development, social and cultural development.
No, that's a fair assessment.
I think you've made a few very good points.
If you knew you had cancer 73, 74, and the only people that know, maybe your wife even didn't know for a while, maybe you had to kind of have a plan.
Maybe he had a plan in his mind that didn't happen fast enough.
Maybe he was waiting for his sons to be ready for it.
I don't know.
Maybe he was afraid of opening it up.
Those things, you know, Zahiri's written about it.
I'm sure you know who I'm talking about when the ambassador.
A lot of people have written about it.
By the way, last question before we wrap up.
What did Khomeini think about Israel?
What was Khomeini's opinion on Israel?
He was against Israel.
Why?
I think that the Islamic Revolution was born anti-Israeli because on those days, again, go back to the 70s, to be pro-Palestinians, pro-PLO, pro-anti-Israel was something that you were not intellectual or you were not Muslim if you were not anti-Israel.
And everybody believed that Israel should be wiped out from the map.
Even on those days, Khomeini was not the only person.
Was it hate, like sheer hate?
Maybe.
It was.
And would you put that at the top or would you put the US above that?
No, the US, I think, was above that.
And then who else would you put in the top three?
Top three.
Top three.
So if Israel's one, U.S. is one, who else would you put in top three?
Western Europe.
Western Europe.
Got it.
And Western civilization.
Well, I appreciate you for coming out.
By the way, if you're Iranian, if you're Iranian, you know his story.
So it's not like you don't know.
If you follow, if you finish this podcast till now, there's a very high likelihood you somehow, someway are interested in Iran.
Okay, whether you agree with him or not, he's got a YouTube channel.
Rob, if we can put the link below for the audience to go see.
What I respect is the fact that you came down and you had the conversation with me and we had a nice little discourse, respectful discourse, and you presented your thoughts.
I gave mine and the audience gets to decide and say, Pat, I completely disagree with you.
I agree with you.
You know, it is what it is, but I appreciate the podcast.
Thank you for having me.
Thank you.
That was a very good discussion.
And hope to see you again.
Thank you so much.
Appreciate you.
Take care, everybody.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
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