Passport to Freedom | Dr. Nizam Missaghi

Guest [00:00:00] I was smuggled out of Iran. There are human smugglers who do this, kind of think of them as modern day Robin Hoods. Robinhood is somebody who breaks the law to try to help the poor. So these people break the law to try to help Iran's best and brightest to be able to get out of Iran. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here. Today we're sitting down with Dr. Naza Musa, who is an Iranian refugee that came over to the United States and made a life for himself. Now, on its face, this might not be something you're particularly curious about, but when I received the pitch, because he's just written a book, normally I throw those things in the garbage. I don't even pay attention to 'em. But something caught my eye about this and I decided, Hey, what the heck? Let's have this person on the show. Even though I don't know anything at all about them, I went and looked up his background thumb through the pages of the book that we were sent, and I realized that this is a true opportunity to get a perspective on what's going on in Iran that we could not get any other way. So I'm very excited for you to hear this conversation that flashes forwards and backwards, talks about a man dealing with the Iranian revolution and what he thinks is happening now, and I think you're really going to enjoy it. First, I want to talk about the interest based communications class that we have coming up November 9th through the 11th. The Interest-Based Communication is where I teach people that are highly logical how to make their ideas outcompete, charismatic people. I teach how to negotiate, how to tell better stories, how to handle conflict, and how to present.

Guest [00:01:35] These are skills that I think the students have found really valuable, and maybe we should take a moment before the podcast to allow some one of our students to say it in their own words.

Vance Crowe [00:01:52] Really, it doesn't matter if you're telling a story at the family reunion or telling a story to your kids at night or telling a story to your manager who can unlock resources for you to do something. It all needs to be a good compelling story. You, you go into the course thinking that maybe you're a good communicator or thinking that you're a good storyteller, and then you actually get to practice that and realize maybe I am not as good of a storyteller as I thought, or, or maybe it's just something I need to, you know, sharpen up and practice. This course was great to go through because it reminded me that I do have that muscle memory. I just need to put in the reps. I just need to pick up the weights again and keep building because I do have it within me to tell better stories. I do have it within me to ask better questions, and I think I've gotten lazy. You know, it's easier to get frustrated with people and just be like they don't understand versus like, instead of getting frustrated, getting curious, Interest-Based Communication. Learn more at Articulate Ventures slash IBC. All right, let's get to the

Guest [00:03:05] Interview with Dr. Naam Zagi. Naam. Zagi, welcome to the podcast.

Vance Crowe [00:03:11] It's my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me, Vance. So

Guest [00:03:14] You

Vance Crowe [00:03:15] Have

Guest [00:03:16] Released a book with a very clever title,

Vance Crowe [00:03:18] And you happen

Guest [00:03:19] To be from a country that is in the news all over the world. Why don't we start off by talking about what brought us together, the book that you wrote, and kind of what your background is?

Vance Crowe [00:03:30] Absolutely. I'm pleased to mention that my book Passport to Freedom from Tehran to Triumph was released last Tuesday. And so it is now available for anybody who wants to be inspired by that story. And the, the title in particular, as you mentioned, the clever title is a play on words with the word passport. I'm a US born citizen. I was born in New York in 1976, and my parents moved back to Iran shortly after my birth. And then in 1979, the Iranian revolution happened. So I had an American passport tucked away in a shoebox in the back of a closet, which ended up becoming my ticket to freedom out of Iran, but not in in the traditional sense that you would think you could just grab your passport and board a plane and leave Tehran, but that I had to be smuggled out of Iran to be able to find freedom. And so the book Chronicles the difficulties of living under the Islamic Republic, the treatment of minorities under the Islamic Republic, how the Iranian people are the biggest victims of the Islamic Republic since its inception 47 years ago. But it also talks about the goodwill of the American people, the huge contrast between how you face a person of authority in Iran with a racing heart and how you will face a person of authority in America, and how this difference is fundamental and cultural and how your word is your bond in America, and how America was so well welcoming to someone like me who didn't necessarily necessarily look the part or act the part.

Vance Crowe [00:05:24] And so it's a a long thank you notes and a letter of gratitude to everyone who opened doors for me along the way.

Guest [00:05:34] So there are

Vance Crowe [00:05:35] Many interesting

Guest [00:05:35] Things about your story, but the one that pops out the most is why in the world if your family was out of Iran in the seventies,

Vance Crowe [00:05:43] Did they go

Guest [00:05:43] Back?

Vance Crowe [00:05:46] This was very common at the time, the before the Islamic Revolution, this is during the times of the Shah, Iran was a place that Iranians loved to live in, and Iranians enjoyed economic prosperity. Iranians enjoyed relative freedoms, although there were some restrictions and Iranians currency, the real at the time was very valuable. The Iranians, even middle class, could very easily travel to Europe and other parts of the world and enjoy a vacation. And so I cannot speak for all Iranians, but a good portion of Iranians lived very comfortable lives. And so it was very customary at the time for Iranians to leave Iran to receive an education outside of Iran and then go back to help the development of their nation. My mother was a pediatrician. She trained for her pediatrics in the United States in New York. And once her training finished, she very willingly returned to Iran during the times of the Shah and very quickly was climbing the ladder of success and promotions in the hospital as a US trained physician. They loved her. And once the Islamic Republic happened, of course her world and my father's world were appended and my mom was dismissed from the hospital never to be able to practice medicine in any Iranian hospital.

Guest [00:07:15] And did this come on so suddenly that they didn't know, hey, we have to leave now. What was the experience of it from the inside?

Vance Crowe [00:07:25] Yeah, so my parents had to deal with the fact that they had two young children on their hand at the time of the Iranian Revolution in 1979, and the fact that the borders were closed and they were not able to leave. And this didn't happen for years that they were stuck. And so they chose to make the best of it, and they chose to try to educate us as children who were being brainwashed in schools. And every morning we would have to shout slogans that are anti-American and anti-Israeli and anti-imperialist forces and all of these things. And the parents had to provide the counter narrative to us as children that the world that you are being told and the person that you're being forced to be is not who you need to be. And so the counter narrative at home was trying to balance what was happening, you know, outside. And so it was a duality that every Iranian child continues to live with today, a narrative that's pushed on them outside and a narrative and a reality that they live in private corners.

