Piers Morgan asked Mehdi Hasan a whopping seven times in a row whether he was happy that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was no longer ruling Iran after his assassination — but the former MSNBC host refused to answer, calling it a “loaded question.”
During his show “Piers Morgan Uncensored” on Wednesday, Morgan asked Hasan — the founder of Substack newsletter Zeteo — whether he was glad Khamenei was no longer ruling the nation after joint US and Israeli strikes last month killed the leader and many of his possible successors.
“It’s a good question. I don’t take pleasure in killing anyone. I don’t think you should illegally kill the leader, the foreign leader of a nation,” Hasan replied.
“He wasn’t just a political ruler, he was a spiritual ruler. And to kill him, to assassinate him on day one of the war, will have insane consequences.”
In a long-winded response to the question, Hasan warned that the assassination could lead to “terrorism” and “revenge attacks.”
He tore into the Trump administration’s “Operation Epic Fury,” jibing that the “regime-change war” was a “real high-level success” in replacing Khamenei with his son, Mojtaba Khamenei, who is “apparently more hard-lined … than his father.”
“Strategically it’s a disaster, and legally and morally, no, you can’t just kill people you don’t like,” Hasan said. “I don’t like [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu … but I don’t support anyone assassinating him.”
A stunned Morgan replied: “My actual question was brilliantly deflected. My actual question was are you pleased that he’s no longer ruling Iran?”
Hasan gave another rambling answer that delved into the morality of killing foreign leaders, but Morgan insisted he answer his initial question.
“No, I wasn’t asking if you supported killing him. I was just asking if you’re pleased he’s no longer ruling the country,” Morgan said. “Sounds like you are, but you are just very reluctant to use the word ‘yes.’”
Hasan replied that it was a “loaded question” that he couldn’t answer “because his son is ruling the country.”
After Morgan repeated his question half a dozen times, Hasan said: “No, Piers, it’s not as simple as that!”
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Hasan said he needed to “think through the consequences” of his answer, calling Operation Epic Fury a “disaster” and adding that it was up to the Iranian people to decide their fate — not Netanyahu or President Trump.
“It was wrong to kill him, it was illegal to kill him, it will have disastrous effects for the region, it’s mad to take out a head of state and a spiritual leader, and it’s even madder when you replace him with his son who is quote-unquote ‘worse’ than him both for Iran and for US and Israeli interests,” Hasan said.
But Morgan again doubled down on his initial question, saying, “You can just say yes or no.”
At one point, Hasan tried to turn the tables on Morgan — but it quickly backfired.
“Are you pleased that Saddam Hussein is not ruling Iran?” Hasan asked Morgan during a heated back-and-forth.
“But you opposed that war like I did?” Hasan said.
“Yeah,” Morgan said again. “Those two things are perfectly compatible.”
