Transcript
Iranian American journalist Hooman Majd on the war and his recent writing (Hour 1)
Nite Lite with Pete Schwaba and Greg Bach · Wed Mar 18, 2026
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Yeah, come on!
Here's Pete Schwabba and Greg Bach.
Dude!
Welcome, ladies and gentlemen.
Welcome to Nightlight MP Chihuahua, Greg Bach is sitting just across the stage from me as we bring you yet another hopefully time of the evening where you can kind of wind down that transition between work and home and Send you into the evening packing to nothing but bliss and calm Which was what we try to do every night.
It's great to be with you Greg.
How are you tonight my friend?
I am doing peachy good.
Well my friend Wow,
that was interesting
string words there.
I like that.
I'm someone who knows how to talk words good.
Very well done.
Well, we got two more
hours.
Yeah, I'm doing well.
I've got my driveway was finally plowed tonight by a friend who half did it the other day and he came back and finished it tonight.
So I don't have to I don't have to feel like I'm in one of those truck commercials at Christmas time.
barreling through snow every time I leave now.
Some of the streets here are getting plowed.
Things
are getting back to normal.
So life in Christmas City, USA is returning to normal slowly but surely.
So I'm happy about that.
That's always good to hear.
The weather is starting to warm up a little bit right now and then snow is starting to melt already.
I'm imagining that when I get back from town, when I get back into town on Sunday, most of the snow will be gone.
But that's not saying much.
I mean, you guys...
We didn't
get much.
Yeah, we got a dusty.
We got like three inches and nothing.
But still, it's just interesting that when I leave here, it'll be wintery.
And when I come back, it'll probably be springy.
Springy.
It's so weird
because I was upstairs talking to my wife before.
And out the window, I see this drip.
Drip.
Like a drip every three seconds with how much snow we got.
I'm looking at mid-May.
before all this to melt.
So that's what we're dealing with here.
We may have to head to the subtropics of Milwaukee at some point.
Get some warm weather.
Dom Lee, producing the show, working the board.
How you doing?
good.
Came off without a hitch.
Came off without a hitch.
Is today Wasabi Wednesday or Worcestershire Wednesday?
your roommate appreciate tacos, that's
No confrontation All
right, well that's fantastic I'm glad everybody's in a good mood.
We're all in a great mood.
I like that too.
It seems like you know
This is a, we're off to a good start here.
12 seconds into the show, but it's a long way to go.
So we have a great show tonight, folks.
We have two outstanding guests, a great question.
Our guest
is five three.
We have three guests, don't we?
We have three guests, correct.
We
have
two guest slots that will be occupied by three guests.
And all very fascinating.
Our first guest, Greg, I'm very excited to talk to Human Majd, an Iranian.
American journalist and author of a bestselling times book.
He's authored three books.
He's kind of a I would say he's an expert on what we're dealing with right now with the American Israeli war.
So he'll be a lot of fun.
I don't know if it'll be fun to talk to, but very informative and insightful.
And then in hour number two, we've got actress Winter Williams and director Matthew Brown.
They are a package deal.
They're married and they've got to be, you know,
They've got to work together as husband and wife
and
as artists.
Yeah, I
don't know about you Greg.
That seems like kind of a tall order
I mean the thing is I love my wife a lot I wouldn't want to work with her and not because it's a thing of like I don't want to work with my wife I don't want my wife to have to endure me Like when I say I don't want to work with my wife I'm saying that on her behalf because I know She would go in about 20 minutes be like if you don't quit now.
This is over.
Oh dear
I'm a fun person.
Let me tell you
listen.
I I spend two hours a day with you three if you include pre-show post-show meetings I think you're a swell guy.
I don't know what your wife's problem
is Hey now, don't you talk about my wife like that?
Don't you talk about my wife like that even if you're defending me?
Yeah, exactly.
It's a don't don't don't talk about my hypothetical version of my wife in this situation like that
That's fair yeah, yeah
But three great guests tonight in this two-hour extravaganza and we've got... Is it too early?
