Pahlavi loyalist outflanks US far-right as fierce genocide defender in viral debate

By Mohammad Homaeefar

British-American journalist Mehdi Hasan recently debated 20 far-right conservatives, including at least one self-proclaimed fascist—yet one person stood out, making even the most hardline participants cringe.

Since it was published on Sunday, the video of the 100-minute debate and short clips of its jaw-dropping moments have gone viral on social media, garnering millions of views on different platforms and sparking fierce reactions to its most shocking moments.

During the discussion, part of Jubilee’s YouTube debate series Surrounded, Hasan made four basic arguments — Donald Trump is pro-crime and pro-criminal, he is defying the US constitution, immigrants are good for America and Trump’s plan for the besieged Gaza Strip is ethnic cleansing.

The participants were given time to debate against any of the arguments in one-on-one exchanges with the Zeteo media company founder, but he ultimately managed to hold his ground against several shocking assertions that included calls for him to be deported from the US.

Debating one of the participants, who identified himself as Connor, Hasan said he came across as a fascist based on his beliefs. “Yes, I am,” replied Connor, laughing hysterically as several other participants applauded in the background.

In an arrogant tone, Connor hastened to add that he didn’t care about being called a Nazi either and that, in fact, he favored some sort of Catholic autocracy over democracy.

When it came down to the fourth argument, all participants appeared to be on the same page—they held the Israeli regime responsible for the ongoing genocide in Gaza and tried to distance themselves from Trump’s policies on Gaza or, in some cases, they tried to distance Trump himself from what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians in the coastal territory.

However, there was an exception—an Iranian-American man identified as Matin, who not only fully supported Trump’s and the Israeli regime’s policies on Gaza, but also held the Palestinian children being killed by Israeli snipers responsible for their own deaths.

“I agree that Trump wants to do a cleansing, but not an ethnic one, because that area requires a lot of cleansing,” he said as he sat down to debate Hasan, before claiming that the people of Gaza are “taught from early childhood age to hate Jews, Christians, and Pagans, [so] you need some serious re-education.”

He then claimed that the situation in Gaza became “chaotic” after the Islamic Republic came to power in Iran, “because the Islamic Republic started to use the so-called innocent Palestinians for their own...”

“So-called innocent Palestinians?” Hasan interrupted. “You don’t think Palestinians are innocent?”

“Not a lot of them,” Matin replied, before saying that Hamas is responsible for hiding in hospitals and making tunnels underneath those hospitals in Gaza, and essentially leaving the Israeli military with no other choice but to bomb them.

Hasan then asked him several times whether Israeli snipers are responsible when they shoot Palestinian children in the head. To which he responded, “They (Palestinians) start brainwashing children at a very young age.”

“So you support sniping children in Gaza?” Hasan asked, bewildered at what he had heard. He then turned to the other participants and asked: “Do all the people here support sniping children in Gaza? Is that a conservative position now?” To which the audience, also in shock, replied unanimously: “No!”

“What if they’re wearing a suicide vest?” Matin said, trying to save face. “What if they’re hell-bent on killing you and your family?”

Hasan retorted: “A ten-year-old child? An eight-year-old child? A six-year-old child? This is bad for you. You’re sitting on live television, where millions of people are gonna see—your neighbors, your friends—that you support the killing of children.”

“Millions of people don’t understand the brainwashing that is going on in the Islamic Republic and in Palestine,” Matin said.

“You’re obsessed with Iran so much that you support the killing of Palestinian children who never harmed you or any other Israeli,” said Hasan. “That’s insane. And the fact that you support Trump’s ethnic cleansing doesn’t surprise me.”

Video clips of the encounter racked up millions of views and sparked sharp rebukes on social media, especially among Iranians, who pointed out that even the most hardcore American right-wingers were shocked by Matin’s words.

An X user Mukhtar said the "Iranian Zionist" Matin was "worse than Daniella Weiss" who supports sniping at Palestinian kids, while lawyer Reza Nasri cautioned against referring to him as an "Iranian" since there was "nothing Iranian about the clown."

Many others called Matin a typical Iranian monarchist—a supporter of Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s deposed Shah—who sparked outrage last month for backing Israel’s aggression against Iran, including airstrikes that killed hundreds of ordinary Iranians.

Over the years, Iranian monarchists, especially those active in the US or Europe, have aligned themselves with pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian rhetoric as part of their broader opposition to the Islamic Republic.

This alignment has led some to adopt far-right talking points and openly support Israeli military actions, framing them as a blow to the Islamic Republic’s influence in the region.

Last month, the monarchists rallied around the Zionist regime’s 12-day war on Iran—a move that reminded many Iranians of the terrorist group Mujahedin-e-Khalq Organization (MKO), which is widely reviled inside Iran for siding with former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein during his war of aggression against Iran in the 1980s.

As outrage continues to mount on social media platforms, particularly among Iranians, many hope that this moment will spark deeper scrutiny of the alliances and ideologies being normalized in certain US-based Iranian circles.

What began as just another heated debate ended with a chilling revelation: the most extreme, pro-genocide rhetoric came not from self-proclaimed fascists in the room, but from a man who represents the so-called Iranian "opposition."

In the end, it wasn’t Hasan’s four arguments that shocked the audience—it was the moral collapse on display from someone the West often presents as a voice for Iranian "freedom." When even fascists recoil in disgust, all red lines have been crossed.

Mohammad Homaeefar is a Tehran-based journalist specializing in Iran and West Asia Affairs.

(The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of Press TV.)

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