 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we have with us Vijay Prashant and we are going to discuss the recent protests in Iran and also the response of the global media. Vijay, good to have you with us. Nice to be with you. Iran protests. Now, irrespective of the dimensions, size of the protests and so on, international media seems to take a position as well as the US administration that this is a call for regime change in Iran. They don't seem to take it when Occupy Wall Street happens or whether protest takes place, for instance, in other countries, which are quote unquote western or favorable to the West. Do you think there is a complete disjunct between what the protests are and how the West wants to read it? Well, absolutely. I mean, look, there were protests in Iran and they're important protests. And the protests came perhaps for five, six, seven, eight reasons. I mean, protests don't happen for one reason. I've been to hundreds of protests in my life. The organizers have a certain call, but people come for all kinds of reasons, different things that are grievances. We'll come to the Iran protests later, but I just want to have you look at the Western response. That's right. So you have a protest, but the problem is that the media, particularly, let's say the Western media, corporate media wanted this protest to mean something very specific for their ideology. There is a protest. There are grievances, but they wanted to read those protests in a way that suited their understanding of Iran. So rather than even consider what the Iranians were saying, they immediately cherry picked or took one or two slogans from here and there and said, this is a call for the overthrow of the regime, and we should support them full scale. And then you had absurd statements made by the United States White House and other world leaders, where they began to say things like, well, this is a sign of the brutal barbaric regime, whatever. And so therefore the government should fall. Now, for the media, irresponsibly, to report this as if it's fact, without having people on the ground, without even making phone calls into Iran to talk to sources and so on, and without reporting the complexity of the revolt, why were people on the streets? It seems to me as a journalist, it's an elementary question. Why are people on the streets? Rather than asking why people on the streets, they showed images of the protests and allowed the White House to define them. Some of the images were even from Bahrain. They were not even images of protest. As we know, a lot of fake news circulates as news. So it was more mischievous than just that. Absolutely mischievous. I mean, it was a way to suggest to delegitimize Iran, particularly at a time of some turmoil in the spaces that are Western allies and Iran's adversaries. In other words, there's been a great deal of political turmoil in Saudi Arabia. And in Saudi Arabia's allies, that is to say, most spectacularly, the Prime Minister of Lebanon, Saad Hariri, who was in Riyadh, was made to resign on Saudi television and then created essentially a crisis in Lebanon. In order perhaps to punish Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran. So while this turmoil was taking place in Saudi Arabia, the arrests of prominent Saudi business people and princes and so on, it seemed that now there was a way to put some pressure on Iran. It's a ridiculous kind of political chess that's going on. It's interesting that you raise Saudi Arabia because at the same time we have also protest against Netanyahu, for corruption, for other things that are happening, as well as what's happening in Palestine, Jerusalem and so on, none of this shall be say, get reported the same way. No, exactly. Nobody was saying that these are calls for regime change in Israel or these are calls for the regime to be changed in Saudi Arabia. I mean, if any country, you know, should provoke the ire of the West, which claims to be the spokespersons of democracy, it should be Saudi Arabia. I mean, after all, Saudi Arabia is a monarchy. Saudi Arabia is openly, patently authoritarian. Iran, all its problems is something of a democracy. I mean, after all, look, there's a complaint made about Iran that, you know, they don't allow certain people to run. That is the clerics go through the list and say, these are the, well, come on. I mean, in Western democracies, they have just the same thing. They have people coming to run for Congress or for president. And then if you don't raise the requisite amount of money, you'll get scrubbed from the list. In Iran, it's the clerics that do the scrubbing. In the United States, it's the big capitalists that do the scrubbing. Somebody is scrubbing the list and choosing who should be able to run. You know, coming back to the question of protests, since you've raised that, you said that there are a lot of complexity in Iranian protests. How do you read it? It started as a protest by the conservative section within the Iranian clergy, who are in fact supporting Rouhani's opponents. Did it also morph into something else? How would you read the protest? Well, firstly, this was not a Tehran-based protest movement. This is important because the two previous major cycles of protest, the student protests in 1999, which began because a reformist newspaper was closed down. And then the protest in 2009, 10 years later, after the elections, when there was the reform section, the so-called green movement took to the street in Tehran, angry at what they considered was a stolen election. These were basically Tehran protests, middle-class reformers, liberals and others, angry about the political arrangement. This protest began in Mashhad, which is near the border with Afghanistan, in the far west of Iran. Now, why did the protest begin in Mashhad? This is an interesting story. Mashhad is the home of the largest endowment, like a Waqf, but a Shia Waqf, big house, a big foundation, which is controlled by one particular gentleman. Now, this is one of the richest institutions in Iran. It's in the far west. They own about 40% of the property in Mashhad, huge property dealers. This man, who runs this major foundation, ran for president against Rohani in the last election. And during a public debate, he openly said that the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had said no taxes need to be paid by this foundation. Now, this is one thing. There had been grumblings in Iran against the fact that these foundations were not paying tax. You know, why should they get so many benefits? You