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Aug. 28, 2025 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
29:52
Max Blumenthal and Anya Parampil - 'What We Saw in Iran'

The Grayzone's Max Blumenthal and Anya Parampil reflect on their recent trip to Iran - just weeks before Israel's sneak attack.

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Supervisors Supposedly Serving 00:01:38
Okay, hello again, everyone.
My name is Chris Rossini, the Ron Paul Institute.
I'm also on Fridays on the Ron Paul Liberty Report.
On behalf of Dr. Paul and Daniel, I also want to welcome you.
I hope you're having a good time already.
We are so thankful, like Daniel said earlier, we live kind of atomized lives in this digital world.
So to get together and have people crisscross the country is really special.
I wish I could put it into words.
You know, it makes us feel that what we're doing is important and we're reaching people from all over the place.
So thank you very much again for coming.
We're very lucky to have three real authentic journalists, Natalie Lader, and of course, Max and Anya.
And what I mean is a journalist is supposed to be a watchdog.
They are supposed to serve the people to be a watchdog against power.
And today, that barely exists.
A very vast majority of people who call themselves journalists are really just the marketing department of the government.
That's really the only position they serve.
They color between the lines.
They do criticize.
You could criticize Trump.
You could criticize Biden, but you have to keep it within a certain range.
We have journalists, all three of them, that go outside of the approved range, and they put themselves, their reputations, and even their lives at times at risk for us to be watchdogs.
And we have three fantastic journalists today.
So I want to bring up the two that you've already seen.
Jewish Community in Isfahan 00:14:02
They actually went to Iran.
Now, how many journalists will do that?
They're going to share their stories.
Max Blumenthal on your parent pill.
Thank you Chris and Daniel and everybody with the Ron Paul Institute.
And it's great to see everyone.
And it was so fun to see the judge and all of our favorite guests, Doug McGregor, Jeffrey Sachs in person.
How much fun.
So Max and I did just come back from Iran.
We were there in May, about a month before the Israeli bombing started.
And going into it, I'll admit I was a little bit concerned because I knew that things on the surface were going well between the U.S. and Iran.
At least we were engaged in diplomatic negotiations, which is always a positive sign.
But in the back of my head, I felt if things are going well between the United States, there's then just a greater chance that the Israelis are going to do something insane to mess it up, which is eventually what happened.
We were just very lucky with timing that it happened about three weeks after we left.
And we took our daughter, our four-year-old daughter, so it was kind of a family trip, but also a work trip.
And I guess I'll just speak from my perspective being there, kind of working, but mostly being there as a mom and just getting to experience the culture.
And obviously, I think as a woman, people are probably very interested in what it was like for me or what it was like for women there.
And you'd probably be interested to know that by the time we got there, they weren't even in Tehran and in other, the other major city we went to in Isfahan.
They weren't even enforcing the hijab or covering.
Most of the time that I was in the city, or during my trip in general, I just had to have a scarf kind of around my shoulders in case somebody requested that I put it up, but that never happened.
It actually only happened twice, once in the media offices of state TV, which I guess I would assume would be more conservative, and once in a church I was asked to cover because, believe it or not, one of the experiences we had was visiting a 350-year-old Armenian church in Isfahan and getting to meet some of the Orthodox community that is protected in the Iranian constitution.
They have a large population in Isfahan specifically.
It's interesting to go there and talk to Christians in Iran because it is true.
A lot of the next question that I get from people when I'm talking about this is, well, can you convert to Christianity in Iran?
And the answer is no.
It is an Islamic country and there are restrictions on conversion.
But it was still interesting to see that there is this whole community there that is thriving and allowed to practice because they're ancient and they've been there for hundreds of years.
And I wish we had pictures to show you of this beautiful 350-year-old cathedral.
It's called the Vank Cathedral, the Church of Saintly Sisters.
Yeah, you can see it.
I posted some video of it.
So that was one of the places that I was asked to cover.
But in general, that is not the issue that when I spoke with women there, they were mainly concerned about.
Women in Iran were mostly concerned about the same issues that women here are concerned about, which is the fact that they had to work too much.
They would all tell me that they felt that their husbands and they had to work too much just to afford daycare, a home, and food, and that they have no ability to save.
