Iran Will Not Bend The Knee: National Cohesion, The Axis of Resistance, and Decolonizing West Asia
Rev Left Radio
Breht O'Shea
4.8 • 3.6K Ratings
🗓️ 25 May 2026
⏱️ 117 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Historian David Yaghoubian joins Rev Left Radio to discuss the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, the genocide in Gaza, the assault on Lebanon, and the broader imperial-Zionist project to dominate West Asia. Drawing from his 2014 monograph Ethnicity, Identity, and the Development of Nationalism in Iran, Yaghoubian explains why Washington and Tel Aviv have repeatedly misunderstood Iranian society, underestimated Iranian national cohesion, and fantasized that sanctions, bombing, covert operations, or minority pressure could fracture the country from within.
Together, Breht and David explore Iran's history of resisting foreign domination, the reactionary nature of the Iranian diaspora in the United States, the ethno-religious complexity of Iranian society, Iranian national cohesion, the strategic significance of the Strait of Hormuz, the relationship between Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran, and the ideological inversion through which the U.S. and Israel present themselves as defenders of "stability" while unleashing coups, sanctions, assassinations, occupations, and genocide across the region. They also discuss how anti-imperialists should defend Iran against U.S.-Zionist aggression without flattening Iranian society or denying its internal contradictions.
This is a conversation about nationalism, sovereignty, resistance, and the failure of empire to understand the peoples it seeks to dominate.
Dr. David N. Yaghoubian is Professor of Modern West Asian and Islamic History at California State University-San Bernardino and author of "Ethnicity, Identity, and the Development of Nationalism in Iran" (Syracuse, 2014) and co-editor of "Struggle and Survival in the Modern Middle East" (3rd edition forthcoming).
-----------------------------------------
Check out a great new resource for revolutionary education, Unlearning Capitalism: https://unlearn.capital/
Support Rev Left and get access to bonus episodes: www.patreon.com/revleftradio
Make a one-time donation to Rev Left at BuyMeACoffee.com/revleftradio
Follow, Subscribe, & Learn more about Rev Left Radio https://revleftradio.com/
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello everybody, welcome back to Rev Left Radio. |
| 0:08.6 | On today's episode, we genuinely have what I would argue. |
| 0:12.3 | You can be the judge of this, but I think this is one of the best discussions that I've ever heard on Iran. |
| 0:18.0 | And that's not because of me. |
| 0:19.5 | That is because of this wonderful guest, Professor David Yagubian, who is really focused scholarly and in an academic sense |
| 0:26.7 | has done a lot of work on internal Iranian nationalism, the ethnic and religious divisions |
| 0:33.2 | within Iranian society. And they're coming together through social cohesion via civic nationalism |
| 0:39.4 | and sort of the construction of Iranian nationalism that is not exclusively Persian or Islamic. |
| 0:46.4 | So we start the conversation talking about ethnic and religious subgroupings within Iranian society, |
| 0:53.5 | the historical processes by which they've come to be united under a civic nationalism, |
| 0:59.2 | the hope on behalf of the U.S. and Israel that sanctions and then a full-on war of aggression would spark sectarianism along ethnic and religious lines. |
| 1:09.5 | And the fact that that has failed has been core to |
| 1:12.9 | the ongoing really victory of iran in this in this ongoing uh you know war of aggression on behalf of |
| 1:20.9 | israel and in the u.s against iran they've stood firm and part of the reason they've been able to |
| 1:27.0 | stand firm is precisely because the u.S. and Israel have not been able to create the sort of sectarian and religious divides they were hoping to create that would topple and ultimately Balkanize Iranian society, as we've seen in other instances. |
| 1:44.0 | It's a very similar playbook |
| 1:45.3 | they've played in many countries, most recently in Syria, to varying degrees of success. But it |
| 1:50.9 | hasn't worked in Iran. And the civic nationalism tying these various ethnicities and religious |
| 1:57.4 | orientations together as proud Iranians is, I would argue, and I think, |
| 2:03.0 | you know, Professor Yagubian argues a core reason why that has not happened. |
| 2:08.0 | So it's a, and then we get in, of course, to current events and the Iranian diaspora, his position |
| 2:14.6 | within it, you know, if you think as we talk about in the episode, the Cuban |
... |
Transcript will be available on the free plan in 14 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Breht O'Shea, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Breht O'Shea and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.