Iran; Under Siege; Breaking the Cycle | 60 Minutes Full Episodes
In a Nutshell
Reza Pahlavi, son of Iran's last Shah, predicts the regime's collapse after US-Israel strikes killed Ayatollah Khamenei, positioning himself as a transitional leader to democracy while rejecting kingship, advocating peace with Israel, and dismantling nuclear weapons. Federal judges face a 78% surge in death threats from Trump rhetoric criticizing rulings on immigration and citizenship, with bipartisan calls to protect the judiciary. Oxford High School shooting parents convicted of manslaughter for ignoring their son's mental health red flags and securing his gun, highlighting failures in parental, school accountability, and national prevention strategies amid ongoing mass shootings.
These notes were generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
US and Israeli strikes on Iran continue. Most prominent leader of Iranian opposition believes regime in Tehran is collapsing and wants to lead transition. Question: You have been out of the country for nearly 50 years. Why would the people want you?
Judge John Kunau blocked President Trump's bid to end birthright citizenship. Received death threats: dozens, if not hundreds. One of 400 federal judges targeted by serious threats last year, 78% jump since 2021. Warning: If we're not careful, we're going to get a judge killed.
Four years ago, gunman opened fire at Oxford High School, 40 miles north of Detroit. Shooter sentenced to life in prison. Prosecutors argued parents also to blame. Question: Do you think his parents failed him? Answer: Yes. This kid was asking for help at every level and he didn't get it and he did something horrible.
Leslie Stahl, Scott Pelley, Bill Whitaker, Anderson Cooper, Sharyn Alfonsi, Cecilia Vega, John Wertheim. Stories include Iran, judges under threat, Oxford shooting. In last minute, poet on being American.
United States and Israel conducted second day of strikes on targets across Iran. Iran's supreme leader killed. Iran retaliated with missile attacks on Israel, neighboring countries, US military bases. At least three American service members killed. Scott Pelley in Paris.
Most prominent member of Iranian opposition says regime is collapsing, wants to lead transition making Iran safe for world. 65-year-old Reza Pahlavi, son of former king (Shah) of Iran deposed in 1979 by revolutionaries and hardline Islamic clerics. In 1979 revolution, Pahlavi was 18, living in Lubbock, Texas, training as US Air Force fighter pilot. Lived in exile 47 years, mostly US, now in Paris. Asked if he wants to be king, Iran's policy toward Israel and nuclear weapons.
News: Supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei killed in opening hours of war. Reza Pahlavi: Earthshattering event. People identify regime's monstrosity with chief monster. His disappearance brings elation: Oh my god, it has finally occurred, maybe this is it, our chance.
You call him a monster? Well, ever since this regime has taken over, how many Iranian lives have been lost? I don't think you can have an example of such level of atrocity ever in the history of Iran or at least contemporary Iran that has occurred under this regime. This is all because of Ali Khamenei's insistence to keep himself and his mafia regime in power at the expense of the Iranian people. I don't know how else can you depict it other than being true monsters in the real sense of the word.
This past January, Iranians poured into streets. Pahlavi urged them on, hundreds of thousands marched. Regime gunned down estimated 20,000 citizens. Massacre prelude to war. Video from Isfahan after Ayatollah's death announcement: Means finally ready to go back to streets, but cautioned safety first. People brave: to hell with it, it's liberation, humanitarian intervention to protect lives. Gives real opportunity seeing end of regime bound to collapse regardless of intervention.
Iranians prepared to fight regardless of outside intervention. Too much blood between us and regime, committed to fight. Thanking President Trump for standing on his word and acting. Believes regime could fall after almost 50 years: Of course.
Prince Reza Pahlavi wants to lead Iran in transition to democracy.
You don't want to be king. I'm not running for office. Are you saying in this interview that you wouldn't lead Iran? That's a different thing. They trust me as the transitional leader, not as the future king or future president or future whatever. I'm totally focused on my mission in life, which is let me bring the country to a point that they can make that free choice. That would be enough for me having mission accomplished.
Imagines peace with Israel: In modern history, Iran gave refuge to Jews escaping Nazis during WWII, sanctuary in Iran. Strategic importance of partnership with Israel critical.
Four core principles uniting:
- Iran's territorial integrity.
- Clear separation of religion from state, prerequisite to democracy, paid price understanding religious dictatorship.
- Equality of all citizens under the law and individual liberties.
- Democratic process to allow people to elect and decide future system of governance.
Nuclear weapons program: Totally dismantled. Iran has no need to pursue military weaponizing.
Father Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, last king, close to US, brutally suppressed opposition, showered friends with lavish wealth. 1979, left amid rising tension, Ayatollah Khomeini returned from exile leading revolution. Iranians blamed US for supporting king, overran US embassy in Tehran, held 52 Americans hostage 444 days.