And of course, people there are living under sanctions and are very aware of how U.S. interference in their country has helped create that situation.
But I did tell them, you know, you'd be surprised if you came to the United States.
This is exactly what most people your age would say are their issues here as well.
It's this international generational crisis, I think, of people of a certain age that aren't able to live at the standard that their parents did.
But those are the issues I think that most Iranian women are concerned about, even though here, obviously, we hear a lot about the scarf and their covering.
There were some power outages that had began while we were there that I think have gotten worse.
And from what I understand, the water situation has gotten worse.
People may have seen just a few days ago, Netanyahu gave us a directive, essentially, telling the Iranian people to rise up while drinking this giant jug of water because there is a water shortage issue in Iran because of the climate, because of it being very dry.
And Netanyahu saying, if you just overthrow your government, we'll teach you all this wonderful, these tricks that we've learned in Israel to desalinate our water.
And we can come and get you water if you just overthrow your government.
So there's pressure in that way that was ramping up between the rolling blackouts and oil for water deal.
Yeah, exactly.
And so I kind of lost my train of thought.
Well, on the issue of minorities, I'll be releasing at the Gray Zone in the next week or so a documentary on Iranian Jews.
We also had the chance to engage with the Jewish communal leadership in Iran.
Iran has the second largest population of Jews in the region, next to the entity where many Iranian Jews went and were enticed to go.
I went to Sunday prayers at a synagogue in Isfahan.
I met with Iran's an Iranian, the Jewish parliamentarian who's guaranteed a seat under Iran's constitution, Dr. Hamayun Samaya at his office in Tehran.
And it became clear to me that the Jewish community there is very secure, maybe not necessarily stable because they're growing older.
It's harder for them to, you know, to grow with all of this outside pressure, but they were secure.
They are not obsessed with anti-Semitism in their own society.
Their synagogues are open and crowded urban areas.
They're not surrounded with armed guards like you see here.
And their leadership is officially anti-Zionist, supports Palestine, and told me there is captive Judaism and there is authentic Judaism.
And we represent the authentic Judaism of Moses that sees life in all of humanity.
Captive Judaism in Israel is defiling humanity.
And it's amazing to hear this.
And it is authentic.
They get in some ways more rights than Muslim Iranians under the Islamic Republic because the Armenian Christians or Iranian Jews are allowed to drink wine in their own communities and have wine in their rituals.
They're allowed to have relationships outside marriage.
They're given many rights as long as they abide by the constitution of the Islamic Republic, which does limit Jews' ability.
For example, there has never been a Jewish member of an Iranian cabinet.
They couldn't be elected president, but there's this kind of bargain.
And they generally economically are doing better than the average Iranian.
And they're very respected.
And you can see in some cities, like in Isfahan, there's a mosque right next to a synagogue in the city of Yazd, a mosque, a synagogue, and a Zoroastrian temple, all next to each other.
And it's just so amazing to see Judaism outside of the Zionist insanity that has consumed the West.
There's not this neurosis there about anti-Semitism where they see at the end of a marathon a Nike billboard says never again until next year because marathon runners don't want to run at 26 miles again and then all of a sudden Bill Ackman comes in and shorts Nike's stock and everybody wants to ban Nike until they change the billboard.
No, it's just a normal traditional Judaism that has existed there since the Babylonian period when they were liberated by Cyrus the Great.
And it's a very normal society.
Iranian society is a very wholesome society where our daughter felt completely comfortable.
We couldn't have enjoyed ourselves more.
We got to go into the homes of average Iranians.
We saw the diverse panoply of opinions and people will come up to us and talk to us in the street and we'd say, we're from the U.S., we're from America.
And they'd be like, we love America.
We just don't like your government, but we love you.
And some people would even say, we want regime change in our country.
And we want the Shah to come back.
There was all kinds of opinions.
I would talk to some younger people and they wouldn't understand why Iran was backing this, had backed the Syrian government or why they were backing resistance in Gaza or why they were supporting the Hashdal Shab in Iraq.
They didn't understand it.
They thought it was a waste of money.
And now what's happened since the war, and I'll talk more about the political situation next, but this is just more of a social commentary.
Since the war, Iranians of all different political and economic backgrounds have rallied around the flag.
