Have a topic you’d like us to delve into, a guest recommendation, or just want to say hi? Drop us a line at ontheissues@msmagazine.com.

Background reading:

• “The Desperate Effort to Silence Iranian Feminists,” Shaghayegh Norouzi and Samaneh Savadi, Ms. magazine, Sept. 22, 2022.
• “Gen Z Iranian Women Hold the Future,” Mana Shooshtari, Ms. magazine, Oct. 21, 2022.

Transcript:

00:00:01 Michele Goodwin:

Welcome to On the Issues with Michele Goodwin at Ms. Magazine. As you know, we are a show that reports, rebels, and we tell it just like it is. On our show, history matters, we examine the past as we think about the future, and we’re interrupting our scheduled programming to bring a special episode to you about what’s happening in Iran. About the 14,000 arrests that have taken place since September. The high rate of children that have been killed and protestors that have been killed all in the wake of the death of Jina Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish girl who died after the trauma and violence inflicted upon her by the Islamic Republic’s Morality Police for wearing an improper hijab. Girls and women have taken to the street in what is considered to be a revolution that is taking place to lift up just how much that women and girls demand and love freedom, and men and boys are joining them, too. 

In just over the past six weeks, there have been thousands of men, women, and children who have been arrested. According to the UN, over 14,000 of them have been arrested defending human rights and uplifting the voices and concerns of women and girls. So, joining me on our episode today to help unpack what’s happening is Dr. Yalda Hamidi, who’s an assistant professor of gender and women’s studies at Minnesota State University in Mankato. She identifies as a feminist, a mentor, and storyteller. She works on feminist issues and is from Iran. 

I’m also joined by Dr. Parmis Khatibi, who’s engaged in solving some of the most pressing issues of or global economy, and who’s deeply involved in what’s happening in Iran right now. Lifting up the concerns of girls and women domestically in the United States but bringing attention to the issues that are taking place in Iran. She’s one of the leading experts in mental health and wellness services and is a clinical specialist at the university of California Irvine Medical Center as well as a clinical adjunct professor for the University of California San Francisco and the School of Pharmacy at USC. 

Join me now as we unpack what is a very disturbing aspect of what is taking place in Iran. But as you’ll hear from my guests, as well there is a silver lining in terms of women and girls standing up for themselves and demanding a change. 

00:00:03 Michele Goodwin:

Parmis and Yalda, it is really an honor to be with you and in times that are really so painful right to the gut that I wish more people internationally were paying attention, that more people were paying attention to in the United States. Iran is experiencing its largest, its most significant civil rights movement since the revolution in 1979. Parmis, I’m wondering if you could perhaps help to level set and share a little bit about what’s going on. 

00:00:41 Dr. Parmis Khatibi:

Sure. Thank you, Michele. Right now, Iran is experiencing its largest civil rights movement, as you said, since 1979, and this was all sparked by the death back in September of Jina Mahsa Amini. She was a 22-year-old Kurdish girl, who died after trauma and violence inflicted by Islamic Republic’s Morality Police for wearing an improper hijab. What that means is that they have these morality police that basically are walking around the streets in every city in Iran, and if you don’t have your ankles covered or you have a piece of hair out, they will come and educate you. So, it depends sometimes on the type of education these women will get. 

Unfortunately, this time, she died in their hands after all the trauma and the violence that they inflicted upon her. I think this is basically 43 years of pain and suppression that everyone just had enough, and now there’s this large and the first time ever women’s-led civil rights movement in Iran and anywhere in the country actually. 

00:01:55 Michele Goodwin:

One of the things that one sees in all of this is that there’s been violence inflicted upon the women and the men who are protesting who are trying to defend the honor of, the death of Jina. Have you been affected by this?

00:02:27 Dr. Parmis Khatibi:

I am very involved in the Iranian community in not only Southern California but abroad as well. I think everybody I know knows somebody, a second or third degree of difference that has been inflicted by this or has been a family member that has passed away or has been held captive by the morality police or the police for protesting. So, I’ve been blessed to not have anyone personally in my own family, but I know so many friends whose family and friends have been inflicted upon by this regime. 

00:03:07 Michele Goodwin:

Yalda, I would like to pose that question to you, too, and also get your sense about what’s happening on the ground and why we should be paying more attention in the United States. 