Is it crazy to go to the question in the night already?
Now let's do the question and then we got something else coming up too, so let's go to the question.
Let's talk about the question.
Okay, question.
Question.
All right, tomorrow is National Let's Laugh Day.
So tonight's question, to kind of lead into that, is who makes you laugh?
And this is a good one, folks.
You can have fun with this.
It could be a family member, it could be a comedian, an actor, an actress, whomever, answer the question, tell us who makes you laugh, and let's have some fun with this.
8-5-5-7-5-2-4-8-4-2, 8-5-5-7-5 Civic, or...
I don't know if you know this, Greg.
You probably do.
We've been doing this a while now.
People can text us on the app, the Civic Media app, and give us their answer.
That's always a good option.
Beaking of people texting us, Pete.
Yes.
You know what we're going to do right now because we're talking about the Civic Media app?
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Are you all ready for this guy?
Are you two are you two are you ready for this?
Oh, I'm so ready.
Okay.
I
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Yeah, I'm a big fan of the biggest words.
Oh my gosh, just the I my brain is huge.
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grab your civic media app folks, open it up, find your favorite station, W-A-U-K, and text in the word cloud.
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The word is cloud.
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Boom.
Very well done.
Love it.
Thank you.
So we'll get we'll get who makes you laugh We'll get some keywords.
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Oh my gosh, all the text coming in right now.
Michael, Betsy, and Troy, and Dan, and Christine, and A-A-Ron.
Oh my
goodness.
A-A-Ron.
We have to have Rich Talarico on, Greg.
I don't know if you know this.
The guy that wrote that sketch for Key and Peele is a friend of the show.
He's been
on
several times.
Hilarious guy, and that sketch crushes.
I
think we either did or still do follow each other on the Twitter.
Oh, nice.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He tried to, yeah, he was, he's kind of starting to do stand-ups, so.
I always thought he was a stand-up, but he didn't realize he wasn't,
huh?
He might have done a little bit of it, but obviously he's like, you know, entrenched in sketch and very good at it and won awards, and that sketch that he wrote, the substitute teacher, I think is in, yeah, I'm sure of it.
It's in the Smithsonian
for like 20 years or
something.
Oh my goodness.
Yeah.
Wow.
Perfect example of a great sketch comedy writing so awesome shout out rich teller eco.
There we go
So yeah, the text line is lighting up booming blowing up whatever the kids call it these days But we've got other stuff to get to lots going on in the news today, right?
Yes, sir.
Yes, sir There it is story big story huge story
Gigantic story gigantic Yeah, it looks like someone's went in front of the Senate the Senate Homeland Security Committee today to try to become the Secretary of Homeland Security there Pete
That was a big.
Yeah, the confirmation hearing for Mark Wayne Mullen the new DHS Candidate and Rand Paul is the committee chair and
I wasn't
expecting that I didn't know they had a history really or that there was bad blood.
Oh, there's beef
Yeah,
there is a beef But is there
something else like I know Mark Wayne wanted to fight the head of the Union and that's that's rational on the Senate floor, but What was his issue with Rand Paul?
I think Rand Paul just doesn't like him thinks he's too aggressive, right?
Well, there was there was a back-and-forth or where Rand Paul essentially Mark Wayne Mullen
So Mark Wayne Wellin thinks that violence is sort of a way to solve problems Yes, as you mentioned he did get into a back-and-forth with Sean O'Brien from I think it was the from AEW I can't remember which Union it was but it was between the two of them where like Mark Wayne Mullins stood up Bernie Sanders has to be like sit down.
You are a United States senator sit We're
not doing this right
now.
You sit down right now sit down You're a United States senator take your seat is it take where should I take it?
But there was a, I said, Mullen did not apologize for his past remarks where he called Paul a freaking snake.
And he understood completely why someone would assault him.
That's what Mark Wayne Mullen said about Senator Rand Paul.
And Rand Paul didn't forget it.
