Illinois scholar Mateo Mohammad Farzaneh on America’s war with Iran

// This is a machine generated transcript. Please report any transcription errors to will-help@illinois.edu.

[00:00:00]
Brian Mackey: From Illinois Public Media, this is the 21st show. I'm Brian Mackey. It's now been more than 7 months since America and Israel went to war with Iran. Since then, fighting has continued on and off. The US is in talks with Iran. President Trump has said he does not expect the war to end before the midterms, in which the war and its effects on the economy have become a major issue. But also last week, in a speech at the United Nations, Trump mused about annihilating Iran. He's also said he believes the conflict will end very soon, and he said he expects to resume bombing after the election. Today we're going to try and make sense of all that, plus what's happening in Iran and the broader Middle East, where the fighting has taken its toll. Joining us is [Mateo Mohammad Farzana]. He's professor and chair of the history and political science departments at Northeastern Illinois University. He was born in Iran. His family was displaced when Iraq invaded in 1980. He came to the United States in 1984. [Mateo], welcome back to the 21st show.

[00:01:16]
Mateo Mohammad Farzana: Thanks for having me back.

[00:01:18]
Brian Mackey: And we also want to hear from you. You can join the conversation today at 800-222-9455. What do you think of America's war against Iran? How has it affected your life? And what does it say to you about America's place in the world? 800-222-9455 is the number. 800-222-9455. All right. [Mateo Mohammad Farzana], let's just start with sort of a temperature check. What has been grabbing your attention about what's happening in the past few weeks?

[00:01:54]
Mateo Mohammad Farzana: So being an Iranian American has its privileges, I guess, living in a rather relatively peaceful environment in Chicago and working and watching all of this unfold. My perspectives, of course, are one from an American perspective and the other one is an Iranian perspective.

Um, let's begin with the first one. Well, just like everybody else in Illinois and across the nation, we are paying a lot more for a lot of things that, in my opinion, was absolutely unnecessary because of this war. We're paying more for gas, we're paying more for lettuce, we're paying more for other food items, milk and orange juice and everything that everybody needs to consume in order to get up in the morning and go to work, obviously. The stress of that, the financial burden, obviously it's not lost on anyone, I'm sure.

To make sense out of why this war even needed to happen from a scholarly perspective is mind boggling. You can talk about that, I'm sure. And then from an Iranian perspective, things are not well inside Iran. I don't want to paint this rosy picture that everything is hunky dory. Iranian currency, the rial, has reached its historic peak — over 2.5 million rials equal $1. And for a society that, as a pensioner — let's say a teacher's pensioner, who some of my relatives are — they receive close to, let's say, 100 million rials, or 10 million tumans as we call it, and that can get you a couple of pounds of lamb or beef, or some chicken and some rice, and that's about it. So things are becoming extremely difficult economically, but the Iranian government seems to hold very steadfast.

[00:04:10]
Brian Mackey: You mentioned the record low value for the rial — or high, I guess, it depends on your perspective, right? $2.5 million to the dollar. There's also a story I just saw this morning from the Associated Press: Iranians face soaring prices for medicine as the US blockade and sanctions hit hard. Do you still keep in touch with people back in Iran? How are you keeping up with what's happening there?

[00:04:33]
Mateo Mohammad Farzana: Yeah, we have a couple of family members actually stuck there since the war had started, and they're elderly. They cannot come over and they're running out of their medicine, and there's no way for us to get the medicine to them. I have a lot of other cousins, 2nd cousins, 3rd cousins, their children, so on and so forth. And I do keep in touch, although it's very difficult to do so through, let's say, WhatsApp, because that was the norm before the war started. But the internet is sketchy at this time, so we have to pay for those phone calls, and we beg them not to call here because it would be incredibly expensive for them, so we try to do that from the US on a weekly basis.

[00:05:25]
Brian Mackey: So you alluded to the idea of what this war is about. We've heard a lot from our politicians about this, and we can get into that. But so — what, from — I understand you keep track of what Iranian media is saying. What have you heard from them about how they're making sense of this?

[00:05:46]
Mateo Mohammad Farzana: So, being respectful to the time that we have, I think it would be crucial for your listeners to go back to 1953, when the US and the British launched a coup against the only democratically elected government in Iran, of Doctor [Mohammad Mossade], back in 1953. They overthrew his government and they reinstalled the Shah, and effectively and successfully — very successfully — sowed the seed of mistrust and, in some fashion, hatred by Iranians that wanted democracy and prosperity for everyone inside Iran.

