که این پیروزی تا اینجا به واسطه وحدت کلt hello and welcome today marks the anniversary of the victory of iran's islamic revolution, it has turned 45 and of course uh it's the significant act at the time when it toppled the us back regime and that happened 45 years ago as we speak people are thronging in the... streets of not only the capital tehran

here in the islamic republic, but also all across the country where people are coming out to uh pay the respects to the uh fruitful uh results that this revolution has brought into their lives. uh of course we'll be doing of the same here on press tv uh talking to guests and discussing uh the different aspects of this uh uh 45 years of this revolution which uh has defied all odds considering some of the factors that have uh come into play when it comes to it. let me introduce our uh guests for our first segment. uh robert fantina is an author and journalist who joins us from uh kishner um and we also have fued asadi, academic and political analyst who joins us from tehran. robert fitina, welcome to the program, taking a look at how this marks the 45 years since the islamic revolution happened uh there are many uh especially western media in general who um portray uh this to have withstod the test of time uh but uh the islamic revolution didn't have to actually prove anything. to

the west or otherwise, tell us your views about first of all, how you think this islamic revolution changed um, at least the timeline here in west asia and the way it impacted the world? yes, the the iranian revolution was a major major accomplishment for the people of iran and sets an example for other people around the world, the united states can be defeated, the united states had established of course and supported the public government, the shah of iran, which is extremely... grudal and the people uh in iran very courageously uh many of them sacrificed their lives uh but were were they they wanted to establish they wanted self-determination they wanted to be able to to establish a government of their own liking which is what they did 45 years ago the uh western media never expected the government to remain this long they never expected this the the overthrow of the shah they never expected the establishment of of people's government in

iran, these are things that are examples for the rest of the world, for those are oppressed by the united states or their own government often supported by the united states, so we can look to the... iranian revolution as an example for oppressed people everywhere, it was, it was not easy for them, as i mentioned, many people lost their lives in the pursuit of this, but 45 years later the revolution still stands and the people are living the way they wish to live. well azadi uh welcome our guest there talks about how people actually gave up their lives and became marders in order to make sure that the revolution came into fruition and i can't help uh but to uh then move to a quote by imam komeini. who said this movement, the uprising the oppressed against the arrogant must spread across the world. can you please give us uh your uh understanding of what imam khini said, and of course your thoughts on this uh 45 day anniversary or the 45 year anniversary of iran's islamic revolution. you

now, i think what robert said accurate, iran set an example to other oppressed people, not only in the muslim. but internationally that it's possible to bring a revolution, a popular revolution and depose a government that was fully supported by the united states, you know, before the revolution, iran was number one in the world in terms of the amount of weapons that iran bought from from the united states, iran ranked first, one third of all us international weapons says went to iran using petrol dollars and you

know this was during nixon kessenger term, carter came into power in januar. of 77 and then there was we had the revolution in february of 79, so the last two years of shah's reign, carter was president in the united states, but what led to shah's overthrow was actually the result of the relationship that people like nixon and kessenger had with the shah, shah was buying. lot of weapons from the united states shah was acting as puppet in west asia for the united states during the vietnam war, the united states were using the fighter jets

that were sold to iran to attack vietnamese and we have passage in the memories of mother that one day shah went to his mother and was quite upset and the mother asked the shah, why are you upset? and the answer was that the americans have taken these fighter jets from iran without even notifying me, meaning the show, so the relationship between the shah and nixon kissenger those years... actually led to the revolution, because what wanted from nexon, after giving all these services to nixon was to leave the internal affairs of oppressing the people of iran to

the shah, so cia had huge office in tehran, iran was actually the hub of cia operations in the middle east, and the cia didn't realize... 'there is going to be a revolution until it was too late and the reason for that was that it was an agreement between the shaw and the nexon administration to leave iran alone in terms of how shah was running the country in terms of oppressing the the revolution came in 1979 in such a environment and and came into office what i'm telling you are declassified document'. been released, the first meeting that shaw had within, was carter's foreign minister, secretary of state, there was no mention of human rights in in that meeting, so although carter was

talking about human rights in practice, the carter administration supported the shah until the last minute and in fact after the victory of the islamic revolution so... we have this sitting and overthrowing this government was amazing, it was more or less america and and this is how other people internationally were inspired, because everybody knew the relationship that shah had with with the united states and being able to overthrow him meant that you can overthrow any other dictator no matter where you are. so thank you for that. robert fintina, our guess there uh did a recount in terms of the historical relationship that uh uh the uh pal regime had with the united states. and at that time we know that how strong that relationship was in terms of pretty much

