Iran Pt. 3: The Empire vs. Iran w/ Bikrum Gill

Upstream

News, Society & Culture, Politics

4.9 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 10 March 2026

⏱️ 101 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode, part 3 of our ongoing series on Iran, we're joined again by Bikrum Gill for a conversation exploring sovereignty and imperialism in Iran. Our conversation opens with an unpacking of the intersections and distinctions of imperialism, sovereignty, colonialism, and capitalism in a theoretical sense. Once these foundations are laid, we then apply this framework to Iran, answering the question of why Iran's sovereignty is so threatening to the United States.

We then jump into current events and explore the thread that ties together the US's assault on Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, Palestine, etc.—and this brings China into the conversation. We talk about the construction of client states and why so many states in Latin America and West Asia have refused to intervene on behalf of Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, and Palestine. Finally, we discuss the Israeli-US war on Iran and what the resistance to it looks like both regionally and within Iran itself.

Bikrum Gill is a faculty in political science and international relations and a scholar of international political economy. He's the author of The Political Ecology of Colonial Capitalism: Race, Nature, and Accumulation, published by Manchester University
Press.

Further resources:

The political ecology of colonial capitalism Race, nature, and accumulation, by Bikrum Gill
"Orders of Sovereignty: Internal Power and External Dependency in the Recognition of the State of Palestine," by Bikrum Gill
"The "Second Sacred Defence": Solidarity, Sovereignty and the Politics of Anti-War," by Bikrum Gill
Black Skin, White Masks, by Franz Fanon
The Wretched of the Earth, by Franz Fanon
On Contradiction, by Mao Zedong
Vocal Politics: Why did the US and Israel launch their war of aggression against Iran? by Bikrum Gill
The Long Twentieth Century, by Giovanni Arrighi

Related episodes:

Intermission music: "Another War" by Carsie Blanton

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The Islamic Revolution challenges at the moment that the United States thought it had one history that is coming into the end of history, it challenges the military basis and the economic basis of imperialism religion.
0:31.6	The Islamic Revolution is a material and ethical challenge to a U.S. imperialism that had drained wealth,
0:40.1	continuing the tradition of British imperialism, drained wealth from majority world through violence
0:45.3	and that are underdeveloped and de-developed those territories.
0:48.2	So it's about trying to restore a sovereignty that can allow for a dignified form of development.
0:56.0	You're listening to Upstream. Upstream. Upstream. Upstream.
0:59.0	Upstream.
1:00.0	A show about political economy and society that invites you to unlearn everything you thought you knew about the world around you.
1:07.0	I'm Della Duncan.
1:08.0	And I'm Robert Raymond.
1:10.0	Like almost all anti-imperialist revolutions of the 20th century, the Iranian Revolution
1:16.6	has been subject to an economic and military onslaught by the United States and the
1:21.6	Imperial Block at Leeds.
1:23.6	This onslaught, as we explored last episode, has primarily taken the form of economic strangulation
1:30.3	in Iran. But when that didn't work as intended, outright military violence was introduced.
1:36.3	And this war cannot be reduced to a deranged United States president, nor is it an inclination to bring democracy to Iran, far from it.
1:47.2	The war is a fight over the direction of development for the global south in the 21st century,
1:53.1	and it's just another front in the second Cold War between the United States and, well,
1:59.7	the rest of the world.
2:01.6	In this episode, part three of our series on Iran, we're joined by Bikram Gill for a conversation
2:08.6	exploring sovereignty and imperialism in Iran.
2:12.6	Bikram Gil is a faculty in political science and international relations and a scholar of international political
	...

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