And then the Shah tried to liberalize, tried to reform, but he began a little too late. Too little was done, and then they were faced with Marxists, Leninists, Maoists, and then Islamists to overthrow his regime, which they succeeded. And the Islamists, the clerics, succeeded in taking over the people's revolution. Hence we began dubbing it as the Islamic Revolution in 1979. And then the hostage crisis followed and Iran had to fight its neighbor Iraq, which invaded under Saddam Hussein only 18 months after the success of the revolution in '79, in September of 1980.

And because they had become a [prior] state — meaning Iranians, the Islamic Republic — because they were holding Americans hostage for 444 days, there were a set of sanctions that were introduced during Jimmy Carter's administration — economic sanctions — and those were renewed with every administration, every president that came to the Oval Office, and that continues to be the case.

Iran had started a nuclear program with the help of the French, and later the Americans or Russians or the Soviets at that time, but mostly the French, back in the '60s and '70s. And Iranians picked up where they had left off after the Iran-Iraq War ended in 1988. And the enemies of the state — effectively the state of Israel and its supporters — incite the American administrations on both sides of the aisle, Republican and Democratic. They helped propagate this story that Iran was building a nuclear bomb, and the first country that would be subject to that would have been the state of Israel.

Now, this was a story that I would say, in my opinion, was concocted because of the animosity that existed not only between the US and Iran, but also between Israel and Iran, because the Islamic Republic was helping the Palestinians financially and otherwise, and also the Lebanese Shiites inside Lebanon, north of Israel, as well as inside Syria. So in some ways, Israel felt like this is an existential threat to them. That would have been true if Iran was developing a nuclear weapon, but up to now, no official body has gotten to the conclusion that Iran was or is developing a nuclear weapon. They do have, and they do say they have, a nuclear program — a peaceful nuclear program, which they want to work on. They are signatories. The Iranians are signatories to the NPT, or the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

So the Americans, in a very brave and very intelligent way, approached the Iranians, and the Iranians agreed to sit down with the Americans, going back to George W. Bush's last year or last two years of his presidency, and that continued during the Obama administration. And we got the nuclear agreement, or the JCPOA as it's called — I would call it the nuclear agreement, the —

[00:10:16]
Brian Mackey: Iran nuclear deal, you often hear it referred to in shorthand.

[00:10:20]
Mateo Mohammad Farzana: Right, and that was a hugely successful diplomatic effort, historically speaking. I'm a historian, so I'd like to mention that this had never been attempted by anyone, any of the parties involved. And kudos to the Americans that were brave enough to do this, and kudos to the Iranians obviously. The only state that objected to that was the state of Israel at that time also, and they did their best to thwart their efforts, but it didn't work.

And then we got Trump 1.0 — Donald Trump's first presidency — and a very short time after he got into the Oval Office the first time around, he pulled the Americans out of the agreement and snapped back all the sanctions that were lifted because of the agreement during the Obama administration, and the animosity continued and the hardship for Iranians continued.

And then you had your domestic objections to the Islamic Republic, which was quite valid — lack of political freedom as well as lack of economic prosperity — and that led to several movements. One was the Green Movement about — I'm sorry, 17 years ago, if I'm not mistaken. Time's going by really fast. And also after the Green Movement, we had the killing of [Massa Amini] or [Gina Amini], the girl that was killed in the custody of the Moral Police back in 2022, with the [Woman Life Freedom] Movement which started, and that was put down by the Islamic Republic. And then we had the latest of the objections of the Iranians, for the same reasons — a lack of prosperity and anything on the horizon that they saw as a hopeful beacon of hope for them — and that didn't happen. That was in January.

And then we had the Israel war last summer, the 12-day war that wanted to destroy the nuclear infrastructure — that failed in doing that — and they wanted to go after the defense mechanism that Iran had built as a consequence of the Iran-Iraq War, and the drone industry that's world famous, or infamous shall we say now. And then we had the sudden, surprising attack by Israel and the United States back on February 28th, which led to the assassination of the Iranian Supreme Leader and a group of very powerful, very influential key personalities, not only as part of the Iranian nuclear program but also as part of the security apparatus and the military.

And we are down to $2 to $3 billion a month of expenditure on behalf of the Americans. We are at $45 billion of expenditure since February 28th. The attacks have led to the killing of 33,400 Iranians, 34,000 injured, 1,700 civilians, 19 American service members, 61 injured American service members. And the diesel price — diesel price that is sitting at 6.76 as I just checked in the morning — and everybody's paying for this war that cannot be won militarily. I think there's consensus, not only in academia but also in the political spheres, that this is not a war that can be won militarily. Diplomacy is the only way moving forward.