Shocking.
A politician doesn't forget.
And so they got back and forth into it.
So there's an article in Raw Story about this where
They're talking about the back and forth and they're talking about the fact that, you know, Rand Paul is trying to say like, Hey man, you didn't apologize.
You didn't say I regret nothing.
And, and Mark Wayne Mullen does not back down.
And I don't find any sort of like, you know, there's no respect I have for Mark Wayne Mullen whatsoever.
I think he is a, a failed MMA fighter who is just a, not a good representative of what should be in.
what should be in our Congress.
So the fact that Rand Paul wanted to go after him, here for it.
I'm here for it.
Then he played a video too.
Oh my God.
He, you know, he also suggested dueling.
He said, you know, years ago, you could still have a duel.
And then Rand Paul jumped in and said, there was a duel that was illegal, though.
There were people holding one of the people at gunpoint during
the
duel.
This is like 130 years ago or something like that.
Well, he talked about the fact that back in the day, they used to fight each other in the well of the Congress and the Senate.
Like that used to happen.
Yes, because it was the 19th century.
Right.
Yeah, it was strange.
And then he told some story about how Donald Trump called to check on his son and he teared up because his son was in a bad accident, which, you know, I'm not going to judge him for that at all.
But when Ron Johnson was asked by a Scripps News reporter called Nathaniel Reed, I think he said, are you surprised at the exchange or what Rand Paul had to say to Mark Wayne Mullen?
And Ron Johnson just said, not overly.
That was his only comment.
So this will be interesting.
I think the Republicans typically are still in his corner.
It looks like
he'd
probably get confirmed, but it might be a little bit of a slog.
It might be hard, but also remember Mark Wayne Mullen has absolutely no qualifications whatsoever to be running this department whatsoever.
None whatsoever.
He's even a worse candidate than Kristi Noem.
And Kristi Noem was terrible.
What's your point, Greg?
My point is we're going to be coming right back with more nightlight with Pete Schwab and Greg Bach here on the Civic Media Network.
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Welcome back.
This is Nightlight with Pete Schwabba and Greg Bach.
Dom Lee working the board producing the show.
We are in the middle of our three big news stories of the day.
What do you say, Greg?
Should we keep this thing going?
Let's keep it going, Pete.
Why not?
That's true.
The
second big story.
Go ahead.
This
is your baby.
I thought
you wanted to introduce me.
No, no, I was watching you watching me.
That was great.
Our boss is like, why is there silence?
No.
So here's an interesting thing.
So we currently have something called the SAVAC trying to go through the Senate right now that would grossly take away the ability to vote.
Don't let anyone tell you differently.
This is not to secure voting.
This is in fact a hamper, intimidate, and to suppress voting.
There's no way around this.
And anyone who says differently is just a liar.
But the point is, is one of the things of the SAVAC is to get rid of mail-in voting.
The president of the United States has been saying for a very long time that mail-
voting as part of the scam, part of the fraud, part of the steal.
And Tom Tiffany is pretty much on board with the save act.
He loves the save act.
He loved the mega act from Brian style.
But now he's saying, well, we should be doing mail in voting.
He said that.
on a podcast with someone named Ben Dryden from his show, The Dryden Wire, which I don't understand, Pete, why everyone has to have the word wire after their name nowadays when they want to be known as a news person.
But he said, he said, we should be doing mail-in voting when asked his thoughts on the practice.
Many states have encouraged it and we've seen the results where you get these questions around the election.
So I think it would be better if we did not have it.
Tiffany, it's like, so I think
it would be better if we did not have it.
Now that we do have it, let's make sure that there are tight controls around it and make sure that it's easy to vote but not hard, but hard to cheat.
Yes, again, stop with this narrative because one, it's the thing of, it's the thing of...
In 2024, you had the president of the United States saying that mail-in voting is the worst and early voting is the worst.
And the only thing we should be doing is paper ballots with pencils and everything else is the steel and blah, blah, blah.