Guest [00:08:37] Yeah, my understanding is that you came from the Baha faith, and so just the, the act of being a part of that faith already ostracized you. Were you public about that or did you have to claim that you were Islamic?

Vance Crowe [00:08:52] Yeah, no, I never claimed that I followed Islam. My parents were of the Baha faith and they were very prominent members of the community and they were very well known. And for this, our home was raided a couple of times. And you know, our personal belongings ran ransacked by the government forces. But thankfully, neither of my parents ever had to do time. And we were among the lucky ones because the members of Bajai community are heavily persecuted. Anything ranging from some skirmishes like your home being graded all the way to seizure of property, to denial of freedom, to imprisonment and to even execution. And hundreds of BAHAs after the Islamic Republic were executed solely for believing differently than the prevailing interpretation of Islamic rule by the, the rulers of Iran at the time. And so this still happens to be the case. And for example, I was dismissed from school for the first time when I was seven years old at the conclusion of first grade, and the principal tore up my academic papers and all of my files stating very clearly to my mom while I witnessed this, that nowhere in Iran will I allow him to study. And so I had to be a witness to this and I had no way of showing or proving that I'd even completed first grade, much less being the top of my class at the time.

Vance Crowe [00:10:23] And so it is difficult as BAHAs to live under the Islamic Republic rule, and the BAHAs are a nonviolent religion that believe in peaceful resistance and believe in civil disobedience. And so they found workarounds. The art of the workaround is common among the Bajai community to be able to find pathways to education, to being able to live and survive.

Guest [00:10:54] I cannot imagine as a parent, I have a 6-year-old and anything we tell that 6-year-old, she's going to tell whoever she encounters, neighbors, whatever. I remember one time my wife said, A dog that bites, a person gets put down and, and so then the neighbor came over and the neighbor had had an incident with a dog that had bit somebody, and my daughter was like a dog that bites, somebody gets put down. And this caused all kinds of problems in the neighborhood, but we never had to worry about our child going to school and saying something that could get our home rated or our parents executed. Help me understand how a family survives in an environment where a child can be taken deeply advantage of in those moments.

Vance Crowe [00:11:36] You're absolutely right. It is an unfortunate situation because you know, it's not just religious discrimination when you're dealing with a child. It is child abuse. It is truly abuse of children When somebody like a school principal chooses to behave this way because no one is in charge of their spiritual destiny until they're adults. So just by virtue of the fact that I was born in a Bajai family and I was being raised in a Bajai family, I should not have been exposed to this level of discrimination. And it's never even permissible for adults to be discriminated against. But once you do it against children, now it ventures into the abuse role. And so yes, we generally were told to not be so vocal about our identity and who we are, but if it became known, for example, a teacher would enter the classroom and say, do we have any non-Muslims here? And so we would raise our hands. There were a couple of Zoan kids, a couple of Jews, maybe a, an Armenian Christian and Bahai. So we would raise our hands and he would ask, what are your religions? And once the Bahai would say, I'm a Bahai, they would say, well, that's not a religion, that's a cult that the British made to create division among Muslim society. And I would be like, oh no, no, it is a religion. It's like, well, you have to go to the principal's office. So I would go to the principal's office and next thing you know, the principal would close the door and sit and say, you guys don't even believe in God.

Vance Crowe [00:13:07] I would be like, no, we do. You guys don't even have a book. Oh, of course we do. Well, you guys don't have scripture. Well, we do. Do you want me to recite something for you? He'd be like, yes, I want to, I want to hear it. So I would look at him and he had his leg crossed and he was sitting in an irreverent way. I said, we don't pray like that. You have to sit reverently. This is me as a 7-year-old telling the principal of a school that he's sitting irreverently. So he complied, he uncrossed his legs and he put his arms across his chest and I closed my eyes and I recited a prayer that I learned at Bahai Sunday School, Friday school there, because Fridays are the off day. And in the middle of my prayer he stops me. He's like, do you know the meanings of these words? I said, well, I'm learning them. He's like, where are you learning them? I said, well, we have a Sunday school, we have a teacher. Who is your teacher? Well, so and so I mentioned the name, see the, the child doesn't know, it's like the dog bite story, right? And so it was like, well, what's the address? I, I was like, well, I know how to get to her home. It's close to here, but I don't know the address off the top of my head. The principal grabbed me by the hand and was walking down the school to try to go to this Sunday school teacher to reprimand her for teaching me Bahai scripture. Now it so happens that my father had come to pick me up from school and seized the scene and intervenes and says, you're not allowed to touch my child. This is the sort of situation you have to deal with when Islamists run and Nation.

Guest [00:14:43] Let's talk about the

Vance Crowe [00:14:45] Islamic

Guest [00:14:45] Overtake of of Iran because to people that were

Vance Crowe [00:14:49] Born, you know, after the eighties, there's really very little understanding that things were ever different. So could you talk about what was going on before, what led to the revolution and then what it was like after? Yeah, I think that there were a lot of different political factions that had dissatisfaction at the time with the regime of the Shah, the Shah. The Shah is just the word for king in Persian. And so he was known as the Shah of Iran at the time. This is Moham Shah. And so a lot of the people who were unhappy with the rule of the Shah, where either the Islamists who had followed the likes of Ayatollah Khomeini and before then Ayatollah Kani and all of these people, and then there were also the leftists at the time, and you have to kind of put it in the historic context of the Cold War. The leftists had glorified significantly what it would like to live in an egalitarian socialistic society. And so this unholy alliance between the leftists of the time and the Islamist created a movement where people would be on the streets and there would be protests and there would be down with the s Shah slogans. And they were, they would be carrying placards and such things would be written on walls. And so naturally they ended up coalescing behind Ayatollah Khomeini as this sort of a spiritual leader.

