Vice Guide to Iran

donut that was a very respectful burnout to make sure they weren't hitting us with mud last november we went to iraq we wanted to get out of the capital and talk to the people about sanctions america and life in the islamic republic western media projects an image that women in iran are repressed they don't have freedoms they can't swim in the ocean freely do you have a message for people in the west [Music] [Music] foreign for the last 40 years the us and iranian governments have been at odds and for the most part we only see iranians on the news chanting death to america here on the southern beaches we were already seeing a very different iran our trip coincided with the 40th anniversary of the hostage crisis when iranian students took 52 americans hostage inside the u.s embassy in tehran holding them for 444 days those events a generation ago created hatred between the u.s and iran that still lingers today between meeting hardline radicals at the celebrations for the anniversary and getting off the beaten path this is a look inside the iran you might not always see on tv against the freedom of 50 american hostages whose mental state and physical condition remain a mystery in the case of any military intervention will destroy them return to hero the man who led the revolution to topple the shawl iran is an island of stability in one of the more troubled areas of the world and i promise you we'll use every legitimate means to free your loved ones from capital they keep calling us the great doesn't bother us sticks and stones iran and libya are two of the most dangerous supporters of terrorism in the world they will pay the price oppression and tyranny must be destroyed we don't want that government would be a mistake to believe that the revolution against the shah was purely [Music] religious states like these and their terrorist allies constitute an axis of evil arming to threaten the peace of the world the president i decided confident america could advance our national security by engaging directly with the iranian government the united states will withdraw from the iran nuclear deal we're about to walk into the grand bazaars it's bustling we're trying to cross the street try not to get jay killed at the same time nice pomegranates it's like six kilometers long and ancient since 1979 sanctions imposed on iran by the us and the international community have been gradually ramping up but now under president trump's policy of so-called maximum pressure the country is banned from buying and selling almost everything on world markets i mean it kind of makes sense when you walk through a place like this that the iranians even though they are suffering from what they describe as economic terrorism or economic warfare but they're also like sanctions shmanchans we survived for so long before we'll be fine it's a known thing that persian rugs are of the best quality in the world and we're instructed by amazing carpets with the recent sanctions they've specifically said in america that persian rugs are not allowed but here they're like no big deal we'll just send it to our buddy in dubai and he'll repack it and send it to the states door-to-door no problem so they're not really sweating [Music] [Laughter] [Music] what is it [Music] so we are doing the cliche thing at the spice market in the grand bazaar at tehran i mean we kind of have to right i have special requests from home in new york and things i need to bring home i kind of don't even know what they are iran is unlike any other country in the middle east alongside an incredibly deep tradition of literature art and culture and despite 40 years of sanctions they have subways and make their own cars their automotive industry it's the second biggest industry in the country gas is eight cents a liter so the streets are packed traffic is gnarly all the time you don't see multinational mega chains which some would argue is the upside of being sanctioned and regardless of people's politics the revolution that took place 40 years ago has defined their modern identity and you see it all over town [Music] so in our bid to understand iran beyond just its capital we figured what better way to meet people than the confined space of a cross-country train journey we needed to go to the very south and that just happened to be the last stop the iranian regime is the leading state sponsor of terror it exports dangerous missiles fuels conflicts across the middle east and supports terrorist proxies and militias such as hezbollah hamas the taliban we came at a time when tensions had reached an all-time high since trump came into office and tore up obama's iran policies coupled with this war-mongering rhetoric suffice to say that relations are awful right now you know trump just came in and he just wanted to say like you obama like this was a bad bad deal we're unilaterally pulled out of this thing that everybody had worked on and everyone agreed was a very good thing [Music] how do the people in iran [Music] [Music] what was the impact i think iran has done a lot better than a lot of other countries our local producer caddy is also a documentary filmmaker who lives in tehran she's seen these issues from every angle have you taken this train before no it's my first