Speaker 1: This is the introduction of the podcast Behind the Bastards
Speaker 1: by Robert Evans. I've forgotten and anything that I ever
Speaker 1: knew about how to introduce podcasts, and over the next
Speaker 1: couple of weeks, as with the last couple of weeks,
Speaker 1: I'm going to kareem through a variety of different styles,
Speaker 1: none of which are good ways to start a podcast.
Speaker 1: And that's where we are right now at the start
Speaker 1: of this episode, Behind the Bastards, the show about terrible people,
Speaker 1: with Robert Evans a terrible person. My guest today is
Speaker 1: Anna Hasnia, host co host of the Ethnically Ambiguous podcast
Speaker 1: podcast producer here at iHeart Radio and Liquor Baron. What
Speaker 1: Liquor Baron like like like you? I am? I imagine
Speaker 1: if it were the Rolling twenties, you would be one
Speaker 1: of the people who would be like smuggling liquor in
Speaker 1: bowling balls to speak, easies. I'm sorry who booked me
Speaker 1: on this show. I really need to talk to my agents.
Speaker 1: Just joking. I don't know what you're talking about, and
Speaker 1: I will not comment further. I don't know where you
Speaker 1: got this information, but I made it quite clear I
Speaker 1: did not want it out there. I don't know. How
Speaker 1: are you doing this week? I'm good? How are you?
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not good, like I'm alive, not great. Uh.
Speaker 1: We we've had some fun news this week vis a
Speaker 1: vis the United States, UH and Iran. UM not been
Speaker 1: a high point in our in these two countries international relations.
Speaker 1: I think would be safe to say no, I don't
Speaker 1: think we've been doing well at all. Um. And of course, uh,
Speaker 1: most of that has to do I mean most of
Speaker 1: that right now at least has to do with the
Speaker 1: fact that on Friday, January third, twenty, Iranian General Kassam
Speaker 1: Sulimani was assassinated via missile by the United States as
Speaker 1: motorcade rolled out from the Baghdad airport. Stories that came
Speaker 1: out in the wake of the attack revealed that he
Speaker 1: had been on his way to an official meeting with
Speaker 1: the Prime Minister of Iraq. So UM shot to call yeah, um,
Speaker 1: not a great move necessarily if you care about iraqs
Speaker 1: sovereign rights as a nation, UM or a or anyone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah um A move with some some complications and consequences,
Speaker 1: most of which we don't know yet. UM. So I
Speaker 1: don't I'm not going to really speculate on them. Um,
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about like the the assassination itself much
Speaker 1: or the fallout from it much. UM. Instead, I thought
Speaker 1: something productive to do would be to really dig into
Speaker 1: Mr Sulimani's life, um and and try to like figure
Speaker 1: out who he was as a person. UM. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: kind of think in terms of like what I do,
Speaker 1: that's the one place I can make a difference. UM.
Speaker 1: One of the things I saw online that was really
Speaker 1: frustrated to me. In the immediate wake of the attack, UM,
Speaker 1: CNBC published an article declaring the newly dead general the
Speaker 1: world's biggest bad guy, um, which correct quite a take.
Speaker 1: And then they later revealed that that column was an
Speaker 1: op ed that they hadn't labeled it as such originally,
Speaker 1: which is great. Uh, just like the Washington Post had
Speaker 1: a column being like this, actually, killing Suleimany opens up
Speaker 1: some like new avenues for diplomacy for the United States,
Speaker 1: And it then turned out that the guy who wrote
Speaker 1: it worked for Raytheon, the company that designed the guidance
Speaker 1: systems for the missiles that killed Sulamani. Guys, it's really
Speaker 1: great for us, like we can sell a lot of
Speaker 1: weapons for this upcoming doom war. We're like kind of
Speaker 1: heading towards so hey, stop looking at it in such
Speaker 1: a negative light. Yeah, it's uh. You know, if he'd
Speaker 1: framed it as this is going to be great for
Speaker 1: selling weapons, I would say, totally honest column. The fact
Speaker 1: that it was framed in terms of diplomacy where I
Speaker 1: start to have an issue. Um. But it wasn't just
Speaker 1: sort of the right wing and centrist media that had
Speaker 1: unbelievably bad takes about Sulimani and his career. On the
Speaker 1: left wing, people started spinning yards about Cossum's legacy uh
Speaker 1: and portraying him as an anti imperialist fighter. On Twitter,
Speaker 1: people like Ranya Kalek and Ben Norton with the Gray
Speaker 1: Zones started claiming that the Iranian general had defeated ISIS
Speaker 1: and Iraq uh in Tens of thousands of folks on
Speaker 1: the left retweeted and shared variations of this take. And
Speaker 1: one thing I think we can be sure of is
Speaker 1: that about of the people on the left and the
Speaker 1: right in the middle who have come out with takes
Speaker 1: on Cossum Sulimani in the last week or so had
Speaker 1: not heard his name prior to his assassination UM, and
Speaker 1: could not have identified a picture of him. Um, I'm
Speaker 1: not an expert on the guy. I can say I've
Speaker 1: known about him for a little over four years, since
Speaker 1: I started studying and traveling to Iraq. He's kind of
Speaker 1: impossible to miss if you go to that part of
Speaker 1: the world. A lot of people in Iraq joked that
Speaker 1: he was the Prime Minister of Iraq like that was
Speaker 1: a common joke, particularly in the South. Um. But the
Speaker 1: fact that I've known who this guy was for four
Speaker 1: years puts me in the same basket as the man
Speaker 1: who ordered his assassination our president. In two thousand fifteen,
Speaker 1: then candidate Donald J. Trump appeared on the talk show
Speaker 1: of right wing radio icon Hugh Hewitt, who asked him,
Speaker 1: are you familiar with General Suleimanny. Trump replied yes, and
Speaker 1: then made it clear that this was a lie by saying,
Speaker 1: go ahead, give me a little you know, tell me so.
Speaker 1: Hewitt went on to explain to the future president that
Speaker 1: Sulimany ran Iran's famous KOD's Force, which is essentially kind
Speaker 1: of like the CIA, mixed in with the Green Berets
Speaker 1: a little bit. Um, and Trump clearly had no idea
Speaker 1: what the Kods Force was because His immediate response was,
Speaker 1: I think the Kurds, by the way, have been horribly
Speaker 1: mistreated by US. So he clearly heard Kurds instead of
Speaker 1: Kods force and Hugh Hewitt had to correct him on that.
Speaker 1: So that's that That's where Trump's level of knowledge of
Speaker 1: this guy was four years for ordering his assassination, which
Speaker 1: is fun which is like, yeah, no, toads love that guy.
Speaker 1: Great guy, He's great. I honestly I've never heard anything negative, wonderful.
Speaker 1: It would have been funny if Hugh Hugh Wit hadn't
Speaker 1: have been a right wing hill, if he had just
Speaker 1: kept running and like seeing how much he could get
Speaker 1: Trump to say about General Sulimani in context of like
Speaker 1: thinking he was occurred like you could have gotten thirty
Speaker 1: minutes of fun radio out of that question. Did he
Speaker 1: correct him? Was he like, oh, oh yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 1: it was Trump said, oh I thought you said curts.
Speaker 1: Of course, well, I guess also not to be that
Speaker 1: person who defends Trump in anyway. But if you don't
Speaker 1: know like Iranian Revolutionary Guard and you don't know the
Speaker 1: shirt go by q U d S, could it's I
Speaker 1: guess it's wouldn't I mean, if you just have no
Speaker 1: understanding of like Middle Eastern anything. You would never make
Speaker 1: that connection. For for for a normal person, that's a
Speaker 1: perfectly fine mistake to make. I would say, I think
Speaker 1: of the people who run for president, especially who are
Speaker 1: running through President two thousand and sixteen, should know who
Speaker 1: cost him. Sulimani like, yes, um, yeah he was. He
Speaker 1: was a big guy, and the story we're gonna tell
Speaker 1: today is the story of how he became a very
Speaker 1: very big dude. Um. And one of the things that's like,
Speaker 1: you know, when when you're talking about like actors at
Speaker 1: this level on the national stage who are responsible for
Speaker 1: horrible things and for good things, um, you don't often
Speaker 1: run across some people who are as competent as this
Speaker 1: guy was. Um. Or at least that's the prevailing theory.
Speaker 1: There's a couple of different theories that maybe like yeah,
Speaker 1: well we'll we'll get into that a little bit. But
Speaker 1: um he's an interesting dude. He's like a character from
Speaker 1: um uh, like like a like a Cold war spy novel.
Speaker 1: He's like like like that level of like um uh,
Speaker 1: like genius at school duggery. He's very good at what
Speaker 1: he did, and so he's an entertaining guy to read about. Um,
Speaker 1: if you can kind of put yourself in the head
Speaker 1: of like reading it as a story and not reading
Speaker 1: it as like a tale of history where actual human
Speaker 1: lives were affected. But it's interesting as hell, and I
Speaker 1: really recommend um. There's one particularly good article about this
Speaker 1: guy that we'll get to in a bit. But he's
Speaker 1: he's he's worth reading about, and you'll understand more about
Speaker 1: what's going on if you do. Yeah, he's started from
Speaker 1: the bottom. Now we are here type yes, yes, uh.
Speaker 1: And I won't quote the rest of that song because
Speaker 1: there's a bad word in it. Uh. This is this
Speaker 1: is a clean shows a clean sew now no, but
Speaker 1: not that one. Um. So yeah. I one of the
Speaker 1: things I did when I was doing my research on
Speaker 1: Sulimani is I made sure to avoid I tried to
Speaker 1: avoid as much as possible using sources that were written
Speaker 1: after the assassination, because everybody writing anything after the assassination,
Speaker 1: at LEAs right now. I assume new Ship will come
Speaker 1: out at some point, but everyone right now is just
Speaker 1: rewriting the couple of good articles there were about this
Speaker 1: guy before he was killed. Um, and getting stuff wrong
Speaker 1: in the translation. So I avoided that for the most part,
Speaker 1: and I would caution people to be very hesitant to
Speaker 1: trust much that you hear about this dude in the
Speaker 1: next couple of months, maybe years, because it's going to
Speaker 1: take a while for us to get much more good
Speaker 1: information out on him. He's a very politicized figure. I
Speaker 1: also recommend reading, uh, what Middle Eastern writers are writing
Speaker 1: during this time. Although one of the things, like some
Speaker 1: of the Middle Eastern writers I found writing on this
Speaker 1: guy right for places like the American Enterprise Institute UM
Speaker 1: so like, which is like a right wing thing tank.
Speaker 1: It's like a neo conservative think tank. In the article
Speaker 1: on him there isn't terrible, but like everything you find
Speaker 1: on this guy is very political UM, which is like, so, yeah,
Speaker 1: do your do your best to find a variety of
Speaker 1: sources and avoid anything new if you're going to do
Speaker 1: your own research on this UM is my recommendation, so Um.
Speaker 1: Kassam Sulimani was born on March eleventh, nineteen fifty seven,
Speaker 1: seven not fifty seven, in the village of Rabbar raybar
Speaker 1: r A b o r Uh in Kerman Province, Iran.
Speaker 1: His father was a farmer and when Kossum was small,
Speaker 1: his dad took out an agricultural loan from the government
Speaker 1: of the Shah, Mohammed Reza Palavi. Now the Shaw, born
Speaker 1: in nineteen nineteen, had come to power in nineteen forty
Speaker 1: one after his father, the previous Shaw, had refused to
Speaker 1: support the Allies during World War Two. In the early
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, before Cossum was born, the Shah fought a
Speaker 1: brutal power struggle with his Prime minister. Palavi, was briefly
Speaker 1: ousted and returned to power only with the express backing
Speaker 1: of the United States and Great Britain. I'm I'm leaving
Speaker 1: out a lot of detail because that's a paragraph there,
Speaker 1: but I think we're hitting the highlights. Um. Now, upon
Speaker 1: his return, the Shaw established what many would consider a
Speaker 1: brutal and repressive police state with the help of his
Speaker 1: secret police, the savak Uh. The show treated the entire
Speaker 1: nation as basically his bank account, or an extension of
Speaker 1: his bank account, and by the time Kasum would have
Speaker 1: been a young boy, the problem was so bad that
Speaker 1: even British observers were shocked by the level of corruption
Speaker 1: within the Iranian government. Here's a selection I picked almost
Speaker 1: at random from the nineteen seventy six New York Times
Speaker 1: article talking about the Shah's government quote to under secretaries
Speaker 1: the handsome Hussain Alzetta and the scholarly doctor Mohammed Ali
Speaker 1: Serifa or Serafi have been dismissed for alleged sugar purchasing
Speaker 1: irregularities which are said to have involve the Iranian government
Speaker 1: and unneeded expenditures of forty five million. To underscore the point,
Speaker 1: Tehran newspapers, which are indirectly controlled by the regime, have
Speaker 1: piously pointed out that this money could have been used
Speaker 1: to build thirty thousand country schools or three thousand hospitals. So, like,
Speaker 1: that's the kind of shady deed dealings that are like
Speaker 1: daily news. Um when the Shah is in power and
Speaker 1: the United States has involved in quite a lot of this. Grumman,
Speaker 1: which at that time was a long island aerospace concern,
Speaker 1: it is now Northrop Grumman, which is like a major
Speaker 1: part of our like uh security industry, like security industrial complex.
