Why Iran Remains a Strategic Power Despite Decades of Pressure

When you think of Iran, you probably think of this. At least 65 people have been killed in demonstrations that began in Tehran almost 2 weeks ago. Some 60 Americans bound and blindfolded are now beginning their sixth day of captivity inside the US embassy in Thran. So far, more than 3,000 people have been killed, according to the World Health Organization. Today, our perception of Iran is dominated by the regime that has controlled it for almost 15 years. But I want to show you a different Iran.

The Iran that existed long before this regime. I want to show you what led up to it. Because understanding that Iran is key to understanding how we got this brutal religious regime and how it has survived for so long. You might think that the story of modern Iran is going to be about religion, but in fact, the story I'm about to tell you is about power and fear. Because for most of its history, Iran was a superpower, an advanced civilization ruling over huge swats of land that today we call the Middle East and Central Asia. They have been culturally, militarily, politically at the center of things for a very long time.

Oh, and this was starting like over 2,000 years ago. But empires rise and fall and this empire eventually was in decline. Which gets us to our story which starts here. This moment, the year 1800, Iran is ruled by a family dynasty called the Kajars. And they find themselves in between two big empires. Both of them expanding pretty quickly. If you look at these empires old maps, you'll see that both of them called this place Persia. That's what outsiders called Iran. The Russian Empire had been fighting to get access to this land between these two seas. Seas that, by the way, are usable during winter, unlike Russia's other ports in the north.

They're going to have to control this land if they want to control Central Asia. Russia easily defeats Iran in a few wars and they take the land and get access to the seas and in doing so Russia makes Iran sign some treaties that gives Russia exclusive military control in the Caspian Sea. The treaty also says that Russian merchants can do what they want. They don't have to comply with Iranian law. It was a lot. Oh, wait, and I almost forgot. If this wasn't enough, Iran has to pay Russia back for the war. So, it's still the early 1800s, and Russia has just leveled up its strategic position in Central Asia, not just by conquering

this land, but by solidifying major leverage within Iran. Now, over here, the British are watching. They're watching closely, and they're getting nervous. Russia now has access to these seas, and it has leverage within Iran. That means easier access to this Gulf, the Persian Gulf that leads to the rest of the world. Even worse, this land east of Iran is strategic high ground. They call it the key to India, meaning if Russia got access here, it would threaten the British Empire's most valuable colony. Iran might take this over and give Russia access. This would be a nightmare for Britain.

A British general calls Russia a quote disagreeable and even dangerous neighbor. So the British Empire jumps into a competition for influence in this region that would come to be known as the great game. They fight several wars with Iran to stop them from getting the key to India. And this is where you start to see a really important pattern that we need to pay attention to. It's the reason I'm making this video. It's the thing that explains the modern-day Iran and its conflict with its neighbors. The British openly say that quote, "We do not want to occupy Iran, but we cannot see it occupied by our foes, aka Russia.

Iran is too big and mountainous to actually conquer. They just need to control it from the outside." Meanwhile, the king of Iran is struggling. He needs money to run his country. So he sees an opportunity to play these two competing empires off each other by selling them different forms of influence inside Iran like the exclusive right to control key industries inside the country. Basically monopolies in exchange for cash. These are called economic concessions and they give the empires influence in Iran without having to invade all while making money in the process. Let me just tell you something really quick. The US and Iran signed a ceasefire agreement last month. But a ceasefire doesn't necessarily bring

certainty. And the issue for most of us back home is that this is a story that's so complex and the effort required to understand it can feel overwhelming or impossible. Is it a good deal? Is it a bad deal? What does it even include? Every outlet seems to cover it differently. They have a different take, a different takeaway. And if you really want to figure out what's going on, it could take hours of work. That's why I'm a big fan and have partnered for years with today's sponsor, who is Ground News. Their mission is to help you understand the news to make it easier to decode and demystify what's actually going on. They are an app and a website that pulls from thousands of articles

and organizes them by story and then provides insights into things like political bias, reliability, who owns the outlet that's reporting on this stuff, even specific differences in the reporting itself. They've been recognized by the Nobel Peace Center for Advancing Media Literacy. So, let me show you how this works using that US Iran ceasefire story. You can see here on ground news that the story was covered by over 650 outlets. Ground News lets me filter by ownership, factuality, location so that I can see the full context and angles on these stories before I decide what to think. They have this bias comparison. It's a feature that lets me see specific differences in the reporting itself. For example,

