Ousting Venezuela's dictator cuts off Khamenei's reach

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. It is Wednesday, 12 Azar 1404, December 3, 2025. Today the dollar crossed the 120,000-toman mark on the open market. The collapse of the national currency, the rial, has accelerated, and it is predicted that by the end of the current year the inflation rate will pass 50 or 60 percent compared with last year. Moreover, for certain goods, such as foodstuffs or even medical supplies, this rate will be far higher. On the other hand, the state of production...

1:00 ...at large factories, enterprises and small workshops, in livestock farming, poultry farming and agricultural production, is in crisis. Likewise, the medicine situation and the pharmaceutical factories are in trouble. In short, the dealings the government has had with enterprises, which for decades it carried out with ease, are all limping along. As some of our friends in Iran put it, it is as if there is no longer any government in the country at all. In fact, one could say the regime is melting away, given the crisis of legitimacy and the crisis of acceptance it faces, as well as...

1:56 ...the crisis of incompetence that has now piled up and created great disasters. It is heading toward a situation that we have only read about in history, for example in the period after the Constitutional Revolution, when the country was in this state, or in contemporary history, for instance in the case of the Soviet Union, where this process could be seen. In these circumstances, Khamenei, who has made everything converge on himself, who has both the powers granted by the Constitution and has gone beyond them, who has laid his hands on half the country's wealth and connected the appointment of managers and all institutions to himself, these days is either in his hole or absent...

2:51 ...or, if he does appear, like today, he spouts nonsense, worthless drivel and the same old repetitions. For example, today at a gathering of women, he again repeated the talk of 50 years ago about the Western model of women and, supposedly, sexual exploitation, the Islamic family model and so on and so forth, things so ridiculous and baseless that they are not even worth mentioning. But let me also say, in parentheses, that given the uproar raised by the letter signed by 15 members of the Majlis calling again for a crackdown on hijab, and the Prosecutor-General again saying such things, Khamenei's remarks, however,...

3:45 ...did not contain a license for repression or street confrontations; he spoke of debating Western models and so on and so forth. In any case, regardless of what he said, the point is that about all these problems of the country, for which he bears the main responsibility, he has not said a word for some time, as if nothing were happening while the country is drowning in a storm of problems, in a raging sea of troubles and hardships. Meanwhile, in this situation, after the remarks by Hassan Rouhani a few days ago, in which he directly and indirectly...

4:39 ...criticized Khamenei personally, with the innuendos and barbs at which Hassan Rouhani himself is perhaps a master, the attacks on him continue and show no sign of stopping. Perhaps one of the most interesting and most recent attacks on him came from Babak Zanjani, the well-known, disgraced and certified thief, who posted a picture of Hassan Rouhani in a tweet and said, "May you take your dream of becoming Leader to the grave." He spoke about young, entrepreneurial managers and so on, and "fake degree," an allusion to Hassan Rouhani, saying such people are no longer of any use; young, entrepreneurial managers must come forward. It seems that this certified thief imagines that he might...

5:40 ...even become the Leader, or the president of the country. But how is it that a man like Babak Zanjani, who did not return two billion dollars of oil money and pocketed it, and who at that time, with the backing of Mohseni-Ejei and Vahid Haghanian, as was said, was both saved from execution and never returned the money, has now been freed and is flexing his muscles like this? It is said that his backing goes higher than Mohseni-Ejei and Vahid Haghanian, and that in fact his backing comes from Mojtaba Khamenei and Khamenei himself. We know that he was released from prison on Khamenei's own order, and apparently, with those two billion dollars he never returned,...

6:38 ...he bought a large amount of Bitcoin at the time. There is talk of one million Bitcoins, which today, if true, would be worth 100 billion dollars, and he has paid hefty kickbacks to Khamenei and Mojtaba. And he himself has now stepped into the middle of things, importing taxis, importing electric taxis, buying railway cars, and in the role of an entrepreneur who solves problems, he is in effect flaunting his stolen money in people's faces. In any case, these bands of plunder and power, each headed by Al Capones like Babak Zanjani, also have many unknown figures who have not come out from behind the curtain like this, and they are partners of the Russian mafia in smuggling...

