In today’s housekeeping, Sam explains his digital business model. He and Yasmine Mohammed (co-host) then speak with Masih Alinejad about gender apartheid in Iran. They discuss the Iranian revolution, the hypocrisy of Western feminists, the morality police and the significance of the hijab, the My Stealthy Freedom campaign, kidnapping and assassination plots against Masih, lack of action from the U.S. government, the effect of sanctions, the cowardice of Western journalists, the difference between the Iranian population and the Arab street, the unique perspective of Persian Jews, Islamism and immigration, the infiltration of universities, and other topics. If the Making Sense podcast logo in your player is BLACK, you can SUBSCRIBE to gain access to all full-length episodes at samharris.org/subscribe.
I'm now officially in both Podcastistan and Substackistan.
So for those of you who support the podcast and may also be subscribed to Waking Up, I wanted to clarify what I'm doing over on Substack.
As I said in my announcement, I wanted to get back to writing.
While speaking is easier and reaches more people and is a better business, writing is a discipline that improves everything I do.
So Substack will essentially be my workshop for writing, but it will also be a place for me to quickly respond to current events and amplify other people's work across a larger network.
Which is what I actually miss having left Twitter.
I might start writing a book over there and solicit feedback from readers.
I might eventually commission the work of other writers and scholars and fund some original research.
I'm told the Substack is also building the capacity to stream live video, which I'm looking forward to experimenting with.
But whatever happens, I'm going to do my best to create something interesting there.
However, if it doesn't succeed as a business, it won't make sense for me to stay there.
As I've discussed on this podcast before, no one knows what the best digital business model is, and what seems right today could be disastrous in the future.
The truth is, no one has figured this out, even if some of us are succeeding financially.
And yet, I believe I've found the best business model available.
However, when we announced my arrival on Substack last week, Some of you got annoyed at being asked to pay for another subscription to gain access to my work.
Of course, I feel your pain, but I don't quite understand it.
Working on Substack is a new venture, just as going on a speaking tour or writing another book would be, and I doubt anyone would think that those things should be included in the price of my podcast.
I've decided to spend time working on something new, but not less time at making sense or over at waking up.
Of course, many of you know this, but let me briefly clarify my digital business model.
Here's the bottom one.
I never want anyone to have to do any math to figure out if they can afford to subscribe to my digital work.
So if paying for this podcast, or for waking up, or for my new substack causes you actual stress, please ask for free subscriptions.
That's what the policy is for.
All you have to do is send an email to support at samharris.org.
Now I know that not everyone fits neatly into the space provided.
If you have an active account on one or more of my existing platforms, and you feel that your subscription to Substack should be included or discounted, well then just reach out to customer support.
None of us should suffer brain damage over this.
I would much rather you be there on your own terms than not be there at all.
Anyway, this has been my policy from the moment we launched Waking Up and from the moment we put a paywall on the podcast.
Over the years, I've seen people try to dissect it, and most of their intuitions are, frankly, wrong.
Some people assume that while subscribers can get my content for free, almost no one does this.
So my apparent generosity is just a form of virtue signaling.
Others assume that while many people might take my work for free, I'm merely implementing the tried-and-true freemium strategy, wherein most free subscribers eventually convert to paying.
So my apparent generosity is nothing more than tricky marketing.
But the truth is that hundreds of thousands of people take my content for free, and few of these people ever start paying for it.
There's no trick.
I just keep putting the rabbit in the hat while everyone watches.
And during the COVID pandemic, there were days when over a thousand people would request my podcast or my app, and often both, for free.
And we still receive hundreds of such requests each day.
I staff a team of 20 customer service agents, and most of their time is spent servicing free accounts.
But I love this business model.
It is an extraordinary luxury to be able to give my work away for free without having to rely on ads and to still be building a successful digital business.
But as you might imagine, there is a reason why most content creators and platforms aren't rushing to copy what I'm doing here.
They worry, of course, that offering everything for free will discourage people from actually paying.
Unfortunately, this is a totally rational fear to have.
I just happen to be lucky enough to have found an audience of subscribers who pay in part because they know others can get my work for free.
Like me, they understand that many people will abuse the policy, but they want to keep it in place for those who need it.
Those of you who support my work, to whatever degree, have given me the freedom to explore new ways of using my time creatively.
Totally unencumbered by pressure from sponsors or publishers or even from you, my own audience.
This is an absolute gift and it's one that I will always strive to return to you by speaking and writing honestly about some of the most challenging issues of our time.
Once again, please email support at samharris.org if you need any assistance.
Okay.
The topic of today's podcast is gender apartheid.
Bill Maher actually did a great closing essay on this topic last week.
It's really worth watching.
I recommend you go to YouTube and search for Bill Maher and gender apartheid and you'll find it.
And there he actually refers to my co-host today, Yasmin Mohamed, and she's been on the podcast before.
Yasmin is the founder and president of Free Hearts, Free Minds, a non-profit charity that provides mental health support for free thinkers living in Muslim-majority countries, where the so-called crime of renouncing religion can be punished by death.
Her book, which we discussed on this podcast, is titled Unveiled, and is a memoir that recalls her experience growing up in a fundamentalist Islamic home and her arranged marriage to a member of Al-Qaeda.
And in it, she sheds light on the religious trauma that so many women still experience today and are unable to talk about.
The book has been widely translated, and versions of it in Arabic and Farsi and Urdu and Indonesian can be accessed for free, courtesy of the Richard Dawkins Foundation.
Yasmin is also the host of the Yasmin Mohamed Podcast, where I recently appeared.
And actually my experience in the Q&A with her audience afterwards inspired me to do this episode of my podcast, because so many of the Iranian dissidents on that call seem to have a quite positive attitude toward the prospect of an American intervention in Iran, because they so desperately want a regime change.
Anyway, we cover that topic and others with today's guest, And she is Masih Alinijad.
Masih is an Iranian-American journalist and a campaigner for women's rights.
She's the author of the best-selling memoir, The Wind in My Hair.
And in 2023, Time Magazine named her one of its Women of the Year.
And she was elected President of the World Liberty Congress.
Masih is one of the most prominent and vocal figures challenging the Islamic Republic of Iran.
And in 2014, she launched the My Stealthy Freedom campaign.
This is a campaign for women's rights in the Muslim world and against compulsory veiling, and it became the largest civil disobedience movement in the history of the Islamic Republic.
Today, Mosse continues to write and host Tablet, which is a satirical weekly show on the voice of America, and she continues to campaign to end gender apartheid in Iran and Afghanistan in particular.
And you can support her work over at MyStealthyFreedom.org.
In today's episode, Yasmin and I talk to Masih about gender apartheid in Iran, we discuss the Iranian Revolution, the hypocrisy of Western feminists, the morality police and the significance of the hijab, her MyStealthyFreedom campaign, the kidnapping and assassination plots directed against her, Lack of action from the U.S.
government, the effect of sanctions, the cowardice of Western journalists, the difference between the Iranian population and the Arab street, the unique perspective of Persian Jews, Islamism and immigration, the infiltration of universities, and other topics.
There's no paywall on this one, as I consider this another PSA.
And now I bring you Yasmin Muhammad and Masi Alinejad.