acting uh for the us interest now fast forward to today and uh the us has diminished to just a couple thousand troops uh in iraq for example i think about 2,500 and of course uh it's illegal presence in syria but uh the diminished role and presence that it has uh this was one of things that the islamic revolution um brought about and up to this point uh um it's uh pretty evident that the us spells a source of insecurity and instability in the the west asia region in particular uh tell us the role that the islamic revolution did have uh to prevent uh the u.s. even though the us is still trying uh from uh spreading its uh uh tentacles across uh the region and preventing from it to have the influence that it has. yes, the united states. continues to attempt to influence the region and and it it does so with its uh its support of the zionist regime

of israel, but uh what the islamic revolution proved was that the us, us government can be can be defeated and that its influence can be defeated in any individual countries. now we have to remember the us still has numerous military bases around uh in that area of the world. many people are attempting to get those closed, but what we see and what is what is inspiring is that the the revolution had far reaching impacts, it removed not only the shah but removed much of the us's as you said military presence in that part of the world, it caused the us to recognize that it is no longer the the preeminent force in the middle east that people can take matters into their own hands. and establish their own governments and evict the united states and

and this military from their from their lands, which is what what it the one of things the iranished accomplished. as you mentioned, there are still us soldiers in uh iraq, although iraq government has demanded the us remove them, and there are us soldiers uh uh supporting terrorist organizations in syria, so these are still uh things that are happening, but "the us influence has diminished continually in the last 45 years because of the iranian revolution. us had complete control of iran prior to that time, and that's iran is not a small country, its population is huge, and the us was basically controlling that population through the brutal shaw, and whatever, whatever the shah of iran wanted its brutality was was just horrific and..." as professor azadi mentioned, the us always talks about human rights but doesn't enforce them or or seek

them in these other countries, and this is what the the people of iran objected to, they object to the military presence, they objected to the political presence, and that was all represented by the shot of iran and the iranian government, and they banded together over a period of a couple of years and again as i mentioned, many people lost their lives. many many heroic people and courageous people, but they accomplished the revolution which, as i mentioned before, lives today. yeah, when you mentioned the word human rights, as i guess are mentioned that, and i think you mentioned that also, i can't help but to ask you about how imam komeini um was one of the first world leaders to actually break off the relationship uh with south africa partied regime at the time, and also the zionist regime. tell us why he thought that that was important and that was one of the things uh primarily that he did uh... the beginning um and saw that uh you know he had to stand up for the oppressed and

basically uh acknowledged the fact that these are illegitimate entities. well that was this is for fusari i'm sorry go ahead you know the revolution from the beginning had an international component to it and this goes back to teachings of islam, actually was an islamic scholar and in islamic thought ' "the message of islam doesn't have any boundaries, any political boundaries, so the message that was given to the iranians to liberate themselves, actually was the same message for everybody international, you sometimes i

compare the clerics that led the..." revolution in 1979 to for for a western audience to this liberation theology that is at least used to be in the 1970s and 1980s very much a component of latin american struggles against american imperialism, liberation theology was led by generally catholic the priests. that had a concern about social issues, political issues and you know, you don't have to be catholic priest nowadays, we have this american professor cornel west that is actually running for

president, and he comes from a religious, religious background so... he combines this religious message with social concerns and political concerns, so in in the islamic clerical establishment, you always have had segment of this establishment that was concerned about social and political issues and their message was international nature. because the oppression is international nature and the idea was not to spread this message using force, this was more an exercise in soft power, in in persuasion, in

creating an example for others to see, and and this is this... is what you saw, and in order to be truthful to this message of opposing oppression, then as you said, what, what the iranian government did in the first few weeks of gaining power was to cut the oil sales that the show was engaging into south africa, and shah was doing this because of the orders that he got from the united states and uk - in the 1970s and shah was supplying oil to israel and obviously that was caught, but what iran did in 1979 with regard to cutting oil to south africa led to the

overthrow of the apartide regime in south africa. and you saw in the hague at icj that that message of fighting oppression and opposing zionism after many many years continues to live with south african people and leaders and that's that's how you had south africa bringing the case at international court of justice against the genocide in palestine, and if it wasn't for what iran did in 1979, the south african economy could continue with with all the oil that they were getting from iran and the colapse of the apartide regime might have not