Meanwhile, the Wisconsin GOP headed by Brian Schimming was saying, bank your votes, mail-in votes, vote early, vote absentee, do what you can, and it showed to have results.
It worked for them too.
And there was this competing message.
And now they're running this thing of we need to get rid of it completely.
But Tom Tiffany is saying, well, now that we have it, we should do it.
We should do mail-in voting.
It's fine.
It's so ridiculous, Pete.
Right.
And I don't know about the wire, but I saw this on the ticker the other day, that nothing for ticker, wire ticker.
I thought that was like even going back further.
You're great, grandpa.
Go on.
But there are people that only want in-person day of voting.
Yes, and it's hard to make an argument to say well no no no this is better I mean there's no evidence of any real voter fraud at least not by the people they're accusing and That makes no sense to me, but did Tiffany give a reason why he's kind of waffling?
No, he just said that we have it so we should have it His words were now that we do have it so let's make sure
that there are tight controls around it, and we make sure that it's easy to vote, but hard to cheat.
Yes, that's already the fact.
Tom Tiffany, guy who wants to be governor of this state.
That's the system we have.
Brilliant.
Walk into any clerk's office in this state, any clerk's office in the state, say to their face, I want to make it hard to cheat on mail-in voting, and they're going to laugh at your face or say, get out of my office and never come back here again, because you have no idea how this process moves.
Seriously, every time one of these idiots talk, I want to say, say that to a clerk's face, and they will laugh at you.
Just laugh so hard at you
and I have to say I have you know I live in a pretty conservative area I would say for the most part and I feel very comfortable I Like you just said when I go in to vote early typically at City Hall I'll do it and I feel very confident that everyone takes the integrity of an election Seriously regardless of which side of the aisle you're on so this is nonsense.
You're
saying this and trying to get this and try to keep people from the polls is horrible
And
again, and again, I'm going to say this and make it very clear.
Anyone who says the SAVE Act or the MEGA Act for that matter are ways to ensure voting are liars.
They are liars.
They have lied to you.
because they always want to push towards the notion of, well, 80% of the people say they agree with this.
No, they agree with making elections safer.
Everyone wants elections to be safer and accurate.
But what they don't agree with is when you tell them what this is all about.
Like for the fact that if you are a woman, this is going to affect you so deeply if you're married, that's going to make it very difficult.
Not impossible, but very difficult because there's no...
If the SAVAX said, hey everybody, you must have proof of residency, proof of citizenship, we are going to provide you with all those details for free and easy.
Here's a website, you can download the information.
That's one thing.
That's not what it does.
It just says, sorry folks, if you don't live, if you're married, you gotta get paperwork.
Don't know where it is, not our problem.
Can't vote then, sorry.
Very well said I got nothing
Sorry this this this put this this topic really gets under my skin because they are utilizing the goodwill of people to Further this horrible horrible bill mark from prayer to sec So why did tiff vote for the save act tiff the trolls should go back under his bridge?
I mean he voted for the save act, but yet he still says that we should have mail-in voting Make that make sense
Let's get
to our third
story.
Don't ever apologize, my friend.
Let's get to our third story now.
The third big story.
All right, quickly.
This does not have the relevance of our previous two stories, but Daniel Baldwin.
I'm
sorry, Stephen Baldwin.
They all have their quirks, Greg.
Oh, yes.
Yes.
But Stephen said congratulations to Michael B. Jordan on his best actor win for the movie Sinners, questioning why the actor celebrated at In-N-Out Burger, I got no problem with that, and suggested that aliens may soon arrive in America.
The only issue is Sinners was not about aliens, it was about vampires.
What
is going on with the Baldwin family?
They're also, I think Billy Baldwin's the only one who's normal.
Yeah, he is kind of normal, actually.
Yeah.
And what's funny is that In-N-Out is a tradition.
Winners go to In-N-Out all the time.
In-N-Out had a truck at the awards ceremony.
Everyone's like, why are they doing it?
