Iranian Dissident on Israel, Bill Clinton’s Miss & Overthrowing Regime | Roya Hakakian • 307
Julian Dorey · 3 Jun 2025 · 2h 57m
Guest: Roya Hakakian · Host: Joey Def, Julian Dorey
This conversation traces the life and thinking of an Iranian-Jewish writer who fled Iran after the 1979 revolution. She recounts growing up in Tehran, watching the monarchy collapse and an Islamic theocracy take its place, and describes how quickly hope curdled into fear as women's rights were rolled back, antisemitic graffiti appeared, and her family lost everything before escaping. From that personal history she builds a broader argument: that the themes set in 1979 Iran — anti-Americanism, martyrdom as civic virtue, and using the Palestinian cause as a political tool for authoritarian regimes — still shape global politics today, including campus activism and Middle East conflicts. She and the host debate Israel's founding, the recurring failures of Palestinian and Arab leadership, the ethics and track record of American military intervention, and whether democracy can survive as a purely local project when authoritarian states cooperate globally. Along the way they discuss the Iran-Iraq war, the CIA, feminist movements across the Muslim world, Robert Kennedy's populism, and the erosion of democratic trust in America itself. The guest argues that Israel remains uniquely targeted for elimination among the world's contested territories, while insisting she does not support military intervention as a solution and instead calls for sustained non-military support for democratic movements abroad.
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What comes up
Timestamps link into the episode on YouTube.
- Guest's childhood in pre-revolution Iran
- 1979 Iranian Revolution and its aftermath
- US embassy hostage crisis and anti-American themes
- Left-Islamist alliance and campus parallels today
- 2022 women's protests and Mahsa Amini's death
- Palestinian cause as political tool for regional leaders
- Zionist history, early universities, and Herzl
- Bill Clinton clip on Arafat rejecting peace deal
- Iran-Iraq war and Khomeini's martyrdom rhetoric
- Democracy, tyranny efficiency, and global interdependence
- Family's expulsion from Iran and Jewish history there
- Long-term solutions for Israel-Palestine and education reform
Said on this episode
Quoted from the auto-generated transcript, which mishears names and technical terms. podcite.com reports what a show said; it does not endorse or fact-check it.
“How lucky we are that this war started because now we can all do what we are meant to do which is to become martyrs.”
“We can sit here and agree that Israel is inflicting suffering upon the Palestinians in Gaza. Of course it is.”
“Inefficient democracies cannot survive in a world of efficient tyrannies. We will be the losers.”