With Iran having violently contained its protest movement and the US under Donald Trump having made violent threats against that country, the rest of us are now bombarded online with hot takes from right and left alike and endless and angry arguments over death tolls and foreign agitators.
So in this ‘Mehdi Unfiltered’ interview, Mehdi cuts through the noise and gets straight down to the facts with one of the world’s leading authorities on Middle Eastern politics and Shia Islam – Vali Nasr.
“Iran, its people, its government, the country as a whole has now crossed the Rubicon… It’s not the same as it was before,” Nasr tells Mehdi.
Nasr – an Iranian-American author and academic who formerly served as a Senior Adviser in the Obama State Department – provides his expert analysis on all the wide-ranging issues that have come out of these protests, including:
Just how bloody Iran’s repression has been: “This is a whole new level.”
The role of foreign agitators: “Israel does see the protests as a strategic asset.”
Whether the US would see revenge attacks if Trump decided to take out Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei: “The Iranian state cannot just absorb something like that without reacting to it.”
What civil war could look like in Iran: “A sinkhole that would entangle all of these governments.”
It’s a nuanced, fascinating, and hugely informative conversation.
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