From Michigan to Iran

Foad Mahdavi asks me: “Will US policy change?”

Transcript

Foad Mahdavi: In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful, hello everybody, hope you are doing great, welcome back to FoaDebate. We are witnessing a political realignment in the United States, coming off a historic blue tsunami in the midterms. The Democratic base is clearly demanding a new direction. And perhaps nowhere is this shift more evident than in Michigan, where Abdul El Sayed, a progressive Egyptian-American and practicing Muslim, just won a Senate seat. The big questions are, how will his presence in the Senate challenge the status quo? And what does his victory tell us about the changing face of American society and its appetite for endless wars?

To help us unpack all of this, I am absolutely honored to welcome our guest today, Dr. Kevin Barrett. He is an author, political analyst, and Islamologist, and has spent decades analyzing U.S. foreign policy and the intersection of religion and politics. As a Muslim American himself, and a fierce critic of the war on terror and Washington’s military adventurism, he brings a wealth of knowledge and a highly critical eye to today’s discussion. Dr. Barrett, welcome to the show and thank youso much for joining us today.

Kevin Barrett: Good to be back with you, Foad.

Foad Mahdavi: Let’s start with the social dimension. As an Islamologist and a Muslim American, what did you feel watching Abdul El-Sayed win? Beyond the historic nature of it, what does his election actually mean for the Muslim community in America, which has faced decades of Islamophobia and marginalization?

Kevin Barrett: Well, it was at least qualified good news, of course. I was particularly happy about it because my friend MD Alam has been a Muslim American activist in the Democratic Party going way back to, oh, I don’t know, 2010 or something like that. And he’s in Michigan now and he’s part of this movement that’s empowering Muslims to run for political office in Michigan. And so this is definitely a big achievement for those people. And so I’m happy to see that my friend MD Alam and his friends have actually made something big happen. And that’s great.

Of course, we’ve seen massive Islamophobia, scapegoating of Muslims, and US domestic and especially foreign policy shaped around wildly irrational fear and hatred of Muslims over the past 25 years—since the Zionists blew up the World Trade Center and blame Muslims in a false flag operation designed to launch a new era of scapegoating Muslims. And it’s still going on. But there’s been pushback all along the way.

Some of the pushback has downsides as well as positive sides. And I can go into that more if you want.

Foad Mahdavi: Okay, he’s a progressive who defeated establishment-backed candidates. Does his victory represent a permanent shift in the Democratic base toward progressive grassroots politics, or is the establishment going to find a way to co-opt this movement?

Kevin Barrett: There has been a back and forth between the mostly Jewish-Zionist funded so-called centrist wing of the Democratic party, which controls the party itself—they control the bureaucracy—and the actual voters, who tend to be much more progressive, especially the organizers. And so Abdul El-Sayed is part of that so-called left-wing group. He worked with Bernie Sanders in past elections.

That struggle will continue. But the so-called progressive forces are winning. They’re gaining ground on various issues. And one of the most important, of course, is foreign policy and specifically West Asia policy, specifically policy on this insane war on Iran and this insane support for genocide in Palestine. And Abdul El-Sayed has been able to be more outspoken about those issues, especially with the Palestine issue, than most candidates who would stand a chance of being elected to the Senate. And so the progressive wing of the Democrats can actually stand against genocide, and be more critical of the war on Iran, than anybody else in the Senate. That struggle between the two wings of the Democratic Party will continue, but the progressives are gaining ground.

Foad Mahdavi: El-Sayed has been openly critical of unconditional US support for Israel and the blank checks given to the Pentagon. With his seat in the Senate, how much influence can he actually have in shifting the U.S. narrative and policy in West Asia?

Kevin Barrett: Well, he’ll have some influence because it’s not just that he got elected, but that his election was a symptom of a larger change in public opinion across both the left and the right, the Democratic and Republican parties, that’s being led by younger people. These past three years of live-streamed genocide have awakened the new generation, and even some older people, to the horror of this genocidal apartheid regime in occupied Palestine. And because Abdul El-Sayed is willing to be reasonably outspoken about that, and because he’s a lightning rod for talk about that issue because of his Muslim name, he will clearly have a very strong effect on the discussion, and he’ll help move it forward.

And it’s moving forward not just in the Democratic Party, where now 80% of Democrats view Israel unfavorably, but also in the Republican Party, where the younger voters have turned against Israel as well. J.D. Vance, the Vice President, just tweeted a tweet saying that this catastrophe for the Republicans happened because of the war on Iran, which was driven by Israel. He sees it too, and he knows he has no political future if he continues to go along with this traditional blind American support for the genocidal Zionist entity occupying Palestine. So I think Abdul El-Sayed has fertile ground for pushing American public opinion and policy in a fresh new direction.