Vance Crowe [00:16:20] And perhaps some of the leftists who were generally, some of them were religious, some of them were secular, thought that he would be sort of a spiritual leader of a revolution. But there would be a referendum and there would be democratic change and all of these things. But what happens is, now wait before you, before you go on real quick, under the shot, were people given freedoms, were they allowed to do things? I mean, was protests allowed? Was this something they were doing that was dangerous? My experience with Iran was hearing about the Shaw of Iran having secret police and, and black sites and treating people very badly. Was that your impression of it? Yes. So the Shah did have a secret police called the Sak, S-A-V-A-K, and the Sak was able to round up dissidents and people who were against the Shah's regime and put them in jail. And there had even been stories of torture and custodial deaths and some executions. And the entire time there was 57 years of the Babi Dynasty because the, the late Shah of Iran was the second in command of that dynasty. And the entire time under the Sak rule, less than a thousand Iranians were executed for being political dissidents. And so this happened and the torture happened, and yet people would of course, use this as a way to protest protests were allowed, but there would be of course reconnaissance and some surveillance of who is leading these and they could face consequences.

Vance Crowe [00:18:06] So the regime, the system under the Shah was not an open system. The Shah had the experience from the coup in 1953 and was very leery of any sort of unrest at the time. So, and Salak was born after that kind of a, an environment, the 1953 coup environment. And so, so yes, this was happening at the time. But just to put it in perspective as far as if we were to look at the level of brutality of the Islamists that currently run Iran for the past 47 years versus the time of the Shah, just this year alone in 2026, the Islamic Republic has executed more than 1000 dissidents just this year alone. But in the, during the entire reign of the Shah, the number of executions likely was a few hundred, and the highest estimates would put it close to a thousand. And so to just kind of give you an idea of how the situation, as far as political freedom may have gone from bad to far worse, and as this revolution starts, starts happening, people are going to protests and, and they're starting to build, do the people know what will happen if the, if the Shah falls and now there's a new Islamic ruling class? I don't think that majority of people, because this was a coalition of people that would be from the bazaar, which was the marketplace would be the, the leftist intellectuals would be university professors.

Vance Crowe [00:19:38] It was a huge swath of society and each of them may have had different ideas, and Islamists were not necessarily the majority among them, but the Islamists were the most organized. And they had this charismatic leader in the face of the Ayatollah Khomeini that brought them under one umbrella. And a lot of 'em thought, let's all get behind him. And once the revolution happens and there's a referendum and there is ability to self-determination and democratic exercises, the people will speak. But it turned out that like you've heard the old saying that every revolution eats its own founders. And so by the time the Ayatollah Khomeini rises to power one after another, the nationalist front and the leftist and everybody else is either sent to exile or executed and the power is consolidated under the Islamist rule, I don't think that the majority of people understood what they're getting themselves into. No, I think you're exactly right that this is very common, that revolutions get started with grand and utopian ideals, and then once you hit

Guest [00:20:47] Some certain point, there's a strong man that comes in that's willing to do what utopians were not willing to do, and then grabs the power and pushes them out if not executing them.

Vance Crowe [00:20:57] That's precisely correct. And so that's the tragedy of the so-called stolen revolution.

Guest [00:21:04] Interesting. And so once this revolution occurs, I mean my knowledge of this really rests in the movies I've seen where Americans are held hostage and they have to sneak their way out.

Vance Crowe [00:21:15] How quickly

Guest [00:21:16] Does the, the change, the political change happen in Iran?

Vance Crowe [00:21:21] Pretty dramatically and pretty quickly. And so at the time of the revolution, I was about three years old, so I have some vague memories of martial law and power outages and sitting in the dark in our home around one little, you know, battery operated lamp and all of those things. I also remember the hostage crisis that happens shortly after with the rating of the American embassy, which was dubbed as the quote unquote den of spies. And 52 American embassy workers were taken hostage for 444 days. So from the very beginning, the Islamic Republic pursued this policy of hostage taking, but the American hostages that were taken was only the beginning of showing that policy, not only internally to the Iranian people, but to the world. I would say that the Iranian people themselves have been held hostage for 47 years under the Islamic Republic, for example, and that they are the biggest victims of this system. I would also say that the region has been taken hostage by this system, for example, through its proxies and arming them and giving them intelligence information from Syria to southern Lebanon, to Gaza, to Bahrain, to Yemen. You see the regional ambitions and how it has taken, and even Iraq has taken hostage a lot of these governments the way it behaves.

Vance Crowe [00:22:58] For example, Hezbollah, which is the paramilitary force that is Iran backed and is funded by Iran, is larger in power and scope than the Lebanese military. And that is a huge incursion into the sovereignty of another nation. So it shows the regional ambitions and the ideals that the Ayatollah Khomeini promoted from the get go that he says, we need to export our revolution. The whole idea of Iran Iraq war started with his idea that he was inciting the Shia within Iraq to rise up against Saddam's bath party and overthrow him because he believed that that's the first natural place for his revolution to be exported. So the Islamists that rule Iran do not have Iranian national interests in mind. They have a particular ideology that they wish to use hegemonically in the entire region. What I really appreciated was you shifted that question just a little bit to pivot that focus to one little thing that opened up a whole nother memory that really is good to share that I may just not have thought of your staff is are great. Your studio is awesome. This was a great way to reflect on the life just in a conversation, Legacy Interviews, learn more at Legacy Interviews dot com. For

Guest [00:24:28] Most Americans, it's very difficult to

Vance Crowe [00:24:30] Distinguish between Arabs and Persians and this concept of Shia versus Sunni. It becomes so complicated that for, for somebody

Guest [00:24:38] That's coming from a very different

Vance Crowe [00:24:40] Context, that it seems like all Middle Eastern conflict is Muslim conflict. What should be updated about an understanding of what's going on in the Middle East and the difference between Iranian Islam and say more of an Arabic

Guest [00:24:56] Mu Islam?

