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@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Glenn Diesen: US Hegemonic World Order Is OVER https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLtq4O422fs https://t.co/3kXImSOeHo
Video Transcript AI Summary
Glenn Deeson frames the Iran war as fundamentally about regime change, noting that this regime change could entail destruction or balkanization of Iran rather than a simple replacement government. He argues that irredentist fear and existential threats would drive Iran to respond aggressively, including closing the Strait of Hormuz and attacking American bases in the region, if attacked. He emphasizes that this is about the survival of the regime and the country’s unity, suggesting that the conflict could escalate toward greater regional chaos, including potential actions around Kharg Island.
On the broader geopolitical implications, Deeson discusses how four years of efforts to curb Russia failed and how European and American efforts have continued to try to sustain pressure on Russia. He explains that the Ukraine war has faced manpower and weapons shortages, and that economic strains in Europe—especially energy prices—compound the difficulty of maintaining support for prolonged conflict. He asserts that with the Iran war, there are even fewer weapons available from the US, worsening European energy and economic outlooks. He argues that Europeans’ and some policymakers’ failure to recognize Russia’s security concerns has contributed to escalatory dynamics.
Regarding China, Deeson notes that China imports oil from Iran but would not welcome disruptions. He suggests that if the United States succeeds in regime-changing Iran, China would be adversely affected, whereas failure could push Iran to align more closely with Russia and China. He discusses potential shifts in global resource control and the petrodollar system, and he frames the conflict as part of a broader great-power competition where the United States seeks to preserve energy flows to allies. He highlights the possibility that successful US or Western pressure could backfire, as Iranian outcomes might push regional actors toward deeper cooperation with Russia and China. He also ties these dynamics to a broader transition from a unipolar liberal hegemon to a multipolar order, with BRICS-like groupings seeking to balance US influence.
Deeson broadens the discussion to the potential death of American hegemony, arguing this would be a longer transition rather than a sudden collapse. He explains that after the Cold War the US promoted a liberal hegemonic framework with one center of power, but over time this leads other centers to balance against the US. He identifies the emergence of multipolar dynamics and institutions like BRICS as indicators of shifting power. He suggests that attempts to break China or Iran could backfire, since enemies may realign with Russia or China, and the US might eventually recalibrate to a more restrained role in Eurasia to rebuild domestic strength. He envisions a scenario where the US reduces its European and Middle Eastern footprint, potentially strengthening East Asia.
On Israel’s perspective, Deeson says Israelis and Europeans similarly believe US capabilities can be leveraged to defeat adversaries, and Israel sees the opportunity to use US involvement to topple Iran and possibly Balkanize the country. He argues that this clashes with the United States’ need to prioritize its own strategic interests in a multipolar world, which would require pivoting toward East Asia and away from Europe and the Middle East. He cites strategic misalignment in Trump-era policy, noting that continuing engagement in Europe and the Middle East may divert resources from East Asia. He suggests that tolerance of prolonged conflict could exacerbate divergences between the US and Israel as American strategic priorities shift.
The discussion ends with appreciation for Glenn Deeson and a plug for his channel.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Alright, guys. From more analysis on the Iran war from a global perspective, we are joined for the first time, and I'm excited about this, by Glenn Deeson. He's host of the Glenn Deeson YouTube channel, which Sagar and I both watch quite routinely. He's also a professor of Russian international affairs, focuses on geoeconomics conservatism and the Greater Eurasia Initiative. Great to see you, Glenn.
Speaker 1: Good to see you.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you so much for the invitation. I'm a great fan of both of you.
Speaker 0: Well, thank you. It's it's certainly mutual. I just wanna stop start with your your top line view of this war, what it's about, and how it's going so far.
Speaker 2: Well, I think it was quite evident that this war was always about regime change. And I think what we often underestimated was that regime change in Iran might also entail the destruction or balkanization of Iran. And I think this is quite evident because when everyone speaks of regime change, there is no you know, replacement governments in the rear, which can simply be put in with legitimacy. So either this would have to be, you know, the Shah two point o, you know, rule with brutality, or the country would then just disintegrate into civil war between different factions. So I I I see this I think this is important because it explains that this is not just a threat to the government of Iran, but also the country.
So once Iran sees this an existential threat, it shouldn't be any surprise that it reacts in this way, which is why many of my guests, both Americans and Iranians on the podcast, kind of predicted this well before the invasion that if they're attacked, they will stray they close the Strait Of Hormuz rather quickly and just begin to attack all American bases in the entire region because this is a fight for survival. And I think this is one thing we we we left out when we saw this war as simply being about, you know, helping protesters and liberating girls because if this was simply the case, the Iranians wouldn't see this as existential threat, and they wouldn't respond in this way. Right. So I think this is just escalating more and more, and we're getting into some very dangerous territory, especially with the the potential of the destruction or of Karg Island, I think that's when all bets are off.
Speaker 1: Glenn, I'm really curious actually for your view of the bigger geopolitical implications. So, obviously, you're an expert with Russia and with Ukraine. You've been analyzing this war now for years. Now we have watched actually oil climb to high prices. The Kremlin has been able to get some sanctions taken off their oil.
They're massively enriching their war machine. I just saw that the I think it's the Belgian prime minister came out yesterday and said maybe we should normalize relations with Russia. This is already having huge ripple effects across the globe. Tell us how you see that.
Speaker 2: Well, well, this is part of the problem with the the the Iran war. That is for four years, we tried to knock out Russia from the ranks of great powers, and it failed. Right. And especially when Trump took over a year ago, if we couldn't do it with the Americans, we can't do it without them. And and, nonetheless, Europeans tried to keep it going.
So The US is still involved, of course, with the intelligence, the the targeting, logistics, also selling the weapons instead of necessarily providing them for free. But the idea for Europe was if we just keep it going for a bit longer, then perhaps something would happen in Russia. Now, of course, the Iran war has major implications for for the Ukraine war. The Ukraine war was already going very poorly. That is there's a massive manpower shortage, so the Ukrainians don't have enough men.
The US doesn't have that much weapon to send anymore, so it's a weapon shortage. And, also, there's an economic problem. So you end up with this situation where the Europeans wanna buy weapons with money they don't have to buy American weapons, which don't exist to arm Ukrainian soldiers, which are you know, also don't exist anymore. So so it was always a huge problem. But now, of course, with the the Iran war also entering, then there's even less there's less weapons coming from The US.
And the Europeans, they are well, the energy prices are now going from bad to worse, and they're preparing themselves for a complete economic meltdown. So it's it's not ideal to keep this war going. I think there's some voices now who would like to see an end to the war. The problem is that the the Europeans locked themselves into narratives of of simply an opportunistic Russia wanting territory. They never I I can recognize that this was an existential threat for Russia, which meant every time we escalated, the Russians would just respond in turn.
So it's a little bit like the problem with Iran. We don't recognize the security concerns of our opponents, so we misjudge their policies and how they would respond to ours.
Speaker 0: One of the rationales that has been offered sort of after the fact of why this war is happening, why this war is actually a smart strategic play for The US, is that since China gets a lot of their oil for Iran, this is going to be damaging to China. What do you think is the Chinese perspective of the Iran war and the likely impact on that country?
Speaker 2: Well, they do get oil from Iran, so they don't care for any disruptions. And, of course, if, The US will be successful in regime changing Iran, either put in a government loyal to The US or the country disintegrates or, you know, turns into chaos, it would be bad for for Iran sorry, for for for China. Mhmm. But, you know, it can also go the other way. That is if The United States now fails in this war, which seems more likely that it will, and part of the objectives of the Iranians is to expel the Americans from the regions, that is to not just destroy bases, but also make the Gulf States reach the conclusion that they're they will have more security without hosting US bases, then suddenly The US is no longer a key security provider in The Middle East.
If it's not a key security provider, then some of the foundation of the petrodollar goes away. Why would they still then trade only in dollars, especially when in new economic centers of power? And then if all of this petrodollars aren't recycled into The US, what would happen with the AI tech bubble, which, you know, is in direct competition or in the AI competition with the Chinese? So there's a lot of things that can go wrong for The United States in this competition with China. But, of course, if The US could seize control over these natural resources, again, this was the very openly an objective in Venezuela to take control of it, make sure they don't link themselves too closely to Russia and China, but also in The Middle East as Lindsey Graham suggested.
We're gonna make a ton of money here, And, obviously, from the energy going to well, whoever America wants to go to instead of China. Mhmm. So there is a lot of more of a great power politics play going on here. And I think this is all you know, this is what ties the competition with China, Iran, Russia. We're living in a very historical time.
We're seeing the the the end of the hegemonic era, which was established after the cold war, and we're now seeing this transition into multi polarity. And at the moment, it's being pulled in both directions, which is a source of, yeah, some of the more violent parts of our conflicts now.
Speaker 1: You know, one of the things I'm interested in, Glenn, here is to think you know, we talked here about China, but I'm also curious for your view as to how this will play out in terms of history. And so you talked there about the end of the hegemonic era. We talked to Giannis Varoufakis earlier, and he said, I would be hesitant to say that this would be the immediate death of the American empire and compare it, let's say, to a Suez moment for the British. However, as I said, even at the time of Suez, nobody was like, this is the end of the British empire. It's only in retrospect that we're able to look back and see that.