I am here with Masi Alinejad and Yasmin Muhammad Ladies, thanks for joining me.
Thank you so much for having us.
I'm very excited.
This is the first time that I see Yasmin in person, and I'm very excited to be with you, Sam.
I hadn't realized that.
I've seen you in person, so I've seen both of you in person, but I knew you guys knew each other, but I was unaware that it was totally virtual, so it's great to get you together in real life.
It's weird that it's been totally virtual, because I feel so close.
We've known each other for so long, and it just feels like It doesn't feel like we're meeting for the first time, but it's nice to get our very first hug finally.
I needed this hug, especially on this beautiful day.
Nice.
Well, I am 3,000 miles away, unfortunately, but I hug you both from afar.
And I want to talk about Iran, Masi, and about the regime and about popular sentiment in Iran.
Because, you know, Iran has been a very big deal for many decades, but it's really been off the radar of most Americans, certainly.
Until fairly recently, because for the first time, Iran directly attacked Israel in this ongoing war in Gaza, and has been obviously funding proxies, and so it's been in a proxy war both with Israel and with the U.S.
for quite some time.
But it's also been widely reported that unlike many other Muslim societies that we might think about, there really is a significant gulf between the religious radicalization of the regime and the people.
And so I wanted to get someone on the podcast who could speak to that and to speak to Well, how we should think about Iran, because we in the West, and in America in particular, seem profoundly confused and ineffectual.
I mean, among many other issues, I think we're witnessing just a Total failure of deterrence with respect to Iran.
I'll just list a few things that we know Iran has been up to.
In addition to the proxy wars, the funding of Hezbollah and Hamas and the Houthis, We have a habit on the part of Iran of directly targeting foreign nationals and dissidents in foreign countries, and you have been one of those targets.
I've been given second life, so I'm celebrating my life every single day.
But Sam, when you say that, when you call it a proxy war, I have to say that when the Islamic Republic directly attacked Israel, so no longer it's a proxy war.
The Islamic Republic for years and years, we've been Warning the U.S.
government and Europeans that the Islamic regime is a great sponsor of terrorism, and if you don't take strong actions against them, they're going to come after you, you know?
I grew up in a very, very tiny village, and I remembered from my childhood that I was forced As a schoolgirl, to shout death to Israel, death to America, as loud as the Tel Aviv would shake.
You know, this is what we've been brainwashed.
And burning the flag of America, burning the flag of Israel.
So this is the mindset of the Islamic Republic.
This These are the main pillars of the Islamic Republic, you know, like death to America, death to Israel and women.
Yeah, but that that mindset doesn't actually reach the Iranian people.
I think that's the key here is that a lot of people hear that from the Islamic Republic of Iran.
They hear the chants and then they assume that that's what the people believe and that's what the people feel.
But that that's not true.
Exactly.
I remember that when I was invited to go to school to give a talk, A lot of school girls, like young teenagers, when they heard about Iran, they were really like kind of scared.
Like, you know, do you really hate America?
And I explained to them about how I, as a little girl, was forced to cover myself in chanting death to America.
So I actually told them, you know, in the map, you might see one country, Iran, But there is actually two.
One is Islamic Republic, the other one is Iran.
So Islamic Republic took the whole nation hostage.
Now you hear from all the teenagers, schoolgirls chanting, death to Islamic Republic.
And they don't want to actually be isolated or hate Israel or America.
But yeah, you're right.
People sometimes get confused and conflicting Iran with the Islamic Republic.
No, it's a huge gap.
Talk to me about the ratio here.
Like how many people do you think, just in your opinion, how many people do you think support the Islamic regime of Iran, of Iranian people?
I don't think that I have to say this based on my opinion.
The fact is the election.
They say that, okay, maybe 25% showed up to the election, recent election.
But we see empty stations.
We see that they don't actually have proper footages to show.
So they use like, you know, fake footages from previous elections to actually show it off to the rest of the world that we're still legitimate.
That actually telling the rest of the world that this regime is in a serious crisis, even among their own supporters, those who back the Islamic Republic, those who actually like like Like my own parents.
They were supporting the regime.
Now they are the victim of the same regime.
My own sister was on TV to denounce me publicly.
My own brother was a target of the Islamic Republic.
He was in jail for two years just because of being my own brother.
So my family members, they see this is the regime that they supported.
There are many teachers, workers, you know, now the working class.
Are not backing the Islamic Republic anymore.
They're backing teenagers who are getting killed for the crime of simply showing their hair.
Masih, give me a little bit more of your background.
I mean, when did you leave Iran?
I know you were born just before the fall of the Shah, so you don't really remember Iran before the Islamic Republic came into being, but many of us have seen footage of what it was like.
And it really, I mean, Iran in the 60s and 70s, before the fall, it looked like San Francisco, practically.
I mean, maybe it was San Francisco plus secret police, but it looked like a I mean, it's an unrecognizable society, given what has since happened.
What's your sense of what public sentiment was?
I mean, there was a ton of resentment toward the Shah for understandable reasons, but just what was the level of religiosity among the Persian people at that point?
And when Khomeini came into power and created a proper theocracy, just how popular was it at that point?
To be honest, I was only two years old.
I don't remember anything.
But as you said, Sam, when I, you know, look at the pictures of my own parents, my mom, my mom, she was covering her hair.
Clearly she was a Muslim woman, but in a beautiful, colorful, traditional way.
But immediately when Khomeini took over the whole country, her picture, even her hijab has changed.
Became absolutely black and you just see my mom's nose.
That's it.
Yeah, my beautiful mom was like very oppressed in the way that Khomeini asked everyone to cover themselves.
So, but I have to say, when I ask a lot of people that, what was the reason that you took part to overthrow the Shah's regime?
You know that I was a reformist journalist as well.
So many of the politicians, the reformists actually told me that for the lack of political freedom.
So we actually demanded greater freedom.
That's why we overthrew the regime.
So what happened?
No, honestly, what happened?
Now, not only we didn't gain any political freedom, we lost all the social freedom that we already had.
You know, people are suffering from poverty still.
People are suffering.
I mean, people like, as I said, my own parents, they are still suffering.
So I strongly believe that the Islamic revolution became a revolution against women, against minority.
That's why I always say to my father, who supported the revolution, that this is my time now.
I'm going to launch my own revolution against your revolution.
Yeah.
But coming from a tiny village, traditional family, it was not easy.
I had to start my own revolution from my family's kitchen.
Let's go back a little bit to that question that Sam was asking, because I think it's really important, you know, the parallel of what's happening today.
Because the left-wing Iranians, the communists, the socialists, right?
They were all supporting, well, they were allied with the Islamic regime in the same way that you see a lot of the left.
Allying with the Islamic regime and Hamas and Houthis and, you know, tell us a little bit of what happened there.
You say that they were.
Some of them still.
And that breaks my heart.
You know, nowadays, through social media, internet, you see that how the young generation is suffering.
And you remember yourself when I launched my campaign against compulsory hijab.
Who were the first group attacking me in the West?
The left, before the Islamic Republic, like attacking me, I was under attack by the left outside Iran, telling me that this is causing Islamophobia.
And I think that's why it's important to identify that, because when the left were allied with the Islamic regime in Iran, as soon as the regime took power, tens of thousands of people were killed from the left or imprisoned or disappeared.
