Khamenei flees from Cyrus and hides behind Shapur 😁

What he says

An English translation of the talk, which is in Persian. It was made with AI from YouTube's automatic captions and may contain errors; the Persian transcript is authoritative. Click a timestamp to jump to that part of the video.

0:01 Hello. Today is Friday, 16 Aban 1404, November 7, 2025. Ahmad Baldi, a young 20-year-old Arab student from Ahvaz who set himself on fire on 11 Aban in Zeytoun Park in Ahvaz, is hovering between life and death at Taleghani Burn Hospital in Ahvaz. Together with his mother, he had been making a living for years, perhaps more than a decade, at a kiosk for which they even had a municipal permit. Municipal agents raided the kiosks and wrecked and destroyed his, and

1:03 after the municipal agents insulted and roughly treated his mother while trying to force her into a municipal vehicle and so on, he ultimately set himself on fire in protest. When the news spread through the city, people gathered in front of Ahvaz's Taleghani Accident and Burn Hospital. The people are rightly demanding the resignation of the mayor and his deputies. The regime, out of fear, has resorted to threatening people, and the Ahvaz prosecutor's office issued a statement warning that anyone who tries to stir up ethnic division and disturb the peace

2:00 will face judicial action. In any case, this painful incident, which on the one hand shows yet another face of people's poverty and on the other lays bare the bullying and violence of the regime, has provoked an anger that may well spread beyond Ahvaz to many parts of the country. Meanwhile, the Tehran municipality, which these days is busy with nationalism, launched a campaign on 13 Aban using the famous relief at Naqsh-e Rostam that shows the Roman emperor Valerian

2:58 kneeling before Shapur I of the Sassanids, in front of his horse. They built a statue of it, with the campaign slogan "Kneel before Iran once again." On 13 Aban they displayed it in front of the embassy, then brought it before the British Embassy, presenting the same image again on large display screens, posters and so on. And to sum up, tonight in Enghelab Square in Tehran, with a concert, music, five pop singers and so on, the regime tried to put on a national ceremony and, under the shadow of Shapur I, perhaps make itself look great and powerful too, and finally installed the statue.

4:01 But these gentlemen, who on the one hand block people from gathering at Pasargadae on the anniversary of Cyrus the Great, the Achaemenid founder of Iran, and who fear the memory and name of Cyrus, the herald of human rights, equality, peace, dignity and elevation, and indeed the founder of Iran, on the other hand try, under the shadow of one episode of Iranian history, to draw what is really a caricature of themselves and to cover up the humiliating defeat they suffered against Israel in the 12-day war. It's interesting that

4:57 these gentlemen haven't even read four lines of history to see how Shapur I, one of the greatest Sassanid kings, defeated the Roman Empire in three wars, and how in the Battle of Edessa, which took place near the city of Edessa, somewhere around present-day Turkey and Syria, 100,000 Roman soldiers were captured along with Emperor Valerian. According to various historical sources, Shapur later, with great cleverness and wisdom, put these same Roman prisoners and the emperor to work on a major construction project he carried out in Khuzestan, whose legacy is today's city of Shushtar. He built the great Shadorvan, or

5:57 Shazorvan, dam on the Karun and in effect created a large irrigation network on the island that formed behind this dam, in order to drive the watermills, and he built a city that is today registered as a UNESCO World Heritage site. In fact, this great king of Iran didn't just wage war, victorious and glorious wars at that; he also used those very wars for the development and prosperity of Iran, and left behind an architectural masterpiece that is now registered as world heritage, is still well worth seeing, and is considered a feat of engineering.

6:53 This is something entirely alien to the Islamic Republic, which instead of developing and building up the country has created a kleptocratic, terrorist regime whose only concern is lining their pockets. In fact, one could say that rather than following the path of Iran's great kings and Iran's glorious history in building the country, they have more than anything become followers of the Hashashin sect and terrorist acts. Interestingly, at this very ceremony tonight there were a great many women and girls without hijab, which once again showed the regime's duplicity: if it organizes an event itself, it has no problem with women

7:53 and girls appearing without hijab, but otherwise it sends in its forces and tries to crack down. The other duplicity is that it suppresses and runs away from the tolerance, forbearance and actions of Cyrus the Great, the Achaemenid, who freed these very Jews, the ancestors of the Jews who have now formed Israel, while at the same time it tries to exploit the name and fame of other Iranian kings. Interestingly, at the same time Axios has reported that the Islamic Republic was seeking to assassinate Israel's ambassador to Mexico, who is a woman, and Axios said this assassination plot

8:53 was discovered and foiled. Israel also thanked the Mexican police for cooperating with them. The source of this plot was Unit 110 of the IRGC's Quds Force, whose commander for these terrorist operations was stationed for a long time at the Islamic Republic's embassy in Venezuela and has apparently now returned to Tehran. So we see how the regime carries out terrorist acts, and as it happens, in recent years it has failed in all of them, especially when it tries to carry out terrorist acts against Israel. That is, it fails in this area too; not only in the

9:49 12-day war did it suffer intelligence, security and military defeat, but also in the terrorist operations it plans and carries out itself, it has so far had no success against Israel. As for the water shortage, which has become distressing, with weather forecasts saying this entire autumn will be dry and rainless, things have reached the point where today many Friday prayer leaders were busy holding rain prayers instead of pursuing the scientific and managerial solutions that exist for this problem. And Mr. Pezeshkian has also fallen to his knees, saying that if

10:45 things go on like this, some people will have to evacuate Tehran, without this head of government saying where Tehran's population of 12 million should go, how such a thing could be managed, and what this flight even means. Although part of Tehran's water is now supplied from deep wells drilled southeast of Tehran and recently southwest of Tehran, the level of those wells has also dropped, and water will inevitably be rationed. And neither Mr. Pezeshkian nor others consider or mention that the solution to this problem, which has been implemented in many of the world's major cities, is water recycling: returning used water to the system

11:40 for people's consumption, with the equipment and means available today. Many experts believe that of the 1.2 billion cubic meters of water Tehran residents consume, at least 1 billion cubic meters, that is, more than 90 percent, can be recycled and returned to the system for people's use. This is a project that could be carried out in a decentralized way in most parts of Tehran, especially in large apartment complexes. And if people don't like the hygienic water produced by recycling for drinking, then, given how few liters a person actually drinks in a day,

12:33 drinking water can be delivered to people as bottled water or through separate piping at a higher price, while recycled water can be used for bathing, toilets, washing and so on, which is the bulk of Tehran's water consumption. Some experts believe this could be accomplished with 1 billion dollars of investment, in the form of loans to large complexes and carried out by various companies, within a two-year period. But the current kleptocratic structure and incompetent regime can't implement not just this project but any project at all. As it happens, Mr. Pezeshkian himself, in another talk,

13:31 said that whoever can solve these problems should step forward and not stand on the sidelines shouting advice. He should be told that the country's problems can be solved; with scientific and proper management they have solutions, good solutions in fact. But under the system of Velayat-e Faqih, under Khamenei's leadership, in the kleptocratic structure he has created and amid the widespread corruption he has unleashed, none of the country's problems can be solved, and Mr. Pezeshkian is blowing the trumpet from the wrong end. But the good news: at the third session of UNESCO's General Conference, with the cooperation of Iran, Tajikistan and Iraq, the Cyrus Cylinder was approved as the world's first written human rights document and

14:37 was registered. Hoping for the victory of Iran and Iranians.