The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Samira Mohyeddin, can you please break down for us what we know about what’s happening in Iran right now, what we don’t know, and why specifically we don’t and can’t know more right now?

Samira Mohyeddin:

Iran has been under what is now past 130 hours of a nationwide internet blackout imposed by the state. What we are getting out are some reports from people who have Starlink and then also what we know leading up to the internet blackout. So protests against the dropping of Iran’s currency, which has dropped to its all time low, has really began on December 28th with the merchants in Tehhran’s grand bazaar. Those protests quickly escalated and spread to every single province in Iran. So it was not just confined to Tehran anymore. And it wasn’t just the merchant class, a wide demographic of people out on the streets. And they’re not just calling for economic reprieve or anything like that. This is now an existential problem for the Iranian government. They are calling for the downfall of the regime. They’re calling for the killing, the death of Khamenei, which is Iran’s supreme leader.

And you’re seeing a level of violence that we’ve never seen in Iranian protests, both on the part of the state and on the part of protestors. And I think that’s really important to point out. You see, Iran since 2017 specifically has been in this successive hamster wheel of protest after protest after protest. In 2019, the government raised the price of gas, which is heavily subsidized in Iran. And there were protests again in November of 2019. And during that time, they also shut down the internet for five days and more than a thousand people were killed. So you’re seeing that same pattern right now, except what is complicating things even more is that you have Israeli and US officials making bellicose statements about Mossad agents being on the ground, that they have a hand in what is going on here. And this isn’t the Iranian government who constantly thinks everything is a foreign hand.

These are actual Israeli ministers like Eliahu, who is the heritage minister saying, our men are on the ground. We have a hand in this. You have people like Mike Pompeo tweeting out on New Year’s Day saying, “Happy New Year to the Iranians in the streets and to the Mossad agents walking beside them.” Now, what does that mean for Iranian protestors? That means that there is no ambiguity for the Iranian regime between real protestors and Mossad agents. So these sorts of reckless statements is what is really ramping up the type of violence that we’re seeing. This isn’t solidarity. This is sabotage on the part of US and Israeli officials.

Maximillian Alvarez:

What do you know about what everyday people in Iran are going through right now, how they’re experiencing all of this and how have you been able to come by that information?

Samira Mohyeddin:

So I’ve been watching Iran’s state media broadcast, Channel one, Channel two, Channel three, and they’ve been showing the destruction that has been happening during these protests. But the other thing that they’re showing, and this is what is totally unprecedented, they’re showing the people, the protestors and body bags, the morgues that are overflowing. They are showing these images and they’re saying that their narrative is that these are Mossad agents, but they’re also saying that a lot of ordinary people … I’m sorry, I get a bit emotional talking about this. A lot of ordinary people have been caught up in what has been going on. And so they’re showing these images as a warning for people not to go out, but also to say that the overwhelming number of people that are being killed. And this is causing a huge amount of fear and just immense levels of grief for Iranians in diaspora and inside the country right now.

For the first time after, as I said, more than 130 hours, some people are able to get through to their loved ones. I heard from a daughter’s friend today who is in the north of Iran, in Mazanda Iran, she said that for the past two days, the anti-riot police have totally taken over the streets there. There have been no protests in that area, that there are drones monitoring the streets and that this is a direct quote from her. “There is blood everywhere in the streets and that shopkeepers are being made to close up their shops at four o’clock in the afternoon. So there’s a de facto martial law that is being imposed. Now, what has been really scary is that just a couple hours ago, Donald Trump took to truth social and said that he has stopped any sort of negotiations or talks with the Iranians and that he’s now telling Iranians, this is a direct quote saying,” Go take over your institutions.

Help is on its way.

“What does that mean? I mean, when I spoke to my friend’s daughter, she was terrified of what is to come. We are in a state right now. Iranians are in a state of not knowing what is to come in the next 48 hours. Is it going to be the US striking Iran again? We saw Israel back in June, strike Iran, kill over a thousand Iranians. So no one knows really what is to come. And all of these Belico statements that we’re hearing from these foreign adversaries telling people to keep going out into the streets, we’re coming to help you. Well, where’s the help? And what does help even mean in this situation?

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, and of course that statement is being made by a United States president that just bombed and invaded Venezuela and kidnapped its president. So this is the reality in which all of this is unfolding right before our eyes. And to that effect, I wanted to ask if you could say more about how people here in the United States specifically, but North America in general, like with Venezuela, we’re realizing that people just have such a lack of full understanding of what Iran is, who Iranians are, and what our own history of relationship with that country is. So I wanted to ask, if you could just speak directly to people, working people here in North America who are trying to make sense of this.

Samira Mohyeddin:

Yeah. I think top of mind is to understand that Iranians have been protesting against this brutal government for 47 years. The first protests that you saw were women coming out on International Women’s Day on March 8th against the impossession of the veil, against the doing away with the Family Law Act, not allowing divorce, all of that. That was the first thing that you saw happen. And then there have been successive protests after that. That doesn’t mean that adversaries like the United States have been trying to have a hand in this, but the really people need to understand that this is a homegrown protest movement. People in Iran are angry. They are angry at their conditions of life. They are angry at the authoritarian nature of this regime, and they want it done away with particularly this newer generation. That’s something else that people don’t really talk about enough is the demographics of what we’re seeing in Iran.