left-leaning outlets are highly critical of the Iran deal. And then you can quickly see that right-leaning outlets use much more positive language, calling this deal, quote, a historic peace deal. Every outlet chooses their narrative and they use language and facts that reflect that narrative. What Ground News does is it just makes that all visible to you very quickly and easily. I've been using their app for years because it actually gives me full transparency into the barrage of news that we all face every day. It's something I can't get anywhere else and allows me to be a more critical thinker. It's completely funded by all of us subscribers, so there's no

corporate influences deciding what you see. You can get in on the Vantage plan, which is the one that I use, and you can get 40% off if you use the link in my description. It's ground.news/jny Harris, or you can just scan the QR code here on screen. Thanks, Ground News, for sponsoring today's video. So, over the next few decades, British and Russian engineers, bankers, merchants, and soldiers flood into Iran. They're exploiting natural resources, making money off everything from railroads to dams to bridges to factories. They're collecting tolls on customs and taxes. They're running lucrative banks.

They build some infrastructure, but much of the benefit flows outward. Britain builds this telegraph line across the country, but it's run by British subjects. And it's a game changer for Britain. Messages that once took months and travel to India in minutes. And the Iranian king is making money for the country, but he's using a good amount of it for his personal lifestyle. By the way, I'm going to start using the Farsy word for king to describe this leader. The word is sha. And even though this guy's basically a king, he is a king within the particular political context of Iran. It's the same reason we use like Zar to talk about

Russian kings or sultan to talk about an Ottoman king or pharaoh in ancient Egypt or emperor in China. You get the point. So the king going forward is the sha. Okay? So the sha is selling all of these industries and monopolies to both empires. And then in 1890 the sha sells Britain a total monopoly on tobacco for 50 years. Tobacco is a major part of daily social life in the country. But now everything has to go through a British middleman. This really hits a nerve. The people are starting to become fed up with outsiders controlling their country. So they band together and protest. And it works. The Shaw cancels the tobacco agreement with

Britain. Iranians are starting to realize that mobilizing together can bring about change. They rise up again in 1905 demanding a constitution. They want to put limits on the king's power. They want to create a parliament. They want to have representation. And they want to limit all these secret deals that the Sha has been making, selling off their country to foreigners. This is among the first constitutional revolutions in the Middle East. And it's looking like it's working. It's the early 1900s and Iran has a parliament. The Shaw is letting this happen, but very soon after he dies. And the next guy, his son, hates the parliament. doesn't like how it's limiting his power. You know who else hates all of this democracy? The

empires, especially Russia, whose influence in Iran, the new parliament, wants to diminish. So, Russia sends in 12,000 troops to support the Sha. They show up to the parliament with a bunch of cannons and they open fire on the parliament building. They kill hundreds of lawmakers and constitutional revolutionaries. They arrest many surviving revolutionaries. Others are executed. The sha is killing his own people with the help of outsiders. And unfortunately, this is something we will see again. But the Iranians striving for democracy fight on and they gain back some power in the country. It's the early 1900s and this pattern that we've seen for 100 years continues. The struggle for

influence in strategically located Iran. Germany enters the scene and Russia and Britain realize that they need to team up to keep German influence out. So instead of fighting each other, they divide Iran into spheres of influence and promise not to cross into each other's area. Of course, Iranians had no say over these lines of influence. And then a year after the empires slice up the country into spheres of influence, there's a discovery that will make Iran even more valuable to control. oil. Lots of oil. Now, the Shaw had sold the rights to explore for oil to a wealthy Englishman in 1901. And after 6 years of searching, he finally found it. Now, the British Navy would be switching from powering its ships with coal to oil. So,

look what happened here. Iran went from being a buffer zone that protected British trade routes and their vital colony to holding the key to Britain's naval dominance, which is their global dominance. Britain is not leaving Iran anytime soon. They would go on to establish a company we know today as British Petroleum or BP. And of course, they send troops to protect this vital resource, right in time for a war to break out in Europe. When World War I begins, Iran declares neutrality. They want no part in this fight. But the fight comes to them anyway. Iran is too strategically important, especially with all this oil.

