Welcome to Current Affairs. My name is Nathan Robinson. I'm the editor-in-chief of Current Affairs Magazine.

I am joined today by Professor Afshin Matine Asgiri. He is a professor of Middle East history at California State University,

and the author of the new book, Axis Empire, A History of Iran-U.S.

Relations.

Professor, thank you so much for joining us here on Current Affairs today.

Thank you for having me, In Carnifers.

Happy to be here.

Now, I wanted to start by asking you to give people

a little bit of context as to your background. You are Iranian yourself, and you, in fact,

participated in the early stages of the 1978 revolution against the Shah.

As I understand, you are, you know, you are leftist, anti-imperialist, Iranian, who is also an opponent of the Islamic regime there.

And I assume that that gives you a number of complex and difficult opinions and reactions to things.

I mean, we've seen, we saw in the early phases of this war, a number of people who were opponents of the regime pleased at blows being struck

against it, and then quickly, I think some of that celebration turned to anger as people realized

that the United States doesn't care very much whether it hits civilian targets.

Let me just ask you personally, given your background, how you are feeling at the moment. Well, a lot of mixed and conflicted emotions.

These high officials of the regime from the supreme leader to more and more

officials have been assassinated by, mainly by the Israelis.

But these were not popular figures, that they're not my favorite people in this world.

However, I think they should have been answerable, ideally to the people of Iran,

not to have criminal outsiders coming into the country and taking them out.

So it's, I don't feel joy or happiness because the context and the actions of

...