That's why I thought they changed.
That's why I was expecting them to change their mindset and at least listen to the young generation in Iran for the I don't want to curse anyone here.
No, but I want people to see how they get treated when they ally themselves with they think, you know, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
They think they can ally themselves with some Islamic theocracy and they think that they're going to end up being friends in the end, you know, skipping off into the sunset together.
When in actuality, they're all going to be slaughtered, right?
They're all going to be, so what we see happening here, they're all going to be butchered.
And what we see happening here now in the West is almost like it's such a parallel.
It's almost the exact same thing.
And the same useful idiots are making the same mistakes when they're allying themselves With, you know, what we see very clearly with Hamas, which are basically an Iranian proxy, you know, group of terrorists.
So it is quite dangerous.
And people need to be aware of the history of what can happen when you ally yourself with with terrorists and butchers.
But first, first, they're putting the lives of those who are really living under authoritarian regimes like Islamic Republic in danger.
I believe that yes they are going to be the next target of the same terrorist group like Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Republic but I don't I don't want to say that I don't care but they are putting the lives of teenagers like Nikah like sorry now only 16 year old girls in danger.
I remember that um When, you know, I launched my Stealthy Freedom campaign, their argument was like, Massie, you're causing Islamophobia, you're feeding Trump's camp, you're feeding the fascists, the right wing... Just remind people, what is my Stealthy Freedom?
Oh, because Yasmin is sitting here.
I thought that everyone now knows what My Stealthy Freedom... I want you to say, what is My Stealthy Freedom campaign?
Because this is how we know each other.
So My Stealthy Freedom campaign started almost by accident.
Masi just took a picture of herself without a hijab on under this beautiful, actually it was a cherry blossom tree.
And if you know Masi, you know she's got this glorious mane of hair.
And she took the picture and she posted it and suddenly she was inundated with pictures of Iranian women.
Bombarded by photos, videos, pictures of women walking unveiled.
Showing their face, not like, you know, those who call themselves activists and dissidents covering their face supporting Hamas, but my girls in Iran, my women in Iran, they were showing their face and saying no to compulsory hijab, which is a punishable crime.
So after, you know, me sharing their videos, I got attacked by the Islamic Republic and the left outside telling me that this is causing Islamophobia.
You know, they were saying that hijab is part of the culture of Iran and we should not ask the leaders of democratic countries, especially those high-ranking members, female politicians of the West, to interfere in internal matter.
Wow!
It's even worse than that, though, because you also have Western activists and so-called feminists who imagine that the hijab is a symbol of female empowerment.
Resistance.
It's removing the male gaze, and you have people like Linda Sarsour being inducted as one of the leaders of the Women's March on Washington.
I don't know Linda.
I've just appreciated her work from afar.
I know her.
Let me be very honest with you.
I want to admit that.
I was very excited about Women's March.
I was very, very, very happy to be part of Women's March.
I remember I was shouting, my body, my choice.
I put a headscarf on a stick.
I was waving that in the streets.
They're the opposite of that.
They put the scarf on their mascot.
On their posters.
But I thought it's all about my body, my choice.
So that's why I joined them.
And I remember that Yasmin, Sam, I was calling my girls and women in Iran.
I was saying, can you believe this is the first time in my life I'm in the street protesting, but I'm not getting arrested.
Nobody, you know, throw acid on my face.
I'm not getting shot in, you know, getting killed.
I was very excited.
Then I asked them to join me and the women of Iran.
I asked Linda Sarsour.
I asked Ilhan Omar.
I wrote an article for Washington Post, for different media, inviting them to join White Wednesday's campaign, to join my self-declared freedom campaign.
No!
Some of them blocked me.
Some of them bullied me.
Some of them went after me to cancel me.
Some of them called me the mouse piece of Trump.
And I was like, I don't really care who is in power in America.
I do what I care.
I don't want the terrorist regime to be in power.
Exactly.
It has nothing to do with Trump and it has nothing to do with American politics.
No!
And I was like, this is hypocrisy.
I was with you saying my body, my choice.
And recently, oh my God, now all of them saying that now we stand with the people of Iran.
You know why?
Because when we are the warriors, They don't care.
But they want us to be victims and own our narrative and saying that, you know, Ilhan Omar was like, I'm gonna stand with the people.
I said, no, you're not standing with us.
You're standing in the wrong side of history by bullying Iranian women.
So, and I'm saying Islamophobic and I was like, wow, you calling me Islamophobic?
First of all, phobia is an irrational fear.
My fear of Islamic ideology, my fear of Taliban, my fear of Islamic Republic is rational.
Absolutely.
And you should be stupid if you don't have any fear of being raped or getting killed if you say that I'm not Muslim anymore.
Can you help the audience understand this moral confusion?
Because I have to admit that it really is very difficult to sympathize with the psychology of someone who Who can't see the contradictions here.
I mean, I don't understand.
It's like a failed and moral intelligence test or something that many, many millions of people are failing.
Is it possible that many of these people believe that the women of Iran, even when they're hearing about the morality police, you know, throwing people in prison and, you know, women getting tortured and killed.
They still believe that most women love to wear the veil and imagine that it's empowering for them in the same way that it would be empowering for a girl at Brandeis or Barnard to just decide to culturally appropriate this affectation just as, you know, a statement of her own empowerment.
What do you think explains the fact that you have people who think they are feminists Simply not caring about the obvious oppression of women in Iran and doing, not only averting their eyes from it, but adopting the most salient symbol of that oppression as meaning its opposite.
To be honest, I don't think that we can call those feminists.
If I mean, when it comes to the women of Iran, they absolutely failed by actually empowering and emboldened, like empowering the oppressors to go after women.
For instance, when I was actually doing interview with the higher ranking members of Revolutionary Guards in Iran and the clerics in Iran, and I was telling that Why you bitten up women in the street?
Why morality police are in the streets harassing women for not covering their hair?
They were telling me an audio interview.
You can listen to their voices saying that.
Who are you?
How dare you to challenge Islamic dress code?
This is before you left.
You were a journalist in Iran before you left.
Yeah.
And they were saying that they were saying that when the higher representative of EU Wearing hijab, respecting our culture.
Who are you?
How dare you to remove your hijab?
And they were, actually, when I left in Iran, I do this interview again, they were referring to Catherine Ashton, to Federico Mogherini, because they go to my beautiful country, they wear hijab, and they call themselves feminists.
And when I challenge them, they say that, you know what, this is a culture and we have to wear it out of respect to your culture.
This is an insult to a nation when they call a barbaric laws part of our culture.
And when they're wearing hijab, so they actually, the Iranian regime using them to oppress us.
They use them as an example and they say, look, even the European women wear the hijab and they recognize it as a form of empowerment.
So what's wrong with you?
Yeah.
And there is a video, actually, there are.
I still get goosebumps when I talk about that video.
There are 11 morality police officers, all of them, women wearing black, bullying one girl, saying the same, using the same argument, telling her that, cover yourself right now.
And the girl said that, no, I don't want to cover my hair.
They said, this is a law.
You have to respect the law.
They say, she said that, I don't want to respect the barbaric law.
Slavery used to be legal.
I'm not going to respect the law.
