Mehdi Hasan, former MS NOW host, sat down for an interview with current MS NOW host Chris Hayes, where he made the argument that the conduct of American military forces in Iran is far worse than that of the Nazis during World War II. Giving his supposed evidence for that horrid and ridiculous claim, Hayes alleged that the U.S. military is responsible for a cruise missile strike that accidentally resulted in the deaths of dozens of children at an all-girls’ elementary school in Iran while actually targeting a nearby naval base.
The strike killed a total of 165 people, most of whom are allegedly children. “It would be, appeared, this unfathomable tragedy, the mass slaughter of children playing at school, was simply the result of the ethos that this administration has bragged about, that the whole kind of ‘shoot first, ask questions later’ attitude, an attitude that Pete Hegseth has been promoting for months before, and then even after this strike,” Hayes said during his conversation with Hasan.
Hayes then played a clip of Secretary of War Pete Hegseth saying, “Death and destruction from the sky all day long. We’re playing for keeps. Our warfighters have maximum authority granted personally by the president and yours truly. Our rules of engagement are bold, precise and designed to unleash American power, not shackle it. This was never meant to be a fair fight. And it is not a fair fight. We are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.”
According to Fox News, it was at this point in the segment that Hayes brought in Hasan, whining about the way Hegseth and the American military speak of the conflict. Hasan agreed with the program host before going on to explain his opinion that America and Israel have a terrible record for bombing civilians. “Part of the reason for this war, Chris, was supposed to be protecting the Iranian people against the regime. How’s that working out so far?” Hasan asked Hayes.
Hayes correctly pointed out that even before American strikes started in Iran, the people of the Muslim majority country were unhappy. “Iran has just come through a period in which there were, according to independent human rights groups, as many as possibly 30,000 Iranians killed by their own government amid protests,” the host explained.
The host then claimed that the U.S. was entering the conflict with a “We don’t care if you live or die” mentality, calling such thinking “wildly self-defeating.” Hasan replied, “It’s a moral abomination. And yes, it’s tactically stupid. They, you know, they bombed a submarine and just let the sailors drown to death… Even the Nazis didn’t do that during World War II. Apparently, even the Nazis collected people from the water.”
It’s important to note that while there were isolated incidents of Nazis helping sailors, this was not common practice and became extremely rare after 1942. “This is insane rhetoric, insane behavior from people who don’t give a damn. Donald Trump has never given a damn about Iranian lives,” Hasan ranted.
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He continued, “I see people in the diaspora cheering on this war, and I feel bad for them because Donald Trump screws over everyone, and he’s going to screw over the Iranian people as well. He’s a guy who has deported Iranians back to that government to be tortured or oppressed. He doesn’t care about the Iranian people.”
Both Hasan and Hayes agreed that the war effort against Iran is less popular than the Iraq war was at this same stage. Hasan then noted that he keeps thinking about a famous sketch from British television that featured two Nazi SS officers finally noticing there is a Death’s Head skull-and-crossbones insignia on their caps, prompting them to ask themselves, “Are we the baddies?”
Featured Image: screenshot from embedded video