Radio War Nerd EP #575 — Inside Iran, feat. Navid Zarinnal
Guest: Navid Zarinnal
Recorded: January 21, 2026
We talk to Iranian-American researcher Navid Zarinnal in Tehran about Iran's protests, US imperialism, who supports & opposes the IRI government, and life inside Iran compared to how it's portrayed in the western media.
Subscribe to Navid's podcast The Colony Archive
*Mossad-linked account's recruitment ad (h/t Grayzone)
Total time: 1:04:15
Direct link to this episode's mp3 here
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Sound production by Telescope Audio
Comments (19)
Great guest, excellent questions
This comment section tells me a fair amount of yall are too clever by half. I don’t think there’d be as much disagreement if cyrus himself said any of this
Actually, a lot of commenters were deeply suspicious about Cyrus the first time he appeared on RWN, and if I recall correctly some of them gave me flack for calling it a great interview back then (Yes, us comment-section people have long memories. Those Bastards!). There are many ways to get paranoid in a world like this.
Thanks, great episode
Unrelated to the ep but what’re you planning to do to hunker out this storm? Down here in the garden state I’ll be lighting a fire in the fireplace and playing with the kids.
This is what it must have been like to listen to radio free europe back in the day
This is actually what it was like to listen to radio war nerd back in the day
Sound wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.
I'm a subscriber to RWN in large part because it regularly provides a view that gets at some kernel of truth lost in other media narratives. But sometimes RWN veers into pure contrarianism. This feels like one of those times.
Could it be that in a country of 91 million people, some of the population might have different perspectives to each other, or to the perspectives in western media? Or are they all just being contrarian?
Very interesting interview, great job. Very balanced and thoughtful lived perspective.
Thankyou for this unexpectedly calming episode. Before I started listening I thought I'd be hearing accounts of massacres and breakdown of the civil order, and now you've given me a wider perspective on the situation and a sense that even if the US bombs the place, it won't turn into another Gaza. The horror is lifted from my mind, and I can sleep.
One thing that does seem significant about the protests compared with past ones, at least from what I’m gleaning from the interview, is that they seem to have started in what normally would be the government’s base of support: bazaari’s and the traditional middle class, people in second and third tier cities, and so forth. Protests from these groups over economic issues aren’t uncommon, but they’re not the kind that boil into a challenge to the government. And that kind of cuts a lot of different ways in terms of how the initial protests should be interpreted
It’s crazy (negative way) that news is just so all over the place that we may have to wait a while for the analysis of the official Kurdish betrayal by the US in Syria. Also like a month + past due for an Ukraine update. But again, understandable with all the other shit going on. The episodes in 2015 feel like eons ago
How on earth can iranians people have faith in iran's defensive capabilities after what has happened?
This was a truly bizarre conversation. Mark seems impressed that he isn’t afraid to be interviewed, but did he say a solitary unflattering thing about the government? The only thing I heard was that it was kind of scary in a vague sense that they could shut down the internet.
I’m curious what you think he’s suppose to say. The U.S. is threatening to bomb the country he lives in that has been absolutely crippled by sanctions and other foreign interference. He was clear. The U.S. empire doesn’t want regime change. They want complete destabilization and balkanization like Libya which is true. He gave an overview of how different Iranians think about the situation politically. Is he suppose to say “yes this regime sucks because x,y and z” to western audiences to help manufacture consent for bombing the country him and his family fucking live in.
Carney, for better, and for worse is one of the few centrists who is an actual pragmatist. The better: discussed in the show. The worse: amping up the resource extraction on stolen land.
Thanks for posting this