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Delve into the complex history and rising threat posed by Iran’s Islamic Republic. From historical grievances and revolutionary ideology to nuclear ambiguity and proxy warfare, we explore why ignoring Tehran’s aggression could jeopardize U.S. national security and global stability. This deep dive unpacks the hidden realities behind Tehran’s hostile rhetoric and the urgent need to reassess America’s strategic stance.
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00:00How the Islamic Republic Became a Threat to America and a Global Security Risk
00:04To understand the Islamic Republic of Iran, and why it's increasingly viewed as a global
00:09security concern, you have to start with its grievances. The Roots of Resentment
00:13In 1953, Iran's parliament, or Majlis, put Prime Minister Mohamed Mossadegh under house arrest
00:19under the framework of Iran's constitutional monarchy, or Mashruteh. Mossadegh had sought
00:24to nationalize the oil industry, but he was also trying to consolidate more power for himself.
00:30The MI6 and CIA-backed Operation Ajax planted a seed of distrust of foreign forces in Iran's
00:35domestic matters. For many Iranians, this event permanently poisoned relations with the West
00:41and planted the seeds of mistrust that would later fuel the 1979 revolution, which took 14 months.
00:47After aligning closely with the United States for decades, the Islamic Revolution ended 2,500 years
00:53of monarchic rule and adopted a new form of government, the Islamic Republic, which would
00:58go on to become a theocratic autocracy due to Ayatollah Ruha la-Romeini's Velayat al-Fari,
01:03guardianship of the Islamic jurist, where a supreme clerical leader would have final say
01:08on all matters, domestic and foreign policy. Velayat al-Fari was in a very real sense a censored text,
01:15much like Mein Kampf. The crucial difference, however, is timing.
01:19Mein Kampf was widely scrutinized and restricted after the catastrophe it helped inspire,
01:23whereas Velayat al-Fari was censored before the 1979 revolution. Iranians were largely denied the
01:30opportunity to read, debate, and fully understand its implications while it still mattered. By the
01:35time the revolution succeeded and the doctrine was enshrined into law, the consequences were no longer
01:40theoretical, and it was already too late. The Iranians burned a United States flag and announced the U.S.
01:46government, saying they would stay until the U.S. sends the deposed Shah back to Iran.
01:52Earlier today, the Ayatollah Khomeini publicly criticized the U.S. for providing refuge for the Shah.
01:58His speech was viewed as a signal by the Muslim students to attack the embassy.
02:02The revolutionary leadership rejected Western influence outright. That rejection culminated in the U.S.
02:07embassy hostage crisis and the birth of the now-infamous slogan, Death to America.
02:18That year, revolutionaries stormed the U.S. embassy and held diplomats hostage for over a year.
02:24Behind the scenes, the clerical mullahs who had joined forces with the Marxists had assured
02:29Republican presidential candidate Ronald Reagan that they would release the hostages after the U.S.
02:34election. Moments after Jimmy Carter lost the election, that came to fruition. But instead of
02:40detente, it was the first chapter of what would become a tempestuous relationship between the newly
02:45christened Islamic Republic and the United States of America, whom the new regime in Tehran dubbed
02:50the Great Satan. Trauma and militarization. The Islamic Republic's worldview hardened further during the
02:56Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. Saddam Hussein's use of chemical weapons, often with Western indifference
03:02or tacit support, left deep scars. Throughout, the Iran-Contra affairs added another wrinkle in
03:08the relations between the regional and world powers. Rather than confront future threats directly,
03:13the Islamic Republic adopted an asymmetric strategy, projecting power outside its borders through what
03:19it calls the Axis of Resistance. This network included Hezbollah in Lebanon, militias in Iraq and Syria,
03:25and support for Hamas and other proxy groups. One early and deadly result came in 1983,
03:30when Hezbollah operatives bombed a U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 American servicemen.
03:37Hezbollah had planned its operation for months, and finally one Sunday morning, when Hezbollah
03:41suspected that the Marines would be the most vulnerable, suicide bombers drove two trucks
03:45in the Marine barracks loaded with 18,000 pounds of explosives. The amount of explosives in this attack
03:50was so large that it was the single largest non-nuclear explosion on Earth since the Second World War,
03:56and he completely demolished the four-story building that had housed over 400 service members.
04:00I had a rough idea of what to expect, but not, not really. I heard the rev of an engine behind me.
04:07It was a very sophisticated operation. He was so close, in fact, that I could look directly at the
04:12driver's face. The intelligence was perfect. The implementation was perfect. I screamed.