Father's reign remembered for repression and opulent wealth. Why believe people welcome you? Many from that era say they recognize where we were and where we are now, want to be with you, support you. Even people imprisoned under previous regime now support.
People killed in father's regime. Father left voluntarily to avoid bloodshed: A king doesn't build his throne on blood of his own people. If nation wants me out, I would leave, will not turn guns on them.
Out of country nearly 50 years, why want you? If issue, wouldn't call my name by millions on streets. Trust because cannot associate with revolution or regime. Young kids shot by regime ask parents: What were you thinking with Khomeini? From day left, never left Iran mentally, first thought every morning is Iran.
In touch with Trump administration and Congress. Message to President Trump: Echo millions of compatriots to thank for courage to intervene. Will go down in annals of Iranian history as most celebrated foreign leader who changed ball game and world.
January, Trump said: "He seems very nice, but I don't know how he'd play within his own country. I don't know whether or not his country would accept his leadership, and certainly if they would, that would be fine with me."
No wholehearted support? Don't expect official endorsement. Millions calling name, recognize uniquely placed for transitional leadership, bridge to destiny.
Unrest building months. Last June, US and Israeli forces attacked Iran's nuclear facilities. 2022, largest uprising in 50-year regime history: Morality police arrested 22-year-old woman for not covering hair, killed in custody. Crowds demanded end to regime. Security killed >500, arrested 22,000, blacked out internet. Population seething, courage on streets now is ultimate heroism. Compares to lone Chinese student in Tiananmen Square; viral image of firefighter carrying wounded person shot dead.
Military and police units signaled would turn on government. Many but not all troops could get amnesty in national reconciliation. Clear indication: Join people or sinking ship.
Have faith in yourselves. Nation with ancient civilization, proud of heritage. Instead of hoping for better future, start believing it can be done.
60 Minutes archive at 60minutesovertime.com. Supreme Court struck down Trump's tariffs, he called two justices he nominated fools and lap dogs. Frequently rails against judges ruling against him, provoking violent threats from followers.
Spoke with 26 federal judges: 9 Democratic appointees, 17 Republican, sitting and retired. Sitting judges feel under siege, most wouldn't appear on camera.
Judge John Kunau, Ronald Reagan appointee, blocked Trump's executive order to end 14th Amendment birthright citizenship for infants born on US soil to noncitizens, ruled blatantly unconstitutional. Threats: Dozens to hundreds death threats, very ugly.
Doorbell, 5 sheriff's deputies with long rifles: Report you murdered your wife (hoax). Next day bomb threat. Congressman wanted poster with picture, everything except dead or alive.
44 years on bench, sentenced al-Qaeda bomber, Montana militia, needed protection, but never as many threats as this case. Never encountered such hostility toward judiciary last year, not bad decisions but political hay criticizing judiciary.
Trump: Cannot allow handful of communist radical left judges obstruct enforcement of laws, duties of president.
Trump called judge lunatic over deportations, monsters over immigration. Threats on voicemails:
I hope your whole family and everybody you loves is raped in front of you and has their heads cut off. I wish somebody will assassinate your ass. I double dare you to try to put charges on Donald J. Trump. You son of a bitch.
US Marshals overwhelmed. 400 federal judges serious threats last year, 78% jump in 4 years. If not careful, judge killed.
Judge John Jones, retired Pennsylvania, George W. Bush appointee. 55 other retired judges formed bipartisan group lobbying White House to stop demonizing judges. Toxic environment, people identify judges' homes, strike out.
Trump attacks as rogue, deranged, corrupt: Attempting to delegitimize federal courts. Presidency on steroids, dormant Congress, president says what law is. Civics: Congress makes law, president executes.
Trump admin facing 600 lawsuits on agenda from immigration to job cuts.
Judge Esther Salas, New Jersey federal district, Barack Obama appointee. Leading voice against personal attacks, now target of threats. 2020, failed litigant shot son Daniel dead, wounded husband Mark at home (not political).
I'm more concerned right now than I was after my only child was murdered. Because attacks against judiciary getting worse, coming from national leader on down.
Vilifying erodes trust: Disagree with ruling or sentence, appeal. Not dehumanize. Political leaders playing Russian roulette with our lives. Rhetoric emboldens, dangerous.
White House statement: Trump survivor of two assassination attempts understands dangers. Accuses judiciary brazen defiance, unlawful rulings.
Deputy AG Todd Blanche: Activist judges war, routine stays by local judges not following law, repeat players intentional.
Judge Kunau: Constitution is judge's north star. Not political agent thwarting president: Apply Constitution, for 250 years judges decide constitutional or not. Otherwise like Russia's Constitution.