The war ravages Iran's economy, and at least 2 million Iranians die from food shortages and disease caused by the war. Once again, Iranians are paying the price while the empires fight to protect their wealth and influence. After the First World War, Russia is going through a communist revolution, turning into the USSR or Soviet Union, and they leave Iran. But they're just next door. They could come back at any time. But for now, it's just the British Empire who wants to increase their influence here even more due to the vast oil reserves they're discovering. Oil had been a gamecher in World War I. It's one of the reasons the British won. And Germany, who didn't have access to nearly as much oil, lost. Oil is a

strategic weapon. They can't leave Iran. But Iranians are fed up with what has been over a hundred years of foreigners running their country from the outside. So this military man rises up. He works with the parliament to throw out the old sha and promises to make Iran great again. Trying to get the people to remember that this was a superpower. They need to restore that greatness. His name was Raasha Sha. At a time of rising nationalism everywhere, Raza Sha emphasizes Persian identity and greatness, reminding people that the majority of Iranians speak Farsy, not Arabic like much of the Middle East. And this Sha says that Iran was great before the Arabs brought Islam to Iran. So he wants to reduce the

influence of religion in the society. He wants to make the secular state the only political and legal power. In 1936, he bans women from wearing any kind of cover or veil. He wants to modernize Iran and push back against all the humiliating foreign influence that has been stopping the country from being able to determine their own destiny for decades. It feels like a new era for the country. He's building hospitals and schools and roads and a university. Farsy becomes the official language. Nomads are forced to settle down. He builds a railway across the country. He builds a strong centralized bureaucracy, a secular court system, a powerful army. and he demands that outsiders call it

Iran instead of Persia. And he crushes anyone who opposes his modernizing efforts. Okay, but not too fast. This is where we're going to see that pattern again. As part of all of this modernizing effort, the new leader brings in German engineers. And look at the date. Back in Europe, Germany just started a war with its neighbors. This is World War II. So, here comes Russia and Britain again. They demand that Raash Sha expel the Germans who could easily sabotage these weapon supply lines that the Soviets need to fight back against Germany and Europe. Or maybe they could sabotage Britain's valuable source of fuel for the war. Raz Shaw doesn't want to give in to the big empires. He's done with that. So, he stalls, tries

to negotiate with them, tries to play these empires off each other, and tries to remain neutral once again. But the British and Soviets are not having it. They pull a familiar act of pressure, this time invading Iran and forcing Raash Sha off the throne and into exile in South Africa. They replace him with his 22-year-old son, who is more willing to do what they want. So much for getting rid of foreign influence. During World War II, Iran is once again too weak to resist and too important to be left alone. a strategic corridor, a buffer zone between empires, a massive oil reserve, and these big powers occupy

huge swaths of the country, all a part of their global chessboard. Okay, so World War II is over and I want you to pay attention to this guy, Muhammad Raza Sha. Remember, he's the new Sha, the one that the Soviets and the British installed right in the run-up to World War II. Yeah, he's a big part of the next chapter of this story. So, just keep an eye on him. Oh, and let's update his photo. He's not 21 anymore. World War II is over. The Iranian people come out of World War II with even more motivation to stop this seemingly forever cycle of outsiders controlling and ravaging their country. Their democracy movement is now

four decades old and the people are developing a stronger and stronger culture of protest, intellectual discourse, politics, national pride, but it's never been able to take root because it's always disrupted by outsiders meddling in the country. And look, even though the war is over and the British are deolonizing around the world, they're still here pulling huge amounts of oil from Iranian soil, protecting it with troops, and shipping it around their empire. And the sha is okay with this because remember, the British installed this sha, their friends. But the people really don't like this sha. He's Britain's shaw, not Iran's.

He's a symbol of more of the same. Foreigners controlling the country. But you know who they do like? This guy. Muhammad Mosadc. He's a political leader and he rises up with a strong voice calling for Iranians to reclaim their country. Mosad wants to reject all imperial powers so that Iran can chart its own course. And item number one on his list is oil. Britain is pumping loads of oil out of Iran. But Iran is only getting 16% of the company's profits. So the Iranian Parliament asks to renegotiate the oil deal to more of an even split. They want it to be more like 50/50. Britain's open

to negotiation. They'll give more money, but not 50%. So the Iranian prime minister accepts this. But when he goes to parliament for approval, who stands up to reject it? Muhammad Mosadak. who argues that this valuable resource is Iran's. They should control it completely. Uh-oh. Britain's starting to get nervous. They say, "Okay, okay, fine. We'll do the 50/50 split." But it's too late. The political and public momentum towards Iran getting full control is too strong. The prime minister who was opposed to nationalization of the oil gets assassinated. And who does the parliament elect to be the new prime minister? Mosedc.

