 Hi, you've probably been glued to the news like we at Code Pink have for the past few days with fear and shock about what's going on. We're going to be having a conversation tonight with anti-war activist and expert and author of a book on Iran, Medea Benjamin. Medea, thanks so much for joining us. It's great to be with you, Ariel, horrible times but important to do whatever we can to give more information to people and get people more ready for actions, which is what we're going to need in the days, weeks and months ahead. Could you give for anybody that hasn't been paying as close attention as you and I have a bit of an overview of what's going on recently bringing us up to, well, up to the minute. So there have been so many new twists and turns of this conflict but I think it's important to step back for a minute and put it in context of two things. One is a lot of this started when a U.S. contractor was killed on a base in Iraq and Trump responded by attacking an Iraqi, it's called a popular mobilization unit and killing 25 of the Iraqi militia. First we have to say why was the contractor there and in that context we have to ask why are there 5,200 U.S. soldiers in Iraq. This is not counting any more troops that are being sent to the region now. And for that we have to say why are we in the region at all and go back to the Bush administration's decision after the 9-11 attacks to attack Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi government in 2003 and unleash a horrendous wave of sectarianism, of violence, of destruction that Iraq and the rest of the region is still reeling from. It's interesting when there's so much talk about the Iranian general Suleimani that was killed and the discussion about all the blood of American troops he has on his hands, I think we should talk about the blood that George Bush and his administration has on their hands by having committed the sin of taking our country into war on the basis of lies. So it's important just to begin with that to say we are not in the region, we don't live in the region of the Middle East. We shouldn't have our troops there and we shouldn't be increasing the number of troops. We should be doing just the opposite, which is what Trump did promise and is what the American people want of getting our troops out of Iraq. Of course we have the new development today in which the Iraqi parliament voted to expel the U.S. troops from Iraq. It wasn't entirely unanimous because the Sunnis and the Kurds were not in the parliament but it's a majority Shia country and the majority of the parliament is Shia and they did vote to expel the U.S. troops. We can get back into that more. That's one framing I wanted to put on this. Well just to mention that 3,500 at least more troops are being deployed or have been deployed since this crisis started. Now that's not to Iraq, that's to the region but it's to ironically secure the U.S. bases that are already in the region because of the opposite of what Donald Trump saying that he ordered Soleimani to be killed to protect Americans. The assassination of Soleimani has led to the U.S. troops all over the region being sitting ducks and so we're sending more troops to protect the troops that are already there. A lot of the news coverage is especially when the U.S. Embassy in Iraq was under attack are going back to 1979 with the Iranian Revolution and the Iran hostage crisis but this actually goes back a bit further. Well that's the other framing we have to do. We talked about the framing of Iraq and putting it in the context of the U.S. invasion in 2003 but we also have to go way back in the case of Iran and put the framing not in 1979 at the time of the revolution and the hostage crisis but 1953 when the U.S. overthrew the CIA and the British overthrew the democratically elected government of Iran, the government of Mohammed Mossadegh. And it's important to go back to that time because it is quite surreal to think that here the U.S. has been fighting to say that we need regime change in Iran and Iran needs a democratic government when they had a democratic government. They had a very liberal government elected in 1951 but the problem was that it wanted to nationalize the oil so that the profits from the oil would not go to the British who were in charge of the oil at that time but would go to the Iranian people. And so you can directly trace the overthrow of that government in 1953 and the installation of a very repressive Shah regime throughout the following decades that led to the people of Iran mobilizing to try to overthrow that repressive regime and one of the only places where they could mobilize because it was so because anybody who openly opposed the Shah would end up being killed or in prison was in the mosques and that's why in 1979 when the people of Iran successfully overthrew the Shah it was the clerics, the religious community that had the upper hand and that managed to then take control of Iran away from a lot of the secular leftist people who were also instrumental in overthrowing the Shah. So the revolution in 1979 is a direct result of 1953 coup and then ever since 1959 the U.S. government has been opposed to that regime and has tried through all different ways including different types of sanctions supporting separatist groups, supporting the group called the Mujahideen al-Qaq or the MEK all different groups to try to overthrow that regime which they obviously have not been successful in doing. It's also important to recognize that the regime in Iran has been attacked by Israel and Saudi Arabia as well and has caused a lot of instability in the region because of that ongoing conflict. But then we have to talk about what happened under the Obama years which was actually the one really good thing of the Obama administration in terms of foreign policy was to finally move forward in terms of an agreement with Iran in this case it was the nuclear deal but the nuclear deal