Threats not just right: 2020 Schumer warned Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh pay price for abortion, apologized. 2022 assassin tried to kill Kavanaugh. But Judge Jones: No match to administration's rhetoric on right.
Ron Zas, CEO Ironwall, scrubs judges' personal data from web. 14 years, never seen as many violent threats. Broadcast to million, need one to act.
Dark web: Gallows. Threats evolved: From "ruled against me, kill you" to "influence what you do," mob mentality for right decision.
Marshals investigating unsolicited pizzas to judges/children: We know where you live, children live. Want to end up like Judge Salas's son? At least 20 to homes in name of her late son Daniel, weaponizing his name.
Judge Salas: Yet to see AG or Deputy AG denounce intimidation. AG Pam Bondi declined interview.
Rule of law at stake. As Daniel's mom who lost only child, irresponsible behavior from leaders makes sad, worried for democracy.
Since 1999 Columbine High School massacre, 84 mass shootings at US schools. Response predictable: Condolences, partisan rhetoric, inaction.
Prosecutors holding parents responsible, not just gunman.
Past two weeks, father of accused high school shooter on trial Barrow County, Georgia. Ignored red flags before teen shot Apalachee High 2024, left four dead.
Precedent: Oxford, Michigan case.
Four years ago, November, active shooter Oxford High School, 40 miles north Detroit. 15-year-old with 9mm handgun killed four: 16-year-old Tate Myre (star athlete, mentor), 14-year-old Hana St. Juliana (freshman).
Hana was a bright light. Making people laugh, her smile and laugh. Tate had crazy awesome zest for life, incredible soul. Hit community hard.
Parents Buckmyer and Steve St. Juliana among growing list bereaved by school shootings.
How are we doing as a country moving towards this not happening again? We're not. Going backwards. Changes at legislative level: mental health support, gun control. It's all
Prevention might have protected Oxford High students. Prosecutors say the gunman, Ethan Crumbley, had texted his mother on multiple occasions that he saw demons in the family home. Three months before the shooting, he assured a friend he was just kidding after he texted that it's time to shoot up the school. 24 hours before the attack, his troubling conduct escalated. A teacher emailed administrators that she saw the sophomore looking at different bullets online in class. A school administrator left a voicemail for the boy's mother. She didn't respond, but later texted her son, "Lol, I'm not mad. You have to learn not to get caught." The next morning, just hours before the shooting, another teacher alerted administrators that the teen's math worksheet had drawings of a gun, a bullet, and a person bleeding, along with the words, "The thoughts won't stop. Help me. Blood everywhere."
He was taken to a guidance counselor's office and his parents were called in. The counselor testified that he recommended therapy and suggested the Crumblies take their son home, but they refused, citing work. The meeting lasted just 12 minutes. They left and he went back to class. His backpack was never checked. Two hours later, surveillance video shows the 15-year-old walked into the bathroom, pulled a gun out of that backpack, entered the hallway, and started shooting. Police found his journal on the bathroom floor detailing his desire and plan to shoot up his classmates. Investigators learned that just 3 days before the attack, his mother had taken him to a shooting range with that 9mm handgun, which his father had purchased for him as an early Christmas present.
Do you think his parents failed him? Yes, I think there was plenty of red flags there for them to be aware that he was in crisis. And their answer to that was to go buy him a gun and take him shooting, which there's nothing wrong with that activity in and of itself, but when that's your answer to a child in crisis, that's a problem.
I'll never forgive him, right? But this kid was asking for help at every level and he didn't get it and he did something horrible. Is it your own choice to plead guilty? Yes, sir.
He pled guilty to all charges and was sentenced to life in prison. Prosecutors argued he wasn't the only one to blame. His parents were each convicted of four counts of involuntary manslaughter for failing to secure the gun and ignoring the warning signs of their son's mental health crisis.
I believe that the following sentences would be in the best interest of justice.
They were sentenced to at least 10 years in prison. It is the first time that parents anywhere in the country have been held criminally responsible for a mass school shooting committed by their child.
Our society refuses to take significant action to protect our children. So, one of the only places that we can put this back on to are the parents. What's really unfortunate here is when you want to think about this shooting and accountability, only the shooter and the parents have been held accountable. There's been no accountability at the school.
Should the school bear some responsibility? Absolutely. I mean, they're in the business of kids. I mean, the kid was in a counseling office. He was obviously in crisis. He basically already had a gun in his hand and the counseling office fumbled it.
Victim's lawsuits against school officials and the district have been dismissed, citing Michigan's government immunity laws, which protect public entities and their employees from being sued.
Immunity is driving inaction.
Yeah. The law enforcement says, "Well, we don't want to waste our time doing the investigation cuz they've got immunity." Prosecutors are the same way. They don't want to prosecute or try to prosecute because, well, they're coming up against immunity. So why bother?