00:03:21 Dr Yalda Hamidi:

Thank you, Michele, for having me here. It’s an honor talking to you in this very painful moment. So, one thing that I would like to mention is that this moment in all its glory and pain that it offers us, encapsulates all my understanding of the history, the very long history of Iranian feminism. This moment has politics of feminism that really stands out to me. It’s not just about repression against women. It addresses the issue of ethnicity, which is somehow similar to the issue of race in the United States. It speaks to the history of trauma that we all have been through with the Islamic regime but also the history of trauma in Iran goes beyond this regime because we had the similar sort of trauma with the previous regime that used to pronounce themselves secular and modernizing but actually imposing rules on people’s bodies similarly. 

The other thing that really stands out to me, for years you have heard from our supposedly representatives in the United Nations that we do not have a queer community, and in this moment the Iranian queer community are coming out and advocating for their rights and just performing in front of the embassies and everything. The Iranian community with the disabilities are coming out and talking for the rights of disabled people. One other thing that really stands out to me is that social class issue in this matter. You see people not just from upper class Tehran, middle class Tehranis but also from all sorts of neighborhood in the metropole of Tehran but also across the city from rural areas, from smaller towns coming out and shouting for women, life, freedom. I think this moment is going to tell the world about who we are and what we stand for and also what we have gone through. 

I have all my family back in Iran. Something that’s really important to me is the history of trauma. The trauma is not just the person getting shot or, again, experiencing police brutality. The trauma is in the eyes of all the teenagers, who feel threatened and feel not respected. The trauma is my friend, who was on the plane from Tehran to Toronto and we’re talking about the plane being shot. So, it’s the trauma of us not knowing whether or not this government is going to protect our right of citizenship. 

Let me just acknowledge that the shooting of the plane was accidental, but it doesn’t take away from the trauma that we all endure. The trauma is me getting arrested as a younger woman by Morality Police and receiving names that were far less than any human dignity. The trauma is people not being able to provide for their families. While they are doing their best and they are getting back to their families every night more miserable than before. 

00:07:08 Michele Goodwin:

So let’s talk about the Morality Police, and then I want to turn to just in recent weeks the number of deaths, which, again, I think that people in the United States really don’t understand just how many people have been killed, including children. There have been over 56 children that have been killed, 362 protestors and that number has probably gone up in terms of the number of individuals that have been killed. You’ve both mentioned the Morality Police. 

In the United States, we’ve become more familiarized in recent years with police-involved violence, certainly after the deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd and similar to the kinds of protests that erupted in the United States after the killing of George Floyd. We see a version of that. Different but still in Iran taking place. Can you tell us a little bit about the Morality Police? Yalda, maybe if you could just give us a brief description because you were stopped by the morality police when you were younger. 

00:08:19 Dr Yalda Hamidi:

So, let me just say that the Iranian feminist underground on the Iranian (…) sometimes do not use the term Morality Police because they would want everybody to know that there is no morality involved. It’s just oppression. So, I’m talking about police brutality in its most cruel version that you can imagine. Of course, it has so much with what’s happening in the world and what’s happening in this country against the community of African American people, but also it’s the police that were put in place initially to make sure to enforce hijab rules. 

When we talk about hijab, we also need to have a broader perspective. There are one million Muslims living in the world and not everybody in this Muslim community wears hijab or considers hijab as part of their faith. I also would like to highlight that so many of the girls and women that are burning their hijab in the streets of Tehran and protesting are not against Islam. In fact, so many of them are believers, so it’s not the issue about the religion. I would like to highlight that these police is a police, just a police, and the issue is about police brutality not enforcing morality and not enforcing Islamic sharia rule because so many of the juries would disagree with that. But they also do not pay attention to all the opposing voices that there is among Iranian communities8. 

While I was arrested by them, it was…I believe in the summer of…

00:10:17 Michele Goodwin:

How old were you? Were you in your 20s? 

00:10:25 Dr Yalda Hamidi:

I think I was 30. I was not exactly arrested, so there were the three of us, my husband and his cousin and I, and we were going shopping. The cousin stayed with us over the night. We were very happy to have her. At the end of her sleepover at our house, we wanted to take her shopping and then the three of us were heading into her house. It’s very funny because I’ve been working with Islamic ruling on women’s body for many years, even before I leave my country and live in the United States. 

So, at that time, the first question that the police asked me was like have you read anything on the hijab? I just looked into her eyes and was like probably more than you can imagine. But what’s the point of that? You’re not going to listen to me arguing with you about the faith, about the interpretations that all the Islamic feminist and secular feminists have of the faith. This moment, let’s not give you any credential in telling you how much I read and how much I did research on the hijab and its role in Iranian history and in the history of the Middle East. Let’s just stay with the fact that you have power over me and you’re interrogating me all the inappropriate questions. 

