No War In Iran

Hello, welcome to Interdependent Study, our podcast where we engage in the learning and

unlearning work for collective liberation.

I'm Damien.

And I'm Aaron.

Thank you so much for joining us today.

Each week we'll bring something new to the table discuss our thoughts and feelings

about it through the lenses of who we are and where we can go for a more just society.

We want Interdependent Study to be a space where we're always learning with one another and

Aaron is up this week.

Oh, what are you bringing to the table today?

I'm surprised.

Yeah.

I'm bringing two articles from Truth Out to the Table.

The first is US and Israel launch a legal war on Iran called for regime change by Sharon

Zheng.

And the second is as Trump bombs Iran, we need to reckon with the American war machine

by Nagin Oli A.E.

These pieces share important perspectives about the ongoing war in Iran that the Trump

regime is waging.

So the first one is focused on news updates of the war and some details of some of the

strikes.

What Trump and Netanyahu have said, some reaction from Congress people and some additional

responses from organizers who are trying to prevent it, prevent this continuing.

Yeah.

And the second one is an editorial about how this war is not just born out of Trump and

his hawkish cabinet, but also from the military industrial complex itself in a country where

the military budget is more than $1 trillion annually.

And Nagin says, quote, plenty has been written in Truth Out and elsewhere about the totally

incoherent justifications for this war, the illegality of it, the potential for regional

disaster, the joke it has made of the very idea of diplomacy.

All of this was and continues to be true.

And all of it is important to raise.

But more than anything, we in the US need to reckon with the fact that so much of our

state wealth, capacity and technology goes toward burying children in rubble.

And I agree wholeheartedly, we have to reckon with the reality that so much work goes into

making weapons that eventually kill children, whether on purpose or not, yeah, or kill civilians.

And it's been this way since the beginning of this country in a lot of ways through enslavement

and the genocide of indigenous people.

And now it's been totally mechanized and we're spending a trillion dollars a year on

it, at least.

At least.

So what does that mean for us as a country moving forward?

I think it, you know, in so many ways, this country has never lived up to its actual stated

morals.

Yeah.

And this is more evidence for that.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

So anyway, I've gotten started.

I'm introducing this piece, these pieces.

Where do you want to start?

What stood out to you?

Yeah.

I feel you.

I thought, these are really incredible pieces to help me get a sense and learn more about

just in general this illegal war that's been waged against Iran and just some of the

context that has led us to this place and has also been part of it as it unfolds.

And I feel like you were getting there.

It didn't take me long to get riled up, particularly in Sharon Zang's piece.

And thinking about why this is so infuriating and upsetting, you alluded to this, Sharon shares

how one of the first strikes destroyed an elementary school, which we now know has killed

well over 100 people, 180, I think, 180 at this point.

And most of those are children, right?

And this always happens.

It's children, it's innocence, it's, it's, it, it, these people are the victims of these

atrocities for no good reason.

And it's beyond upsetting because there is no justifiable answer to the question of why

this is even happening.

One of the things that Sharon shares in her piece as you highlighted is some of the

response from some United States politicians to this war.

So she shares, quote, many US lawmakers denounced the attack urging against a war with Iran.

Trump is acting on the violent fantasies of the American political elite and the Israeli

apartheid government, ignoring the vast majority of Americans who say loud and clear, no

more wars.

So representative Rashida Talib in a statement, President Trump will pretend this is about

democracy and the rights of the Iranian people.

Don't be fooled, Trump does not care about the Iranian people she went on.

Our government has imposed brutal sanctions that have destroyed the Iranian economy and

the lives and livelihoods of millions of people.

You cannot free people by killing them and destroying their country.

And so it's like they're playing games with people's lives and their humanity as, as

representative Talib said, Trump is more concerned with appeasing these twisted fantasies of his

friends and, and political elites as she said more than anything remotely related to democracy

and, and freedom and, and peace and, you know, to call it dangerous doesn't even begin

to, to describe it.

Yeah, and they're not, there, there's no coherent narrative about it.

Yes.

Everybody's got a different talking point and a different take on the same thing.

Yes.

And I think that makes it clear how ill formed this all was.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And to think that, you know, this is foreign policy by what in the world.

And before we, we move past the school, you know, there's a haunting image of graves

being dug.

I believe for the people who died in the school.

Yeah.

And it's just, yeah, it's haunting.

Yeah.

And the reporting that I saw this morning, as we record this, these articles are, we

gold now.

Yeah.

So what I saw this morning is that that school was hit by a Tomahawk missile, which is

a US missile.

And those, this real doesn't have those.

Right.

So that's a, that's a US attack on that school too.