If you had that lens on and you were looking with the Iran crisis but all of these other things, what were the specific timeline and events that you would look for to say definitively this was the beginning of the end?
Speaker 2: Well, I I also don't wouldn't go for it the Suez Canal Mhmm. Comparison because Britain had very different fundamentals than The United States. The US is a massive power. It will remain so even if its economy would begin to collapse. It's it's gonna recover.
It's gonna be a key player. So I I wouldn't dismiss it as going simply disappearing. Britain could disappear, disappear, but but that's that's not not the the case with The United States. But I think it's a longer transition and it's worth keeping in mind what the world order signifies. That is what are the basic rules, which depends on how security is created.
When you have the international system with all these large powers competing against each other, then the question is what creates security? Well, usually it would be a pursuit of indivisible security, because if countries compete, that is if United States builds some missiles, that's security for US, but insecurity for China, and then China will respond, and we end up in the security competition. So usually peace is created if you recognize the security concerns of your opponents and you try to elevate the common security that is indivisible security. Well, after the cold war, there was only one center of power and this and The US promoted a different approach to security, which was the hegemonic peace, which means you don't have to take into consideration other centers of power. You only have one power which dominates.
And indeed, the more The US could dominate, the less any other countries, even coalitions could aspire to challenge The US. This will be the source of security. So this was the liberal hegemon. One center of power, there's no more great power rivalry, and that hegemon is a liberal democracy, so it will try to transcend some of the uglier parts of former politics, so elevate the role of democracy in human rights. This was the main idea.
It will be a benign hegemon. But, of course, the the key problem is over time, the hegemon will always exhaust itself as we've seen some more debts and also other it depends on keeping other powers down. So eventually, other centers of power would then figure out that they have to work together to balance The US. So you see institutions such as BRICS. Like, why would Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and, you know, Iran, all these other countries suddenly have commonality?
Well, of course, they want a different economic architecture, but they also want to balance hegemonic hegemonic aspirations of The United States. So so I think these are the the wider trends happening, and what I would look for would be some of the key crisis we had. For example, the attempt to break China. This was a key part of this of trying to restore hedge money, but it it it doesn't work. The the Chinese are not just an industrial power.
They're also an high-tech power. If anything, they can use their AI more to to be implemented within industrial capacity, so they have more ability to, well, to make some revenue of their AI. We saw then with Russia, the objective under Biden administration was to use the Ukrainians to try to knock out Russia, and then The US could focus on China. It didn't work, so Trump then instead tried to get Russia on our our side of the ledger by improving relations. And to some extent, the same applies for Iran.
The the the assumption if you can knock out Iran, you take out an important player at the southern end of the Eurasian continent. The the problem is all of this tends to backfire. That is when if one goes after Russia, it will align itself closer with China. Now the attempt to defeat the Iranians, they will link themselves closer to both Russia and China. And, ideally, at some point, I think The United States will reach the conclusion what many people thought was America first, which is if The US just pulls back a bit, just aspires to aspire to be one among many great powers, it will be able to restore its domestic strength.
And suddenly, if it doesn't have that big footprint on the Eurasian Continent, then the Europeans, the Russians, the Iranians, the Chinese would begin soft balancing each other at least. And and but but we're not quite there yet. I think there's still these efforts by The United States to restore its hegemony. But I think that the defeat in the Ukraine war and now likely defeat in the Iran war will more or less put an end to this.
Speaker 0: My last question for you, Glenn, is we had Truta Parzion, and he said, you know, from the Israeli perspective, they feel that this war is going great, that this is all going exactly the way that they want it to go. They finally succeeded in getting a US president to launch the war they've been pushing for years and years. Of course, blame still lies with Trump, but no doubt Netanyahu and others allied with him were were making the case, and that ended up being persuasive to Trump. Do you view it that way, and how do you see the interest of Israel diverging from the interest of The United States?
Speaker 2: Well, the Israelis aren't that different from the Europeans in this regard because the Europeans also think that what's missing with The United States is not the capabilities. They still believe The United States has this infinite resources and capabilities to essentially defeat whoever they want. So the Europeans wanted simply America, we can bring them back into the war against Russia, then more directly, then we will win. And Israel is more or less thought the same. That is if we can just get the United States to attack Iran, yes, it might access might not succeed with the regime change, but in another long war, over time, the Iranians will be weakened, and, hopefully, the government can be toppled and even possibly the country could be balkanized.
So getting finally a US president after all these years, and they have talked about this war for many decades now Mhmm. There's this opportunity to as long as The US kept in the war that they can knock out Iran eventually, maybe not now, maybe in five years. But but I guess here's the the where this Israel and The US begin to diverge. That is it's not in United States interest, especially this critical time in history because, as I said, the world is becoming multi polar. That's just a reality in terms of the international distribution of power, which means The US has to make priorities.
And those priorities as the national security strategy outlined is to focus on the Western Hemisphere and East Asia. That's where America's peer competitors, which means if you pivot to somewhere, you have to pivot away from somewhere, and that would be pivot away from Europe and The Middle East. And this is the key problem. This is why Trump has made a mistake because the longer he remains in Europe, that absorbs American resources, but it also pushes the Russians further to China. And also in The Middle East, the longer it stays in Iran, the more it's gonna divert its focus away from East Asia.
Indeed, The US had to pull out its THAAD missiles and Patriots from South Korea to send to the Middle East. I know. The whole point of pivoting to Asia was the it was supposed to go the other way. The weapons were supposed to be pulled out of Europe and the Middle East and sent to East Asia. So we're seeing everything going in reverse, and this was not in the strategic interest of Trump.
This is what no. Not what the security strategy indicated. They were supposed to do the opposite. But now, of course, one year later, The US is still involved in the war in Europe, and they're also now doubling down in The Middle East. So I think this is a strategic mistake for for The United States.
The fact that they most likely won't win this either makes it even worse. So, no, I I think you're gonna see this expressed more now in terms of divergence in The US, how they view Israel. What what is America first? Is it the partnership with Israel or putting America before Israel? I think you're gonna see more more splits there now, and that's reflected in how the, yeah, the strategic interest of America is changing.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. Glenn, you are such a great guest. We can't wait to have you back. And everybody go subscribe to Glenn's channel. He does such incredible interviews.
We're gonna have a link down in the description, and we really hope that people will go watch his content as well. So thank you very much, Glenn. We appreciate you.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much.
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@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Stanislav Krapivnik: The Iran Lesson - Russia Will Retaliate & Deter https://youtu.be/-Rpc7g2Jg5w https://t.co/7ZuZKH2kq2
Video Transcript AI Summary
Glenn: Welcome back. Stanislav Krappivnik, a former US military officer, born in Dolbaz and recently returned, joins us again.
Stanislav: Always a pleasure, Glenn.
Glenn: In the last two days, Russians entered the strategic city of Orekhov in the Saporiyansko region, which may indicate that if this falls, the whole region might begin to collapse. In Slaviansk, the last Donetsk conglomeration, there are real advances that, if successful in circling the region, could mean the entirety of Donbas falls. Is the Russian spring offensive already begun?
Stanislav: It’s hard to say, partly because mud season is ongoing in those areas. The South is still mud-prone; the terrain there is different from Haryakov and Sudirmy, where ground is firmer, forested. In the South, there’s black earth with fewer trees, causing severe mud this time of year. If the melt is fast, flooding can occur; if slow, the ground acts like a sponge and mud persists as water seeps down. Nightly freezes persist while daytime temperatures rise above zero. Weather affects movement and logistics.
He notes that the briefings from the Russian command vary from independent mappers, suggesting either undisclosed advances or battlefield confusion. The Russian high command’s reports and geolocations may not always align with independent assessments. If credible, Russia’s forces from the South may have entered Ariakhov, with two parallel rows advancing toward Ariyakara and a long urban sprawl to the south. There is a gray zone because Ukrainian claims differ from Russian assertions. Ukrainians often withhold confirmations for long periods; e.g., Gudaiipoya/Gulyaporiya discrepancies show how contested reports can be.
Stanislav says it’s not clear that this is a bold, continuous offensive up and down the lines. A big push would require enough armored vehicles, artillery, and aviation, which he has not seen yet, though it could be developing. Ukrainians have conducted desperate counteractions not just to retake territory but to disrupt Russian preparation for a potential spring offensive.
If he were in command, he would launch a big spring offensive, at least partially toward Sumy, which is about 14 kilometers from Kharkiv. Sumy would be a key logistics hub and could cut off Kharkiv from the west, accelerating the fall of the region. He explains that Kharkiv could be surrounded by blowing bridges from the south and encircling through Sumy to the west and the east along the Russian line toward Bianka and the Big Water Reserve. He mentions continuing Russian movement in the north and the city of Kasatirivka, which has been split by a river; all bridges were blown about a month ago, complicating approaches.