was seen as negotiations on one issue that could then lead to negotiations on other issues and so it was a very very critical breakthrough. Unfortunately Trump when he was campaigning because of his connections to Israel and Saudi Arabia and because of the neocons that he has surrounded himself with he talked about how awful that deal was and indeed when he came in in 2018 he ripped up that nuclear deal that is the most recent root of the crisis today when he ripped up that deal he imposed this extremely hard sanctions that the Iranians have been living and suffering under and those sanctions not only say that US companies can't trade with Iran but it says the whole world we don't want them to trade with Iran we don't want Iran to be able to sell a drop of its oil and it's quite remarkable that in the first year the Iranian government basically had a policy of quote strategic patience waiting to see will the european step forward and oppose these US sanctions will there be enough opposition from the international community to allow Iran to move forward economically and relieve the pain of these sanctions but unfortunately that didn't happen and so Iran has been looking for ways to force the hand of the international community and that is what has led us to this situation today but let's be clear it is a crisis that was manufactured by Donald Trump the nuclear deal was one that was agreed upon by the international community the UN Security Council the European Parliament the Chinese the Russians and it was a deal that was working that Iran was abiding by and it was Donald Trump that has caused this this crisis and talk about what's happened since the ripping up of the deal through now and the type of patience that Iran has had well there have been studies done that have shown how much the economy has shrunk because of the sanctions how the value of the currency was plummeted by 60 percent how it's become difficult to get access to certain medicines like cancer medicines how the price of food has doubled in some cases tripled how the middle class in Iran has been so decimated and also how this has given the upper hand to the conservative elements in the Iranian regime who said from the beginning don't come to an agreement don't negotiate with the United States because they can't be trusted and of course in the end they were right and now with this latest escalation of tensions it's become so obvious we have to also say that in the last few months there have been uprisings in Iran precisely because of the economic pain that people are enduring when the government increased the price of gasoline people came out and the Iranian regime brutally repressed the protesters killing hundreds of them and if you look now to what is happening today the the the murder of Soleimani has made all of their protests in vain because now there is not a a chance for people to come out and ask for reforms in the government in fact what the US has done is unified the Iranian people behind the government if you see the huge numbers of people that have come out in the funeral procession for Soleimani it's quite remarkable I think there have been millions of people that have come out and that's not because the Iranian government is forcing them it's because the people are incensed that the US has done this and we have to also recognize that Soleimani was a hero inside Iran and what made him such a hero even if you can go all the way back to his upbringing and really who he was for for the people well I think what's important to talk about is what the Quds force was and that is a force that was not the repressive force inside Iran it's a force that had that was dealing with the threats to Iran from the outside and when you see how many countries in the Middle East have been devastated by ISIS that hasn't happened in Iran and that's precisely because of the work of the Quds force and Soleimani so even to those people who hate the regime the Iranians inside Iran who hate their own government many of them felt that Soleimani was somebody who was keeping them safe and that's why you see people rallying around the funeral procession today and it's quite ironic that the killing of one person has managed to bring this kind of unity to the Iranian government that the United States was trying so hard for so many years to divide before we go on I just want to say to the folks watching on Facebook live and the around 25 people we have that called into the webinar or got in through Zoom if you have any questions if you're watching through Zoom you can type them in the question box and on Facebook you can put them right in the comments and we will get to question and answer fairly soon so there's one issue that we haven't come up talked about and hasn't come up in the news very much at all and that is something that the the Iraqi prime minister said during a session in parliament that what happened today and he said that Soleimani was actually in Iraq at the invitation of the prime minister because there had been discussions going on between Iran and Saudi Arabia mediated by Iraq now this is extraordinary news that Soleimani was invited in the Trump new he was coming in and this was a part of a peace process so it should be all over the news because it is shocking that the United States would take this information of an invitation that our allied prime minister gave to Soleimani to talk about peace and the U.S. using this like the mafia would do this to as a way to then assassinate Soleimani and it's it's interesting to note that there have been talks be going on mediated again by Iraq between the enemies Saudi Arabia and Iran and that the U.S. obviously didn't want these talks to happen and assassinating Soleimani was a way to make sure that these talks did not proceed so what does it mean you know people were discussing the assassination of Soleimani initially as similar to the secretary of defense here in the