➡ Evan Demarsh from The Trends Journal interviewed Professor Mohammad Marandi from the University of Tehran about Trump’s threats to Iran. Marandi believes Trump’s threats are not about Iran’s nuclear program, but about Iran’s support for Palestine and opposition to genocide and apartheid. He also suggests that the U.S. supports authoritarian regimes and is involved in illegal activities, such as the bombing of Iran. Marandi asserts that Iran is preparing to defend itself and will not abandon the Palestinian people.
➡ The article discusses the ongoing conflict in Gaza, with a focus on the role of Hamas and the potential for a ceasefire deal. It criticizes Western media’s portrayal of the situation and suggests that the actions of the Israeli regime are damaging its own reputation. The article also suggests that the United States, under Trump’s leadership, is becoming increasingly isolated and despised due to its actions. The author believes that the future will be challenging, but sees a decline in the legitimacy of the Israeli regime and the United States.

Hello, my name is Evan Demarsh. I’m the executive editor at The Trends Journal. I’m here today with Professor Mohammad Marandi from the University of Tehran. Professor, thank you for joining The Trends Journal. I appreciate it. Thank you, Edmund. It’s always a pleasure. We will get right into it because it’s never a dull moment when it comes to Trump in the Middle East. Yesterday, Trump was at a naval base in Virginia. His message yesterday to Iran was that if it messes again, if it tries to restart its nuclear program, he’s going to act even faster to bomb these facilities.

Professor Marandi, what is your take on Trump’s latest threat, and is that escalatory? Is that something that Iran thought Trump believed all along? I think it’s pretty clear that Trump has no red lines, and that is the new state of affairs in the West. They’ve removed the mask, as they say. It’s no longer about when they carry out genocide, and when they slaughter, and they bring about regime change, and when they support terrorist groups. It’s not about freedom, and democracy, and women’s rights, and children’s rights, and all that. That mask has been removed.

In fact, I don’t even think it’s like the early 20th century, or mid-20th century, and the 19th century, where it was a civilizing mission, where we were supposed to be civilized through these assaults, and these massacres, and invasions. Now it’s more medieval. It’s just brute force, no need for excuses. Just slaughter people, and get the job done. That’s basically what Trump was also saying in his so-called peace plan for Gaza. He was basically saying, if you don’t accept my peace plan, I’m going to make the genocide much worse. That’s what he was saying.

I mean, whether he can do that or not, that’s another issue, and whether I don’t believe that Hamas is ever going to accept that capitulation, and that demand for submission. But in any case, that is who Trump is, and that is what the United States is, because there is no outrage in the United States among liberals when it comes to bombing Iran, when it comes to the genocide. They’re all in the same boat. The US bombing of Iran was illegal in the first place. All of those three places were all monitored regularly by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

There was never anything in any of these facilities that showed Iran was pursuing nuclear weapons, yet he bombed them anyway. Now he’s making new threats, which show that this is not really about the nuclear program at all. Because he said he obliterated the program. If it’s obliterated, then it’ll take years for Iran to rebuild it, if that’s really true. So let’s assume that what he says is true. Then there’s no program. So if the United States threatens to bomb Iran again or starts bombing Iran again, it’s clear that this was never about the nuclear program.

It was never about human rights or women’s rights or children’s rights or freedom of expression. The United States supports a genocidal regime in Palestine. It supports authoritarian regimes across West Asia, North Africa, and elsewhere. And Iran has elections. The problem with Iran is Palestine. The problem is that Iran, unlike Turkey, unlike the Emirates, unlike Egypt and Saudi Arabia, Iran is independent. And unlike these countries, Iran supports the Palestinian people. Iran pays a price for opposing genocide and apartheid and opposing ethnosuppremism. This is what it is really all about. This is why Netanyahu is planning to attack Iran again, and why Trump is looking for an excuse to join Netanyahu in bombing Iran again.

Because they want to help his Zionist supremacism to be able to spread its wings across the region, and it’s only Iran that is willing to stand up and block it, Iran and its allies in the axis of resistance. So Trump’s threats against Iran, of course, are all illegal, but it’s all about the genocide in Palestine. Trump has taken this real tough guy persona recently talking about Venezuela, even U.S. cities, Iran. It seems as though, like, in Trump and HEXIF, they have this machismo that they’ve been approaching in the military, and it seems like they’re quick to, or at least they’re presenting themselves as quick to, use the military to achieve political goals.

