Democracy Now! 2026-04-08 Wednesday

From New York, this is Democracy Now. I heard this morning that our conditions had been accepted and then a ceasefire was declared. I was generally happy from the bottom of my heart. Life spread across Iran after a two-week ceasefire deal was announced Tuesday evening, ahead of President Trump's deadline. Pakistan brokered the deal. Trump initially threatened to bomb bridges and power plants inside Iran, possible war crimes, and escalated his threat Tuesday morning by posting on social media, quote, �A whole civilization will die tonight.� The statement drew worldwide condemnation. We'll speak to Professors Naghmeh Surabi and Eskander Sadri Burujerdi about what exactly the ceasefire is, what comes next, and more. Then to a new documentary about Democracy Now and our very own Amy Goodman, called Steal This Story, please. We'll be joined by the film's directors, the Oscar-nominated team Carl Deal and Tia Lesson. They'll be with us here in New York. All that and more coming up. Welcome to Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the warm peace report. I'm Narmine Sheikh. President Trump renewed threats Tuesday to destroy every power plant and major bridge in Iran if the Strait of Hormuz was not fully reopened by 8 p.m. Eastern, warning that, quote, �A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.� Less than two hours before that deadline, the U.S. and Iran reached a tentative two-week ceasefire, brokered by Pakistan, under which Iran agreed to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Trump announced the deal on social media, calling it a, quote, �double-sided ceasefire� and saying Iran had put forward a, quote, �workable� 10-point peace plan. Iran's Supreme National Security Council said it accepted the terms, but warned its, quote, �hands remain on the trigger.� Crowds of people gathered in Tehran and other cities waving flags to celebrate the news of the two-week ceasefire. Early on Tuesday, the U.S. struck military targets on Iran's Khair Gailand, the source of nearly all of Iran's oil exports. U.S.-Israeli strikes also completely destroyed the Rafi-Nia synagogue in Tehran, home to one of Iran's few remaining Jewish communities. This is Siamak Maureh Sedr, a Jewish former member of Iran's parliament. They are not enemy of Iranian army. They are enemy of Iranian people. They are enemy of Iranian nation, because Iranian people are great people who does not want to obey the Zionism and the USA. And when you do not want to obey the powerful man who wants to follow Sata, they would attack you, of course. So the propaganda that we want to help the Iranian people are, I think, a judge, unbelievable judge from them. Israeli forces continue to bomb Beirut, demolish homes, and evacuate villages as they push deeper into the south of Lebanon. Since March 2, Israeli attacks have killed nearly 1,500 people, including 129 children, according to Lebanon's health ministry. The Israeli military struck the southern city of Tahrir Wednesday after issuing forced evacuation notices to residents. More than 1.1 million people, nearly one in five Lebanese, are now displaced. This comes as Israel says the U.S.-Iran ceasefire announced Tuesday does not apply to Lebanon. Despite Pakistani Prime Minister Sheba's Sharif declaring of a, quote, immediate ceasefire everywhere, including Lebanon and elsewhere. This is Naim Saleh, a resident of Beirut. The big reading for Israel is that they don't want to stop. They want to carry on wars to blackmail the entire region, naturally. Where will this lead? To more wars and more destruction. In all cases, Lebanon to be excluded. Iran won't abandon Lebanon. Iran certainly won't abandon Lebanon. Despite the ceasefire, Iran continued to launch retaliatory strikes throughout the region. Three boys in southern Israel were wounded by an Iranian missile fired after Trump announced the truce. A security official tells the Times of Israel that the Israeli Air Force is continuing to carry out strikes in Iran. In the United Arab Emirates, operations were suspended at the Habshan gas complex due to fires from falling projectile debris, after what Abu Dhabi described as a, quote, successful interception of an Iranian missile. Earlier on Tuesday, Iran's Revolutionary Guard said they had attacked Saudi Arabia's Jabal Petrochemical Complex in retaliation for strikes on an Iranian petrochemical facility the night before. The King Fahad Khosway, a series of bridges linking Saudi Arabia to the island country of Bahrain, closed again Tuesday amid Iranian missile attacks. Oil prices swung wildly Tuesday as the U.S.-Iran War entered a new phase. Brent Crude surged to $117 a barrel as President Trump threatened to demolish Iran's civilian infrastructure. After the announcement of the two-week ceasefire, oil prices plunged more than 16%, falling below $100 a barrel for the first time in weeks. The head of the International Air Transport Association says it would still take months for jet fuel prices to stabilize once the Strait of Hormuz fully reopens. American freelance journalist Shelly Kittleson, has been released after being held for one week by the Iran-backed Iraqi militia, Qadai Hezbollah. 49-year-old Kittleson was abducted from a Baghdad street corner on March 31. The militia freed her in a prisoner swap after Iraqi authorities agreed to release several members of the militia who had previously been detained. Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed her release, saying the U.S. is working to support her return from Iraq. In Louisiana, 22-year-old biochemistry student Annie Ramos walked out of a federal immigration jail on Tuesday, five days after ICE agents entered her husband's army base to arrest her. As part of her release, Ramos was fitted with an ankle monitor and told to report to ICE every week. She just married 23-year-old staff sergeant Matthew Blank days prior to her arrest. Ramos was brought to the United States from Honduras as an infant. In 2020, she applied to the DACA program that's deferred action for childhood arrivals, but her application was never processed. In California, federal immigration agents shot a man Tuesday after stopping his car in the central valley town of Paterson. The shooting left Carlos Ivan Mendoza Hernandez hospitalized. ICE director Todd Lyons said in a statement that agents fired quote, defensive shots after Hernandez weaponized his sedan in an attempt to run over an officer. Video obtained by Sacramento NBC affiliate KCRATV shows Hernandez reversing away from officers who appear to be reaching into his car. The officers draw their guns as Hernandez backs into another car, then appear to open fire as Hernandez drives forward. ICE has not said how many shots were fired. ICE agents have shot at least eight people in 2026. Meanwhile, ICE has arrested more than 800 people following tips shared by Transportation Security Administration officials since the start of Donald Trump's second term. That's according to Reuters, which reports the TSA supplied ICE with records on more than 31,000 travelers for possible immigration enforcement. Trump administration officials told a federal judge Tuesday that they still seek to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia to Liberia, a country to which he has no ties. The Maryland father first made headlines in March when he was wrongfully deported to El Salvador where he was held in the notorious C. Cort mega prison. Abrego Garcia was returned to the United States after months of public outrage. But the Trump administration has since tried repeatedly to send him to one of several African countries who have agreed to accept third country deportees. Abrego Garcia's lawyers have argued that if he must be deported, it should be to Costa Rica, which has agreed to accept deportees who cannot safely return to their home countries. Homeland Security Secretary Mark Wayne Mullen has threatened to withdraw customs and border protection officers from airports in sanctuary cities that limit cooperation with federal immigration agents. The move would effectively halt international travel, tourism and commerce, though major airports in Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, New York, Seattle, San Francisco and elsewhere. This comes as the partial government shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security has entered its 54th day with no signs that it will end before Congress returns from a two week recess on April 14th. A United Nations expert is warning that Mexico is facing a quote, toxic crisis driven in part by the United States use of its southern neighbor as a waste disposal site. Marcos Oriana, the UN special rapporteur on toxics and human rights, conducted an 11-day investigative mission in Mexico, finding that weak environmental regulations and a lack of oversight have allowed pollution to accumulate, turning communities into what he called, quote, sacrifice zones. Government records show the U.S. exports hundreds of thousands of tons of hazardous waste to Mexico each year, including lead acid car batteries. Meanwhile, Mexico has increased imports of waste to be burned as cheap fuel for industry. Marcos Oriana said the result is the quote, legalized poisoning of people. And Vice President J.D. Vance traveled to Budapest Tuesday, where he appeared alongside Hungary's right-wing Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, five days before Sunday's parliamentary elections and openly campaigned for his re-election. Orban's Fidesz party is currently trailing the pro-EU opposition, TISA party, by double digits in the polls. Orban has been Prime Minister of Hungary since 2010, making him the European Union's longest-serving leader. Here's Vice President Vance on Tuesday. Will you stand against the bureaucrats in Brussels? Will you stand for sovereignty and democracy? Will you stand for Western civilization? Will you stand for freedom, for truth, and for the God of our fathers? Then my friends, go to the polls and the weekend, stand with Viktor Orban. Meanwhile, President Trump's son, Donald Trump Jr., traveled to Bosnia's Republic of Sperska in a visit widely seen as a gesture of support for Milorad Dodik, the pro-Russian leader who was stripped of his mandate last year after a court banned him from politics. The Biden administration had imposed sanctions on Dodik in 2022 over his separatist policies, which were later lifted by the Trump administration last year. During his visit, Don Jr. called the European Union, quote, a bit of a mess and predicted a major fracture between the blocs' eastern and western member states. And those are some of the headlines. This is Democracy Now, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. Up next, we'll talk about the tentative two-week ceasefire reached between the US and Iran, as well as what conditions are like inside Iran. Back in a minute. Iran. Iran. Iran. Iran. Iranian musician and artist Ali Ramzari holding a sit-in protest in front of the Damavanth power plant in Tehran on Monday. Ali said, quote, war's goal is never rescue, and I wish more people understood this. The people of Iran, relying on their thousands of years of history, will surely overcome this tough crisis with wisdom, he said. This is Democracy Now. Democracy Now.org, the war and peace report. I'm Nermin Sheikh. The United States and Iran have announced a two-week ceasefire brokered by Pakistan, under which Iran has agreed to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the vital waterway of oil and natural gas shipments. The deal was reached Tuesday evening, less than two hours before President Trump's deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait under threat of destroying every power plant and major bridge in the country. Trump announced a deal on social media calling it a, quote, double-sided ceasefire and saying Iran had put forward a, quote, workable 10-point peace plan. Iran's Supreme National Security Council said it accepted the terms but warned that its, quote, hands remain on the trigger. Soon after the announcement, Iran State TV said the United States had, quote, suffered an undeniable historic and crushing defeat. This morning, Trump posted that the United States will be working closely with Iran to discuss sanctions and tariff relief and said there would be no uranium enrichment. Israel has said it backs the ceasefire deal between the United States and Iran but added that the ceasefire does not include Lebanon, contradicting an earlier statement from Prime Minister Sheba's Sharif of Pakistan. Meanwhile, in