Mohammad Marandi Discusses National Outrage in Iran

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Your family, I think, were out in this funeral procession and taking part in this explosion of national mourning and emotion. Just give us a sense of what it actually is like on the ground. What did they sense out there?

MOHAMMAD MARANDI, CHAIR OF AMERICAN STUDIES, UNIVERSITY OF TEHRAN: Well, my family and everyone around me, they all said that it was extraordinary and that they had never seen such a crowd before. Some say it was over 5 million people in Tehran. People were very angry and outraged. But during the prayers, they suddenly became very emotional, especially when the leader was praying and weeping, the whole crowd, the millions of people, suddenly they fell apart. So, it was a very emotional event, but it was also an event where people were extremely outraged by what the Trump administration had done.

AMANPOUR: So, let me ask you this, because clearly the next step is in Iran’s hands. What will Iran do? We have had the general telling CNN that there will be, you know, proportionate military retaliation. I just want to play a little bit of the interview that he gave to Fred Pleitgen and then ask you.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAJOR GENERAL HOSSEIN DEHGHAN, MILITARY ADVISER TO IRAN’S SUPREME LEADER (through translator): For sure, no American military staff, no American political center, no American military base, no American vessel in the world will be safe. If he says 52 sites, we say 300. And they’re accessible to us.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: We’ll get to the numbers in a moment, but what do you expect? I mean, you’ve lived this, you’ve watched the regime, you have seen the back and forth during tense times between the United States and Iran. What will Iran decide to do that potentially is proportionate and manageable and won’t slide into accidental all-out war with the U.S.?

MARANDI: Well, the belief here is that Iran can’t appease the Trump regime, because if they do, he will only carry out more atrocities, he’ll be killing more people. And therefore, Iran feels that the United States government under Trump has to be punished in a way where they regret what they did. What Trump has so far done is he’s mobilized the whole country. The country is completely united. Everyone believes that this was an act of war against Iran. And interestingly, another, I think, miscalculation of Trump, is that he also united Iraq, and that the outrage in Iraq is also extraordinary because they also murdered a senior Iraqi military commander and war hero, who was key to the defeat of ISIS in Iraq,