U.S. but he's actually a much bigger deal than that and how worried should we be about Iran's retaliation from this and as well we have a question for you which fits right into this and Joseph is asking how irrational is it for Americans to worry that Iran has nuclear weapons or it's just about to have them Iran doesn't have nuclear weapons it has never had nuclear weapons it's a long way away from getting nuclear weapons but there was an announcement by Iran today that they would not abide by the portion of the agreement about the enrichment of uranium it's interesting that they still have not withdrawn from the deal but they are steadily withdrawing from obligations that they had under that deal now the deal really is not in effect anymore because the U.S. has violated the deal through the sanctions but the Iranians are still the deal is still hanging on by a thread and yet Iran will get closer to the possibility of having nuclear weapons because they are now going to be enriching more uranium so any idea that the U.S. is safer today because of the killing of Soleimani that's another argument to say that Iran is just about ready to pull out of that deal now there still are inspectors U.N. inspectors in Iran and I would think that Iran at some point will say that it wants to kick the inspectors out but they haven't done that and they are probably at least a year away from getting a nuclear weapon and which is an incredibly patient thing that they have not yet withdrawn formally from the deal that they have not yet kicked the inspectors out they're very much the adults in the room especially compared to Donald Trump who has been tweeting today just some of the most egregious things threats to bomb cultural sites in Iran saying that there are 52 cultural sites the bombing sites in general including cultural sites and the bombing of cultural sites isn't itself a war crime Trump also tweeted out today a notification to Congress that if even one American is killed that he will retaliate possibly disproportionately and that this is the notification of Congress now that is now we have all these beautiful new weapons that our military has and we will use these beautiful new weapons on them it's just disgusting can you talk about the role of Congress and what's so problematic about Trump saying this is your entire notification well if anybody knows the Constitution it's Congress that has the sole authority to authorize war not Trump of course he is going to be arguing that there was this imminent threat and those who have heard the initial arguments say that it is it's pretty much ridiculous and we have seen that we are more in more danger today and our troops are certainly more danger today so what he did to relieve us from the imminent threat has just gone in the opposite direction but Congress there are members of Congress that are trying to show their opposition and maybe now would be a good time for you Ariel to talk about some of those initiatives in Congress hello Ari I was muted since this crisis started Senator Tim Kaine has introduced a privileged war powers resolution a privilege means that it cannot be kept from going to a vote and in that case the war powers resolution would declare that Congress has to authorize the use of military force we'd like to see that get voted on and pass through Congress overwhelmingly very quickly because we are in such a dangerous situation where things could get worse at the moment in the house we also have a bill that's been there for a while and could move forward quickly and onto the floor and that's HR 2354 and to take action on legislation both of these are related to the war powers in the house it's to prohibit funds from being used for military operations against Iran unless Congress authorizes such actions you can go to codepink's website codepink.org and I will put that on the in the Facebook comments to take action and contact your senators and representative in the house and tell them to act swiftly and strongly on this there is no time to wait at all and I see we have a couple of questions I'm going to begin with one of them and then we'll go on to the rest. Pardo is asking how determined is the Trump administration to putting in a puppet government in the coming months or years and then we also have another question asking about how concerned Americans should be about nuclear weapons from Iran's allies but I want to expand that to where could this go in the region this isn't really just Iran and the U.S. but this is a much even even not even just Iran rock in the U.S. this is a much bigger crisis than that. Well right the issue about I'm sorry what was the first one? How determined is the Trump administration for a puppet government? You know Trump says he's not trying to overthrow the regime and yet for since the time he came in they've been trying to overthrow the regime he's been encouraging the protesters to go out on the streets been funding the opposition forces and he had Bolton in there who was openly calling for regime change and there are other members of his government that have been openly calling for regime change so even though he doesn't say it of course that's what they want that's not about to happen I just mentioned that the people of Iran are more united than they have been with the death of Soleimani and there's tremendous anti-American sentiment and so for those groups that have been trying to change the government they will have less support than they have ever had in a long time inside Iran so that's just not going to happen in terms of what this means for the region there are allies of Iran that are in Iraq that are in Syria Lebanon Afghanistan Yemen they are all over the region and a lot of them are calling for revenge as well so things will start to blow up it's going to happen and it's going to affect the entire region and that's why people who live in the region are scared to death I mean we should be