Foad Mahdavi: We have been discussing how the new Congress might act as a check on the war machine. Given your staunch anti-war stance, do you see this situation as a real institutional break on military escalation, perhaps regarding Iran, or does the executive branch still hold all the cards?

Kevin Barrett: Well, the executive branch has usurped power in the United States and has relegated the Congress to secondary status, and this is unconstitutional. The Constitution of the United States clearly gives Congress power to declare war, to launch a war. Congress is supposed to decide if there’s a war or not.

And that hasn’t happened. The executive branch has usurped that power unconstitutionally. And the presidents who’ve done this over the past several generations all should have been impeached, convicted, and thrown in prison for treason to the Constitution—Trump more than any of them, especially after this unprovoked and dastardly sneak attack on Iran under cover of negotiations, this war that has been such a disaster, it’s led to so much suffering in Iran, and it’s leading to suffering all over the world. And it is also not serving American objectives at all. It’s basically just insane enslavement to Israel, as even the Vice President is basically admitting. So that situation really needs to change.

And whether Congress will be able to find ways to push back against the president’s policies is an open question. They do have power over spending. That’s something that hasn’t fully been taken away. So they can threaten Trump to withhold spending for things that he wants money spent on, and use that as a bargaining chip to try to moderate his behavior in his foreign policy. And we’ll see how that works out.

But ultimately, what the United States needs is to get back to its Constitution. Thomas Massie introduced (legislation based on) the War Powers Act, making it clear that the Constitution empowers Congress to decide on matters of war and peace, not the President. This is the kind of thing that the United States needs. This new situation might actually make that possible. I don’t have a lot of hope, but it’s not as impossible now as it was a few days ago.

Foad Mahdavi: Okay, great. Do you see any difference between the Democrats and Republicans facing Iran?

Kevin Barrett: Well, there is a difference, but it’s really a difference between degrees of evil, the greater evil and the lesser evil, the greater Satan and the lesser Satan. Clearly, the Republicans under Trump are the greater evil. They are totally controlled by the most extreme gangster pro-genocide wing of the Zionist movement. And how that control operates, whether it’s money, whether it’s blackmail, Epstein tapes on Trump, who knows? But they’re just completely controlled on that side. Vance is telling us he’s not, so I hope that’s true. But Trump certainly is.

As for the Democrats, they are, quote unquote, “pragmatic.” But what that means is that they’re still going to be the enemy of Iran, at least until some major new reckoning arrives or some huge change happens. If we look back at Obama, he didn’t negotiate the JCPOA to do Iran any favors. He didn’t even comply with its provisions and release the money that he was obliged to release to Iran. He actually didn’t honor his agreement. And the Democrats also, even El-Sayed—he has called Hamas evil, which is just outrageous. But as a guy with a Muslim name, he had to do that to get elected. And I believe he’s also said negative things about Iran, as have other so-called pro-peace people in the United States.

So it’s really only a small minority of we Americans who have actually studied the issue, and have recognized the huge mistakes in policy and the evil arrogance of America’s policy towards Iran and towards the region, who are willing to speak with full honesty. And we can’t participate in mainstream discourse. All three of my YouTube channels, were nuked. I’ve been deplatformed from all sorts of platforms and ways of being paid and things like that because my views are outside the mainstream in the United States: I’m just being honest and saying Iran is not evil. Hamas is not evil. The United States has pursued really very, very mistaken and wrong policies. That’s the obvious truth, but nobody is allowed to say it and still be part of the mainstream political process. People like El-Sayed have to watch what they say and basically lie. They basically have to tone down the reality so much that really they’re obliged to lie to get elected. And that’s very sad, but it’s the reality.

Foad Mahdavi: And final question, how close we are to war?

People are wondering whether Trump has been humbled enough to want to put the war behind him. And the only way to do that would be to comply with the memorandum of understanding (MOA) that he signed. It shouldn’t be that hard to do what he signed, but he’s resisting it.

So we’re hoping that he’ll just do that and get this issue behind him and go back to previous situation with Iran, with the exception that the United States will now be alerted that it can’t just go and bomb Iran any time it wants to anymore (from bases that won’t exist). So let’s hope he does that.

But there’s a very substantial chance that he will go ahead and take Netanyahu’s advice and double down and launch more bombings, more attacks, possibly even try to invade and occupy Iranian islands. And if he does, the American defeat will just be that much greater, but there will be more suffering as well in Iran, all over the world, and in the United States. So we’ll see how it plays out…

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