MTP Transcript for Nov. 19

MR. RUSSERT: Iraq and Iran. Insights and analysis from Robin Wright and Ted Koppel after this station break.

(Announcements)

MR. RUSSERT: And we are back. Robin Wright, Ted Koppel, welcome both.

Ted Koppel, tonight, Discovery Channel, 9 p.m. to 11, two-hour documentary on Iran. You just got back. Let me show you as you visited the former U.S.  Embassy in Iraq—in Iran. Let’s watch.

(Videotape, “Koppel On Discovery: Iran-The Most Dangerous Nation”):

MR. TED KOPPEL: This, of course, is what used to be the U.S. Embassy, until a bunch of radical students back in November of 1979 seized it, and took all the Americans inside hostage. There are other reasons why the U.S.  government considers Iran to be dangerous these days, but if you want to talk about the roots of American resentment toward this country, what happened inside the U.S. Embassy here is a pretty good starting point.

But raise that with almost any Iranian, and he or she will respond by saying “Ah, yes, but look at what you guys did back in 1953, when the CIA conspired with British intelligence to overthrow the freely-elected prime minister Mohammed Mossadeq, replacing him with the shah.”

And that’s essentially the way you can define U.S./Iranian relations these days. Tit-for-tat, grievance for grievance. When a group of Iranian journalists were denied entry to the United States, trying to accompany President Ahmadinejad to the general assembly at the United Nations, the Iranians immediately responded by saying, “Well, when Koppel and that Discovery group leave, that’s it, we will be issuing visas to no more American journalists.”

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT: That’s incredible. Here we are, concerned about Iran becoming a nuclear power, with the war in bordering Iraq, and we’re still dealing with tit-for-tat on journalist visas.

MR. KOPPEL: I’ll give you another example. When I arrived in Tehran, I was taken in to be fingerprinted. It took about an hour, because they don’t fingerprint anybody else. They only fingerprint Americans. And the only reason they fingerprint Americans is because we do retinal scans on people who come from the Middle East, and they don’t have a retinal scan machine. I asked someone later, “What do they do with the fingerprints?” Because the guy who fingerprinted me had never done it before, and he got so much ink on that you couldn’t even read the fingerprint. He said, “They, they just throw it away. They’re just doing it to be”...

MR. RUSSERT: Harassment.

MR. KOPPEL: Yeah. Well, it’s tit-for-tat.

MR. RUSSERT: What’s the sense of the country? What did you find there, Ted?

MR. KOPPEL: It’s not—look, all of us have been to totalitarian countries, and, in its own way, Iran is a totalitarian country. But there is a different feel. In some countries, you sort of feel as though all the air has been sucked out of the atmosphere as soon as you walk in. That’s not the way it is with Iranians. Iranians are eager to talk, they will criticize their president, some of them just as savagely and with the same kind of sarcasm that people at—in Georgetown salons in this town criticize President Bush.  In fact, frequently they will draw that kind of analogy between their own president and President Bush. That surprised me a little bit.

Having said that, if you cross some of these invisible red lines that they have, you can be jailed for the most innocuous things. And you can be brutalized for the most innocuous things. It’s not an easy place to live.

MR. RUSSERT: Robin Wright, 27 years ago, when the embassy was taken over, it’s an eternity, when you think of the population of Iran, a country of 69 million people. Seventy percent are under the age of 30. They don’t remember that event from their own memories.

MS. ROBIN WRIGHT: No. And, in fact, they are, in many ways, the most dynamic force for change in the region. We focus so much on the ayatollahs and hard-line president, when in fact, the real future of the country is likely to be decided by this enormous body of people who really do understand a global era. They are connected through the Internet. There are, as Ted’s documentary points out, tens of thousands of blogs. Everyone’s connected.  There is a real engagement. They will—many of the people I know in Iran have seen American movies before I see them. They are, they are very savvy about us, just as savvy about us as we are ignorant about them. And that’s what, in many ways, is the fe—the hope for us. I’ve often argued that the solution to U.S./Iran relations is really in bridging the gap, particularly with that age group, rather than dealing with, you know, bombs or a military solution.

MR. RUSSERT: And yet, Ted Koppel, you captured what many young people in Iran are exposed to at an very early age. Let’s just watch more from your documentary.

(Videotape, “Koppel On Discovery: Iran-The Most Dangerous Nation”):

MR. KOPPEL: Still, Khomeini, the religious leader, the revolutionary, the severe, forbidding anti-Western, anti-American presence, remains a force. And the displays of public anger against America that he first inspired more than 25 years ago echo to this day during Friday prayers at the University of Tehran...

(Man shown leading prayer service, congregation shouts in response)

MR. KOPPEL: ...in the streets after prayers...

(Men shown walking through street, shouting in Arabic)

MR. KOPPEL: ...and in the indoctrination of the very youngest. The newest generation of Iranians on their first day of school:

(Children shown standing in formation. Man addresses children over public address system, children shout in response)

MR. KOPPEL: “Death to America! Death to America!” Without much passion, without much emphasis, without any real understanding, they carry the flowers given to them on this, their very first day of school, and they begin their indoctrination against what their leaders tell them is the most dangerous nation: America.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT: One universal truth of all school kids in the morning: they yawn.

MR. KOPPEL: They yawn.

MR. RUSSERT: Thank God.

MR. KOPPEL: And don’t know what they—and, and really—but it’s not just the kids, Tim. The amazing thing to me was that, for the most part, and we were witness to, and sometimes sort of involved in some of these demonstrations, surrounded by them, there’s no passion to it whatsoever.

MR. RUSSERT: It was robotic.

MR. KOPPEL: It’s robotic. People are going through it. In fact, people were coming out of Friday prayers when we were there in Isfahan. And, you know, sort of giving us the ‘V for victory sign,’ and all of a sudden somebody there spotted the camera and realized that here was an opportunity, and all of a sudden he started whipping out the “Death to America” slogans. And people go through the motions, but you didn’t get the feeling, certainly with the people, that there was any real enthusiasm.

MR. RUSSERT: Because here’s the other side of Iran. And here we have people who are enjoying life in a very Western way. Rock music, videos, cafes, Internet cafes, pool tables. I mean, Robin Wright, how do we tap into the fact that young Iranians love Western culture, and yet, those same young Iranians, even if they are “reformers,” also think that their country should have a nuclear bomb as a, as a sign of stature in the world?

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