So why bother? And that's where we've gone. I mean, we've fought consistently just to have this investigation done.
I imagine that there will be people who say the schools are already stretched thin. They don't have the ability to do much with a kid who's in trouble. We can't let them off the hook. This was preventable.
There are no national standards after a school shooting, no federal mandates for state reviews or investigations. Typically, the FBI is only required to investigate if it's considered an act of terror or a hate crime. After months of pressure from the community, the Oxford school board hired a private security firm called Guidepost to conduct an independent investigation. Guidepost doesn't have the legal authority to compel testimony. Of the 161 people they asked to interview, approximately 70 refused or would not respond, including two school employees who met with the shooter hours before the incident. The district said many staff members had given depositions in court proceedings, but according to Guidepost, those interviews didn't fully address all of their questions.
Guidepost concluded the teachers at Oxford High acted appropriately by immediately raising concerns. Guidepost investigators faulted the school for not following established threat assessment protocols, writing this tragedy was avoidable. The Michigan Attorney General's office says it is now investigating.
James Densley and Jillian Peterson are professors of criminology and founders of the Violence Prevention Project, a St. Paul, Minnesota-based nonprofit that studies mass shootings.
You think about all the things that were learned after 9/11 and how that created an entire infrastructure and an apparatus around dealing with terrorism. We don't see that same type of urgency with the mass shooting problem. Instead, we get sort of thoughts and prayers. We get a situation where we pit off imperfect solutions against each other because no one can agree on anything. And then that creates a situation where there's no action. So what is missing is that definitive action where we can create a template that everybody else then follows suit.
Densley and Peterson have spent the last 10 years researching hundreds of mass shootings, interviewing those who knew the gunmen and also the shooters themselves, hoping to better understand their pathways to violence and how to stop them.
What's the pattern that emerged from the data? We saw an early childhood with a lot of pretty significant violence or neglect, domestic violence in the home that kind of laid the foundation.
Did you ever say to any of these mass shooters, could somebody have stopped you? That was one of the questions I asked every time. Is there anyone or anything that could have stopped you? And every person we talked to said yes. One of them even said, "I think anyone could have stopped me."
Their research shows that over 90% of all school mass shooters broadcast their plans online or in person before they commit the atrocity. Investigators say the gunman in Parkland, Florida, Uvalde, Texas, and Apalache High in Winder, Georgia all told people about their intent before the attacks.
They're feeling hopeless and they feel isolated and they're looking for that notoriety. They want to be seen no matter how dysfunctionally. No matter how dysfunctionally, it's better than not being seen.
Often after a school shooting, schools add more metal detectors, clear backpacks, and drills. If a school is given emergency resources to make their kids safer, it's not the best use of them.
It's not the best use of them. And all of that security ends up being kind of theatrical, right? Like it makes you feel better maybe, but if a student is the perpetrator, it doesn't do anything. And so you're better off spending resources on things like teams that communicate with each other, right? School-based mental health, crisis intervention, suicide prevention, and the data bears that out.
The data over and over again bears that out. The best thing we can do to prevent violence is not to push kids out. It's to actually pull them in.
The researchers are part of a pilot program in Minnesota designed to teach school staff how to identify kids in crisis and wrap them up with services. In 2022, after Uvalde, Congress passed a bipartisan bill that included a billion dollars in grants for mental health services at schools. But last April, the majority of that funding was discontinued. The Department of Education explained the programs conflicted with the administration's priorities. In December, it awarded $28 million for credentialed school mental health providers, a fraction of the original funding.
Something has to change. I mean, gun violence is the number one killer of our children in America, and our society currently seems to have its head in the ground refusing to acknowledge this. Just saying, "Oh, it's the way it is." No, that's a ridiculous answer. This is not something that is insurmountable. We can make great strides to prevent this from happening again. We just aren't.
Six poets have read at a US presidential inauguration, including Robert Frost and Maya Angelou. Amanda Gorman was 22 when she read her poem, The Hill We Climb, at Joe Biden's inauguration. As the nation celebrates 250 years of independence, Gorman was asked, "What does it means to be an American?"
When I think about what it means to be an American. I truly believe it's more than a pride we inherit. It's the past we step into and how we repair it. meaning that being an American is more than just remembering our history. It's how we heal it. It's how we recover. It's how we hold ourselves accountable to being the best that we can be. Part of my American story is being someone who's descended from slaves. And how that informed my own Americanhood is it teaches me that freedom, equity, liberty are not just things we can take for granted. They must be fought for, protected, and cherished. And so my right and my role and responsibility as an American is both to love my own freedom, but to love and defend it for other people as well. It's to remember yesterday and always walk pridefully into tomorrow.
I'm John Worthen. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes.
Keep 60 Minutes in your library
Save the videos and channels worth coming back to, and find them again in one place.