This is a generation that had no hand at all in bringing this type of government to fruition, and they want it gone. So that is the first thing. The other thing to keep in mind is that in terms of working class people, you have petrochemical workers in Iran, people working in the oil fields, teachers, bus drivers, all of these people not allowed to even form unions inside the country. These are people that haven’t been paid in months. Iran’s economy is crashing, and it’s not just due to the crippling sanctions that the United States has been putting on Iran for decades, and particularly since Trump came to power and this maximum pressure philosophy that they have, there is severe corruption and mismanagement in Iran. For a country that has the third largest oil reserves in the world, why are we seeing millionaire, billionaire mollas? I mean, the leader of Iran, the supreme leader who looks like he’s this man who lives some sort of agnostic religious life, he has billions stored away in a Swiss bank.

I mean, that is what is maddening to people on the streets of Iran right now. They are very well aware of the hypocrisy of these clerics, and that’s really what they’re fighting against. I’m not sure if the Iranian government is going to be able to come out of this protest intact and really we don’t know what is going to be happening in the next 48 hours. Trump could very well strike parts of Iran. We have no idea because as you said, we saw what was done in Venezuela, who again has the, I think it’s the second largest oil reserves in the world. And if the United States thinks that it can just go into Iran and do what it did in Venezuela, it is sorely mistaken. Iran is the size of Western Europe. A country of 90 million people who, like it or not, still has a very large base of supporters inside the country.

A lot of Iranians, I put a call out to people online and I asked them, “What is their biggest fear right now?” And the three most prominent answers I got were that they were afraid that Iran would become like Syria, Libya or Iraq. They were afraid of civil war and they were afraid of outside intervention. So those are the three biggest fears that people have right now. And of course, the other big fear is that this crazy massacre on behalf of the government will continue.

This is the really scary part right now, Max, is that people outside the country keep telling people to go into the streets, but they’re not offering them any sort of solace or any sort of help or intervention or anything. They’re not talking about nonviolent, civil disobedience. They’re telling people to attack their institutions. And then what? What’s going to happen? The people in Iran aren’t armed. They have no way of fighting against the government. They’re being slaughtered in the streets.

Maximillian Alvarez:

While we have you, I wanted to ask, because we’ve spoken with you multiple times on the Real News Network about Israel, the genocide in Gaza. For folks who are wondering what role does Israel have in this and what the hell is Israel doing and how is this connected to what we have been seeing Israel doing for the past three years, at least, if not the past 75? I

Samira Mohyeddin:

Mean, this is a wonderful diversion from Israel’s genocide, ongoing genocide in Gaza, and it’s ethnic cleansing in the occupied West Bank. The world is no longer talking about Gaza. It is not at the top of the headlines at all. Iran is. And you’re seeing Israeli influencers, Israeli supporters promulgating this idea that … And this is the language they’re using. They’re saying things like, “Oh, where are all the encampments for the Iranians?” All of a sudden, no one cares about dead Muslims. They only care when Israel is doing it. Why isn’t anyone talking about Iran? That is what Israel is doing right now. And it is actually, sorry to say, very effective.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Where could all of this be heading? And-

Samira Mohyeddin:

I wish I had a crystal ball. Yeah. No, I really don’t know because the rise of fascism in the United States and this removing of this cloak that somehow the US is the harbinger of democracy and freedom and human rights is gone. It’s gone. And we’ve watched a livestream genocide for the past two and a half years and we’ve watched the internationational community allow Israel to conduct that genocide. And this is where the difficulties come when you see the government of Iran slaughter its own citizens and all of the international community rushes to condemn it, but then at the same time, you don’t see that happening in Israel. And this is where the hypocrisy lies and this is where the danger is. We’ve allowed Israel to dismantle the international rules-based order. We’ve allowed Israel to dismantle international law. And then at the same time, we want to be able to do this double speak when it comes to Iran.

That is the problem. That is the cauldron that we are all swimming in right now. And it’s a very scary, scary time. You have the United States openly, openly espousing the Monroe doctrine. I watched a press conference today where at the front of the podium of that press conference, this is the United States giving a press conference. It said, “One of ours, all of yours on the cover of that podium.” That is a saying from the fascists of Spain in the 1930s. That is a direct saying from the fascists. So everything is out of the open right now. And I think it is so dizzying that not many of us know what to do. We really just shrug our shoulders, whereas you have the confident dumb all saying, “Well, this is it. It’s the end of this, the clash of civilizations and blah, blah, blah.

We need to do away with this group and do away with that group.” And I watched Pete Hegseth today stand outside what used to be the Department of Defense, and he was hammering a new sign saying the Department of War and talking about how wonderful it is that he can change this sign after 76 years. That’s where we are. That’s the world we’re living in right now. And I don’t know what’s to come. Anybody who tells you, I think they’re full of shit.