Welcome to another episode of Iran Uncovered, a podcast by NUFDI. Today we're honored and very pleased to be joined by a person I'm most excited to speak with after some time, Dr. Pardis Sabeti, whose resume I'll go through in a minute. Normally, as everyone knows, I think who's watched this before, I usually don't have notes when I have a podcast, but your resume is so extensive and so impressive that I'm forced to have notes here just to go through a few of the accolades so our listeners and our viewers know a bit more about you if they already don't. But first of all, thank you so much for being with us here in the studio. We really appreciate your time.
Well, thank you, Cameron. I'm very excited to be here, as you know, and I'm grateful for everything that NUFDI does. So this is a real pleasure. Thank you so much.
Well, for those who may not know Dr. Pardis Sabeti, which by now would be really their fault because you should know who she is. She is a computational biologist, a medical geneticist, and evolutionary geneticist. She did her undergrad at MIT, then went to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and then graduated summa cum laude from Harvard Medical School. At Oxford, not only did she get a master's, but also a doctorate in philosophy, so a double doctor. Dr. Sabeti is currently a professor at Harvard's Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and a professor at Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases, and she also leads the Broad Institute's Infectious Disease Program, which for those of you who know much anything about the medical world, the Broad Institute is one of the most prestigious institutes of its kind. In 2014, she was part of the team that was named the Time Person of the Year for her work and her team's work in developing the cure for the Ebola virus, and she was also awarded the Time 100 Impact Award, which in her speech she dedicated, as far as memory serves, to the people of Iran. In addition to all of this, just to make every Iranian parent in the world mad at their own kids, she's also a musician. And she's also an advocate for the people of Iran. Most importantly for us, Dr. Sabeti has kindly been for almost two years now a member of NUFDI's Advisory Council and we're so glad again to have you in studio. I think that's the longest introduction or bio I've ever read of anyone in my entire life. Masha'Allah. So thank you so much again for being with us, Dr. Sabeti.
Well, thank you, Cameron. And thank you for that kind introduction.
Of course, that's just the facts. It's just reality. I actually have one note here. She was also noted by Time CNN as one of the geniuses who will change your life. So that's quite the introduction. I don't think anyone's ever said anything like that about me. So truly a pleasure to have you here. Thank you so much. I know you're rarely in Washington, so the fact that you made time for this, we really appreciate. That bio that I just went through is obviously highly specialized in the medical field, in the research that you've done, and some of the cures that you've developed, and I definitely want to get into that. But I want to talk first about you and your upbringing and your family. You of course grew up in the United States, but you weren't born here. You were born like so many Iranians of the diaspora in Iran. You weren't there for long, as far as I know. Tell us what it was like. What do you remember of Iran? How long were you there? You came here pretty young. So you came, obviously your family has a particular history which we'll talk about also in a little bit. What do you remember of Iran and your time growing up there?
You know, I was just two years old when I left Iran, and so it's difficult for me to say, you know, what do I actually remember and what do I remember from sort of like what I've been told and the images that I've seen. But I do know that, you know, I was very fortunate to be born into a really wonderful family with an amazing mom and dad and a big sister who took really good care of me. And you know, from everything I've seen, my mom thankfully loved to take images, and so I've got to see, you know, been able to see what a lot of people don't, what our life in Iran was, and it was really sweet and special. But also, I mean, it must have been such a hectic time for them. And I really, you know, thank my parents for making our childhood normal when it was anything but normal. It was as abnormal as it gets, right? But they really did try to shield us from a lot of the chaos around them. And when they came home, they came home to us as parents and loving parents. We left in 1978 when I was just two years old. And on the eve of the revolution, my father sent us out of the country and stayed behind as long as he could before it was untenable to stay. So we went on to the United States ourselves and we spent a lot of our early days in the country moving from state to state trying to find a place, trying to avoid danger and harm. And so even that part of our childhood in America was chaotic. But again, very, very lucky to have been brought up in a way that sort of made that a charmed life as opposed to a very tragic one.
You describe your life in the chaos outside of it as opposed to the peaceful home. And I think for a lot of Iranians, perhaps those who left the country around the time of the revolution whose parents were in some way involved in the government or they worked for the late Shah of Iran, that's the case. As you alluded to, in your case it was particularly chaotic outside the home towards the end. Your father, Parviz Sabeti, recently sat down for a multi-part interview after years. I think it's the first interview that he's ever done. Your father served the previous government and the late Shah of Iran as one of the leaders of SAVAK, which there's so much said about. Most of it, you know, this is not the place for the conversation, but most of it not true, I think. Lots of it aggrandized, lots of it so hyperbolic. And I mean really in any case, that's a separate conversation.
