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Useful Idiots with Katie Halper and Aaron Maté

“Total Clusterf**k”: Iranian Journalist Destroys Media Lies About Iran Protests

Useful Idiots with Katie Halper and Aaron Maté

Useful Idiots, LLC

News, News Commentary, Politics

4.54.6K Ratings

🗓️ 23 January 2026

⏱️ 36 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Watch Samira's show On the Line Media: https://www.youtube.com/@samiramohyeddin

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Click here for the full interview with Samira Mohyeddin: https://www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/p/full-episode-total-clusterfk-iranian?r=je5va&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

Watch this week's Friday Free-For-All: Elon Musk Unknowingly Quotes Mel Brooks’ Hitler Character https://www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/p/elon-musk-unknowingly-quotes-mel?r=je5va&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

Join us LIVE on Youtube every Monday at 10am EST for Monday Mourning, where we watch the Sunday morning news shows so that you don't have to.

As protests, violence, and confusion continue to unfold and escalate in Iran, with media coverage somewhere between ignorance and propaganda, we try to break through the lies to learn about what’s actually going on.

We spoke to Iranian-Canadian journalist Samira Mohyeddin about why Iranians are protesting the government, how Israel’s Mossad is involved in those protests, the purposefully crippling and murderous effect of sanctions on ordinary Iranians, and why anyone who tells you they know what Iranians think is “full of shit.”

Useful Idiots: At this point, what’s your understanding of what’s happened with the protests in Iran: To what extent are they peaceful? Who’s responsible for the violence? And what is the extent of state repression?

Samira Mohyeddin: This is sort of unprecedented in Iran during the successive number of protests that we’ve had throughout the years. The merchants in the Grand Bazaar have never really protested until now. This happened because Iran’s currency just plummeted to its lowest that it’s ever been, which reduced their ability to import items.

And then things took a very decidedly violent turn, both on the part of the protesters and on the part of the state. All of a sudden you saw buildings being burned, police and security personnel being killed, some of them burned alive. This is very weird. We have been watching protests in Iran for decades. This is not how Iranians protest. I really need to just put that out there.

And then the state repression and violence started with Iranian security personnel using live ammunition on protesters.

Then the internet went out.

So it’s a very muddied story right now both because of the internet blackout, and because you have all these bellicose, reckless statements being made by people like Mike Pompeo and Israel’s heritage minister, Amihai Eliyahu, saying things like, “We were on the ground in June, you better believe we’re on the ground now, we have a hand in this.”

[In addition, on January 2, Mike Pompeo tweeted: Happy New Year to every Iranian in the streets. Also to every Mossad agent walking beside them...]

Making such statements really provides fodder to the Iranian government, who already thinks all of its grievances that its citizens have are something to do with a foreign hand. So it’s a really awful clusterfuck, to be honest.

Useful Idiots: It’s almost as if Mike Pompeo and people in the Mossad wanted to endanger the protesters to justify whatever their plans are for further bombings of Iran.

Samira Mohyeddin: I mean, it feels like that. This isn’t solidarity, this is sabotage. You can’t pretend to care about Iranians and then write “Happy New Year to the Mossad agents walking beside them.” You are putting a target on the backs of protesters when you say something like that.

Useful Idiots: This week at Davos, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent bragged that “President Trump ordered Treasury to put maximum pressure on Iran, and it’s worked! Their economy collapsed. They are not able to get imports. And this is why the people took to the streets. So this is economic statecraft. No shots fired. And things are moving in a very positive way here.”

Subscribe to hear Samira’s response to this blatant brag about murdering ordinary Iranians, plus how she landed on the “Top 4 Antisemites” list for calling out the most racist podcast clip you’ve ever seen.

00:00 Intro

00:49 Jared Kushner reveals MASTER PLAN for New Gaza

03:39 Why didn't Russia and China veto Trump's Board of Peace?

05:15 Elon Musk's horrible joke delivery (it was a Nazi joke too)

06:31 Samira Mohyeddin interview

07:04 What is happening at Iran protests?

09:57 Is the Mossad behind them?

32:55 The most racist podcast clip you've ever seen



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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Welcome to Useful Idiots. I'm Katie Halper.

0:07.9

I'm Mary Mate. Thank you so much for being here. Our website is Useful Idiots Podcast.com.

0:12.5

Go there to support the show and get bonus content. On this week's show, we speak to Samira Mohayadine-Canadian journalist, about Iran. It's a very insightful

0:23.8

conversation. We get into some of the complexities about, you know, being in exile, if you're Iranian,

0:30.8

and having court of the system of your government, but also not wanting it to be balconized

0:34.2

and bombed and sanctioned by the US and Israel.

0:38.7

And a whole lot more.

0:40.1

So make sure that you, if you're not already subscribers,

0:43.9

become subscribers so that you can see that full interview with Samira

0:46.9

because she's just so incredibly insightful and astute and funny.

0:50.2

All right, every week we do a recap of the week in the news.

0:53.7

It's called the Friday Free For All.

0:55.4

It's only for our paid subscribers.

0:57.0

But if you're a free subscriber, here's a preview.

1:04.0

Let's kick it off with Jared Kushner.

1:07.0

Now, who is Jared Kushner?

1:09.0

Does he even have an official position in government? No.

1:12.5

The nation's son-in-law? Well, he basically is the nation's son-in-law because he happens to be the son-in-law of Donald Trump. And so he gets to do many things, including unveiling the so-called Board of Peace and its plans for a new Gaza. Here he is with the kickoff

1:33.8

at Davos. And we've developed ways to redevelop Gaza. Gaza, as President Trump's been saying,

1:38.0

has amazing potential, and this is for the people of Gaza, we've developed into zones.

1:42.7

In the beginning, we were toying with the

1:44.2

idea of saying, let's build a free zone and then we have a Hamas zone. And then we said, you know what, let's just plan for catastrophic success. We have a deal demilitarized. That is what we are going to enforce. People ask us what our plan B is. We do not have a plan B. We have a plan. Well, that's so exciting for the people of Gaza who are still being bombarded

...

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