Arash Azizi

I mean, they're just very bad for Iranian national interest.

Yeah, I mean, Zionism, I think, is often misunderstood or seen as very exceptional when it isn't.

In the 19th century and then early in 20th century, nationalism was a very common movement.

And the basic idea of nationalism was that a people needs to have some sort of a sovereignty in its homeland.

Now, nationalism had different versions.

A democratic version would say, yes, we'll form a country called Poland where Poles live, but there are tons of non-Poles live there.

Doesn't mean we are going to expel them.

We'll give them equal citizenship.

But the language would be Polish.

This would be a Polish country.

but everybody will have equal democratic rights.

It didn't work out so bad in practice.

There was a second Polish Republic, for example, but 50% of its population, I think, were non-Polish.

But many of them did have many rights.

But then there were tensions and others.

So Zionism...

of course, was the idea of, well, what would the Jewish people do?

Because they're not majority anywhere.

So if they are to have a place in this nationalist framework, they need to move somewhere and build their own country.

And that's what they did in Palestine.