04:17Hit the deck. That's their playbook. They built their playbook over time, and I would call it like a cult,
04:27a cult who is following an ideology, and they're building their playbook based on how we respond
04:34to certain things. And, I mean, they're taking notes. From Khomeini to Khomeini. After the passing of
04:41Khomeini, the clerics appointed Ali Khomeini as the new supreme leader, a position he has held since,
04:47making him one of the longest-lasting heads of state, though this has come with an oppressive
04:51domestic policy that has encroached on the kinds of freedoms and liberties enjoyed in the West.
04:56His tenure, associated with standing up for the Palestinians in the Holy Land, positioning the
05:01Islamic Republic as a counter to America's new regional ally Israel, and presenting himself as the
05:06leader opposed to so-called Western hegemony, has won him supporters on the Arab street who may not
05:11necessarily be endeared by Shia Iranians, but who would gladly take in the revenues generated by
05:16Iran's extensive resources in oil, gas, and minerals. This wave of defiance comes as Iran faces growing
05:23economic pain. Inflation is soaring, the currency is collapsing, food prices are rising, public anger
05:30is boiling over, and protests are once again flaring up in cities across the country. Since then, the regime
05:37has invested tens of billions of dollars in the axis of resistance, to the chagrin of regular
05:42Iranians who are generally secular, liberal, and as an Indo-European ethnic group, not necessarily all
05:48that sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, which many Arabs themselves look with skepticism.
05:52And this is not just commentators.
06:02And this is not just commentators.
06:03But also, their most respected and revered statesmen.
06:28Where are the issues before 1967? We were thinking about ourselves and we were thinking about
06:34the world. The thousands of shepherds fell down before 1967. Who is it? How do you say that
06:41Palestine was killed in 1967 and died in 1967? It is Palestine that is the southern border
06:48of Gaza. If it was like this, they killed the Israelis in 1948. They left it to you.
06:549-11 and a mist reset. When 19 Islamists, of which 15 were Saudi nationals, part of Osama bin Laden's
07:05Al-Qaeda network carried out the September 11th attacks, a striking contrast emerged. While
07:10celebrations erupted in some parts of the Middle East, Iranians held candlelight vigils. The Iranian
07:16people mourned. The regime did not plan the attacks, but the aftermath changed everything.
07:21The U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq alarmed Tehran. Instead of escalating, the Islamic Republic
07:28temporarily pulled back, fearing it might be next. That fear wasn't unfounded. Former NATO commander
07:34Wesley Clark later revealed that the Islamic Republic was on a list of seven countries targeted for
07:39potential regime change by the U.S.
07:41He said he reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. He said, I just he said,
07:46I just got this down from upstairs meeting the Secretary of Defense office today. And he said,
07:50this is a memo that describes how we're going to take out seven countries in five years,
07:56starting with Iraq and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finishing off Iran.
08:03I said, is it classified? He said, yes, sir.
08:06Neo-conservative figures like Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz openly viewed Iran as unfinished business.
08:12But the U.S. became bogged down in Iraq's sectarian violence and instability rooted in
08:17Iraq's artificial borders and social fragmentation. Iran is not Iraq. It is not a Sykes-Picot invention.
08:25It's one of the world's oldest continuous civilizations dating back to 3200 B.C.
08:30And unlike the Taliban, Iranians are overwhelmingly secular, culturally liberal,
08:35and broadly aligned with Western values, a reality often ignored in foreign policy debates.
08:40We're going to live to see great things in Iran. Iran is too big. Tehran is too big.
08:44And the stupider the regime, the more intelligent the people get, and the more humorous.
08:47Polling, turnout figures, and decades of protests show that
08:50the Islamic Republic does not represent the Iranian people.
09:00In fact, even a growing number of religious people have grown disheartened, disenfranchised,
09:10and despising of the kleptocratic regime.
09:23Reassessing the Bush years.
09:25The United States of America has the sovereign authority to use force in assuring its own
09:30national security. That duty falls to me as Commander-in-Chief. By the oath I have sworn,
09:38by the oath I will keep. Recognizing the threat to our country, the United States Congress voted
09:45overwhelmingly last year to support the use of force against Iraq.
09:49A common critique of the Bush administration was the invasion of Iraq, since it was neither
09:54harboring Bin Laden nor possessing any weapons of mass destruction. But with hindsight, for all its
09:59flaws, with Saddam Hussein gone, Iraq is no longer ruled by a genocidal dictator who was going to be
10:05succeeded by an even more sociopathic son. After 9-11, the US had little choice but to strike the
10:11Taliban for harboring Osama Bin Laden. The Taliban's eventual return was not America's intention,
10:17nor was Iraq's sectarian collapse something Washington engineered. Instead, the administration's
10:22most consequential failure came before 9-11, when intelligence warnings about Bin Laden's plans went
10:28unheeded, allowing nearly 3,000 Americans to die.