time but this is funny i like the atmosphere people i believe that every cabin has a their own life it's all little universes little worlds right exactly do iranians still see america as the great satan oh no that was the thing before right you know that death to america it's just a war and so sometimes you know we are under sanction uh we are suffering from lack of uh medicine something for uh daily routine life uh we don't have so when they say that america it comes from somewhere it's kind of ingrained in people when they like iran or iran is like you know an unstable actor they can't be trusted it's a dangerous country it's all these things but we are not dangerous are we we are not dangerous it's a safe country but but you know maybe it's happened because of their behavior with us for three years we have we had sanctions we were under sanction and we deal with this yeah this is the iranian culture this dining car is getting very colorful now yeah with the disco lights like a disco [Music] yeah [Music] the train has stopped everyone is disembarked because it's prayer time and this is where people are doing bazoo and this is their little railway mosque [Music] by the second day people really started warming up to us [Music] we're very far from the kind of death to america intense terrorism finally 22 hours later let's see thank you so we're here right on the strait of hormuz and um the uae is directly across in oman very close to dubai in saudi arabia closer to riyadh than we are to tehran at this point from what i saw bandarabas it felt like an entirely different country from tehran a weird hybrid between an emirati gulf state in the south asian country not the iran that i had visited before the city sits on the strait of hormuz a strategically vital waterway through which iran exerts control over a third of the world's oil and historically the strait has long been the set of conflict between the u.s and its allies going all the way back to the days of the cold war the u.s is coming out with a tough warning for iran it's saying that any disruption in the straits of hormuz will quote not be tolerated the strait is effectively controlled by the islamic revolutionary guard corps or irgc goods and services flow through those oil waterways and people want to see that commerce the shadowy military organization which trump is classified as a terrorist group for their sake they don't do anything foolish if they do they will pay a price like nobody's ever paid a price he thrusts the group into the spotlight in january by assassinating one of their top commanders we wanted to speak with the irgc but their press office hadn't been returning our calls [Music] so he tried to chase down their commander after a speech [Music] did you leave already oh god that's the guy who could hook up the interview right there everybody's chasing the commander of the revolutionary guard now we're about to all walk into traffic it looks like that he said the dog is the brother of the fox and walked away seriously he shut me down didn't want to talk to me but we've tracked down his predecessor and he's invited us to his home and will talk to us which is great if you look at the some picture for example when i was in afghanistan yeah during the war between the soviet union this is in iraq with me before the war so you were the head of irgc during the war yeah so you're like the top guy yeah how many and how many troops did you have reporting to you how many people were you homeless whole of the entire thing operation of the years earlier this year the trump administration designated the irgc as a terrorist organization which was unprecedented um what is what are your thoughts on that uh on the subject of trump from you know his rhetoric towards iran it's it escalates and it de-escalates and but it goes up and down and seems a lot worse than it was during the obama administration but i'm curious what you think the implications would be if trump actually does attack iran what would happen it [Music] everyone is testing each other in the strait of hormuz that's all right we needed to see it for ourselves [Music] so we're going on on a boat into the strait of hormuz it's been a lot of action over this year in the strait a lot of tankers have been getting attacked uh iran's been getting blamed for it like a japanese and norwegian tanker where iran denies an iranian tanker was seized by the british uh because they said they were shipping crude oil to syria which was a violation of sanctions and then iran kind of retaliated and messed with a british tanker so this has all been happening in the last few months so there's a lot of action out there right now like one third of the world's oil supply goes through this rainforest so we're gonna go check out the tankers the revolutionary guard also controls the area um so maybe we'll see them too [Music] so iran is with the current sanctions iran is banned from creating oil with anyone but from the amount of takers you see where wherever you see red lines of the takers that means that they are empty and that oil has been dropped off so there's a lot of oil trading hands and the revolutionary guard and that kind of naval warship right there is very ground patrolling checking out the different international