So one of the questions she would ask me was what’s in the handbag of your guest? I was just puzzled. How should I know? The second comment she made, if she was an honorable woman she was not at your house. Nothing in that moment…it was a moment that my brain stopped working. It took me years to process through the trauma and pain that that woman caused that she was accusing me of so many things that I was not. Being an immoral person and implying that good, moral person would go through the stuff of her guest and just expose a woman’s belongings for just equating that kind of morality that they were looking for. You know, this experience, my experience was very mild and minor. They let us go after about half an hour, but that experience remained with me. 

I want you to think about all those women and all those girls who have been asked inappropriate questions, immoral questions. Those women, those girls are moral agents on the ground. They are screaming for their agencies, and they are actually exposing the police. So, in their honor, I really agree with them that we shouldn’t be using the term morality police because these police is actually devoid of any morality. 

00:13:38 Michele Goodwin:

I understand your point. I’ll turn to you, Parmis, just about that because it is a term that is being used and there’s a sort of sense that there is…so, I completely understand that it is a term that’s being used inappropriately by those who are wielding it because there is an assumption by what they do that they are creating a more sort of moral society to people that are perceived as being immoral. Parmis, tell us just a little bit about why this is going on. What’s behind this kind of policing and do you think that with the protests that are taking place now that a change will come? 

00:14:26 Dr. Parmis Khatibi:

Michele, oddly enough, if you go back to 1936 when the Shah’s father was in power, there was a dynasty in Iran back then. He didn’t allow women to wear a hijab. He thought it was unmodern. So, during that time, up until the revolution, Iran was very modern. I mean women were in all forms of power and political government. They were wearing miniskirts, they were wearing swimsuits. So, it’s a very modern, very westernized country. 

When the revolution occurred between 1979 and 1990, that’s when the morality police or I’ll call it the guidance patrol. That’s another term that’s used for it sometimes. That was formally set up. There was a great deal of pressure on women, often by just people on the streets or by random members of the police forces. This is completely focused on women, and it’s really an example of how the states will take women’s rights and abuse them. In this particular case that we talked about, it was a young woman who died as a result of simply not wearing her veil correctly, and that triggered a lot of people in Iran who were already feeling a great deal of grievance against the way that the state has been handling their economic futures and their ability to feel a sense of liberty and exercise their rights. 

I think that’s the reason why this guidance patrol / morality police has become such a target and the upset that we’re seeing sweep through the country. With that being said, we’ve gone too far to turn back. So, the reprimands of stopping not only in the US and across the world and in Iran all of these rallies and protests… to amplify their voices is because there has to be some type of regime change. I compare the people of Iran kind of like the government of Iran is North Korea and the people of Iran are South Korea. There is no ideology that matches one another, and they can’t turn back because I feel like if they do stop or turn back the reprimands are going to be so much more harsher by this government on them. The people I’ve spoken to in Iran have just said amplify our voices because when internet is available and they can hear and see all of our posts on social media, it just gives them more power to know that there’s support for them to keep moving forward and demanding change. 

00:17:00 Michele Goodwin:

Parmis, I’m going to follow up because people then would wonder based on what you’ve said if the governments like North Korea and the people are like South Korea, how does this government get into place? How does this government sustain? I mean people in the United States really are so far removed. Can help to explain that? 

00:17:19 Dr. Parmis Khatibi:

Well, when the revolution occurred, some people will say it was the doing of the CIA and the US. I mean there’s so many theories about why this revolution occurred. I don’t want to go down the political aspect of it, but Yalda, you’re more than welcome. But when you suppress your people, when you cause fear towards them, when you do things, when you lead by fear and cause so much suppression that is how they’ve stayed in place. Unfortunately, if you don’t have the military or the police on the side of the people, what do they have to fight with? Just stones. You know, what are stones going to do against all the ammunition they have? So that’s how they’ve stayed in place so long. 

It’s just so remarkable to see all these women and young girls chanting death to the dictator, taking off their hijab, walking in the streets and not caring what the reprimands are because this is a generation that grew up on Instagram, social media, Tik Tok, so they see freedom in the other side of the world and they want that. There is no hope for them in Iran. So, they have nothing to lose in that sense by fighting now for regime change. 