And now, and this is what our Iranian friends and contacts are telling us, they see that the fight in Palestine or in Syria has actually come to them, and now they understand what Qasem Soleimani was doing over there, and they are starting to identify with the government in a new way.
And the clerical government is actually working with this and encouraging the singing of pre-Islamic Republic nationalist songs in public and honoring pre-Islamic Republic nationalist heroes.
So there's a rise of nationalism in Iran.
The concept of regime change has never suffered a more devastating blow than it did during the last 12 days.
And one more point, many of the people we met in Iran thought the war was too short.
They were deeply, deeply supportive across political lines of the ballistic missile attacks, the retaliatory attacks on Israel.
And they believed that they could win a war of attrition.
So they are prepared for another round that they feel is inevitable.
Yeah, something that was interesting is that, well, and the reason that we talk so much about the religious minorities and even the people coming up to us in the street and voicing their opinion is because that's just so far from what any American is exposed to when it comes to hearing about Iran.
I think if you told most Americans that there are churches and synagogues in Iran, they would be shocked that something, that those communities even exist.
But you'd also probably be shocked, and I was shocked by the level to which people were very open about voicing their political opinions in the street, just coming up to us, recognizing that we were American, and in some cases, yes, saying, tell your government to overthrow us and bring the Shah back.
Like there was a wide range of opinions that people would just, and obviously the people who could identify us and speak English would probably be more likely to say something like that to us in public.
But I would say that even meeting people that are closer to the government or pro-government, they're still very critical.
Pretty much everyone that I met in Iran was critical of the government in some way, including from people that say that the government, the current government didn't go far enough in terms of confronting Israel or they feel that the current Iranian government is even doing too much to appease the United States or shouldn't even be bothering trusting the United States at this point because of our history reneging on deals and undermining them.
And I think that's it's a it's a valid point.
I don't know why anyone would trust us at this stage, but.
Yeah, I mean, Pazesh Gian, the reformist president, is leaving the door open for negotiations.
And there's more opposition to that than ever before because look at what happened.
When we were there towards the end, I managed to be able to sit down and talk with some of the high-level diplomats who were involved in the negotiations in Doha on the nuclear issue, which Trump had initiated.
And they were confounded.
They didn't understand Trump.
And they thought that Trump was playing some kind of 13-dimension chess, that he had some strange agenda, that he was actually deliberately making these bellicose and irrational statements in order to tank their economy, and that he actually had an agenda.
And what I think they couldn't imagine was that Netanyahu was in charge ultimately of the entire game that was being played with these negotiations, and that Trump, whether he knew it or not, was just providing cover for Israel to catch Iran by surprise.
Iran Bombed, Broadcasters Targeted 00:03:42
And what did they do when they attacked?
The attack began not with a total air domination of Israel.
It began from within.
It was similar to the Operation Spider's Web that Zelensky waged on Russia, where he used commercial grade, they adapted commercial grade drones to drop munitions and attacked from within from drone bases they had set up months, if not years in advance.
And the population that the Mossad was using, many of them were Afghan migrants or members of minority groups, which shows you how Israel and the West are constantly trying to break down the mosaic inside Iran, the social unity.
And this was devastating.
I mean, the fear that people had inside Iran that we were speaking to was mostly about the Mossad terror cells.
They literally had a society infested with sleeper cells.
Well, we were told Iranian sleeper cells were going to terrorize us.
And they would wake up every morning wondering if there would be a car bomb.
This beautiful North Tehran neighborhood that we went to to see markets and all of these famous restaurants called Tajrish was heavily attacked, not only by Israeli missiles, but by these Mossad terrorists.
They assassinated, they were mainly responsible for assassinating nuclear scientists, taking out ballistic missile launchers.
But what we also saw was the prowess of an Iranian military that has developed its capacity almost on a completely independent basis with very little help from Russia or China.
I was able to tour an IRGC museum, which is an exposition or an exhibition of their ballistic missiles, which are their national pride, which they developed during the Iran-Iraq war to respond to Saddam's war on the cities.
And by the middle of the war, they were able to actually hit Baghdad.
And now you can see they've developed the premier hypersonic missiles in the world, which can reach Tel Aviv in less than seven minutes.
And this is what has granted Iran its deterrence and which led Donald Trump to initiate a ceasefire within 12 days.