And they say that, look, even the female politicians from the West, when they come to Iran, they are not Muslim, but they respect the law of the land.
And I kept hearing this argument from, you know, a lot of Western feminists saying that this is the law of the land.
You know, all the journalists, Leslie Stahl of 60 Minutes, and I mean, they all, you know, There's a famous story, I don't think I've seen video of it, but the Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci.
Oriana Fallaci, yes.
She was wearing it and then she took it off in front of the Ayatollah Khomeini and said, you know, I'm getting rid of this medieval rag or whatever she said.
She was the only one.
But Sam, let's be very, very clear.
Here I'm not talking about a small piece of cloth.
I'm not, you know, talking about hijab.
Hijab is the symbol, one of the most visible symbols of oppression.
It's the tool used.
It's the main pillar of a religious dictatorship.
It's the main pillar of a gender apartheid regime.
So when we talk about compulsory veiling, that doesn't mean that if we get rid of, like, you know, compulsory hijab or morality police, then we are okay here.
It's the tip of the iceberg.
Yeah.
It is.
And that's why I want to actually use the opportunity to say that the teenagers in Iran, they're showing their middle fingers to the cameras that are there to identify unveiled women.
And they say the same word, no to compulsory hijab, no to Islamic Republic.
So clearly, hijab became a tool in the hand of regime to control the whole society through women.
So these mullahs, the clerics, they're writing their own ideology on our bodies.
And we use our bodies now to tell them, go to hell.
Get away.
You know, get lost.
Do you have any sense of what is happening in the minds of these Western women that they can't understand this?
Because we're talking about something very visible.
We're choosing something that should be very clear and understandable.
And they're still not getting it.
Do you think that they're truly not getting it?
Or do you think that they are maybe being strategic and just pretending that they don't get it so that they can, you know... I think all they care, it's their own political agenda.
So they don't know that if they are a true feminist or human rights lover, freedom lovers, then they have to put freedom, human dignity, feminism at first.
They don't.
For them, political agenda is more important.
Like, for instance, when Jamal Khashoggi was killed They were all loud to condemn Saudi Arabia.
There are many Jamal Khashoggi in Iran.
Why they were hesitating?
Because they care about their own ally.
Right now, right now, I actually challenged some of the Democrats, you know, those who actually launched the campaign, Bring Our Girls Back, about the girls of Boko Haram.
And I said, where are you now?
Why you're not campaigning for the girls of Afghanistan who are being kicked out from schools?
They are not even able to get an education.
They're not even able to go and have their own job, their own normal life.
So why are you not campaigning for them?
You know what I hear?
Then we are going to be seen as criticizing President Biden.
So what?
For me, that's why I keep repeating that.
Honestly, I don't care whether Biden is in power, Trump is in power, Obama is in power.
This is a democratic country.
You have to be strong enough to challenge them and support your own sisters.
In Afghanistan, in Iran, you don't want to do that because you care about your political agenda?
It's really sad.
It breaks my heart.
We don't matter unless it's through the, you know, the narcissistic, navel-gazing American lens and what matters to them.
And then the people that happen to be there are the people that matter in that period of time, you know?
But the rest of the people, if you're on the wrong side of the political spectrum as far as they're concerned, then you don't matter.
You know what, when I was the target of assassination plot, when the guy got arrested in front of my house by AK-47, I was like, this is the moment that finally all the female Democrats, all the female politicians here, they will get united because I'm a woman.
Then this is the first time Iranian regime hired someone.
To kill a woman on US soil?
Just to summarize this Masa, you, as I said at the top, Iran has this habit of targeting dissidents and activists in other countries and they've actually successfully kidnapped people and brought them back to Iran for trial.
There was apparently a plot, first a kidnapping plot against you and then an assassination plot against you and you were informed by the FBI about all this to take it seriously.
And so that's now what you're telling us about.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
But what... I'm being very honest with you.
What breaks me, it's not the Islamic Republic sending killers here because... You expect that from them.
Transnational repression is in the DNA of the Islamic Republic.
But what breaks me, what makes me frustrated is the reaction of those who are, I hope on them that they are going to support me because they're women.
You know, it's funny you say that because that's exactly how I felt on October 7th.
Yes.
I thought, well, this is going to be very clear now.
I mean, we all saw Shani Luke in the truck.
And I thought, well, there's going to be no question When it comes to rape, we are all together to condemn that, no?
There is no question about this.
How could there be any other side of this discussion?
You know, why is it even a discussion?
Why?
Why?
Why when it comes to Women's March, I am with you.
But when it comes to raping Jews, to killing Iranian women, kicking women of Afghanistan, you are not with us.
Why?
Can someone answer this simple question?
Inexplicable.
I'm telling you, none of, none of the female Congresswoman, none of them condemned the assassination plot of me as well.
None of the, you know, Democrats.
None of the female...
So what do you make of this?
Again, this comes back to a total failure of deterrence against Iran.
It really seems that you have Iran targeting people in America individually.
You have them funding proxies to attack both Israel and America in various contexts.
You have them directly attacking Israel last month.
You have them, you know, threatening at any given month to produce a nuclear weapon.
What do you make of the fact that the U.S.
seems more worried about a war with Iran than Iran does?
It's just a complete breakdown of deterrence.
Yeah, they keep saying that when I ask them to be firm, to take strong actions, because lack of action, you know, emboldened the regime to go after not only their own citizens, to go after, you know, people in the region.
They say that we are not at war with the Islamic Republic.
What do you expect us to do?
And I was like, hey, but the Islamic Republic is at war with you, with, you know, the United States of America.
With your own allies, with, you know, its own women.
So then you should act like a true leader.
You have to take the leadership.
Because America is, I mean, is or was beacon of hope for millions of us.
I came here because I was like, this is the land of, you know, liberty.
First Amendment.
We can do a lot here.
But on U.S.
soil, now I see Salman Rushdie was the target of the assassination plot because of the Islamic Republic, because of the fatwa was issued by Ali Khamenei.
So the lack of actions, actually sending signals to the regime that, hey, you can do whatever you want.
There is no punishment for you.
There is no punishment for you.
So for millions of Iranians now, it's like they're very disappointed by the U.S.
government.
And I don't want to say that, but they say that we sacrifice our life.
We get killed in the street.
We face rape.
But at the end of the day, this is the American government trying to save the Islamic Republic.
And some of them actually makes jokes saying Ayatollah Biden.
Well, there was that six billion dollar deal.
Right after that, actually, people were like, you know, mocking, making jokes.
But they are frustrated because they were like asking President Obama during 2009, calling him on his name, saying, Obama, Obama, you're either with us or with them.
I'm not sure whether you know.
Are you saying that a majority of Iranians would welcome an actual war with the United States?
I mean, they would want the United States to try to intervene and force a regime change in Iran?
Look, I'm not asking the American government to intervene, but they are interfering in our own internal matter while the people of Iran manage to shake the regime.
What does handing out billions of dollars do here?
Saving them, protecting them.
Iranian people in bloody November, they took to the street and They were about to be successful, to overthrow this barbaric regime.
What happened?
The government shut down the internet for three days and they killed 1,500 innocent people.
Only in three days.