Speaker 1: I guess you say, um Like they did a bunch
Speaker 1: of like shady bribes to middleman in Iran in order
Speaker 1: to get the Iranian government to like buy a bunch
Speaker 1: of airplane parts and stuff from them that were necessarily like,
Speaker 1: actually useful. Um And so Grumman was basically funneling corporate
Speaker 1: money into the hands of individual members of the Shah's
Speaker 1: government so that they would spend huge amounts of defense
Speaker 1: money on ship they didn't need, which would be profits
Speaker 1: for Grumman. Um. And all of the money that was
Speaker 1: spent on this was of course money that normal Iranian
Speaker 1: people like Cossum's dad paid to the Shah's government in taxes. Um. So,
Speaker 1: Cossum grew up as an into an adolescent watching his
Speaker 1: father play crippling taxes and interest on a loan to
Speaker 1: a central government that basically stole money from its people
Speaker 1: for their own personal enrichment. Um Now, when his father's
Speaker 1: agricultural Iranian can't comment further, Hey, you do what you
Speaker 1: gotta do, you know, yeah. Um So, when his father's
Speaker 1: agriculture alone came to the Shah's government offered no forgiveness
Speaker 1: or respite costumes, father wind up owing the equivalent of
Speaker 1: about a hundred U S dollars, which was enough debt
Speaker 1: to have rendered his family destitute at that point in time. So,
Speaker 1: at age thirteen, Cossum and his cousin ah Mad had
Speaker 1: to leave home without their parents knowing, in order to
Speaker 1: go work in the city of Kerman. He later recalled,
Speaker 1: at night, we couldn't fall asleep with the sadness of
Speaker 1: thinking that government agents were coming to arrest our fathers.
Speaker 1: We were only thirteen and our bodies were so tiny.
Speaker 1: Wherever we went, they wouldn't hire us until one day
Speaker 1: when we were hired as laborers at a school construction
Speaker 1: site on Kaju Street, which is where the city ended.
Speaker 1: That paid his two tom nd per day, which is
Speaker 1: the currency at the time, I guess. So it took
Speaker 1: eight months for the boys to save up enough money
Speaker 1: to make a meaningful dent in their father's debts. Uh
Speaker 1: And unfortunately, by the time they had saved up enough money,
Speaker 1: it was late enough in the year that the mountain
Speaker 1: passes back home were covered in thick snow. The boys
Speaker 1: had to find a local man with a car I
Speaker 1: named Palavan Uh and he drove them back. And according
Speaker 1: to Sulimani's later recollections, this guy really hated the shaw
Speaker 1: and he was the first person to express seditious political
Speaker 1: views to the young cossum. Poulavan was particularly furious that
Speaker 1: small children have would have to work full time to
Speaker 1: pay off a relative's debt to the already wealthy. Shaw Uh,
Speaker 1: this is the time for them to rest in play
Speaker 1: and not work as a laborer and a strange city.
Speaker 1: I spit on the life they have made for us.
Speaker 1: Cosumercalled this guy saying, Um, so this is like clearly
Speaker 1: an important moment in his young life, and it makes
Speaker 1: his like his personal memoirs um. And again it's hard
Speaker 1: to say how true that all is, because again he's
Speaker 1: a very politicized figure. These are the memoires he came
Speaker 1: out with, and you get the hint with some of
Speaker 1: them that he's trying to sort of like inculcate some
Speaker 1: values that he wants to spread in the populace. Um.
Speaker 1: But most of what we know about costums early life
Speaker 1: came from either a book that he wrote or that
Speaker 1: might have been ghost written about his life. Um. And
Speaker 1: then you know a few interviewers who have kind of
Speaker 1: like around folks in that region, some historians and stuff,
Speaker 1: but there's there's not a huge amount out there. Um.
Speaker 1: The experts who have analyzed Cossum's early life outside of
Speaker 1: his own book do agree that he grew up very poor,
Speaker 1: and he would have been working heavily from a young age.
Speaker 1: The story about his father's debt meanten that he had
Speaker 1: he and a cousin had to go to the city
Speaker 1: to work it off. That's almost certainly true. Um. We
Speaker 1: know Cossum got no more than a high school education.
Speaker 1: He's been about five years in school maybe, um. And
Speaker 1: by the time he was a young adult, he'd managed
Speaker 1: to get himself a job working for the water department
Speaker 1: in the city of Kerman. Now, by this point it
Speaker 1: was the nineteen seventies and the twilight of the Shah's
Speaker 1: period of control. Revolutionary fervor had gripped many sections of
Speaker 1: Iranian society. Various movements rose up to question the royal
Speaker 1: grip on power. Cossum meanwhile, dedicated himself to getting swollen
Speaker 1: as hell. Uh. He became a dedicated weightlifter and began
Speaker 1: socializing with a group of equally swollen and equally frustrated
Speaker 1: young men. Um. So he's not a revolutionary initially, he's
Speaker 1: a He's a gym rat. Comes into his like late teens,
Speaker 1: early twenties. Right. Based on my understand he wasn't very
Speaker 1: religious either. I think Um, yeah, he grew up kind
Speaker 1: of not necessarily secular, but it wasn't the most present
Speaker 1: in his childhood growing up. No, And I you don't
Speaker 1: get the feeling. You hear different things about this guy.
Speaker 1: Some who will say he was extremely pious, a lot
Speaker 1: of folks who like knew him and talked. You get
Speaker 1: the feeling kind of openly about it. It wasn't a
Speaker 1: big deal to him. Like I do think it would
Speaker 1: be accurate to say his religion was the Iranian state
Speaker 1: and like the revolution as he saw it. Like, I
Speaker 1: think he was that kind of dude as opposed to
Speaker 1: like being super pious, but he was. He was Funny.
Speaker 1: You say he's pious because he was a pisces, which
Speaker 1: means he's very kind of has some intensity, and but
Speaker 1: he's adapted, so he you know, he adapts to his situation.
Speaker 1: And you know, when you're trying to to fight to
Speaker 1: what payoff loan for your father or just trying to
Speaker 1: survive when you're poor, and you just adapt to your
Speaker 1: environment and do what you need to do to get by,
Speaker 1: and if that is joining U army, you do what
Speaker 1: you can. Yeah, he's adaptive, so he as as a
Speaker 1: young man he Um. Yeah, he starts getting swollen hell
Speaker 1: um and that that's mostly his social group for a
Speaker 1: little while. And Uh, he does start attending a series
Speaker 1: of sermons by a traveling preacher who worked with one
Speaker 1: of the future Ayatolas. And this is where Kasum first
Speaker 1: became seduced by the idea of Iran without its shaw Um.
Speaker 1: So he's not again, he's not a part of the
Speaker 1: There is like a revolutionary movement. There's like a revolutionary
Speaker 1: leftist movement in Iran and a revolutionary like Islamist movement. Um.
Speaker 1: And obviously the Islamist movement is the one that actually
Speaker 1: like overthrow, succeeds in overthrowing the Shah. Um. But he's
Speaker 1: not really a part of any of that. Like he's
Speaker 1: entranced by some of the speeches of some of these
Speaker 1: guys who are pro that, but he never really gets involved. Um.
Speaker 1: And so in nineteen seventy nine, uh Ayatola Ruhola Komeni
Speaker 1: overthrows the Shah's government. Uh. And it Claire's an Islamic
Speaker 1: republic in Iran or a bunch of people backing Uh
Speaker 1: the Ayatola I should say he didn't he didn't do
Speaker 1: it on his own UM. Now, one of the new
Speaker 1: Ayatola's first orders of business was to secure this new
Speaker 1: regime from being overthrown, particularly by elements in the military
Speaker 1: who might still have been loyal to the Shaw or
Speaker 1: at least who weren't necessarily loyal to the Ayatola. And
Speaker 1: to this end he established the Revolutionary Guard, which is
Speaker 1: essentially was essentially a separate branch of the military that
Speaker 1: was loyal directly to the clerics who now ran the country.
Speaker 1: UM and young Kassam left his gig at the Water
Speaker 1: department to join the Revolutionary Guard. He found himself like
Speaker 1: called to get involved with this new thing. And this
Speaker 1: is a smart move. You see this a lot in
Speaker 1: history when you have revolutions, most of them will set
Speaker 1: up a military like side structure. Like if they don't
Speaker 1: outright just destroy the military, the military stays intact, but
Speaker 1: nobody really trusted. You see this with like a lot
Speaker 1: of revolution see revolutionary governments. You don't see it like
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union so much because they did kind of
Speaker 1: destroy everything that it existed before UM, but you see
Speaker 1: it in a lot of revolutionary movements where like they'll
Speaker 1: have to set up a side sort of security structure
Speaker 1: outside of what had existed before, because they can't do
Speaker 1: away with that entirely, but they don't trust it. And
Speaker 1: when you have this new kind of thing, like the
Speaker 1: Revolutionary Guard was, you have an opportunity for like a
Speaker 1: young man with no history to make a big name
Speaker 1: for himself because like the military or like the intelligence
Speaker 1: agencies like those are like really ossified, strict structures. Were like,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a certain way they do things, and
Speaker 1: they tend to hire from certain groups of the population,
Speaker 1: and if you don't know anybody, you're probably not going
Speaker 1: to get much of a shot there. Um, whereas the
Speaker 1: Revolutionary Guard, nothing's written. And so this guy, this poor
Speaker 1: kid from carmen Um can join it any as a
Speaker 1: chance to actually like build a career for himself, and
Speaker 1: he immediately distinguishes himself as very intelligent, um, very ambitious,
Speaker 1: and he starts to rise within the Revolutionary Guards by
Speaker 1: the time he's because he's extremely loyal, because he's a Pisces. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's exactly what he credited to as well. Yeah, big
Speaker 1: big zodiac guy. I remember that about him. So by
Speaker 1: the time Suleiman, he's twenty three years old, he'd earned
Speaker 1: himself enough trust that he was sent with a group
Speaker 1: of guardsmen to suppress pretty brutally a Kurdish uprising in
Speaker 1: West azer Baijan in a place called Mahabad. Now in
Speaker 1: the late nineteen forties, Mahabad had been the site of
Speaker 1: a short lived Kurdish Socialist Republic which had fought for
Speaker 1: its independence briefly, but was abandoned by the U s
Speaker 1: SR it's only hope of survival and then eaten up
Speaker 1: and destroyed. UH. In the wake of the Shah's overthrow,
Speaker 1: Mahabad's Curds had decided to basically give independence another go.
Speaker 1: If you know anything about Kurdish history, this happens all
Speaker 1: the time, UH, and it never works out, so UM,
Speaker 1: and it did not work out this time. UM. We
Speaker 1: don't know much specifically about Sulimani's individual actions to crush
Speaker 1: this uprising. UH. It's not part of his backstory that's
Speaker 1: often emphasized, particularly since he wound up dealing very frequently
Speaker 1: with Kurds in Iraq and in Syria on a diplomatic
Speaker 1: basis over the course of his career. So it wasn't
Speaker 1: a great thing to go into detail about. UM. But
Speaker 1: this action against the Mahabad uprising by the Revolutionary Guard UM.
Speaker 1: It was really like the first big action taken by
Speaker 1: the Revolutionary Guard UM. And participating in the Mahabad rebellion
Speaker 1: UM becomes seen as like if you do that, like
Speaker 1: that's kind of what makes you UM like marks you
Speaker 1: out is like a big name and o g in
Speaker 1: the Revolutionary Guard Corps. You were a part of this
Speaker 1: this like force that was deployed to Mahabad, and it
Speaker 1: sets you up for success and for promotion and stuff
Speaker 1: within the organization. UM. And so because he's there at
Speaker 1: this time, like it puts him in a really good
Speaker 1: position for what comes next. Uh you know what's you
Speaker 1: know what's going to come next? Domination? Well, kind of
Speaker 1: the opposite actually a crippling and unbelievably destructive invasion by Iraq.
Speaker 1: Oh that old, that little old thing. You know. It's interesting.
Speaker 1: My father fought in the Uran Iraq hoarn. So did
Speaker 1: my mother. Well, she didn't fight. I think she was
Speaker 1: more unlike whatever, the women do not fight. Yeah, based
Speaker 1: on my understanding, she said she played a drum, which
Speaker 1: I think she's lying. But that's casual Persian parent thing.
Speaker 1: They'll never tell you the truth. But anyway. I mean,
Speaker 1: aren't you know that I'm mistaken. There's some stories of
Speaker 1: like people like women who would like run with explosives
Speaker 1: under Iraqi tanks and blow them up and themselves up
Speaker 1: and stuff like. It was a pretty desperate war, especially
Speaker 1: in the early stages. Um. Yeah, I believe my father
Speaker 1: rode horses. That was his thing. He I don't. He
Speaker 1: just told me. He's not so very forthcoming about his
Speaker 1: war days. I mean, it's we don't it's not very
Speaker 1: much known in the West, but it's like one of
Speaker 1: the worst things that happened in the latter half of
Speaker 1: the twentieth century. Like, there's a lot of bad wars
Speaker 1: in the latter half of the twentieth century, but that one,
Speaker 1: that one's up there, um and it was um. It
Speaker 1: would prove to be like um a foundational moment, obviously
Speaker 1: for the modern nation of Iran, um, but also for
Speaker 1: Kasum Um. So for a little bit of a background
Speaker 1: on this war. In nineteen eighties, Saddam Hussein, you might
Speaker 1: know him for his romance novels. He also was the dictator. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: Saddam Hussein launched an invasion of Iran. His goal seems
Speaker 1: to have been to take advantage of political chaos in
Speaker 1: the country following the revolution to make a quick, quick
Speaker 1: grab for land and power. UM. Now, there are rumors
Speaker 1: that you'll hear to this day that Saddam invaded with
Speaker 1: a green light from the United States, And there's actual
Speaker 1: very little hard evidence for this. Most of what we
Speaker 1: have suggests the Carter administration was too busy dealing with
Speaker 1: the Iranian hostage crisis, UM, and they were actually really
Speaker 1: unhappy that Saddam invaded, and complicated matters from internal Iraqi documents,
Speaker 1: we know Saddam expected the US to impose the invasion.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about the fun, funked up ship the United
Speaker 1: States did here shortly. UM. But what's important is that
Speaker 1: Saddam Hussein launches this fucking invasion of Iran thinking it's
Speaker 1: going to be easy. It's kind of the same reasoning
Speaker 1: you see with UM with like Hitler in UM Operation Barbar.
Speaker 1: Also when he invades Russia, where there's just been this revolution,
Speaker 1: everything is unsettled, the old order has been torn down
Speaker 1: in a place with a new one, and this neighbor
Speaker 1: who's belligerent is like, oh, it'll be really easy to
Speaker 1: kick their asses UM, And it works out kind of
Speaker 1: the same. It works out similarly to that one. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: Iran doesn't turn out to be a pushover. The war
Speaker 1: would company known and I think this, Yeah, the sacred
Speaker 1: defense is the term used. Sacred defense. Do you have
Speaker 1: a translation for that? Um? I don't have it in Farsi.
