As we continue the attack on Iran, there is widespread discussion about how long it will last and what the result will be. In the U.S., the political football is being tossed back and forth.
Democrats have been mostly silent since their attempt to put a leash on the president failed. They hope the effort will fail and bolster their chances of success in November. Short of that result, they hope for an economic impact that will strengthen their “affordability” campaign for the fall. Keeping the government closed is part of their calculus. The inpass is not about ICE, since ICE is already funded. It’s about a way to damage the president, given their limited ability to do so. Of course, no one really knows what will happen with the war.
Republicans are also silent, probably to remain on Trump’s side and because they believe in the cause.
What I get from the mass media is a nothing burger. They don’t really know anything, so they speculate and advocate for one side or the other. The Strait of Hormuz is trending because 20% of the world’s oil supply goes through there. Iran has declared the Strait closed, and the U.S. has to figure out how to keep it open so oil prices don’t skyrocket.
Some pundits have us returning to the 1979 oil embargo, which is fear-mongering nonsense. Trump knows the stakes of the game he is playing and will play his cards as he sees fit, but even he can’t predict when the Revolutionary Guards will surrender, if and when the Iranian people will rise and take their country back.
Here is a sampling from the New York Times: UD bombs Iranian oil hub. Why was so little done to head off the Strait of Hormuz problem? Trump and Rubio’s vision of war: The art of destroy and deal. Trump’s alliance with Israel is reshaping the Middle East.
The crown prince Reza Pahlavi, son of the Shah, deposed in 1979, is now communicating directly with the Iranian people. He has told them to prepare for the regime’s collapse and to stay safe until then.
Frustrated by the political coloring of content, I started looking for alternative sources of information. What follows are some points of view I discovered.
1. There are daily updates on the YouTube channel Tousi TV, which is an online political news and commentary channel, mainly distributed through YouTube, social media, and its own subscription platform (Tousi TV+), all broadcast from the UK. It focuses on geopolitical news, politics, and commentary about current events.
Mahyar Tousi, the channel host, is an Iranian who provides updates on political events in his country and also speaks to the Iranian people around the world. He has 1.4 million followers. Tousi has shown videos of mass protests inside Iran demanding the return of the crown prince, and people taking control of police stations in some cities, where the police stood down and joined the celebration. Revolutionary Guard food distribution locations were taken over by the people and looted. Mahyar appears to have enough connections inside his country to provide an accurate picture of what’s happening on the ground.
2. I listened to Rafaela Siewert of the Free Press interview Elica LeBon, an Iranian lawyer and activist living in the United States, who talked from an Iranian point of view.
Elica made a strong point about the negative reaction to the war in the United States, as reflected in recent polls. The reality for people living in the U.S. and, generally, in liberal democracies is that they are never threatened. The force the U.S. is exerting to suppress threats from the outside and keep Americans safe also creates a paradox: people don’t see why we need to take any action against an enemy because THEY don’t feel threatened.
“The Iranian regime has enshrined in its Constitution from its inception, death to America and Israel. It has promised to eliminate both those forces, and it has acted on that intention significantly over the past 47 years. Some people push back on this contention because they don’t believe that the Iranians have nukes. Regardless of nukes, the Iranian regime is motivated to destroy the United States using any means possible.
The removal of this regime is absolutely the best thing for the American people, for the Iranian people, for the people of the Middle East. I can’t. I can’t guarantee that it will happen this way, but. We’re hoping.”
3. I listened to The Mishal Husain Show on Bloomberg. She interviewed Iranian scholar Vali Nasr from The Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. I am very skeptical of scholars these days because politics has negated the value of their expertise. Deep establishment thinkers are largely anti-Trump because he doesn’t possess the gravitas they have.
“And now this war has gone out of his control. It’s far longer, far messier, and is actually exacting costs across the United States, both in terms of damage to its bases and the impact on energy markets and the global economy as a whole. So, I think it’s signaling that he wants to end it, but I don’t think Iran is ready to quit.
But I think they calculate that this is not a munitions count. This is not about who has a bigger bond. This is about who has a higher pain threshold. And they think the United States and Israel can Dash a lot faster, but they’re not really long-distance runners. And so, I think they’re prepared to absorb this for far longer.
And so if the president was looking for a quick political uprising in Iran, it’s not going to happen. It will not happen until the dust of this war settles. So for now, the Iranian public is not a factor in this war (false), and this was something that both Israel and the United States had been counting on, that the war would pave the way.
I was in India recently, and it’s very clear that, outside the United States and the West, Iran is enjoying widespread support for standing up to Donald Trump and Standing Tall. Also, they are actually inflicting pain on the United States.
When I was with the Obama administration, we pursued a path of Engagement. Mishal: If Donald Trump hadn’t ripped up the Iran deal, would it have resulted in a better present, or is your description of the regime too entrenched? For that, you know, I think it could have ended up better (false).”
4. Mohamad Faridi, an Iranian living in the United States (his parents are still in Iran), was interviewed on the Dave Wood podcast. Here are a few quotes from him.
“The regime, with all its brutality and all the evil that came down on the Iranian people, shut down. Protests killed thousands of Iranians throughout the years, and then the most horrific one of them was last month, in January, and now it’s actually March. About five weeks ago, they say, they killed, upward of 90,000 people.
I have spoken to my family in Iran. All of my family is in Iran. They told me that any relatives, any, anybody that they know they have lost, or one or two members of their families to this? Regime, you know, savagery? Many of the people were detained, arrested, in prison, tortured, raped, and they kept their backs against these evil people.
This regime is one evil, weird thing. I mean, from evil to unimaginable evil that they have ruled in this nation for 47 years. In 2009, we had the green movement, when Obama betrayed the Iranian people and sent pallets of money instead of jets. Just imagine how stupid a president could be negotiating with terrorists. That didn’t work.
In 2023, we had Masa Amini, the girl who didn’t wear her hijab, and she was killed. Iranians came, and we had the same situation, and Biden was in power, and we were thinking God, if Trump were in power, something such as this would have happened.
And now, we see the difference. Trump told them that if they killed the Iranian people, the guns would be locked and loaded. Help is on the way.
But, thank God, finally. Thank God that they have arrived, and then they killed the head of the octopus that was in Tehran. I promise you, upwards of 90 percent of the Persian population in Iran and the diaspora are rejoicing in it. This has been the best news for them.”
The best place to get information about Iran is from the Iranian people. They are the ones with a stake in the game. They are the ones who want their country back. Comments from here from academic elites or journalists with a political axe to grind are useless.
Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.
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