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Prof Madhavan Palat, eminent historian, speaks with C Uday Bhaskar on Trump’s threat to destroy Iran | SAM Conversation
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00:07Hello and welcome to SAM Conversations. I am Uday Bhaskar. Today is April 7th, 2026 and perhaps,
00:20just perhaps, history will recall this day as being very distinctive but for reasons that are
00:31not very flattering in relation to the current U.S.-Israel war against Iran. And the reasons,
00:40as I see it, I'm just getting my thoughts together, we are towards the diabolical and I'm afraid the
00:50lunatic. Now these are strong words to use but the context is the latest post put out by U.S.
00:59President Donald Trump on his personal microblogging site, Root Social. And it's a very dire threat to
01:09Iran. It is so dire, I want to read it as accurately as I can. I quote, this is the
01:17U.S. President
01:18Donald Trump. A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.
01:27I don't want that to happen but it probably will. Unquote. It goes on. But this is to convey the
01:37enormity of what is at stake. Meaning, that if Iran does not accept the deal as it has been termed,
01:46which has been offered by the Americans, then the Trump threat is that Iran as a civilization
01:55will be destroyed. Never to appear again, never to be born again. There is a certain finality.
02:04And to me there is a kind of embedded double irony. One is America decides to destroy a civilization like
02:14Iran. Now the contrast is striking that America is a young nation. It does not qualify to have a
02:24civilizational status. Yes, America has imperial status in the modern context, but perhaps not
02:30civilizational. And Iran is inheritor of an ancient civilization. It has pedigree. It has depth.
02:39It has faced many challenges. That's irony one. And the most, of course, striking military irony,
02:47as it were, is that here are Israel and the United States, both countries with nuclear weapons.
02:54Clearly, Israel is the covert, secret nuclear weapon capable nation, piggybacking on the United States.
03:03And the US, of course, has the world's largest arsenal of WMB nuclear weapons.
03:09It has also used the nuclear weapon in Japan, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, August 1945.
03:17And this alliance, this partnership of the US and Israel today with the Trump Post is threatening
03:28to destroy Iran merely because Iran wanted to acquire the legitimate right in terms of its own
03:37nuclear know-how and civilian technology in terms of the program that it was following.
03:42So that to me was the double irony that a non-nuclear weapon state is being threatened in this manner.
03:50And we have another 12 hours before it's Wednesday morning in this part of the world, in West Asia,
03:56in South Asia, while the United States will settle down to suffer most probably on Tuesday night by
04:04daytime, Eastern time. So to place this in context, I'm very grateful to Professor Madhavan
04:11Panath, eminent historian, who has agreed to join us at very short notice. We scrambled the moment we saw
04:20this post, and I reached out to him. And I said, Madhavan, please unpack this with your deep water table
04:28on empire, on conquest, on empire, on conquest, and more. Madhavan all yours.
04:36Trump, of course, is notorious for giving or issuing all sorts of unholy threats of this kind. And when he
04:45talks of the total eradication, obliteration, destruction, etc., of Iran, I'm not so certain
04:54what he means. And I'm not certain that he himself knows what he means. But if it is a serious
05:00attempt
05:01in thinking of destroying a civilization, he should just go back to Iranian history and see how many
05:09times the attempt has been made has never succeeded. As you know, as long back as 331 BC, Alexander overthrew
05:23the Achaemenian empire. Well, what happened is Alexander became Iranian rather than the Iranian empire vanishing
05:33completely. It is true the rulers became Greek for a while under the Silukid empire after Alexander,
05:40but nothing much changed there. The superficial Greek culture remained on top.
05:48But after the Silukid empire declined, already by 224 or 227 BC, what is known as the Parthian empire,
06:01another Iranian empire, arose in that area. That is what we call the territory between roughly
06:09Iraq and the frontiers of India. And it was a major challenger to the Roman empire.