Speaker 1: The two terms I've heard for it is the sacred
Speaker 1: defense and the imposed Warum. I'll have to look into
Speaker 1: that a little. I'm curious what it is. What did
Speaker 1: you what did you grow up being told about it?
Speaker 1: I wasn't told much. I a thing that goes on
Speaker 1: and sort of, um, maybe it's just I don't want
Speaker 1: to say, just blatantly immigrant families. But something I noticed
Speaker 1: in my Persian family is that certain darker aspects aren't
Speaker 1: spoken about, and you're kind of, um like guarded from
Speaker 1: those things. So you're not really told about such things.
Speaker 1: Like when I was told about the shaw like they
Speaker 1: were like he was this lavish, you know king who
Speaker 1: always wore like it was always like beautiful imagery of
Speaker 1: like a man who was covered in gold basically, and um,
Speaker 1: you know, later as I grew up and I started
Speaker 1: him like always he was a deeply corrupt man who
Speaker 1: you know, I had a father who basically ruined him,
Speaker 1: so he was never really able to stand up for
Speaker 1: himself and be zone. It's like all this stuff of
Speaker 1: layers and layers of layers, but like my parents would
Speaker 1: have never told me any of that, you know, Like
Speaker 1: I always had like a very base understanding until I
Speaker 1: went and did my own research and was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I remember my father gave me the book All the
Speaker 1: Shah's Men, and I was like, oh my god, this
Speaker 1: is not how I expected it to be. Like wait
Speaker 1: a second, like what happened here? And you know, they
Speaker 1: just kind of they like to sugarcoat it because they're
Speaker 1: trying to protect you from I guess internalized genetic trauma,
Speaker 1: which you're like, what are you gonna do? There's an
Speaker 1: extent to which that kind of sounds like my upbringing,
Speaker 1: like just in terms of like you know, you hear
Speaker 1: like Thomas Jefferson was this great scholar of liberty and
Speaker 1: this great like this this this great thinker and like
Speaker 1: the nature of like human freedom, and it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: he also raped a slave for decades like you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, but basically, my whole understanding of the Iran
Speaker 1: Iraq war was that my parents were in it because
Speaker 1: of the two year draft, which is still in place
Speaker 1: in Iran. They were like, hey, we went and did it,
Speaker 1: but now we're in America and we are looking forward.
Speaker 1: And that is about all I understood. And I just
Speaker 1: saw photos of my parents like in their like ear
Speaker 1: like out doing things like my dad on a horse
Speaker 1: or eating. You know what doesn't have a two year
Speaker 1: draft on a you know what, won't draft your parents
Speaker 1: for two years to fight in a war against Iraq?
Speaker 1: What the products and services that support this show? Hell yeah,
Speaker 1: they have no legal power to do. So that's what
Speaker 1: I would hope for. There's some bills were putting up
Speaker 1: in the House that will hopefully that will hopefully give
Speaker 1: our our supporters the right to draft US citizens. I am.
Speaker 1: I am a very supportive of that. I said, we
Speaker 1: cut out the middleman, get rid of that state. Just
Speaker 1: let advertisers directly compel people in the military service. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I have one quick question before we go to break
Speaker 1: what was the draft ages when the original draft in
Speaker 1: the US was on geez, I think it was, I
Speaker 1: mean what it might have been seventeen when he started
Speaker 1: eighteen and then it went to how old, like when
Speaker 1: did they cap it? I believe I think thirty five
Speaker 1: five damn about to get drafted. I mean, to be honest,
Speaker 1: I think it should start at like thirty and go
Speaker 1: up to seventy. No, seventy, they're can you just killing
Speaker 1: our people like that? If the boomers? If you think
Speaker 1: about how think about how different the Iraq War would
Speaker 1: have been if we'd sent the boomers out to fight
Speaker 1: at first. I mean, we would lose a lot of boomers.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess, oh, dear, I should say that.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know. I mean it seems
Speaker 1: like it's just seventeen seems too young. I could see
Speaker 1: twenty to thirty, because after thirty, that's when you start
Speaker 1: to be like my back, and then it's like I
Speaker 1: think you should be I support like, I think twenty
Speaker 1: two would be a good minimum age. You're you're old
Speaker 1: enough to where we're like you you should I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe twenty you can't rent a car until you're twenty five.
Speaker 1: That seems like why should you be able to drive
Speaker 1: a tank? Yeah, that's true. If if fucking I mean
Speaker 1: not that. I I don't want there to be a draft.
Speaker 1: To be clear, I was just curious because I've been
Speaker 1: thinking about it, because it's been people have been talking
Speaker 1: about drafts and draft dodging. I was just curious. I
Speaker 1: don't want to draft, to be clear. Please, I don't
Speaker 1: oppose a draft, but if you're going to have a draft,
Speaker 1: start with people who are fifty and older. That's that's
Speaker 1: my my thinking on the matter. But speaking of the draft,
Speaker 1: draft these products into your lifestyle. We're back and uh,
Speaker 1: this is a fun moment. Um. We don't often have
Speaker 1: a news break while we're recording an episode, but as
Speaker 1: we went off to break, the news dropped that a
Speaker 1: series of missiles were fired at all Assad Air Base,
Speaker 1: a US air base near air Bill in northern Iraq.
Speaker 1: Uh and our government is saying they were fired by Tehran.
Speaker 1: Obviously I don't think from Tehran, UM, but it looks
Speaker 1: like it was probably the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps who
Speaker 1: fired the missiles. UM. Now, a number of these missiles
Speaker 1: were fired, like most recently a day or two prior
Speaker 1: prior to that, by members of an Iraqi uh Sia
Speaker 1: Milicius supported by Iran, so it's kind of not clear
Speaker 1: how different this all is from that, but it seems like, uh,
Speaker 1: this is at least continuing to happen, So I guess
Speaker 1: we'll see how it goes. That's fun news. Yeah, great times. Yeah,
Speaker 1: everything's great. I love it when all of the people
Speaker 1: in charge your level headed, insane. UM. So yeah, when
Speaker 1: we were talking in the past about horrible violence between
Speaker 1: Iraq and Iran, Uh, we're talking about the Iraqi invasion
Speaker 1: of Iran, the Iran Iraq war. Uh, that continued for
Speaker 1: most of the eighties. So at the start of this war, um,
Speaker 1: you know, saidam and hoped it would be an easy
Speaker 1: victory due to the technical superiority of its forces, but
Speaker 1: stiff Iranian resistance quickly turned the war into a World
Speaker 1: War One style meat grinder. Uh. Kosum Sulimani was at
Speaker 1: the front almost from the beginning. Now, there are two
Speaker 1: different versions of this story, and I found both collected
Speaker 1: by the American Enterprise Institute, a neo conservative think tank.
Speaker 1: And again I must note that since Kasum's life is
Speaker 1: very politicized, you're going to have trouble finding sources on
Speaker 1: him that don't have some sort of clear bias. The
Speaker 1: AI report sites at sources and seems pretty in line
Speaker 1: with the other stuff I've read, uh, it doesn't seem
Speaker 1: I'm not saying anything crazy in here at least um
Speaker 1: and it describes two different theories as to how he
Speaker 1: sort of got his career started the beginning of the
Speaker 1: war uh quote. Sulimani reveals that he was given the
Speaker 1: task of administering the Kerman Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps could's
Speaker 1: garrison upon his return from Mahabad. In the face of
Speaker 1: the Iraqi invasion of Iran, Sulimani train and expedited several
Speaker 1: contingents from Kerman to the Southern front against Iraq. Later,
Speaker 1: the i r g C sent a company under Sulimani's
Speaker 1: command to Susan gard where it resisted Iraqi advances and
Speaker 1: the Malikia Front. Malik provides an almost Who's an Iranian
Speaker 1: scholar provides an almost entirely different account of Sulimani's participation
Speaker 1: in the war against Iraq. According to Malak, Sulimani was
Speaker 1: sent to the front as merely a participant and a
Speaker 1: very casual mission transferring water to the front. He was
Speaker 1: sent to the front for only two weeks, but the
Speaker 1: enlightened and heavenly atmosphere of the front left such an
Speaker 1: impression on the heart of the young and pier workman
Speaker 1: or technician that he, rather than spending only two weeks
Speaker 1: of his mission at the front, spent almost the entire
Speaker 1: eight year long period of war there. Now, it's not
Speaker 1: possible to verify either account Sulimani's own account gives the
Speaker 1: impression of a young man with a clear purpose in life,
Speaker 1: while Malick's account is sort of like uh idealistic, like
Speaker 1: uh okay. So basically you've got the two different versions
Speaker 1: you've got of how this guy starts the Iran Iraq war.
Speaker 1: One is kind of like a pretty standard military story.
Speaker 1: This guy is in charge of a military unit, he
Speaker 1: is sent up to the front, and he distinguishes himself
Speaker 1: self there, so he stays stationed there and fighting at
Speaker 1: like the head of things for the entirety of the
Speaker 1: war pretty much. And the other account is that he's
Speaker 1: sent up there on like a non aggressive mission to
Speaker 1: like deliver water to soldiers, and he just falls in
Speaker 1: love with being up at the front line. UM. And
Speaker 1: I don't know which of these is true. UM. I
Speaker 1: can say that the most trustworthy Western account, UM comes
Speaker 1: from a two thousand thirteen New Yorker article The Shadow
Speaker 1: Commander by Death Dexter Filkins. It's the article you'll probably
Speaker 1: see have seen shared on Sulimani after his assassination. Um.
Speaker 1: It's a pretty balanced and well written article. UM. And
Speaker 1: it those with the water Carrier sort of version of
Speaker 1: events that he was sent up there to deliver water
Speaker 1: to the front and that he like fell in love with,
Speaker 1: you know, the culture of sort of frontline sacrifice and
Speaker 1: you know, gradually got more and more and more involved. Um.
Speaker 1: I do, I do think it's worth digging into, like
Speaker 1: kind of what the motivations behind both variations on this
Speaker 1: story might be. Um. I think the water Boy backstory
Speaker 1: is kind of the one both the Iranian government and
Speaker 1: Sulimani himself wanted people to believe. And I believe I
Speaker 1: think yeah, Um, I I think that like, like clearly
Speaker 1: obviously the government has a definite interest in pushing like
Speaker 1: this view of like a guy going up to the
Speaker 1: front and being kind of uh like inspired by the
Speaker 1: heavenly atmosphere. It like that he that he feels there
Speaker 1: that's like atmosphere of sacrifice. You kind of see that
Speaker 1: in any sort of like government, Um, Like you compared
Speaker 1: to like the movie American Sniper. UM. But it also
Speaker 1: is is kind of worth outing that. Um. The official
Speaker 1: version of Cossum's biography doesn't make him out to have
Speaker 1: been like an early radical support of the Ayatola. It
Speaker 1: admits that he was like kind of just working out
Speaker 1: at the gym when all that was going on. UM.
Speaker 1: So it is it is like entirely possible that this
Speaker 1: is an accurate depiction of events that like when he
Speaker 1: kind of really gets radicalized and inspired and and uh
Speaker 1: like okay, finds his calling in life is at the
Speaker 1: front line during this war. Um. And it's like there's
Speaker 1: a lot of reason to believe that a lot of
Speaker 1: young men find their first experiences with combat at like
Speaker 1: a front line like that to be kind of intoxicating.
Speaker 1: It tends to either like break young people or be
Speaker 1: something they find like almost addictive. UM. And it seems
Speaker 1: like it would be fair to say that Cossum wound
Speaker 1: up on kind of the addicted side of that. In
Speaker 1: the mid odds, while delivering a speech at the site
Speaker 1: of one of the Iran Iraq Wars major battles, he
Speaker 1: said this to a reporter, The battlefield is Mankind's lost paradise,
Speaker 1: the paradise in which morality and human conduct are at
Speaker 1: their highest. One type of paradise that men imagine is
Speaker 1: about streams, beautiful maidens, and lush landscapes. But there is
Speaker 1: another kind of paradise, the battlefield. So that's that's I mean,
Speaker 1: it's one of those things. It's definitely the angle he
Speaker 1: wants to portray about himself. It also might be true
Speaker 1: because he spent the whole of his life in war zones. Basically, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think some people, and it's just based
Speaker 1: off my understanding of like career military people, like they
Speaker 1: are they feel the most. I mean, it's weird to
Speaker 1: say they feel the most at home at war, Like
Speaker 1: that's where they thrive. It's what they understand best. Like
Speaker 1: you take them and put them on a dinner table
Speaker 1: and you're like, so how is your day, and they're like,
Speaker 1: I mean, like they don't even know what to say
Speaker 1: to you because they're like, look, I mean I fight wars,
Speaker 1: I come up with strategy. This is the work I do,
Speaker 1: And they don't really know how to deal with other
Speaker 1: things outside of that. This is how they are. That's
Speaker 1: how they're wided. I can I can I've had a
Speaker 1: lot less experience at front lines than this guy, but
Speaker 1: it is addictive. Um, Like the atmosphere out there, the addention,
Speaker 1: the additional sense of like meaning everything is imbued with
Speaker 1: and I do you know, I try to be like
Speaker 1: critical whenever you're trying to figure out, like what do
Speaker 1: these people want you to believe about them? Like what
Speaker 1: are they putting out into the media versus what is true?
Speaker 1: But I kind of think the version of events that
Speaker 1: Cosum relates about his early war experiences are more honest
Speaker 1: than not, just because it tracks with the rest of
Speaker 1: the guy's life. Um, I think this is a dude
Speaker 1: who falls in love with battle and sacrifice and makes
Speaker 1: that his life for the next thirty years or whatever. Um.