happen at the time that it did, so this is... an international struggle, whether you are in iran or in canada or in united states or in africa, the nature of oppression is international and struggle against that oppression should be international, and this was the message of the revolution, and to continue along that line, the fact that imam stood for the oppressed his intentions behind standing up for... press uh was voiced through uh what was happening to the people in south africa in terms of the regime there, the partide regime there, and uh we take a look at how that has been a core theme of iran for the palestinians and how the israeli regime has uh pretty much violated their human rights um with the with the goal um of

uh unifying especially people in the muslim world to liberate al goods are we looking at uh how the west shunt that to the point that that is one of the cornerstones of its animosity towards the islamic republic uh since they saw that here was power that stood for the oppressed that went against their interests. yes, i think very much so, and that's why we're seeing western nations are not condemning uh the apartthide regime of israel for its genocide, and and they that makes them of course complicit in genocide, because the iranian revolution uh was successful, uh, iran, iran has not been able to be defeated, uh, the united states has attempted to do it with brutal sanctions, with violence jcpo, uh, with with demonizing everything about it. so this is this has created hostility toward iran and the muslim world, and the united states is, and and many western governments are following the united

states in uh criticizing anything iran does, in criticizing anything, any uh any of the muslim and arab countries in the middle east, anything they do, because they the united states fears that there will be other revolutions that other countries will uh will... look at what the iranian people did and replicate that in other repressive countries throughout the middle east and they they the united states is losing control over many parts of the world that is controlled for for years and is struggling to maintain that control uh the united states is losing power and influence as is evidenced by the the agreements and the reestablishment of ties just about year ago between iran and saudi arab. is something that was very displeasing to the united states because it had no hand in it, and if that if that reestablishment of ties was to happen, the

united states would want it done with its terms and its conditions, but the those two countries weren't interested in what the united states had to say, went along to do was best for their two countries, and this is something the united states cannot manage, cannot deal with, it wants complete control. and that's that's in order to gain power and profits, which is what the united states government is all about. putis adi, let's change gears and take a look a notion that this iranian president, the current one, abraham has talked about, which is one of the fruits of the islamic revolution, and that is the notion of this new world order of which iran is part of, something that perhaps many may not have thought that iran could have been able to... achieved based on the accomplishments and a variety of sectors to catapulted into being part of this new world order. if you can define that for us how iran's achievements uh which are the fruits

the revolution and sanctions by the us being one of the reasons that iran was able to excell in that regard to put it uh into this new world order. you know uh us foreign policy has been a major failure not only in iran and not only in west asia, internationally, the united states government officials have plundered taxpayers, american taxpayers resources on foreign wars, engaging in policies that have weakened the united states internationally, so you see a decline in terms of ' us standing internationally and also you see decline inside the united states in terms of the widespread hunger that

americans are experiencing. i was reading this report by the urban institute a few months ago that 24.6% of americans, it's almost 25% that have... experienced hunger in the last year, this is huge number, so united states is in a decline, and the decline of the united states means the decline of the order, the international order, they call it the liberal order that the us led after world war ii, and especially after the collapse of the soviet union, and what is emerging now, it seems is new order where you have number of western countries led by the. united

states, number of countries that have historically depended on on us, led by the united states, and then you have this other set of major countries in the world, including iran, china, russia other other countries that are not taking dictates from washington, because they don't have to, because the united states is power in decline. and they are forming new organizations, they are expanding previous organizations, bricks is an example, iran joint bricks last year, and so there is another block, you have this western block led by the united states and then you have this other block that is - is trying to...

have independence when it comes to his foreign policy and domestic policy, and iran is actually one of the countries that started this movement, the movement of not taking dictates from washington, iran did that 45 years ago today, and if it wasn't for iran's... resistance against american led order, we don't know if other countries would have realized that it is possible to have an independent foreign policy, you know, after the collapse of the soviet union, russia was very much trying to become like a western european country, if you watch vladimir putin's interview with a couple of days ago,

he goes through the history of russia west relations after the collapse of soviet union, and what he's saying as the president of russia, that russia tried its best to become a member of that western block, the united states didn't want russia in because of different reasons and "i think russians realize that it is possible, it is not possible to really work with the united states and they realize that they have their countries like iran that have been opposing an american order for many years. i think the same thing is true with china and other countries that are trying to be more independent.