Ben Anderson Was Arrested in Iran Because They Thought He Was a Spy | Joe Rogan

Now, as a journalist, when you see shit like that, that has got to hit home. Oh, yeah, the last few years for journalists, especially, you know, if you're, I mean, he wasn't an American citizen. Right. But he did write for the Washington Post. Yeah, and was a resident. But, but I mean, I was, I was, I was arrested in Iran for a week, a long, long time ago. And roughly the same time, an Iranian Canadian photographer was arrested, and she was raped and beaten to death. So the people that are citizens of these countries, they're, they're really, really bearing the brunt. And again, that's why I'm uncomfortable if people call me brave, because I get to come home. With these guys, you know, they can get to them and they can get to their families very easily. And that that takes a whole other level of bravery. The woman who was raped and beaten to death, what was she involved with? She was a photographer. She was just taking pictures. Yeah, yeah. And the usual thing with I mean, certainly in Iran, but this is common all over the place. If you're a dual citizen working as a journalist in, for example, Iran, they'll accuse you of being a spy. I was accused of being a spy. They tried to get me to confess to being a spy. That's a very normal assumption out there. And how long were you in jail for? Just seven or eight days. What was that like? Actually, not not too bad. I mean, psychologically, it was bad because they were threatening torture and execution. Physically, it wasn't it wasn't too bad. I was fed. I had a bad bed. I was roughed up a bit. I wasn't I wasn't beaten. But I did think it could last months and months and months. And I did think I could go to Evan prison. They actually put me in a car and drove me to what they said was in prison once and then just took me somewhere else. Evan prison? Evan prison is where people have been tortured and executed. So they just drove you there to scare you? Drove me around for a few hours to scare me and then took me to another place. Yeah. What were they trying to get you to confess to? To being a spy. And they said at one point, they said, do you honestly expect us to believe you travel the world collecting all this information and you don't share it with your government? I said, yeah, that's exactly how it works. And they thought I was insulting their intelligence by by saying that. What were you over there covering? We were I did a series. One of the first series I did was called holidays in the axis of evil. So I spent my first four years as a journalist undercover wearing a secret camera. And luckily I appeared on a couple of docs with a guy who was not very good. And so I looked genuine next to him. So the control BBC two said give this guy a series. I was racking my brains trying to think wanted to be a foreign correspondent wanted to cover conflict. Then George Bush made the axis of evil speech. And John Bolton added three countries to the list. So it was Iraq, Syria, Cuba, North Korea, Libya, Cuba were the six evil countries. So we went to all six countries. Me and one cameraman held handheld camera chain actually saw it. And that's when he first reached out and I started talking to vice about eventually joining them. But kind of documentaries from the streets up to just trying to say, you know, despite all the rhetoric about Iran, this is what the people are actually like. And it was it was kind of youth led. We we interviewed a bunch of students who were involved in some famous protest in 1999 where the police came in and smashed the dormitories and burnt them down and beat them. I think because we interviewed them, we were then tracked and arrested. So how did you get free? How did I get how'd you get free? It's I didn't know at the time if two countries have diplomatic relations, it's only a big deal after a week. So on the night of the seventh day or the eighth day, they let me go. Yeah. But I had no idea at the time I thought I thought this could go on months and months and months. Now when you're over there in Iran, what is their perception of the United States when you talk to the young people over there? Oh, love the United States. Really? Music, culture, sports, everything and extremely well educated about the United States. American foreign policy is a completely different discussion. But I mean, one of the things we tried to cover was the Friday rally at Tehran University, where you see everyone chanting death to America, death to Israel. And we wanted to cover it because they bus in old men from the countryside who said they're going, oh, yeah, death to America, death to Israel. Really? Yeah, it's not something to be. So some propaganda staged event. Yeah, I mean, if there was a turning point in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars with Iran, Ryan Crocker, who was former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Israel, Iraq, Afghanistan. Straight after 9-11, he was sent to Geneva, where a number of countries affected by the refugee crisis were meeting to discuss how to deal with it. One of the countries of Iran. So they have this meeting and then he and his Iranian counterpart would disappear for, he says, seven or eight hours over tea to discuss the future of American-Iran relations. They knew that they were going to get rid of the Taliban. So the Iranians said, OK, here's a map of the Taliban leaders homes. If you take out those homes on day one, Taliban have finished. And Ryan Crocker said, oh, thank you. Can I take notes from this map? They said, the map is yours. We made it for you. Gave him the map. Let the Americans use Iranian airspace. Handed over some prisoners. They were absolutely key in us overthrowing the Taliban so quickly. And Ryan Crocker was making good progress in then talking about the future of Iraq post-Sudan. One night he gets a knock on his door and two of his staff has come in and say, boss, you're really not kind of like what's just happened. He said, what's just happened? And it was the axis of evil speech. So the moderate so-called in Iran who had fought hard to get permission to negotiate with the great Satan, the US, said, you've made us look stupid. You know, it was hard for us to get this chance. We helped you in Afghanistan. We were willing to discuss future relations between our two countries. And this is this is what happens. So it's over. Wow. And then fairly soon after that, obviously, there's the invasion of Iraq and Iran is sponsoring the insurgency and giving them sophisticated IEDs and all that rather than, you know, potentially helping. So you think that with wow, with one speech. Yeah, the whole thing shifted. Yeah. So they would they would have been willing to somehow or another negotiate or cooperate or I mean, work alongside getting rid of Saddam was obviously in their interest. Yeah. They've got a brutal eight year, eight year war with it. We have a very strange relationship with Iran. I mean, going back to the hostages from, you know, the Jimmy Carter era. Yeah, I do think it's one of the most misunderstood countries in the region. I mean, when you actually go there, you know, the people are so smart and so educated and potentially such such good allies. So what is the key issue? It's the government. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, what I just explained, right? I think they're capable of being far more rational than than the speeches by the crazy old mullahs would would suggest. I mean, if they they've proved it. Yeah. And the idea that the Saudis and Emiratis can somehow bomb the Houthis in Yemen into submission and push back Iranian influence on their southern border is is ridiculous. That's just never going to happen. And I think even if you ignore the obvious moral argument, just from a pragmatic point of view, the idea that we should back this unconditionally is ridiculous. See, this is just part of the real problem when you're dealing with world events is trying to parse all this stuff out and look at so many different stories from so many different parts of the world in so many different areas of conflict. And it's almost impossible to pay attention to it all. Every time I meet people from these countries, I'm I feel like a fraud because there's so much that they know that I don't know and I should. Right. And, you know, I get paid to do this. I get paid to pay attention to this for a living. And I feel out of my depth regularly. And that's focusing on the five or six countries that I focus on, let alone everything else. What other countries do you focus on? I mean, the last few years has been Congo quite a bit. Afghanistan, mostly Iraq, Yemen. I've focused on a lot of the last three, four years. They're the main ones. Been to Brazil recently. Been to Central African Republic recently. But not.