tankers another thing that's been happening is that the chinese ships have been turning off their transponders and that allows them to then kind of steam along and transport oil in secret and then you have the you know the brits and the americans saying don't let that chinese tanker report here because it's got iranian crude oil on it so iran has made it very clear that regardless of sanctions they will not stop selling oil to whoever wants to buy oil from them and they said that the international community has no right to tell iran that they can't do that basically you you're gonna say to us we're gonna sell our oil [Music] foreign go for a swim so we're just pulling out a bundle uh going to catch them after starts and stops in other cities uh finally on a ferry late at night it's kind of chaotic here it's a big safety first sign and it's felt anything but safe people jumping onto fairies after they've already left the show we actually got hit by a like a barge but and now we're packed like sardines obviously it's all good [Laughter] [Music] our hotel was actually housing for workers at an adjacent shipyard we were building luxury yachts before sanctions caused their investors to pull out we were talking to some fishermen this morning and they said that you know the sanctions are affecting their ability to get the the gear that they need to do their jobs we're talking to you now and it's shut down your entire business it feels like the sanctions really are having an impact on iran is that would you agree with that yes so how does it feel when you walk into your shipyard and you see this half finished yacht here that's been sitting here for 15 plus years back is my [Music] the secret [Music] and [Music] it's on the news all the time as this international flash point where is world war iii gonna kick off the reality is it's where the iranians come and hang out and it's super good vibes [Music] after what felt like a little vacation in the south of iran it was time to head back to the city [Music] okay [Music] but before we went to the 40th anniversary event at the former u.s embassy we wanted to see the shrine of the ayatollah khumeini [Music] he was the guy who 40 years ago led the revolution through which he molded the psychology of modern iran creating the country we see today [Music] khomeini shrine and it is an epic place its scale is massive it's a two billion dollar project that they started 30 years ago and it's still unfinished he was the guy who brought what the west calls radical islam to the world and in the modern era i can't think of a leader who's been more defiant towards the west and towards america specifically in his spirit of defiance has cast a very long shadow [Music] foreign [Music] they have some pretty great coffee mugs prayer beads swag khomeini swag i want a picture of a t-shirt of romania when he was young [Music] the tripod is really good me too okay so let's get two of those mugs two of these one for you one for me i think we get another pair of two of these [Music] [Applause] [Music] in 1979 when radical students took over this american embassy they looked to humaney for approval this embassy was the biggest embassy that america had anywhere in the world it's pretty crazy he could have shut down the siege but instead gave his blessing interesting how things change right like in the 50s we're just gonna build this huge thing it's like 26 acres i like that they left the the seal on the front of the building though here we go into the den of spies the decision created the bitter animosity between the us and iran that continues to this day arms transfers these are the documents that they found and pieced back together it was their proof that it was a espionage going on in here from the bureau of intelligence and research confidential not releasable to foreign nationals about the strait of hormuz as the control point for persian gulf tanker transit there are still radical students in the embassy it's been turned into a strange museum used to indoctrinate young iranians in anti-american ideology oh this is cool server room hussein sheikh al-islam was one of the ringleaders of the hostage crisis and allegedly its chief torturer if the carter administration hadn't accepted the shah into america for cancer treatment it would have been it would take no no no no no no no no exactly what you say students sit together say okay this is what they do good the two are going to do we go and take over the embassy we say give us the show we give you the hostages and we wait for 48 hours 72 hours if imam khamenei supported we continue and then imam khamenei said i support them oh iranian people even who were in tehran was in front of the embassy supporting their students because shaw has done so many bad things to us that we wanted to try for him there's so many reports though about what happened like that it was translation that went to interrogation that went to torture no no it was that you personally were involved with torture no no no no it wasn't a torture no no no it wasn't a torture no no no no because it was an order from imam i'm not saying because they're lying no doubt they're lying they make them some of the other students have gone on record to say that they regret no no i don't i don't