Iran, crowds of people gathered in Tehran and other Iranian cities waving flags to celebrate the news. This is a resident of Tehran earlier this morning. I heard this morning that our conditions had been accepted and then a ceasefire was declared. I was genuinely happy from the bottom of my heart. Hopefully, this can open a path to victory, lead to the lifting of unjust sanctions and allow Iranians, after all these years, to live like others and simply breathe. The 11th hour ceasefire announcement followed a tense day that began with Trump's issuing an expansive threat that if Iran did not reopen the Strait of Hormuz by his deadline of 8pm ET on Tuesday, a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don't want that to happen but it probably will, he said. Condemnations poured in from across the world describing Trump's threat as unacceptable and that any such attacks would be war crimes. Here in the United States, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez described Trump's ultimatum as a quote, threat of genocide that merits removal from office. Over two dozen Democrats, as well as several prominent conservatives, including former Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, also called for President Trump's removal under the 25th Amendment. For more on all this, we're joined now by two guests. Skander Saudiri Burujerdi is an assistant professor in the international relations of the Middle East at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. He's the author of Revolution and its Discontents, Political Thought and Reform in Iran. His recent piece for the London Review of Books is titled The Dry and the Wet Burned Together. He joins us now from Edinburgh. We're also joined by Naremeh Surabi, a professor of Middle East history at Brandeis University. Earlier this year, she began translating articles from Persian to English by writers inside the country. Her recent piece for the Boston Review is titled The Catastrophe That Has Befallen All of Us. She joins us from Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Welcome to both guest to Democracy Now. I'd like to begin with Professor Saudiri Burujerdi. If you could just respond to this 10-point ceasefire plan, whether you think it's likely to endure, and especially this point of contention about whether it includes a ceasefire regarding Israel's incursions and attacks on Lebanon. Thank you so much. I definitely think the fact that we've moved from President Trump's threats to, in essence, Norway, an entire civilization to a ceasefire does kind of highlight the fundamental strategic incoherence of the heart of this illegal war of aggression. I think we should breathe the sigh of relief. It is a very, very important reprieve, but it is, of course, extremely precarious. It isn't a resolution to this conflict. There's no doubt about that. It is extremely, extremely precarious. We're already seeing it being imperiled as we speak with ongoing attacks in Lebanon, as well as reports of attacks in the Persian Gulf as well, which are happening right now. It is very, very precarious, but obviously both parties, at least for the moment, do have very much strong incentives to continue to try and prop this up, as do many regional states. I do think it is interesting that President Trump actually didn't mention in his very first, in his tweet announcing the ceasefire that Iran sort of misarrested as well as its Nicaraguan. These weren't actually mentioned so much. These obviously were the chief reasons for starting this war, which obviously was also framed as a war of regime change, of course. And also the other thing I would like to note is that the fact that actually President Trump did acknowledge that the Iran's 10-point plan was in essence the framework in which these, or the basis in which these discussions would take place is also very important, because this would have been dismissed as absolutely fanciful before this conflict, and very much shows that we're now in a situation very much of the Trump administration's own making, namely that the Strait of Hormuz is very much under Iranian control. There are even reports coming out right now as well that while Iran obviously will facilitate transit through the Strait, it is actually going to be dependent on coordination with Iranian authorities and with the Revolutionary Guard. So just to finish, on this note, I would say that while the ceasefire is precarious, the idea that if sort of conflict resumes, that this will result in the fundamental sort of change in the balance of power, it actually won't. It's actually hard to imagine that we won't end up exactly where we are now. And basically, another ceasefire would have to actually take place as well. So I would say that this is a real strategic blunder for the Trump administration, farcical as the current head of the CIA actually noted in the actual planning, which led up to this illegal war. So I actually do think we are going to have to see, it's going to be very precarious, but I do think we've seen a fundamental change in the region, which is very, very, very significant. And if I could, you mentioned earlier the question of incentives, the incentives for all parties to reach a ceasefire, however, as you said, tentative and precarious, it remains. If you could talk about the scale of the destruction in Iran of civilian infrastructure, one of Iran's largest pharmaceutical manufacturers, bridges, steel industries, etc. The pharmaceutical manufacturer, Tauvir Daru, which produced critical cancer treatments. If you could comment on that and how is one to interpret the significance of the systematic attacks on Iran's industrial base, as well as its educational facilities, like Sharif University, which was considered and widely referred to as the MIT of the Middle East? Well, yeah, I think it's very much an extension of what we have seen previously, very much the Israeli modus operandi. So namely sort of the Dahya doctrine initially, and then maybe we can call it the Gaza doctrine. But Israeli decision makers and President Netanyahu have been very, very clear that their objective is to destroy and sort of in essence, deindustrialized Iran. So it basically won't be a functioning nation state that sort of the various gains and achievements of development