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So I am an Iranian national, I live in Glasgow now, and I was in Iran last Christmas
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Okay. And my family's still there, actually. I would like to say that I'm not in support of the regime
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90% of people would like to see a regime change. But no one likes to see it at the cost of innocent civilians dying, anyone
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but i mean you can't do it otherwise can you i don't think you can i mean maybe you can but even
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when the protests um reach the streets as they did in 2019 and 2022 it leaves hundreds of innocent
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civilians dead exactly and that's my point it is difficult to for it to happen organically
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without some external pressure but even with with some external pressure i still believe
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before a regime change, the Ayatollahs will make a bot bath in Iran
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on their own people before it happens. So they wouldn't sort of, you know
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board the metaphorical plane to Moscow or wherever it would be that they'd find support
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and sucker like other despots, like the last Ukrainian leader? Absolutely not
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Or the Syrian, or Bashar Assad, actually. And in fact, Bashar Assad proves your point in a way
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The amount of Syrian blood that was spent and spilt before he fled the scene like a coward is biblical
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So, okay, so, I mean, this is entirely spec, well, maybe not
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because you can't do opinion polling in Iran, which is kind of part of the point of this conversation, isn't it
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But, I mean, how do you get a handle on how widespread support
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for the regime would be? I mean, what would your take on that be, your personal take
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My personal take is that if you went around Iran and asked people the number one priority
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it will be the financial situation and the hyperinflation and the whole economic point of view
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before we get into any of the, obviously those are important as well
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women's rights, human rights, freedom of speech. But everyone's number one priority right now and concern is the financial situation
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because it's awful right now. and yeah. That is true in countries
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that aren't theocracies as well though so it doesn't really answer my question
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Exactly. What, I mean how if the economic situation was relatively healthy
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would the regime be popular? Still not popular but then you can make the argument
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whether if the economic situation was healthy would people still want to see a regime change or not
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Well, that's the question I'm asking. I did acknowledge you might not be able to answer it, so I can hardly tell you off
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I mean, who is to say that after regime change, we're not going to be in a situation like Afghanistan, like Libya
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Like Iraq. I mean, you'd have another ISIS growing up in the vacuum
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that was created by regime change in Iran. What about my somewhat lazy suggestion
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that there are parallels to be drawn with the Taliban? with the regime currently in Iran and the Taliban
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and therefore why wouldn't you want to get rid of it? Would you buy that? It's not lazy at all, and I agree with you
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I mean, you can't guarantee that we won't be in a worse situation
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than we are right now. I mean, look around you and believe, you know
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Yeah, I hadn't forgotten that because I referenced it, but to hear you say it actually just in such simple language
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you couldn't guarantee that you wouldn't be in a worse situation than you are now, to which the answer becomes
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it's not for anybody outside Iran to decide to roll the dice. At the moment, right now
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one minute I'm happy that Israel attacked us. Right. And it is mad
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You wouldn't find any other nation, any patriot person that say, oh, I'm actually happy that another country attacked us
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Gosh. Historically, you would. I'm not picking a fight. I'm just thinking about the glee
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with which the statues of Saddam Hussein were pulled down towards the end of the second Gulf War
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So the notion of a liberating enemy, which to tie your call in with the last one
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with Sinners, is of course you can't really have a liberating army
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without civilian death, can you? So that's why it's mad to celebrate it
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because you're celebrating something that has caused the death of Iranians. Exactly
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So yeah at the moment one minute I happy one minute I upset because I have family friends over there They are under the bomb I here in safety But then again people say oh it our country our infrastructure
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But can I also point out another thing? In the past month, maybe you know about it, because of all the sanctions and everything
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And also, the fact that the regime was sending all the money, finances, resources from Iran outside instead of giving it to the Iranian people
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For the past couple of months, every single day, there was power outage
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Water was cut. There was no enough gas. And this is from a country
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We have the highest amount of any resources that you can think of
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And then the economy is completely collapsing. The inflation is to the roof
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So if the Israelis right now attacking our infrastructure, it's fine by me
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Because those infrastructure, even up to now, it wasn't in service of the people
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it was for the government financing I don't know all their proxies over the world
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and provoking other countries and to tie your contribution to this hour with the conversation that we all
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had in the last hour you look at what Netanyahu has done in Gaza
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and you still welcome his intervention in your own country that's not an easy question class
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You're telling me I wouldn't even try, Nova, and you don't have to, but I've asked it now
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No, because, you see, first of all, the conflict between Israel and Palestinian people
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it's a long history, right? Of course, yes. But what my opinion is, what happened on 7th of October was absolutely, I don't know how to say it
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an atrocity, I would say. And if a country attacked me like the way Hamas attacked
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Israel and do whatever they did on 7th of October, I would flatten the other country
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One excuse is because the level of brutality and savagery they did on 7th of October
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it was beyond war crimes. There is no justification for that. Well, except it was undertaken by a terrorist organisation
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not a sovereign country. And of course the leader of Hamas was indicted for war crimes
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but died before he could be put on trials. But you can't kill 2 million people in retaliation for the murder of 2,000
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No, but then again, unfortunately... There's no then again there. We're going to fall out
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You can't kill 2 million people in retaliation for the murder of 2,000. No, you can't, and I agree with that
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But that's the ugly side of the war. and also one thing is happening..