It's tradition.
This is not new.
Paul Giamatti went, all right.
We are coming right back after new sports and weather with Human Majd, an outstanding Iranian-American journalist and author.
We will see you on the other side of the break.
Don't go anywhere.
This is Nightlight with Pete Schwabba and Greg Bach on the Civic Media.
Welcome back to Night Light, ladies and gentlemen.
This is a Wednesday edition of Night Light, which Greg is also a top five days of the week.
For Wednesday, I am Pete Schwabba.
Sitting across the stage for me is Mr. Greg Bach, and you've got the Civic Media Network.
A quick reminder before we bring on our next guest, this hour's keyword in our break into spring, multi-state text-to-win contest is cloud.
C-L-O-U-D cloud.
Text that in on the app and only the app, and you are eligible to win our daily prize of 200 bucks and you'll be automatically enrolled in our grand prize grand prize drawing for a Verlo queen size mattress, right, Greg?
Queen size, that's right.
That's a queen.
That's the best size, I think.
All right, so cloud is this hour's keyword, C-L-O-U-D.
Text in and good luck, everybody.
It is my pleasure now to welcome our next guest.
He is an Iranian
American author of three books, including The New York Times bestseller, The Ayatollah Begs to Differ.
His most recent book is a memoir, Minister Without Portfolio, a memoir of an, sorry, a memoir of a reluctant exile.
Joining us now to discuss his unique insights into the American-Israeli war with Iran is Iran American journalist, Human Majd.
It is nice to have you here, Human.
Welcome.
Thank you very much for having me.
Pleasure.
How did I do with that intro?
Was that, uh, sufficient or?
Perfect.
It was fine.
He's got
a lot of stuff
going on.
There's a lot of stuff going on.
Yeah.
Uh, so, you know, we recently, I think both Greg and I read your article in the LA review of books.
Uh, it was so insightful and it helped me form a better opinion about this conflict because there are so many factors at play as to who is behind it or what the reason behind it is.
We still don't really 100% know, but.
for someone like you to truly have two horses in this race.
What are your thoughts right now as to what's happened to your native country that's being perpetuated by your country you've lived in for 50 years and love?
I mean, this has to be a really unique position you're in.
Yeah, it is it's unique.
I mean and it's unique to I I assume to many other Iranian Americans the estimates are as many as a million to even as high as 2 million Iranian Americans live in North America That's US and Canada and there are some big pockets Los Angeles has a huge Iranian community exile community New York Washington DC San Diego Toronto in Canada and Vancouver in Canada
I have to imagine one, not the Canadians, but at least the Iranian Americans, many of whom
have been here for many years, have become American citizens, have children raised here, born and raised here.
In some cases have married Americans, you know, and are very American in many ways.
Like, you know, it's the melting pot of the United States.
You're here for a few years and suddenly you're just, you know, in the culture and you're American and you love the country for the reasons we all love the country.
even when we hate its politics.
We still love the notion of the United States.
So to have that country that we love and the people of the country that we love, including our families, if we're, you know, have American families, and if our kids are born and raised here and don't have any real emotional connection to Iran, well, they are 100% American, more than anything else, to have those, that,
country, then attack the country of birth, your homeland, the people that you recognize as being like you in terms of culture, language, the way of thinking is painful.
I mean, that's the only thing I can say is painful, especially under the current circumstances.
I mean, I think back to Americans throughout history,
You know Americans fought against the British and they were British who fought the British They were English who fought the British and you think back to World War one or World War two where American German Americans in World War one were fighting Germans and In World War two Italian Americans were you know fighting Italians Japanese Americans very few but most of them were intern Very few the ones of the military needed
fought Japanese.
But in each of those instances, the other country appeared to be a real menace, either to the world, to America.
And I think American, hyphenated Americans, if you will, had less of an issue fighting Hitler or Mussolini, or even Hirohito, who had attacked Pearl Harbor, than...