that had actually been secured over decades and decades through the blood, sweat and tears of Iranian engineers, planners, and various others are to be reversed, basically. And really what they want to see is a form of economic collapse. So we should also note sort of the attacks on Huzestan steel, also major sort of steel plants in Esfahan, as you mentioned, the attack on Marshaar Petrochemical complex, which employs thousands and thousands of people. So yeah, it is all around all out assault on Iran's industrial base, on its sovereignty, very much a clear attempt to de-develop the country. And we also see very much sort of a continuation of scholastic side that we also saw in the case of Gaza and Lebanon. I mean, this is really, really clear attacks on some 30 universities, assassinations of faculty, the death of various university students, 600 schools have been hit. And also just a broader attack on Iran's culture, 120 cultural sites. So it really is that all out assault and all out attack on Iranian development, sovereign development, on Iranian sort of cultural heritage. And on sort of its economy more broadly, because I mean, I guess we're assuming that they've realized that actually the sort of, I guess, this plan to prosecute a war of regime change has in essence failed. So really what they're hoping is when this when the sort of the hostilities do finally cease, what we'll see is sort of economic failure, basically, and collapse of some sort. So I think this last really has been the ambition and as the ongoing reason, that's the sort of the ambition of the Israelis, absolutely, which again, I mean, I think quite cynically, they were always pursuing sort of this, this, this maneuver to basically try to engender conditions of civil conflict, dissolution, etc. Well, I'd like to bring in Professor Naghmeh Sorabi, as we mentioned earlier, you've been translating writers from inside Tehran, starting earlier this year, when protests in fact, were occurring, widespread protests were occurring in Iran, which were subsequently cited as one of the many justifications that the Trump administration gave for its invasion. If you could tell us some of what you've been hearing from people inside Iran, what people are writing about the diaries they've been sharing with you about what conditions in Tehran have been like since these attacks began, 40 days ago now. Yeah, there's a wide, there's a wide range of reactions. Mostly there's a lot of discussion in Iran about this question of esti-sal, which means desperation. It just very basically means desperation, but it really contains a sense of people trying hard, trying over and over again to claw rights to improve their situation and that every turn they felt that they were crushed, they were repressed. The war is one of the many ways in which this hope to have a better life and to come out of this esti-sal had actually affected it and took it away. And so there's been a lot of discussion among the people that I read, people I translate and people I'm in touch with, about how we can think about esti-sal in the context of the war, but mostly how can we think about it once we come out of this war. When I say there's a wide range of thought, I think it's really important for us to remember that inside Iran, in some ways you can think there are three groups of people, just in a very, very simple way. There's one that was against the war before the war started, was against the war as it was happening and is very happy and has a sigh of relief now that the ceasefire has happened, even if it doesn't take hold. There's one group that was pro-the Islamic Republic and in some weird ways they are pro-war if we think about it because they think this war is strengthening the Islamic Republic, which it has. They think this war is showing that the Islamic Republic is stable and is going to persist despite anti-imperialist, as they put it, within their own rhetoric, despite imperialist powers having designs on Iran. And then there's a third category of everyday normal people who were for this war because they saw that this war is going to be the only way for them to come out of esti-sal. For a lot of the people that I'm in touch with, including this morning when I spoke to them, the question is how to bring society back together if they're going to come out of this situation and mostly how to deal with the pro-war people who saw being pro-war as a way of coming out of this desperate situation. And I think it's really important to keep this in mind because one of the ways in which we have ended up where we are today is that instead of understanding Iran for what it is, we keep imposing wishful thinking upon it. We want it to be unstable, the system. We want the people to all be united, let's say, against the war. And it's not. And the voices inside Iran know that and they're contending with that and trying to come up with solutions for a future that includes all of these groups of people. And Professor Saurabi, I'd like to ask about some specific issues brought up by the writers you've been translating, specifically with respect to economic conditions inside the country, with some estimates suggesting that about 40 percent of Iran's population is now below the poverty line. Even middle-class people, like one of those whose work you have translated, have reported the spiraling cost of living in Iran. This woman in particular saying that her landlord has raised the rent by 30 percent for next year, though she may lose up to 40 percent of her income because of the war. If you could talk about this. Yeah, she's a very good example, but one of actually the more privileged people that I read and I've translated. So let's just start with by one estimate. Last year, 30 percent of the population was under the poverty line. As you mentioned, the estimate currently is that 40 percent are just in this basically 40 days. We don't know what the actual numbers are going to be. We have to wait for the dust to settle to see what that percentage actually is. By one account, the price of goods just every day food items has more than doubled in the 48 days. People have been laid off of jobs not because of any kind of, I don't know, restructuring. But when you hit these supposed military targets, none of them are