Once again, it's a completely independent program that is sanctioned.
The IRGC is listed as a terrorist organization by the U.S. You know who else is sanctioned and listed as almost a terrorist entity?
It's IRIB, which is Iran's version of like NPR.
It's its national broadcaster.
And we participated in a conference called the Sob Festival, which, you know, I hope maybe some of the people who've appeared here might be able to attend in the future.
You know, who are some of the speakers?
George Galloway, Aleister Crook, Glenn Deeson, figures like Mick Wallace and some of the people you see on Jojo Napolitano.
And the offices next to the conference hall where we held this conference, which is the IRIB offices, built a beautiful building built in 1940.
It was one of the first major targets of Israel's assault.
They bombed this broadcaster.
And for those of you who haven't seen it, look up the live broadcast when they were under attack.
It was an Iranian woman demonstrating defiance, but also the power of women in Iranian society.
Knowing they were about to be bombed, she continued broadcasting.
And you could actually see the studio being bombed.
Two Questions Revolution 00:09:43
She survived.
I think her name is Sehar Imami.
And that was incredible.
Just a few weeks after we were there, that area was bombed because they don't want, for the same reason that Palestinian journalists like Anas al-Sharif are being assassinated in Gaza.
Yeah, and since returning, it's been an experience for me.
I'll just share because our daughter hears us talking about the war and she'll ask us if certain places that she went that she remembers are okay, or if the people that she knew that, like the nice women that played with her, are okay.
And it was very, it was difficult because some of those people were telling me during that period that their own children were telling them, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, because the Israelis were heavily bombing their neighborhoods in Tehran.
And it was just a few weeks after we were there.
I'm curious kind of what people want to know about Iran, what the audience would ask us.
I don't know if there's a way to maybe take two questions, one or two questions if we have time for that.
Or how you guys feel about that, Daniel and Chris.
We don't have much folks.
Okay, well, if anybody has a question, because I feel like we could just ramble, but I'm more curious what you guys would like to know.
Yes.
Well, I know you've come to Damascus as well.
Did you compare and contrast the experience of Tehran versus Damascus, or did you pick up on some similar themes?
A lot more drinking in Damascus.
Damascus, definitely closer to a Western capital, I would say, just in terms of lifestyle.
But the main, the common theme that I would say observe is that there's this sense when you're in both places that you're in a truly ancient, sophisticated civilization.
Whether, I mean, in Damascus and in Syria, I felt that everywhere because the history is so apparent.
And then in Iran as well, you just feel that these are people that have been living and building incredible societies.
I mean, long before we started building our own.
And I just, I wish that we could respect them and deal with them in a way that was respectful instead of trying to tear it all down.
Because, you know, Syria was a was a, when Syria fell, I just, the first thought that I have is all of the people, of course, that we met and the rich society and culture that we saw now is getting destroyed by our allies in the country.
And my fear after Iran is that something similar could happen there too.
I don't think anything is off the table.
I think as strong as Iran has demonstrated itself to be, I don't think the Israelis are going to give up easily.
And I think they're really going to push in the next few months to achieve their goals in Tehran.
Yeah, in Iran, you have Shia Islam as the backbone of the Islamic revolution in Iran and the interpretation of it through the persecution of Hussein, the social justice component.
It really defines Iranian society along with their civilizational role at the center of Eurasia for thousands of years and the pride.
Whereas Syria was much easier to pull apart.
You had a minority sect in charge.
The Sunni population was being pushed against it through this CIA dirty war and Gulf Wahhabi propaganda.
And the sanctions hit Syria so much harder, the Caesar sanctions, whereas Iran has been under sanctions since 1980, 1979, 1980, and they have been able to withstand sanctions through their economic prowess and relationships with neighbors.
So I think there's a major difference between Syria and Iran.
But losing Syria as part of the axis of resistance is a harsh blow.
Joe, you had a question.
I'm curious if you were hassled by the FBI or the Treasury Department.
I've been invited to Iran that whatever they're sanctioned, I was dissuaded from going about the 20th century.
So the question is whether we were hassled by the FBI.
I mean, we were fully prepared to be hassled on our way back because I was actually called in for questioning on our way back from a vacation just a few months before back in February.