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So Iran has now attacked Israel. You're in favor of Iran being wiped out
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I would say Iran give the excuse to Israel for 47 years
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Under your own ysis, you said if we were attacked like that, Iran has tried to visit terrible carnage upon Israel
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It hasn't been as, quote, successful, end quotes, as Hamas was on October the 7th
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but you're in favour of the flattening of Iran now, to use your own words
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Not really, because we really didn't attack Israel or didn't do all those things
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But that's, again, also through our proxy, not our proxy, the government's proxy did all sorts of crimes in the region and to Israel
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So, of course, I'm not happy if Israel completely destroyed my country
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but then again we are a country that we don't have a government okay i'm not sure i've heard
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the words but then again deployed in quite such a um what's the word i would want um sticky
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territory i think it's important to explore the sort of well this is this is simplifying it a bit
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but the three fundamental pillars of the regime that the the the silos in which they're active i
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I would say the first is this kind of it is a mafia regime It the best way to describe it It is a mafia It is a massive racketeering business worth trillions of dollars They embezzle a huge amount of money assets resources into their own pockets
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and into the sort of pathways of their regional influence, which I'll come to next. And that's
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That's the next sort of pillar of their activity, that regional influence
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the support both financially and in terms of resources, whether it be military or natural resources of extremist groups
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And don't forget that the Islamic Republic in Iran, the Iranian regime, is in itself a terrorist group
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It is a fundamental religious Shia Islamic terrorist group that does not represent Iranian people who are generally very secular
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very liberal and not particularly religious. We are inherently Zoroastrian. We are not Muslims, generally speaking
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So these groups that the Iranian regime supports, whether it be Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis
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through these groups they propagate their sort of extremist Shia fundamental principles
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or lack thereof principles and they engage in their proxy wars and therefore continuing to this grain of natural resources, wealth and assets and energy and effort
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that should be going into investing into the Iranian economy, infrastructure, its use
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All of that is being redirected and stolen and taken away from the Iranian people
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So it's very, very important when any – I've listened to your show and LBC for years
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and when you listen to people speak or whether it be on LBC or any other outlet
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that people often tend to synonymize Iran and the Islamic Republic, or Iran, the nation of Iran, the people of Iran
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And let's not forget, Iran is the single oldest continuous living nation state
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Two and a half thousand years we have existed as a state. And it is imperative that the regime is not confused with Iran or its people
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One does not represent the other. Yes. And the third, and this is probably the most important
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and this is why I have my opinions and the Iranians have their opinions, and there is a diverse set of opinions about this conflict
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and the action that needs to be taken, and regimes change that almost all Iranians want
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but how does it look and how will it come internally, will it come externally or a combination of the two
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And is it through force and war or is it through, I don't know
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intelligence agencies like the 1953 coup, which happened without much fighting. So the third pillar of the Islamic Republic, the mafia regime that has taken our country hostage
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is the control of its people, clamping down on dissent, on defiance and removal
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and of true democratic values and basic human rights, whether it be freedom of speech, freedom of expression
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things like music. In the last few days, your listeners might have seen on the BBC
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was one of the most well-read articles of the day that the Iranian regime has once again banned dog walking throughout Iran
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and is clamping down on that. So something as basic as that, which brings me up on the point of the Islamic Republic
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and Islam in general being the complete antithesis, in my opinion, of what it is to be Persian
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And Persianism and Islam are two completely opposing ideas, and this is my opinion
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I don't truly believe that somebody can be both because the inherent values
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and I speak perhaps mostly of Shia Islam and the version of Islam that this Islamic regime of Iran
