Guests

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. Israel is also part of the agreement, but it has said it will continue its attacks and occupation inside Lebanon. The deal was reached less than two hours before President Trump’s 8 p.m. ET deadline Tuesday for Iran to reopen the strait under threat of destroying every power plant and major bridge in Iran.

Although both parties have “strong incentives” to maintain a ceasefire, the deal is “extremely precarious,” says Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi, professor of international relations of the Middle East at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. “We’re already seeing it being imperiled as we speak, with ongoing attacks in Lebanon, as well as reports of [Iranian] attacks in the Persian Gulf.”

We are also joined by Naghmeh Sohrabi, professor of Middle East history at Brandeis University, who has been translating articles from Persian to English by writers inside Iran. Sohrabi speaks to the economic suffering — which had already led to protests in Iran earlier this year — that has been compounded by war. “People are losing their jobs. People are losing their homes. Food prices are going up,” she says. “And the question is, even if the ceasefire holds, how they’re going to pull this country out of the situation.”

Transcript

NERMEEN SHAIKH: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Nermeen Shaikh.

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 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 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 Shehbaz 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.

HADIS KHOSRAVI: [translated] I heard this morning that our conditions have 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.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: 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 8 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday, quote, “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.

Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi 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 burn together.” He joins us now from Edinburgh.

We’re also joined by Naghmeh Sohrabi, 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 Democracy — to both guests to Democracy Now! I’d like to begin with Professor Sadeghi-Boroujerdi. 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?

ESKANDAR SADEGHI-BOROUJERDI: Thank you so much.

So, no, I definitely think the fact that we’ve moved from President Trump’s threats to, in essence, destroy an entire civilization to a ceasefire does kind of highlight the fundamentals of strategic incoherence at the heart of this sort of illegal war of aggression. So, I think, you know, we should sort of breathe a sigh of relief. It is a very, very important reprieve. But it is, of course, extremely precarious. You know, it isn’t a full resolution to this conflict — there’s no doubt about that — and it is extremely, extremely precarious. And we’re already seeing, you know, it being imperiled as we speak, with sort of ongoing attacks in Lebanon, as well as reports, actually, of attacks in the Persian Gulf, actually, as well, which are happening right now. So, it is very, very precarious. But, obviously, both parties, at least for the moment, do have very much strong incentives to continue, to continue, actually, to try and actually prop this up, as do obviously 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’s sort of missile arsenal, as well as its nuclear program — these weren’t actually mentioned so much. And 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, you know, the fact that actually President Trump did acknowledge that the 10-point plan, Iran’s 10-point plan, was, in a sense — 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. And there are even sort of reports coming out right now, as well, that while Iran obviously will facilitate transit through the straits, it is actually going to be dependent on coordination with Iranian authorities and with the Revolutionary Guard.

So, just to sort of to finish, I mean, on this note, I would say that while the ceasefire is precarious, the idea that if sort of conflicts resumes, that this will result in a 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, and farcical, as the current head of CIA actually noted in the actual planning which led up to this, to this illegal war. So, I actually do think we are going to have to see — it is going to be very precarious, but I do think we’ve seen a fundamental change in the region, which is very, very, very significant.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And if I could — you know, 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. I mean, 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 Tofigh 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”?

ESKANDAR SADEGHI-BOROUJERDI: 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 Dahiya doctrine initially, and then maybe we can call it the Gaza doctrine. But, you know, Israeli decision-makers and President Netanyahu have been very, very clear that their objective is to destroy and sort of, in essence, deindustrialize 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 Khouzestan Steel, also major sort of steel plants in Isfahan, as you mentioned, the attack on Mahshahr petrochemical complex, which employs, you know, thousands and thousands of people. So, yeah, it is an 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 scholasticide, 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. Six hundred schools have been hit. And also, just a broader attack on Iran’s culture, 120 cultural sites.

So, really, it’s an all-out assault, an 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 — its plan to prosecute a war of regime change has, in essence, failed. So, really, what they’re hoping is, when 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 that really has been the ambition, and that’s the ongoing reason, that’s the — so, that’s sort of the ambition of the Israelis, absolutely, which, again, I mean, I think, quite cynically, they were always pursuing sort of this maneuver to basically try to engender conditions of civil conflict, dissolution, etc.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, I’d like to bring in professor Naghmeh Sohrabi. 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?

NAGHMEH SOHRABI: 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 estisal, which means desperation. Just this 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 at 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 estisal had actually, like, 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 estisal 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 estisal.

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.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Professor Sohrabi, 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% 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% for next year, though she may lose up to 40% of her income because of the war.

NAGHMEH SOHRABI: Right.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: If you could talk this?

NAGHMEH SOHRABI: 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% of the population was under the poverty line. As you mentioned, the estimate currently is that 40% 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 everyday 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 nothing needs to be more said in that.

And the question is, again, even if this 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’d become political protests by January. But this estisal 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.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Professor Sadeghi-Boroujerdi, if you could comment on one of the points that Professor Sohrabi 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 U.S. and also its Gulf neighbors?

ESKANDAR SADEGHI-BOROUJERDI: Yes, so, I think it might be useful to sort of actually connect that to something that Professor Sohrabi 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 tried to shut Iran out of the global financial system, we have seen this steady growth and sort of immiseration of the Iranian populace, speaking, obviously, of the working classes and lower middle classes. And this hasn’t been linear. It has been relatively kind of uneven, 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 states. 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 fire in the form of the Iran-Iraq War. But then, really, I mean, the Islamic Republic and Iran, more broadly, has always 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 Revolutionary 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 — a plurality of power centers within the Iranian state, which, you know, 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 come 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, you know, 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 is an existential — is an 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 bull in a china shop and basically unleash huge amounts of destruction, but ultimately it will be forced to withdraw, because there simply isn’t the appetite for a long, drawn-out campaign. And as I said, that’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.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, let’s step back and talk about one of the questions that you’ve raised in the several articles that you you’ve written. You wrote in a London Review of Books article last month, “We are witnessing the realisation of a long-cherished ambition, a neoconservative 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 via 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 was — 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?

ESKANDAR SADEGHI-BOROUJERDI: Well, I think, I mean, there has — you know, we have to look at the structural context. I mean, really, since the Carter administration and the Iranian 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 in the states in the Persian Gulf, sort of tells you 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 a 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, obviously, by American imperial imperatives. I mean, the fact that there are all these sort of American military assets in the region, of course, Israel is set to benefit, obviously, and it has been the beneficiary, really.

And 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. And 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, you know, significant influence in pushing the Trump administration in order to do this. And he is — you know, as you said, every other month he’s visiting Washington. It’s 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 U.S. imperial hubris, really, and groupthink, whereby, you know, the Trump administration — 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 Nicolás 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, if you think about the assassination of Qassem 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 sensed 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 the Strait of Hormuz. And, 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 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 completely — we shouldn’t entirely conflate them, and we should look at the longer arc of sort 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.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, just before we wrap, Professor Sohrabi, 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? NetBlocks, 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.

NAGHMEH SOHRABI: Yeah, so, basically, as you said, on February 28th, the Iranian government shut down modes 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 Sadeghi 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 unequalness 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 OK 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 protests, all of it, into fifth columns. And it’s going to now — and then they have announced it. 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 that now it’s treason. So you have a new word for it. 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.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Thank you so much for joining us, Professor Nagmeh Sohrabi, professor of Middle East history at Brandeis University, and Professor Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi, 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 Lessin, talking about their new documentary about Democracy Now! and our very own Amy Goodman, called Steal This Story, Please! Stay with us.

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