10:31So, was this an intelligence failure? It was a failure of intelligence with a small eye. It was a
10:41failure of our society as a whole to deal with this. I think you could have seen this coming. Indeed,
10:46lots of reports, including the ones that Brian worked on, did see it coming. And I think the question
10:53is, why did we lull ourselves so? As such, the lesson is less about invading Iraq and Afghanistan,
10:59and more about how it ignored the growing al-Qaeda threat, who had first sought to take down the
11:04World Trade Center in 1993, before doing so successfully in 2001. Basically, half of the
11:10underneath of the towers from the level one to level six were always blown down almost in one huge crater
11:18with thousands of trucks, thousands of vehicles crushed like pancakes. In fact, the real lesson of
11:24Afghanistan was that if you don't address the root of the problem, the cancer returns. The Taliban,
11:29for example, practice an intense misogyny by preventing women from getting their education,
11:34while its leaders send their children abroad to school.
11:36Just for the record, you have two daughters. Do they go to school?
11:39Yeah, of course, yes. Of course they do, because you're in Doha and they can go to school, right?
11:48Yeah, they are observing hijab. They are observing hijab. And so that means we have not denied.
11:57We have not denied our people. So if they do exactly, if your daughters do exactly what you tell them,
12:04they're allowed to get, okay, so your daughters get an education because, wait a minute,
12:10your daughters get an education because they do what you tell them, all right? I'm glad we clarified that.
12:15Similarly, in the Islamic Republic, Masa Amini and scores of other women were killed over antiquated hijab
12:21laws that have since been loosened, even though the regime leaders send their kids to the West.
12:33While the UK, EU, and Canada appease Islamists out of fear of offending or to pander for votes,
12:38for the West to survive, it needs to at least be realistic and honest about these dynamics.
12:43These are Muslim values. These are Canadian values.
12:49Nuclear Ambiguity
12:51The Islamic Republic's nuclear policy is strategically confusing if not ambiguous.
12:56Despite a fatwa or religious edict by the previous Supreme Leader Khomeini forbidding weapons of mass destruction,
13:02the regime is advancing enrichment, limiting transparency with the IAEA,
13:07and maintaining a latent weapons capability without ever openly declaring its intent,
13:11which increases the risk of proliferation, undermines international monitoring,
13:16and forces Western powers to reckon with a regime that could covertly shorten breakout
13:20time toward a bomb while destabilizing regional security. Its investment in missiles, ballistic and
13:26hypersonic, and drone development, is no doubt impressive in that it is lethal.
13:31According to Associated Press to mark the day, an Iranian state television channel aired a typically
13:36religious talk show Thursday night that instead saw its cleric and prayer singers look at
13:41Iranian military drones. They fired up the engines of several of the Shahid drones,
13:47one version of which has been used extensively by Russia in its war on Ukraine.
13:51Now that it's testing missiles reaching Siberia and Russian-approving tests,
13:55the regime itself is now claiming its missiles can reach Alaska.
13:59The Buenos Aires 1992 Precedent
14:01The risk is not theoretical. The 1992 Buenos Aires bombings, attributed to Iran and Hezbollah,
14:08set a precedent that the Islamic Republic is willing to project mass casualty terrorism far beyond the
14:13Middle East, underscoring that nuclear ambiguity in the hands of a regime with a global terror record
14:18poses a direct threat to Western civilians and interests.
14:32regime change must come from within. Western leaders often argue that Iranians must overthrow the
14:49Islamic Republic themselves. But there's a harsh reality. Iranians don't have a second amendment.
14:54They face the regime's brutal oppression with empty hands. When they rise up, they face live ammunition,
15:01mass arrests, internet shutdowns and summary executions.
15:09Over the past decade alone, thousands, possibly tens of thousands of Iranians have been killed during protests.
15:15The January 2026 event is now looking more and more like an outright genocide. Official figures cited 3,000 deaths.
15:22The regime's internal meds suggested up to 30,000. Entire generations have endured repression
15:28by the IRGC for nearly half a century.
15:30When people question the mere possibility of killing so many people quickly, the regime's sinister
15:44interpretation of the Quran is telling.
15:46and when someone is looking for it,
15:50they are asking them to kill you,
15:52and if you're walking towards the sea,
15:54they are fighting themselves,
15:56even if they're going to some of you,
16:00they are going to kill them,
16:02they are going to kill you .
16:06We have to leave two other places to kill you.
16:10If they are not gonna kill you ..
16:12..and if they're in someone's hands it will find you..
16:16It's the case of funeral.
16:17In this funeral, it has been the case of one woman who has an equality in three houses,
16:24and has been accused of things, and has been inhabited by her family.
