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SeriesPolitics & Practical TheologyHistory

Imam Tom Live

Should We Show Solidarity with Iran? | Deep Dive: Iran Ep. 3 | Imam Tom Facchine

How should Muslims think about a state that is simultaneously a target of imperialist aggression and a source of sectarian harm — and is there a principled position that doesn't require ignoring either?

In the concluding episode of Deep Dive: Iran, Imam Tom Facchine brings the series' full arc to bear on the present moment — examining Iran's contemporary geopolitical role with the same rigor and intellectual honesty applied throughout. The episode addresses, and ultimately rejects, the reductive claim that Iran is a Western-installed agent, while equally refusing to excuse the sectarian conduct that has caused real harm to Muslim communities in Syria and Iraq.

Drawing on the series' established framework — that commitment to the truth must take precedence over political allegiance — this episode shows that the answer, as with much of Islamic history, resists easy resolution.

This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings.
00:00
Is the axis of resistance for real? Why aren't Sunnis doing anything? Is Iran our only hope to stand up to Israel?
00:12
Today we're going to look at Iran in our final installment of this series from a geopolitical lens. This is going to be the shortest one, and it's also going to touch on where we've landed today.
00:21
Now, there is a claim, and it's one that I want to bring to the front here in order to dismiss it and debunk it, that Iran really is an agent of the West.
00:32
That Khomeini, when he was abroad in exile, he was in France. Why was he in France? There's an interesting relationship between Iran and France, but that's another story for later.
00:42
He was in touch with Jimmy Carter. He actually sent a message to Jimmy Carter kind of reassuring him that Iran wasn't going to pose a threat, that he wasn't going to pose a threat. You could even say, getting the green light, that the US wasn't going to intervene.
00:55
But to stretch these facts to the point that the assumption is that Iran is now installed, or Khomeini was installed by the United States or by France,
01:06
or that the Islamic Republic of Iran is doing the West's bidding, is quite the leap of logic to make.
01:14
And it's very simplistic. It doesn't look at the way in which actors, even if they enjoy support from Western superpowers, they do have agency of their own. Look at the mujahideen of Afghanistan, who were supported by the US government throughout the 80s,
01:27
only to turn around and fight the US government throughout the 90s, and so on and so forth. So, groups do have agency, and they do receive support from time to time.
01:36
Not all of that support is completely deterministic, and means that they're just in cahoots and taking orders and directions from the direction that the support is coming from.
01:47
It is true that the US did play both sides during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, but this wasn't necessarily because Iran was their puppet.
01:56
It was more about a tactic that Netanyahu has been quoted advising Obama and others to pursue, which is trying to degrade both sides.
02:05
And so, in the US playing both sides in the Iran-Iraq war, the goal was to weaken both, and that's certainly something that they did. Eventually, they would turn against both, in various ways.
02:16
That politics and history moves through realism, not idealism. That who's your friend is going to be your foe tomorrow, who's your foe yesterday might be your ally the next day.
02:27
That things happen via interests, not grand agendas, and those interests are constantly in flux and are shifting.
02:34
We talked in a previous episode about how, when it came to fighting ISIS, that made for very, very strange bedfellows as the US was actually coordinating with Iran and Iranian-backed Shi'a militias within Iraq against ISIS.
02:48
Is that an indication that Iran is taking orders from Washington? No, not necessarily. It just means that their interests converged in a particular moment in time.
02:58
So, Iran is not the real pawn of the West, nor is it the ally, nor are they a pawn of Israel.
03:05
In fact, if you look at the other governments in the region, it's very clear that the ones that are being used, the puppets, are the states throughout the Gulf and the Arab world.
03:15
Examples such as Jordan shooting down the missiles that are coming from Iran to Israel. They're not going to affect Jordan whatsoever, they're going to affect Israel.
03:23
The fact that the Gulf states released statements condemning Iranian ballistic missile and drone attacks on US bases and US assets as if they had been attacked themselves.
03:34
And there's something of the "we sick, master" mentality that Malcolm X described when enslaved peoples being internally colonized would associate themselves with their own oppressors that they would perceive an illness of the master as their own illness.
03:50
Now, that being said, the sectarian strand of Iran's behavior has allowed the puppet regimes ruling over Sunni majority countries a convenient excuse.
04:00
They have a convenient excuse to be belligerent and a convenient excuse to run to the US to make arms deals, to coup-proof their nations, and to crack down on dissent.
04:09
They're always, especially from 1979 onwards, they're always looking over their shoulder as to the next political revolution or Islamic revolution that might threaten their authority and their power.