06:16And it lasted for 24 centuries, all the way up to 24
06:26CE. So, it is not as with advantage at all. But let me get to the right,
06:32220 BC to about 220 AD, almost 500 years. Yeah, that's right, almost four centuries, roughly
06:39corresponding to the Han empire in China. Then we have another one, what's called the Sasanian empire,
06:49which followed immediately after 224 to 650 AD, or CE we call it now, which is a properly Iranian one
07:00in
07:00that it is considered the most national empire, where the religion was Zoroastrian, which is what we
07:08associate with the ancient Iran. Now that lasted all the way to 650. So it's a pretty long innings
07:16we already have for continuous series of Iranian empires, in spite of it collapsing to Alexander's invasion.
07:24But nothing much changed otherwise. The big change occurred only with the Arab invasion
07:31of 650, when the Sasanian empire was overthrown. And the whole of Iran was converted to Islam.
07:39And even the Persian language was suppressed for nearly two centuries.
07:45That's the longest time that an eclipse of this sort occurred. But it was obviously flourishing under the surface,
07:55because a recovery took place under what is known as the Samanid empire, which was a completely national
08:03Iranian recovery. And it lasted as long as from 819 to 999 AD. It is one of the glories
08:14of Iranian culture and empire building and so on, when the great revival of the Persian letters also took place.
08:25Now that lasted pretty long and the Iranian culture had a very extensive field of play right across from
08:34the borders of the Byzantine Empire all the way to India. As usual, that was the region in which these
08:41empires flourished.
08:44It suffered its next catastrophe under the Mongol conquest. That is true. But again, as you know,
08:52when the Mongols conquered anyone, the local culture flourished. The Mongols became local.
08:58It happened in China. It happened in Russia. It happened in Iran.
09:02In Iran. The Mongols were known as the Ilkhanids, the Ilkhanid empire. And they lasted all the way until 1353.
09:14And once again, we have an extraordinary cultural revival and imperial revival under what's known
09:20as the Safavi empire. And that went on from 1501 to 1736. This is another of the glories of Iran.
09:30So you have a succession of great empires, the Achaemenid, the Parthian, the Sassanian,
09:41and Samanid, and now the Safaviy. Now, the only time Iran really went under was because of colonialism.
09:51But that happened to pretty nearly everybody, including India, who succumbed to Western power of this sort.
09:59So from the end of the 18th century until 1925, it was under the heat of colonial rule, under the
10:07inglorious Qajar dynasty in Iran. And that was replaced by the Qajar dynasty, which was overthrown in 1979.
10:19Again, it was under Western rule. But there's no question of an Iranian culture being obliterated
10:26or in any sense of the term. The only question was whether it was politically subordinated.
10:32And now, of course, after 1979, we know the history. Not only Iranian culture, but everything
10:38that they wished to be as independent Iranian flourished and challenged whatever America tried
10:44to impose upon them. So it's very unlikely that it can be just like that overthrown unless the nuclear
10:51holocaust takes place. Yeah, exactly. I mean, that is what I thought I would come to later. But would it
10:56then be fair to say that from the way you have described the temporal trajectory of Iran going back to
11:04the
11:043rd century BC to where we are now in 2026, from about 300 BC to where we are now. There
11:11is a certain
11:12distinctive pedigree over the century. I said a pedigree to Iran.
11:19Yes, there is. And that pedigree is something which I'm saying is very distinctive.
11:23Each civilization has its own contour and characteristic in as much as we talk about Indian civilization or
11:30Chinese or Mesopotamia and so on. But if I were to now take this forward and link it back to
11:37Donald
11:37Trump and America. America is an imperial power. And in many ways, the Baton had passed from Britain to
11:46America in the last century. And we are familiar with that part of colonial history. But when we look at
11:52the
11:53modern period, which is really 1945 onwards, when the United States becomes the principal hegemonic power,
12:02though it had the former Soviet Union as a countervailing power for a brief period in the Cold War,
12:09which is 45 years, how do we frame or interpret the American imperial impulse? I can't think of another
12:18word because I don't think colonial would be appropriate here. But the American impulse, I'm
12:24talking of post 45, whether it's Vietnam, or whether it is more recently in Afghanistan, which we are
12:33familiar with, and now in West Asia, followed by the Donald Trump kind of template, which is that if you
12:43do
12:43not accept our deal, it's always put out in a very conciliatory manner, then there would be literally,
12:51he uses the word hell in uppercase, in all the posts that he has put out. So how would you
12:57look at that
12:58the American characteristic, in terms of using its power, to the extent, you mentioned nuclear, when he
13:05talks about destroying Iranian civilization, as you rightly said, I hope it doesn't come to pass. But America
13:12has a vast range of WMD weapons of mass destruction. And will they take recourse to what is, I think,
13:20misleadingly referred to as a tactical nuclear weapon, to try and bring Iran to its knees, in which case, of
13:27course, we are talking about a completely different scenario. But to be accurate, President Trump himself has
13:35not used the nuclear weapon, but his officials have been alluding to it, in a very elliptical manner. So
13:41the, it's both there and not there, you know, which is a very Trump kind of trait, in terms of
13:46how he
13:46issues the threats. So how do you look at the American imperialism?
