# BREAKING Iranian Revolt Update: The “Trump Factor,” a Revolt Spreading Beyond Iran’s Traditional Fault Lines, and Exposing Iranian Guard Networks in Canada

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-bureau-podcast-6621098/breaking-iranian-revolt-update-the-trump-factor-a-revolt-spreading-beyond-iran-s-traditional-fault-lines-and-exposing-iranian-guard-networks-in-canada
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-bureau-podcast-6621098/breaking-iranian-revolt-update-the-trump-factor-a-revolt-spreading-beyond-iran-s-traditional-fault-lines-and-exposing-iranian-guard-networks-in-canada.md
Podcast: [The Bureau Podcast](https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-bureau-podcast-6621098)
Published: 2026-01-09T16:30:11+00:00
Episode link: https://www.thebureau.news/p/breaking-iranian-revolt-update-the
Audio file: https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/184036173/473460bd4d9a2e85611288e5c71293fc.mp3
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Duration seconds: 3493

## Resource

VANCOUVER-OTTAWA In this Bureau Podcast breaking episode, I’m joined by my former colleague Negar Mojtahedi — now a Canadian investigative journalist with Iran International English — to unpack a revolt in Iran that was moving at internet speed abroad until the regime shut down networks last night, making Negar’s on-the-ground sourcing all the more crucial — especially as major broadcasters, from the BBC to the CBC, have appeared reticent to cover this monumental story. We begin where both Negar and I share expertise: exposing the Iranian regime and the organized-crime national security story hiding in plain sight here in North America. Negar’s reporting has found “hundreds, potentially if not thousands” of regime-linked officials and intermediaries living freely in Canada — often not uniformed Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps figures, but family-linked networks and financial middlemen who can move money, facilitate influence, and in some cases monitor dissidents. We discuss how this threat extends beyond the Iranian diaspora, reaching into the Jewish community as well — including lethal threats against former Canadian justice minister Irwin Cotler. Later in the episode, I return to the point that even if Western citizens think they don’t care about the Iranian regime’s harms abroad, they should understand the dangers they face at home — including how organized crime networks can traffic fentanyl one day and take Iranian intelligence-linked hit contracts the next. From there, we move into how this uprising began in an unexpected place and metastasized into something larger and more dangerous for the clerical state. We discuss how the first sparks appeared in the bazaar’s electronics and phone sector — a modern pressure point where merchants live and die by currency vo…

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