regret i'm i think it was the right thing to do i think uh still it is the united states who is going to mistake toward iran no next we spoke to one of sheikh al-islam's comrades who is now one of iran's most senior politicians we're about to go meet vice president abdekar she was one of the big players in the hostage crisis the hostages are in our hands and we protect them strongly and we are ready so that in the case of any military intervention we will destroy them she was the spokesperson for the hostages and also a translator here we go you said yourself that if there was an attack on this embassy that you would destroy the hostages could you really do that yes we mean it madam vice president is that the right way to refer to you yeah all right thank you for taking the time with us today you as a young activist along with your comrades and your generation had a very very significant impact in shaping the country what do you say to the these young activists today who are fighting for things that you might not be in agreement with we have to see everything in the historical context that it took place those early days of the revolution the youth at that time they were listening to what was happening in the world in terms of all the anti-imperial movements and even the young generation today they understand very well how these terrible sanctions today inflicted by the american government are hampering the the advancement of our society and preventing them from finding decent jobs or from the economic advances that they expect their societies to have but not all the anger on the streets of iran is fueled by sanctions one precursor to the current protests was the white wednesday movement women protesting the mandatory wearing of the hijab or islamic head scarf what do you say to the young women who say that we don't have enough freedoms and the women in the white wednesday movement say we don't want to wear our headscarves anymore after the islamic revolution in iran we have a set of regulations and norms in our society based on our religious values and the majority of the iranian people cherish those values those values are not meant to restrict women or men but they're meant to ensure that there is a dignity that's preserved in relationships between men and women and that harassment does not occur in our society the practice of modesty and dress modesty and behavior campaigns which are directed from abroad mostly or they're meant to to bring a different paradigm which is usually western oriented they won't be accepted by the majority of the society thank you so much after the embassy was captured artists painted the walls with anti-american murals for the 40th anniversary they unveiled new ones it seems that the regime has doubled down on revolution there's no moderation here really this one here they're at the table uh but the american diplomat is wearing fatigues and combat boots there's no trump up there bush looks a little weird this one is uh kind of heavy it's got a nod to israel lsd america is the depraved country everybody's shooting dope and taking lsd not that they're not shooting you up in this country is that a mustache or trump's hair on the gun trump's hair on the gun okay so one reference to trump mickey mouse with the gun mcdonald's serving up barbed wire and the statue of liberty's torch which has been extinguished and smoke is just coming out this one's just bad it's like brooklyn student art show the impotent gun before the rally we wanted to meet with some young people in one of the little cafes we'd been having lunch what is the name of this cafe what does that mean it's the he said fine i'm going to do 16 more rounds of sanctions against iran when you hear that do you think oh like life is going to get harder today what is it like for women in iran do you have enough freedom foreign iranian women have enough freedom as a man he's saying that but okay but let the women speak do you agree with him this is life but it's just my opinion because we have so many limits but these are the rules this white wednesday movie i've heard i've only heard a little bit about it what do you think of it that's what i'm talking about really yes i didn't know it was such a sensitive subject it's so sensitive super sensitive we don't want and there's a famous quote that says we used to drink in public and pray in private but now we pray in public and dream in private that says you know and any uh terror attack that happened in the us no iranians were involved and this discrimination is kind of hurts our feeling but everyone loves us are you going to go to the embassy tomorrow i am [Music] the idea that they would attend the rally was comical to them and when we saw it for ourselves that made sense i think there's gonna be a lot of this these like buses they bust people in for it from townships angry students who've been fed propaganda their whole lives young kids have been bused in from the outskirts for a fun propaganda day street fair of anti-semitic and anti-american activities they're making swords out of balloons i think this is the anti-semitic booth the angry birds destroy star of david also known as happy birds so they've got a massive slingshot set up to shoot at the star of david in front of this