Vance Crowe [00:24:58] Yeah, so let me first go over the Iranian side. Iran itself is a, is probably the oldest or among the oldest continuously in existence nation states in the world. And Iran is a very pluralistic society as far as its history. It is filled with people who are Persian speaking about over 50% of Iranians are Persian speaking who do not speak any other language but Persian. But then the other nearly 50% of Iranians would be people of RI descent who speak a Turkic language similar to Turkish called Ri. They come from Northwestern Iran. You have the Kurds to the west, you have the Arabs to the southwest, I'm sorry, the southwest is correct. You have the Lucci to the east, you have the torments to the north and east. And so you have a very diverse population, eth ethnically that have come together even among the Iranians, even though the majority are the followers of Shia Islam, at least on paper. Even though today, if you were to ask the average youth in Iran, what's your religion? They may say that I don't believe in anything because they have grown so discontent with the Islamists that have ruined their lives and futures that so many of them that I speak to have departed from belief altogether anyway. But if they have to fill out a government form, they'll probably just write Islam because that's the most convenient thing to write. Nonetheless, at least on paper, majority of them are Shia Muslims.

Vance Crowe [00:26:31] But the Kurdish population, majority of them are Sunnis for example. And they're all within Iran, the Arab population in the province of Stan that's near Kuwait. And parts of Iraq also generally Sunnis. And you have the Baucis in the southeastern part close to the Pakistani border who are also Sunnis. And so these populations are with this from the central government discriminated against, and their progress and development are also curtailed by them. So even within Iran, pardon me, there is significant diversity of belief and there is significant geographic spread of ethnicities, but majority of Iranians do not speak Arabic. There is a population, probably about 2% of Iranians that do speak Arabic, but majority of them don't. And so in the Arab world, of course the majority speak Arabic. And so there is a language difference between them. And then there's of course the different interpretation of Islam. The Sunni tend to follow the sunna, which is the tradition of the prophets, whereas the Shias tend to follow the line of succession from the descendants of the prophets. And so that is the, the major difference between them. And of course it's become a point of contention among them. Generally speaking, Iran is the only Shia country with this much power to wield because it has the oil and gas revenues.

Vance Crowe [00:28:04] And so it wants to have that sort of hegemony in the world and it calls its supreme leader, the leader of Muslims in the world, whereas the majority of Muslims in the world that our Sunni would not recognize him as as any sort of leader at all.

Guest [00:28:20] You mentioned the power that Iran has, and I think this is something that has shocked most Americans, you know, the average American that was being told, we need to go into Iran, we need to wage war. It's like, hey, we will just drop some bombs on them and it'll be over. And I think there are a lot of people that are stunned that this was not a simple, very quick process. What gives Iran this power that they can withstand the largest superpower on earth?

Vance Crowe [00:28:49] The end of this story is yet to be written as far as how it's going to shake out, and we don't know that. And of course history will inform us eventually, but the Islamic Republic I think had predicted that it would be leading itself to confrontation because of all of its regional ambitions and all of how it had waged proxy warfare for decades. And so because it knew that one day it would do that, it had developed heavily fortified missile factories deep into the mountains, for example, that are harder to reach. And it is also benefited from technological advancements of the modern age with GPS technology and with very cheap drone technology where a drone that cost a few thousand dollars would have to be intercepted by an interceptor that's more than a million dollars. And so, so this kind of asymmetric warfare is a new thing as far as warfare that was not there before. It's the same reason why a power that's a 10th of the Russian military called Ukraine has been able to withstand the Russian incursion for the past four years. And so asymmetric warfare has changed the calculus in how we deal with rogue regimes here. And so unfortunately that's the reason why they've been able to withstand and they are survivalists. And they had planned for this for a long time.

Vance Crowe [00:30:21] They had wrongfully thought that the use of the closure of the straight of hormones would be a deterrent to the beginning of any war because nobody would ever want to take that level of a risk. And they figured that that deterrent would never start a war. As a matter of fact, the supreme leader who was eliminated back on on February 28th had told the world that we will not negotiate. He famously said this, he said, we will not negotiate and no war will happen because all of his advisors had said, because we threaten the strai of hormones before nobody daress attack us. And so that's number one. And then the number two was they figured even if a war begins once we put the choke hold on the strait of hormones, the war will have to abruptly end because the world will not be able to tolerate the economic crisis. They will pass off the economic crisis to the poor Iranian people who will have to suffer, but their tolerance is much higher than the world economy. So they figured that they're going to outlast the pain that they are causing to the world and the greater pain that they're causing on their own people own. Well, it turns out that they probably overplayed their hand because the number of barrels of oil that are now going through the strait are getting close to two thirds of pre-war era that sure, there are some projectiles that are hitting a few tankers on a maybe daily or weekly basis, yet the majority of tankers are crossing and that they're starting to lose that grip.

Vance Crowe [00:31:56] And so that's why they're starting to behave more erratically where you're seeing how they're pushing the Houthis to become more active and try to shut down the bubble man up straight, for example, at the Gulf of Aiden and how they're trying to find other means of inflicting economic pain. Again, it all goes back to the hostage diplomacy. Now let's take the world economy hostage so that they let go of us.

Guest [00:32:25] Well, let's go back to your story because your family who had, you know, been prominent, your mother was a a doctor, she no longer can work. You are getting in trouble at school. How

Vance Crowe [00:32:35] Long do you stay in Iran and what is it like to have a passport that you're renewing hidden in your house? Does that mean trouble if they find it? Yes. So I was 18 years old when I finally left Iran, and that's after having been dismissed from multiple schools four to five times in my entire elementary, middle, and high school careers. And having to even go to different districts in Tehran because our district at some point had decided that it would not register a single Bahai student. And once I finished my high school, finally after so many dismissals and changing of schools, I was again top of my class and I was denied access to all university education in Iran. And that's part of the discrimination against the Bahai community of Iran. And I wanna say this, it's not just that it's my being victimized, it's that when a nation does not allow its best and brightest to get educated, it's also depriving itself of the benefit it would derive from such people. And so it's not that I am going to be victimized, but entire nations are victimized when you start categorically denying people who think differently, the ability to get an education and serve their own nation. And so I often think of Emma Lazarus's poem, and I have written it in my book, that is the poem that's known as the Great Colossus. It's written at the base of the Statue of Liberty where it says, give me your poor, give me your tired to the teaming shore.