Speaker 1: That that That's how it seems to me. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And even the sources that hate Cosum Sulimani are consistent
Speaker 1: that he served with distinction at the very front of
Speaker 1: the Iran Iraq War for pretty much the entirety of
Speaker 1: the time that it went on. And I'm gonna quote
Speaker 1: from The York The New Yorker. Now, Sulimani earned a
Speaker 1: reputation for bravery and a lawan, especially as a result
Speaker 1: of reconnaissance missions he undertook behind Iraqi lines. He returned
Speaker 1: from several missions bearing a goat, which his soldiers slaughtered
Speaker 1: and grilled. Even the Iraqis our enemy admired him for this,
Speaker 1: a former Revolutionary Guard officer who defected to the United
Speaker 1: States told me on Iraqi radio, Sulimani became known as
Speaker 1: the goat Thief, and recognition of his effectiveness, Alafona said,
Speaker 1: he was put in charge of a brigade from Kermen
Speaker 1: with men from Jim's, where he lifted weights. The Iranian
Speaker 1: army was badly overmatched, and its commanders resorted to crude
Speaker 1: and costly tactics. In human way of assaults, they sent
Speaker 1: thousands of young men directly into the Iraqi lines, often
Speaker 1: to clear mine fields, and soldiers died at a precipitous rate.
Speaker 1: Sulimani seemed distressed by the loss of life. Before sending
Speaker 1: his men into battle, he would embrace each one and
Speaker 1: bid him goodbye, and speeches he praised martyred soldiers and
Speaker 1: begged their forgiveness for not being martyred himself. When Sulimani's
Speaker 1: superiors announced plans to attack the Fall Peninsula, he dismissed
Speaker 1: them as wasteful and foolhardy. The former Revolutionary Guard officer
Speaker 1: recalled seeing Sulimani in nineteen eighty five after a battle
Speaker 1: in which his brigade had suffered many dead and wounded.
Speaker 1: He was sitting alone in a corner of a tent.
Speaker 1: He was very silent, thinking about the people he'd lost.
Speaker 1: The officers said, this is a rough time. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: from the best information available, Sulimani again was a dedicated soldier.
Speaker 1: Rule Mark Correct was a young CIA officer in a
Speaker 1: Stanbul during the war and he interfaced with many wounded
Speaker 1: Iranian soldiers who were sent there on leave to recuperate,
Speaker 1: and he met Sulimani there during one of the times
Speaker 1: when the general was wounded. And correct job in the
Speaker 1: CIA was basically to like meet these young Iranians away
Speaker 1: from home to like recover and try to recruit them
Speaker 1: as like CIA informants. So he met a lot of
Speaker 1: these guys. Um said this later. I think he I mean,
Speaker 1: he definitely talked to him. Um, I don't think it
Speaker 1: took He was like, sorry, bro, I'm a high sees
Speaker 1: you know how that be. Can't you know exactly what
Speaker 1: he said? Hell? Yeah? And and Correct was a Gemini.
Speaker 1: So okay, alright, I'm a Gemini. Oka correct said, You'd
Speaker 1: get a whole variety of guardsmen. You'd get clerics, You'd
Speaker 1: get people who came to breathe and horror and drink.
Speaker 1: There were the broken and the burned out, the hollow eye,
Speaker 1: the guys who had been destroyed, and then there were
Speaker 1: the bright eyed guys who just couldn't wait to get
Speaker 1: back to the front. I'd put Sulimani in the latter category.
Speaker 1: So death estimates from the Iran Iraq War ranged from
Speaker 1: around half a million to over a million, and over
Speaker 1: a million honestly seems like the most credible UH estimate. UM.
Speaker 1: It was, yeah, one of the most brutal conflicts of
Speaker 1: the latter half of the twentieth century. Um and living
Speaker 1: through the carnage it caused would have been a pretty
Speaker 1: radicalizing experience for a guy like Suleimani, who saw both
Speaker 1: wars beauty and its horror. Now Cosin rose rapidly through
Speaker 1: the ranks, and by his mid twenties he was commanding
Speaker 1: an entire division, and his lofty position in the military
Speaker 1: would have made him aware of the incredibly shady dealings
Speaker 1: going on in the background. I am speculating here, but
Speaker 1: it is my suspicion that American policy during this period
Speaker 1: would go on to have a major impact on the
Speaker 1: man Kasum Sula mony became and the tactics he engaged
Speaker 1: in for the rest of his life. In nineteen ninety two,
Speaker 1: The New York Times published a bombshow report titled the U.
Speaker 1: S Secretly gave aid to Iraq early in its war
Speaker 1: against Iran or it should have been a bombshell report,
Speaker 1: but since it was about the Middle East, and it
Speaker 1: wasn't during one of the cumulative eleven weeks that our
Speaker 1: nation nation has cared about stuff happening in the Middle East.
Speaker 1: No one really noticed the article, but it was damning
Speaker 1: and I'm going to read a quote from it now.
Speaker 1: The Reagan administration secretly decided to provide highly classified intelligence
Speaker 1: to Iraq in the spring of nineteen eighty two, more
Speaker 1: than two years earlier than previously disclosed, while also permitting
Speaker 1: the sale of American made arms to Baghdad and a
Speaker 1: successful effort to help President Saddam Hussein avert imminent defeat
Speaker 1: in the war with Iran. Former intelligence and State Department
Speaker 1: officials say the American decision to lend crucial help to
Speaker 1: Baghdad so early in the nineteen eight i Ran Iraq
Speaker 1: war came after American intelligence agencies warned that Iraq was
Speaker 1: on the verge of being overrun by Iran, whose army
Speaker 1: was bolstered by the year before by covert shipments of
Speaker 1: American made weapons. So, in other words, Iraq invades Iran,
Speaker 1: and as soon as Reagan comes to power, we sent
Speaker 1: I Ran a bunch of guns illegally. We actually have
Speaker 1: Israel sell them the guns in order to bolster contra.
Speaker 1: Oh this is before that ship. That's even that's a
Speaker 1: different thing. Yeah. Wait, wait we did this twice. He
Speaker 1: kept doing this. Yeah, you couldn't stop Ronald Reagan from
Speaker 1: selling arms to Iran, well in buying them. Wait, so
Speaker 1: what did he use the money to do this time? Well,
Speaker 1: this was not about this first time. I don't think
Speaker 1: there was even a profit. They were just first time.
Speaker 1: It was like a geopolitical thing. Yeah, he didn't want
Speaker 1: Iraq to overrun Iran, so we sent weapons to Iran.
Speaker 1: And then because the way the Iran Iraq war goes
Speaker 1: is Saddam invades Iran and it's a debacle for him him,
Speaker 1: and he loses a huge number of men. But then Iran,
Speaker 1: once they push Iraq out, invades Iraq as sort of like, well,
Speaker 1: let's see how far we can take this ship, and
Speaker 1: then it's a disaster for Iran. And what happens is
Speaker 1: Saddam invades, then he gets pushed back, in large part
Speaker 1: due to the fact that the US gave Iran a
Speaker 1: bunch of weapons, and so the US is like, ship,
Speaker 1: now Iran is going to overrun Iraq. So we send
Speaker 1: Iraq a shitload of weapons. And not just do we
Speaker 1: send them weapons, we send them high level intelligence on
Speaker 1: the positioning of Iranian troops and military divisions with the
Speaker 1: specific knowledge that Saddam Hussein is going to deploy chemical
Speaker 1: weapons against those people. So we did not give Saddam
Speaker 1: his chemical weapons, although his chemical stockpile was made with
Speaker 1: a lot of help from European scientists, um, but we
Speaker 1: specifically helped Saddam's military target the Iranian military, including uh
Speaker 1: Sulimanis units, because his unit lost thousands of men to
Speaker 1: chemical weapons with chemical weapons. So during this war, Sulimani
Speaker 1: is at a high enough level that I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: if he doesn't know while it's going on. He knows
Speaker 1: immediately afterwards that the United States is arming both sides
Speaker 1: of this conflict. Um, and it is. It is a
Speaker 1: very This is not I want to I want to
Speaker 1: be clear here. This often gets like played as like
Speaker 1: the CIA fucking around. This is not the CIA fucking around.
Speaker 1: This is the state, state government. This is state money,
Speaker 1: not like US. It's like, because he's been watching the
Speaker 1: US for years, fuck with everybody. That's wild now one
Speaker 1: former Yeah, I think it's interesting here because it's specifically
Speaker 1: one they're like one of the State Department officials that
Speaker 1: The New York Times talked to like specifically laid out
Speaker 1: that this was not a ci A rogue initiative, but
Speaker 1: that had been approved of the highest levels of the
Speaker 1: Reagan administration. The exact quote he gave them was, we
Speaker 1: wanted to avoid victory by both sides. UM. So basically
Speaker 1: we wanted there to be a bloody stalemate. Um. It's like,
Speaker 1: we're trying to be like really neutral about this, but
Speaker 1: at the same time, we are going to give everybody weapons. Yeah,
Speaker 1: We're going to give everybody weapons. And like the way
Speaker 1: we did it was really shady. We basically looked the
Speaker 1: we sold weapons uh to Jordan's Saudi Arabia and Kuwait
Speaker 1: and then looked the other way while Jordan's Saudi Arabia
Speaker 1: and Kuwait sent those weapons to Iraq. Yeah. Um from
Speaker 1: the Times quote, American officials made no effort to stop
Speaker 1: these sales, known to many in the administration, even though
Speaker 1: American export law forbids the third party transfer of American
Speaker 1: made arms without Washington's permission. So if Sulimani wasn't aware
Speaker 1: of this all at the time, he was aware of
Speaker 1: it by nineteen ninety two when this report came out
Speaker 1: in the New York Times, I'm going to guess a
Speaker 1: guy like him would have read it. It was not
Speaker 1: a secret New York Times article alredating I assume Iran's
Speaker 1: got a couple of subscriptions. Um, That's what I'm gonna say.
Speaker 1: So now, when the war ended in nineteen eighty eight,
Speaker 1: Sulimani and his division were post toe to the chaotic
Speaker 1: eastern frontier of Iran, where gangs of narcotic smugglers laden
Speaker 1: with Afghan opium had rendered much of the region wild
Speaker 1: and uncontrollable. For several years. Kasum fought a brutal bloody
Speaker 1: but ultimately successful war on drugs in that part of
Speaker 1: the country. Among other things, he gained a reputation for
Speaker 1: being incorruptible. He also spent a lot of time fighting
Speaker 1: against the Taliban Um, who were enemies of Iran at
Speaker 1: that period of time. And he spent a lot of
Speaker 1: time like backing and moving in agents and like supporting
Speaker 1: militias in the area that we're anti Taliban, including a
Speaker 1: militia called the Northern Alliance who you might have heard
Speaker 1: about when we invaded Afghanistan because they're the guys we
Speaker 1: allied with two so now in ninet, based on all
Speaker 1: of this experience, Kasum Suleimani was a natural choice to
Speaker 1: put it put to put at the head of Iran's
Speaker 1: notorious Kods Force. The Koods Force is an elite division
Speaker 1: within the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and essentially serves as
Speaker 1: a serves in a mix of functions a bit like
Speaker 1: the CIA cons across with like Joint Special Operations command Um.
Speaker 1: The Iran Iraq War had ended after a series of
Speaker 1: durrass of disastrous offenses into a rat cost hundreds of
Speaker 1: thousands of Iranian lives, and this debacle had convinced the
Speaker 1: government that their military future lay in asymmetrical warfare. UM.
Speaker 1: You can't compete with like the big Western nations and
Speaker 1: like straight up tank battles, and it's incredibly wasteful to try.
Speaker 1: So instead, let's let's get smarter about this, you know,
Speaker 1: fund insurgencies get better at that sort of fighting. UM,
Speaker 1: And they, in this way, Iran kind of guesses what
Speaker 1: the warfare is going to be like in the twenty
Speaker 1: first century. They're definitely ahead of the United States UM
Speaker 1: in figuring that part out so UH. In the wake
Speaker 1: of the Gulf War. As US influence expanded across the
Speaker 1: Middle East, UH, the Kood's Force became increasingly important important
Speaker 1: to Iran's geopolitical strategy. It was basically responsible for projecting
Speaker 1: power outside of the Islamic Republic, so Costum's appointment to
Speaker 1: the head of this force was the sign of the
Speaker 1: deep trust the Ayatola placed in him over the years
Speaker 1: he held the judg ab Sulimani would prove to be
Speaker 1: a dedicated supporter of the conservative clerical elements in the
Speaker 1: Iranian government. In nineteen a series of student protests racked
Speaker 1: the country and pushed for reform within the nation's harsh
Speaker 1: religious laws. President Mohammed Khatami, who had come to power
Speaker 1: as a reformer, was unwilling to crack down on these students.
Speaker 1: Costam Sulimani and several other Revolutionary Guard commanders signed a
Speaker 1: letter promising they would depose the president if he did
Speaker 1: not brutally crushed the demonstrations, which were brutally crushed in
Speaker 1: the wake of this um And speaking of brutally crushing
Speaker 1: student demonstrations for liberty, okay, you know who won't do that?
Speaker 1: An ad? An ad sponsor, a sponsor unless it unless
Speaker 1: it's one of our Ray Theon sponsored ads. That kind
Speaker 1: of their business. Yeah, although Raytheon does also need uh
Speaker 1: insurgent movements in order to stay profitable. So really, you know,
Speaker 1: if you're an insert argent, Raith Theon is your best friend?
Speaker 1: Um y by ray I do not stand by that.
Speaker 1: Then it cuts to immediately we got a ray Theon
Speaker 1: ad because we have horrible I am. I am hoping
Speaker 1: for the day we get a Raytheon AD. That's gonna
Speaker 1: be fun. I mean, don't be surprised. We were getting
Speaker 1: Coke bro ads and we're getting Fox News ads. We
Speaker 1: get random acts it's beautiful. I'm just excited we're back.
Speaker 1: So we've been talking about the Koods Force a bit,
Speaker 1: which Cosum Suleimani has just been appointed to head. UM.