Mosedc looks like the guy who's going to finally put an end to foreign control to usher in a new Iran. One that's run by the people, not by the empires. It's 1951 and Mosadc's proposal to take back the oil company goes to Parliament and they approve it. And now Britain is really freaking out. The US and the World Bank step in to try to mediate, try to find a peaceful deal, but neither side gives in. Britain will pay more, but they will not give up control. And Mosed won't budge on Iranians controlling their oil completely. Britain then tries to punish Iran by boycotting their oil, sending Royal Navy warships to this choke point in the Persian Gulf to deter any tankers that are considering transporting oil

out of Iran, hoping that this will hit them economically and give them leverage in the negotiation. But Iran doesn't budge. Oil is the ultimate symbol of Iran taking the country back from this 150 years of foreign meddling. So Britain decides it's time to play dirty. The American CIA is in the middle of the Cold War trying to counter Soviet influence around the world. And the CIA's Middle East guy is in London. The British intelligence agency gets a meeting with him and they try to convince him that Mosedc could be an asset to the communist Soviet Union. The brand new President Eisenhower wants to do anything he can to counter Soviet influence anywhere on Earth. What if Mosad is sympathetic to the Soviets and

they let them get access to the oil? We can't have that. And they conclude that they need to get rid of Mosedc. This is basically a rerun of several previous episodes of this story where the big empires use Iran as a playing field to counter the influence of their geopolitical rival. So, the CIA allocates $12 million in today's money to do whatever it takes to get Mosad out. They sneak people into the country who start quietly bribing politicians, paying organizers to bring crowds into the street against Mosad. They give money to newspapers to attack him. And when the moment's right, the Western friendly Sha steps up and tries to fire Mosad from being prime minister. And it totally backfires. The people

keep supporting Mosedc and the Sha flees the country for Rome. The CIA regroups and continues their secret campaign of influence. And they eventually get enough of the military to flip. Getting the military on board is usually the defining feature of a coup. And now enough of the Iranian military supports the sha and not Mosed. They go to Mosedc's house. They arrest him. They run him through a military trial and charge him for treason because he didn't obey when the Shaw tried to fire him. They sentence him to life under house arrest. He is officially silenced. And then the Shaw, remember the same Shaw that Britain installed in World War II to be their Shaw. He flies back into the country and takes total power once

again. He remains Britain's guy, but now he's loyal to the Americans who just reinstalled him as the leader by throwing out the person that the democracy had chosen. Britain keeps control of Iran's oil business. But they do start sharing 50% of the profits with Iran. And to avoid future backlash, the British divide their share of oil between other big nations, giving a huge share to the US, who had just spent a lot of money to help them save the oil. Mosedc almost did it. He almost broke the cycle of outsiders controlling Iran's government, resources, and economy. But once again, he was thwarted by the more powerful empires. And the Sha goes on to do a version of what his dad did to Iran to modernize

the country and the society in a western direction, trying to reduce the influence of Islam on the society. He allows women to vote, increases rural education, but does all of this with an iron fist. He eliminates his political opposition. He censors the press, and he imposes Western dress and lifestyle on the society. The CIA helps him create a secret police that he uses to capture and torture and spy on anyone who opposes his regime. And the sha gives Americans in Iran legal immunity, which is a perfect echo of the humiliating treaties that Iran was forced to sign with Russia over a hundred years earlier. And the oil keeps flowing. Iran is getting rich, but its tens of millions of people are becoming

increasingly resentful that their leader is clearly a western puppet. And one of the most vocal critics of all of this, Rhola Humeni, a religious leader who abides by a strict conservative interpretation of Shia Islam. He starts giving speeches against the Sha. Now if you look at Hmeni's speeches and I have looked at and listened to many you start to see frustration not just with the sha but frustration and anger at this entire story that we've been telling so far these years and decades and centuries of Iran being sold to outside powerful empires. He says that the empires have quote invaded Iran and occupied our country.

The property of the people was exposed to danger. The government has sold our independence, committed treason against this country and against Islam. Before it was the British that brought our misfortune and now it's the Soviets on one hand and the Americans on the other. All of our miseries are caused by those imperialists. He calls on the religious leaders to rise up to avoid quote this nation to be slaves of Britain one day and America the next. He says that a number of foreign states carry off our oil after drawing it out of the ground and the negligible sum that they pay to the regime they have installed returns to their pockets by other routes. They have reduced the Iranian people to the