actually, some of them are military targets. Some of them are within a complex. They employ, let's say, 20,000 households. When that factory or that complex goes away, these 20,000 households are also now going to not have any jobs. So people are losing their jobs. People are losing their homes. Food prices are going up. And that is also partly what, for example, the one that you mentioned, but something like something that I translated about two days ago by a woman named Zahra, where she talks about them being bombed, the bomb falls near their house. She loses her hearing. And then there's just one line in there and she says, I lost my job today. And there's nothing more in that because there's nothing needs to be more said in that. And the question is, again, even if the ceasefire holds, how they're going to pull this country out of the situation considering the fact that the protests that started in December were economic protests initially, they become political protests by January. But this is, Stissel, that I already talked about at its heart, at its root is also an economic question. And the war has just made it worse. And people's testimonies about that just prove that it has. Professor Saadiri Bourgerdi, if you could comment on one of the points that Professor Saadabi raised, which has been the subject of some discussion and controversy, namely what has happened as a result of the assassination of so many of Iran's top leaders, you wrote in a recent piece, quote, the decapitation of the leadership has not produced capitulation. That of course is clear. And you say if anything, it has arguably accelerated the consolidation of power in the hands of a younger and more militant generation within the political and security elite. So if you could elaborate on that, and what precisely this more hard line and militant position may mean for the future of Iran's relations with the US and also its Gulf neighbors. Yes, I think it might be useful to sort of actually connect that to something that Professor Saadiri was also saying. So I mean, I also study the impact of sanctions on Iran. And particularly we see since 2012, actually, when the Obama administration actually pursues so-called crippling sanctions and really sort of try to shut Iran out of the global financial system, we have seen this steady growth and its sort of emissuration of the Iranian populace, particularly the working classes and middle classes. And this hasn't been linear, it has been relatively kind of and even because the Iranian government has taken various measures to diminish that somewhat. But what we've seen is actually it has empowered those connected to the security apparatus and architecture within the state. It's what I use the term asymmetric statehood. So basically we see those elements that have access to black markets, smuggling and so on have actually proven resilient, actually. And this is kind of a story which could characterize the Islamic Republic and the Iranian Revolution since 1979, the Iranian state really. So we have obviously the baptism of the fire in the form of the Iran-Iraq war. But then really, I mean, the Islamic Republic and Iran more broadly has all been facing, yeah, real sort of, I guess, imperial aggression, economic warfare as well as actually outright warfare since its inception. And therefore it has developed a significant resilience and has institutionalized that revolution as it ultimately was articulated and cashed out. So yeah, the idea that if you just sort of decapitate the supreme leader or you decapitate leading figures in the reverting guard, we're talking about a major, major institution. And the state more broadly, I mean, just beyond the revolutionary guards, I mean, there are multiple plurality of power centers within the Iranian state, which power can be, is concentrated obviously in these, but it also is relatively diffused even within the revolutionary guards. So just take for instance, when we had the assassination again of leading military personnel on the 28th of February, Iran very quickly activated what's called to be known as its mosaic defense strategy, whereby you have this sort of decentralized command, which has been built over a significant period of time, whereby operations can continue even in the event of senior commanders being assassinated. And really, of course, this speaks to a broader strategy, a broader strategic horizon of, I mean, Iran in conventional terms, under arms embargoes and sanctions, etc. I mean, it never was under the misapprehension that it could compete with the United States in conventional military terms. So it always has pursued this asymmetric and attritional strategy. And of course, I mean, this comes at a heavy, heavy cost for the country, for the population at large, and also even for the leadership, I mean, we've seen they've been hit very badly. But I guess that the philosophy there is that they can actually withstand that because it obviously isn't existential, isn't a existential fight, they are prepared to weather and absorb that pain. And they kind of understand that the United States will come in like a bullet in the truncheon, it may as well unleash a huge amount of destruction, but ultimately, it'll be forced to withdraw because there simply isn't the appetite for a long drawn out campaign. And as I said, it's extremely costly for Iran. But I mean, this is actually how they intend to weather the storm and they don't really see that they have another option. Well, let's step back and talk about one of the questions that you've raised in the several articles that you've written. You wrote in a London review of Books article last month, we are witnessing the realization of a long cherished ambition, a neo-conservative fever dream that Benjamin Netanyahu has lobbied for in one form or another for decades. And in an article that you cited a quote from the one by the CIA director, calling Israel's concluding that regime change would occur in Iran, him calling it farcical. The New York Times which reported this in a piece headlined how Trump took the U.S. to war with Iran. It reported that Netanyahu in his visit to the White House on February 11th held a meeting in the situation room with Trump as well as other senior military officials, including the CIA