scared here in the United States but it is quite amazing that Iran has come out and said that their response is going to be on military against US military instead of civilians they could have easily said it was going to be anywhere and made everybody in the United States feel like they were targets but people in the Middle East all feel that they are targets right now and are very very concerned and of course the families of US troops who are being sent over there now are very concerned about what it means for them but this is not a war that's going to take place inside Iran this is a war that could take place all over the region and could indeed come home to us in the United States so we have a question from Andrea on Facebook kind of a frantic what can we do and I'm wondering in response to that if you can talk about the mobilization last weekend along with the work in Congress what about people taking to the streets and grassroots grassroots initiatives on the ground so first we have to admit that the anti-war movement that was so strong during the first years of the Iraq war fell apart when Obama came in and there are very few groups now that are continuing to do anti-war work the coalitions that we have are not strong and so it's very hard to gear up to the level we have to be when we have had such a weak movement over these last years but given that it is amazing that in just four days time we managed with the answer coalition and then other groups that came on board like veterans for peace like the world beyond war the popular resistance voices for creative non-violence the national Iranian American council and others came together and pulled off in over 90 cities it now is protests so that's quite remarkable I think that in the beginning Ariel we had a goal of 20 and then we changed it to a goal of 30 cities and then it just kept going up and up and it is quite amazing and some of them were very large in Washington DC and San Francisco in Chicago so there were thousands of people that came out on the streets the answer is estimating that the total would be close to 15,000 that's quite remarkable in four days time and then it means we have to build from that so what can we do we keep having we're going to have to keep calling for protests we think that in some cities people want to keep doing this every Saturday there's calls for teach-ins educational forums there are lots of interfaith groups that are forming and and getting statements out from the different churches at the national levels at the local levels there's people that want to quickly get resolutions passed in their cities and of course there's work to be done pushing congress people to do more even the democratic leadership should be not only calling for Trump to not escalate but should be calling for the troops to get out of the Middle East and that is not what most of the Democrats are calling for right now just this last month in December the national defense authorization act was passed and it had a number of amendments that could have passed with it including invoking the war powers resolution to prevent a war with Iran and repealing the 2002 authorization for use of force in Iraq which would say that we don't have authorization from congress to continue military activities in Iraq that's also an answer to a question on zoom but uh even even though those attachment those amendments were possible to get on the NDAA the democrats capitulated and didn't see that a single war powers amendment not to prevent a war with Iran or not to stop us participation in the Saudi war in Yemen ended up passing with that bill so we need congress to be a lot more bold now because the stakes are really really high and this is imminent yeah i'm really glad you brought that up Ariel because it was so shameful that they didn't fight to keep those amendments in there we would be in a different position right now if they had um done their job uh which was to get something out of this horrible NDAA which is a military funding bill and instead gave seven hundred and thirty eight billion dollars of our taxes over to the military and we should understand that as we go forward if this goes into a full blown war the Pentagon will be saying that's not enough money and they're going to ask for even more that the stocks of the weapons companies have already gone up since the killing of of Soleimani and this is when the military industrial complex goes into full gear and there's only one way to stop them and that's to have a strong movement in the United States which is what we have to build up so we talked about more days of action we're also talking to our friends at the stop the war coalition in the UK and other groups internationally about an international day of action so stay tuned because i think tomorrow we're going to set the date and it's either going to be in two weeks or in three weeks time and that's going to be a very exciting time to show a global um repudiation of Trump's escalation of violence with Iran and i want to remind people that you can find information about that on our website that's codepink.org when we announce the day for the international day of action and we're going to need a lot of people in the streets at that time so that's codepink.org as well as materials for hosting a vigil a teach-in another anti-war activity in your town and there's other stuff going on in congress there's going to be hearings starting this week about the crisis in Iran and before we mention those i just want to point out that as this most recent crisis began it was weapon stocks that went up on that at that very moment. Yeah so in terms of the hearings that are coming up if anybody is in the DC area or can get yourself to DC we need to pack those hearings with signs with our t-shirts with things that are visible that say no war with Iran and we need help in doing that we also want to have a everyday presence in congress and the house