So just a, just a name that is a name that and bring that point very clearly, yes.

So yeah, I think in addition to this kind of playing games with people and you mentioned

we're shooting to leave and that you can't free people by killing them.

Yeah.

We can see throughout a lot of the actions that are happening, a lot of this is intertwined

with Israel and Netanyahu and his government are in full support of this war.

And they're also bombing Lebanon, right?

So Trump, along with Netanyahu, is urging regime change and they're going to get their

wish in some way because they killed the IITAL.

Yeah.

So Netanyahu said in an address that was spoken in Hebrew and so this is translated,

quote, as a people who desire life, we have no choice but to engage in this campaign.

The Iranian people and all their diversity, Persians, Kurds, Azaris, Balak, Abkazians and

all other citizens of this wonderful nation.

This is your opportunity to establish a new and free Iran.

And you know, I don't think anybody was really defending the Iranian government.

Sure.

Yeah, they've been horrible and repressive and there have been mass movements in Iran

recently against the government.

And I want to point out the beginning of Netanyahu statement as a people who desire life,

we have no choice but to engage in this campaign.

And what life is it that you desire, whose life is it that you desire?

Yeah.

Or military killed over the last two and a half years.

And over the last 80 since 48, actually, yeah.

And it rings very hollow when we can see the war crimes you continue to commit in Gaza

and the violence you supported in the West Bank that now you value life.

And so you have to then kill people.

So back to representative Tiliw's point, you have to kill people to free them.

Right.

What?

That I don't know that that's how it works.

No.

And we've got more than 20 years of experience doing this as the United States.

And it hasn't turned out any of the ways that anybody said it would.

No, it's crazy to me.

I read that and just thought about the hypocrisy in that statement.

Yes.

And it just blew my mind.

These are war crimes, plain and simple.

And I think you can't say that you value life if you're actively committing war crimes

like full stop related to that point, actually.

Sharon describes an important piece about all of this.

And I think has to be named.

So she says, quote, Israel framed the strikes as preemptive.

But many critics said that this is a farce.

Preemptive self-defense under international law requires an imminent armed attack, not

political disagreement, not long-term rivalry, not speculative future threats.

There has been no evidence of imminent attack from Iran that would justify bombing Tehran

in broad daylight.

Said the national Iranian American council president Jamal Abdi in a statement.

According to Iran, will not bring security, Abdi went on.

It will endanger civilians, place U.S. service members at risk, empower the most repressive

and violent elements inside Iran, and destabilize the region for years to come.

For Iranians already suffering under repression, sanctions and economic hardship, this escalation

will mean only more pain.

Preemptive strike is a favorite lie that the genocidal government of Israel tells us before

they killed children to leave, said.

And it was the word farce that got me there.

All of the pretext for this war is a farce.

And as you said, nothing about it is about desiring life or protecting life in the least.

And not to mention the violations of international law, not to mention Trump not getting congressional

support or approval for these actions that he's taken, the fact that it has been reported

that this war has already likely cost the United States taxpayers over a billion dollars.

And I think I saw something today about it potentially costing over $100 billion.

Maybe when it's all said and done, but who knows when that might be.

And so all of it to me is just so insane and just guided by these men, these elites,

if you will.

And again, it's so dangerous and it scares me.

Yeah, they're not our best, you know?

No, they're not our best.

Not at all.

But I think I saw something that it's costing US taxpayers a billion dollars per day.

Oh, so that's great.

Yeah, that's, I don't know how accurate that is, but that's something I saw, I think

earlier today, that the munitions, the deployment, the logistics behind all of it's going to

cost about that much per day.

Either way, if it's a billion so far or a billion a day, like it's so much money that is

mind-blowing.

Yeah.

So yeah, there's a lot to talk about with all of this as you could tell.

One of the things that may sound like an outlier, I think, in all of this is AI.

But I think AI is central to this in a lot of ways, as is big tech in general.

There are ways to oppose both big tech and AI that are already in place.

And so Nagin says in her article, quote, we can wage campaigns against death dealing corporations

and make sure that war profiteering is exposed and subjected to public outrage.

The no tech for apartheid movement has long been organizing to push Silicon Valley to

stop supplying the Israeli military with computing power and has already found some success.

The Israeli military's use of artificial intelligence in Gaza has received a great deal

of reporting.

Now that open AI has announced a deal to allow the Pentagon to use its models in their classified

networks, the fight against AI has taken on renewed urgency.

Campaigns across the country against data centers are now also a crucial nexus of resistance

against militarism.

So this is one of the reasons why I think everyone needs to slow all the way down with these

generative AI companies.

Yes.

For lots of reasons, lots of reasons.