00:18:35 Michele Goodwin:

Yalda, I want to pick up on that with regard to the regime that’s in power and the fact that women and girls are fighting back. This is a regime that has also said that it’s willing to put to death people who’ve been protesting. Can you lift a bit of that up because it’s really quite extraordinary for a government to say that it’s willing to kill its protestors. 

00:19:00 Dr Yalda Hamidi:

I would like to take a step back because it’s a very privileged podium that we’re talking to, and I have some personal opinions on the matter. But I would like to highlight that with a country as large as Iran with more than 18 million population and with history of feminism that goes beyond a century, we have multiple voices among the feminist. Parmis addressed one of the voices that are loud and we hear them more often in the United States because of the access and the privilege that people who advocate for this voice have. I have some agreements and disagreements, but I don’t think at this point what I think is the most important issue. 

So, I just wanted to give you a background view of different branches of feminism in Iran. We have at least four different branches, and it’s so expected that these people have disagreements on different issues with each other. We have the history of the secular feminism that goes back to 1905. We have the history of leftist feminism that comes with the existence of the leftist movement from Iran, and we have the history of Islamic feminism, which is the newer version of Muslim women advocating for feminism based on faith came about in about 1970s across the world. And as Parmis mentioned, we have the cyberfeminism right now. 

Cyberfeminists have at least two groups in them. So, after the repression of the regime on so many feminists on the ground, and we’re talking about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad regime and we’re talking about the election that we believe was hijacked by him. So many of the feminists had to leave the country, and they couldn’t get their voices across anymore. Those feminists right now living across the globe, but you can find them on different social media trying to raise their own voices. These are the first group of the Iranian cyberfeminists. 

And the second group that I would like to mention are the youth that Parmis talked about. So, right now we have 13-year-old and 16-year-old who are Tik Tokers and vloggers and they are on Instagram doing their work and so many of those kids were in the streets and we lost so many of them, just as you mentioned.

00:22:00 Michele Goodwin:

I would love to have a show where we go deeper into aspects of that history. 

00:22:16 Dr Yalda Hamidi:

Yes, thank you. So what’s happening right now is that all these feminists having different sorts of demands of the government. So, if we look at the secular feminist, you can recognize different voices. The two loud voices that we hear right now are the voices for regime change but also voices that advocate for feminist solidarity across the globe and people who would argue that US sanctions against Iran actually has exacerbated this situation for so many people. 

I think we need to pay attention to these two voices and what they have to offer. As a person who’s standing in the middle, I do believe that each side has some level of truth into that.

So, I think it’s really important to see this issue in a global scale because that scale has provided us with better steps for moving forward. So, regime change is the demand that usually implies military intervention. Because of that I try to stay away from that. 

00:24:01 Michele Goodwin:

Right. Yalda, let me get to that. I want to stay back on the point that I raised. That point being about the judiciary announcing last week that over a thousand indictments had been issued in relation to the protestors. I would really love for our listeners to understand just what is at risk so that they understand that this is not a matter of…which is horrible in and of itself, the death of one young woman that sparks a revolution but that there have been many deaths and that now the judiciary has announced over a thousand indictments. Then there have been other accounts that even more than that that may lead to execution. There are news reports saying of course the sort of announcement of the proposed executions will not be taking place, but I just think it’s so important that people sort of understand just what is sort of lifting up in the air in Iran right now. Parmis, I wonder if you might be able to speak to that. Do you have any kind of clarity just on what those indictments represent. Should people be worried that those indictments, that level of indictment will actually lead to punishment and death? 

00:25:36 Dr. Parmis Khatibi:

I believe so because I believe this is a regime that is no holds barred. I mean they’re killing children, point blank. So, I 100 percent believe that we all should be worried with these indictments and it will actually be carried out. I mean if you heard recently about the Sharif University, which is like the Harvard of Iran, they had barricaded and they were shooting at students there because they want to kill all the brightest minds. Same thing happened in Evin Prison where they take anyone who is a political powerhouse, anyone who is for human rights. Again, brilliant minds that have talked against the regime. There was a fire that erupted there, allowing people to die. They barricaded from people coming in and saving them. 

So, this is a regime that I personally believe has no holds barred, and it will carry these out. I mean they hang people. If you are gay, you’re hung in Iran for being gay. I mean this is a very brutal regime, and I would definitely be very concerned about these indictments and we do need to somehow get involved because they will carry these out, in my opinion. 