Yeah, we can go there as well because I have lots to say about that.
What was it like growing up? First of all, I want to talk about that period. Again, you said you were two and then you came out. So we'll talk about, you know, those early years and what was it like? What did people say to you, you know, your father works for SAVAK? And then maybe we'll talk a bit today because I think the narrative about SAVAK and a lot of things that happened before 1979 in the previous regime are changing. So I'd like to get your take on that as well. And obviously as I said, your father recently sat down for I think it was a four or five-part interview with Manoto, which I think now there's 14 hours of him directly, you know, 14 hours. Okay, well we're going to talk for 15 hours today. See if we can beat him. I'll put up him by one hour. I think I'm going to close the lights, I think, you're in the studio. But that I think also, you know, that was the first time he had spoken publicly. That was one of the first times that anybody in the intelligence services from the previous regime had opened up so much and it was fascinating, I think, for a lot of people. What was it like growing up? You had this chaos you describe outside and then a peaceful home. What was that like? You know, your parents, your lovely mother is here with us in studio. We're so thankful that she was able to join you. It's a pleasure for us to meet her, someone we've heard so many good things about from our mutual friends. What was it like growing up and people I'm sure said things to you. What was that like?
Well, I mean for one, people didn't say that much to us because we didn't really talk about it. We were in hiding. We were obviously a direct target of the Islamic regime. And as a result, it was very difficult for my father and my parents to work and they had to do, you know, we had to keep it very interesting. We moved again, like I said, from state to state. We changed our names multiple times, you know, there's still obviously always risks. But somehow, you know, either I was pretty clueless or they were pretty amazing about it. I didn't feel that. Like, you know, some parents are always just constantly like telling you all their woes. And my parents had such immense ones, but they never really brought it to us. You know, they really put all their heart and their soul into the kids and into continuing to fight for Iran. My dad never stopped. My parents never stopped. They always were working in different ways to try to support the people in Iran. You know, my dad, the interesting thing is, right, my dad hasn't come out and he hasn't spoken and it's a pretty horrifying thing to have like extreme lies being said about you, taking on your character in that way. And my mom has always been like, 'Why don't you tell people?' Like my mom is more of a fighter. She's like, 'Why don't you tell people like what is going on, you know?' And he said, 'It's not about me and I'm not here to try to defend myself. Like I know what I did.' And you know, he's in that kind of, you know, those individuals, you know, they're just truly loyal to the cause. It was always about the cause. It was never about himself. And honestly, so he recently kind of came out of the woodwork when my mom brought him to a protest.
To a protest. Yeah, so she first convinced, my mom is the architect. But I said she waited 44 years to try to do this. So you know, she got us all to go to a protest. It was like a lovely day. We were all out and about, but you know, kind of celebrating the cause. And she's like, 'Oh, like take a photo.' And I love doing photography, so I just made a fun little image and snap. And we're like, 'Oh, this is fun.' And I was like, 'We should post it.' And she's like, 'Yeah, let's post it.' And we posted it and immediately got a big reaction. And my dad's a very funny guy. And I sort of said, 'Well, Dad, you know,' because all these really positive comments came out. And it was this amazing thing for him to see and for us to see. People get it. You know, the people understand that his character is not what they... they now understand what fake news is in a way that they didn't, you know, many, many years ago. And they understand propaganda much better as well. And so it's nice for him to see that like the majority of people understood that he was actually not a killer and was a noble man trying to do a really hard job in a very, you know, awful situation. And so I was sort of, you know, yeah, anyway, I basically was sort of said, 'Dad, like, you know, how is it to come out?' And he told me like this, you know, Persians have their little stories and he told me a story about like how a guy fell into the water and then somebody else jumped in and saved him and, you know, did all this great work and then everyone was congratulating the person who did the saving, who did the kind of thing. And basically that person said, 'I just have one question, who pushed me in the water?' And my dad just looked at me. He's like, 'You pushed me into the water.' And so we did. My mom and I pushed him into the water. And you know, and she convinced him again. My mom is a formidable individual and with a real passion to help the people in Iran. And she said, you know, but she understands who he is and she understands that he does not want to put himself out there and that's not his thing, but ultimately she convinced him that this is not for you. It's not about you. It's about the people in Iran and they need to hear from you what it is they, you know, experienced. And I have to say, I know a lot of the history because I know my dad, but I was riveted by the documentary and Manoto did a terrific job and I think it's just because bit by bit it just starts to unravel like everything that the Islamic regime has told the people for all this time and I think that was really powerful and really important and needed to be told.
