Hello and welcome to a new episode of Real Politics. I am your host, Firasmodad. Today I'm going to be talking about the geopolitics of Iran and trying to help us understand this country a little bit better. First, I want to start with a little bit of context here. And I'm going to start with a favorite video of mine of General Wesley Clark, a former NATO commander,

describing what the U.S. policy for the Middle East has been since 2001.

Let's watch it together briefly.

About 10 days after 9-11, I went through the Pentagon, and I saw Secretary of Rumsfeld and

Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz.

I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the joint staff who used

to work for me.

And one of the generals called me and he said, sir, you got to come in.

You got to come in and talk to me a second.

I said, well, you're too busy.

He said, no, no.

He says, we've made the decision we're going to war with Iraq. This was on or about the 20th of September.

I said, we're going to war with Iraq.

Why?

He said, I don't know.

He said, I guess they don't know what else to do.

So I said, well, did they find some information

connecting Saddam to al-Qaeda?

He said, no, no.

He says, there's nothing new that way.

They've just made the decision to go to war with Iraq.

He said, I guess it's like we don't know what to do about terrorists, but we've got a good

...