00:26:54 Michele Goodwin:

Just to clarify for our listeners, we know that there’s been over a thousand indictments. There was a United Nations report that got conflated with some of this, which said that as many as 14 thousand protestors have ben arrested in over the past six weeks, which is quite significant and speaks back to what both of you were saying, Parmis and Yalda. And the parliament in Iran has called on the judiciary to act decisively against those who have been arrested. So, we know that over 14 thousand have been arrested. We know that there have been over a thousand indictments, and we know that the parliament has called on the judiciary to act decisively against the arrested protestors. We also know, as you say, that there are children who have been killed and at the most prestigious university in Iran, which is one of the most prestigious in the world that there has been gunfire directly aimed at the students and the faculty who are there. 

So, what happens next do you think? How should governments get involved? How should activists get involved? How should women’s groups, groups that in the United States embrace women’s rights, that embrace feminism. What should they be doing and paying attention to in this moment? I’ll start with you, Yalda, and then I’d like to hear from you, Parmis. 

00:28:32 Dr Yalda Hamidi:

This is a very difficult question. There are a couple of suggestions in the air, and I tried to pickup from what I heard, but it’s a very difficult moment. If you subtract the military intervention, which is something that I don’t believe in, what else we can do? One of the things that I’m hearing from feminists on the ground that they are really looking for is different groups of feminists across the globe showing solidarity. Recently, we had a letter signed by Palestinian feminists just taking a stand and saying no to what Islamic regime is doing in the name of Islam to Muslim women. Keep in mind that this regime has made a claim that they’ve been supporting Palestinian women’s rights for the past 40 years. So, it definitely means something when Palestinian women refused to accept that kind of support and stand with Iranian women who have been going through police brutality. 

We have seen marches in the streets of Kulgani and all the cities that you wouldn’t think of necessarily, but women are showing up and just disowning this regime and dishonoring what they are doing in the name of Islam. I would like to actually on top of feminists encourage all the Muslim world to please come out and lend us your voices and say no to what’s happening in the name of religion because we know that this is not a religious issue. 

What else is to do, I know that there are abolitionist feminist groups working on different issues, some of them are located in California. Some of them are trying to get internet to the hands of people in Iran. I know that there are technical ways and governments can do things and corporations can do things. For example, because of the sanctions, people can never use their iPhones in full capacity in Iran. I’m one of those people. Whenever I travel to Iran, there used to be problems with using different apps on my phone. 

So, one of the things that I can ask for and I think is useful is removing those kind of sanctions so people on the ground have access and can get their voices and demands and can tell us what’s exactly necessary for them in this moment. The other thing that comes to my mind is what you’re doing, Michele, and I’m very grateful for that. Get the voices across, let people know what’s happening, and let’s not keep our eyes from what’s happening because just as Parmis said, it’s a huge brutality and there is no way that we can ignore that and leave Iranian people alone with a government that holds no moral at this point for just moving forward with some of these criminalization and indictments. 

The other thing that I want to talk to more academic audience who are hearing my voice is, know that this moment is a moment of trauma. Thanks to our sister feminists, we know a lot about students who deal with police brutality and conflicts past, know that the Iranian community in America and across the world, and I’m talking about students, graduate students, are coming to your classes with trauma. Please, please, please be there for them. Provide accommodation. Know that the trauma changes the brain and we cannot have the same expectations of your colleagues and of your students. 

One of the other things that I would like to see happening on the ground is different opportunities for Iranian scholars who would like to leave Iran immediately. I am serving on the Global Education Council on my campus, and I would like these campuses and these communities to move fast and provide funding for people who need to leave the ground immediately—journalists, feminists, academics who experience trauma and their lives have been threatened by the government. 

00:33:06 Michele Goodwin:

Yalda, I really appreciate you mentioning the coming back to the matter of trauma and coming back to the issue that it threads globally. There is a very large expatriate Iranian community all around the world and including in the United States. They’re our friends, our students, our colleagues. I really appreciate your mentioning that the matters that are going on back in Iran are those that touch them deeply. 

Parmis, I’d like to turn that question to you that I started with, which is what are the next steps? What can be done? What should people have on their minds and be looking to do? 

00:33:57 Dr. Parmis Khatibi:

I think I’ve had so many people ask me this question, what can we do to help, being here. One is just to keep raising your voice. Your voice is powerful and keep raising it and tell people to stand with you. Secondly, we’re all global citizens. I think showing your solidarity by sharing a message of why you stand with the women of Iran is very important. 

Third, I would say attend events where you learn about oppressed communities. There’s no way to learn about human rights violations than attending events that talk about that or going to actual areas even within the US that are oppressed communities or marginalized communities. That’s very important. Share posts that you see on protests with other people in your community can know about it as well. Then donate or support human rights organizations. 