North of Slaviansk, the gates of Krasnyomar require closing first. There are contested claims about Yaman, with Russians saying around 50% controlled vs. Ukrainians claiming 10–15%. The central concern is the Russian push in the south, where Yemen sits in a triangle formed by the Oka and the Sri Bianca rivers, and Russian forces are closing in from the north as well. Crossing Yamana is expected to fall; it’s a matter of time, though how long remains uncertain.
Glenn: Ukraine does not withdraw after encirclement. There’s a rational explanation tied to PR wars: if the US and Europeans lose interest in Ukraine, weapons and money dry up, and Zelensky appears addicted to PR victories to keep support. Do you think the war in the headlines affects Western support? How does the Iran conflict influence Ukraine, given weapon and money dynamics?
Stanislav: There’s additional pressure on Western governments from the military and certain military societies not to rush into direct NATO engagement or a large-scale conflict with Iran. He notes Iran’s demonstrated ability to strike American bases and key targets, and that Iran’s actions have shown the US and its allies that American power isn’t unlimited. He argues Iran’s strikes and the broader Middle East conflict complicate Western calculations, as American bases and interests face increased threats.
He asserts that Iran has shown it can strike at American bases and that American casualties would be far higher than reported. He claims Iran’s actions press Western governments to reconsider involvement in the region and to reassess commitments to allies such as the Saudis, who reportedly told American bases to stand down. He also discusses how Russia’s deterrence posture could shift in response to ongoing Iran–US tensions, and suggests that if Russia sees an opportunity to restore deterrence, it might be tempted to push back more forcefully.
Glenn: Russia’s approach to diplomacy with Europe and the US is complex. Macron’s bid to join a Russia–US–Ukraine format could spoil negotiations. Belgium’s stance on Russian assets and broader EU politics complicate any settlement.
Stanislav: He explains distrust in European leadership, questioning whom to trust in Europe. He suggests that a broader reform in European leadership and doctrine is unlikely soon. He notes that among European politicians, there’s disagreement and strategic posturing, with some populist voices but institutional leadership often failing to present a coherent strategy.
Glenn: What about China and Russia’s support for Iran? How might that evolve?
Stanislav: Russia previously explored a mutual defense pact with Iran; the document lacks substance, and real support has been practical, including MiG-29s, Su-30s, and S-400s, along with jamming systems enabling Iran to counter US satellites and missiles. He describes Iran’s military buildup and how Russia’s support has extended to drone technology and air defenses. He predicts Syria could reemerge as a battleground, especially if Iran’s militancy expands and if the US and Israel are drawn into broader conflict. He suggests China may reassess its stance and consider leveraging its position as US capabilities wane, potentially viewing Taiwan’s reunification as a strategic opportunity.
Glenn: Any final thoughts?
Stanislav: He emphasizes the high level of risk and unpredictability in the current international security environment, with multiple actors pursuing aggressive strategies and the potential for rapid shifts in alliances and deterrence calculations. He notes Iran’s broader influence and the risks to regional stability, hinting at a world where war remains a possible, though increasingly costly, option for major powers.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined by Stanislav Krappivnik, a former US military officer, born in Dolbaz and has, since returned. So thank you for coming back on the program.
Speaker 1: Always a pleasure, Glenn.
Speaker 0: So we see only from the last two days that the Russians have entered a strategic city of Orekhov in the Saporese region, which may indicate that if this falls, that the whole region might begin to collapse. And also in Slaviansk, that is the last conglomeration of Donetsk, we see, yeah, some real advances being made, which would then, if then if they succeeded in circling this region, then that would essentially be the entirety of Donbas falling. So do you see the Russian spring offensive have having already begun?
Speaker 1: It's hard to say, partially because it's still a mud season down in those areas. So they're they're still more or less in the South anyway, which is not I was gonna talk about Haryakov and Sudirmy because they have different there's still mud there, it's much more firm ground, forested areas, so it's it's a different terrain. In the South, you got the really lots that's all black earth, and it doesn't have this as many trees to to fix it with the roots. So you get really, really bad mud about this time of year. If it's as fast to melt as what we're having up up here, and it started, to be honest, the temperatures were above zero almost a month ago.
I was checking. So they're still having nightly freezes, during the day, they're already well above zero. So if the snow is free melting off, in these kinds of areas, you wanna have a fast melt. Because if you have a fast melt, you'll have flooding, things like that. But the ground, you know, the ground's a sponge.
It only absorbs so much water. Any excess water, it just sloughs off, and that goes streaming down to the creeks, what have you, and then draining out to the sea. If it's a slow melt and the ground, absorbs its mud, it starts to, suck that down into the, sublayers, and there's more coming, and it's just continuous mud. So it stays muddy a lot longer if it's a slow melt than if it's a really fast melt. Dear you know, Gurusimo I'm I'm thinking I'm butchering his name again.
I'm I'm always bad with names. He the brief that was given by Russian by the Russian command, it in some areas, it varies a lot from what a lot of the independent mappers have shown. So either there's just been a lot of locations that have been I've seen a lot of advances that hasn't been marked off or there's confusion on the battlefield. And considering this is the the Russian high command, you you you tend to on their side because you think they they they should have the right information. There is a there's it's under question.
We'll see what comes up with videos in the next couple days, geolocations, things like that. But if to be believed, then, yes, Russia is already Russian forces from the South have already entered Ariakhov. Up there's two rows, parallel rows that run up to Ariakhov, and there's a long urban sprawl to the south of Ariyakaraway. So you do they may be already in Ariyakara. That's the and you get that you you get that gray zone because on the one side, the the Ukrainian sure sell aren't saying they're there, but the the Russian side is saying they're there.
But there's a very, normally, there's a small difference between the two, but right now, there's a big difference. Of course, Ukrainians also have a tendency of not admitting anything for a month. So sometimes that small difference becomes a really big difference like they did in Gulya Porya, where a month and a half after Gudaiipoya was taken, they're still reporting it as the Russians are besieging the city. The Russians are, like, 10 kilometers past the city. But oh, I'm actually it was probably about six kilometers.
And the western press was just parroting what Kia was saying. So we'll see. Whether or not this is the actual Russian spring offensive, I don't know. That that's something that's again, it hasn't developed boldly enough to be able to call a a big offensive. I mean, as far as a continuous offensive up and down those lines, yes, they're they've been going on for the last two years, steady rolling forward.
Whether this is a big push, you, you know, you would imagine a big push. In this case, we still have to have enough armored vehicles, our artillery and aviation to support it. I have not seen that yet, but it may be. Now we know that the Ukrainians were doing a lot of desperate counter actions, not so much because they could take those areas back. They physically don't have the means to do it, but to disrupt Russian preparation because apparently because they thought that is the location of the big spring offense.
Me personally, if if I was in command, at this point, I would launch the Big Spring offensive, at least partially, towards Sumi. And why towards Sumi? Russia, of course, are about 14 kilometers from Sumi. It's not a big city. It's about a 250,000 in the north, but Sumi is a key logistics hub, and Sumi will cut off the Kharkiv area from the west.
So you would do a a very deep encirclement of Kharkiv, cutting off a lot of supply lines from Kyiv going heading into Kharkiv. So that would do a lot of damage for the Ukrainian defenses in and around Kharkiv and would accelerate the fall of the region. Particular since you can also cut Kharkiv off in the South where the Osiri Bianca runs, if you blow blow the bridges. So you basically have Kharkiv in a tech in a technical in a in a tank technical I can't think of a word right now. Well, you're surrounded.
That's you'd have the city surrounded because you'd blast. You'd you could blow the the bridges heading in to to to Harikka from the South. And if you have a deep encirclement through Sumy, you take it out in the West, and, obviously, in the East, it's it's a Russian line moving steadily forward toward the city of Bianca and Big Water Reserve. And then from the north, you start moving it. There's still Russian movement down.
It's been very heavily contested. It has been bef as it has been, but it's still moving forward. So that I think that for me, I would do that as the big spring offensive, the drop Kyiv out of the map. I mean, sorry, Kyiv Kharkiv out of the map out of the battle map. We'll see, of course.
Konstantinavka, yeah, that's a big fight. And then that's another one of those areas. The Ukrainians are claiming about 15% of the city is in Russian hands. Gerasimov said there was around 60%. So that that's a very big difference.
And Konstantinavka is something that they're heavily contested in, and that's the new Bachmud. It's the latest Bachmud. Let me rephrase that. They're throwing all their forces that they can into it to try to hold it. Again, they the Ukrainians have a bad tendency of, and and it's good for the Russian side, of course, not knowing when the hell to leave the party and and retreat back out.
They they tend to really like getting themselves surrounded and wiped out. And, of course, you know, Hitler gave those same orders. It it leads the the difference is that when Hitler was fighting, he had generals who he kept sacking and returning, but the general, they kept sacking because they just wouldn't follow his orders to stay in a fight to the last man. They'd retreat, do tactical and strategic retreats as needed. But the Ukrainians seem to be doing the best Hitler impersonation they can and standing and fighting everywhere where they should have been retreating if they had any sense.