Vance Crowe [00:34:13] And so there is one place where it says, give me your wretched refuse. We were treated like wretched refuse in Iran. And so when Emma Lazarus wrote that, and when I read that the first time, it connected with me because we were considered wretched refuse. And what, when we came to this land, when I came to this land, I was received with open arms now about the passport. The Iranian government does not have an issue with some Iranians having American passports, but the Iranian government also mandates that any person of Iranian descent have an Iranian passport if they want to travel to Iran or leave Iran. And so the problem for me as a bajai at the time was that the policy was that no bajai would be issued Iranian passports. And so even though I had an American passport, and the fact that you renew American passports in Iran itself is very complex because there is no, and there has not been any Iran, any American embassy in Iran as of almost 47 years, we would go to these Swiss embassy and they would take our application and they would ship it out to the American embassy and burn Switzerland. And it would take three months, sometimes four months for you to get that back through diplomatic mail and go pick it up at the Swiss Embassy. And so even renewing your passport as an American in Iran is a very difficult task.

Vance Crowe [00:35:44] Nonetheless, I had a valid American passport. It was just not my ticket out of Iran because they would mandate that I have an Iranian passport also. And then they would deny that to me. So I was imprisoned in Iran even though I had an American passport in hand.

Guest [00:36:01] How did you get out?

Vance Crowe [00:36:04] I was smuggled out of Iran. There are human smugglers who do this, kind of think of them as modern day Robin Hoods. Robinhood is somebody who breaks the law to try to help the poor. So these people break the law to try to help Iran's best and brightest to be able to get out of Iran. And so they charge a fee all in cash. There's no Google reviews, there's no yellow pages, you, it's just word of mouth that such and such family has recently used one. You go to them and say, Hey, can you give us the name and number of who you used

Guest [00:36:37] To

Vance Crowe [00:36:37] Facilitate your daughter's exit last month? He'd be like, I don't know his name. I don't have a number for him, but he calls from time to time looking for referrals from payphones. I'll be happy to pass your number along. That's how it was. I never saw any for form of ID by this guy. I don't know his real name. He went by Uncle Haie. He, I don't remember his face vividly. He would not talk over the phone other than calling and saying, Hey, it's Uncle Haie, I wanna come visit you. He'd be like, oh yes, please come. And because everybody was worried that all phones were wire tapped and so you would never discuss such sensitive things over

Guest [00:37:16] The

Vance Crowe [00:37:16] Phone. And so he came in, person got the money, it's just a verbal oral agreement handshake. And my dad said, if we never hear from you again, what would happen? He said, that's the risk you take. And so a few weeks later he called and said, be at the bus station in the city of Tabriz on Friday. This was on Wednesday night. And so I had two days to just wrap all of my world into a small suitcase and make it out there. And so on the back of a truck to towards the Iran Turkish border. And then we sat into the mountains at dusk and hiked mountains for about eight hours before we were in a small town on the Turkish side.

Guest [00:38:00] What did it cost to get out of Iran

Vance Crowe [00:38:04] In dollar cents back in 1994? It would've been about $1,200. Okay, that's still a hefty sum at the time. And

Guest [00:38:13] Once you get across the border, do you have a plan set up for where you're gonna go and how you're gonna

Vance Crowe [00:38:19] Live? And

Guest [00:38:20] Did you have money in your pocket? I mean, that's a lot of pressure for an

Vance Crowe [00:38:23] 18-year-old. It is a lot of pressure. And so I remember the night before I left, I had these black jeans and at the inseam of my pants, my mom had opened it and rolled up a hundred dollars bills and pushed them one after another. One would push the other one in and had sutured them because mom was worried that they may try to rob us somewhere that even the smugglers you don't trust. 'cause trust is a high commodity. And so I had about $800 into the inseam of my pants. And so, and I had the American passport sewn into my underwear. So the only way that they would reach to for my American passport is if they stripped me literally without an underwear. And so the smuggler was a very kind hearted gentleman, but we didn't know how he would be. And so that's why we took all these precautions. He took us all the way to Ankara. And so the morning after we had received Ankara, he showed up and said, I'm gonna take all of you to the UN office to get registered here and then apply for asylum. That's when I told him that I'm an American citizen, I'm going to the American Embassy and not to the UN office. And he said, oh, you have a passport? I said, yeah, I have a passport. He's like, why didn't you give it to me? I would've had one of my men get it stamped across the border. I was like, well, we didn't trust you. And so, so, but then I had that trouble in Turkey because my stamp was completely blank. There was no evidence that I'd flown into Turkey.

Vance Crowe [00:39:54] So leaving Iran illegally is one crime. Entering Turkey illegally is another crime. So at one point in my life, I was an illegal immigrant in Turkey. And so I went to the American Embassy to figure out how I would exit Turkey with a passport. That's so blank. And what'd they say? So, you know, you take numbers and then you wait for your number and you come across this thick glass paint little cubicles to talk with the person on the other side. So I, my English was not nearly as good as it is today. And so I had rehearsed this with my parents who lived in the US and had decent English. And so I had tried to tell the story the best way that I could, that I basically went up there. I said, I'm an American citizen, here's my passport. I came across the mountains two nights ago. I'm here, please help me get out and get to the, to America. And this lady's eyes were just widening as I more and more spoke. And it was beyond her capabilities. So she said, go have a seat. I'll have somebody come get you. But that heading to consular services was a American lady, sweet lady named Lucy. And so Lucy comes, calls me by the name, and I follow her back there instead of behind this thick glass like you would see at banks sometimes. She walks me to her office and she sat, there were two chairs at 45 degree angles. So she sat next to me and she said, tell me again what's going on? So I told her the story.