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has kind of developed over the last 47 years. If you look at, for example, dogs, I'm a dog lover, I've had dogs all my life
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dogs are a sacred pillar of Zoroastrianism, of the first monotheistic religion that came from Persia about 4,500 years ago
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and is perhaps not a set of principles, not a set of commandments
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more values to live by. And that in itself is just one example that I use
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of how this clamp down on this mouth treatment of dogs for example goes against all Persian values And that goes back to this old adage of you can tell
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how civilised the nation is by how it treats its women, its
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animals, or any more vulnerable people. And theocracies are generally going to be the opposite
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of that model. I don't want to run out of time, but I do want to know, and again, I don't
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want to oversimplify the nuance that you've provided or break it. But the situation is so awful
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that even if it's instigated by Israel, we would welcome regime change
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How widespread is that for you? This is where you've seen in the last few days
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it really differs between people. You have the kind of... So I need a show in Iran, really
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to get a proper handle on this. And of course, that isn't going to happen. Yeah, well, I think even from that show
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if you have a three-hour show at the beginning, and people's opinions might differ by the end of it
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But I think people, in a nutshell, people want the regime gone
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perhaps not at all costs, but, you know, I think we are very open
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to exploring options. The fact is that I think about the current situation
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is in Iran. I think that we have always been in a war
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Our Iranian people have always been in a war. I totally understand people talking about
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inflation and stuff like that. But it goes way beyond it. And if you think about it
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the regime in Iran, I don't say that people have always been like this, but I have
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lived in Iran for more than three decades, and I have seen people who were mostly
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religious people and they were okay with this regime. During so many years, they have changed
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because they have seen lies and they noticed that the lives of people is not important for this regime at all
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If you have a look on different protests and the movements that have been happening in Iran in 2019, 2022 and 2009
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all of these, many people were killed. Nobody is ever going to know the exact number of people
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because they just don't let people to make other people in the whole world be informed about it
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It's just everybody is so oppressed there. And yeah, it's like everybody is suffering from the fear
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If you're a journalist there, and even if you're a journalist outside the Iran
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you always have to be really careful because they are that brave
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that they can threaten you by the lives of your family there
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I think we spoke to Paul, didn't we, about this, Paul Caruana Galizia not long ago
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about the evidence he'd unearthed of dissidents in this country being targeted, if you like, even in this country
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by agents of the Iranian regime. I don't want to run out of time, Masi
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and you paint a hideous picture. How hideous would it have to be
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before a significant portion of the Iranian population and would even contemplate the possibility that Benjamin Netanyahu might be the man to start the regime change
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Well, honestly, I think war is the ugliest thing that can happen in any country
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When it happened first, and they actually went for some of Iranian military people
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we thought that, OK, it might be the start of change. But at the moment, there are some people being killed, like normal civilians
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Yes. And our family are back there. We are so worried about them
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We are worried about people in Israel that might be killed as best
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It's about human being. But the thing is that I know that even if this regime is going to say that
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OK, this number of people have been killed, innocent people have been killed
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they're just using it. they don't care about the lives of people
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because even in the past they have been killing people themselves. I mean, it is one of those conversations
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where oddly the extremes seem in danger of meeting and you realise that the huge portions of the ordinary people
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are nowhere near either extreme, as in the people ordering and undertaking the killing
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But that's all a bit John Lennon, isn't it, Massey? The hope that everyone can live in peace and harmony