Thank god for that. Now for the North because that's the South. That's the South, the push. And and Kasatirivko, by the way, has been split in two. It has a the river running down in the middle.
All the bridges have been blown about a month ago. So with the water level up, the water is ice cold. You're not getting across. You're not gonna swim across. It's very hard it's very hard to coordinate between the two halves.
So you've already split the city effectively, and then you can start splitting into smaller portions to take it under siege or invest it. Now in the North where you got Slavinsk, well, to close the the gates of Slavinsk, first, you gotta close the gates on Krasnoyomar. And that that's another that's a third point where there's questionable how much of Yaman is taken, how much of it isn't. Because, again, Gerasimo said about 50%. The Ukrainians are claiming about 10% or 15%.
So, again, you got this big difference, but that's not the most important thing. The important thing is the Russian push in the South Of Yemen. Because Yemen is in this triangle where the Oka falls into the Sri Bianca. So you you you wind up with this triangle like this, and Yemen's right there on the wide high hypothesis. And then the Russian forces are all around it, they've closed off from the north as well.
But what's the danger to Krasnoyman for the Ukrainians is Russia forces have been pushing in the South, and there's only one bridge, one main road left leading up to the Krasnoyman. That's the main logistics road. And that road is already under drone drone attack. Right? The Russian drones can reach it.
So it's already somewhat under Russian control. And if they take that bridge they they need to take it from Missouri because the bridge is blown. Either way, the garrison's not cut off. You're not gonna get across those rivers, especially this time of year. So once that's taken, any pontoon bridges or if they can take the main bridge intact, and you're heading straight into Slade and Skar from the north.
And that's when you really start to close that big culture. So that that seems to be the what the developing situation is in that area. We'll see. I mean, crossing Yamana is gonna fall. I have no doubt about that.
It's just a matter of how long does it take. You know? Do do they surrender? Does it take another week? Well, it will it'll take longer a week.
I'm sure. Unless there's been major movements, and we haven't seen in the geolocations yet, which is a possibility. There's a possibility that's 50% under Russian control. We'll find that out, well, I think within the next day or two.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Mentioned the Ukraine is not withdrawing after they become encircled and the, I guess, the obsession with holding on to territory. And, you know, there is it's it seems irrational, but this this think there's a rational explanation that is what people often dismiss as PR wars. It's more accurately necessary PR wars because if The US and Europeans lose interest in Ukraine, then then essentially the the weapons and money dry up, and then it's all over. So I think Zelensky has become a bit addicted to PR victories, though, which is why he kinda need these things.
And, I guess, on that topic of, you know, Ukraine falling out of the headlines, which is something that obviously angers or worries Zelensky significantly. We we see that whenever something else pops up and Ukraine disappears from the headline, he, you know, he comments on it. He argues the need to bring it back essentially. And, you know, so you can't really well, it looks as if the war in, now the attack on Iran unavoidably will affect the the Ukrainian battlefield. Do do you have any overview in terms of how significant this is?
Because, again, it seems to be weapons, there's money, there's international focus, you know, political support. Everything, you know, has to it comes it has to come at expense, doesn't it?
Speaker 1: Well, there's one more other other point that particular Western commentators aren't too apt to mention. It's the amount of pressure from the military and from certain military society that's now been leveled on the government. Look. You know, the we don't wanna go too fast or we don't wanna hit into NATO because, oh my god, there may be a big war. Iran has shown everybody, including a lot of Russian generals by the way, could smack the Americans around left and right.
You can absorb whatever hits they have. They really can't do that much to you. And this is a nuclear power, so they're definitely not gonna go nuclear because that means there's no America left. So look. You know?
The the point is is if the Iranian if the Iranians can take out 23 American bases and just just systematically destroy them, And American casualties, believe you me, are a hell lot higher than 14 guys killed. That probably multiply at least by 10 to to get something closer to reality, and it's growing, growing fast. And if they do a ground war, it's gonna be just a mass casualty event. We'll see. But the point is is look.
You know, for eighteen days now is it eighteen days? One second. Yep. It's eighteen days. For eighteen days now, the four day Trump war has been a disaster for the Americans.
Their equipment, their bases that they've been built up for thirty years are getting obliterated totally. Some already are. Get videos constantly of big fires and drones just flying all over these bases, taking out American equipment infrastructure and, you know, like, for them, the American military. And the result is what? Not much from the other side.
Yes. They've killed a lot of civilians in Tehran, but Tehran's standing. And that's not something they could do in Russia because US aviation would have one hell of a field day trying to get in. So that's and then then the pressure on the government is why aren't we doing this? When Iran says we're going after Ukrainian I'm sorry.
They're going after Israeli generals and politicians, and soon maybe Ukrainian generals and politicians, The question is, why aren't we doing this? And that's what the question always comes back to the equivalent. Why aren't we doing this? We can do this. We have the capital.
We have more enough capability to do this. Why are we not doing this? So that's something that no western no western pundit wants to talk about. But if Russia takes the gloves finally off, you're gonna see a NATO happening the same thing that you saw in with Iran. Because quite easily, Russia could take out Ryan Metall or Russia could take out the manufacturers of the Flamingo.
It's basically the upgraded v one. Yeah. That that's something that you could drop on a Russia account. There's nothing anybody can do about it except either run away before it hits or die with it. That that's the reality of it.
Russia could very easily take out these manufacturing facilities. And the next question is, do you really wanna go further, or are you gonna back off to the Germans or to the British and so on? I think that would be a shock moment that would cause a lot of these politicians to have to go change their underwear, to be frank about it, because they
Speaker 0: Are you froze?
Speaker 1: You're right. It's okay. Yeah.
Speaker 0: Okay. Oh, you're back. Sorry. You, yeah, you you disappeared for, like, thirty seconds. That's
Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay. So so what was the last thing I said that that got recorded?
Speaker 0: Yeah. That's, yeah, some something that they they don't wanna do. Why does it
Speaker 1: You know, the the the there's massive pressure that's building on the government. Why aren't we doing what Iran can do? And like I said, the you know, Russia can easily take out Ryan Metall or take out the manufacturing of the flamingos. And I think at that point, that would be a very shocking moment to European politicians. They may have to go change their underwear after that because they've gotten very, very comfortable.
They can do whatever they want, evil they want to Russia, sponsor terrorism, do whatever, and the response has only gotta be in Ukraine. See? Yeah. Okay. The Ukrainians will get it for what we do, but we don't have to worry about it.
The moment this all comes home and they suddenly see the smoke pilling piling up from some factory or key manufacturer point in their capital, that suddenly is gonna be a wake up call for a lot of them that, you know, you've overplayed your game. Things have gotten very, very serious. And look. You know, realistically speaking, America is never going to surrender. Even the smallest cities like Oklahoma City or Arkansas City with 200,000 population in exchange for Berlin or in exchange for London or exchange for Paris, Warsaw, or any other European city regardless of size.
It's not gonna happen. That's just the point. It's not gonna happen. And Iran is also demonstrating that very, very clearly.
Speaker 0: I think that's a excellent point, though, in terms of this also changing the calculation in Moscow. Because since the beginning, it always seems that Russia's faced with a dilemma that is, does the blood flow? Does it retaliate and essentially restores deterrent? Or or does it, yeah, let it go and, you know, avoid risking World War three, but but then, of course, the undermining its own deterrence if it's does retaliate. It does it just seems that now the yeah.
The the the ability, Well, not just that the Iranians prove that if you hit back, then that that's the only way of getting the opponents to respect your security. But it's but it also suggests now is would be the opportune time for Russia because because now all all these weapons and money are tied up in the Middle East. So, again, I am not advocating for anything, just to be clear, but but it seems like that that would be part of the calculation here that this is a good time to to restore the deterrence and if we begin to push back. But do you see any indication so far of Moscow going down this line? Because I heard before that this is a bit of a pressure now that, you know, people are looking towards Iran and asking why aren't we doing this?
Why do we keep getting, you know, punched in the face and not hitting back?
Speaker 1: Well, there there are some quick substantial evidence. For example, when the French envoys came in would demanding and asking and demanding that they be part of these negotiations, they were quite literally told to go fuck off in those words. It was the the ending of what they were told. So the diplomatic facade there of trying to be civilized is starting to slip away. It's like, fine.
You know? The the these are the people we're dealing with, which know who they are or what they represent in themselves. So there's no point in being nice to them anymore. They're an ad. Macron and his government is an enemy government.
He tries to do this political ambiguity, which Trump is also trying. I think Trump is more than doing it off the fact that he doesn't want the hell to do. And Macron to some degree too. But, you know, political ambiguity is not what you want in in superpowers and especially countries on nuclear weapons. You want absolute transparency as much as you can and predictability.
Otherwise, the logic of of well, you know, with with America, since America has a first strike doctrine, the logic for any other country that's capable of doing it is the moment you can do a first strike on America, you do a first strike on America. That's that's the problem of having a first strike doctrine. Oh, we'll take you out whenever we feel like it. Well, everybody's now scared that you might actually be stupid enough to do that. So the moment they see an opportunity, it behooves them in the in in, the logic of geopolitics to to exterminate you the moment they can't, because you're, you're the constant threat.