and the senate where we are going off to the senate and the house offices to demand they take action to do sit-ins to work with groups locally that we simultaneously do work in local offices and in the national office to put pressure on their congress people so there's a lot of work to do if you can get yourself to DC please do if you can join us any of those days will be every single day working from the cafeteria in the Rayburn office and you can come and join us anytime. And we have an activist house in DC and if there's room in the house you can request to stay there or to visit and the easiest way to do that is to send an email to info at codepink.org and we will direct that to Pocky Wieland who manages the house in DC. We design the pledge that we have online and that way we know that you're somebody that really cares about this issue you're among our core members and we'll make sure to work with you inform you of ideas that we have but we also need to hear your ideas and if you have ideas that you want to get to us and can't do that tonight just write to info at codepink.org and we would love to hear what ideas you have one idea that somebody just sent to me is to say that we should have regular protested Trump properties in the U.S. and around the world and I think that's a great idea so keep your ideas coming we need to be creative we need to find ways that the media will cover them we were pleased at some of the media coverage of the protests this Saturday but there should have been a lot more so we have to find more ways to show that Americans are standing up against these policies. And we have a question from CPT I don't know if that's Christian Peacemaker team or just the same initials but a question about how hopeless should we feel given how rogue this administration has gone the the vileness and hate in in Donald Trump's tweets uh to protests really do anything. Well it was interesting I was thinking back on the days I think it was 2014 or 2013 when Trump was when Obama was in power and he said that that Assad had crossed the red line in Syria and that he was going to respond to the chemical attack in Syria with U.S. military direct involvement and that we started an uprising of the people to say no and it was left and right coming together but there were differences then there was the right in the Tea Party that was anti-interventionist and came to join us and there was also a president who cared about what the popular opinion was and was going to give Congress a chance to vote on it until he realized that Congress was not going to pass it and then he didn't move forward in this case we have a president who doesn't give a damn what Congress says and we don't have that kind of support from the right but we can feel hopeless first of all we have to act we have to do whatever we can to stop a war people say we came out the hundreds of thousands indeed in the millions to try to stop the Iraq war and it wasn't successful but what are we supposed to not show the world that we care about these issues not try to stop Donald Trump remember it is a presidential campaign campaign coming up and Donald Trump does want to win some people say that this is all about the presidential campaign and that this is part of his tactic of getting people to rally behind him but if we can build up enough opposition to this we might actually change Donald Trump's mind and the opposition has to be strong internally and it has to be strong globally and the Iranian government is going to the UN as well there are many areas that we can be showing our opposition but we have to do that in the United States it's our duty as Americans to get up stand up to get out into the streets to show that we are furious about what Donald Trump is doing hopelessism is not going to help us absolutely and I see people discussing the importance of being connected to other organizations and all being involved together and we have all got to come out and address this crisis well I see that organizations that are not normally involved in the war issues are getting involved now groups like move on indivisible the women's march that is going to be having big mobilization on January 18th has put the war issues on the agenda so and the group like the democratic socialists of America that have chapters all over this country are now taking this on in a major way as well groups so we have been contacted by a lot of groups and then other groups that haven't contacted us but are doing this on their own so I think that is a very positive thing that we're seeing groups that have membership that is much larger than ours in code pink that are taking this on now we've been working on this for a while because we and you in particular Medea anticipated this sadly and unfortunately and if you could talk for a minute about the book that you wrote and let people know where to find it it's a it's a really nice laid out primer on the history and politics of Iran yes it's called inside Iran and it's a very readable book written as a kind of basic 101 and important to read right now especially the history of Iran in the west and you can get that online you get that from the code pink story you get that anywhere online but I think it would be a great primer a good way to get started to have a deeper understanding of the Iranian society the Iranian government how it works and its history not only of the relations with the west but history of its relations with the countries in the region wonderful let's see if we have any more questions are there other things that you can let our watchers know places people should be looking things that people should be worried about well I think that we are going to be having a lot more webinars calls that people can be more actively involved in asking their questions we're going to have people from the region talk to us we have a lot of friends in Iran because we have gone there many times you Ariel