Iranians today have a more of a problem at least some of us do with the way that we are in this war with Iran because it didn't appear and of course many of my American friends agree and journalists and you know politicians even and congressmen and senators agree it did not appear that Iran was a threat to the United States it did not appear that Iran was going to attack the United States it did not appear that
In any way Iran presented a danger even to Israel, which is a close ally or to other allies in the region They were in the middle of negotiating now you can hate the regime in Iran But they were in the middle of negotiating a nuclear deal with the United States and it was a sudden attack in the middle of those negotiations like in June of 2025 and Unfortunately and for most Iranians who may have been somewhat
um pleased that let's say the supreme leader and some of the top military officials were eliminated because they are hated by so many people especially after the protests of
January this year in Iran where so many people were killed in those protests in the crackdown on those protests So many people were innocent people have been killed.
It was really heartbreaking for an Iranian to Iranian American and I'm sure for many Americans who were watching the images and videos coming out of that schoolyard in Southwest Iran with 175 children being killed we now know by a tomahawk missile fired from
a U.S.
naval ship, it's heartbreaking.
It's heartbreaking and you think to yourself, why?
um why are we doing this and and uh so really i mean it's all i can say is a long answer to your question is it's just very painful for iranian americans and i know you know in wisconsin they're american iranian americans at the university of wisconsin and in different um different campuses there are iranian american students iranian american professors there's you know everywhere in america there are iranians um and iranian americans um
Green Bay Packers had an Iranian-American player, David Bakhtiari.
So you'll find them everywhere.
And
those families, Bakhtiari I think is half Iranian, father was Iranian, or is Iranian.
But those families all have family distant or close relatives inside Iran who never left or couldn't leave.
And we sit here worried every morning about
whether they're going to be safe or not and trying to send messages to them because the internet is sort of at a crawl, if at all.
And phone lines with the outside world have been cut off.
And Iran claims it's doing this for security reasons to avoid spies being able to communicate, et cetera, at times of war.
But it makes life for us ordinary Iranian Americans or Iranians anywhere in the world who have family back home.
very, very difficult to communicate.
I have friends of mine who are Iranian Americans as
well.
And even aside from what is going on right now, there always seems to be a permanent heartbreak for them because it's a thing of like so many of their folks who are either, you know, from the country or children of immigrants have more of a through line to their home countries, even if it's, even if it's, you know, not constant, but with.
My friends who I think about and what you wrote in your story for the LA review of books is that it reminds me of their heartbreak is that they're proud to be Iranian, but they don't have connection to home because they can't go home or their parents don't want to go home.
I can't imagine what you and your family goes through on a daily basis when there isn't what's happening now.
There always just seems to be a permanent sadness because it's so far away and you just have to wait for news when it comes along.
I mean, that's what I get from them when they talk about it and from what I read.
Am I reading that correctly?
No,
I think you are.
I think you are.
It's a very difficult situation for many Iranians.
I mean, you know, for for years, you know, it's been an up and down kind of
thing going on with Iran in the United States, you know, there are times when Iran and the United States are talking like during the Obama administration and things are better and Iranian Americans feel relatively comfortable in traveling there and visiting and seeing family.
It's a, you know, short lived.
And then there are times when Iran takes a dual American citizens hostage or arrest them for spying or for whatever reason.
And then all of a sudden we're all, you know, terrified of going back.
And I've been interrogated in Iran.
It's an unpleasant experience.
I can't go back now.
I've been told I can't go back and it's it's it is it's it's a heartbreaking thing because you know over the last 47 years since this revolution there's never been really a long period of time where Iranians could say wow okay Iran is you know it's comfortable it's okay we can go visit we can talk to our family every day we can get on you know you know FaceTime call with them they they do exist those times do exist but they're
far and few between.
And so yeah, this pain, you know, for older Iranians who go all the way back to the revolution like myself, yeah, that's 47 years of this.
For younger ones, like I know even 40 year old Iranians who are born and raised here who've never been to Iran.
And they have managed to get an Iranian passport because by law, they're Iranian.