When Iran hears threats from Trump, do they, does the leadership there, do you think they think that it’s more bluster? Or do they think, or do you think that they’re looking at this as a sincere threat from Trump? Is this Trump just being this tough guy that he wants to be? Or is it a legitimate threat? Well, Trump’s not a tough guy. He’s a coward that sits in the White House and bombs other people from afar. But the Iranians do take the threats very seriously. They’ve been preparing for war ever since the halt and the cessation in the military conflict when the Israeli regime launched its war against Iran.

We have to remember that the Israeli regime lost that war, and Steve Bannon, as you know, said that it was basically Trump that saved Netanyahu, because during the last three, four days, things were going very bad for the Israeli regime. And the Iranians initially did not accept, and then gradually Iran gained some extra concessions and then accepted a ceasefire. This time around, the Iranians are going to hit harder, and they’re going to make sure that the Israeli regime and its allies regret an attack on Iran. But I think all of these are symptoms, the murder of people in the Caribbean, which has made fishermen cautious about working, and it’s driving prices among people across the Caribbean.

And many poor people, it’s just making life more difficult for them. The murder of these people in these boats by the regime in Washington, the legal attacks on Iran, the support for the Holocaust in Gaza, and all the crimes that are being committed, the support for al-Qaeda, the same al-Qaeda that we were told carried out in 9-11, we saw in New York just a couple of weeks ago, during the month of September. All of these are symptoms. What’s going on in the United States, the weaponization of the military, the limiting of freedom of expression, the capturing of the TikTok by the Israeli regime and Zionists, all of these are symptoms, that all is not well in Washington, and the empire is in serious trouble.

And perhaps Trump himself has problems, who knows if it has to do something with Epstein. And also there’s the issue of the assassination of Charlie Kirk and the narrative produced by the FBI doesn’t add up. All of these are symptoms of what seems to be a major problem in the United States, and that Washington is truly ill, and the empire is dying, and this empire is lashing out and becoming increasingly dangerous as it lashes out. However, it is not going to intimidate Iran. Iran is preparing to defend itself. It will not forsake the Palestinian people.

And any further act of aggression is only going to expose regimes in the region that are members of NATO or proxies of the United States, and they’re going to enhance Iran’s status across the global south, the global majority, and even in the west among those who have been supporting the Palestinian people, because five days of five decades of antagonizing Iran by the west, all those narratives are now shattered. Because the world is saying, how can this so-called evil Iran be the only country that is standing up for the Palestinian people alongside Yemen? And the western world, which has always pretended to be civilized, they’re the ones who are carrying out this holocaust in Gaza.

So Iran is blocking or trying to prevent the holocaust. The west is supporting the holocaust. Regional countries are complicit. What this does, war is evil, but it is enhancing Iran’s position. It is further delegitimizing the Israeli regime in the eyes of the world, and it is only going to make the United States and its western allies more isolated. It’s interesting because you mentioned with Iran and the support for what’s going on in Gaza, you saw the flotilla that was intercepted recently, and those who were on it, they weren’t activists Palestinians. And everyone has this wide brush, and they say, oh, Palestinians, but it’s kind of like wink, wink, Hamas.

There’s no distinction. Let’s get past that. There’s no distinction in the western media between Palestinians and Hamas. It’s interchangeable. So I think people are starting to see that too. But moving on from that, and I just want to get your opinion on this Gaza ceasefire plan, and it’s a 20-point plan, and the New York Times described it as essentially Netanyahu getting everything that he wants except some things. For example, according to the peace plan, Palestinians do get to remain in Gaza, but then critics of the proposal, like Norman Finkelstein, he came out and he said, essentially, what this is, it’s a phased deal, very much like the first one earlier in the year, where Israel will be able to get back the remaining hostages, which the international community wants to happen.

They want these hostages. I think most people want these hostages to be returned. But the problem is that after these hostages are returned, Hamas loses any bargaining chip for future negotiations. This is the supporters of what’s going on with that as far as Hamas. They lose all negotiating bargaining chips, and Israel can absolutely ramp up the massacres really without any kind of incentive not to just completely roll over all of Gaza, just by claiming that Hamas has not demilitarized and laid down its weapons. So when you look at this Gaza ceasefire deal, you mentioned before that you don’t think or you hope Hamas doesn’t accept.

Do you see this ceasefire deal as something viable that could bring a steady and long peace to Gaza, or is this just another, is this more trickery from the Washington and the White House? Well, Hamas and its allies, Islam, Palestinian, Islamic Jihad and other groups, they’ve agreed on a policy, and Hamas has given out a statement which I think was very well crafted, and they’re fully supported by the different resistance groups, both inside Palestine and outside Hezbollah supports them, and Saadallah and Yemen supports them, and Iran supports them. What they are trying to do is to prevent Trump from being able to pretend that he’s serious about peace and justice, and trying to use this opportunity to ease pressure on the Palestinian people, because the West is completely complicit.