Vance Crowe [00:41:26] I was smuggled out, we were subjected to discrimination. She's like, how do you, how did you get this American passport? I was explaining the Swiss embassy and all of these things. I was born there. My mother had, was educated in the US and so, and apparently at the time, my heart is racing and I'm looking visibly perturbed. So she held my hand. And this was very important, and I mentioned this in the book. This is the first time in my life that a person of authority shows compassion to me. It's the first time in my life, every time as a child, we'd gone to the Department of Education talking about why I was dismissed from school. We would be treated like that, wretched refuse. Like, leave our office, don't talk to us, don't touch anything. And so here, this lady held, held, held my hand and said, you're safe here, slow down. And so this was incredible. I I still get emotional talking about it. And that was 32 years ago. And so she said that we basically came up with a plan that the best way to do this is I surrender my passport to them. I make a police report that my passport was lost, and they would issue a new passport at the, at the embassy in en Cora that would not need a stamp anymore because it, we would pretend my passport was lost. And so I used a replacement passport to exit out of Istanbul a few days after that.

Vance Crowe [00:42:58] And I was running out of money too. And so I flew to Austria where, and I had an uncle so I could borrow money from him and then take my flight to JFK.

Guest [00:43:09] This is a harrowing story. What what in incredible. I don't wanna take out all of the adventure and excitement

Vance Crowe [00:43:16] In the book, so

Guest [00:43:17] Maybe we should skip forward to you go from being an 18-year-old

Vance Crowe [00:43:21] Illegal

Guest [00:43:22] Refugee

Vance Crowe [00:43:23] To

Guest [00:43:24] Becoming a medical doctor in the United States. What is the path that took you there? How does somebody living? Were you alone

Vance Crowe [00:43:32] Living

Guest [00:43:33] In the United States?

Vance Crowe [00:43:35] You know, I come from a long line of physicians in my family, especially on my mother's side, multiple generations of doctors going back so many generations that we can count. And so it was always my dream to follow in their footsteps and be a physician. But I was denied access to university education in Iran. And it was very important to me to pursue this dream. And it would seem like a very far out dream that it would never be achievable just because of my circumstance. Even my father, who is the ever pragmatist said, well, the statistics are against you. Americans have a hard time getting into medical school. What would you think makes you so special that you're gonna show up there and get into medical school? I said, well, at least I can say I tried. And so I give me the opportunity, let me leave the country and see what I can do. And so I went to my aunt's house in Maryland when I arrived. My aunt was also a pediatrician, just like my mother. She's since passed, but she opened her home to me, gave me a, a bedroom in her basement in Frederick, Maryland. I lived there for two years, took community college courses, learned English, improved my performance on standardized testing, transferred to the University of Virginia. For those of your listeners who may not know, the University of Virginia was founded by Thomas Jefferson. It's a, an incredible workup, architecture and accomplishment and part of the American history. So I was embedded in that environment where I finished my bachelor's degree with distinction.

Vance Crowe [00:45:10] I from there went to Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond for medical school. I interviewed at multiple places, but I chose to go in-state because of cost and proximity. And when I finished there, I went back to the University of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson's University and pursued my specialty training in anesthesiology. And since then, for the past 20 years, I've been practicing in the Phoenix metro area. I founded my practice, I sold it to private equity. So that gave me some extra time and resource to be able to focus on my book and doing things that I like. I run nonprofit, nonprofit that helps promote the arts. I teach at the university, I get medical students who rotate with me and I try to teach them not just medicine, but sometimes life.

Guest [00:46:01] I mean, there's so many directions we can go in. But I think the thing that I'm curious about is what, when you think about your experience, what does this give you? The ability to see that a person that's always been living in America would struggle to see?

Vance Crowe [00:46:19] I think that in the same way that if you are in water as a fish, you may not realize the value of water until you're outside of it. I think that a lot of Americans may take for granted the freedoms that they have, that they enjoy every day, that you can

Guest [00:46:36] Criticize

Vance Crowe [00:46:36] Your government and not disappear the next day. That you can have the right to assembly and the right to protest and go home in safety. That you can express your views and your property will not be confiscated. That you can pursue an education, that you can write your ideas and thoughts freely. And so this level of freedom was not always there. Freedom comes with sacrifice and freedom comes with perseverance and with being safeguarded as a gift to pass on to the next generations. And so when Benjamin Franklin said, a republic, if you can keep it, he really meant every word. And I think that it, it's a mandate for all of us to understand how freedom can erode. How we each have a duty to be exercising our civic duties, how we should be part of our communities, how we should cherish the freedoms that we have and how we should be able to pass it on to the next generations so that they can enjoy this and also honor the sacrifices that came before this. One of the important reasons why I wrote this book was for my children who were born into freedom to understand that people before them like myself, had to sacrifice and potentially risk their life so that they can be born into freedom. And I wanted them to be appreciative of this.

Guest [00:48:08] Yeah. So your children, they got to live an ordinary American life then?

Vance Crowe [00:48:14] Absolutely. And every day I remind them, every day I remind them and they somehow feel that my experiences belong to ancient history. Somehow they think that the 19 hundreds was just some other time, prehistoric times. And I tell them that I'm a living example of this. And not only I am that living example, but the experiences that I had continue to be had if I had lived in Iran and if they had been born in a place like Europe,

Guest [00:48:45] You know, it's very common in certain circles to be like, oh man, the United States, it's getting bad. Things aren't going well here, I'm gonna leave, I'm gonna go somewhere

Vance Crowe [00:48:55] Else.

Guest [00:48:56] When you hear that, what do you think?

Vance Crowe [00:49:00] I think that there is no perfect nation in this world. And I think that every nation has room for improvements, has room for reflection, and has room for

Guest [00:49:12] Conversation.

Vance Crowe [00:49:13] And so I have, I, I'm not one of those folks who thinks that if it doesn't work, you should just abandon it. I think that identifying the problems, using our power as citizens to vote, to exercise our right to self-determination, to affect change, to organize in our communities, I think is a far better approach than to just simply, simply abandoning ship and trying to go somewhere else to see if there's a greener pasture elsewhere. I think that every place has got its own issues. I think that America is still singularly the place where dreams can be realized. And I think that despite some of the issues that we see today, I see the polarization, I see the, the difficulty. I see how some people have certain political beliefs, somehow think that other Americans who believe differently may be traitors to their nation. I think that level of vitriol is not good for this perfect union, but I do think that we have opportunities for improvement and for bridging divides and coming together and having conversations rather than just simply lunging, expletives or labels at each other.