So, when you were growing up, this was well before the Manoto documentary, it was well before a lot of the realities or truths that have now been exposed about pre-1979 in Iran have come out and before the generation on the streets inside the country chant, you know, 'Reza Shah, bless your soul' or all the other things. I mean, it's only the past five, maybe seven years that some of those narratives have started to change. So, when was the first time that you realized, well, my dad was not just a regular dad, he had a particular political role. There's a lot of people who don't like him. There's a lot of people who, as you said, are saying he's a killer, are saying he's doing all these things. What was that like and how did you deal with that? Did you go and research yourself what happened? Did your dad tell you the stories? What was that like and how did you come to terms with that's who your family is and that's the background you have, but also trying to realize the truth about what actually happened in that time?
Yeah, I mean, I think my dad was never trying to ever push a narrative with me, you know, he was not, he's a very straightforward guy. Frankly, he even told me the things that they had to do. Like he actually, he's very funny because I, you know, he always wants to like tell you everything. I've never seen him to be anything but a really straightforward person and so we always understood the job he had, the complications of it. But we also understood the, you know, incredible lies and the propaganda. And so I think I've always known my father. You know, sometimes they're like, I remember when I'd come out and I would say good things about my father because I think he's a very good man. Really like an incredible man, to be honest. And I would say things like that. They're like, 'Oh, well, even Al Capone's daughter liked him.' And I was like, you know, I was like, fair enough, you know, fair enough. Obviously people have two faces. But I've seen my, I mean, remember I spent like, because of the fact that we were in hiding, this man didn't leave the house. I saw him every day all day. Like he was there. He couldn't, you know, we both, my parents were sort of a little bit under house arrest in this kind of scenario. I've never seen this man raise his voice. I've never seen this man like hurt a fly. Like I've never seen this man do it. You know, wakes up in the morning and just helps like, you know, got to get the milk, he's going like he doesn't even know, you know. He was in a terrible accident when I was in high school because he was driving me and my sister like, you know, to school on a highway every morning and had a head-on collision, you know, a car going across the median, crashed into him. And the first thing he asked her like, 'What's with the kids?' And that's just, that's who my dad is and who he's always been to everybody who knows him. And I think I was lucky in that I, my dad, you know, I got to meet a lot of people, a lot of Savakis, a lot of very good men in the SAVAK that we got to meet over the years and really honorable people. And a lot of other people who are always like, 'I just want you to know your dad is a good man.' And people kept trying to, people who knew him always wanted my sister and I to know that. And that was really special. So, I was very lucky to have that kind of support around me and again just two parents who were just delightful humans. You know, so whatever my experience was, I'm only grateful and not a lot of people have that.
Did you ever face any challenges professionally? I mean, we read a very small bit of your resume just off the top. You've been to the world's best universities. You've worked with the world's best corporations, the best research institutes. Have you ever faced any complications like, 'Oh, wow, are you the same SAVAK? We heard your dad, you know, was torturing people in the basement like they say about so many people who were involved in the previous regime.' Did you ever face any challenges professionally in that sense?
I know. I mean, yes, it's funny. There's somebody who came out who spammed the entire Harvard faculty and was like, you know, this is her father and you should know everything about this. And Alan Dershowitz as well, people came in and defended me on the thread. It was like a thread to everybody. But it was, you know, but this person, like these kinds of things happen all the time. That person ended up being an agent of the regime who'd been arrested for working for the regime. So, it was, you know, they're not that good at hiding their intentions, but yes, no, I mean, I have gotten it, but it hasn't really ever fallen too far because people understand it.
How do you go about those when people realize or they say, 'Hey, is that your father?' How do you, because there is so much fake news about this and maybe we'll go into it in a bit before we get to your work and your professional life?
I can talk about my dad all day and my parents, don't worry.
We can do both. Okay. But how did you go about educating people? This is a very difficult thing to tell somebody, 'Hey, the entire body of information that you have about Iran and this period in Iran, this particular organization is completely, if not completely, in the majority totally false.' Where do you even start? I mean, how do you untie that thing which is so tightly wound that the late Shah was an American lackey and he was a brutal dictator and he killed 100,000 people. I mean, somehow these numbers continue to add up. It's as if the late Shah killed more people than actually lived in Iran at the time. How do you even start to unwind that thread?
