{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"Iran Edition: A Crime Against Humanity","description":"Our first guest today is Roya Hakakian, author of Journey from the Land of No. Born and raised in Iran, Roya explains that what has unfolded there over the past two weeks is comparable in national trauma and moral consequence to the September 11, 2001 attacks or the October 7 terrorist massacre. She argues that the world\u2019s failure to grasp the scale of these events is akin to 9\/11 happening and no one paying attention. The reports are horrific\u2014reminiscent of genocidal campaigns of the 20th century\u2014including accounts of security forces in Mashhad beheading teenagers and municipal workers being instructed not to clean blood from the streets, deliberately leaving visible reminders to terrorize the population. We are also joined by Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA Iranian targets officer who spent years identifying, assessing, and attempting to recruit Iranians with access to valuable intelligence. He argues that short of direct military action, the United States can play a far more aggressive role by helping protesters secure communications and cyber capabilities to disrupt the regime\u2019s control. The regime, he notes, appears to have taken a \u201cshotgun\u201d approach\u2014systematically eliminating anyone who has demonstrated leadership in street protests\u2014and that targeted repression is strategically significant. Our third guest is Behnam Ben Taleblu, senior director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies\u2019 Iran Program, where he oversees the organization\u2019s Iran-related research and analysis. He contends that if President Trump intends to help catalyze the next phase of protests in Iran\u2014to give momentum and protection to those already in the streets\u2014the United States will need to act in a way that is politically consequential. Political pressure and military signaling, he argues, must be fused. While Qatar fears regime collapse, Turkey arguably has the most to lose and has been among the most vocal opponents of an Iranian implosion. The regime\u2019s more than 12-day internet blackout, Taleblu notes, is designed to prevent images and videos that violate its own red lines from escaping and saturating the global media environment.   ","author_name":"Breaking Battlegrounds","author_url":"https:\/\/breakingbattlegrounds.substack.com\/podcast","html":"