[00:14:15]
Brian Mackey: Yeah, and — what is the state — and I should say we need to take a break in about 90 seconds here and I'm going to have to hold you to it. But what is the status of the Iranian government today, right? There was an attempt to — I don't know the phrase you'd use — decapitate, eliminate as much of the leadership as they could. I'm not sure what the hope would be, what would happen after that. But are things markedly different today than they would have been, you know, seven to eight months ago?

[00:14:46]
Mateo Mohammad Farzana: Should we answer that or should we go to the break first?

[00:14:49]
Brian Mackey: Oh, you can — I mean, if you'd briefly maybe start an answer —

[00:14:53]
Mateo Mohammad Farzana: I think there are two things before the break. I think there are two things that are next to impossible. One is opening up the [Hormuz] without Iranian cooperation — the Strait of Hormuz, the area that connects the Persian Gulf to the free waters of the world. That's one.

Number two is the use of the term "decapitation" of the Iranian government. You cannot use it in this instance, because the Iranians have practiced for a day like this. Even if the Supreme Leader is killed, even if the president is killed or the government is killed, there is a system in place that will take care of the government, and the defense will go on as planned. And they don't need to be centralized all in one place. So it would be, again, almost impossible — maybe I should say impossible — to get rid of the Islamic Republic, if that's anybody's goal to do that like that. That's impossible to do.

[00:15:55]
Brian Mackey: All right. I'm going to share a listener comment here. Wayne in Champaign from our texting group says it's an absolute disaster, which was completely predictable and in fact was predicted by every previous administration going back decades. If you want to join us, 800-222-9455 is the number.

We'll have more with [Mateo Mohammad Farzana], professor and chair of history and political science at Northeastern Illinois University. Our subject today is Iran. This is the 21st show. Stay with us.

It's the 21st show. I'm Brian Mackey. We're talking about the continuing war with Iran and its consequences in the Middle East region and beyond. We asked members of our texting group about this. You can join that, by the way, by texting "talk" to 217-803-0730. Christopher in Brimfield says it's been a disaster. The government said Iran was not making a nuclear weapon. Trump has misled the American people. It is 100% his fault.

Also heard from David in Mount Morris: I'm an infantry combat veteran of Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Kosovo was a peacekeeping mission. My experience with warfare after the fact is that the most war-hawkish of men are usually the ones who would be least likely to fight it themselves.

And Ricky in Urbana says: Besides the fact that it's illegal to attack a country not in self-defense — so Trump's aggression is a war crime from day one — it does make me more nervous about traveling too. Why are we so ready to waste billions making more enemies who will never forget losing relatives, friends, neighbors, including children? It's illegal, immoral, and stupid, Ricky says. Thanks to everyone who wrote in.

If you want to join us, 800-222-9455. We're talking about this with [Mateo Mohammad Farzana], professor and chair of both history and political science at Northeastern Illinois University. He was born in Iran. His family was displaced by the Iran-Iraq War when he was a child. He came to the United States in 1984. Again, to join us, 800-222-9455.

So let's talk about the endgame here, right? Robert Kagan, as far back as May, said America loses if Iran maintains control over the Strait of Hormuz, and there's basically no way Iran is ever going to give that up now that this sort of seal has been broken. So "Checkmate," which is the title of his article. What do you think of that assessment?

[00:18:40]
Mateo Mohammad Farzana: Well, I think the author is absolutely right. One thing that the listeners might want to know is the Strait of Hormuz — because of its geographical location, because of the topography, because of the mountains and hills around it and the way you have to navigate through a very, very tight spot to get from one side to the other, with the Iranians having almost all the control over that navigation — it's impossible to put this genie back in the bottle. The cat is already out of the bag.

And this was actually alluded to as a possible Iranian tool even before there was an Islamic Republic. This was used, actually, in 1976, if I'm not mistaken, or 1977, by the late Shah of Iran, by the monarch, where in an interview — I believe with The New York Times, if I'm not mistaken, don't quote me on that — but he gave an interview with a Western outlet saying that, you know, we can always close the strait and see how everybody's going to react. Well, that kind of verbiage, that kind of threat, if you want to call it that — or that kind of informing statement, I would say, that, hey, listen, we can do this if we want to, but we'd rather not because it's not good for anybody and it's not good for us either — that was used also during the Iran-Iraq War, or sometime when the tanker wars started, and then now. The United States effectively allowed Iran — or you could say it forced Iran — to show how this is an absolute possibility, and everybody's paying for that price right now.