You know, I'm not necessarily the best at it, but I would say like in my mind it's like, you know, the winners control the narrative. Like who are you listening to? Who's giving you this information? Would they have a reason to lie to you? You know, would the US government have a reason to want this regime in power? Like basically just asking questions to them, right? Of like why would you assume that everything you hear is the truth? And show me evidence of what he did. I mean, I think after we posted that photo, the Twitter photo, you know, it was very funny because it was like, you know, all these positive images and then what seemed like bots, like a lot of Twitter accounts that were set up just like that week that were coming out and being like, 'Is this you?' And they'd have a picture of some random guy that looks nothing like my dad shooting somebody and I'm like, 'I don't know what this is.' And there was this other picture of like, this was his offices and I'm like, it looks like Madame Tussauds. I'm like, 'I don't know what I'm looking at.' You know, like it's not, they're not even trying. They're not even trying to say anything real. And my dad, I remember sometimes my dad would sort of tell me like some of the things that the people who were, you know, the terrorists who were in his prisons were saying they did all these things, you know, to them. And my dad was always like, 'That just definitely says much more about their mind and the kinds of crazy tortures they imagine.' Like, you know, they can think of. And so, you know, and again, because you saw in the documentary also, like my dad will tell you everything. He's blunt to a fault, you know, to some degree and so he'll tell you.
He used some choice words in that documentary.
Yeah, he just says it all. And so it's not, I don't have this sense like he's never felt like he's holding anything back from me and again, maybe he's some mastermind that duped us all, but again, there's no evidence to suggest that and a lot of evidence to suggest that he's not.
That's the most important thing that you say is the evidence and I think there's so many... First of all, we should be honest and I'm sure that you have had this conversation and your father did in the documentary as far as I recall and any honest person will, when you're talking about an organization the size of the SAVAK, a government as expansive as the Shah's apparatus of state was, there are obviously things that go wrong. There are obviously bad apples who make bad decisions. There were people who were killed who shouldn't have been probably. There were people who had treatment on them that was torture which was unacceptable. Even the Shah himself, there's all these interviews saying, you know, this shouldn't be happening. In an organization that big, there's always bad things happening. There's always things that are not happening as a matter of policy, but they have happened. And to your point about facts, the important thing is, okay, taking the fact that let's say things like this happened in any organization, you have those bad apples, you have those bad things happen, but the Islamic Republic itself very shortly after the success of the revolution and I'm sure you have seen this, but so many people in Washington or even many Americans or non-Iranians don't even, many Iranians don't know this, that the Islamic Republic itself did a study by I think it was the Bonyad-e Mostazafan if I'm not mistaken or Bonyad-e Shahid at that time and they did a study of all the people who they said that the Shah's regime had killed because they made these huge claims, 100,000 political prisoners, tens of thousands of people killed. And interestingly, to your point about propaganda and fake news and what role were Western entities playing in this, Amnesty International, all these organizations were repeating this propaganda saying, 'Oh, the Shah's killed this many people. He's got 100,000 political prisoners.' And the Islamic Republic itself said, 'We cannot find the evidence for all these things that you're saying. All these people that you say have been killed, their families say that they're right here. They're sitting at the dinner table. It's not true.' And you called some of the people in those prisons terrorists. The regime itself said that a significant proportion of the people who were killed by the Shah's regime were killed in active shootouts with security forces. You're walking in a police station and whipping out an AK-47. What is the police supposed to do? So, that's what's so frustrating, I think, for so many people. And it's not just about the SAVAK, but about the entire pre-1979 apparatus, that there's just so many lies told. Again, bad things happened. This happens in any large organization, but it's just totally false. I mean, it's simple lies that have been told.
You know, I always talk about like how does evil beat kind of goodness? And it's not by defeating it. It's actually by making everyone believe it's the same. You know, and how does it do that? How does it control narrative like that? It's just one truth and a drop of lies. You know, at the end of the day, actually, there's not much evidence that the SAVAK was doing things wrong. You know, and in fact, actually, by a lot of metrics, the accountability was extreme. Like, who else would let, you know, human rights organizations stay in their prisons for that long? It's not, you think the US government's going to do that? You know, you're not going to see that anywhere else. And so, you have, you know, like so much accountability by the Shah. He was actually like, who else also like lets people who actively try to kill him, you know, go free? I mean, it's actually, it's like, it's unbelievable.