director, where he was Netanyahu accompanied by a video call by other Israeli military officials, including the intelligence chief that is the head of the Mossad. And the Israelis made the case in that meeting for war with Iran, laying out possible scenarios and concluding that victory was all but guaranteed. Now Netanyahu has of course made an unprecedented number of trips to the U.S. since Trump came to power seven months, seven visits in the last 14 months. That's of course on average once every two months. So if you could give an assessment of your sense of to what extent this war may have been driven by Israel and whether Israel's intentions coincided exactly or more or less exactly with the U.S., which is why the U.S. ultimately went along with Israel. Well, I think I mean, there has been, you know, we have to look at the structural context. I mean, really since the Carter administration and the Reign Revolution, we have seen this ongoing massive militarization of the Persian Gulf region. I mean, just this proliferation of U.S. bases throughout various Persian Gulf states. Actually, the states in the Persian Gulf sort of tells you and the degree to which the region has been militarized. And a lot of this was actually to contain both Iran and then, you know, previously Iraq. We obviously have the really atrocious legacy of the Iraq war, which again was very much sort of a war of regime change to very much transform the region in the image of the United States and Israel. And I think these were driven by obviously by American imperial imperatives. I mean, the fact that all these other American military assets in the region, of course, Israel is set to benefit, obviously, and it has been the beneficiary, really. And what I think really what we're seeing, obviously, since October 7th, is that basically all guardrails have been removed. And we have, and we see very much kind of an alignment between the United States and the Israeli state in order to really conclusively enshrine Israeli domination of the entire region, where it has complete freedom of action to carry out genocide, ethnic cleansing attacks on Lebanon, southern Lebanon, and then pursuing again another sort of campaign of ethnic cleansing there as well in the south, as well as freedom of action in Iran. Iran is often seen as, I mean, is seen as the last, as it were, obstacle to both Israeli and American domination. So I have no doubt that Benjamin Netanyahu did exercise significant influence in pushing the Trump administration in order to do this. And he is, you know, like you said, every other month he's visiting Washington is really kind of unprecedented. But I guess what we're really seeing is a classic case very much supported by the Israeli state and advocated by the Israeli state of US imperial hubris, really, and groupthink, whereby, you know, the President Trump himself has really surrounded himself with, how can I say, sycophants for the most part, who aren't really willing to challenge him on something that he is really obviously committed to. And I think, you know, coming off the kidnapping of Nicolas Maduro and obviously the attack on Venezuela, he clearly believed and he was clearly influenced and he clearly wanted to believe, and this is why I say groupthink is important, he clearly wanted to believe that this would be similarly straightforward. And you know, you could argue that he thought this because he's basically been by both sort of the corporate media and Fox News and so on has been told that he can do this. And previously, obviously he has done things with little, with minimal consequence. So we take a think about the assassination of Qasem Soleimani in January 2020. There wasn't sort of significant repercussions for that. Similarly, when he attacked Iran's nuclear installations, most recently, I mean, there wasn't massive fallout over this. And it really is only when sort of the Islamic Republic sense that there was really an existential threat that it started to move to both horizontal escalation, so attacks on the Gulf states, and their sort of crucial energy infrastructure, as well as closing straight of Hormuz. I mean, if we believe the reporting in the New York Times, and of course, we should take that with a pinch of salt, there clearly was the impression that this would be a cakewalk. And this wasn't simply just this was being sold by the Israelis, which of course it was. And there might be even somewhat of divergence there. So maybe the Israelis did actually believe that this would lead to regime change and the installation of the former Shah's son and so on. They tried to at least market that. But it seems that the Trump administration or President Trump himself wasn't particularly enamored of that, but he did think that he could provoke regime collapse and basically maybe do some sort of deal with the rump, the remnants of the Islamic Republic. So I wouldn't say that they complete, we shouldn't entirely conflate them. And we should look at the longer arc of American imperialism in the region. But yes, of course, Israel does play, I think the specific decision to take this action was obviously very much significantly influenced by Benjamin Netanyahu, in particular, who yeah, has been, I mean, he's been basically portraying Iran as the ultimate bogeyman of the region for decades and decades. And he has been lobbying for this his entire career. So just before we wrap, Professor Sarabi, if you could tell us just to go back to the situation inside Iran, number one, the question of communications, how people in the country are communicating with one another. And with those outside net blocks, the Global Monitor reported Sunday that the state imposed near total internet shutdown is now the longest nationwide blackout on record in history. And also the reports of an increasing number of executions within Iran. We have about a minute. Yeah, so basically, as you said, on February 28, the Iranian government shut down loads of communication. Basically, you can't call into the country. It's very, very hard to. People can buy little packets of phone cards where they can call out and that's unstable. Internet, basically, there's something called the National Internet inside Iran. So they have their own apps. They can communicate within that. But