We didn't hear anything from the U.S.
government saying that, you know, OK, now we're going to help the people of Iran by providing Internet, kicking out the dictators from U.S.
technology, actually allowing the dictators to using social media.
So the lack of action Is something that emboldened the Islamic Republic.
No, I'm not asking the U.S.
government to bring change for us or to save Iranian people.
It's a very, very clear strategy is missing here.
The United States of America doesn't have one strategy, one clear Iranian strategy on the table that shows to the people of Iran that if there are Republican or Democrats, we don't care.
We have one policy towards Islamic Republic.
So that actually hurts the cause of bringing regime change in Iran.
Otherwise, Iranian people are brave enough, powerful enough to bring democracy within the country.
But this is 21st century.
Unarmed people, armless people cannot do it on their own.
International community can provide supports, technology support.
Look, Putin, China, Maduro, Khamenei, they are providing weapons for each other, technology surveillance.
They're backing each other, helping each other at the United Nations, voting for each other.
So, providing, sharing information how to oppress any uprising taking place in each authoritarian countries.
What we want, the same unity among democratic countries.
What is missing here, now United States of America cannot take the leadership to ask its own allies to put the revolution in regards in the terrorist organization.
Yeah.
So these are some common actions which is missing here and empowering the Islamic Republic to kill more people.
What about the history of sanctions here?
What has been the effect of sanctions and, at least from the outside, it appears to have done no good at all in terms of deterring Iran from their misbehavior?
You know, sanction itself is not sufficient when they're not even applied to the oppressors.
For instance, when Ibrahim Raisi was here, in his delegation, there were members of Revolutionary Guards coming to the United States of America while they were designated as a terrorist organization.
So, what kind of impact this kind of sanction can do?
And I remember that I myself reached out to Jake Sullivan, the National Secretary Advisor of President Biden, and I informed him about this.
And I had a meeting with Prime Minister Rutte in Netherlands, and I informed him that there are 52 companies in Netherlands They know how to bypass sanctions in, you know, trading with the members of Revolutionary Guards.
I warned President Macron in France that sanction is not sufficient when the Revolutionary Guards, the high ranking member of this terrorist organization, are really good at using Putin, Maduro, China to evade sanction, to bypass sanctions.
That's not enough.
What is missing here, as I keep saying, that dictators are more united than democratic countries.
We don't see that.
For instance, right now, the U.S.
citizen is in prison in Iran.
British citizen.
Swedish citizens, German citizens, French citizens, they are in Iran being used like bargaining chip.
Guess what?
All these democratic countries having parallel negotiations with the terrorists, with the hostage takers, trying to find out how they can hand out money to get their national citizens free.
This is not the way that hostage takers understand.
They only understand one language.
Language of pressure.
You should get united, all of you, the democratic countries.
Downplay, downgrade your diplomatic relation with these hostage takers.
This is how you can end hostage-taking diplomacy.
Similar to what we did with South Africa and the apartheid there.
Exactly.
And guess what?
President Biden, when he was young, he was pro-banning South Africa because of apartheid.
You tell me.
If a regime kill women for showing their hair is not a gender apartheid, if a regime that actually kick out half of the population from a stadium is not gender apartheid, then how do you call it?
A regime that do not even allow me to ride a bicycle, to dance, to sing.
Singing solo is forbidden for Iranian women.
We cannot get a passport without getting permission from our own husband.
We cannot travel abroad without getting permission from our male relative.
This is like Handmaid's Tale, you know?
And the people of Iran have been screaming really loudly, very clearly, making it very obvious that they're wanting to That they want to see this entire regime dissolved and that they want to be free from it.
But like you said, they can't do it on their own.
They are not armed.
And they especially can't do it when these other big powerful countries all around the world are actually negotiating with the regime of Iran.
Not only negotiating.
Right now, Ebrahim Raisi was killed in a helicopter crash.
Iranians are dancing.
Iranians are showing their happiness.
The family members of those who got killed by the order of Ebrahim Raisi making videos of themselves dancing.
And guess what happened?
United Nations Security Council having one minute of silence.
The leaders of European... Just like with Soleimani, same thing.
Exactly, calling Qasem Soleimani national hero.
Oh my God, I never forget the day hearing some of my own heroes on different media calling Qasem Soleimani national hero of Iranian people.
Unbelievable.
And I was like, he's a terrorist.
He's a terrorist not killed Iranian people.
He killed Syrian children before ISIS, you know, even exists.
He went to Syria to attack the, you know, those who were trying to overthrow Bashar Assad's regime.
He killed the, you know, children in Iraq.
So for that, I don't want to say that the Western government is actually collaborating with the terrorist regime, but how do you call it?
How do you call it when now Ibrahim Raisi, the killer, the butcher of Tehran, is receiving sympathy from the leaders of democratic countries?
How do you call it?
Yeah, it really is confusing because it's just not obvious why we would have fallen into this particular trap.
It's hard to see who is benefiting in America, certainly, for us to have this ineffectual a policy.
I mean, the only way I can interpret it is that we've got such war fatigue.
We've drawn, I mean, basically we've drawn the lessons of Vietnam all over again.
I mean, the longest war we ever fought in Afghanistan is widely acknowledged to have been just an abject failure, both materially and morally.
And so it was with Iraq.
But this is so different.
This is what people don't get, is the people of Afghanistan and the people of Iraq are very different than the people of Iran.
We had the history.
I mean, they can look at our history.
It's totally different.
You know, this is the narrative of the lobbyist of the Islamic Republic.
I remember that whenever Qasem Soleimani got killed, there were many analysts were showing up on CNN, different media, saying that We should not helping those who are asking for regime change.
Qasem Soleimani, Javad Zarif, these are like the reformists and heroes of the Iranian people because they don't want to be other Syria.
They don't want to be other Iraq.
And that's the narrative of the Islamic lobbyists outside Iran.
But guess what?
This is the Islamic Republic turning Iran to another Syria.
This is the murderous regime of my beloved homeland turning the whole country like a chaos.
It would be like a prison break.
Iranians are hostages right now.
The whole nations are hostage in the hand of a regime which telling women in 21st century that you're second class citizen, telling them that we rape you or you deserve to be raped.
If you simply showing your hair, I keep saying that because I don't know whether your audience really get that.
And that's what this Raisi guy, this president of Iran that just died in the helicopter, he was one of the people that, I think it was his policy that young girls, when they end up going to prison, that they be raped to make sure that they're not virgins so that they don't go to heaven.
That's what we're dealing with here.
Today is my happy day because Bryce is dead, but sometimes I really cry and I get frustrated.
When I see that they shake their hands, but they don't want to be seen with me, with people like me.
Like I was in Germany meeting with policymakers, with ministers and members of parliament.
Then I was very excited to meet with the foreign minister.
She's a feminist.
And her team was like, OK, but in private, because now we're trying to negotiate with the Islamic Republic.
It might change the mindset of the Islamic Republic.
Not only that, I'm not sure whether this is the right place to say or not.
You know, Kristin Amanpour is my hero.
When I was in Iran, she was my hero.
When my sister was brought on TV to denounce me publicly, it happened that I was with her in a party, Persian, a Nowruz party.
When I saw her, I screamed out of joy and I opened my arms to hug her.
And I was very excited.
I said, oh my God, you're my hero.