know, they get cheaper water, they pay no tax, etc. At the same time, as a conjunctural issue, the Iranian government, for reasons of trying to combat inflation, to hold down spending, I mean, they have been under economic attack for the last 10 plus years. I mean, Iran has faced a major economic war. So, this government of Rohani has had some neoliberal solutions, essentially, toward this attack internally. And they decided, I think, against the better judgment to cut the subsidies in petroleum and in bread. Now, on the one side, you have great resentment brewing against these foundations, they're not paying tax. Secondly, you're cutting what is basically basic needs of people. This was the conjunctural issue. So, what's interesting is for Mashhad, where the protests begin in the West, is spread to small towns first. You know, it's spread to the port city of Bandar Abbas. It's spread to even in Qom. You know, the heart of Iranian religiosity, the heart of Shiism, they were protest. It spread to small towns where the lower middle class and working class came to the street. This before it came to Tehran, this was a small town rebellion. And one interesting thing is the government arrested around 3,000 to 4,000 people, perhaps 3,700. Somewhere around there, they arrested these people. Most of the arrests were in these small towns. Tehran was quite quiet. After all, the current government in Tehran is a reform government. So those people who are angry, who are reformers, they have a government there. This government has loosened restrictions on women's freedom. In other words, you will not be prosecuted if you don't wear a headscarf in public. You know, they've freed up many reformers. They've improved conditions for reformers in prison. This was not a reform protest. This was a basic cry from workers, lower middle class and others saying, and this is by the way part of a global manifestation, lower middle class workers, others saying a standard of living has been destroyed. And also the fact that the US has inflicted a huge punishment to Iran, $150 billion of seized assets have not come back as Rouhani thought it would. So in some sense, the US really tries to stifle these governments and organizations. And then later say, look, people are revolting. Leaving that out, there is another interesting development this time in Iran vis-à-vis the Security Council, even France and the UK, otherwise always with the United States in the Security Council, didn't vote for the US resolution. Sweden didn't vote for the US resolution. Second time this has happened, one earlier was Jerusalem, they didn't go with the United States. Do you think that essentially the Trump, Nikki, Hailey kind of positions is getting the US isolated even from their allies? So there are two things that are going on. One is that they don't want to war against Iran. That's clear. And that's the obvious kind of, you know, service thing. I think that the United States has really hurt European domestic economy by its foreign policy. Look at it. There were three suppliers of energy into Europe, Russia, Libya and Iran. All three have been. You killed off Iran by the sanctions. You basically cornered Russia into its war in Crimea and so on. And then you sanctioned the gas out of there and you destroyed Libya. So having isolated the three main resource providers for Europe, why the Obama nuclear deal was so popular in Europe, it would bring Iranian energy back into Europe. Basically, this is an underexplored part of why the Europeans were so eager. It's not just that they are rational and they don't want war. They need energy. And the energy price issue right now, I think everybody realizes temporary. Energy prices might go up. They're temporarily suppressed. If you permanently removed your three main sources of energy and prices go up, Europe is going to be in very difficult situation. They are not keen to once again box Iran in. They want to bring Iran back because they need Iranian gas. They need Iranian oil. There is no sign that Libya is going to tomorrow or day after be providing it. Not at all. And Russia, I think it's very unlikely that this is going to open up. The Russians are building pipelines to China. This is not working out so well because the Chinese and Russians are disputing the price of the gasoline, particularly natural gas. But I think price questions can be settled, particularly once oil prices and gas prices rise, then the dispute over prices will be moot. In other words, Europe has to prepare for the day when prices start to rise. So the Russians aren't going to be eager to send natural gas back to Europe. So this Iranian issue is very important. Trump and others, they miscalculate. They assume that their allies will come with them or they try to bully them. Well, it's very clear they don't want the nuclear agreement that has been reached with the United States, Iran and the US. That should be scrapped. And they do see all of this suggestions for regime change, increased sanctions, which is what really happened in the Security Council. All of it is a means to sabotage the Iran agreement. And forcing Iran to pull out of the agreement so that the US can say we didn't do it. So in that sense, the US seems to be isolated not only on the issue of the Security Council vote, but also the desire to really sabotage the nuclear agreement. Recently, the Iranian leadership said publicly that they said the world should prepare for the end of this agreement. I think that was an interesting statement they made. I mean, they didn't give a narrative of who is going to scuttle the agreement. The world should prepare for the end of the agreement. I think they are also thinking this through. They understand that Trump's foreign policy is slightly irrational and irregular. It's hard to predict exactly what they're going to do. So they are also trying to up their own unpredictability. You see, why should they sit and be rational when they are dealing with an irrational actor? If I was to, as it were, do a game theory exercise with the two of them. You play Iran, I play the United States, I start to get irregular. You should also start to get a little unpredictable. And I think we're listening to voices coming from Iran now. It's important not to read those voices as unpredictable voices. Thank you very much Vijay for being with us. We'll continue to discuss this and other issues with you in the future. This is all the time we have for NewsClick today. Do keep watching NewsClick or visit our website and also your YouTube channel.