Welcome to today's podcast, sponsored by Hillsdale College.

All things Hillsdale at Hillsdale.org. I encourage you to take advantage of the many free online courses there. And, of course, I'll listen to the Hillsdale Dialogues, all of them at Hugh for Hillsdale.com or just Google Apple, iTunes, and Hillsdale. Morning, Gloria, evening, Grace, America. I'm Hugh Hewitt. Welcome to the program. I hope you enjoyed the Super Bowl yesterday, but we are on the cusp of big events, whether it's this week or this month or next month. It's a very important time, and I'm honored to have with me Prince Reza Pahlavi. He's the crown prince of Iran. He is also the voice and face of the Iranian opposition in exile.

Prince Pahlavi, welcome. Thank you for joining me. I want to start with a very direct question.

To your understanding, how many of your fellow countrymen were murdered by the regime on January 8 to 9?

I've heard a lot of different numbers.

First of all, thank you for having me on your program.

The number vary between 36,500 to about 40,000.

That's the last estimate that we've had.

It could be higher than that because there's still ongoing arrest happening.

They are killing people

in hospitals. They are finishing them off on their wounded beds. They are arresting doctors

or anybody rendering assistance to the victims. Who knows how much the total numbers will be,

but the most conservative figure so far has been over 36,000 people, unfortunately.

I'm going to start using that number, Prince. Thank you. What do you hope to see President Trump

order our military in the America to do right now? Look, when you are fighting an occupying

force that has taken a whole country hostage and people are on the streets unarmed as civilians demanding liberation from this tyranny and hoping for freedom.

And at the time that they're being shot on the streets by military machine guns and basically war instruments, this is no longer a fair fight. This is a genocide

in the making. And the only thing that will equalize the playing field for these brave

Iranians who are fighting for their own liberation is to have an assistance that is needed

help at this time to neutralize elements that the regime

has used against its own citizenry to brutalize them the way they have.

And this means targeting the regime's top apparatus of repression, which is of course the

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