that is actually monitored. So everybody is very careful about what they say, but they can't get out with it. It's very, very hard to, again, going back to the economic situation, talking about black markets, which Professor Saadiri also mentioned, a black market of proxy configurations has developed. These are very, very expensive, but they allow you to break through the internet blockage that you mentioned. But it costs a lot of money. So in a circumstance in which we're talking about the unequaleness of the economic disparity within Iran is now showing itself in terms of who gets to connect with the outside world and who can't. In terms of the execution, it's really important to remember when we talk about how the region, how Iran has changed and how it has withstood imperial forces. One of the ways in which it's done that is that it's actually doubled down on its internal repression. It has been executing protesters that it arrested in January. It has continued to arrest people despite war conditions for a variety of reasons. And it's really important to remember that while the Islamic Republic, before the war, was not okay with protesters, it had a language in which it distinguished between protest and rioting. What the war has done is that it's allowed this now empowered state to turn protest, all of it, into fifth columns. And it's going to now, and they have announced that they talked about it, the head of the judiciary two days ago, that they're going to continue executing people and they're going to continue confiscating their property in the name of, now it's treason. So you have a new word for it, was protest, rioting. And now trying to claw some space out of this world that Iranians live in is now going to be called treason and dealt with accordingly. Thank you so much for joining us, Professor Narmé Sorabi, Professor of Middle East History at Brandeis University, and Professor Askander Sarderi Burujerdi, Assistant Professor of International Relations of the Middle East at the University of St. Andrews. Thank you both so much for being with us. When we come back, we'll be joined by the award-winning directors Carl Deal and Tia Lesson talking about their new documentary about Democracy Now and our very own Amy Goodman. Cold steel this story, please stay with us. The power to dream. People have the power to fart. People have the power to march. People have the power to love, power to dream. To rule, to wrestle, to war from fools. People have the power. Patty Smith performing at Democracy Now's 30th anniversary celebration, along with Bruce Springsteen, Michael Steippenmore. You can see the whole celebration on our website at democracynow.org. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, The Warm Peace Report. I'm Narmine Sheikh. We end today's show with a look at the new documentary about Democracy Now and the life and career of our very own Amy Goodman. Democracy Now just celebrated its 30th anniversary at Riverside Church in New York last month. Well, 30 years ago, Amy, along with co-host Juan Gonzalez and Pacifica Radio, launched Democracy Now as the only daily election show in public broadcasting in 1996. It grew from nine community radio stations expanding to television as well, the week of the 9-11 attacks in 2001. It's now on 1,500 public television and radio stations across the country and around the world. The film is called Steel This Story, Please. And here's the film's trailer. Hi, Amy Goodman from Democracy Now. Can you tell us what you think about President Trump saying climate change is a Chinese hope? I'm sorry, I run a later meeting. Right, but you weren't running light when you're just standing there, so. My first impressions of Amy. What did you say to those who say that you're a war criminal? Man, she doesn't kill anybody. Don't push me. I'm a journalist here. Independent media is the oxygen of a democracy. What do you mean by independent? Nothing sponsored by corporations. Amy's periodically brilliant at the spy game. We began on nine radio stations. If she believes something, she's going to fight for it and get it out to the world. Straight up journalism. It came from my Jewish education that you asked questions. Sharif, can you talk about what's happened on the Gaza Strip? From ground zero from East Timor. This we deploy in Haiti. From Georgia's death row prison. We had to smuggle in our recording equipment. This was extremely dangerous. We're accusing a powerful American corporation of murder. Without any warning, military open fire on the protesters. They put the guns to our heads. It is critical that we expose what is done in our name. Donald Trump understood corporate owners of the media would do anything for money. She taught me, speak to the people at the target's end of the bomb. Speak to those who are being deliberately silenced. When you hear someone speak, it's less likely you'll want to destroy that. We expand the frame and center those voices. There is a great force that would like to silence us. The protests are the enemy of the people. That's a trailer for the new independent documentary about democracy now and the life and career of Amy Goodman. It's called steal this story please and opens in theaters in New York this week. The film was directed by the Oscar-nominated filmmakers Carl Deal and Tia Lesson, known for their previous films Trouble the Water and Citizen Coke, also longtime producers for Michael Moore. Tia also won three Emmys for her film The Jains. Executive producers of steal this story please include Jane Fonda, Rosario Dawson and musician Tom Morello. The documentary has won over a dozen audience favorite and jury prizes at major film festivals around the country. Its theatrical release begins Friday in New York here at the IFC Center and expands to theaters across the country. Carl and Tia now join me in our studio. Carl, why don't you begin by telling us what prompted you to make a film about Democracy Now and Amy? Well thank you, Nermeen, for having us here. We're really happy to be here. We're grateful for all the people on the other side of the glass behind you there and all the great work that Democracy Now has been doing over the last 30 years. So happy anniversary and congratulations. You know what Democracy Now has been doing and what Amy has