We come back and it was like a trek.
It's a thing that the Customs Border Patrol has, it's called like a traveler recognition.
And they've been targeting people on a political basis under this specification.
And they brought me in and asked me bizarre questions about, you know, do you know these people?
One of the people turned out to be Medea Benjamin from Code Pink, but her birth name was presented to me, Susan Benjamin, and so I didn't know it was her, and other names.
And I vaguely remember one of those names being Mahmoud Khalil.
And this was before he was arrested by ICE.
So they thought that I was going to be a snitch or something.
I don't know what they were trying to do, but it was a completely routine vacation.
And so I was expecting this coming back from Iran, but that didn't happen.
And they waved us through.
This may have been because negotiations were taking place.
I wouldn't expect to be waved through again, but the trip was completely worth it.
And I encourage, if you can go to Iran, I encourage it.
Let's take two questions at once.
I don't know how to call on anyone.
Is there sort of leftism or Marxism in Iran today?
The socialist left was heavily repressed by Khomeini's forces after the revolution.
That's well established.
But there actually are leftist or Marxist youth in Iran who have had some demonstrations.
They want to come out and demonstrate for Palestine.
They still are seen with suspicion, but you have to understand the revolution and the way Shia Islam is interpreted is also influenced in a way through a thinker named Ali Shariati who influenced the revolutionaries.
He conceived something called Red Shiism, Shi'ism that emphasizes social justice.
So it feels a lot like the rhetoric I hear there feels very similar to the rhetoric I hear in progressive social justice, anti-war circles in the U.S.
And we actually became friendly with some secular leftists who support the Islamic revolution mainly because of its foreign policy.
Yeah, I would say the anti-imperialist foreign policy or the critic of the criticism of empire is the way that that flavor of the revolution lasts today.
But definitely the political left element was drummed out.
Compare being a young Muslim in Iran to being a young Muslim in Egypt and watching the genocide in Gaza.
I mean, there are some of the Muslims, a minority of Muslims across the region who can actually be proud of what their government did, whereas Egyptian young youth hang their heads with shame and they want to do something.
Yeah, right there.
With the return of conflict being inevitable, the Zirad, you hated, do you believe that it's going to, that Iran isn't going to show us what was right this time around and that the escalation is going to be much quicker?
Or does it be sort of the same great standing tip?
There's a debate about that right now about whether Iran should take the initiative.
But I can't say they have promised a harsher response.
And I think it's contingent on their ability to deter Israel with air defenses, which have been attrited.
I mean, there's no debate about that.
And a lot of the Israeli attacks came through Azerbaijan over the Caspian Sea.
They were standoff attacks.
So, how can you deter those attacks that are almost outside your territory?
The Azerbaijani government is growing closer and closer to Israel.
So, Israel is basically on Iran's immediate doorstep.
And there's also this new deal over the Zangazor corridor, which everyone should consider.
So, also ballistic missiles.
Iran had more ballistic missiles than Israeli intelligence thought they had, but they have to also have launchers, and many of the launchers were taken out.
So, I think we're about to see a long-term war in a series of cycles.
But Israel suffered more damage than we understood.
It wasn't just $580 million to the Weizmann Institute, where they developed drone technology, AI technology.
Haifa's main oil refinery, one of only two oil refineries in the country, was destroyed.
Iran actually dealt them a pretty serious blow.
Just because Max brought up Israel pretty much being on the border with Azerbaijan, something that was interesting for me was to ask Iranians what they thought happened to their president that crashed on the Raisi that crashed in a helicopter with his foreign minister right near the border with Azerbaijan at a very tense moment in Israeli and Iranian relations.
Hamas Leader at Inauguration 00:00:44
And most of the people that I spoke to actually said at the beginning they were skeptical, they weren't sure, they thought maybe it was an accident, but that since all of these assassinations have come down, particularly Hania in Tehran, where the Israelis targeted him in a guest house.
The Hamas leader.
Yeah, the Hamas leader, Ishmael Hani, who was there for the inauguration last, the Iranian presidential inauguration last year, last October, where they like targeted him in an official guest house of the government and were successful in killing him.
But most people that I talked to said they do believe that Israel did have something to do with that crash, even though the government itself would not make that statement.
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