Our Friends in Tehran: World BEYOND War Podcast Episode Featuring Shahrzad Khayatian and Foad Izadi

By Marc Eliot Stein, January 29, 2020

Three and a half weeks ago, the world reacted with horror to the news that the USA’s desperate President Trump had ordered the assassination of a senior official of Iran’s government, bringing the United States and Iran to the brink of a potentially catastrophic war. This reckless and inexplicable act completed Trump’s long term goal: to roll back the remarkable 2015 nuclear agreement between Iran, USA, UK, Russia, France and China that had brought such a great sense of hope only a few years before.

The 11th episode of the World BEYOND War podcast features something we could use a lot more of today: direct conversation between American and Iranian citizens. A curtain of darkness and paranoia always descends in time of war, and this is especially true in the US/Iran conflict, which dates back to the US/UK overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected and popular leader in 1953, as well as to the tumultuous Iranian revolution of 1979. Our latest episode features interviews with two members of World BEYOND War’s global community of peace activists who live in Tehran. We talked freely and without an agenda.

Shahrzad Khayatian

Shahrzad Khayatian is an LLM in international human rights law at Shahed Behesti University, as well as an “artivist” (art activist) and the author of two important articles published on WorldBeyondWar.org: “Fear, Hate and Violence: The Human Cost of US Sanctions on Iran” and “Iranian Sanctions: Iraq Redux?”.

Foad Izadi at World Beyond War's 2019 conference

Foad Izadi is a professor of American Studies at the University of Tehran and a member of World BEYOND War’s board of directors. Foad was a featured speaker at our #NoWar2019 global antiwar conference in Limerick, Ireland last year.

This episode also includes a musical excerpt: “Price of Freedom” by Salome MC.

This podcast is available on your favorite streaming service, including:

World BEYOND War Podcast on iTunes

World BEYOND War Podcast on Spotify

World BEYOND War Podcast on Stitcher

World BEYOND War RSS Feed

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