They can get their father's Iranian.
They can get an Iranian passport.
But they've never actually been able to use it and take advantage of that time to go to Iran.
So for them, the heart breaks even.
One of them just a couple of days ago was saying to me, I really fear that after this war, there'll be nothing for me to visit.
because you know there are some cultural heritage sites that are being bombed and you know palaces and amazing you know 15th and 16th century mosques and stuff like that have suffered damage so there's that as well on top of that for you know every kid my own my
own
kid who's been to Iran but when he was much much when he was a baby but not for the last 15 years so um yeah it's a it's a tough
it's a tough situation in that regard um... but you know i think most iranian americans are grateful to to be here in america uh... and somewhat guilt-ridden that they're not in indian iran with their fellow iranians being bombed by the country that they live in uh... that they spend most of their time
we just have about a minute and a half before we have to go to a break uh...
But I wanted to ask you, to what you said earlier, is the threat that Iran was never really a threat to the U.S.
Just yesterday, Joe Kent, one of the top U.S.
counterterrorism officials, who was deeply MAGA, resigned, basically saying what you just said, that Iran was not a threat.
What are your thoughts on his resignation, and could this sway the opinion of other highly entrenched MAGA followers of this war?
Well, yeah, I mean, one would hope.
I mean, there's already quite a bit of opposition to this war inside Congress.
Just today, Chelsea Gabbard is at the Senate being grilled about imminent threats.
And at one point,
I, testimony that I saw, she said the only person who can determine whether there's an imminent threat to the United States is the president of the United States, which is actually false.
Because the intelligence community determines whether her job is to determine that and then present that information to the president.
What she's right about is the president can do whatever he wants with that.
So, yeah, no, I think there is a movement among
congressmen and congresswomen and among other politicians and other people inside the even the administration as you pointed out with Joe Ken who were saying you know there's something wrong with this picture and Americans are dying you know just Trump is going to going to you know Dover Air Force base to the welcoming ceremony of the six Americans who died in that tanker crash aircraft tanker refueling crash
I mean, how many times are we going to have to see that if this war continues?
We're going to keep this conversation going with Humaan Majd, Iranian-American journalist and author right here on Nightlight with Pete Schwabba and Greg Bach.
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Welcome back to Nightlight with Pete Schwabba and Greg Bach.
You've got the Civic Media Network.
We are in the middle of a fascinating interview with
Human Maj, he is a best-selling author and an Iranian American who is also a journalist and a scholar and he's got great insights into this war is really what it is with America and Israel and Iran.
So we are talking to him about that and getting his thoughts.
Human, what is your hope?
This seems like it's a mess.
There's no exit strategy that seems like there was no plan.
For someone like you who has an interest in both places, what is the best possible outcome that you think could happen here?
It's hard to say, but I would argue that the best possible outcome is obviously for the war to stop.
That's the first thing.
The minute the war stops,
Hopefully deaths stop people getting killed stops on both sides on all sides I should say because people are getting killed also in various Persian Gulf States as well Innocent people you know Indian workers in Dubai for example, so I mean the best case is the war stops and then there is some kind of
Negotiation if you will or or conversation but talks between at least the United States and Iran as the superpower as opposed to Israel And Iran to try to figure out how to manage the aftermath of the war That's probably the best case scenario and I believe that if that happens Iran would probably be willing to
go back at some point, maybe not right away, to the negotiating table and try to restart those talks to give satisfaction to the world community that Iran is not a threat, either nuclear or from its missiles to anybody else.
And ultimately, the best case scenario is the non-aggression pact.
Let's put it that way.
Let's say Iran has a non-aggression pact with...
U.S.
and U.S.
allies, which would by definition include Israel and all the Persian Gulf states.
That would be ideal.
Now, if you talk to some other Iranian Americans, they say, well, the best case scenario is the regime to fall tomorrow.
And the regime to fall then, but then when you ask them what comes next when a regime falls, in some cases people say, well, the son of the shock could take over.