Speaker 1: The Kods Force is named after the Farsi word for
Speaker 1: Jerusalem UM, which gives you some idea as to what
Speaker 1: it's seen as its ultimate purpose UM. And there's definitely
Speaker 1: like a big angle that's sort of like Iran is
Speaker 1: the head of this axis against Israel UM and against
Speaker 1: the United States. And in fact, the term access of
Speaker 1: resistance is used a lot to like what they're trying
Speaker 1: to build in the Middle East in opposition to Israel
Speaker 1: in the United States UM. And the Koods Force headquarters
Speaker 1: is very notably UM on the former US embassy campus
Speaker 1: in Tehran, the embassy that was taken over UM during
Speaker 1: the Iranian Revolution and stuff, which is like that's a
Speaker 1: move right there. UM. So now that he's in charge
Speaker 1: of the Kods Force, Kasam Sulamanni embarks in a policy
Speaker 1: of recruiting and training agents all across the Middle East. UM.
Speaker 1: His biggest success is probably Hezbollah, an Iran supported militia
Speaker 1: and political party in Lebanon that spent most of the
Speaker 1: last couple of decades chucking rockets into Israel and being
Speaker 1: bombed by Israel in response. UM. Hezbollah started as a
Speaker 1: resistance to the Israeli occupation because Israel occupied a lot
Speaker 1: of Lebanon up until about two thousand UM, and constant
Speaker 1: Hezblah and surgeon attacks were a big part of why
Speaker 1: Israel eventually like gave up on that occupation. UM. So
Speaker 1: it's it's again. I'm not gonna be doing justice to
Speaker 1: all of this history. I'm trying to provide the broad
Speaker 1: strokes UM. And a lot of the ability of Iran
Speaker 1: to get weapons too has Blah in Lebanon, and particularly
Speaker 1: to send them the rockets that has Blaw like intermittently
Speaker 1: fires into Israel. Um is possible because Iran's ally is Syria,
Speaker 1: and so Iran is able to move rockets and support
Speaker 1: in like money and weapons up through Syria. So keep
Speaker 1: that in mind because that's going to be very important later.
Speaker 1: So Kasson was also busy in Afghanistan. The Taliban are
Speaker 1: sworn enemies of Iran's clerical regime, and for years before
Speaker 1: nine eleven, Sulimani was integral in backing and supporting the
Speaker 1: resistance to the Taliban, and I'm gonna quote now from
Speaker 1: a report in West Points Combating Terrorists Terrorism Center quote.
Speaker 1: In August, a few months into Celimonies, Uh Tenor at
Speaker 1: the head of the KOD's force, Taliban forces swept into
Speaker 1: the northern Afghan city of Missouri Sharif, home to a
Speaker 1: substantial community of ethnic Hazaras far as He speaking Shia Muslims.
Speaker 1: The Taliban initiated a brutal pogrom against members of the minority,
Speaker 1: trashing homes, raping women and girls, and massacring hundreds of
Speaker 1: Shia men and boys. Among the dead was a group
Speaker 1: of nine Iranians, eight diplomats and a journalist. At this
Speaker 1: naked provocation, factions on both sides turned white hot for war.
Speaker 1: The I r g c S overall commander at the time,
Speaker 1: Yah yah Rahim Sava Safawi, requested Supreme Leader khamenes Uh
Speaker 1: permission for the punishment of the Taliban to advance to Harat,
Speaker 1: a city in western Afghanistan, annihilate, punish, eliminate them. Iran
Speaker 1: began massing an invasion force of almost a quarter of
Speaker 1: a million soldiers along the Afghan border. Reportedly, it was
Speaker 1: Sulimani who stepped in and diffused the situation without resort
Speaker 1: resorting to further violence. Instead of confronting the Taliban directly,
Speaker 1: Sulimani opted to throw increased Iranian support behind the opposition
Speaker 1: Northern Alliance, personally helping to direct the groups operations from
Speaker 1: a based across Afghanistan's northern border and Tajikistan. It was
Speaker 1: a model of proxy warfare to which he would return
Speaker 1: again and again. So this is really important. There's this
Speaker 1: the Taliban murders a bunch of people, including Iranians, and
Speaker 1: there's this huge outrage within Iran calling for an invasion
Speaker 1: of Afghanistan in the late nineteen nineties, and they have
Speaker 1: a quarter of a million men mass to do it.
Speaker 1: And Solimani says, no, no, no, no, funk that we've
Speaker 1: seen what mass invasions look like. We've seen what like
Speaker 1: war on that scale looks like, particularly against an enemy
Speaker 1: like the Taliban that's never going to stand and fight.
Speaker 1: He's kind of predicting, like what would happen in the
Speaker 1: United States later, Like that's a bad idea. The smart
Speaker 1: thing to do is send in support and trainers and
Speaker 1: commandos and bolster one of the militias that of Afghans
Speaker 1: that are already fighting the Northern Alliance or that are
Speaker 1: already fighting the Taliban, and like that's that's the way
Speaker 1: to actually make progress in Afghanistan. There's no benefit to
Speaker 1: invading Afghanistan, um, which you know, looking at the history
Speaker 1: of invading Afghanistan, not a dumb play um now. Obviously
Speaker 1: in two thousand one, UH later in two thousand one,
Speaker 1: nine eleven, nine eleven, all over everybody's asses, uh, and
Speaker 1: the US committed itself to invading and then never leaving
Speaker 1: Afghanistan for reasons which are still unclear. Uh. Kasam Sulimani
Speaker 1: was only too happy to lend his forces support to
Speaker 1: the American military effort in that country. He and his
Speaker 1: KOD's force and their proxies in Afghanistan worked closely with
Speaker 1: US Special forces, in particular, could Force soldiers and US
Speaker 1: special operators fought side by side against the Taliban, and
Speaker 1: one of those chapters of the War on Terror that
Speaker 1: we do not talk about very much anymore, But this
Speaker 1: is where things are at the start of the war
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan is Iran in the United States very much
Speaker 1: working together against the Taliban. So as the Bush administration
Speaker 1: began to ramp up the propaganda campaign that preceded the
Speaker 1: totally successful and widely praised invasion of Iraq. There was
Speaker 1: reason to believe that the United that US Iran relations
Speaker 1: had turned a corner. The government of Iran and Kassam
Speaker 1: Sulamani hated both the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, and there
Speaker 1: are a few better ways to turn a nation from
Speaker 1: enemy to friend than fighting two back to back wars
Speaker 1: as allies. I mean, it worked for the United States
Speaker 1: in England. Um, So the question is how did things
Speaker 1: get fucked up from this point? Like that seems like
Speaker 1: a pretty great spot to be and you're fighting alongside
Speaker 1: each other. You're like fucking up two of their big
Speaker 1: enemies in a row. Uh, what turned things bad? Do
Speaker 1: you have any guesses? I'm gonna say, um, white people
Speaker 1: because they're never happy, yeah, color or grown grown up
Speaker 1: with immigrants. You just take what you can get and
Speaker 1: you understand and you go, I'm not going to cause
Speaker 1: more trouble because, like, I see what the situation is,
Speaker 1: and I know it might not be better for us
Speaker 1: in any other way. This might be as good as
Speaker 1: it gets. So I'm gonna fucking shut up and keep
Speaker 1: my head down and not speak out where I'm not
Speaker 1: supposed to not supposed to speak out. And maybe I'm
Speaker 1: speaking a little too much from how my father would
Speaker 1: talk to me, But that's what it had always felt like. Well,
Speaker 1: you know who didn't worry at all about speaking out
Speaker 1: recklessly because he knew that none of it would ever
Speaker 1: harm him was was was George Bush, and one of
Speaker 1: his speech writers. In January two thousand two, President George W.
Speaker 1: Bush delivered his first post nine eleven State of the
Speaker 1: Union address. He named Iran as part of an access
Speaker 1: of evil, alongside Iraq and North Korea, three nations which
Speaker 1: notably did not collaborate or work together in any meaningful
Speaker 1: sense of the word. This declaration took Iran by surprise,
Speaker 1: considering their soldiers were literally fighting alongside the United States
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan. Now. Ryan Crocker was deputy chief of the
Speaker 1: American Embassy in Kabul at the time. As a result
Speaker 1: of this position, he communicated regularly with the representative of
Speaker 1: the Iranian government, a guy who was basically the direct
Speaker 1: mouthpiece for Kosum Sulamani Uh. Crocker had not been warned
Speaker 1: that the United States was about to declare Iran part
Speaker 1: of an access of evil in a speech, and he
Speaker 1: was very unpleasantly surprised when he realized this is what
Speaker 1: had gone down. And here's how Crocker recalled the hours
Speaker 1: after the Access of Evil speech and Kabul quote. He
Speaker 1: saw the negotiator, the Iranian negotiator the next day at
Speaker 1: the U N compound in Kabul, and he was furious,
Speaker 1: you completely damaged me, Crocker recalled him, saying, Sulimani isn't
Speaker 1: a tearing rage. He feels compromised. The negotiator told Crocker
Speaker 1: that at great political risk, Sulimani had been contemplating a
Speaker 1: complete reevaluation of the United States. Say why wouldn't he?
Speaker 1: Maybe it's time to rethink our relationship with the Americans.
Speaker 1: The Access of Evil speech brought these meetings to an end.
Speaker 1: Reformers inside the government who had advocated a rapproach ma
Speaker 1: with the United States were put on the defensive. Recalling
Speaker 1: that time, Crocker shook his head. We were just that close.
Speaker 1: One speed word and one speech changed history. Great Bush,
Speaker 1: but hey, no bushes are cool people to hang out
Speaker 1: with Ellen, and we should we should. I want to
Speaker 1: note bus should get some blame for that speech, but
Speaker 1: we should throw a lot of blame too on the
Speaker 1: guy who wrote The Access of Evil Speech and The
Speaker 1: Acts as of Evil Speech. Writer was a fellow you
Speaker 1: might know from the Internet today named David Frome, now
Speaker 1: from is currently a staff Yeah, he's currently a staff
Speaker 1: writer at The Atlantic and a never Trump idiot grifter king.
Speaker 1: He wrote a stupid book about how Trump is bad
Speaker 1: and despite the fact that all of his previous work
Speaker 1: as a neo con was laying the ground for Trump anyway.
Speaker 1: Fun David Frome. Uh, you can find him on Twitter
Speaker 1: at at David Frome, but you probably shouldn't because this
Speaker 1: ship bird has done more than enough damage to the
Speaker 1: world and should not be listened to by anyone on
Speaker 1: any subject ever. Again, I will admit that it's pretty
Speaker 1: hilarious that his current pinned tweet, which I think he
Speaker 1: means is a reference to the Trump administration, is the sentence.
Speaker 1: When this is all over, nobody will admit to ever
Speaker 1: having supported it. I fucking hate David Frum. He's a yeah,
Speaker 1: but infair. It is debatable as to whether or not
Speaker 1: Iran was ever actually seeking reproache ma with the United
Speaker 1: States Cossum was again, I can't emphasize this enough a
Speaker 1: spy chief, and every piece of information that he allowed
Speaker 1: to get out about him carries the risk of being
Speaker 1: a piece of disinformation, because that's what spies do. Now,
Speaker 1: maybe he wanted to spread the rumor that the access
Speaker 1: of evil speech is why relations broke off. It's impossible
Speaker 1: to prove this to a point of certainty. All that
Speaker 1: I can prove to a point of certainty is that
Speaker 1: David Froume is an idiot. Now, whatever the truth behind
Speaker 1: all this, By two thousand four, Saddam Hussein was out
Speaker 1: of Iraq and Sulimani's Good's Force was committed to ensuring
Speaker 1: that the US followed him. They began to manufacture and
Speaker 1: export huge amounts of explosively formed projectiles or e f
Speaker 1: p s. These are basically roadside bombs that launch a
Speaker 1: molten copper slug into armored vehicles. E fps were miles
Speaker 1: ahead of the indigenous improvised explosives in Iraq, and they
Speaker 1: could only have been manufactured in Iran and sent into Iraq.
Speaker 1: And in short order, rough of American combat deaths in
Speaker 1: Iraq were blamed on these weapons. Um So this is
Speaker 1: like what a lot of US military planners, uh will
Speaker 1: will like really point to as to why they hated Sulimani.
Speaker 1: And it's one of those things there were There have
Speaker 1: been a lot of people in the United States military
Speaker 1: establishments since Bush was in office who wanted us to
Speaker 1: assassinate this guy, and both Bush and Obama were intelligent
Speaker 1: enough to be like, it's just not worth the fallout. Um.
Speaker 1: There's a part of me that thinks the reason he
Speaker 1: was assassinated is that eventually enough of those guys got
Speaker 1: forced out by Trump that some of the military people
Speaker 1: who were just thinking of like they're dead friends, were like,
Speaker 1: we've got a chance, he doesn't know what the consequences
Speaker 1: will be, and we can get rid of this guy
Speaker 1: that we hate. Uh I think that might be what happened. Yeah,
Speaker 1: now and not true logic, Yes, yes, And it's one
Speaker 1: of those things. I don't morally blame a military leader
Speaker 1: who had friends is killed by an e f P
Speaker 1: for wanting that guy to be killed. It's what you
Speaker 1: do if your friends got killed. But part of the
Speaker 1: reason why the military doesn't run the show in our
Speaker 1: government is because you shouldn't have those people making the
Speaker 1: calls you should have civilians with a level of separation
Speaker 1: from all of those sort of calls and a level
Speaker 1: of emotional separation making decisions, Which is why we didn't
Speaker 1: assassinate this guy earlier, because the powers that be, the
Speaker 1: civilians who are running our military as it is supposed
Speaker 1: to be, We're like, I know you're pissed, but that's
Speaker 1: a bad call. Like it's going to endanger more lives.
