Click on Owen Jones, 'The Iranian perspective, what Iranian officials are actually saying has been largely erased from most Western media coverage. We're getting bombarded, of course, all the time by the perspective of the US, by Israel, but what Iranian officials are saying and thinking and their strategy is just being completely neglected. Now, there's one exception to that, which is Dropsite News, a brilliant media organization, which has actually been reaching out and speaking to Iranian officials to work out what their strategy is. And it is pissing off the Trump administration to say the least. And and the Trump administration as we know is acting all surprised and shocked uh at you know the idea that the Iranian regime would have shut down the Strait of Hormuz that it's attacking Gulf Allies when they've just been broadcasting what would happen if they were attacked. James Scahill, brilliant co-founder of Dropsite News, great to great to speak to you now. You've been doing this brilliant journalism. You've been speaking to Iranian officials. Just just tell me about that. Tell me kind of why that's important because I think that angle is you have to go to Dropsite News, a lot of the time to work out what's going on. You know,
Jeremy Scahill: I've I've been a journalist for a quarter of a century, and never in in my life in media have I ever seen a more intense effort to criminalize talking to the other side or speaking to forces or groups or in this case officials from a nation state that the western world and specifically the US public is told these are these are the enemies.This is a this should just be a central part of journalism that you know particularly when the president of the United States has made a decision without the approval of the United States Congress to go to war. And throughout the genocide in Gaza I've interviewed leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. And in doing so you remove or strip away a kind of cartoonized version of who the other side is. And in doing that you also are able to predict or understand what actions may come next. So in the case of Iranian officials even before the first bomb started falling on February 28th we had been speaking to senior Iranian officials about what was going to happen during the negotiations. Some of the first stories that we broke uh after the US and Iran started talking again was the the concessions that Iran was making in these negotiations. And we didn't just speak to Iranian officials. We got information on what they were putting on the table in terms of uh uranium enrichment, in terms of potential future discussions on non-nuclear issues. And what we were understanding was that the terms went beyond the 2015 Nuclear Deal. But we didn't just talk to Iranian officials. I then talked to Rob Mali, who was one of the lead US negotiators on that 2015 deal. And Mali told me, "Look, Trump could just declare victory right now and say, I got something out of the Iranians that Barack Hussein Obama could never do." And and and Rob Mali said to me, "Look, the Iranians are doing something quite unprecedented. If the US doesn't take the win here, then it's an indication it was never about the nuclear issue at all and it was just about buying time to amass forces in the region and to try to, you know, sort of absorb what Iran might do." So during the negotiations, talking to Iranian officials gave us insight to the fact that this wasn't actually about nuclear, it was about a regime change war. And then during the war, Owen, in talking to Iranian officials, there have been several times uh where we've reported what Iran is saying it's going to do, the kinds of strikes it's going to do in the Persian Gulf, um against GCC countries or against Jordan, the kinds of intensification of the attacks against Israel that they were going to be engaged with, and then also Iran's posture on potential negotiations or a so-called ceasefire.
All of this shouldjust be basic journalism. But so many news organizations seem to believe that it's okay to just and including news organizations that spend all this time calling Trump a liar and saying that he's the greatest threat to media freedom that's ever existed in the White House. They're then on certain issues saying, "Oh, well, US officials say this." And and that's a real problem. It does a disservice to a democratic society or notions to democratic participation indecision-making, including on the decision to go to war.......'