Guest [00:50:23] Yeah, I mean to me, you talking now about immigration and things is brave in a certain way because unlike any other time in that, I can recall there is absolutely a movement in the United States to say, get rid of the people that are not American. And despite you, you know, being born in the United States, I think there are people that would define you as not being American. This, this is something that it was almost inconceivable to me growing up, but now exists. Do you see this as well and what's your response to it?

Vance Crowe [00:50:55] I have noticed it, especially in the past decade or so, it's more common for patients to ask me, Hey doc, what's your nationality? Right? And I typically tell them, American, I've never held a passport outside of the American passport. They're like, well, okay, but but where were you really from? Right? So these kinds of questions I didn't receive before. So I do notice that shift and that difference. And so I tell them, I said, well, my parents are Iranian and I grew up in Tehran and well like you got an accent? I'm like, yeah, you know, if you go back a few generations, we've all had accents. And so I always tell them, I say the one thing is if you come across somebody with an accent, they usually know one more language than you do. And so that is the, because you know, the joke goes that if you're, you speak three languages, you're trilingual, you speak two languages, you're bilingual. If you speak one language, you're American. And so I tell them in jest, I say, well that's because I speak a language more than you. And so I try to make light of it, but I also try to give them perspective that, yeah, I, I didn't grow up here but I love this place. I call this place home and there is no place in the world that has received me like America has, including the country of the birth of my parents. You know, when you write

Guest [00:52:22] A book, you are having to take these nebulous thoughts that, that don't necessarily have a home and you have to put them in some sort of linear order. Did your book write itself because it was just, it was a memoir and you could just say, this is what happened next. Or were there struggle points that you had to figure out? How does all this fit together?

Vance Crowe [00:52:41] I did struggle a lot. I think the biggest struggle of writing this book was reliving a lot of my experiences. Sometimes I would be writing and I would be crying. And so it was therapeutic for me actually at at times. But what I did is that under notes in my phone, I opened a file and every time I thought of a memory, I wrote it down. And it was not necessarily in chronological order, but I thought that this memory is worthy of being read in the book 'cause it contributes to the bigger story and it enriches the story. And so I did that. And so once I had a

Guest [00:53:17] Critical

Vance Crowe [00:53:18] Mass of stories that came together, I started moving them and giving them priority and tried to put them in some sort of a chronological order. But still, I think a memoir that's written chronologically would be too boring. So there's a lot of flashback and flash forwards in this book to try to engage the audience and tell a story in a way that I think is more palatable and more perhaps suspenseful. And so my book starts with the story of Halley's Comet, the comet that comes every 75

Guest [00:53:50] Years

Vance Crowe [00:53:51] And is viewed. And last time that it was viewed was 1986 and that's when I started. I was 10 years old at the time and I would climb up the stairs to try to view it view in the smog of Tehran. And because I'd read in the newspapers that it's coming and I didn't want to miss it 'cause I knew that if I missed it, I would never see it again. Who knows if I would ever make it to 85 because Iraqi missiles were raining down on Iran during the Iran Iraq war and I could die the next day and I would never even live to see 11 much less 85. And so I had all of these thoughts about wishing upon a star, trying to make a pact with this halley's comet that's coming, that by the next time you come, the world will be a better place.

Guest [00:54:36] That's profound When I think about all of your expertise, you know, having somebody from Iran that understands what's going on there, I know there is more that we could discuss, but where would you take this conversation? W what do you think is not well understood by Americans about what's going on with them? Particularly because we are ensnared in a war with a country that I think a lot of people would have trouble finding on a map if you ask them.

Vance Crowe [00:55:04] Yes. I think that one thing that we need to understand about the Islamic Republic is that it does not function like a normal government. A normal government tries to be answerable to its citizens. The Islamic Republic treats them like subjects and not citizens. It has to be representative of the people. And this one is not sure. It has a veneer of democracy where it has a parliament and it has a judiciary and it has an executive. But in reality the supreme leader calls all the shots in conjunction with multiple security apparatuses such as the IRGC and the beige force. And so it's, it really, if you were to think of that government as a government, you have already directed your thoughts in the wrong direction. This is a system that functions like a cartel rather than a government. That is the first thing. So when you're dealing with a government like this, appeasement will never work. Giving them some money and expecting them to behave is not going to work because the money is not going to create social or economic development for the nation. It goes to fund the regional ambitions and the power graphs that they wish to do and the elimination of the state of Israel. That was their stated goal from the beginning of the, the revolution. And so I know that administration after administration have kicked the can down the road and facing the Islamic Republic perhaps followed the policy of appeasement and making deals and try to keep them at bay.

Vance Crowe [00:56:46] But in reality, a system like this and its behavior now with the war is becoming much more apparent to the world as to how it's, to what great lengths is willing to go to try to disturb the order in the world that eventually a system like this, when it's gone, it will be best for the peace and security of the world. I don't just say this so that the Iranian people get to breathe a sigh of relief and finally have the right to self-determination. But I say this for the safety and security of the world, that a system like this had to eventually be addressed. Now you could argue whether the Trump administration's approach to it by not building a coalition by suddenly starting it. While all of this could have been better thought out. Absolutely, I don't know. I am not, it is not my area to comment on, but I knew that this administration did something that should have probably been done, been done a long time before, before this asymmetric warfare becomes so powerful as a tool of deterrence. And before they get to be so advanced with their ballistic technology and so exact, with their ballistic technology where they can strike a lot of American bases and American allies without difficulty.

Guest [00:58:09] I think there are a lot of people that think that the United States got pulled into Israel's war. It

Vance Crowe [00:58:14] Does not sound like you

Guest [00:58:16] Think that, it sounds like you think that this is a, a larger security concern that that expands beyond Israel. Is that right?

