The Guardian's report on the trial of Parviz Sabeti, deputy of the Shah's SAVAK

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, 17 Mehr 1405, October 9, 2026. Mr. Trump announced today that, after talks with Putin, Russia is to send 300,000 tons of diesel to the world market immediately, another 500,000 tons next month, in November, and one million tons later on. He said, and Mr. Trump does make promises and talk very fast, that the price of diesel would come down right away. The price of diesel, which before the

0:51 Persian Gulf war against Iran was around $3 a gallon, plus or minus a bit depending on the part of America, has now reached an average of $6.28 a gallon in the United States, and each gallon is roughly 4 liters. Naturally, the rise in diesel prices has affected road transport and also America's rail transport, because on many American lines, the absolute majority of them, especially in rail freight

1:43 transport, the locomotives run on diesel. It has also affected agriculture, which consumes a lot: tractors, combines and so on. Of course, this move goes against the tightening of sanctions on Russia that was passed in the US Congress just last month, which Mr. Trump also signed. Now they want, in effect, to exempt Russia from part of the sanctions. And especially if this fuel is to enter the United States, it would violate America's strict 2022 law that banned imports of Russian energy products

2:34 into the United States. But why has Mr. Trump done this? This is an issue that will presumably cause a great uproar in the coming days. The point is that, according to an investigative report Reuters published yesterday, the situation in various electoral districts is not good at all for Republican Party candidates. In some places, Republican candidates are even distancing themselves from Trump in the hope of winning votes. For example, in the elections in Florida or

3:28 Georgia, where the state governor is also being elected, both candidates are putting significant distance between themselves and Mr. Trump. In Michigan, the Republican Senate candidate has also distanced himself from Trump and criticized him over the issue of tariffs against Canada, and similar things are happening in many US House districts. In general, polling across the whole of America shows that

4:15 Americans' approval of Mr. Trump's performance has fallen to 32 percent, and there are three main reasons for this. The first is the rising cost of goods and of living in America. The second is the Iran war: most Americans, even among Republicans, are not happy that America has entered a war far away at all, and in particular the Iran war, which has now also affected their lives. And the third is dissatisfaction with Mr. Trump's economic policies, the game he has played with tariffs and the disarray he has

5:07 created in the economy. But the interesting point is that while the Islamic Republic has put almost all its investment into closing the Strait of Hormuz, the threats and so on, and the high costs of this war, in order to put pressure on the world energy market and world oil, and through that to put pressure on Mr. Trump as well, Russia, which is Iran's strategic ally, and which the Islamic Republic, or at least Mr. Khamenei in particular when he was alive, stressed time after time was our friend

5:58 and so on and so forth, now, at a single "go ahead" from Trump, and since it is in Russia's financial and national interest to have its sanctions lifted, its officials immediately answered the call and announced that they are ready to pour diesel onto the world market. Mr. Pezeshkian, who also met Putin last month, met Mr. Putin again yesterday, for the second time in a month, on the sidelines of the summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States, in effect the former Soviet republics, in Turkmenistan.

6:50 In this meeting, Mr. Putin of course declared his readiness to help resolve this situation and said that Russia is willing to come in and help with peace. Mr. Pezeshkian, for his part, stated that we had given some proposals to America, America has given new proposals, we are making amendments to them, and once they are finalized we will sit down through our intermediaries and wrap things up. But another interesting point is that at the same time, while Mr. Pezeshkian is talking about the peace process, and Mr. Trump also explicitly

7:39 stated that until the US election, that is November 3, there will be no attack on Iran and there will be no war, presumably so that this would help him in the election, two reputable American newspapers, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, in separate reports citing sources who did not want their names revealed, said that Trump has ordered that plans for a US attack on Iran's drone and missile arsenals and energy facilities be studied, and they are working on this, plans that

8:30 the Pentagon has prepared and made available. At the same time, Mr. Eyal Zamir, the chief of staff of the Israeli army, also reported that they had held a meeting with American commanders, and he spoke about the possibility of an attack on Iran and a renewed war, and said that the Israeli election, which is scheduled for October 27, might be postponed as a result. If a vote were held right now, Mr. Netanyahu would lose the election to Mr. Eisenkot, his main rival.

9:21 In any case, when we put all of this together, we see how things are moving, and again the question remains whether the war will be stoked and flare up or whether there will be peace. This deadly state of neither war nor peace remains as ambiguous as ever. Meanwhile, Ms. Navi Pillay was announced today as the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. She is a South African jurist and judge of Indian descent, and from 2008 to 2014 she was the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. She has held various positions, but

10:14 what became controversial was that she chaired the UN Independent Commission of Inquiry on the conflict between the Palestinian territories and Israel and the events in Gaza, and in 2025 this commission declared that Israel had committed genocide and war crimes in Gaza. For this reason, her announcement as winner of the Nobel Peace Prize has, on the one hand, been supported by human rights organizations, UN officials themselves, many independent international figures and many European countries, while

11:06 Mr. Trump criticized this decision of the Nobel Peace Prize committee, and Israel, both Mr. Netanyahu and its Foreign Ministry, harshly attacked this decision, Ms. Pillay personally, and the Nobel committee. But yesterday the Guardian newspaper published a detailed article about the trial of Mr. Parviz Sabeti, the notorious deputy and spokesman of the Shah-era Organization of Intelligence and National Security, that is, SAVAK,

11:55 describing how it is proceeding and what has happened. This trial is based on a complaint by three Iranian-American citizens who did not want their names revealed, and the judge has also kept them confidential, because they said their lives were in danger from monarchy supporters. They are three people who, according to information the Guardian also provides, were severely tortured in prison under Mohammad Reza Shah, with tortures such as electric shocks, sexual abuse, whipping, cables, the "Apollo", which was a torture device, and other methods. In total they are seeking $225

12:46 million in damages, which Mr. Sabeti would have to pay if he is found liable. Of course, Mr. Sabeti has said he was always opposed to torture, a claim that is truly ridiculous. His lawyers also first asked that the complaint be dismissed altogether because more than five decades have passed. But the plaintiffs argued that they had only recently found him at gatherings of monarchy supporters, and that this was why it had been delayed, and the judge accepted this argument and the trial is continuing.

13:37 The interesting point is that, in fact, those who are torturers and commit acts against human rights, whether in the Pahlavi era or in the Islamic Republic era, should know that even after several decades they will eventually have to answer for it at some point. Hoping for the victory of Iran and Iranians.