Yeah, I think that's a little bit of wishful thinking because the son of the Shah has been living in America for almost 50 years.
Since before the revolution, never really had an organization of any kind on the ground in Iran to take over, never really built a government in exile outside Iran, and so, and doesn't have, you know, universal support inside Iran.
So you have let's say for the sake of argument that between 10 and 20 percent of the populations support the Islamic regime.
We may hate that regime, but 10 to 20 percent support them.
Now, this is a country of 93 million people.
The size of the country is bigger than Western Europe combined.
So if you want to change the regime, it's not going to happen just by dropping bombs on people.
It's going to require boots on the ground.
President Trump has already
not ruled that out.
Pete Hexeth, the Secretary of War, has not ruled that out.
So what does that mean?
So let's say we've done it before.
We could do it.
We did it in Iraq.
We put boots on the ground, went all the way to Baghdad, got rid of Saddam Hussein, imposed our own person, Paul Bremmer, as the pro-consul for a while, running a country, and then tried to bring about some form of democratic rule in Iraq.
And it's still not perfect.
We know that.
We did boots on the ground in Afghanistan and 20 years of boots on the ground, Taliban is back.
And we replaced the Taliban with Taliban.
So for people who are arguing that there should be a regime change, it's easy to say.
And maybe that would be a best-case scenario, but it's a best-case scenario that's not realistic at this time unless we get involved in a major war.
And I can't see Americans really wanting that at this point, having experienced two major wars that have caused such misery and such death and destruction for Americans and for Iraqis and for Afghans.
I can't see that there's this real appetite among, I'm talking about the American public.
I'm not talking about Lindsey Graham and the people who are, yeah, yeah, let's go in, let's go to war tomorrow.
So, you know, going back to, again, another very long answer to your question about what's the best case scenario, I think, you know, best case scenarios for the war to stop and to forget about the idea of landing troops on Iranian soil and trying to fight a war with, you know, 10 to 20% of the population who will not welcome troops with flowers.
You know, in your article,
you speak about this as far as the knowing people and seeing people on social media who are either from Iran or Iranian descent who
who love Trump, who love the message, who love this, who are celebrating, who celebrate the Ayatollah's death.
And you say in that article, I couldn't do it because I don't want death for anybody.
How do you have conversations with individuals who are being, in my opinion, sold a huge bill of goods on this?
And as you just said, there's no real plan.
What are the conversations you're having with Iranians who are like, well, let's just see what happens, Humaan.
Let's just, let's give it a chance.
We've
been
giving it a chance for years and that doesn't
work out.
What are those conversations like?
Listen, I understand the sentiment that people have.
There's many reasons why an Iranian American or an Iranian who lives here, even if he or she is not a citizen, who has managed to leave Iran.
Many reasons why they may feel that way.
And you can't always fault them.
They've either been in jail, they've been beaten up by thugs, you know, security forces, they've lost a parent, they've, you know, they've been humiliated by the morality police if they're a woman.
There's so many reasons why you start having that hatred in your heart.
And so, you know, that's not my experience.
So I can't, I mean, do I have hatred for the guys who interrogated me, you know, and I wrote about it in my memoir?
I'm not hatred, but I didn't like it.
I didn't enjoy it.
I didn't go to jail like some of these people did.
I didn't experience that.
So it's understandable.
And I just, in any conversation where people say, well, well, yeah, sure, why not regime change?
Why not go to war?
Why not like, you know, it's okay to kill, it's worth the price if X number of even our own people die in order to bring about that change.
And in every war, there's collateral damage.
I mean, that's the arguments people make.
And I say, yes, but, you know, you have to be more realistic about
what is accomplished, what can be accomplished.
Thank you, Human, for being here.
We really appreciate it.
Human Majd is an Iranian-American journalist and author.
Thank you for being here and giving us this perspective.
We really appreciate everything.
Thanks so much.
My pleasure.
Thank you.
Thanks for having me.
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