You know, tomorrow may be having internal problems or economic problems or what have you, and you're just gonna strum at the decapitation strike. And since America has displayed, especially under Trump, this fetish for decapitation strikes, well, obviously, if you can do a decapitation strike on the on The US, it behooves you to do a decapitation strike on The US and exterminate Washington or whatever before they can exterminate you. That's the logic that you create because MAD goes away. MAD is no longer there, mutually assured destruction. It's now who gets to push the button first or whose missile can get there before the other guy can make a decision.
That's the problem with having a first strike doctrine, and then being a having a a regime of idiots on one hand and idiots with big grenades and apes with grenades on the other hand as we see in what what they've created in The Middle East where they literally have no idea how to get out of this and save face. There is no way out without with saving face, and I think they're gonna double, triple, quadruple down. So I, you know, I I I did a video where I talked about and and tomorrow, we'll be doing a video with RT. We're gonna be talking about possible ground routes of ground incursion. But as I said, you know, this is a possible route, but you'd have to be a total cretin to go down this route because it's it's it's suicide for whatever army you throw in there.
And then they're not gonna do it. Well, now I'm not so sure they're not gonna do it. They I think they they may actually go down this route. As stupid as insane as it may sound, it'll be suicide for the guys they tossed in there. But, you know, at this point, I mean, this is the president that yesterday said, you know, not only did they scratch because they made it illegal for all American satellite companies to display maps of the Middle East over the last two weeks.
Amazingly, it's not just American satellites up there. Who could have thawing thawed out? None of the Iranians have satellites or the Russians, Chinese, a lot of other countries. So the the images keep coming. But, you know, when Trump goes out there, and and starts talking about, you know, your show we're gonna pull your, broadcasting licenses, because your fake media, because you're showing those those images of burning American tankers or burning American bases, it's all AI.
It's not real. None of it's real. We don't have anything burning. Like, okay. And then the tourists arrive.
Well, please come help me, you know, open the streets of Harwich. It's a very small job. We you know, you can do it. It's a very small job, which begs the next question. Why aren't you doing it?
Oh, because the US Navy said, hell. Oh, no. We're not gonna send our ships in there to die. So here, French. Frenchies.
Deutschers, come over here. And you Chinese tourists, it's gonna be very bad for you if you don't do this. It's like, what what are gonna do? China's getting this oil. Pakistan's getting this oil.
Iranian oil exports have actually gone up 10% as far as that that made me to believe. So yeah. So you you got a regime that has absolutely no plan. You you've got a bunch of psychopathic pseudo heretic preachers in the in the Zionist Christian Zionist movement telling Trump that he's the anointed one, and to go against Trump's word is like going against God's word. I got a video of that one from was it was it Pamela White, I think, last name?
Yeah. The the chief preacher for for Trump, the chief heretic preacher. So, you know, that I mean, these people are insane. They're all certifiably insane. They got an old guy that started suffering from dementia who's got the big guns and who likes to be, you know, he likes to be praised, and that's what they're doing.
They're working to his ego. So this is this is as this is as dysfunctional as you could imagine of the government. And then you got the Israelis. It's the biggest rogue state in probably the last since World War two. And now what do you do with that?
And and you've got these two combined. So it's it's it's a horrible situation we've found ourselves in. And I don't know how to get out of it short of removing both regimes. I ever wish which way anybody wishes to do that.
Speaker 0: Yeah. I saw Trump trying to sell in the intervention to open up the Strait Of Removes like he was selling apartments or something. It was very strange to watch because, you know, countries do have intelligence services. They it's not like, oh, okay then. If you promise us, it will be easy.
I mean, even, yeah, Starmer said he had consult his team, and Trump had a comment like, well, you're the prime minister. You have to consult anyone. It's, like, really trying to push an apartment on someone before talking to, you know, your lawyer or whatever. It's was very strange, to watch. But, sorry.
Go ahead.
Speaker 1: You know, Trump's the the big breakthrough in intelligence and psyops over the last couple days was Trump calling a stormer a weakling and a loser, and then US intelligence is now pushing that Khomeini, the younger Khomeini, is gay. That's your big propaganda push right now. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You guys are desperate.
I mean, that's obvious enough. How do you tell someone you're desperate without telling them you're desperate? You know, just watch the the American response. Everything's great. Everything's blown up, but we can't open the streets of Harmouth for right now.
But maybe later. Oh, and and we'll we'll escort them after the shooting is done. They actually said that. You know? Yes.
We're we escorting them after the shooting's done. So you're in one of those peace again, and nobody's nobody's threatening you. Got it. Got it. It's it's it's funny and hilarious from one side, but it's very dangerous and nerve wracking from the other side because you're literally dealing with deranged individuals up and down that chain of command.
Speaker 0: Well, it was just weird because at some point when the British said they might send some naval assets, you know, to the general region, not to the Strait Of Moose, The Trump said something along the lines that, oh, we don't need your help now. You know, we already won. It's too late. And now, of course, he wants them to come out. It's just they're so much all over the place.
It's very strange to watch the lack of narrative control, management of allies. Yeah. Now shocking. But but before, you mentioned Macron wanting to join this diplomatic effort, or I think it is important to be specific. He wanted to join the trilateral Russia, US, Ukraine format.
And this is kind of problematic because if he joins as a spoiler, it's just gonna be ruin the whole thing. That is the desire to prolong the war. I thought that he might have more success if he would just suggest, you know, let's open bilateral diplomacy because, you know, there wouldn't be nothing to lose. You know, if they if the France and Russia is able to improve relations, that would be good on its own. And, you know, worst case, one creates some divisions within the EU about those who don't want it.
So, you know, it is no lose for Russia. But joining in on the established format when the Europeans have more or less expressed their desire to sabotage it, it's it does make any sense. However, you've seen a wider development of it. The Belgian prime minister said it's time to restore normal diplomatic relations with Russia. This is the same prime minister who didn't wanna steal the Russian assets.
Even president Stavov Finland, you know, who's a real Russophob to, you know, his core, argued at some point, we're gonna have to start speaking with Russia again. Obviously, things aren't going well in the proxy war in Ukraine, but also the Iran war, I think, has really shook them because the, well, the energy they're cut off from, so the the economies will just go south from here on. And, yeah, security wise, the Americans are distracted. They have no weapons to send. They have no ability to escalate or bluff, you know, put in the ultimatums to Russia even if they would want to.
So so it seems Russia is in a stronger position. Do you do you do you see any possibility of any, I guess, what would be the conditions for Russia to open up any negotiations or discussions with the Europeans? Or are there any?
Speaker 1: That is very, very difficult question because let's face reality. Who do you trust in Europe? I mean, especially coming from the French or the Germans. We let's not forget Hollander, who got beaten to the press only by Merkel, to laugh and jump up and down and tell them how they, pulled, Vladimir Vladimir's part of the nose and just bought a bunch of time for Ukraine to build up build up for war with Russia. By the way, this is what they said.
It wasn't just for the Donbas. Already think the Donbas. So how do you trust anything that's coming out of those governments? There are continuations, basically, in one form or another with Mertz and and Macron. I doubt that you can trust anybody.
And the problem is is even these more outlier parties that are now populist parties getting power, like Front National or or alternative for Deutschland. The problem is is their leadership is being groomed into being just another party. And it's you know, as I was talking to a couple of some Germans that I know, they yeah. They said at the grassroots or the the the Gundensland area level, you're still facing AFD that is what it was. But at the federal level, they've been cooped already.
And Front National has been cooped for quite a long time. And you're the ones they were screaming that, yeah. We don't mind sending weapons. Those soldiers, we're gonna get some soldiers. We don't mind sending weapons to, Ukraine.
So what's the difference here? And then you look at Farage. And Farage is, for all intents and purposes, the rebirth of, the conservative party two point o, except he's talking about we don't want immigration. Of course, the conservatives said the same thing, and then you saw what happened in England. You just keep getting flooded even worse under the conservatives.
Everything that else that's coming out of Faraj's mouth is neocon playbook. You know, he's just reading right off the talking points for neocons. So, again, who do you trust in Europe? You can trust people like well, well, the Belgians the reason the Belgians first and foremost, the reason the Belgians didn't wanna take the Russian money is simply because they know what what debt of thieves that they're a part of. And once everybody takes their share and puts it in their pocket, when the whatever it gets to that point, there will be lawsuits against Euroclear, and Russia will take that money out of Euroclear offices all over the world.
It'll bankrupt Euroclear totally. And then it'll come after the Belgian government in lawsuits. And the Belgian government's the only one that's gonna be paying, and Belgium cannot afford $300,000,000,000 or euros. It'll bankrupt the entire country, and you can sell off all the you can sell off the king and queen, and you can sell off all the castles and all the museum parts, and you still will never pay this sum off. And that's the problem.
And they they they were smart enough to realize, yeah, when everybody goes, hey. We're behind you. You know? We're really all behind you. We're really far behind you counting the money we just stole.
So have fun. Good luck. We're we're we're morally behind you. Because the Belgian said, well, let's sign a document that will split the the damages across the board. Nobody signed that document.
