Karim Sadjadpour

He believed that one of the most powerful forces in the world was the desire of human beings to live freely, to live under free societies.

And he...

aligned American power and American foreign policy with that goal of Russians to live under freedom.

And he stood with those freedom seekers in Russia, those dissidents.

And we had a whole...

kind of institution, multiple institutions in the United States, places like Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, National Endowment for Democracy, which stood for those aspirations and those goals and helped those democratic and freedom movements.

And that doesn't really exist at the moment.

Those institutions have really atrophied.

I don't think, you know, President Trump, he issued these warnings against Iran not to kill protesters, but, you know, living in Washington, I can see that there aren't a lot of people right now, whether in the State Department or other NGOs that are empowered to be thinking about, you know, how do we advance the cause

of change in Iran?

How do we potentially help Iran's opposition?

You're ultimately correct, Scott, what you said earlier.

It's my view that the U.S.-Iran Cold War, which has now persisted for 47 years, it's not going to be ended by

American negotiators or even American bombs.

It's going to be ended when you have a government in Iran that reflects the country's national interests of wanting to advance its own prosperity and security.

And

You know, we can destroy a lot with military power, as we've seen in a lot of other places.

But I think those institutions that help kind of solidify the day after and the day after the day after in those countries, those institutions have atrophied in the United States.

You know, I'm always reminded of that old quote attributed to Winston Churchill, who said, I'm paraphrasing here perhaps, but if you're 18 and not a leftist, you have no heart.

And if you're 15 and still leftist, you have no brain, which is that there's long been this tendency among young people to want to...