level lower than an American dog. And all in all, the people must quote throw the sha out of Iran. It's a call for revolution. Now, I told you at the beginning that modern day Iran is not all about religion and religious beliefs, and that's true. And yet, this man, Humeni, is a religious cleric, an imam, a leader in the Shia Islamic tradition. And in that tradition, there is a particular emphasis on martyrdom. So while Humeni's rhetoric echoes a lot of the anti-imperial revolutionary language that was happening by the way in a lot of parts of the world at this time's revolutionary language is anchored

particularly in religious doctrines of the oppressed rising up against the oppressor divine justice skepticism of secular governments and this mix of religious and revolutionary language resonates among the people. Humeni is arrested and almost executed, but the people rise up in protest. The Sha responds with soldiers and open fire. The Sha's people worry that executing Humeni will make the uprising worse. So, Humeni is released, but forced to leave the country. He's now in exile, but he continues to spread his message to the Iranian people by smuggling sermons into the country on cassette tapes. Now his speeches about imperialists imposing an unjust order on

Iran are echoing through villages and mosques. People are listening to the cry to overthrow the tyrannical and corrupt regime. Meanwhile, thanks to surging oil prices, things are going pretty well for the Sha over the next decade. He's developing the economy. There's new infrastructure, roads, dams, ports, airports. There's a middle class that's emerging. There's schools and universities. Students are going abroad to study. The US even encourages Iran to start a nuclear energy program. The Sha also spends a lot of the oil money on building a huge military. He becomes the number one buyer of military equipment on Earth, becoming completely reliant on US weapons. And Iran becomes a significant military power in the Middle

East. The Sha is also spending money on opulent oil funded palaces, throwing extravagant parties in the middle of the desert where guests fly in on helicopters and French chefs serve luxury food. The rest of the country is watching this and resentment is simmering. Humeni is continuing to rally people from his exile and by the late 1970s, people are routinely taking to the streets. Like the tobacco protest in 1890, this is transcending any one group. People from all walks of life are coming together. The shop owners, the working class, the students, the intellectuals, the religious. They don't all agree on what the future of Iran should be. But they all agree on one thing. That the Sha is

a foreign puppet who can no longer be tolerated. He's losing control. He tries to crack down by declaring martial law to stop the protesters, but they don't stop coming. Even after the military opens fire, the oil workers then go on strike, which is a huge blow to the government who relies on a constant flow of oil for its revenue. And as a lastditch effort, the Sha tries to appoint a moderate opposition figure as prime minister, but it's too late. The people have turned against the monarchy. It's January 1979 and the Sha flees the country once again. He claims he's only going on vacation and that he would be back, but he would never return to Iran. This is Hmeni's moment. He

flies back to Thrron and he's greeted by crowds of millions of people. He gets the military to flip to stop supporting the old government and he quickly consolidates some control over the chaos. Foreigners flee, especially British and Americans who are enemy number one. Though the revolutionaries do seize 66 Americans and hold them hostage for over a year. Humeni dissolves the old government, the monarchy, the parliament, and he replaces it with a new system, one that he developed while in exile. Hey, if you're still watching, you are probably somebody who wants to better understand the world. So do the thousands of members of our club called Newress. Newress is where smart, curious people get a deeper version of what we

do across all of our channels. In-depth interviews with experts we speak to, conversations between creators, and a place to connect with other members directly. And I just launched a podcast with is that only New Press members get access to right now. 60 bucks a year to become a founding member. That money goes directly to support work like this. You can go check it out at newress.com. The link is in the description. And I'll see you over there. This is a huge moment in the story. The people just overthrew a westernbacked regime, not with force and a war, but through sheer will of the population. 40 million

people who are tired of this story of being controlled by outsiders. I want to take a moment to show you what they built next. The inside of the regime. Because the regime that Hmeni built is the regime that today exists. It's the one that has been fighting a war with Israel and the United States. And it is the one that is more difficult to topple than outsiders believe. And I want to show you why this system is unique. And that's because it's a reaction to Iran's story up to this point. This is a system that protects the country against foreign intervention. The intervention that Humeni and his religious followers see as the source of moral corruption in the society. To prevent that from happening

again, Humeni says that there must be religious leaders who sit at the top of the system. Specifically, this one leader, the supreme leader, the guardian of the system. Iran's new constitution gives him a lot of power. He gets to appoint all these other government leaders. But look, there's also a democracy tucked into this system. People vote. They elect members of a parliament. They elect a president. They even elect the 88 people who have the power to appoint or remove the supreme leader.