Nobody was gonna go for that. No. No. No. You just go ahead and and and we'll we'll we'll we'll we'll morally with you there, but, you know, to the end.
So the it's the EU. Well, what can you say? It's a it's a it's a den of thieves, h one trying to get over on the other one and and climb up the the ladder to be the the the head of the guild of thieves. That but that's what you're looking at. I mean, you're you're not looking exactly at people that have any concept of honor or or respect or loyalty.
You're looking at at cutthroat politics that are unified, but the moment you take away the Russian threat, what are they unified by? Just the lust for power and machinations between each other. I mean, they're you're not talking about something you can build a foundation of a society on or a civilization. There is no civilization idea in Europe, modern Europe, modern in the EU. There's civilization idea in the Eastern Europe called Russia, and those that are now being drawn to it, there's a civilizational idea in the former Austro Hungarian empire, well, for most of it anyways.
But the remainder of Europe, including the Germans and their Middle Middle Europe concept that's been around since the eighteen eighties. There's no there's no civilizational idea anymore. What what do they got to bring to anybody? So this is just you know, it's it's managers. You don't have leaders in Europe.
You have managers and very poor managers with possible good high paying jobs in America after they leave. So I don't know. Europe who do you talk to in Europe? I mean, quite simply, if I'm if I was sitting in a criminal right now, I would ignore everything coming out of Europe except or urban people like Orban and Fitsow who've proven themselves. Maybe Babich, they would have to depend on how much he can prove himself.
But who else do you trust?
Speaker 0: I noticed that in Russia, some of them the the rhetoric over how, you know, the Minsk was, well, was a ruse, that it has has some similarities to the Libyan issue. Because I remember after they fooled the Russians over Libya, Russia took a very different stance over Syria. Now you see after the Minsk and, of course, you could put Istanbul into that same mix, The the distrust now towards any real diplomacy, it's it's quite astonishing, which makes it very, I guess, difficult to find some any settlement. Doesn't mean that settlement can't be done. It just means that the trust component, which is important to make any deal work, is, well, completely absent.
But you mentioned before the whole idea of of the Russians being prepared to take a stronger stance against the Europeans. But how about The United States? Because we've seen some, well, reports in media and some politicians who are outraged because they they alleged that Russia has handed over intelligence to the Iranians in terms of American targets, which seems quite reasonable. I just assumed that would happen. But, you know, no self reflection.
They they they don't seem to recognize they've been doing the same for the past few years. So but nonetheless, when Trump was asked about this, you know, he was kinda dismissive either that they didn't do it or it's just minor stuff like we've done in Ukraine or they think we've done in Ukraine, he said.
Speaker 1: Minor stuff. Ukraine. Yeah. But But what would be your stuff? You try to assassinate the president of Russia.
I don't know. What what what could be more major than that?
Speaker 0: Yeah. But is the are the Russians also willing to push back harder against The United States?
Speaker 1: And I definitely. I think so. And and it the confidence is growing. And even the Chinese who were took a big step back from Iran at the beginning of all this have changed their stance quite a bit too. It's true to have their they had their radar systems there, but Chinese are stay taking a a long step back to see how it's gonna go.
And now they're looking at it and going, oh, that's how it's gonna go. You know, land lease you know when land lease started coming to the the Soviet Union? There's a concept called, you know, success breeds success. Well, in 1942, in January 1942, when the British ambassador to the Soviet Union took a nice little drive up to Klin, which is Northwest of Moscow. Well, back then, it was about a 120 kilometers.
That's about 90 kilometers. Moscow keeps growing. And he came out and got to see what was left of the smoking ruins of a German division that was surrounded and clean and exterminated. And he went back and he telegraphed back to Churchill and to Roosevelt. I think they're gonna win.
And that's what they went. Oh, okay. Okay. We'll back them now. It's the same thing here.
They were us going back and looking at the Iranians and going, I think they're gonna win. They they got pretty damn good chance of winning because all the big bullies come, and he's gonna take everybody out. But, you know, when you're the big bully, once you've established yourself as the big guy in the on the basketball court, you really don't wanna fight anybody because, you know, you can smack around the little guys, but some medium sized or bigger guy, even if you beat him, he's gonna take so much out of you. Everybody starts to lose respect for you or starts to lose fear of you. And this is what we're seeing.
Yeah. You could kill as many Iranian civilians as you want. The Iranians are are clearing the Americans out of the Persian Gulf, and the Iranians aren't breaking. They're just in fact, they're doubling down, and delivering blow after blow. No matter what Trump says, you know, Trump's different positions between breakfast, lunch, brunch, dinner, and midnight snack.
He's you get the whole plethora of what the hell is he talking about today. Oh. But the Iranians are standing around. In fact, the Iranians said, we don't we we're not asking for peace. They flat out said this.
We're not asking for peace. We don't see any reason for peace right now. So we're they're not looking for peace. They're looking for it to punish the Americans and to make it as pain more maximally as painful as possible. They're looking to expose the Americans out of the Persian Gulf, and they're doing a damn good job so far, at least the from direct kinetic.
But they're also pressuring the the Arabs to go, look. You're not getting any help from the yanks. They're not here to protect you. You're the front you're you're there to absorb, you know, our blows for them, but they're not gonna protect you. And that's starting to play a lot on a lot of these Arabs from what I've been told by the sources the Saudis have told the American bases to, you know, go screw yourself.
We're neutral. We're not gonna help you survive the best you can. And that's if that's true, that's a pretty big blow. And as much as we've seen Nancy I'm sorry. Lindsey Graham is screaming and hollering.
I don't know what drugs he was on this time. It's a couple of the videos lately. His his eyes are rolling in the back of his head, and he's it looks like he's either very, very drunk or on something else. But, you know, Lindsey Graham, they're screaming up and down that, yeah, we defended you, and you're not defending us to the Saudis. You have to come.
You're you're sorry. You know? Blah blah blah. Well, it's just that's another sign of that desperation. They take the mask off, and we are trying to strong-arm these countries.
The countries are going, no. Thanks. Bye bye. Have a good life. You know?
What what are gonna be the reactions after this kind of war is over? Well, if things keep going, they've hedged their bets that The USA ain't gonna be isn't gonna be in any position to do anything to them in recalination. That's the position that they're all in. Besides, Trump's got his new play toy. He's gonna go invade Cuba.
That's that's you know? You you know, he's already invaded Greenland kinda. He's tried to well, he he's got a war he can't win, but he's thinking about invading Iran. But, yeah, why worry? We're we're already gonna invade Cuba.
So, I mean, he got his agenda. You know? We we've gotta do so many things before for the bucket list. I guess that's one more thing for the bucket list.
Speaker 0: Since war is always the solution, if one is full of high hubris, sorry, after Venezuela, then, of course, then we have to go to the war. And if one is humiliated as now with Iran, then, well, we have to change the folks and get a victory behind us. You know? Then okay. Well, then there's also war.
But either way, it seems to go towards war. But in terms of, yeah, the pressure tactics and the it seems as if the, you know, that, yeah, that, I guess, perception becomes reality. That is if all these countries in the region thought The US was winning and Iran was on its back foot, then, of course, they would wanna bet on the winning horse. As you said before, that's what countries do. But if you look at this yeah.
From Saudi Arabia to Azerbaijan, all these countries which, most likely had some false flag attacks against him as well, now they're saying, well, we don't really wanna do this after all. That's a good indication of, of where where things are going. And it's, I can see why Russia and China would want to, you know, reduce The US, presence in The Middle East and at least scale them back in places like Iraq. But but also there seems to be a wider message that is if all The Gulf's nations will reach the conclusion that actually being frontline states for The US, you know, will, you know, will not give us security. It will only ensure that bombs will drop on our heads.
You know, this message is going across the world. In East Asia, you have the South Koreans now discussing, well, look what happened. America had some rough times, and they took away all our air defense systems. What would they do for us? And maybe that message Sorry?
Speaker 1: And they did it in the middle of the night.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Just in case they would notice. But now, you know, maybe this message comes across to the Europeans as well. If the Russians would now seek to restore their deterrent and, you know, drop a bomb on some weapons manufacturers in Germany, what would really The US do? It might, you know, even pull out its air defenses.
So it's you know, I can see why they would want why there's a lot to gain from if not the defeat of The US, at least some retreat. So just to say, I guess, the last question is, what do we know so far about the Russian support, or what do you think about it as well as the Chinese support? What are
Speaker 1: they actually doing for Iran? Well, outside Russia shipped in let let let's remember one thing. The that Russia back in 2005 and even 2004, Russia wanted to sign an agreement with, you know, with Iran on the level of Belarus and North Korea, a mutual defense agreement. The Iranian liberals who are in charge at that point refused. The the defensive clause, I think, if I remember correctly, that's fifth fifth section, third paragraph, went down to something along the lines of from from an actual defensive clause that that's in with Belarus and North Korea, a solid defensive clause, We're down to something we will struggle together against mutual regional threats, which means what?