But they're making promises about capabilities and about the adoption of their platforms

and about the potential revenue that they will generate allegedly.

But it's all made up.

It's based on data that they had from a few years ago when astronomically things were

progressing very quickly.

And that's all going to plateau.

So it's plateauing across all of these fronts.

To fill the gap, they're turning to the military industrial complex where there's little

scrutiny.

Some big spending and very little scrutiny on the actions of these contracts.

They've got to fill the gaps between what they say they are and what they actually are

with the money that Congress gives to the Pentagon each year, which again is a trillion

dollars.

Yeah.

And so that's how they're going to balance the books.

Enterprise level contracts with giant institutions like the US military.

Absolutely.

And again, back to our question about whether it's a billion a day or a billion an hour.

I mean, the money is there.

And so it makes sense that open AI and these companies are going to the military industrial

complex.

That absolutely makes sense.

And I think you have been really outspoken about the dangers of this and being concerned

about gender, AI and being cautious about it.

And I've appreciated that.

I think one of the things that compelled me about what Nagin talks about in this is

actually right after what you just shared, she didn't work to build off of that and connected

to other movement work.

And I just was really compelled by that.

So she says, quote, so too are campaigns for immigrant rights and against deportations.

In the wake of the US strikes against Iran last June, the Trump administration rounded

up Iranian immigrants for deportation, those deportations continued into this year, even

as the Iranian government staged a brutal crackdown on protesters.

As we prepare for war to rage across the region, we can demand the US and Europe open

their borders to people fleeing violence and despair.

We can continue to show the links between the occupation of cities by federal immigration

agents here at home and imperial wars waged abroad.

The enemies of democracy here are also the enemies of democracy abroad.

And I just think it's so important to take a step back and to see the connections between

and the impact of imperialism and colonialism and white supremacy and how all of those

forces have done so much harm to literally every single one of us individually and collectively.

And here we are as a result of that.

Yeah.

In so many ways, you see the connection to generative AI companies, to ICE and the way

that they're tracking people and big tech supporting that with their databases and the data

centers and the environmental impact of that, not to mention the environmental impact

of bombing people in general.

All of this stuff is connected in so many ways, and in so many ways we haven't collectively

in a broad way made those connections publicly before, and I think people are doing that

now.

I think that people, there are people who are talking about things similarly to us who are

connecting these dots and making really, really profound connections between all of this stuff

and how it's all working and how it's all negatively impacting all of us.

And so we don't need data centers, not just because they're a huge environmental impact.

That is absolutely on the list.

Yeah.

Top three probably.

Yeah.

Maybe number one, but close to those other priorities are they will be used to kill people.

Absolutely.

The US military wants to use AI to kill people without any kind of checks or balances.

If the military is using AI to do that, that'll come home in police departments.

It already has.

I mean, there's many ways.

It already has.

Right.

There's information out there now about how it's being used for surveillance of folks right

here at home.

And so it's all connected.

It's all connected.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, let's connect some more dots and talk about applications.

Okay.

How do we apply this article to our day-to-day lives and work?

Nagin closes her article with this, quote, polling shows that this war is unpopular.

Not maybe an authoritarian, but he is not entirely invulnerable.

Nor are the elected officials who have given him pass after pass.

We cannot let him believe for a second longer that he can get away with something this wildly

illegal or recklessly dangerous without accountability.

And we cannot let the leaders who follow him believe that they too can unleash such violence

without consequences.

After all, would we be here if there were any real repercussions for the 2003 invasion

of Iraq or the continuing genocide in Palestine?

We need true accountability for these crimes.

And the only way to get it is to wage a struggle against militarism every day.

Not only in moments of crisis, but whenever and wherever it rears its ugly head.

I think one of the underlying points here is that these actions, this war are grounded

in our ever-expanding military and industrial complex, which is global, as we're just

alluding to with AI and all that stuff coming back home.

So we have to find ways to hold the administration accountable to that, members of Congress,

who continue to send money to the Pentagon without hesitation, accountable to that.

These companies themselves need to be held accountable to that.

Yes, a good point.

Nagin outlines several points in her article, including boycott, divestment, and sanctions,

movement to put pressure on Israel, and making connections to that broader efforts to oppose

the perpetual war machine.

And so seeing the ways that BDS is connected to opposition to global imperialism, I think

is an important point to make because we can start to see that when the BDS companies

aren't getting the money, those targets aren't getting the money that they want, some

of this other stuff can't happen in the same way.

Absolutely.

There are different ways to do it.

And so all of that stuff, again, as we said, is connected.

And so she starts to really draw some of those connections in her article, which I really

appreciate.

So that's my application.

How about you?