04:20
But the fact remains unchanged that Israel perceives Iran as the single greatest threat in the entire region.
04:27
That is a fact. It is also a fact that Iran's backing of Hezbollah was the greatest challenge on Israel's border until Israel was able to largely incapacitate Hezbollah in 2024, though now it looks like things have changed.
04:42
Iran's backing of Yemen, the Houthis in Yemen, has also supplied them with capabilities that nobody foresaw. None of this serves Western interests, none of it serves Israel's interests or that of the United States.
04:56
So when we see what's unfolding now, we see a US-Israeli aggression against Iran.
05:03
We see Iran responding with missiles and drones focused on US military bases in the region and also Israel. How should we feel? How should we feel as Sunni Muslims?
05:16
I think it's important to bring it back here to the principle that we've tried to state throughout this series that as God-fearing Muslims we are loyal to the truth above all else.
05:26
Someone can be wrong and later can be right. Someone can be right and later be wrong. Someone can be wrong in one way or right in a different way. Someone can be right and wrong through different activities at the same time.
05:38
What is happening against Iran is imperialist aggression, no doubt about it. And Iran has a right to defend itself. How many times have we heard that Israel has a right to defend itself as it commits a genocide in Palestine?
05:50
Now, what is unpalatable is the atrocities and the sectarian violence, the anti-ummatic behavior that Iran has displayed, especially in Syria and Iraq.
06:03
And so sometimes people are rightfully concerned and hesitant to express that solidarity or express their even opposition to the aggression that is going on because of those other things.
06:17
Well, there's an interesting historical parallel that I'd like you to think about that I think captures this dynamic very, very well. Remember at the fall of the caliphate, Mustafa Kemal, the arch-secularist who led the charge to abolish the caliphate.
06:31
He did that, which was bad. We regret it. We actually mark it on our calendars. But he also did save Turkey between the Treaty of Sèvres and the Treaty of Lausanne.
06:41
He saved Turkey from being carved up by the British and by other imperial forces. Whereas the Ottoman sultan at the time, he was disempowered. He was mentally defeated.
06:54
He was the one who wanted to make a deal with the British to hand Turkey over to them. Identity politics don't work here.
07:03
We feel for the Ottoman sultan, but we're opposed to the secularization of Mustafa Kemal. But in that particular moment of history, who would you have sided with?
07:16
Who was right? That the preservation of Turkey, making it an integral autonomous territory, even if it had to go through horrible secularism,
07:27
enabled a possible future horizon where now we can have Erdoğan and the AK Party and we can have Islamic revival and all the things that are going on.
07:36
And not to portray Turkey as a perfect place, they have their own limitations of ummatic solidarity and pan-Islamic sentiment. Just like the other nations we've covered in the series.
07:47
But it just goes to show you that history is not idealist. History is not linear. That history and politics move sometimes in a not ideal way. In a way where problematic actors do very important and good things.
08:01
And so when we think about our own relationship with Iran, let's think about it from the reverse side. Can we imagine the region right now?
08:09
Can we imagine Palestine and the Palestinians who are living under occupation, imagine where they would be without Iran? If the Islamic Republic of Iran did not exist, would the occupation be complete?
08:21
Would the ethnic cleansing of Palestine be complete? That's a real scenario that we have to take very, very seriously. And what if Iran was replaced with something like the Emirates?
08:32
One of these nations that is in full collaboration, normalization with an apartheid genocidal government. So both of these things can be true at the same time. But what's important, and we'll end the series on this point, we can't settle for the status quo.
08:46
Rather, as Muslims who want to see a liberated ummah, an ummah that is autonomous, that is dignified. One that can bring the beauty and the light of Islam to the world.
08:58
We have to look towards the future and think about the shortcomings and the failures of movements and nations past. And how we can correct for those as we move forward.
09:11
We have to make sure that we shed the yoke of colonialism. But we also have to be aware of the mistakes of both Iran and Saudi Arabia.
09:22
And how both of them, despite very different tracks, in an important way they have a very common similarity. Where their national interests and their sectarian interests ended up winning out.
09:32
Over more pan-Islamic or ummatic sentiments or duties. How do we correct that going forward? And how do we look towards other places in the ummah that unfortunately are overlooked. Places like West Africa.
09:46
Places like Southeast Asia. Places like the subcontinent. Places that are ripe with pan-Islamic sentiment and ummatic sensibilities. How can they contribute to something that is greater than anything that we've ever seen before?
10:00
How can the ummah achieve its own liberation? We'll leave you with that. Thank you for watching.
10:19
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