He made many of his opponents ministers, and they were serving government posts.
And my dad actually brought in a lot of those people and tried to reform them. And he has these stories of people he, I mean, I think one of the saddest stories was somebody who he was, you know, supporting and brought into his organization that was killed by his own organization because they didn't like that he had turned, you know, to the side of the government. And so, like ultimately, I can't actually believe like how noble these individuals were trying to do good.
We talk about in the West, it's talked so much about again, the SAVAK, all these crimes, crimes that were committed that really never happened according to the data, according to the regime itself. Again, putting aside, you know, obvious things that happen in any government, as you say, happen in the United States, happen in any country, especially if you think of a Middle Eastern country in the mid-20th century. One thing that's so often ignored, I'll get back to the weaponization in a second, but is what you said, that so many of these people were terrorists. This was the Middle East in the middle of the Cold War, where you have terrorist groups like the Mujahedin, terrorist groups, communists who are funded by the Soviet Union, radical Islamists who we see what they've done to the country now that they've taken over. And that's a reality which is so often ignored. I mean, it's often portrayed as if the people who were the opponents of the Shah were, I don't know, 'I just got off the plane from Switzerland and wanted to make the country look like Geneva.' But what they wanted to make the country look like is exactly what they've made it look like. And they said so from the beginning. And perhaps it would have been even worse had someone like the Mujahedin come into power. So, that's just totally lost in this narrative. We say it's almost described as if everyone who was in a prison was a dissident writer or songwriter. No, that's what's happening now. The people who were in prison were not all, but to a great extent, engaging in armed struggle with the government, trying to assassinate and in many cases successfully assassinating senior ministers, prime ministers, I'm sure trying to assassinate your father, trying to assassinate the late Shah several times, the Crown Prince, the Empress. I mean, these were not dissident intellectuals to a great extent. They were simply terrorists. They were armed guerrillas. And that's what's so interesting to be lost in the narrative. Because when I compare that to people who, and I'm sure as a musician you can appreciate this, somebody like Toomaj Salehi, who the regime was about to execute and now still has in prison. We have people who are quote-unquote journalists at The New York Times and people who are quote-unquote experts on Iran in this town in Washington, D.C. that go to the fancy panels and, you know, the cocktail parties with the ambassadors and all these things. And when Toomaj Salehi is arrested because in one of his rap videos, he calls out the regime's lobbyists in Washington, D.C., their propagandists in the media, their first reaction is not to say, 'Oh my gosh, this poor singer should be released.' What they say is, 'This guy is saying death threats to us. Toomaj Salehi is threatening to kill us.' That's their reaction. So, we have in one hand, pre-1979, these people who were actually guerrillas, actually terrorists to a great extent, being lionized as if they were... And here we have a peaceful, very talented, remarkably talented rapper who people say...
Favorite artist. So, she's a big, big fan.
Yeah, who's this guy calling us or having death threats. Yeah. I mean, how is this public? I mean, you've lived it personally. How has this propaganda gone on for 45 years? How has this lasted almost 50 years?
The fix is in. It's always been in, right? I think that's the thing which is that we come to realize is that I know I love my country. I'm grateful for my country, but like it does a lot of, you know, sorry, and my country being the United States, my adopted homeland. But the things it does, I mean, and that's I would say about, you know, that government as well. So, we have to be able to say like this is, you know, they put themselves first. I think for me, I've always been like, I don't have a problem with America putting itself first, right? Like in the sense of like, yes, countries put themselves first. I have a problem with it saying that it's out defending human rights around the world. It's disgusting. That part I think is disgusting. You know what I mean? Because it's like if you're selfish and greedy and want things for your people and you want cheap oil and you want all these things, like that's fine. That's the game. But when you sort of say we're doing this for human rights, it's like, okay, now stop. You know, that is the thing. And that's like I said, what hurts my heart, right? Is that they came in, they didn't seem to have a problem with Iran before, you know, the Shah raised oil prices and then suddenly, you know, they want in everybody's business and they need to be there all the time. And so, I'm not even saying, you know, I actually have a lot of friends in this administration even. And I'm so sorry. Yeah, I can't even... No, well, and I said some good people. And some of them you know, but at the end of the day, I'm like, although either you are morally corrupt or you are duped by people who are morally corrupt or surround yourself with the wrong people because you're getting the wrong information. I don't know, you know, I don't know, but it's to me that part like it's...