happy bird it's like an amusement park [Music] i mean it's kind of like they're making it fun for kids with all the activities they're getting them early the older kids burn flags the younger kids get to play baseball it's like iranian county bears so the emotions are really wrapping up here now all of trump's recent rhetoric has really increased the anti-american sentiment in iran right now now granted this is a gathering of hard lighters why is today important the 40-year anniversary of the students taking control of what is now the former u.s embassy how important because 40 years ago a student like me said that there must be no american presence in iran they put an end to this it seems to be one of the standard activities at the anniversary events stopping on the american flags [Music] what does it say on your hands the burning of the flags stomping on the american flag effigies just anti-american sentiment at a fever pitch intensity they've modernized the message why are you here today giving the young generation that kind of revolutionary philosophy and spirit to carry into the future for the next 40 years at the rally iran's official ideology seemed as alive as ever [Music] they just got really heavy really fast [Music] but away from the camera people often had a very different point of view the thing is we've spoken to so many people who have a lot of fear about being honest and telling us how they really feel you know a couple women who refuse to talk to us we're saying it's not just being told how to dress but how to think and that kind of the subject of mind control seems to be a running game so um [Music] and what they're afraid of is ending up in that present over there which is where all the the political prisoners are sent it's called evin it's kind of the legendary terrifying place that nobody wants to end up it had been an eye-opening trip from hard lighters to hipsters it seemed everyone was frustrated but not with regular people with governments and policy americas and their own [Music] so we are at the practice space for an iranian death metal ban called chaos dissent tensions between the us and iran haven't been this high since 1979 and uh we should probably get on a plate and go home because we're the only american use crew in the country right now it's probably not wise to be here but we had one last thing to shoot it was these guys uh chaosta set and um so you know priorities because you know we can do all the things in our houses uh on our uh parties but uh not out of that right is it illegal for you to play concert in public yeah it's not illegal to play ourselves okay but a live live concerts is kind of uh brutally illegal you know you can have a live gig with jazz or fusion without vocals right but metal is completely illegal right someone check your lyrics someone check your music uh some sometimes i don't know why they tell us this music is satanic and i don't know uh what kind of relationship with the music and satan this is the political situation in iran and internationally kids in their 20s you know like the younger ones teenagers in their 20s are they are they politically engaged ah yeah but you know we have a situation here new generation is so depressed people do not act about their situation about to change the situation they just uh sit and watch the whole uh happening in the country right but do nothing you could leave yeah yeah this is the only option right do you want to leave i want to be you do yeah we want right has a band right the name of your band chaos descent yeah in persian you decent after chaos your situation will reflect in your heart we saved a lot of lives by terminating his life you can lie easy you can tell the truth and go to the gym the evidence indicates that the plane was shot down by an iranian surface-to-air missile and are things getting better or worse i could say worse really yeah iran confirmed more than 800 new cases on tuesday bringing the total to over 2 300. it also seems that senior officials are not immune to the virus either thank you for talking to us have a good day appreciate world yeah [Music] uh is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war and frequently the words of the pursuers fall on deaf ears

Channel: VICE

Views: 1,537,528

Rating: 4.7597528 out of 5

Keywords: iran, suroosh, vice, journalism, documentary, videos, culture, interview, film, movies, underground, vice videos, lifestyle, independent, vice guide, exclusive, vice mag, vice magazine, vice.com, world, documentaries, short films, docs, yt:cc=on, APCLPWCL124153119

Id: voA0cS1JiGQ

Length: 51min 19sec (3079 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 15 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/rightsyllalables]

Omg the Vice guide used to be my favorite show!!! I believe they had two, vice guide to travel and then vice guise to something else. Anyways the vice guide to travel is so great, but the North Korea episode is probably my favorite. But I will definitely check this one out. Thanks for the share!!!

[u/Chris_in_Lijiang]

Not much different from Rick Steves' Iran show. Very disappointing really. You could see it was going to shallow by the way they skipped over the bazaar.

[u/STSector9]

Back when Vice wasn’t complete woke shit