13:51Yeah, let us keep aside the nuclear threat, it is a threat, obviously, always used. After all, Russia
13:57also has been using it, or periodically talking about it. And Trump is, uh, implying it all the time.
14:05But it's very doubtful whether they're actually going to use it. They don't need to.
14:10The, uh, what we can see is that Trump can attack Iran sufficiently to subordinate it. Or that might be
14:19his ambition. And he's got the resources to do so. The only point is whether he's prepared to commit
14:25enough of his own men, or his troops, to carry it out. If he wishes to do so, then of
14:31course he can manage it.
14:32But since they always want a victory on the cheap, uh, that may not happen. But, uh, Iran has been
14:39through
14:39this before, obviously, and it might have to succumb to that again. But we must remember that what, uh,
14:46Trump's words are perhaps extremely crude sounding today. But if you look at the vocabulary of colonial
14:53powers in the 19th century until 1945, they were not very different. The way they addressed all the
15:00people and the states that they conquered, one after the other, were in very similar terms, without a
15:07doubt. You just look back in an Indian history, the manner in which a person like Wellesley or Dalhousie
15:14Litton spoke and addressed the various princes or the opponents that he had to face. It was practically
15:21in the same terms. It, uh, may not have been terms of, uh, quite such vulgar abuse as Trump uses,
15:30but it
15:32was as aggressive as Trump is and as offensive as Trump is and as insulting as they can be. In
15:40that sense,
15:41there is no difference. Trump's imperial power is, uh, he is a frank restatement of the colonial mind
15:50of the Europeans of the 19th century until the middle of the 20th. To the Europeans, that now seems
15:57shocking because they have abandoned it or they profess to have abandoned it. They do not use such
16:03terms in their, uh, relationships with the poorer parts of the world. They leave that particular form of
16:10exercise of power to Trump. So Trump, uh, sorry, to America and Americans express it in the raw,
16:18uh, for they told the Vietnamese will bomb you back into the storage. They, uh, they said they'll bomb the
16:25hell out of, uh, Afghanistan. This is their normal language, uh, of speaking and everything that they say,
16:32say in Latin America cinema. So there's no, uh, not a particular difference about it. Each time they
16:39threaten to obliterate, threaten to exercise overwhelming superiority and this applies to
16:46Americans, all the Europeans and the Russians in colonial times. There's no difference.
16:52You know, there is the old adage. Trump is only attempting to reestablish his superiority and his hegemony
16:59as before. You know, I was saying that there is the old adage that power is always hand in hand
17:06with
17:06arrogance and it has to be tempered by principle. And I think in many ways that was the attempt in
17:141945
17:16when again, to its credit, the United States agreed to the charter of the United Nations and that all nations,
17:25all countries, all countries, big or small would have a certain locus in the larger global framework.
17:31And though it is now long buried, I think after October seven, the rules based international order
17:39is now a thing of the past. And we perhaps will have to wait and watch and see how tonight
17:49unfolds April
17:50April seven, April eight, and whether president Donald Trump will exercise the extraordinary military
18:00power that he has at his command, or would they be a review? And, you know, there's just one strand.