No, I really appreciate your application.

And in particular, I think all of that is spot on.

I loved her point about if there were any real repercussions for Iraq and what's continuing

to happen in Palestine, like would we be here?

And so at some point, we have got to, as she says, stand up against this and call for

it to completely stop so that these things don't continue to happen because otherwise,

they will just continue to happen until none of us are here.

That's where we're headed.

I think none of us will be here because, yeah, the violence will win.

So I love that.

My application actually is, I'm going to just repeat what you shared when you opened

this piece.

And our conversation today, because I, I loved what Nagin said to open her up at peace.

She said, quote, plenty has been written in truth out in elsewhere about the totally

incoherent justifications for this war, the illegality of it, the potential for regional

disaster.

The joke it has made of the very idea of diplomacy.

All of this was and continues to be true and all of it is important to raise.

But more than anything, we in the US need to reckon with the fact that so much of our

state wealth, capacity and technology goes toward bearing children in rubble.

And I, I share that again because it's so profound.

The heaviness of that statement is so profound.

And you know, this is a moment in our lives that is so scary and so big and so important,

right?

We have to come together to fight it.

Otherwise, again, we're, we're killing children and we're killing innocent people.

And we're just killing people.

And it's no, we've got to stop it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

We'll set.

We'll bring it back.

Yeah.

Yeah.

How I open.

Yes.

Yes.

When you said that, I was like, oh, I want to say that.

Yeah.

It's all good.

You are learning an unlearning work beyond our conversation today.

My homework is to learn about a bill that's in Congress called the Block the Bombs Act

that's mentioned in this, in one of these articles, I don't remember which, but that

would prevent additional military aid going to Israel and I also want to learn about taxpayers

against genocide, which is giving people resources to use their leverage as taxpayers in the

United States to oppose continued support of Israel and the IDF and other military actions

in companies and whatnot.

Yeah.

So that's my homework.

What about you?

I love that.

I'm with you there.

I want to check out some of the movements that Nagine, in particular reference in her

op-ed piece.

She mentioned and you did to BDS, I'm familiar with that one, but like you said, she also

mentioned the taxpayer.

Taxpayers against genocide campaign, which, you know, is advocating and working to keep

federal friends for being used to violate human rights.

And then there was also the note tech for a part-time movement, which you also mentioned,

which is organizing and fighting for Silicon Valley to stop supplying the Israeli military

with computing power.

And I just hadn't heard of either of those movements before reading these pieces.

And so I want to look more into them, see what work they've done and what we can learn

from them.

Yeah.

And I remember some of this stuff being covered in Palestine Laboratory by Anthony Lone's

de Ains.

Yes.

And so there might be some connection there that we're, we might have talked about something

like this.

Yeah, maybe.

Absolutely.

And I remember a moment.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But good stuff.

Always get to learn more about what kind of things people are doing in the places where

they sit and how they're impacting things bigger than the, the locus of control they

feel like they have.

Absolutely.

All right.

Well, that's it for our conversation today on these two articles from Truth Out and

Damien, you're up next time.

What do you bring to the table in our next episode?

Yeah.

So I'm going to bring a piece from In These Times, which is called Capitalism Without Humans,

written by Sarah Jaffee and published actually in late January.

I haven't read it yet at all, but it's from the, the quick glances that I took of it.

It seems to sit at the intersection of technology and AI meets organizing and movement work

all across the country.

The tagline of the article is, quote, as new technologies, not immigrants replace human

labor, machine breaking as a tactic of rebellion is taking on a renewed vitality.

And I don't know.

Again, the bits and pieces I read seemed really fascinating to me.

And so I'm definitely looking forward to reading it in full and talking about it with you

next time.

Did you, when you skimmed it, did you see anything, any reference to the leadites?

Because we talked about them with the friends in common book and learn a lot, a lot more

about what they were actually about.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I wonder if there's a connection here that she's making it.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Well, and what really got me was there's a great picture of what are those self driving

cars that, you know, way most, the way most yeah that people have looked at.

Little on fire.

And that's not me.

I was like, wait.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Let me look at this.

I think somebody wants to bring Waymos around here somewhere.

Oh, I had not heard that.

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, I'm glad we're reading this then.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, with that, we want to thank you for joining us today.

You know what I'm going to ask you to do here.

But in case you forgot, please follow, leave a rating and review, share our podcasts with

the people in your life.

Follow us on social media, including Instagram, TikTok and Blue Sky.

Check us out on YouTube and sign up and join us on Patreon to get notified about any

new things we've got going on behind the scenes.

Yes.

Thank you for listening.

And remember, it's not about us, but it is about all of us.

And we'll talk to you next week.