been leading this effort in bringing stories in from the ground, the stories that we're not going to hear, that are shut out of the mainstream quite frequently and it's not lost on me today listening to your guests today in the studio talking about Iran. When you contrast what you just presented to your audience with what we're seeing in the headlines today, the headlines in the mainstream press right now, the commercial media are all about what's going to happen to oil prices now. Who won and who lost or who won, not even who lost and you're presenting another side of this, of the brutality and the cruelty of this attack on civilian infrastructure. So that's kind of a key difference between what happens here and what happens elsewhere and it's because you're independent. So for us as independent filmmakers, we've been doing this for decades and we've always tried to work a little bit out of the mainstream and have always admired what Amy has done. And so for us it was a no-brainer when she consented to let us follow her around for the last couple years, which was an exhausting endeavor. For us it was an opportunity to say something in this really critical moment. And T.F. we could, as we mentioned, the film has won multiple audience awards at festivals around the country. So if you could say more about how the film has been received by audiences and indeed by critics, it seems to have received excellent reviews. Well thank you Nermeen. Yeah, you know look, somewhat happy to believe that the only non-fiction storytelling that audiences are interested in is true crime stories and celebrity profiles. And we think they're wrong and I think our experience so far to date with this film proves that. And we're looking forward to continuing to bear that out in the theatrical release. You know people want to see and read and hear content that speaks to this grave political moment and you know this film does just that. Okay well let's go to more of the film. These are other clips from Steel The Story, please. In 1991 Amy and fellow journalist Alan Nern witnessed and survived a massacre carried out by the U.S.-backed Indonesian military against civilians in East Timor. They then, Alan and Amy, reported on the massacre. A group of soldiers surrounded us. They beat me to the ground. Alan threw himself on top of me to protect me. And they used their USM-16s like baseball bats and they slammed them against his skull. They put the guns to our heads. Western reporters witnessing this was a problem for them. They killed more than 270 Timorese in that day. This is a day I'll never forget for the rest of my life I live with every single day. If we could somehow report it to the outside world maybe that would be a way for the killing to stop. That was a clip from Steel The Story, please from 1991. In this next clip Amy takes a call from President Bill Clinton on Election Day 2000. One thing that I just have seen Amy do over and over and over again. Mr. Mayor, we all pat in there to ask you questions. You're going to trip her. It's okay, I'm from New York. If she has zeroed in on a target she always finds a way to ask the questions no one else will ask. Whether it's powerful corporate people or the presidents of the United States. $25, $30 gets you the DVD of our Sunday night event as we talked about independent media in a time of elections. It's Election Day 2000. This is the presidential race between George W. Bush and Al Gore. We got a call. I thought they said the white horse calling. That's a historic bar in Greenwich Village where Dylan Thomas drank himself to death and they said the president would like to speak to you. I said the president of what? And they said the president of the United States. Oh the white house, not the white horse. So we go running into master control and it's an alternative Latino music show. Gonzalo Bertos at the controls. You hear salsa music loud and underneath it all President Clinton is saying hello hello is anyone there? Mr. President are you there? I am. Can you hear me? Yes we can. You're calling radio stations to tell people to get out and vote. What do you say to people who feel that the two parties are bought by corporations and that their vote doesn't make a difference? That there's not a shred of evidence to support that. That's what I would say. It's true that both parties have wealthy supporters but. It was very interesting talking to the leader of the free world. So that's obviously an extraordinary moment. If you could talk to you about the significance of this documentary coming out during the Trump administration and increasing crackdown on media in general and on independent media in particular. Well that's right. Yeah I mean look we saw in 1996 the telecommunication act accelerated the consolidation of media and that has really you know been chilling at this moment. So many there's so many journalists out there that want to report the news that want to you know aggressively ask the questions and they are compromised and they are censored and they are silenced by their own networks that are trying to curry favor with the Trump administration with corporate sponsors. And one of the remarkable things that you know we think of in terms of Amy's coverage over the years and democracy now is that it is not accountable. It's accountable only to its listeners. It's not accountable to corporate sponsors. It's not you know beholden to government funding and that's what makes you guys really different and so refreshing right now. I mean we have just 20 seconds but talk about the significance of independently distributing this film. Well that's right. We're actually going to be in about 80 Art House theaters across the country. They're mostly nonprofits. We are a nonprofit distribution company that's putting out this film. It is a time when you know Amazon controlled by Jeff Bezos and Paramount you know controlled by the Ellison family. They're not taking you know films like these and so we're excited about you know getting it out directly to audiences and we are looking forward to meeting folks on the road. Leave it there. Carl Deal, Tia Lesson, award-winning filmmakers. We all look forward to seeing the film in theaters. To find out where it's playing go to stealthistory.org. Thanks so much for joining us.