I'm seeing you here.
And I started to explain to her what happened to me, my sister, my family.
And I said, can I have a picture with you?
And she said to me, in front of a lot of Iranians, that, yeah, let's get a picture, but can you not publish the picture?
Because I'm going to have an interview with Obrahim Raisi.
So you're a little bit controversial.
So she, you know.
She'll be seen with him.
She'll sit with him.
She'll wear a hijab with him too.
I smiled.
I smiled among Iranians.
There were a lot of Iranians.
And I said, of course, yeah, I understand.
I totally understand.
But I lied because it broke my heart that because of getting an interview with Ibrahim Raisi, you're a powerful woman.
So I took the picture, but I never published it.
I want one day to see her and I want her to say that.
You can publish the photo.
I was wrong.
I want a lot of journalists and feminists like her to understand that the killers of my country, they understand only one language.
Language of power, pressure, and stand in solidarity with your sister.
Don't call me radical.
I'm not radical.
Radical are those who are lashing women.
Radical are those who are raping women.
I'm just saying that my dream is to walk shoulder to shoulder with my mother in my beautiful country.
I just want to have the same freedom that you take it for granted here in America.
So is that too much to ask?
I want to return to this gulf between the Iranian population and the regime, and I can't imagine we actually have opinion research that we could rely on here, but I think it's important to understand the degree to which the population of Iran is different or is likely to be different than, you know, the Palestinians under Hamas, say, right?
Quite fashionable to draw a bright line between Hamas and the Palestinian people.
But every indication I've had over the last 40 years is that there is a fair amount of support for theocracy among Palestinians.
It's not everybody, but it's also not nobody.
And if I had to guess, I would think it's Somewhere around 50% of Palestinians are fairly in line with Hamas's worldview.
And, you know, if you look at support for suicide bombing among Palestinians, it's always been very high, around 70%, and, I mean, much higher than other people in the region.
And however you want to discount that for, you know, what the political emergency they have been suffering with Israel, still it's obvious that there are a lot of theocrats beyond the formal membership of Hamas.
There have to be a lot of theocrats in Iran for the regime to have successfully kept the veil over the whole society since 1979, right?
I mean, there are people, you know, manning the Republican Guard, there are people in the morality police, Just, what is your sense of how large the support would be for the end of theocracy in Iran?
And how is, I'm wondering, and now I'm speaking as someone who really is just purely ignorant of the details here, I'm wondering if there are any important differences between Persian and Arab culture that might be relevant here?
Can you both of you speak to that, the difference between the Iranian population and its support for theocracy and any other population we have meddled in, you know, in Afghanistan, Iraq, among Palestinians, etc.?
I already passed a lot of red lines here.
I'll leave it to Yasmin to answer this question.
But to be honest, Iranians, especially the young generation, they're very progressive now.
And I have to say that in my country now, the majority of the young generation, they are against not only Islamic Republic, they are against Islam.
Because of, you know, the oppression that they have been facing for years and years.
Yeah, absolutely.
I think it's important to remember people see now that, you know, there's 57 Muslim-majority countries, it's called the Islamic Republic of Iran, and they forget that these people have all been colonized, that these cultures, these nations, these people have all been colonized and indoctrinated.
And what's really unique about Iranians is they have always remembered their Persian core.
They didn't lose it in the way that so many of us, my family from Egypt included, you know, like my people from Egypt included.
You lose everything.
You know, Egypt now calls itself the Arab Republic of Egypt.
What are you doing?
You're in North Africa.
You have your own civilization.
You have your own culture to be proud of, but they have just become colonized and they now call themselves Arabs.
Iranian people didn't do that.
You didn't lose your traditional, your holidays.
You didn't lose your, yeah.
Although it was a crime.
It was a crime to celebrate like, you know, the birthday of, yeah, to going to It's funny that sometimes I hear in the West saying that, you know, like hijab or Islam is your culture.
I was like, are you educating me about my own culture while I'm seeing that Iranian people facing punishment by celebrating the Persian culture rather than, you know, the Islamic culture or Islamic ideology?
Your culture became criminalized.
Yeah, it is a crime, still is a crime in Iran.
You will face punishment for celebrating our own culture.
So, but yeah, I mean, I leave it to an Arab woman to actually to say that because it's beautiful when I see someone at the end of the day recognize this because a lot of Western people here, when I see them, they don't recognize that.
They categorize, you know, they don't see the difference.
Yeah, they think it's all the same.
They think Iranians are Arab, Pakistanis are Arab, Indonesians are Arab.
They just think anybody who's Muslim must be an Arab.
So they don't really get that very important point that these are all people that have been colonized by Arabs, by Arab Muslims.
So I think that's really I think that's I think that's the point here, Sam, is that because they are so deeply proud of their roots and they've never forgotten their roots and they've held on to their roots, that's why they can fight against the Islamic regime of Iran, because they see this Islamic regime as their oppressor, as their colonizer.
They really believe that.
As the enemy of the Iranian culture.
Exactly.
Yeah.
And that's why I believe that.
Because Arabs don't see it that way.
No, I believe that the Islamic Republic and Islamic culture is the minority in Iran.
And, but yeah, as I said, that they have the power, money, you know, everything to change the narrative in the West, to downplay the young generation, to downplay the Iranian culture.
But I'm sure, I'm sure, you know, we will change this.
Yeah, I must say that in speaking about jihadism to Western audiences, I'm always amazed at the amount of confusion there is about it and how difficult people are to persuade that it's even a thing.
And even many, many Western Jews are totally confused about jihadism and are quite concerned Not to be guilty of Islamophobia, but one population that I find is not at all confused are Persian Jews.
I've never met a confused Persian Jew at this point.
They're basically right next to ex-Muslims as you know understanding what I'm talking about.
When I came to America, I mean to be honest, First allies that I found were the Persian Jews.
Why?
Because they have suffered from the beginning when the Islamic Republic took the whole nation hostage.
They were the first minority group Who have been facing executions.
And when you talk to them, they really know the pain and the struggle.
And I'm so happy that I had them on my side.
And that's why maybe when the Islamic Republic and Hamas, they had the coordinated attack against the civilians.
From the beginning when I heard, I was like, this is the time now we, the people of Iran, should stand on their side to support them to be their voices.
And to be honest, among all the countries in the region, Iran was the only country that you didn't see even a moment of hesitation among Iranians to stand with their sisters.
To condemn the attack, to condemn Hamas, to condemn the brutality of Hamas raping women.
Forget the region, even in the West.
Oh yes, yeah, even in the West.
And I remember that when I made a statement about how women in the West didn't condemn it, Iranians didn't know that.
My people in Iran were telling me that, who are you criticizing?
Really?
Like women didn't condemn the rape?
So because we always say that.
How can it be real?
How can you think that?
When it comes to rape, of course we should all be united.
Even in the Jewish controlled media and Jewish controlled Hollywood failed to condemn the rape of Jewish women.
Can someone tell me why?
Because I really don't know.
I really don't know.
It's like watching through the videos.
That they clearly wanted to show the rest of the world that this is who we are.
We rape women.
We grab their naked bodies everywhere.
We film them.
We show them that we can do whatever we want.
And then the West keep quiet?
