Category: Iran

Interviews: The New Protests in Iran

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Zunes’s main talking points for a series of interviews on the protests in Iran, December 28-31:

  • the protests are significant in that the bazaar is, traditionally a backbone of support for the regime, have been in the leadership of the resistance
  • there is significant poor and working class participation in the protests, unlike some previous movements which have been disproportionately students, middle class, etc.
  • U.S.-led sanctions are unjustifiable and are hurting the economy, but the regime’s corruption, mismanagement, and lack of accountability are the bigger problem
  • the economic problems are systemic, so changes at the Central Bank and minor adjustments in fiscal policies will not satisfy most protesters
  • the protests are already going beyond economic issues; most Iranians do want at minimum much greater democratization/accountability within the current system and an increasing number want regime change
  • the U.S. and Israel will try to take advantage of the situation, but the protests are homegrown and not the result of imperialist machinations
  • threats of military action by the U.S. and Israel with likely strengthen the Iran regime, since people tend to rally around the flag in case of outside threats and most Iranians across the political spectrum do not trust either country

It’s Not About the Bomb

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The Progressive, August 5, 2025, by Stephen Zunes [source & audio]
It would be a mistake to view the U.S. bombing of Iran and support for Israel’s twelve-day war on that country as simply about preventing the Iranian regime from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Ultimately, it’s about punishing Iran for its refusal to acquiesce to the hegemonic aspirations of the United States and its Middle Eastern allies. There was a time when Iran was the most important ally of the United States in the region. In 1953, the CIA facilitated the overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected government following its nationalization of the country’s oil resources…

Iran Vows Stronger Response If U.S., Israel Attack Again

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FO° Talks July 30, 2025 [25 mins.]
Fair Observer’s Rohan Khattar Singh speaks to Professor Stephen Zunes about Iran, Israel and the United States… Trump has brought back the “Maximum Pressure” policy back on Iran with new sanctions, and for the first time, direct military strikes on Iranian soil. Zunes doesn’t believe Iran was building nuclear weapons, but after the recent strikes by Israel and the US, Tehran would now like to build some as a deterrent and is now closer to Russia and China. Also Israel’s military operations and Apartheid conditions in Gaza…

Did Washington Post amplify Moroccan propaganda?

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African Digital Democracy Observatory
Disinfo.Africa quoted Zunes June 27, 2025:
Washington Post echoes disputed claims that Saharan mercenaries were captured in Aleppo:
On April 12, 2025, the Washington Post published a story describing the new Syrian government’s alleged efforts to dismantle illicit Iranian supply lines running through southern Syria… largely to aid Hezbollah in their war against Israel [and] implicated soldiers from an Algerian-based nationalist movement in the Iran-Hezbollah conspiracy. [But] this TruthAfrica investigation shows, the central pieces of evidence for these allegations appear to be a distortion of an Algerian ambassador’s statements and an inauthentic document… Steven Zunes told Truth Africa, “The Hezbollah/Iran connection is utter nonsense… The idea that [The Polisario Front] would be lying with this autocratic, reactionary Shia group,” he told us, “just seems quite absurd….”

No Iranian threat ‘other than having US regional interests challenged’

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Al Jazeera June 22, 2025 [source], 3-minute video,
also World News:
Zunes says the suggestion that Iran posed any kind of threat to the US is “totally nonsense”… “Iran has no capabilities of reaching the United States with its missiles or other kinds of weaponry… And if the concern was about their nuclear programme eventually being militarised to make nuclear weapons, Trump would not have destroyed” the 2015 nuclear deal…“I have a feeling he’s been wanting to launch war on Iran for some time…” contrary to what Trump had campaigned on… [Iran has] “a number of options… They can attack US forces directly. There are up to 40,000 Americans within the range, not just of Iranian missiles but of drones and other weaponry… You have the fleet in the Persian Gulf, just off the Iranian coast. They can be vulnerable as well if they attack… it could impact global shipping, impacting oil prices and indeed the entire global economy… You also have proxy militias in Iraq who could target American bases there… So there are a number of ways American forces could be vulnerable, and I would be surprised if the Iranians don’t target at least some of these.”