So, going back to your original question and comment about what the author of that article said: absolutely, there is no way for Iran to give up this leverage now. Even if, let's just say for a second, even if the Islamic Republic is destroyed and Iran gets whatever kind of government, or just, you know, goes into chaos and the country is going to be, you know, balkanized — or whatever, talks like that here and there — whoever controls the strait will still have effectively the control over what goes through it.

Now, would the United States — we as Americans — do we want to go halfway around the world and control an area that we're not familiar with? I guess the overwhelming percentage of people would say no. Look at what happened in Afghanistan. We effectively left for a government that supported the terrorists to come on September 11th and commit atrocities against American citizens, killing almost 3,000 innocent people. We let that government take hold again — I'm talking about the Taliban. They're back in power. So that means we have a small window in which we can actually send our service members there to do things or to control the Hormuz Strait.

But I'm just giving the example of Afghanistan as one. And look — today marks the end of the American presence also in Iraq. We don't have any more soldiers, any more service members left, other than the diplomatic corps at the embassy. And that started in 2003 with the Iraqi invasion by George W. Bush. And now we are leaving, which means we have less power — we, meaning the Americans — we have less power in the Middle East, and that's exactly what Iran wants. And that's part of the 14 points that we now call the MOU, the [Islamabad] MOU that was brought about by Iranians and Americans, which Donald Trump signed on June 17th, which again led to an expiration 60 days later, to leave us where we are now.

[00:23:22]
Brian Mackey: All right. I want to go to the phones. We had a caller — I think we just lost the call, unfortunately — but I'm going to still use the question. Aram called in from [Chandigarh] in India, wanted to ask if the intelligence coming out of Iran regarding nuclear enrichment is true or not — what you know about that.

[00:23:42]
Mateo Mohammad Farzana: Iranians are saying that they do have enriched uranium, but not to the degree that they could make a bomb with. If anybody studies the JCPOA — we do actually have a course here at Northeastern Illinois University where I teach about the history of the JCPOA, how significant it was for the world, but especially for Americans and Iranians. And if you study that, disregarding the technical part of it because I'm not a nuclear physicist, obviously — but if you look at it, Iranians did give up a large portion, almost all, of their enriched uranium that was almost to the grade that they could make a nuclear weapon with. They gave it up, and they actually sealed some of the reactors and they got rid of some of their centrifuges.

And all of that was verified by the IAEA, which is the nuclear watchdog of the United Nations. And Americans confirmed that too. And that's how the Iranians got to get some of their money back that was frozen — part of their assets — and that's how they got to start talking about doing business with the Americans. And Illinois, actually, was one state that would have benefited hugely from this thawed relationship, this melting of the ice between the two nations. But unfortunately, Donald Trump came out of that.

So, going back to your original question: yes, Iranians are not denying that they have enriched uranium. But let me also add this for the listener who brought up this question and others. [Psician], Doctor [Psician], the Iranian president, in New York last week gave an interview to Fox News, and he did mention this — that it gets missed a lot — that there is a standing, valid religious decree, or a fatwa, that was issued by Ayatollah Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, that other ayatollahs have also supported: that it is against Islamic law, or Sharia, the way you look at it, to actually make a weapon of mass destruction. So they're talking about nuclear weapons. Now, for defense purposes, it does not include that. So they are free to do drone production, to manufacture drones and ballistic missiles and cruise missiles and so on and so forth, but as far as nuclear weapons is concerned, it's not even doable. The Iranian constitution would not allow for that.

Is there an exception to the rule? Can we see one day that Iran would be pushed to make it? Who can say — anything is possible. A nuclear weapon has been proved to be a great deterrent, to keep nuclear powers away from one's neighborhood. Pakistan is one good example, and so is India, and so is North Korea.

[00:26:56]
Brian Mackey: All right, another caller. Paul is calling from Urbana on line one. Paul, it's been a minute. Thanks for calling in.