It's the exact same reason why they keep quiet when the Iranian women are being raped and killed by the regime because it's the wrong oppressor, right?
If the oppressor is American, yeah, that's different.
Or Israeli, of course, yeah.
But if your oppressor is Muslim, even if it's a Muslim terrorist, then you are the wrong kind of victim and you won't get the support.
So what Jewish women went through recently with recognizing this and the shock and the horror that they felt, I knew that pain.
You know, I just wanted to embrace them because I know how you feel.
I know how it feels to be so betrayed by people who you think, you know, who they think that they're on the right side of history.
They think that they're feminists.
They think that they're good people.
And then look how they treat us.
And let's not forget Jews were always supporting their sisters in America, in Iran, everywhere.
And then I actually think that, yeah, you're right, this was a total betrayal to our sisters who faced rape, but at the same time seeing no reactions from Well-known human rights organizations, well-known, you know, activists, actresses in Hollywood.
But that actually empowered the Islamic Republic to say that, OK, now we don't need proxy war.
We can go directly after Israel.
That's beyond sad because this is going to actually put democracy in danger.
This is going to actually put the mindset of the youth in the West in danger.
I don't think people in the West really understand how empowered the terrorists are right now and all of their supporters.
I don't think they get the morale boost.
I don't think they understand how much October 7th.
I mean, after 9-11, people didn't have smartphones, right?
People didn't have their GoPro cameras.
Yes.
You kind of heard, you know, murmurs of, oh, people are celebrating in the Islamic world over 9-11.
But there wasn't really evidence of that.
Now you see it.
Now you see it.
And the way that it's shared in the WhatsApp groups, the jubilation and just really there's it's such a morale boost.
They feel on top of the world right now.
And I don't think the West really recognizes kind of what they're up against at this point.
And that's beyond sad because recently when I heard that how even Osama Bin Laden became a hero through TikTok in the young generation suddenly found a letter from Osama Bin Laden to America and I was like this is Dangerous because very soon they can actually find a letter from Ali Khamenei to America and then Ali Khamenei is going to be another hero of the youth in America.
Why?
Because of the division here.
I wonder what are both of your thoughts on... Left and right, Republican and Democrats.
They're putting the mindset of the youth in danger.
Yeah, the youth are in agreeance.
They hate America too.
I think Sam is calling us, but we are really, you know, enjoying our own conversation.
There's some latency here.
So yeah, you got half of what I just said.
What are your thoughts on immigration?
Because when I look at Western Europe, when I look at the level of Islamism in London, right, and the degree to which the government there and the police force there is Quite visibly terrified to even acknowledge the scope of the problem.
I mean, it's pretty obvious that they don't have an answer to the problem.
They simply have too many Islamists in England to have a ready answer for the problem.
Which suggests an immigration failure and also just a failure to contain the spread of dangerous ideas, right?
Or to successfully combat those ideas so as to discredit them, right?
So they just left the crazy mosques to be crazy for far too long, and they left their borders open for far too long, and now they simply have the wrong people in their society, right?
They have committed Islamists and even Jihadists in their society.
And so now you have Parliament, you know, quite obviously, you know, bending its procedures so as to keep its MPs safer than they perceive themselves to be because they're getting inundated with death threats if they don't vote one way or the other.
I mean, again, I don't live there, but viewed from the outside, it looks totally intolerable.
So the question is, how do we avoid that outcome in the States, right?
I mean, I think all of our security concerns, given our various jobs, would be worse if we lived in Paris or London.
And I think we're happy that there's a difference between, you know, what's real on the ground in the U.S., not to say there aren't real dangers, you know, especially for someone like yourself, Masi.
Yes.
It's better here and, you know, I don't know where Canada falls, Yasmin, probably somewhere between the U.S.
and Western Europe.
But how do you think about immigration and what should we do on that front?
I mean, you mentioned about the UK and the Islamist extremists there, but I was actually recently in Canada.
So I think Yasmin knows the pain.
There are more than 700 members of Revolutionary Guards there.
So they are not like, you know, illegal immigrants.
They've been welcomed.
Without any background check?
By the Canadian government.
And that's a disaster that the high-ranking member of IRGC receiving visa by Canadians and now living their luxury lives there.
The relative of the Ayatollahs, the relative of the killers, some of the interrogators were seen in Canada.
So you see, and in America, the same story.
So I actually talked about this.
I provided a list.
I gave it to two administrations saying that these are the former officials of the Islamic Republic.
Now, actually teaching in different universities here at the United States of America, the former ambassador of the United Nations for Islamic Republic, who was covering up the massacre, the executions, now teaching peace and security.
in university here, Mahalati.
And another one is Musavian, who was part of the team of the Islamic Republic for negotiation, nuclear negotiation.
He was the one covering up all the massacres and killings.
He is praising Hamas.
He is supporting Hamas.
Now he's here.
Now, do you think that's just an abject failure of the vetting process?
I mean, politically, no, they are...
The U.S.
government, the U.K.
government, Canadian government, they're trying to be politically correct.
They're trying to bring more people in the name of diversity and being politically correct.
They're welcoming terrorists.
They are actually giving platform to terrorists to brainwash the youth here in America.
Mousavian, I really want to talk about him.
Mousavian is a terrorist.
You say he's at a university?
Yeah, he's actually teaching at Harvard University, and now there is a group of Iranians demanding the U.S.
government to kick him out from university.
Princeton University, full of Islamic Republic agency.
And that's beyond sad, because these are the people who worked For the Islamic Republic government and here promoting the Islamic ideology.
But the family member, let's list very very sad stories here.
You know Neda Agha Sultan, the well-known symbol of Iranian protesters during 2009 Green Movement who got killed in front of the eyes of the free world because the video of her getting killed went viral.
Obama, President Obama talked about Her.
Neda Agha Sultan's family applied for visa twice.
Canadian refused to give them visa.
But they gave visa to the chief of the police of Tehran.
And he was seen in a gym in Canada, standing next to an unveiled woman.
So as I said to you, the killers of Iranian people, 700 of them, Received visa.
Here we are.
Let's not go far.
In America, Masoumeh Ebtekar was the spokesperson of, you know, the group of students who took American diplomats hostage.
Guess what?
Now her own son living here and she is welcomed on CNN.
She's a regular guest on CNN.
She is part of the government in Iran.
And now you're hearing New York Times want to cancel me, but they go after Massoumeh Abtekar and interview her.
So this is the mindset of some of, you know, the activists, journalists, the government here, the United States of America, trying to be politically correct.
And they are not even aware of the danger of that.
It's suicidal.
It is.
When it comes to terrorists, do not be politically correct.
Name them who they are.
Stop giving democratic titles to terrorists, calling them president, calling them, you know, scholars at university, calling them activists, dissidents.
They are not.
What can we do about this?
I mean, it seems like there has to be some kind of response to this.
On one level, there certainly needs to be some proper journalism done here.
There needs to be some long-form journalism that just exposes all of these people and all of the networks and all of the funding.
Exactly.
I mean, Sam, this is a very, very simple thing.
There is no need for me and you to educate anyone.
There should be an investigative report about the family members, the relatives, and the members of IRGC living Here at the United States of America, taking the platforms, going to universities, educating the youth here in America about the peace of Islam and Islamic ideology.