16:28He always gets exposed to it.
16:31Where do you get exposed to this advice?
16:33Where is it?
16:34It's a racist and a racist man who leaves the sack of the battle.
16:37They have to show the truth and they have the people who are the Autobots of the individual ones they have to breathe with.
16:44Why is it we get exposed to this one?
16:45And this is why the people are rejecting Islam
17:07for the regime hijacked and bastardized Islam.
17:15The regime's own evidence.
17:27Recent footage from Iran's parliament reveals something unsettling.
17:31Instead of a civilian legislature, viewers see uniformed IRGC commanders,
17:35clerics chanting militant slogans.
17:45Open threats directed outward.
18:10And mocking of the dead on state-sanctioned TV.
18:32At the same time, Iranian officials speak abroad of diplomacy and peace.
19:00To critics, this dual messaging isn't a contradiction.
19:03It's a strategy.
19:04A broader security question.
19:06The Islamic Republic's leadership is ideologically driven,
19:10rooted in revolutionary theology and apocalyptic belief systems
19:13centered on martyrdom and confrontation.
19:16With Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei aging,
19:18analysts warn that instability, or escalation, could increase rather than fade.
19:23At this point, the debate is no longer purely moral or humanitarian.
19:27It's become a question of international and American national security.
19:31But what about the markets?
19:33One common concern is economic.
19:35What would intervention do to global markets?
19:38Historical data tells a consistent story.
19:41Across nearly a century, markets tend to fall before or at the onset of wars.
19:46Once uncertainty clears, markets often stabilize and rebound.
19:49Wars rarely cause long-term market collapse.
19:52The probability of losing money drops from 46% in one day to 6% over 10 years.
19:59Missing just a few of the market's best days, often during crises, can devastate long-term returns.
20:04In short, geopolitical shocks change headlines, not long-term market math.
20:09The bigger picture.
20:11The Islamic Republic is not a normal government.
20:14It's an ideologically driven regime, born in exile.
20:17Khamenei's father is from Najaf, and the Ladijani's were born there themselves.
20:22With Ali Ladijani claiming credit for the Tiananmen Square-inspired massacre in January 2026.
20:27It is obsessed with revolutionary end-times theology and sustained by repression at home and proxies abroad.
20:34Views that would shock anyone in the West if they actually listened.
20:36The other people who have been born in the West if they were born in the West if they were born in the West if they were born in the West.
20:55Meanwhile, Iran's people are pushing in the opposite direction, towards secularism, openness, and reintegration with the world.
21:18A reflection of the country before Islamists seized power, and Iran had power and prestige.
21:23Iran, a unique endeavor.
21:35The number of children in primary schools has risen from 1.7 million to 4.1 million.
21:42In high schools, from 326,000 to almost 2 million.
21:46Of 152,000 students in higher education, about one-third are women.
21:52In 1975, at Tehran University, 44% of all graduates in medicine were women.
22:00Iran today.
22:02Women even playing soccer.
22:04Symbol of a radical revolution against deep-rooted taboos, habits, prejudices.
22:13History shows that revolutions don't take generations to succeed.
22:16The Russian revolution unfolded in eight months.
22:20Iran's 1979 revolution took 14 months.
22:23Many believe Iran is entering a similar moment, one driven not by strength, but by regime incompetence and internal decay.
22:30Iran is a country of 95 million, of which 80% reject the Islamic Republic.
22:36Final thought.
22:37When Iranians warn the world, they are not speaking ideologically.
22:41They're speaking from experience, ignoring that warning once had catastrophic consequences.
22:46The question now is whether the world listens or says, once again, we didn't know.
22:51Iran, like America, was a secular liberal country.
22:54Of course, it wasn't modern-day Sweden just by virtue of being a constitutional monarchy,
22:59despite giving women the right to vote before even Switzerland did.
23:02But while history does not repeat itself, it does rhyme,
23:05and it does not take much for free societies to be overtaken by militants.
23:09The stakes were hitherto limited to social practices,
23:12with the Islamic Republic showing it will kill citizens to stay in power,
23:16and openly threatening America and the EU.
23:18The IRGC is now effectively making the argument that it needs to be dealt with
23:22before America learns that while Iranians were not involved in 9-11,
23:27Islamist radicalism knows no boundaries.
23:29.
23:34.
23:39And I think that's why I love you to the citizens.
23:43Like this 47 years ago, I saw this one.
23:46I saw this one and I saw this one.
23:49I saw this one.
23:51We are the ones we are.
23:54We are the ones we are.
23:56We are the ones we are.
23:58We are the ones we are.
24:09Madden!
24:10Madden!
24:11Madden!
24:12Madden!
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