18:08I don't know whether the time will permit, but I'd be grateful if you could give me a brief comment
18:13on this, given your own perspective. There have been rumblings in the United States, both among the
18:20political class and among the military, particularly the retired military in the United States about
18:28unlawful orders and whether unlawful orders by the US president, the commander in chief, and whether ordering
18:37the destruction of Iran in this manner, which means the complete, as I said, obliteration as it were,
18:46would, would that lead to a situation within the US where there would be some disquiet
18:50about executing these orders? I mean, it's just not clear.
18:54Yeah, there is certainly a vast amount of disquiet about it, about what Trump is doing. But the Americans
19:02have committed any number of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the course of the past 70 years
19:09after the Second World War. And if there are people who have objections to it, they generally suppressed
19:16it. And they know that they are really not going to be called to order because there's nobody who can
19:21call the Americans to order in such a case. So really, that is, I don't think, going to be a
19:27very serious
19:28problem in itself. The only problem he will face is if he calls up people in a, in a form
19:35of draft,
19:36as happened in Vietnam. Then, of course, there will be overwhelming opposition. But he doesn't need to.
19:41That's what he hopes to do. But I think that what is interesting about the whole situation is,
19:47why has America chosen to attack in this form rather than what they call the rules-based order?
19:55The rules-based means rules whatever Americans chose to be the rules.
19:59Yeah, yeah, yeah.
20:00It functioned very well for them from 1945 onward. That is, they organized the whole world into a
20:06hierarchy of powers subordinate to them in one way or the other. It threw a series of multilateral
20:11institutions, and they could juggle them around and play with them, and it worked very well.
20:17And through that elaborate network of the United Nations and all the associated multilateral bodies,
20:23American power penetrated everywhere very well. And it used a vast amount of military power also,
20:32but through the system. And it worked very well because it always had the legitimacy of it.
20:38Now, why are they abandoning that legitimacy and the effectiveness of that? And why have they forgotten
20:45the importance of the importance of it? That legitimacy is as important as physical power
20:49in favor of acting as a street-side bully in this way? Is it because they suddenly feel they are
20:57weakened
20:58and therefore have to show it? And why should they feel they have been weakened? Weakened by whom?
21:03Not by Russia, not by China. I see it anyway. China hasn't challenged them. Russia
21:11Russia supposedly has challenged them, but America has not committed itself to Ukraine yet.
21:17So why does America feel itself weakened to be able to be weakened?
21:22Very valid question. The only response I can think of literally as we are speaking is that perhaps
21:28in Donald Trump's second term, he has allowed himself to be misled by Israel and Prime Minister Netanyahu.
21:39And between the two of them, for a variety of reasons, and I'm not even talking about the Epstein Files,
21:45they have gone down this path. And along this path, I would make another point, which is that observation,
21:53that maybe between the two of them, Trump and Netanyahu, there is a misreading of Iranian resolve.
22:00And therefore, tonight, if the United States does go ahead with the kind of destruction that it has threatened,
22:07there will be an Iranian response. I cannot imagine that Iran will go down without a fight as it were.
22:13And that would completely, I think, change the topography of West Asia, as we know it today,
22:21in terms of its infrastructure, its assets and its democracy. And that, of course, is not a very,
22:28it's a bleak thought in more ways than one. But thanks, Mahavan, for sharing your thoughts,
22:33because as I said, this was a short... May I make just one small comment?
22:38I don't think Trump is being misled or led by the nose by Netanyahu. America remains a leader in
22:46that situation. And Israel is acting under the American umbrella. America also wants to prevent
22:54the spread of nuclear power, certainly to Iran. The point is, how do you do it? Do you do it
23:01the way
23:01Obama did it or the way Trump wishes to do it? Trump wants the shortcut. And that is what Netanyahu
23:08wants.
23:08Trump is inclined the same way. He was perfectly happy with the genocide in Palestine. He'll be happy
23:16doing this kind of thing. But I don't think that he's being led by Netanyahu. They might pretend it is
23:22that way, but I don't think so. But this, I think, is a subject for another discussion. So be warned,
23:28you'll be back and we'll pick up the thread from here. But for tonight, I think we keep our fingers
23:33crossed and hope that when we wake up on Wednesday morning in this part of the world,
23:40Iran would still be a robust civilization. Thank you, Madhul. Thank you. Thank you for watching
23:47some conversations. We will be back again.
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