Anti-regime slogans in Mashhad and Tehran residents honor Rasoul Khadem

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 Friday, 21 Azar 1404, December 12, 2025. First, I apologize: in the previous program I misspoke and said 19 Dey instead of 19 Azar, though the date in the written text below the program was correct. Today, Friday, 21 Azar, the seventh-day memorial in Mashhad for Khosrow Alikordi, the defense lawyer of freedom-seekers, drew a huge crowd of people who had rushed to Mashhad not only from Mashhad itself but from other cities and from all over Iran.

0:56 Well-known human rights activists, legal activists and political activists were among those who attended the ceremony. Narges Mohammadi, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, gave a fiery speech that was accompanied by pro-freedom chants and ended with the chant "We swear by the blood of our comrades, we will stand to the end." Right after this speech, government agents arrested Narges Mohammadi, and according to reports so far, Sepideh Gholian, Nasrin Sotoudeh, Alieh Motalebzadeh, Hasti Amiri, Pouran Nazemi and several other activists who attended the ceremony have also been

1:57 arrested. The Nobel Peace Prize Committee, based in Oslo, Norway, has issued a statement condemning Narges Mohammadi's arrest and calling on the Iranian government to release her immediately and to provide assurances about her health. Narges, who had been sentenced to 13 years in prison, spent years in prison and was temporarily released for health reasons, but even during this release Mohammadi has remained a very outspoken critic of the regime at various ceremonies and in interviews and statements.

2:51 Two days ago Narges Mohammadi also announced that 82 lawyers had declared their readiness to help uncover the truth about Khosrow Alikordi's death. Javad Alikordi, his brother, who had demanded the footage from the cameras in his office without tampering by the regime, has been summoned by the judiciary. In any case, the death of this honorable man, Khosrow Alikordi, which the regime claims was a heart attack, has provoked a wave of protest as well as distrust of the regime's claims, and many believe he was killed in his office by agents of the regime.

3:49 Signs of beating and injury were seen on his body; or else they went in with a premeditated plan and killed him, for example by injecting potassium, which produces the symptoms of a heart attack. In the videos seen so far from this ceremony, chants such as "Neither Gaza nor Lebanon, my life for Iran," "Death to the dictator," and "Woman, Life, Freedom" can be heard in parts of the crowd, and in some videos chants in support of the Pahlavi family can also be heard. In any case, this ceremony showed how Iranian society reacts when it faces the regime's violence and bloodshed and the shedding of the blood of one of the

4:52 brave children of the land of Iran: it protests and, in effect, honors his memory. Society is fundamentally grateful to those who toil on its behalf, sacrifice, and give of their own lives and resources. Another event that happened today: the national pahlevan, respected by the people of Iran, Rasoul Khadem, was met with prolonged applause from spectators when he entered the hall where the final of the Freestyle Wrestling Premier League was being held, and so that the sound of the spectators' applause

5:48 would not be broadcast on television, the regime turned up the music in the hall. Interestingly, Alireza Dabir, the regime's president of the Wrestling Federation, said after facing this scene that "these are just foam on the water," implying that he, supposedly, is the one working for the people, an allusion to a Quranic verse saying that what benefits people remains on earth and the rest is foam on the water. In this way he tried to cover up his own humiliation and how despised he is because of his ties to the regime, as well as the popularity

6:41 of Rasoul Khadem, which comes from his being a true servant of the nation. Rasoul Khadem, who on many occasions has not only a record of charitable work and attending to various strata of the people, but has also shown, through his outspoken criticism of the regime during the Woman, Life, Freedom revolution and at other times, that he is a pahlevan who stands with the people. This reception for him in the wrestling hall, where the hall practically erupted, is reminiscent of the world champion Takhti, who was also beloved by the people in the Shah's time, and when he entered a wrestling hall where Gholamreza,

7:36 the brother of Mohammad Reza Shah, was present, the crowd suddenly leapt to its feet and gave him prolonged applause, which was in effect a jab by the crowd at the regime's figures. This later, of course after Takhti's death, became the source of rumors that he had been killed on the regime's orders. In any case, these scenes, whether in Mashhad honoring Khosrow Alikordi or in Tehran with Rasoul Khadem's presence and the people's applause for him, show how society reacts to a regime it does not accept, to its affiliates and its operatives, and how it

8:34 embraces its own heroes. Now, following the rain, and snow at higher elevations, which meteorological organizations had forecast two weeks ago—and anyone could even see on their own mobile phone the weather forecasts provided by Google or Apple or others, where you can usually see the weather ten days ahead for cities all around the world—this week and next week several precipitation systems are coming from the west over the Iranian plateau and will bring good rains to cities, and snow at higher elevations and in high-altitude cities. This is, of course, a cause

9:30 for happiness. But what is interesting here is that, as was seen several times before, some charlatan Friday prayer leaders would look at the weather forecast, see that rain was predicted, and immediately hold rain prayers so that they could later say their prayers had been answered and that it had rained because of the rain prayer and their supplications. Now this time the charlatanry has passed to the Ministry of Energy and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which claimed they carried out cloud seeding, that the IRGC Aerospace Force seeded the clouds from east to west and north of the country and so on, and that this rainfall is due to an operation on which God knows how much of the country's money they have spent.

10:25 Experts have warned about this. Among them, today Mr. Ahad Vazifeh, head of the National Center for Climate and Drought Crisis Management, expressed surprise that the Ministry of Energy's emphasis on large-scale cloud seeding is unusual—he didn't dare mention the IRGC by name—and went on to say that this is because such a measure cannot have a significant effect. Earlier, the head of the Meteorological Organization, Sahar Tajbakhsh, had also said that cloud seeding has very little effect, and Kaveh Madani, the environmental expert who is outside Iran and who in fact heads the United Nations university institute in this field

11:23 of the environment, had warned in a tweet back in Aban that precipitation systems are on the way, and be careful that they don't chalk up the rainfall to rain prayers, or cloud seeding, or taking back clouds stolen by enemies. Hoping for the victory of Iran and Iranians.