just came back from there and we will be talking to people in Iraq in people who have been involved in the US military so we'll have a number of webinars I know the answer coalition that we have been working with to organize this last Saturday protest is going to be doing a very in-depth webinar from 3pm to 5pm next Saturday and I think people will learn a lot from the guests that will be on there so education education education is really important so that we can counter the lies that are constantly coming out from this administration and that we can talk to our friends our relatives our co-workers and help build these movements and I would say to anybody in your local place that now is the time to do outreach to the faith-based communities to the universities there are new groups in fact a new student anti-war movement that is just getting off the ground and we're very excited by that we've been contacted by a lot of universities just in the last couple of days that want to get involved now is the time to bring young people to reinvigorate the anti-war movement to reach out to other movements like the environmental movement the Medicare for all movement and of course the campaigns the presidential campaigns to bring this up to their attention and make sure that they incorporate this into their messages we have been saying for a long time that the reason there's not money for Medicare for all for the Green New Deal for the infrastructure we need for free college education is because we put so much damn money into the Pentagon and now it's going to be worse than ever so this is a call to all those different organizations to get involved and to really mobilize very quickly and anybody on this call we need your help so we have two questions and they're a bit connected the first is from Martin from Jewish voice for peace in Washington DC and he wants to know about the role that Israel played in the past and is continuing to play and I would add going into the coming weeks and months and also Norman is asking if we could please talk about the fact that Pompeo informed Netanyahu and BS and the UAE before the attack but not Congress not the UK not the EU and if you could also talk about the many media reports that are coming out saying that Netanyahu and the Mossad were involved in pushing Trump Pompeo and perhaps the US military to carry out the assassination well these are important questions and Ariel you can help me with this because this is your area of expertise but I do want to say that when we were working under the Obama administration to try to get the Iran nuclear deal passed there were groups like APAC and other pro-Israel groups that all of a sudden had an infusion of millions and millions of dollars that they were putting in to try to defeat the deal and we know that Netanyahu came to the US to try to stop that deal from going through and it is quite remarkable that we were able overcome all of that lobbying all of that money that was thrown in and get the Iran nuclear deal passed but Netanyahu has constantly been crying wolf about Iran's ability to have a nuclear weapon at the very same time that Israel refuses to acknowledge how many nuclear weapons it has refuses to be part of the non-proliferation treaty and doesn't acknowledge that Iran not only doesn't have nuclear weapons but has the most stringent inspections regime that any country has ever agreed to and then I think to acknowledge that Israel has been pushing the United States to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities but also pushing the United States to get more involved in regime change in Iran and it's very interesting how yes Pompeo has had discussions with Israel before talking to our own Congress and how it seems like Israel was involved in trying to make sure that Saudi Arabia and Iran did not move forward on a path of talking and in fact Israel has been reaching out itself to Saudi Arabia to try to solidify an alliance between them against Iran but please add to this well I would add that leading up to this current crisis we were watching us an escalating situation of Israel striking in Iranian targets in Syria in Lebanon and in Iraq and that kept escalating and I would also add that Israel is right now in the middle of an election cycle it's in the middle of two things an election cycle and Netanyahu has been indicted on bribery charges and is trying to get immunity from that so like Donald Trump he's looking for all kinds of distractions and he's looking to win what is now the third election in Israel and he needs to win this one by a lot more and he's learned in the past that campaigns based on fear are successful for him so he is dancing in circles at the news of this assassination now that said relatively cooler heads in Israel of which it's a very low bar and there are not many but those with even slightly cooler heads in Israel are not responding with the same degree of excitement but instead see the dangerousness of this assassination while Trump did this quite flippantly and quite rashly previous US presidents and previous Israeli administrations have known not to assassinate the second most important person in Iran a sovereign country and let's see we have another question can we talk a little bit more about the logistics of coming to DC to lobby in person in particular what would the hours be and would we be available to be helpful well we will be there so we will be absolutely available to be helpful and I would say we will be there from pretty much nine to five every single day the most important days in Congress or Tuesday Wednesday and Thursday because the Congress people leave on Mondays and Fridays although their staff is still there so those are still important days as well but the most important ones are Tuesdays Wednesdays and Thursdays we will set up a meeting place if we have enough people will do a meeting place in the cafeteria of the Rayburn building in the