Speaker 1: And I think one of the stories of the Trump
Speaker 1: administration is again, those norms that existed for a good
Speaker 1: fucking reason going away. Um yeah, now, um, some of
Speaker 1: that's my own speculation, but we do know that the
Speaker 1: e f P s in particular, are why so many
Speaker 1: US military people really hated Sulimani. Now, Kassam Suleimani's war
Speaker 1: against the United States in Iraq was a textbook case
Speaker 1: of how to wage a successful insurgent conflict. He and
Speaker 1: his Kods force succeeded in briefly bridging the Sunny Shiite
Speaker 1: divide among insurgent groups, supporting both in their efforts to
Speaker 1: kill American soldiers. One way he did this was by
Speaker 1: using his connections to the head of Intelligence and Assad
Speaker 1: Syria to allow Sunny extremists to move through Syria and
Speaker 1: across Iraq's porous border. This provided huge numbers of foreign
Speaker 1: fighters to battle American soldiers. It also helped establish the
Speaker 1: networks of Sunny extremists in that region, in Syria and
Speaker 1: in northern Iraq that years later would coalesce into what
Speaker 1: we now know as isis Um. So this is again
Speaker 1: a decision with profoundly mixed consequences, and I'm gonna quote
Speaker 1: again from that New Yorker article. In many cases al
Speaker 1: Qaeda was allowed to degree of freedom in Iran as well.
Speaker 1: Crocker told me that in May two thousand three, the
Speaker 1: Americans received intelligence that al Qaeda fighters in Iran were
Speaker 1: preparing to an attack on Western targets in Saudi Arabia.
Speaker 1: Crocker was alarmed they were there under Iranian protection planning operations,
Speaker 1: he said, he flew to Geneva and passed a warning
Speaker 1: to the Iranians, but to no avail. Militants bombed three
Speaker 1: residential compounds in Riad, killing thirty five people, including nine Americans.
Speaker 1: As it turned out, the Iranian strategy of a betting
Speaker 1: Sunni extremists backfired horrendously. Shortly after the occupation, began, the
Speaker 1: same extremists began attacking Shiite civilians and the Shiite dominated
Speaker 1: Iraqi government. It was a preview of the civil war
Speaker 1: to come welcome to the Middle East. The Western diplotin
Speaker 1: Baghdad told me Sulimani wanted to bleed the Americans, so
Speaker 1: he invited in the Jihadis and things got out of control. Now,
Speaker 1: one of the things that's really frustrating to me right
Speaker 1: now is that you'll see and like a lot of
Speaker 1: the anti war left people celebrating Sulimani as like an
Speaker 1: enemy of ISIS and Islamic extremism. And it's true that
Speaker 1: his forces fought against ISIS and that he helped in
Speaker 1: the campaign to destroy ISIS, but he was also integral
Speaker 1: and helping ISIS come about and kind of the same
Speaker 1: ways that the United States were. And this is one
Speaker 1: of the things that I think ironic to me is
Speaker 1: that if you look at like a lot of the
Speaker 1: mistakes that the US made that allowed ISIS to get
Speaker 1: a foothold in Syria and Iraq, and a lot of
Speaker 1: the mistakes Iran made that allowed ISIS to gain a
Speaker 1: foothold in the same region, they're not entirely different. Um.
Speaker 1: And I think they're both based in this kind of
Speaker 1: an attempt to use these forces for your own gain
Speaker 1: that backfired. Um. It's an interesting story, UM, but it's
Speaker 1: a lot more complicated than a lot of people on
Speaker 1: Twitter are giving it credit for being. So that's that's
Speaker 1: my take on it. Now. In two thousand eleven, when
Speaker 1: the Syrian Civil War started up, Sulimani ordered members of
Speaker 1: the Iraqi Shiite militias that he'd formed to help resist
Speaker 1: the US into Syria to support Assad's beleaguered and still
Speaker 1: incompetent military. UM. And this is again like there's quotes
Speaker 1: that you get from like members of the Iranian government
Speaker 1: at the time that are, like, if we lose Damascus,
Speaker 1: we lose Tehran. Um. Because like Syria connects uh Iran
Speaker 1: to Lebanon, and like Hezbollah is a hugely important chunk
Speaker 1: of like Iran's international Paul. He's particularly like in terms
Speaker 1: of like what they consider to be the resistance to Israel.
Speaker 1: So there's very much this understanding that we cannot let
Speaker 1: Asad in Syria fall or it's the end of us. UM.
Speaker 1: And there's also another one of the things that you hear,
Speaker 1: you'll hear quotes along the lines of unlike the Americans,
Speaker 1: we stick by our friends. And obviously I hate me
Speaker 1: some Bashar al Assad. But there's a point there that
Speaker 1: I think gets to like why the United States is
Speaker 1: doomed to always lose whenever it gets involved in conflict
Speaker 1: in the Middle East. Is a country like Iran under
Speaker 1: a guy like Sulimani and whoever is going to come
Speaker 1: next to him is capable of portrait of of of
Speaker 1: of thinking in terms of decades, in terms of we
Speaker 1: have been supporting this regime in Syria for years, and
Speaker 1: we will continue to and we will gain certain long
Speaker 1: term benefits from being solid as a rock in our
Speaker 1: support of this regime. And they did things like they
Speaker 1: loaned Asad seven billion dollars, they sent thousands of soldiers
Speaker 1: in to fight, a significant chunk of whom died fighting
Speaker 1: for Assad um. Whereas in the United States you never
Speaker 1: get plans that go much further than four maybe eight years,
Speaker 1: and nobody who we back, as we've the Kurds in
Speaker 1: Syria have most recently seen nobody can trust that will
Speaker 1: stay there for any length of time. Um, Which is
Speaker 1: like when you're looking at why we continually funk up
Speaker 1: in the Middle East. I think that is as much
Speaker 1: of a reason as anything, is the fact that, like
Speaker 1: nobody can really trust us to hang around um. And meanwhile,
Speaker 1: with a country like Iran, if you're Iran's ally, you
Speaker 1: kind of can know what they're going to do, like
Speaker 1: and and it's not because you know, it's because of
Speaker 1: national self interest. Is because Iran sees Syria as an
Speaker 1: integral part of its national defense and its foreign policy.
Speaker 1: But like, if you're Syria, you can trust Iran to
Speaker 1: do certain things to back your ass up. And if
Speaker 1: your US ally in the Middle East, you can never
Speaker 1: trust the United States further than about four years out.
Speaker 1: And that's just the way it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's uh yeah yeah. I mean it's like the American
Speaker 1: way is to always just have your own back and
Speaker 1: not consider um. The consequence is in a weird way.
Speaker 1: Ah yeah, I don't. I don't care for this. It's
Speaker 1: this problem of like, like, obviously I'm not in favor
Speaker 1: of I think it's good that we get to vote
Speaker 1: regularly on a new government, but there are aspects of
Speaker 1: it that are dumb. And one of the things that's
Speaker 1: dumb about it is that it means our entire foreign
Speaker 1: policy changes on a dime every four to eight years,
Speaker 1: And maybe there's a way to have a government where
Speaker 1: we still get to vote out leaders regularly, but also
Speaker 1: we don't whiplash our allies every time someone with a
Speaker 1: different opinion winds up. I don't know, maybe maybe there's
Speaker 1: a way to figure that out. God you would think
Speaker 1: or like, yeah, just keep it. I don't even know,
Speaker 1: Like it's so it's so tough to think about, because, like,
Speaker 1: I mean more so, when you were talking, I started
Speaker 1: thinking a lot about my Iranian family and hoping. I
Speaker 1: feel like the best outcome would be that the US
Speaker 1: understands that the attacks were the missiles that were just
Speaker 1: fired are in retaliation of them killing Slemani, and they
Speaker 1: just take it as that they go, Okay, that's enough,
Speaker 1: and that they don't retaliate into your on because I
Speaker 1: feel like, um, this country can't I don't even know
Speaker 1: like what to think, Like we can't stand here and
Speaker 1: then be like okay, well let's just all vote. Like
Speaker 1: it doesn't nothing makes sense anymore. And I'm really starting
Speaker 1: to become a little unraveled as we go on. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I I really it doesn't even feel
Speaker 1: like just being like, well, we gotta get out there
Speaker 1: and vote them out is enough. It's like, why is
Speaker 1: no one taking this person out of the control? Like
Speaker 1: it seems so I feel so lost currently. I don't
Speaker 1: know what I want. I just want it to be done.
Speaker 1: I want this man to be out, and I don't
Speaker 1: want I don't want anyone else to die. Is that fun?
Speaker 1: Is that like just to like I mean, like right now,
Speaker 1: the most recent news that just came out after the
Speaker 1: Iran launched missiles into the Al Asad air base near
Speaker 1: or Bill is that um, one of the advisors to
Speaker 1: Iran Supreme Leader Aguin named said Jollily, posted to Twitter
Speaker 1: a picture of the Iranian flag. And if you'll remember
Speaker 1: when Trump announced Trump announced the killing of Sulimani basically
Speaker 1: by just tweeting a picture of the American flag. Um,
Speaker 1: And it's just keeps getting dumber, like like, don't that's
Speaker 1: not the direction it should be heading, where we just
Speaker 1: post flags and shoot missiles at each other, Like that's
Speaker 1: that's not a boy. Um, I'm not happy with that development. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And also it just came out that on the In
Speaker 1: officials are warning that if the U S retaliates to
Speaker 1: the strikes that are on just launched has below will
Speaker 1: fire rockets at Israel. So that's this is all going
Speaker 1: great in real time. Everybody fun one super cool. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think the best we can do is understand that
Speaker 1: we did something we shouldn't have done without a plan,
Speaker 1: and now we have no plan, and now we're here,
Speaker 1: and it's like, what are we supposed to do. You
Speaker 1: can't go into Iran. You just can't do it. You
Speaker 1: cannot go start a war with Iran. You definitely can't
Speaker 1: go started like a foot war with Iran. You're not
Speaker 1: this isn't this is absurd. We were No one's going
Speaker 1: to survive this. You're not gonna put these poor military.
Speaker 1: The US military does not deserve this. They do not
Speaker 1: deserve to have to fly troops out there while they're
Speaker 1: literally telling troops to get the funk out of here.
Speaker 1: This is not good, and here we are. It's it's
Speaker 1: fundamentally like. One of the things that was really frustrating
Speaker 1: in the lead up to the fucking election is that
Speaker 1: there would be all these guys who are ostensibly on
Speaker 1: the left who would be like, well, Donald Trump at
Speaker 1: least is like our best bet, Like this is someone
Speaker 1: I really respect. Otherwise that Jeremy Scahill over the intercept
Speaker 1: something said something like Trump is the best might be
Speaker 1: our best bet for like not any getting America involved
Speaker 1: into any new wars, And it was like, if you
Speaker 1: listen to his actual rhetoric, he was never anti war.
Speaker 1: He was just anti actually like committing Like he was
Speaker 1: never anti war. He was anti the only thing about
Speaker 1: war that isn't all negative, which is like the ability
Speaker 1: to build long term relationships and potentially stability in areas
Speaker 1: at the cost of lives and in a significant amount
Speaker 1: of money. Um, like what we had helped to achieve
Speaker 1: in chunks of northeast Syria, Um, Like what we helped
Speaker 1: to achieve in chunks of northern Iraq. Um. He was
Speaker 1: against that stuff. He was not against murdering people and
Speaker 1: sending in troops as long as he got to steal
Speaker 1: oil from people like that. That was the thing that
Speaker 1: Trump said is like number one, he's fine with fucking
Speaker 1: bombing the ship out of people, and number two, he
Speaker 1: thinks when we're involved in the country militarily, we should
Speaker 1: get to take half their oil. Like he was always
Speaker 1: just a pirate Um, just a bunch of idiots tricked
Speaker 1: themselves into thinking he was anti war because they hated
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton. It's just so frustrating, Um, how dumb people were. Uh,
Speaker 1: and now we're seeing like, yeah, he's just sending more
Speaker 1: troops into the Middle East and they're getting shot at
Speaker 1: by rockets and he's bombing sovereign nations that are on
Speaker 1: paper are military allies. Because it's just so dumb. It's
Speaker 1: so dumb. Yeah, there's no lodging, But do you think
Speaker 1: there's an adult in the room anywhere in this situation? Uh?
Speaker 1: Not not anymore, not anymore. I Mean the problem is
Speaker 1: that like everybody's convinced they're the adult in they're like
Speaker 1: these military guys, the guys who I suspect like pushed,
Speaker 1: We're you're part of what was pushing the assassination of Sulimani.
Speaker 1: Would say that, like, no, we are the hard nosed adults.
Speaker 1: We understand the realities of the world. And this guy
Speaker 1: was a bad guy and he killed our men, and
Speaker 1: like sometimes you've got to take it to the bad guys.
Speaker 1: And I think Sulimani was a bad guy. I think
Speaker 1: he did some terrible things. I think he's backing of
Speaker 1: the Assad regime was awful. But the right answer and
Speaker 1: the smart answer, is not always killing everybody who does
Speaker 1: bad things, especially since for as much ugly ship as
Speaker 1: Sulimani did, you can find American generals who did a
Speaker 1: lot of similar things who are alive today, and Costum
Speaker 1: Suleimani doesn't have nearly as much blood on his hands
Speaker 1: to say Henry Kissinger does. Like that's just a reality
Speaker 1: of the world, is that if you go around missile
Speaker 1: striking everybody who has done bad things, you will be
Speaker 1: at war with everybody and a lot more people will die.
Speaker 1: And it's not satisfying when you've lost a friend as
Speaker 1: a result of something that guy did, but that guy
Speaker 1: lost friends as a result of something some of your
Speaker 1: buddies did, because like, that's the fucking way this game
Speaker 1: is played. And I hate all of the people who
Speaker 1: actually consider it a game, which is most of the
Speaker 1: people that we talk about in stories like this, Like,
Speaker 1: I hate them all, um. But I was thinking the
Speaker 1: other day how circular history is, like it's I had
Speaker 1: a very dark thought where I was like, oh, this
Speaker 1: will never end, like we will maybe relations will get better,
Speaker 1: maybe they won't, but we will be in this cycle forever,
Speaker 1: and it feels like it just happens and happens and
Speaker 1: happens we we do whenever I get too trapped in
Speaker 1: that kind of thinking. One thing I like to think
Speaker 1: about is France and Germany, um, and France and England,
Speaker 1: which are all countries that were trapped in a centuries
Speaker 1: long cycle of constant and incredibly bloody warfare, and now
Speaker 1: all of their teenagers fuck each other every summer and
Speaker 1: get drunk and take ecstasy and dance to electronic music
Speaker 1: and there's never going to be a war between those
Speaker 1: three countries again. Um, and a ton of ugly blood
Speaker 1: between them. UM. So I don't think it's hopeless. That's
Speaker 1: a good way to look at it. I can see
Speaker 1: that it does require a number one. It requires being like, well, okay,
Speaker 1: you have guys on your side who killed a lot
Speaker 1: of our guys, and the ship they did was fucked up.