You know? It means absolutely nothing. It's empty air. It's just a a word salad that when you boil away the the extra the the fat off of it, there's nothing there. So it's it's a pointless document.
Russia signed that document and ratified it right off the bat. Iran signed that document the second day it was getting lots of loving from the West because we wanna be loved by the West. So Saudi also wanna be loved by the West. And and when the West was giving it lots of loving is when it finally signed that document, and it's still not much of a document. But what followed afterwards and the liberals in Iran losing power and prestige after that little twelve day war and all the mass murders that the Israelis commenced upon inside of Iran, What came out of that was the Russian aid.
So MiG 20 nines, Su 30 fives, s four hundreds that we've yet to see. They're being husband, and I think they're being husband for whenever the Americans actually get enough gumption up to bring in their b 50 twos. That that'll if I was Iranians, that's what I'd be doing. I'd be husbanding those s four hundreds or waiting for the b 50 twos to start coming in and then take them out of the sky. They're slow, and they're big.
They're that's a hard target to miss. So, additionally, Russia brought in a lot of technology upgrades for propulsion systems, avionics, and jamming. Never mind Russia brought in the jamming systems that blocked the Starlinks and allowed to identify the Iranians and identify where those terminals were. Let's not forget that. So that's jamming equipment.
And a lot of this was for the existing fleet of ballistic missiles and avion and and air assets and for for future, obviously, also. Additionally, targeting. I mean, that's what the Americans say. Oh, they're they're helping and targeting. Well, why wouldn't they?
You've been doing this for four years. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. Oh, but no. It's not. How dare they do this to us?
They're evil. Okay. So what have you been doing for the last four years? I mean, either they're that hypocritical or they're that lacking of self awareness. I'm going with hypocrites.
I'm pretty sure they know what they've been doing. So and they've been high and they've been bragging about it until it gets done to them. And they're like, oh, you can't do that. We're really exceptional people. You can't you can't play.
We we're it's a rules based order. We make the rules. You can't do that. That's in the rules. Well, yes, we can.
Additionally, Russia has been bringing in a lot of its experience with with drones. Speaking of drones, there was a there was a sound bite from Trump that there are no such thing as underwater drones and and seaboard drones because we would have killed them by now. See, it's all artificial intelligence. And the Iranians posted another one of those drive through tunnel moments where it's just it's just going down one tunnel, and there's a bunch of these waterborne drones. It's just Rollos like they're down with airborne drones.
Like, okay. It's all artificial intelligence. Know, if it doesn't fit Trump's agenda or Trump's momentary lapse of sanity. By the way, there's something else to consider in this too. The council if if I remember the name correctly, it it's the Security Council of Iran of Iraq.
It's basically a council of militias of the Shia militias. And what they've said to El Jelani is, you take a step into Lebanon, and we're gonna turn your we're gonna turn Syria into a new battleground. We'll come across en masse and and write few throughout. You know, he's still fighting the Alawits, what what's left of the Kurds and the the Christians and the Shia. So Syria is not a done deal.
And I think once the Americans and the Israelis are either the Israelis are beaten back or they're stuck in a very wide war as it's now started today, a full invasion of Southern Lebanon. The Jelani is gonna find himself with a bit of a problem because those Iraqi Shia militias are are itching to go in for a fight, and Iran is gonna be empowered. I'm sure the Russian military is not gonna sit idly by either. Yep. El Jelani may very, very quickly find himself from being chopper play to playboy to American refugee.
So and and his regime is gonna be a very short lived one. It all depends on how much the Americans are left in the Persian Gulf. If they've been if they've been eradicated out of the Persian Gulf, El Jelani's head is gonna be rolling if he doesn't jump a plane and take off fast enough. So Syria may bounce back as an entity, at least to some degree.
Speaker 0: I've been looking over, like, all the journal articles and all academic work from 2012 and the the this era when there were talks about going to war with Iran. And it's interesting that the main conclusions were always, well, this is just a crazy gamble. It's like a recipe for a prolonged war. There's too many unknown variables. If you go after Iran, then that will spill out in essentially every part of the entire region.
I mean, did this just seems like it was very, very predictable. Of course, what wasn't predictable back then was that they would be fighting a proxy war against Russia, and this also is impacted greatly by this war. So well They're very good. Any last thoughts?
Speaker 1: Yes. The satellite imagery seems to suggest that the Chinese are getting ready to return with open arms one of their provinces. So the only one that isn't part of China yet, if you get my point. This is prime time to to do it. The the Americans are out of missiles.
The Americans are jammed up. The Americans are looking like fools. Hey. It's a good time to and they're pulling all their systems out of everybody else. A good time to go look at Taiwan and go, yeah, baby.
It's time to come home. So whether the Taiwanese want to or not and there's a very large fraction in Taiwan that wants pre reunification with China. So let's let's not forget that. So, yeah, the the Chinese may finally see the green light to make their move. I mean, this is gonna have it's it's having, and it's gonna continue to have ramifications well outside of this battle space that they're presently in.
And that Trump's advisers were either psychotically, heretically religious in that that Christian Zionism heresy. We're gonna bring the end of the world and Armageddon and all that, or they were just so bought by the Israelis that they just threw caution to the wind. You know, whichever it is, I think it's probably a combination of both. They're gonna be reaping that whirlwind for a very long time.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, you know, Joe Kent, the who was appointed by Trump to be the director of the National Counterterrorism Center. He he has resigned now because he opposed the war against Iran. Not only did he say this made no sense because Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, contradicts Trump, but he also make the point that this only started because of pressure from Israel and Israel lobby. I mean, this is just this is Trump's own guy, so I think this is really going into the history books as one of the great great blunders of The United States.
And, yes, interesting times. So thank you very much for taking the time.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. Absolutely. Oh, always a pleasure. I wish I was better more more or happier topics. Less less more joyous topics, but it is what it is.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Jeffrey Sachs: Iran War Could Escalate Into Nuclear War https://youtu.be/gmtJZvmOOes https://t.co/CNvb081Aqe
Video Transcript AI Summary
Professor Jeffrey Sachs discusses the Israel-Iran conflict, the risk of nuclear escalation, and a pathway to end the war. He clarifies that David Sacks is not related to him and was speaking as a Trump adviser, advocating that Trump declare victory and stop the conflict to avoid deeper disaster. Sachs outlines the economic and strategic dangers: the Strait of Hormuz could be closed, 400 million barrels released from reserves would cover only about twenty days of normal oil flow, and ongoing tit-for-tat strikes are destroying energy infrastructure, increasing global calamity risk.
Sachs recounts the five-step framework he and Sybil Ferris proposed to end the conflict, which he attributes to a need to recognize all security interests and to reduce aggression against Iran. He emphasizes that the US and Israel’s escalation harms Israel, the US, Iran, and regional stability. The five steps are:
1) Stop brazen, illegal armed aggression against Iran and recognize Iran’s security interests, noting that Iran does not want a nuclear weapon and had adhered to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) until the US ripped it up in 2018. Iran reportedly wants negotiated oversight under UN scrutiny, and the plan’s collapse is linked to broader regional violence.
2) Acknowledge Iran’s desire not to develop nuclear weapons and acknowledge the JCPOA’s original framework, highlighting that Iran’s leadership signaled a preference for negotiation under international inspection, contrary to the perception that Tehran seeks to acquire a weapon.
3) Open the Strait of Hormuz through Gulf Cooperation Council states and Iran, with Gulf states reasserting sovereignty over military bases on their soil and pledging that bases will not be used for aggression against Iran. The Gulf states and Iran should negotiate bilaterally to ensure open trade routes, with regional solidarity in backing this approach.
4) Return Israel to its 06/04/1967 borders, creating a Palestinian state in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem on internationally recognized borders. Sachs argues this addresses the root cause of continual conflict and links it to Netanyahu’s policy of denying a Palestinian state and pursuing broader regional control.
5) Establish a state of Palestine within the UN (as the 194th member) so that Hamas, Hezbollah, and other militant groups are disarmed, with disarmament supported by the regional consensus and the UN Security Council, contingent on Palestinian statehood.
Sachs asserts that what blocks peace is a coalition of Israeli supremacism, Israeli apartheid, and US support for aggressive actions. He references the Likud ideology and the historical “clean break” doctrine, noting that the US veto in the UN Security Council has repeatedly blocked recognition of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
Speaker 0 adds a discussion on indivisible security versus hegemonic peace, arguing that true security must be indivisible and that hegemonic peace—enforcing dominance—has led to the current crises in both the Middle East and Ukraine. Sachs agrees that the delusion of overwhelming force undermines security and highlights parallel dynamics in Taiwan and Russia.
Finally, they address why Iran was underestimated: the U.S. has pursued a self-created reality approach, leading to improvisation and escalation without a coherent planning process. Sachs criticizes the American security establishment for improvisation, lack of careful analysis, and dependence on a hegemonic approach, suggesting that this mindset increases the risk of miscalculation and escalation. The conversation ends with acknowledging the late hour in Kuala Lumpur and expressing thanks.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined by professor Jeffrey Sachs to discuss how the war in Iran may be spiraling out of control, but also how it's possible to put an end to it. So thank you very much for joining us again from Malaysia.