There's even courts to protect people's rights. This seems like a balanced democracy, right? Well, not quite. This is actually what we call a filtered democracy. It's filtered through religion. There are at least two religious councils who are appointed by the supreme leader that control who actually gets to run for office or which laws get passed. And once you dive into it, you see that this whole system is built to prevent any future revolutions from overthrowing this religious government. The system has multiple ways to keep people in line. Local religious leaders and state media carry the regime's message. There's a morality police that enforces dress codes like women covering their hair. And in

addition to a conventional military that protects the borders and deters invasions, the regime itself has its own military. It's called the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. And it has its own ground forces, air force, and navy all dedicated to the survival of the regime. And perhaps most effective, they have this volunteer militia that helps exert control of the regime inside every city, village, town, and neighborhood in Iran. And finally, one last special unit in the Revolutionary Guard Corps is dedicated to spreading Iran's power and influence outside of Iran's borders. All in all, Iran has over a half a million active military personnel and well over a million if you include the voluntary militia networks. And so since 1979,

this system has survived. It has survived invasion. It survived a bloody 8-year war with Iraq right after the revolution. And to deter anyone else in the region from threatening their survival, the Iranian regime keeps expanding its proxy network throughout the Middle East, funding militias that help it survive. Then the regime survived the death of its founder in 1989 and the new supreme leader Ali Kami carried on with this same system. The regime has grown more and more unpopular over the decades which has led to mass protests but the regime survives every time. And during all of this, Iran has been watching as their formal rivals and their neighbors build the ultimate survival tool.

Iran realized that if they really wanted the ultimate deterrent from foreign intervention, they too needed nuclear weapons. So for the last 40 years, this has been a story of a paranoid regime who's resentful towards the West and supercharged with apocalyptic religious fervor, secretly pursuing nuclear weapons and using its big network of militias that it funds throughout the region to project power in the Middle East to threaten its enemies. All in the name of stopping this centuries long cycle of foreign intervention in their country. All while the West, specifically Israel and the United States, try to stop them through a combination of cutting them off the global economy, making diplomatic deals, and most recently through a full-on war.

These most recent wars between Iran and its enemies, Israel, United States, have really been a part of Israel's strategy to weaken Iran, to not just stop their nuclear capabilities, but to also weaken this network of proxy militias they have around the region. And ultimately, if you listen to the leader of Israel for the last 20 years, the goal is to stop this standoff once and for all by toppling this regime, by getting rid of it altogether. Israel's wanted to do this for decades, and they finally got the US on board. But this is where the long story that we just went through starts to teach us some lessons about what might happen next. First remember that this country comes from what was for most of its history a

civilizational superpower, the dominant power in the region. And for the last 200 years, it has been humiliated, controlled by outsiders who have dominated it through coercion. That memory, that resentment is woven into modern-day Iran, especially the regime. A regime that rose in a burst of anger in 1979. A regime that yes is fueled by apocalyptic religious fervor and belief. But as we now see, it is also fueled by this story by ensuring that this never happens again. that outsiders will never again control Iran, coersse Iran and its people and its government and who have built a paranoid high control regime full of multiple parallel governments and layers of different militaries who centralize the power around this supreme

leader. And so what we see as one expert told me if Israel takes out a 100 top officials in an air strike there'll be a hundred more waiting to take their place. This is a regime that is designed to be coup and revolution proof. And the last thing I must say is that this has been a story mostly about Iran's government and its conflicts with outsiders. I have said nothing about the people. When I was in my 20s, I studied Farsy and I got to know a lot of Iranian people and I learned a lot about the difference between the regime and the people. Iranians are some of the most generous, kind, enthusiastic, brilliant people I've ever met. And I learned that the vast majority of them, 80% according to some polls, do not support this regime. And yet

these people continue a centuries long tradition of Iranian people being stuck between the government and the outside powers that want to control them. Thanks for watching everyone. Couple things. First off, uh 50% of you watching are not subscribed. If you like this stuff, please subscribe for free. It really helps what we do here. Helps support. Also, I just want to say one more time, thanks to Ground News. God News makes it easy to compare global perspectives. I can see how sources in Iran cover stories versus how it's reported in the US all in one place. You can go to ground.new/jny Harris to get 40% off the unlimited access Vantage plan and see for

yourself. And I just lastly want to let you in on um something that I haven't fully talked about yet, but if you've made it this far in the video, I'm going to tell you I'm working on a big documentary series called The Human Element. It's going to launch later this year. Uh, there's more info on that over at Newress, our club of curious people. You can go check it out at newpress.com. Thank you all for being here. I'll see you in the next one.