Speaker 1: We have guys on our side who killed a lot
Speaker 1: of your guys, and that ship is fucked up, and
Speaker 1: at some point we have to stop taking vengeance on
Speaker 1: each other. Otherwise we're just going to keep killing each
Speaker 1: other and nothing's ever going to get better. And that is.
Speaker 1: Eventually France and Germany and England stopped counting who had
Speaker 1: killed more of the other sons and they just started
Speaker 1: taking ecstasy together in dance clubs and that made things better.
Speaker 1: Um and yeah, we've had a digression a bit. We
Speaker 1: should get back to talking about gossip. Sulimani um so UH.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and eleven, when the Syrian Civil War
Speaker 1: started up, Sulimani ordered members of the Iraqi Shiite militias
Speaker 1: he'd formed to resist the us uh UM into Syria
Speaker 1: to support Assad's beleaguered military, which was, as it is now,
Speaker 1: completely incompetent. I was just watching a video the other
Speaker 1: day of like thirty soldiers of the Syrian Arab army
Speaker 1: supported by a tank fleeing from nine UH like jihadi
Speaker 1: fighters in it lip. It's just like, you guys still
Speaker 1: haven't figured out to be a fucking military fleeing they
Speaker 1: were just like there their their conscripts, they're poorly trained,
Speaker 1: they don't know what they're doing. They're poor, like they're
Speaker 1: only led by corrupt Like the only competent fighters in
Speaker 1: in Uh in Syria on the side of the Syrian
Speaker 1: government are like Hezbollah and other like Iranian backed militias
Speaker 1: like they have a lot of competent fight and that's yeah.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna read a quote from The New Yorker about
Speaker 1: that quote. Sulimani also set up additional Shia militia groups.
Speaker 1: These included a group of Afghans resident in Iran, the
Speaker 1: Fatimiyun Division, in a Pakistani outfit, the zeb Nyabian Brigade.
Speaker 1: The very names of these groups announced Iran's sectarian intentions.
Speaker 1: Shia Muslims accord Fatima, the daughter of the Prophet, a
Speaker 1: status comparable to that of the Virgin Marrian Catholicism, while
Speaker 1: Zineb Fatima's daughter was the sister of Hussain, Who's whose
Speaker 1: death at the Battle of Karbala formed a pivotal moment,
Speaker 1: and as soon as Shia Skism, forces under his command
Speaker 1: were instrumental in many of the major offensive during the
Speaker 1: Syrian War, including the recapture of Kassar from the rebels.
Speaker 1: So most experts view Iran support as embodied by Cossum Sulimani,
Speaker 1: because he is completely in charge of the Iranian effort
Speaker 1: in Syria is absolutely critical to Bashar al Assad's staying
Speaker 1: in power, and Cosum Sulimani is really the man who
Speaker 1: runs the Syrian Civil War for the regime for a
Speaker 1: lot of the war. Like he is one of the
Speaker 1: top players and maybe the only competent one um or
Speaker 1: at least like the I mean, there's other competent Iranians involved.
Speaker 1: Nobody in the Syrian Aram Army is very good at
Speaker 1: what they do UM Now. Today the s a A
Speaker 1: is obviously still not great, but the entrance of Iranian
Speaker 1: back militias, including the Lebanese Hezbollah, provided the regime with
Speaker 1: enough competent fighters to recapture critical cities like Aleppo and
Speaker 1: swing the type of war back in Assad's favor. And
Speaker 1: it's it's hard to exaggerate how much human misery this
Speaker 1: has been responsible for. Uh. The siege of Aleppo alone
Speaker 1: costs thousands of lives, and the fact that Assad's regime
Speaker 1: survives has allowed them to, among their things, incarceraate and
Speaker 1: torture to death to death around a hundred thousand people.
Speaker 1: This is all done, or at least the support of
Speaker 1: the Assad regime by Sulimani was done for nationalist motivations.
Speaker 1: He was fighting for Iran more than anything else. Um
Speaker 1: And yeah, yeah, so we we we've gone into why
Speaker 1: that's critical, for for why they see it as like
Speaker 1: a matter of sort of like national survival to support
Speaker 1: Syria in this war. Um So, yeah, I I I
Speaker 1: think that's important to understand. Uh So. While almost every
Speaker 1: US attempt at projecting power and influence UH in the
Speaker 1: Middle East over the last twenty years has in an
Speaker 1: object failure, mass death and unspeakable expense, Kasam Sulimani and
Speaker 1: his Kods force have been extremely successful in spreading Iranian
Speaker 1: power across the region thanks to a network of militias
Speaker 1: and an incredibly successful political influence campaign. Iran near now
Speaker 1: has deep connections to the government of Iraq, basically owns
Speaker 1: the government of Syria, and maintains a sizeable base of
Speaker 1: power in Lebanon. Uh In addition to that, they also
Speaker 1: have a huge base of control and support in Yemen
Speaker 1: because the Hoothy militias that are currently fighting against the
Speaker 1: Saudi led coalition are backed by Iran, and it costs Iran.
Speaker 1: You know, they spend millions per week supporting the Hoothies
Speaker 1: and the Saudi spend billions per week bombing them. Um
Speaker 1: And it's kind of the opposite of the case. In
Speaker 1: in Syria and in Syria, Iran is definitely on support
Speaker 1: of the side that has killed the most innocent people.
Speaker 1: In Yemen, they are on support of the side that
Speaker 1: is fighting against the people who are murdering civilians by
Speaker 1: the thousands. The Saudi led coalition has been responsible for
Speaker 1: the vast majority of the deaths and the Yemen So
Speaker 1: there's always very fucking complicated when we talk about these
Speaker 1: different conflicts. And I'm not going to give the Iranian
Speaker 1: campaign sort of in Yemen as much time as it
Speaker 1: deserves UM, but it's important to see, like when Kasum
Speaker 1: comes to power in charge of the goods force UM
Speaker 1: like other than like Hezbollah, which is still at that
Speaker 1: point kind of nascent in Lebanon, UH, they don't have
Speaker 1: a lot of influence in the rest of the region.
Speaker 1: And by the time Kassam Sulimani is killed, the Iraqi
Speaker 1: government is on his side. There are a hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty thousand Shia militiamen backed by Iran living who are
Speaker 1: like iraqis UH. There are Iran backed militias in Syria
Speaker 1: that have been responsible for keeping the government in power,
Speaker 1: and the government owes around billions of dollars. Hezblah is
Speaker 1: one of the most dominant forces in Lebanon. UM, and
Speaker 1: they also Iran has a huge amount of influence and
Speaker 1: dominance and Yemen as a result of their support of
Speaker 1: the Hoothies. That's all Sulimani is doing. Like, that's a
Speaker 1: huge amount of power and influence. And you have to
Speaker 1: compare how Iran's ability to project power in the Middle
Speaker 1: East has changed in twenty years to how the United
Speaker 1: States has has where we you know, in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways, it's completely collapsed, Um, as a result of
Speaker 1: the fact that, like we're we're incredibly inconsistent. We don't
Speaker 1: tend to run our campaigns competently. Like it's one of
Speaker 1: those things. Um. On a purely intellectual level, he's very
Speaker 1: good at what he did. UM. He had an incredibly
Speaker 1: successful career, almost breathtakingly so UM. Yeah, he did so
Speaker 1: pretty wild. Yeah, it's it's he's a very influential fellow now. UM.
Speaker 1: For most of twenty years, Kasum traveled with near impunity
Speaker 1: from Baghdad to Damascus to the suddenly front line outposts
Speaker 1: in battlefields of the Iraqi and Syrian civil Wars. In
Speaker 1: the years since two thousand eleven, he went from a
Speaker 1: silent background figure which is appropriate for a spymaster, to
Speaker 1: a highly public war hero, constantly photographed standing on trucks
Speaker 1: surrounded by fighters. His image grew even more prominent after
Speaker 1: two thousand thirteen, when Isis began its bloody march across
Speaker 1: the Middle East. The Shia militia's that Cossum had spent
Speaker 1: years building were some of the few capable forces interact
Speaker 1: during the early stages of the Civil War, when the
Speaker 1: soldiers of the Islamic State were at the gates of Baghdad.
Speaker 1: The role these militias played in stopping ices is wildly
Speaker 1: overstated now online, but in the early days of the
Speaker 1: civil war they were quite important. As the war drove
Speaker 1: on and the Iraqi Army reformed and retrained other units,
Speaker 1: including the famous Golden Division and the counter Terrorism Forces UH,
Speaker 1: these forces did the vast majority of the actual fighting
Speaker 1: to retake Iraq from dash Um. When I was there,
Speaker 1: we ran into the Hasht al Shabbi militias, which is
Speaker 1: sort of like the popular mobilization forces. The Iranian back
Speaker 1: militias um now and again, but it really was like
Speaker 1: most of the fighting, like the recapturing of Fallujah and
Speaker 1: Mosle like it was. It was like Golden Division and
Speaker 1: and you know CTS forces more than anything else that
Speaker 1: did a lot of that fighting um and kind of
Speaker 1: like where the popular mobilization forces were critical was like
Speaker 1: kind of when when when Isis was moving on Baghdad
Speaker 1: and stuff, as the kind of the West struggled to
Speaker 1: get its act together and providing you know, useful support.
Speaker 1: So you don't want to denigrate and say that they
Speaker 1: didn't have an impact in stopping the spread of ISIS,
Speaker 1: because they absolutely did. But like the idea that that
Speaker 1: sulamani Is militias beat Isis, I mean it it ignores
Speaker 1: thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of Sunni Iraqis
Speaker 1: who did the bulk of the actual fighting against dash Um. Yeah. Anyway, uh,
Speaker 1: And I should note that my source on this take
Speaker 1: is not just due to my own biased recollections from
Speaker 1: my time in Iraq. It's also due to other sources
Speaker 1: within the Iranian government. Because The Intercept recently published a
Speaker 1: leaked archive of secret Iranian spy cables that they got
Speaker 1: their hands on. Something These cables came from members of
Speaker 1: the Iranian ministry of Intelligence and Security, which tends to
Speaker 1: be pretty antagonistic towards the Koods Force because again, and
Speaker 1: this is another frustrating thing, like you read about like
Speaker 1: coverage of this, and it like around this, around that,
Speaker 1: and like to a certain extent, it's hard not to
Speaker 1: when you're like talking about multiple different nations, but like
Speaker 1: there are a number of different forces within the Iranian
Speaker 1: government that want different things. To me, why the intelligence
Speaker 1: is not fans of the Kuds, Yeah, as I understand it,
Speaker 1: it kind of goes back to like we were saying,
Speaker 1: when you know, you have you have the revolution and
Speaker 1: the shaw is out and the new government doesn't really
Speaker 1: trust the military or the existing security apparatus, Like you're
Speaker 1: not going to tear all of that down because it's
Speaker 1: too much of a pain in the ask to do so,
Speaker 1: but you also don't trust them. So the Revolutionary Guard
Speaker 1: and the Koods Force come out as a way for
Speaker 1: the clerics to kind of have their own military and
Speaker 1: intelligence machine. The Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security is
Speaker 1: like basically the descendant of like the older standing security
Speaker 1: services in Iran um and so they're they're not the
Speaker 1: Koods Force, and in a lot of ways they view
Speaker 1: them as kind of an enemy because they're like opposed
Speaker 1: sort of forces. Um like that they're they're more antagonistic.
Speaker 1: Opposed isn't quite the right word, but like I hope
Speaker 1: I've gotten that across to some extent. I'm not an
Speaker 1: expert on this, and I've ever the understand like read
Speaker 1: up on that or even really thought about it. It
Speaker 1: never occurred to me, but it really makes sense because
Speaker 1: there's so many working, like you said, forces in Iran
Speaker 1: that you know, I tend to forget sometimes that like
Speaker 1: the whole era before the revolution was just a different time.
Speaker 1: And while they did try and eliminate the majority of
Speaker 1: that influence, like certain things are still kind of like
Speaker 1: working within the Uran just because they're needed to be. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're not gonna like you're not gonna fire all of
Speaker 1: the police and stuff overnight, especially since you need those
Speaker 1: people to like help you like assert your power. Now,
Speaker 1: Like it's just like but then you don't trust them
Speaker 1: and you build your own structure and like things move
Speaker 1: on from there. That that's the understanding that I have.