Western journalists in mainstream media, they are the same as Nazi journalists. There’s no difference for me for BBC journalists and Nazi Germany journalists. There’s no difference for me between the New York Times journalists and Saddam Hussein’s journalists when he was invading Iran with Western support and when he was giving chemical weapons by the West to use against Iranians and Iraqis. Western mainstream journalists are part of this Holocaust. They are foot soldiers in this genocide. But people across the world are seeing through Trump’s ploy, this attempt to force capitulation upon the Palestinian people.

Hamas, I think, is making the right move, and that is to see what can be done, ease pressure on ordinary Palestinians, and at the same time to make sure the world recognizes and continues to recognize that it is the United States and Israeli regime, and that they’re Western allies that are carrying out this Holocaust. So we’ll have to see how things play out in the days and perhaps weeks ahead. But I think that the behavior of the regime towards the activists in the flotilla was a catastrophic mistake for Tel Aviv and Zionists, because what they’ve done is that they’ve been telling people across the world that if you support the Palestinian people, if you take baby formula to save starving infants, that you’re a terrorist.

That if you are in a boat in international waters with infant formula, you are a terrorist. And you know that they took them from international waters, but even if they entered the waters of Gaza, they still, it would be illegal for the Israeli regime to act against these people, because even according to the West, the West Bank and Gaza Strip are not a part of the Israeli regime, and they’re Palestinian. So they have exposed themselves to the world, especially since these activists come from across the world, and many people across the Mediterranean went and saw these boats.

So people feel closer to the cause now. The regime, I used to think that the Israeli regime and the Zionists were smarter than this, that they were good at aspirin and propaganda, but now it seems like they’re being controlled by Iran, and that they’re producing propaganda against themselves. The propaganda being produced by the Israeli regime is hurting the regime. It is exposing the regime further. The Iranians couldn’t do a better job to discredit Zionism and Zionists than the Zionists and the supporters of Zionism themselves today. Trump spoke to Axios. This is my last question, professor, and I appreciate your time.

Axios spoke to Trump, and Trump talked about this peace deal, and obviously he leveled a threat to Hamas to accept it or be blown up. But one of the next goals is to improve Israel’s public relations to the world and recover its respectability and its reputation. That’s what Trump said. So, professor, if you could change hats here, Trump calls you up and he says, professor, I need to figure out how to recover Israel’s reputation in the world. How do I go about doing that? How would Trump go about, after all that’s happened in Gaza, let’s say the war ends tomorrow, how does Trump help Israel fix up and rebuild its reputation in the world? How do you see that playing out, his effort? Well, if you want to lose your account, then I can tell you what he should do.

But so I won’t go there. What I can say is that Trump, the image of Trump is as negative as that of Netanyahu. There’s no difference between Trump and Netanyahu. There’s no difference between Netanyahu and the fanatics that rule over Israel. There’s no difference between Netanyahu, Trump, and the overwhelming majority of Israelis that support the genocide, according to their own polls. So there’s nothing to rehabilitate. There’s nothing that Trump can do because he is one of the reasons why the United States is so despised today and why the United States is so isolated today.

And these are all symptoms, what’s going on in Gaza or what’s going on in the waters of the Caribbean or what’s going on in different cities in the United States or the limits being put on freedom of expression in the United States and access to information, such as with TikTok. All of these symptoms are that of a dying empire, an empire that’s dying rapidly and which is lashing out and it’s becoming increasingly dangerous. But it’s those countries and those entities that are being targeted by it will not be intimidated. The Islamic Republic can be wrong.

It’s not going to be intimidated. It’s not going to forsake the Palestinian people. It is not going to accept the legitimacy of ethnosuppremism. And the days and weeks and months ahead will be tough, but I don’t foresee the United States having any success. Things are only going to get worse for the world, but for the United States, things are going to get worse in particular. And the Israeli regime will continue to look less and less legitimate in the eyes of the world. And these are the signs of death. A regime that is seen as illegitimate across the world cannot sustain itself.

It has had no real military successes except for slaughtering women and children, which it does intentionally and which Western media tries to hide. But the world despises it. And I think anyone that is despised by everyone around him really does not have much to live for. Well, Professor, on that note, Professor Marandi, follow him on X, and he’s always interviewed on YouTube. He’s one of the great voices and most educated voices to hear about the topic. Professor, thank you for joining the French Journal. I appreciate it. Thank you, Edmund. It’s always an honor.

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