I think a lot of times we think, oh, something is happening abroad. It doesn’t affect us here, but I firmly believe that what occurs globally affects us here locally and we’ve seen that in so many ways. I think it’s important for us here or wherever you are is to get involved in your local community and also don’t forget to reach out to your elected officials and let them know. Because if you don’t speak up and don’t have a voice, no one will know what you’re fighting for or what you’re advocating for. I think there’s just some important things that we all can do to help move it along a little bit better. 

00:35:36 Michele Goodwin:

We’ve reached this time in our podcast, every episode we ask about a silver lining. It can be heart wrenching sort of coming from spaces where there’s so much that has been broken and yet within those spaces that are broken, it’s amazing how people share of themselves, how they fight for justice, how they lift up. So, I want to ask each of you what that silver lining happens to be in these times. I’ll start with you, Parmis. 

00:36:11 Dr. Parmis Khatibi:

I have to first say, Michele, that it’s so ironic because Iran or Cyrus The Great, he was the first king of Persia, and he’s the one who wrote the human rights, the declaration on the Cyrus Cylinder actually. That was in 539 BC where he said everyone is free to choose their own religion, establish racial equality, and here we are now in a country that created human rights and everyone being equal. And our women and girls are fighting for human rights. So, the silver lining in all of this is that I think I’ve noticed within my own community here, people have galvanized around a cause. I think they’ve galvanized to either be part of a community, reach out to their elected officials and realize how their voice really matters and who they pick as their congressman, senator, president or parliament member abroad. 

Three, they realize that you do need to get involved in these issues because if you don’t, if it doesn’t matter to you it won’t matter to anybody else. I think that’s been such a silver lining to see so many Iranian people get involved in their communities now both civically and politically and make for that change. 

00:37:34 Michele Goodwin:

I really appreciate you mentioning that and the Iranian people because there are men and boys who’ve also come into the streets understanding just what is at risk in these times. Yalda, what do you see as the silver lining? 

00:37:49 Dr Yalda Hamidi:

There are so many. It’s a very, very painful moment and I personally feel very traumatized, but it gives me the highest hope I’ve ever experienced. I think it’s the beginning of a feminist revolution that has already started. You know, when you think of people on the ground fighting a government who shoots at them, you need to scale back on how you understand victory. I think this revolution has a very loud message. The message is women, life, freedom, and it means if you want to free a community you need to look at intersectionality and honor women and I would say trans women, queer women, women of color, women from different ethnicities, until women from the lowest social classes are free none of us are going to be free. 

I would also very much agree with Parmis on the point that it’s the beginning, hopefully of a global feminist revolution. I was talking to high schoolers in Minnesota yesterday. One of them ask me, if I advocate for stopping police brutality against African American community in Minnesota am I helping feminists in Iran? I said absolutely, yes, because what happens in a place in the world has so much to do with somewhere else. I think hearing that a student voice is the silver lining in my head. We need to connect all these fights. We need to start global right here in our state. We need to fight for reproductive justice because what the Iranians are fighting for is reproductive justice, the right of keeping your children alive and providing them with the freedom that they deserve. 

So, against all the pain I’m seeing a glory in this moment, and this is the silver lining for me. 

00:39:56 Michele Goodwin:

It’s been my privilege and honor to be with both of you today. Thank you so much for helping to spread the word about what is happening in Iran and the urgency of our paying attention and the threading of what’s happening there to everyone around the world including in the United States. Thanks so much. 

00:40:16 Dr. Parmis Khatibi:

Thank you for using your platform, Michele. 

00:40:20 Dr Yalda Hamidi:

Thank you. 

Michele Goodwin:
Guests and listeners, that’s it for today’s episode of On the Issues with Michele Goodwin at Ms. Magazine. I want to thank each of you for tuning in for the full story and engaging with us. We hope you’ll join us again for our next episode where you know we’ll be reporting, rebelling, and telling it just like it is. 

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This has been your host Michele Goodwin. Reporting, rebelling, and telling it just like it is. On the Issues with Michele Goodwin is a Ms. Magazine joint production. Michele Goodwin and Kathy Spillar are our executive producers. Our producers for this episode are Roxy Szal, Oliver Haug and also Allison Whelan. Our social media content producer is Sophia Panigrahi. The creative vision behind our work includes art and design by Brandi Phipps, editing by Will Alvarez and Natalie Holland and music by Chris J. Lee.