University of Tehran

They know everything about everybody, whoever it is.

I don't know if it's just a bunch of, you know, women at Tehran University who run a maritime intelligence cell and they collect all this open source information and classified information and fuse it together.

When they go after something, they know what they're going after.

And they call those ships owners up like two million dollars or we're going to hit you.

So introduce our cast of characters, would you?

Yes, this story was brought to me by an Iranian professor at the University of Tehran named Dr. Habib Ahmadzadeh.

And he produced, wrote, directed this documentary on his own, out of his own pocket.

It is the story of this woman going through this medical crisis several years ago.

Welcome back, everyone.

Today is September 20th, uh, 2026, and we have the pleasure of being joined by Professor Seyed Mohammad Marandi, a professor at Tehran University, and also a former advisor to Iran's nuclear negotiation team.

Uh, thank you for coming on.

How are you?

And today we have in Washington, D.C., Jamal Abdi, the president of the National Iranian American Council.

Hassan Ahmadian is a professor at the University of Tehran and deputy director of the Center for Middle East Scientific and Strategic Studies.

He's joining us from Tehran.

And Mark Feifley is also in Washington, D.C. He's the founder and president of off the record strategies.

I tell you, David, if a family king of him was saved, he would say the same, that Israelis came for selfies, and that he actually accused Israelis of burying people alive with heavy machinery, that people were still alive under the rubble, which is absolutely nonsense.

But Marcus, where does this come from? I mean, did he do his undergrad? While you were at the Technion, was he doing his undergraduate studies at the University of Tehran in Iran or Damascus? Where does this come from?

No, not from Tehran, Damascus.

It comes from the old school, Popular Front of Liberation of Palestine, PLO training camps in Libya, which he says that he was there in Libya, where Sahrawis and Palestinians and some Latin American guerrillas were training.

So can you give us a bit of a picture of your academic journey so far?

Well, my academic life started when I started my undergrad at University of Tehran, back in Iran, home.

And I was doing my undergrad, my bachelor's in materials and metallurgical engineering, where I took the hydrometallurgy course.

And then I discovered my passion and how interesting extractive metallurgy and all the chemistry behind it is, which is where I decided to join the recycling lab there and did a thesis there working on battery recycling using environmentally friendly reagents.