house as well as in the cafeteria of the Dirksen building in the Senate so we people could come anytime during that during the day nine to five you have two hours free come if you have eight hours free come whatever and we'll send you off to an office to visit so really we need people and we need as much time as you could possibly give Stephanie is asking what John Bolton's role has been in this well John's Bolton's role when he was in the administration was to cook up precisely these kinds of things he was always looking at how to make the life of Iranian people more miserable so they would rise up and overthrow their government and he came up with all kinds of ways when you see the insidious forms of the imposition of different sanctions and the ways that John Bolton had been working with the opposition groups like the Mujahideen al-Qaq and now he's out of the administration but he was one of the first ones to come and congratulate Donald Trump for the assassination of Soleimani it's now there are rumors that maybe he won't in the impeachment effort go against Trump because he's so happy about what Trump is doing to move us closer to war with Iran this is what John Bolton wanted all along so I want to remind people that this is only the first of many educational series that we'll be having we'll be doing other conversations with Medea we'll be talking with Iranians on the ground in Iran with Iraqis with other experts and also I know that there were a number of people who wanted to watch this but weren't available and we are recording it and it will be up on the Code Pink website so that you can share it with colleagues and friends and I want to say our website again which is codepink.org and that on the website you can contact your senators and representative in the house tell them to take action quickly you can find materials for vigils rallies um teachings and more and you can contact us to get more involved at info at code pink as well on our website if you take the pledge to join a global movement against war and that will be on the homepage then we will know that you are extra interested in this issue and want to be closely involved and we will work with you closely any further thoughts before we start winding down yeah as we sign off I think it would be nice if we both said a little and I'd love to hear from you um about the Iranian people because you were there recently and this is really all about people um how is there anything you'd want to let the people who are watching this know about what you discovered when you visited Iran? Sure well some of the things that surprised me when I when I got to Iran were um just the friendliness of the people this is despite all the horrific and horrible things that the US is currently doing to that country and yet people were so aware of the difference between a government and its people and so welcoming and so vocal about their desires for peace and I want to speak about the length and breadth of the history of Iran and that the Iranian people have been through so much and they see themselves as so resilient they have no thoughts that they will be capitulating to the US and do not want another country interfering in their domestic affairs even those who are incredibly critical of the government and there are many who are in many reasons to be they say very clearly that it is up to them to reform and build the society that they want and not something to be imposed upon them um I would direct people I wrote an article recently right before this crisis broke out on the history and political lives of the Jewish community in Iran here in the US we're facing a horrific rise in antisemitism and when I went to synagogues in Iran so different than the US and so different than Europe there were no guards out front no locked doors and no feeling of being unsafe and they told me we are very well protected and respected in this society so I did some research on the incredibly long history of Jews in Iran and those are who are there currently and that can be found on CodePink's website or on Common Dreams and I would say that the people there are asking for the for us in the US to do everything that we can to pull our government back to get these sanctions lifted to make sure that we don't go to war and are outraged at the actions taken in the past few days well thank you for that because I think it really is important to recognize the beautiful people of Iran the beautiful history the incredible contributions that they've made to the world society that our country is a little baby compared to the thousands of years of history that Iran has and that the arrogance of Donald Trump is so revolting when he is threatening this country of 80 million people and when he talks about our beautiful weapons I think of you know who will be on the receiving end just as was the case of Iraq and the other places that the US has invaded our country is really a violent country and we have a violent vile man in the White House right now and we have to do everything we can to counter him and to show the people of Iran and the people of the region that there are people in the United States that want to live differently in the world want to have a loving relationship with the people around the world and do not think that the aggressive militaristic behavior of our leaders reflects the values that we hold as Americans so thanks for organizing this webinar Ariel and I look forward to the days ahead in which we can do a lot of mobilizing and organizing and have big big demonstrations and flood the halls of Congress so that we could try to stop the man man madman in the White House and with that we'll sign off and we'll be back very soon if you're not already on our email list you can sign up on our website codepink.org and please also follow us on twitter at codepink for up to the minute updates about what's happening and what you can do peace with Iran peace night