[00:27:03]
Speaker 2: Yeah, the counter on that is the Libya experience, when the bomb was given up and then he was attacked too. So —

[00:27:11]
Mateo Mohammad Farzana: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:27:12]
Speaker 2: — the negative part of that. And Netanyahu's been saying that the Iranians are within three months of a nuclear bomb for the last 20 years, is the quip. But I wanted to talk about the earlier stuff from Trump, which was the assassination of Soleimani, which I guess was in the first term. He was actually — he resigned his position, I understand, because he found his colleagues in the military too belligerent. He actually was less belligerent and left the administration for a while.

Um, this is kind of parallel — you're talking about the continuity, but actually with the decapitation — a word you don't like — of the regime, it's actually gotten more, uh, more — yeah, indeed. Um, which also brings up the fact that the way out that apparently the Israeli intelligence briefed Trump on was that maybe Ahmadinejad could come back, which was astonishing, because he was the bogeyman for so many years when he was [prime minister]. But as he is — I mean, I just get apoplectic when I think about it, because it's so harebrained. I don't know if it was a serious offer or whether they just needed some pictures of people to say there was a possibility of a regime change, but they really just wanted the war.

Um, and one other thing is that when you were on previously, we had an email correspondence, and I don't know if you were hacked or I was hacked — but it sounds wacko, but it's all disappeared — and this was about the economic machinations that led up to the demonstrations. Yes, indeed, and so I'll have to resend it and ask you for that citation because I did look —

[00:29:06]
Mateo Mohammad Farzana: That's really strange. I think I —

[00:29:09]
Brian Mackey: I should warn everyone, only about 4.5 minutes left, but go ahead, please.

[00:29:13]
Mateo Mohammad Farzana: No, I do remember that, and I think I referred you to an article about [Scott Besson's] idea of an economic war before any of this stuff started. I do remember you. I will look for it, and if you email me, I will send it back to you again.

[00:29:29]
Brian Mackey: All right. I think Paul's listening offline. Anything else you wanted to respond to there, about Soleimani or anything else?

[00:29:37]
Mateo Mohammad Farzana: With Soleimani, one thing that people need to notice is that the Islamic Republic in general, and the people who run it by and large, are incredibly ideologically driven. When you are ideologically driven, the ultimate sacrifice — which is one's life — is not in question. We saw that during the Iran-Iraq War, with people volunteering to die. They saw it as a good thing, as a martyrdom, that they would go to heaven and live a very nice afterlife, if we can use that word.

So for people that are attacking, or want to destroy, people who are ideologically driven, it's going to be extremely difficult to incentivize a war like that. Soleimani was ideologically driven, and people that came before him and after him are, or were, ideologically driven, and there's no shortage of that.

Brian, Iran has 92 million people living in it. They're very, very patriotic, although perhaps the great majority does not support the Islamic Republic. We understand that. But let me give you an example — maybe this would help. A lot of us — let's just say myself — I don't like how the affairs of the United States are being dealt with. But if — and I don't have a favorite in my government right now, I rather would have had someone else running things, maybe we wouldn't be in this mess. But let's just for a second think that a country — let's say the Martians — attack the United States, or this country X or Y would attack us. I would absolutely rally behind my president and I would volunteer in any way, shape, or form if I see that my country's being attacked — meaning the state of Illinois or the United States. I would absolutely do it. I swore to the Constitution that I would do it as a naturalized citizen.

So in some ways, Iranians — they didn't take a sworn statement that they would defend Iran, but they would defend Iran. So the 92 million people has a dedicated 10 to 15 million people that are willing to die right now for the cause, which is what they think is the perseverance of the Islamic government. And the rest of the people would absolutely do the same thing if they think Iran is being threatened and being attacked unjustly.

So the idea of a regime change might seem a bit romantic for some, but if that means that we're going to destroy dialysis centers, or bomb girls' schools like it happened in [Minan] — intentionally, as it happens to be — or attacking a wedding reception, a wedding party that happened a few weeks ago, then it would be very, very easy to imagine whose side the Iranians will take, because the Americans would do exactly the same thing.

[00:33:04]
Brian Mackey: [Mateo Mohammad Farzana], professor and chair of history and political science at Northeastern Illinois University. Thanks for being with us and sharing your perspective with us today on the 21st show.

[00:33:15]
Mateo Mohammad Farzana: It was great to be with you. Thank you so much.

[00:33:21]
Brian Mackey: Coming up after the break, we will have more on the 21st show. Something completely different. We'll be talking about the quinceañera, the rite of passage in Latina culture that marks the transition from girlhood to womanhood. It's also the subject of a new book of essays about the tradition and its place in popular culture. We'll talk with the collection's editors. It's coming up after the break. This is the 21st show. Stay with us.