Vance Crowe [00:58:25] I think Israel is the litus test of how a government is behaving. So it's, it's certainly, it's stated goal of erasing Israel itself should cause alarm to anyone because no nation should be able to erase another nation off the map. So once they say that, I think that just shows you what their ideological fantasies are. So that

Guest [00:58:51] Exposes

Vance Crowe [00:58:51] Their fantasies to the world. That's number one. And number two is they have been at war with the United States to different degrees over the past 47 years. We talked about the seizure of the embassy and of course the hostage crisis, but that was just the beginning. The Beirut Barracks bombing, they were directly responsible for doing that. That shortly happened shortly after the interventions that they did in Iraq with Q Soleimani, the, the Iranian commander that was also the head of the paramilitary puts force, which was operating outside of Iran, brought the IED technology to Iraq and hundreds, if not thousands of US servicemen died because of that technology that he brought to Iraq. So it's not that the Islamic Republic has done nothing. And I also remind your audience that the Islamic Republic has hacked into our water systems right here in the US to try to see if they can disrupt services here. And that has happened. So it's not like they have been sitting idly, never picking a fight with the us and it's only been with Israel. That is not the case. They have at every turn tried to undermine the us. Its allies, its faces and its interests.

Guest [01:00:09] You mentioned the killing of the ayatollah that has he been replaced? Is the person that replaced him a a similar person? Is it really just a figurehead and the larger body decides things? What's going on now that he's been taken out?

Vance Crowe [01:00:24] That's completely shrouded in mystery. On paper, they have named his son Moham. As the the new supreme leader. There is a decent amount of intelligence that Hamani is either dead or that he is severely compromised because he was injured in the same strike that killed his father. So he either is unable to rule or he is no longer here anyway, but, and nobody has seen him, not a video, not a voice recording, nothing since he was appointed over six months ago to this position. So the idea is that there is a lot of fracture within the power apparatus within Iran that the IRGC on the one side is calling some shots. The Iranian so-called president, I hate to use that term because I don't think that he's representative of the Iranian people, but he shows up to the UN General assembly and has access to Supreme about how he's the victim and he would never attack his own people. But he also has more conciliary tone, conciliatory tone. And then of course you have the head of the Parliament, Oli B, who shows up along with the, the foreign minister to do the negotiations. And the fact is, it doesn't appear that all these three factions are necessarily in concert with each other. That, for example, they would promise that the attacks, that the strai of hormones would end and then the IRGC would start throwing projectiles anyway. And so there is a lot of fracturing within the system.

Vance Crowe [01:01:56] And now with the naval siege and the air siege, it seems to me that not only, of course the people are suffering because the inflation is now almost triple digits, but also that the ability of the Islamic Republic to pay its repressive forces is becoming more and more diminished. And so that may make the situation ripe for another uprising where there may be so enough fractures

Guest [01:02:21] For

Vance Crowe [01:02:22] Prevention of another sort of massacre and potentially for the people to

Guest [01:02:27] Prevail

Vance Crowe [01:02:27] This time.

Guest [01:02:29] If the regime does fall, do you anticipate that it would be the, you know, democratic situation that people were hoping for in the seventies? Or do you think it would be another strong man? What do you perceive would happen?

Vance Crowe [01:02:42] I think it's very difficult to predict. I do think that the Iranians of today are far more educated, especially the young population that's highly wired to the outside world and knows what the world is like. I think that the likelihood of a secular democratic government for the future of Iran would be high because it's something that the people wish to have. And so there are some opposition figures that are mentioned that could help transition to a referendum. And I would hardly think that

Guest [01:03:14] Any Islamist

Vance Crowe [01:03:15] Faction would

Guest [01:03:16] Gain any more than 15 to 20% of the votes. Well, this has been just a fascinating conversation. I want to give you a moment to talk a little bit about your book, where people can find it, and how they can get a chance to learn more about your story.

Vance Crowe [01:03:32] Absolutely. Thank you for this opportunity, van. I really appreciate it. My book is entitled Passport to Freedom from Tehran to Triumph. And the book came out last Tuesday. It is available on every outlet if people wanna do Amazon, Barnes and Noble and whatnot. And then for those who wish to have audio, I am the narrator of my own book. I did all of the studio visiting and and getting it done there. And so they can certainly find it on Audible or any other place where they find audio books. It's not a simple memoir story. I think that it does have some lessons. I hope that people will find it insightful about reflecting on the American sp spirit on the definition of freedom that is not just geographical, but it's psychological, it's internal. It's a movement away from the idea of victimhood and moving towards becoming who you feel that you are destined to be rather than what people have prescribed for you. And so I feel that these concepts are universal. It's not just a story of a young man who leaves Iran escapes and comes to America as a homecoming, but it's also a story of humans and a story of aspirations and of dreams that can become true with the proper setting and effort.

Guest [01:04:56] So maybe a final question as a way to close out, I know I myself, and I would imagine most of my listeners have no comprehension of the Bahai faith. You had mentioned your ability to quote a verse. Is there one that comes to mind that might give us an op, an insight into your faith?

Vance Crowe [01:05:14] Yes. Bahala, the founder of the Baha Faith, who lived in the middle of the 19th century, said that the earth is but one country and mankind, its citizens. And so one day in the future, it may be that all these nation states will find peace and universal peace will prevail, and that people will live in harmony in the way that, for example, the states within the US live in harmony together. And so that is the hope, that's the ultimate goal for the world to rid itself of extremism and come together and work together in unison towards the betterment of humanity. Well, Dr. Massai, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It's been my pleasure, Vince, thank you. Thanks so much for staying for the whole podcast. I hope you enjoyed this fascinating conversation. As we're wrapping up, if you are one of those people that is highly logical and you found yourself in those situations where somebody that is more persuasive, more charismatic, was able to outcompete you than consider coming to my interest based communications course, this is where I teach the fundamentals of how to make your ideas competitive so that the right ideas can win. If you are interested to take this course, you can go to Articulate Ventures slash IBC. All right. We'll be back next week with another fascinating conversation,

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