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Today, Explained

Maximum Pressure

Today, Explained

Vox

Politics, Daily News, News

4.3 • 10.3K Ratings

🗓️ 12 April 2019

⏱️ 22 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Earlier this week, President Trump designated Iran’s Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization. It is the first time the United States has ever given such a designation to a part of another nation’s government. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Depending on when you're listening to this, I've already brushed my teeth several times since recording this message.

0:05.3

Today's episode of Today Explained is brought to you by Quip Electric Toothbrushes.

0:10.4

The Quip Electric Toothbrush starts at $25 in your first pack of refills.

0:14.6

Is Fifofafri at GetQuip.com slash Explained G-E-T-Q-U-I-P.com slash Explained.

0:30.8

A lot happened this week. Solange Poldada Koicella, humanity saw its first black hole,

0:37.5

Old Town Road hit number one on the charts. Julian Assange and his beard got arrested,

0:43.6

dirt and dweins, last games, game of thrones, hysteria, Omar Al-Bashir got ousted. Benjamin Netanyahu

0:50.8

got re-elected with all of the things who could fault you if you forgot. President Trump did

0:57.5

something this week that no U.S. president has ever done before.

1:03.0

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has announced that the U.S. is designating the Iranian Revolutionary

1:07.8

Guard as a terror group. We're doing it because the Iranian regime's use of terrorism as a tool of

1:12.6

state craft makes it fundamentally different from any other government. The first time that we've

1:18.4

seen the U.S. government designate part of another country's government as a terrorist organization.

1:24.4

This designation is a direct response to an outlaw regime and should surprise no one.

1:32.1

I asked Dina Espandieri what this first means for the world. She's the author of Triple Access,

1:39.4

Iran's relations with Russia and China, and we started with what exactly Iran's revolutionary

1:46.5

guard is. So the guards are a branch of the Iranian Islamic Republic government effectively.

1:54.0

They were created after the 1979 revolution when Iran's army, their views were not in line with

2:01.2

those of the new government and their people couldn't be trusted. And so the new government created

2:07.4

the revolutionary guards as a kind of parallel military organization that would uphold the views of

2:13.4

the Islamic Republic and that would spread the revolution both inside the country and outside the

2:19.2

country. Is there like a comparable government entity that we might know well that helps frame what

...

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