Speaker 1: Um So, anyway, a bunch of these cables from the
Speaker 1: Ministry of Intelligence and Security about these guys talking about
Speaker 1: Sulimani and his malicious in Iraq leaked out and these
Speaker 1: are all from two thousand, two fifteen, and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: quote from that Intercept article now. Well, the Iranian led
Speaker 1: war against Diceis was raging. Iranian spies privately expressed concern
Speaker 1: that the brutal tactics favored by Sulimani and his Iraqi
Speaker 1: proxies were laying the groundwork from major blowback against the
Speaker 1: Iranian presence in Iraq. Sulimani was also criticized for his
Speaker 1: own alleged self promotion amid the fighting photos of the
Speaker 1: Iranian commander on battlefields across Iraq had helped build his
Speaker 1: image as an iconic military leader, but that outsized image
Speaker 1: was also turning him into a figure of terror for
Speaker 1: many organized Iraqis, for many ordinary Iraqis, and some documents
Speaker 1: intelligence officers criticized Sulimani for alienating Sunni Arab communities and
Speaker 1: helping to create circumstances that justified or a newt American
Speaker 1: military presence in Iraq two thousand fourteen m o I
Speaker 1: S document Limit limited that partly because Sulimani broadcasted his
Speaker 1: role as commander of many of the Iraqi Shia militious
Speaker 1: fighting Isis. Iraqi Sunni's blamed the Iranian government for the
Speaker 1: persecution that many were suffering at the hands of these
Speaker 1: same forces. The document discussed a recent assault by Iran
Speaker 1: backed forces against ISIS fighters in the Sunni farming community
Speaker 1: of Jurf al Sakar. The attack had included a number
Speaker 1: of Shia militia groups, including a notorious outfit known as
Speaker 1: a Syb al al Hawk, which is also the guys
Speaker 1: who fired missiles at those u US bases a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks ago and a couple of days ago. The
Speaker 1: militia succeeded in routing the Islamic State, but their victory
Speaker 1: soon gave way to a generalized slaughter of locals, transforming
Speaker 1: the sweetness of Iran's triumphanto bitterness. In the words of
Speaker 1: one case officer, this is that case officer talking. It
Speaker 1: is mandatory and necessary to put some limits and borders
Speaker 1: on the violence being inflicted against innocent Sunni people in
Speaker 1: Iraq and the things that Mr. Sulimani is doing. Otherwise,
Speaker 1: the violence between Shia and Sunni will continue. With the
Speaker 1: mos I m I support report continued. At the moment,
Speaker 1: whatever happens to Sunni's directly or indirectly is seen as
Speaker 1: having been done by Iran, even when Iran has nothing
Speaker 1: to do with it. And this is another part of
Speaker 1: like the complexity here, and we're talking about, like you know,
Speaker 1: if you're trying to get like a fair assessment of
Speaker 1: Sulimani's role visa the isis Um, you have to account
Speaker 1: the fact that he formed these militias which were a
Speaker 1: part of defeating Isis. You also have to take into
Speaker 1: account that a big part of y Isis gate a
Speaker 1: foothold in Iraq is because the Shia Melissa militias, particularly
Speaker 1: in places like Mosul, brutally suppressed and executed Sunni Um,
Speaker 1: based in a large part on like long standing local
Speaker 1: different like like arguments and hatreds between Sunni and Shia.
Speaker 1: But like Iran then supported those guys by giving them
Speaker 1: weapons so they were able to carry out these blood debts,
Speaker 1: and that provided fuel for the Sunni uprising. Uh that
Speaker 1: like Isis really represented in Iraqs that then some of
Speaker 1: these like these Sunnies could get guns and kil Shehia's
Speaker 1: and it's like and a lot of what I saw
Speaker 1: when I was over in Mosele, was people complaining about
Speaker 1: these the Iran back militias and like the violence they
Speaker 1: were carrying out against Sunnis again in response for a
Speaker 1: lot of violence that like Sunnis who had supported Iraq
Speaker 1: had carried out, and like this is just gonna cause
Speaker 1: another cycle of violence between Sunni and Shia and Mosel.
Speaker 1: And it's like it's like fuck this ship, Like this
Speaker 1: is all very messy. Um now in those yeah, um.
Speaker 1: In these documents, Iranian officers speculated that much of the
Speaker 1: propaganda campaign to turn Suleimani from a secretive spy chief
Speaker 1: into a public hero had to do with his hopes
Speaker 1: of a future campaign to be president of Iran. And
Speaker 1: this is one angle you're going to hear about Sulimani
Speaker 1: a lot. That he was being groomed or at least
Speaker 1: grooming himself to become the next president of Iran. This
Speaker 1: is possible, but I think some other theories might also
Speaker 1: be Possibly, maybe he would take on the next supreme leadership.
Speaker 1: That's yeah, I think that's really possible. Like what there's
Speaker 1: the two real possibilities is that a he was pushing,
Speaker 1: he was being groomed and sort of like pushing himself
Speaker 1: to either be the president or the next supreme leader
Speaker 1: of Iran. Totally possible. He had the kind of reputation
Speaker 1: where that could have happened. I think the other possibility
Speaker 1: is that the Iranian government and Sulimani himself were preparing
Speaker 1: for him to be killed by the United States and
Speaker 1: wanted him to be a potent symbol when it happened,
Speaker 1: that they were assuming it was going to happen, and
Speaker 1: that he was trying to provoke that assassiny. I think
Speaker 1: it's possible. I think, Wow, you just blew my mind.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, obviously I don't know, but
Speaker 1: but I think both are possible. Starting in two thousand
Speaker 1: thirteen with that New Yorker article, Cosum Suleimani's most frequent
Speaker 1: public appearances were at funerals for deceased Goods Force soldiers.
Speaker 1: For years, Cosum made a point of meeting with the
Speaker 1: families of martyrs, and here's an excerpt from one part
Speaker 1: of the article talking about his visit to the funeral
Speaker 1: of a comrade who died fighting in Syria. Quote. He
Speaker 1: has a fierce attachment to martyred soldiers and often visits
Speaker 1: their families. In a recent interview with Iranian media, he said,
Speaker 1: when I see the children of the martyrs, I want
Speaker 1: to smell their scent and I lose myself. I think
Speaker 1: that's something that probably made more sense in the original
Speaker 1: Farsi than it does translated into English. Um. As the
Speaker 1: funeral continued, he and other mourners bent forward to prey,
Speaker 1: pressing their foreheads onto the carpet. One of the rarest
Speaker 1: people who brought the revolution in the whole world to
Speaker 1: you is gone there as a panihan, the m mom
Speaker 1: told the mourners. Suleimani cradled his head in his palm
Speaker 1: and began to weep. So In public appearances number one,
Speaker 1: Suleimani is constantly at the funerals of martyrs, constantly honoring
Speaker 1: these soldiers who have died in his command. Um. And
Speaker 1: he's very humble about his own his story, even mocking
Speaker 1: his short stature by describing himself as the smallest soldier.
Speaker 1: He's infamous for refusing to let audience members kiss his
Speaker 1: hand at public appearances. Um, But online he was a
Speaker 1: lot less humble and he can't be having a random
Speaker 1: kiss your hand. Maybe there's a lot of random kissing.
Speaker 1: Uh in that part of the that part of the world. True,
Speaker 1: but cheek to cheek, he keeps like, keep it like
Speaker 1: cheek to cheek, keep it like practice at this. Don't
Speaker 1: kiss my hands now. Uh So, So he's he's he's
Speaker 1: trying to be humble like in person and at these events,
Speaker 1: and that's clearly a big part of his image. But
Speaker 1: he also has a big online presence, and before it
Speaker 1: was shut down in two thousand nineteen, his official Instagram
Speaker 1: had more than eight hundred thousand followers. Um, pretty good Graham.
Speaker 1: Now it's part. Pretty good to Iran, Pretty good Graham
Speaker 1: for it's part. The government of Iran devoted significant resources
Speaker 1: to burnishing a cult of personality around Sulimani. The Supreme
Speaker 1: Leader of Iran referred to Kastam sula on a preassassination
Speaker 1: as a living martyr of the revolution. Now martyrdom became
Speaker 1: an increasing theme in later public appearances of Suleimani. In
Speaker 1: two thousand and fourteen, Defa pressed at i R, which
Speaker 1: is a website popular among internal Iranian security insiders, published
Speaker 1: the text of a speech Sulimani and made back in
Speaker 1: two thousand seven. They republished in praising the martyrs of
Speaker 1: the Iran Iraq War, and I'm gonna read it from
Speaker 1: a right up in the Middle East Media Research Institute here.
Speaker 1: Sulimani stressed, while praising martyrdom that he himself yearned to
Speaker 1: gain the exalted status of a martyr, and added that
Speaker 1: jihada is a supreme value in war that allows Iranian
Speaker 1: fighters to compensate for their technological inferiority and lack of
Speaker 1: operational readiness and to defeat the enemy. He emphasized that
Speaker 1: absolute obedience to the regime of the rule of the
Speaker 1: jurisprudence was also a decisive factor in war. In light
Speaker 1: of the prestige earned by the martyrs, he said, I
Speaker 1: pray to God from my own end to be martyrdom
Speaker 1: as well, and that he will not deny me this
Speaker 1: mighty blessing granted to outstanding individuals. So I think there's
Speaker 1: an an argument that maybe and that because like one
Speaker 1: of the things that you know, the the U S
Speaker 1: will argue provoked our assassination of Sulimani. Um is the
Speaker 1: fact that a few days before uh that that like us,
Speaker 1: that whatever, that that Iranian backed militia in Iraq, um
Speaker 1: like the same one that committed one of the massacres
Speaker 1: Uh during the fighting against ISIS fired missiles at a
Speaker 1: US Iraqi joint base and killed an American contractor. And
Speaker 1: that was like, that's sort of like part of what
Speaker 1: the US used to justify this, like killing Sulimani. Um,
Speaker 1: And I part of me wonders, like it seems clear
Speaker 1: as being set up for something. It was either politics
Speaker 1: or because they wanted this guy to be famous and beloved,
Speaker 1: um and well known, and they wanted to provoke the
Speaker 1: U S to doing something dumb um to take him
Speaker 1: out because then he's a martyr and then you can
Speaker 1: use him to galvanize resistance to the United States, which
Speaker 1: is a big part of Iran's foreign policies, to gall
Speaker 1: an eze resistance to the United States. And right now,
Speaker 1: Kasam Sulimani has become a symbol of resistance to the
Speaker 1: United States two millions of Shiites across the Middle East.
Speaker 1: His picture hangs over streets on banners from Beirut to
Speaker 1: Baghdad right now. Um, so I don't know, I don't
Speaker 1: know what the actual cases. Um. It's also he's like
Speaker 1: his funeral has been used by the government to kind
Speaker 1: of try to unify people in the wake of there's
Speaker 1: just a bunch of massive protests in Iran and the
Speaker 1: Koods force, you know, under the command of Sulimani, had
Speaker 1: like something a fifteen hundred anti government protesters killed UM
Speaker 1: during like this uprising. UM, And now I think they're
Speaker 1: kind of using his assassination and like this aggression by
Speaker 1: the United States the attempt at least is too kind
Speaker 1: of pull the country back together. UM. It's uh fucking
Speaker 1: um hard to say what the actual plan was, or
Speaker 1: if there was a plan, or if I'm breeding too
Speaker 1: much into this. He's a spy commander, chief guy. So
Speaker 1: part of me is like, you know, maybe there was
Speaker 1: a deep plan here. Maybe he just wanted to be
Speaker 1: supreme leader or president and uh, he never thought that
Speaker 1: we would do something this dumb. Either way, I'm just
Speaker 1: seeing now that the president is going to address the
Speaker 1: country later tonight, so that's probably not going to be good.
Speaker 1: I hope it's him saying he is tapping out, because
Speaker 1: God damn, I don't think that is what's happening. God, Well,
Speaker 1: here's hoping for the best. UM. Pray for the people
Speaker 1: of Iran. Pay for pray for the people of Iraq. Uh,
Speaker 1: pray for the people in the Middle East who will
Speaker 1: suffer because of what is to come thanks to the
Speaker 1: lack of adults in the room. Pray for Yeah, the
Speaker 1: lack of adults in the room. Well, h well, I
Speaker 1: would say more, but I have I'm a bit of
Speaker 1: like a in a bit shock in a bit, I'm
Speaker 1: in a bit shock over everything that's kind of slowly
Speaker 1: pouring out in the news. And um, I need to go,
Speaker 1: uh talk to my Iranian family members and make sure
Speaker 1: everyone's good to go, because that's all I have is
Speaker 1: a telegram app to make sure they're okay, because it's
Speaker 1: it's that's the way it goes sometimes when your entire
Speaker 1: family lives in Iran and you have no sense of
Speaker 1: communication and this is the darkest fucking times and we
Speaker 1: can only um pray for this to end soon and
Speaker 1: for no more people to die. Yeah. Well, the US
Speaker 1: just banned all civilian flights over the Gulf regions, so
Speaker 1: that's not Jesus yea interesting yep. Yeah, I mean everyone
Speaker 1: needs to tone it down. That's just my that is
Speaker 1: my final thought is to down yeah, yep, which is
Speaker 1: It's well, I feel like now there's a lot of
Speaker 1: people are gonna get stuck in Iran, like American nationalists,
Speaker 1: because you have to go over the Gulf, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And there's a bunch of journalists there who were there
Speaker 1: from the United States to like report on the funerals
Speaker 1: and stuff, which I mean, on one end, assuming they
Speaker 1: don't get taken into custody by the security forces. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a sweet position to be in as
Speaker 1: a journalist if you're the only people on the ground
Speaker 1: when something like this happens. Um, but I think it's
Speaker 1: I think it's it's going to be pretty horrific all around. Yeah. Well, um,
Speaker 1: if you're listening, and if you're in any of those places, um,
Speaker 1: you're in our thoughts and just stay safe. That's all
Speaker 1: you can do. Yep. I wish this could be more uplifting,
Speaker 1: but I don't know. Mm hmm, yeah, I mean yeah.
Speaker 1: The big question is this going to be a series
Speaker 1: of terrible air strikes and missile strikes on Iran or
Speaker 1: is Donald Trump going to actually send in ground troops.
Speaker 1: Either way, probably a bad idea. Yes, yep, yes, this
Speaker 1: is not this. This not good. This not good, And
Speaker 1: those are my final thoughts. This not good m back
Speaker 1: to you, Robert, What if I was this the worst?
Speaker 1: This not good? So you can find us on Twitter
Speaker 1: and Instagram at Bastard spot. You can find us on
Speaker 1: the Internet behind the bastards dot Com. Uh. Keep the
Speaker 1: people of a Rock in Iran and Syria, Lebanon, Yemen
Speaker 1: all in your hearts. Uh. And I hope that the
Speaker 1: fewest possible number of people die and what's about to happen.
Speaker 1: There's really nothing else to say. Yeah, we also fuck
Speaker 1: David Froum. Yeah, because he's he's tweeting about all of
Speaker 1: this ship right now and he should not be shut
Speaker 1: the funk up about the Middle East, David truly. Um okay,
Speaker 1: Well the episodes over, thank god.