They should be.
You know, there is an investigative report about a relative of Putin.
What is different?
Khamenei is the biggest ally of Putin.
Khamenei is the one providing drones for Putin to kill innocent Ukrainians.
The Wagner group is in the terrorist list.
Revolutionary Guards is in the terrorist list.
But what is different between the relative of the Wagner group and the members of Revolutionary Guards?
That's, that's very dangerous.
Believe me, I'm going to warn you that if you don't join us, the women of Iran, to end this regime and trying to be politically correct here in America, you will face more of the terrorists here on U.S.
soil targeting the U.S.
citizens.
And you actually mentioned about the kidnapping plot of me.
That happened three years ago.
So what happened when the FBI stopped the kidnapping plot?
Then year after they sent killers.
They hired killers and they sent it in front of my house.
Why?
Lack of action.
They got back this time with killers.
I don't know what's going to happen for me in the third attempt.
I don't want President Biden to do anything after I get killed.
So, if people wanted to support something, some organization, some effort, what is there to support that might influence this in some auspicious way?
There are a lot of different organizations actually documenting about the crime against humanity that the Islamic Republic has been committed for 40 years.
I actually want to specifically mention about a new campaign which we, the people of Iran, the women of Iran, alongside the women of Afghanistan, launched called United Against Gender Apartheid.
And I don't think this is difficult.
The Islamic Republic is a gender apartheid regime.
All of those who supported banning Africa during apartheid, they have to join us to criminalize gender apartheid.
And it's not difficult.
Members of the states here at the United Nations, unfortunately, I don't have any hope.
The United Nations became a place to unite dictators, but Still, we're calling on different, you know, countries to join us to expand the definition of apartheid in all existing laws to include apartheid as well.
That will make our work a little bit easier to kick these barbaric regimes and take them to international court, to ICC.
But you have the Islamic regime lobbyists, not only in the UN, but, you know, in each one of our different governments, right?
Whether it's America, UK, Canada, etc.
And they are pushing back against you and they have a lot of money.
They have a lot of political clout.
So, you know, you are grassroots activists up against, basically, regime proxies all over the West.
You know, I was actually under attack by the same lobbyist saying that Massey is being paid by the U.S.
government.
I was like, wow, as a journalist, my salary is like the same salary as the teachers here in America receive.
You even blaming the victims?
My dream is to be a journalist.
In my own homeland, Iran, you should put the blame on them kicking me out from my country.
And Ilhan Omar, which I want to again name her, she shared the article saying that Masi Alinejad is being paid by the US government.
I was like, Voice of America is a respectable platform.
And I worked for them when President Obama was in power, when President Trump was in power, and now when President Biden is in power.
It means that I'm using the platform to echo the voice of voiceless people.
Why are you bullying me?
I am not the enemy.
Why are you fighting with me instead of fighting against the Islamic Republic?
So yeah, the lobbyists trying to use the social media, spread misinformation, fake news against us.
When you go to my social media, you will see I'm on their attack every single day.
They send letters to different organizations to cancel us.
So, for us, it's not easy to fight against them.
That's why I always say that we should be united, the way that the Islamic Republic and their proxies and their lobbyists are united against us.
We launched a campaign, you remember, about being cancelled, like Nadia Murad, the Nobel Peace Prize Yazidi woman, was trying to go to Canada to give a talk, and they cancelled her talk.
Why?
Because she...
The day when I was very happy because the guy got arrested with AK-47 in front of my house, some of the organizations immediately cancelled me for the safety of their own attendees, their own employees.
I was like, wow, you interview Ibrahim Raisi, but you cancel me?
Because of being the target of the killers?
You're raising the Yazidi case is kind of painfully ironic here because I just noticed that Amal Clooney, the famous humanitarian lawyer, wife of George Clooney, who represented, I forgot the Yazidi woman's name.
Nadia Murad.
Yeah, Nadia.
And obviously that was quite heroic, but she is now one of the quarterbacks at the International Criminal Court of Justice to issue arrest warrants for Sinwar and Netanyahu, as though these were equivalent So can I use the opportunity to call on her to join the women of Iran?
I really want Amal Kholouni to join the women of Iran to help us to take the Islamic Republic, the gender apartheid regime who actually rape women in prison, who actually kill women for simply walking unveiled, who blinded women, gassed the schoolgirls, so she can help us to take the Islamic Republic to international criminal court.
I mean, this is not me asking her, this is Nargis Mohammadi, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, within prison, alongside more than 60 women in prison, calling her and calling the Western activists to help us to take the gender apartheid regime in Iran to international criminal court.
Is that too much to ask?
I think this phrase, gender apartheid, is quite useful.
It's a very clever weaponization of the term and it's, I hope it's effective because, I mean, obviously... You know what?
No, no, no, it's not because I'm being bombarded now by some of the West who actually attacked our anti-compulsory veiling campaign now saying that apartheid carries historical pain and it comes with a baggage and don't use it!
No, no, but it is.
It's a term like slavery.
Everyone knows they're against it.
Yeah, you'd think.
And it's accurate.
It's not a misappropriation of the concept.
It's not a distortion of the concept.
It's quite accurate.
But I'm not arguing that you should be at all embarrassed by using it this way.
I think it's very effective.
And this whole space is suffering from a lack of effective messaging.
I mean, what's happened since October 7th is just You know, among other things, you know, one of the epiphanies is that it's just the messaging matters and Israel and its allies have been just fatally ineffective in messaging the moral, you know, rightness of their war with Hamas, right?
I mean, it's just the idea that a majority of young people Can't figure out who the bad guys were on October 7th.
It's just, you know, it attests to many things, but it attests to an absolute failure of effective messaging.
So I think it's, you know, I think this is a very good way of framing it.
So Masi, I want to support your work.
I know listeners will want to support your work.
Where can we do that?
What's the website?
They can go to my Stealthy Freedom website, and this is a website of my campaign against compulsory veiling, but we actually created a new initiative, which is called United Against Gender Apartheid.
So, trying to gather the testimonies from women who experienced torture, rape, and actually experienced the gender apartheid regime in Iran and Afghanistan to get the Islamic Republic, you know, an international criminal court.
So, I'm looking at both websites now.
So, it looks like the unitedagainstgenderapartheid.org is a new website and does not yet have a donate button, but mystealthyfreedom.org does.
So, that looks like the place to support you immediately.
Well, I hope people will support those organizations.
I will certainly do that.
And I'm going to try to engineer some proper journalism on this topic.
So if you're a writer out there who's listening to this podcast, if you have strong opinions about who should do this journalism, I will reach out to my contacts to get some fresh opinions on that topic.
I will be happy to fund this, and I will pay better than the Atlantic, and it would be good to just get this done, because it's quite crazy that we're here, and again, we seem to have built a machine for inducing hallucinations in the next generation, and it's not going to end well if we keep it up.
Masi, Yasmin, thank you so much for your time.
Thank you.
I hope one day I'm going to invite you to my beautiful country, Iran.
Wouldn't that be nice?
Yeah, I would love that.
Thank you so much, Masi.
Together we are stronger.
Thank you.
So happy I enjoyed the conversation.
And thanks to Yasmeen for co-hosting this episode.