7:39 ...oil, petrochemicals, gas condensates and so on and so forth, and in big domestic projects. These are the people who are actually keeping the status quo in place, and their financial power is behind the likes of Sadegh Mahsouli, the billionaire general, for example behind the Paydari Front, or political factions, or some of these members of the Majlis. In any case, this attack on Hassan Rouhani, coming from a thief like Babak Zanjani, and in language that is mainly used by the Paydari people these days, shows how they are, in their view, striking at the pro-Western pieces as a service to Russia, and also that the power struggle...

8:35 ...has already begun. Besides, regarding the idea that Rouhani wants to be the next Leader, it is heard that he too, Rouhani, and many people like him have come to the conclusion that with Khamenei's death will come the death of velayat-e faqih, and that the country will get nowhere until velayat-e faqih and this Constitution are changed. It is the same conclusion Hashemi Rafsanjani reached toward the end of his life, when he said he wanted, while he was still alive, to remove velayat-e faqih, which had not worked, from the Constitution, and of course it was this very velayat-e faqih that did away with him. But Mr. Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State,...

9:32 ...in an explicit statement about the Maduro regime, also brought the Islamic Republic into it. He said that the Maduro regime is a transit organization for the Islamic Republic; that the IRGC, Hezbollah and the Islamic Republic are present in South America, and that one of their main bases is Venezuela. This information and what Mr. Rubio said are correct. As for the Islamic Republic, the news that has been made public so far, and there are probably many other secret things as well, is not merely that at least 1,000 housing units were built in Venezuela by the Kayson company, one of the rent-seeking companies attached to the government and the regime, and that the IRGC has been working there...

10:25 ...Iranian carmakers assemble the Samand and the Pride there; the Etka chain store has set up a chain store there called Megasis; the Export Development Bank, in partnership with a Venezuelan bank, has set up bank branches; there is shipbuilding; and most importantly, Iran carries out the smuggling of Venezuelan oil, and drugs. Drugs, for which Venezuela is in fact a main bridgehead for distribution in South America and Mexico, all the way to the United States itself. Of course, in the affair of Mr. Juan Guaidó, who was the speaker of the National Assembly and declared that the previous election had been rigged and was void, and that according to the Constitution he was definitely the interim president until...

11:23 ...the election was held again. Well, Maduro resisted, the people took to the streets, and in suppressing the people, the Islamic Republic, Russia and Cuba worked together and helped Maduro crush the opposition. My point is that besides economic investments, they are present in other areas as well. But there is also the matter that Islamic Republic officials have built or bought expensive villas worth several million dollars on an island belonging to Venezuela with a pleasant climate, an issue that has been raised, so that if they had no place in Iran they could go there. Now this has been called into question, because for the moment Mr. Maduro's regime and Venezuela itself have come under...

12:22 ...pressure from the United States. And the United States, which according to the Monroe Doctrine, from 1815 or 1816 until now, has declared that America belongs to Americans and that no foreign country, by which they meant European countries at the time, but others too, should be present in the countries of the American continent, has naturally applied pressure to remove the Maduro regime. It is said that Mr. Maduro has set some conditions, but he may be transferred to Qatar. Meanwhile, the negotiations on peace in Ukraine in Moscow, where Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump's son-in-law, had gone, reached no result. Because Mr. Trump's 28-point plan, which...

13:16 ...had in fact become known as the Putin plan, was not accepted by the Europeans; it was changed and turned into a 19-point plan, which Russia now does not accept. One of the Kremlin officials who took part in the talks stated that the negotiations were very constructive but did not reach a result. Hoping for the victory of Iran and Iranians.