Speaker 1: Great to be with you, Glenn, as always.
Speaker 0: So Israel has what is often referred to as the Samson option. That is it's considered to be the last resort if Israel faces an existential threat, that is to use nuclear weapons against its enemies. So this is dangerous because The US and Israel seems to be exhausting their arsenals, including their interceptors, and the situation is not just deteriorating, but it's escalating very quickly. And I saw that Israeli newspaper, Harets, they reported that one of Trump's top advisers, David Sachs, warned that Israel could be destroyed, and under these conditions, Israel could use nuclear weapons against Iran. So I was wondering how you assess this, I guess, spiral of escalation and the possibility of this actually going, yeah, falling into a nuclear war.
Speaker 1: Yes. David Sachs, no relation to me, by the way, but a friend said a couple of days ago that Trump should declare victory and go home. And he was speaking essentially as a Trump adviser. He's the AI czar in the White House. So he advises on digital and AI policies.
And he's an influential, observer. He wasn't predicting a nuclear war, and he wasn't saying we're at, that juncture. But what he was saying is, if this just continues, it will be awful. And he was saying to his boss, Donald Trump, just go home. That was the message.
Just end this. This is a debacle, but call it a victory. Trump easily does that. But don't pursue this more. It's leading to worse and worse for the reasons that you said.
On the economic side, the risk of global calamity is absolutely growing day by day no matter how they try to talk calm to the markets, no matter how they talk about releasing emergency reserves from the strategic oil reserves. The fact of the matter is people can do arithmetic. The, Strait Of Hormuz is closed. The release of 400,000,000 barrels of oil, which was what was announced, is roughly twenty days of normal flow through the Strait Of Hormuz. Not very impressive actually for what looks like, could be a deadly long crisis and disaster, not only because The Straits are closed, but because production of oil and gas is shutting down and the physical facilities, one after another, are being destroyed right now in the tit for tat fire between The US and Iran.
And so this is why David Sacks advised his president whom he serves, just stop and go home. Since Trump lives in a delusional world to begin with, We can declare victory. He can say how wonderful it is. Look at how many people we murdered. Look at how many leaders we killed.
Look at how much infrastructure we destroyed. Remember last summer, he declared victory and went home. Of course, it was absurd then as well. But this is the option. What David Sacks was saying is that that is actually the best security for Israel as well.
That's not only the right thing to do from the point of view of the world economy, the right thing to do from the point of view of US security, but the thing that would keep Israel safest as well. In other words, this war is to nobody's advantage. It's a pure lose lose lose all around. Lose for Israel, lose for The United States, and lose for the rest of the world, and especially, of course, Iran and the Gulf countries. Yeah.
Speaker 0: No. I I spoken a bit with David Sachs on email. I've been trying to get him on the program. He seems like a good guy, so I Yeah. Yeah.
But, you know, but I was thinking as well that if if The US actually escalates one step further and go after Karg Island and Iran retaliates against the energy installations across the Gulf States, it doesn't really matter anymore if the Strait Of Hormuz is open, if everything is in flames and destroyed. And, of course, it's gonna take much more than twenty days, and I also thought the same by opening the strategic reserves. It doesn't communicate a lot of confidence either when one is willing to deplete it to such an extent. But you, with your colleague, you wrote that is you and civil affairs, you wrote about the five steps that which Trump could take to put an end to this war, essentially, ramp, which David Sacks advocated for. So if Trump reads it or calls you or listen to this podcast, what are these five steps you would advise?
Speaker 1: Well, one is he's not gonna call. Maybe David Sacks will read it.
Speaker 0: If I if I could interject very quickly. Yes. You at at one point, before he got elected now, he actually tweeted out a video of you when you were talking about The Middle East. So he you know, I'm I'm glad he listens to Reason, but sorry for
Speaker 1: Yes. And that was a video that warned about Netanyahu. I said that is one dark person. I used a little bit less temperate language. But I said that this is one big problem.
And Trump tweeted that out at the time, a mystery. But what I said turned out to be absolutely right, which is that not only is Netanyahu mister genocide, but now he is putting the whole Middle East in flames. And the whole world is going to come very soon to understand Israel created our global economic crisis. It's not gonna be good for Israel's security, this kind of approach. So, yes, mister Trump did tweet that out.
Maybe he can listen to somebody to tell him, cut your losses, declare them a victory in your own way. That's your business, but don't drag us into disaster. This is the point. Now what I and, my colleague, Sybil Ferris, recommend is a a real end to the conflict in The Middle East because we say that there are interlocking parts. It probably won't happen.
We stress that in the article. We're not naive optimists. We're just saying that the way you make peace is to recognize everybody's security interests. That is also the point about Ukraine. Since Russia's security interests are never recognized, there's no peace.
I the same in The Middle East. If you want peace, which most normal people in the world, I'd say all normal people in the world do, then you recognize everybody's security interests. What are Iran's security interests? Not to be bombed repeatedly by Israel and The United States and not to have Netanyahu say, for thirty years, overthrow that government. It's okay.
It can't be more simple than that. The US and Israel need to stop their brazen, blatant, illegal, armed aggression against Iran. This is not even a preemptive attack because Iran wasn't attacking anybody. This is just brazen, naked aggression, and it's the essence of the violation of international law. So that was point number one.
Point number two, Trump says every day, I need to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. I don't know whether this is fatuous, whether he's so ignorant he doesn't understand what he does, or whether it's a game. But the simple point is there was such an agreement, and you, mister Trump, ripped it up. Of course, that was the joint comprehensive plan of action negotiated in 2015 between Iran and the permanent five members of the UN Security Council, not just The United States, but Russia and China, Britain, France, and The US and Germany, and then ratified unanimously by the UN Security Council. And the essence of it was to underpin the supreme leader's religious command that Iran would not get a nuclear weapon because the supreme leader said this is against our faith.
And so Iran put itself under scrupulous inspection and honored the agreement. It was The US that ripped it up. Trump in 2018. I don't know if he remembers the man on the surface remembers nothing, learns nothing, knows nothing. But I don't really know whether he remembers that he ripped up the agreement that accomplished exactly what he said.
Maybe he can remember that the Iranians said again last year and this year, they don't want a nuclear weapon. They want to have a negotiated agreement. They want to be under UN scrutiny. Maybe, I doubt it, but maybe he could find an aid to let him know what the Omani mediator said the day before they killed all the leadership, which was we made great progress and we're going on to a next round of negotiations in Vienna because the Iranians don't want a nuclear weapon. And so this is the second point is, yes, it's not even hard, mister Trump.
It's never been the issue with Netanyahu. It's not about the nuclear weapons. It's about overthrowing the Iranian government. That has always been his dream. The third point is to open up the Strait Of Hormuz, and that is not by Trump pitifully, pathetically demanding NATO, do this.
China, do this. To get him out of the incredible mess that he and Netanyahu have created for the world. It's something for the Gulf Cooperation Council, that is the countries of the Arabian Peninsula, and Iran to work out bilaterally. And what is needed is for the Gulf countries to say that they are taking sovereignty of the military bases in their territory, And those bases will never be allowed to be used in aggression against Iran. So that's how to get the Strait Of Hormuz opened up again.
It's the Gulf countries on one side. It's Iran on the other. All Islamic nations, all part of the organization of Islamic cooperation. In fact, both The United Arab Emirates and Iran are part of the BRICS countries. It's not even hard for them to agree with each other.
The mistake that the Gulf countries made was to hand over their sovereignty to The United States as if that's some kind of protection for them. But what they should do now, seeing that there's no protection to having these bases, is to reassert sovereignty over the bases in their country and to agree with Iran. The strait will open and these bases will never be used against Iran. The fourth plank is the one that, is is the is the one that is so obvious, but the one that is actually the cause of all the wars of the last thirty years. And that is that Israel needs to return to its borders of the 06/04/1967 so that a state of Palestine is created in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem on the internationally recognized borders.
And this is what Israel has gone to war repeatedly to block. And this is the basic point of all of these wars, including this one. Why has Netanyahu dreamt for forty years of overthrowing the Iranian regime? Why has Netanyahu been part of every war in The Middle East? Because his doctrine is that Israel will control all of Palestine and with some of his zealous zealot partners, even more part of Syria, part of Lebanon, part of who knows what.
Because according to The US ambassador, Mike Huckabee, who's another part of this disaster, Israel has the right to haul the land from the Nile to the Euphrates, says ambassador Huckabee. Okay. Well, the whole reason for all these wars from the Israeli point of view is they're they've said there will never be a state of Palestine. We'll kill them. We'll expel them.
We'll rule over them, in an apartheid state, but there will never be a state of Palestine. And any government in this region that backs the Palestinians, we will overthrow. That is the so called clean break doctrine of Netanyahu that has been in place for thirty years. So the fourth plank is a state of Palestine alongside as the state of Israel. And you know what?
Israel has no veto over that. The reason it doesn't happen is The US and The US alone. This was voted in the Security Council last year and the year before. The US blocks this. This is simple.
People should understand. Almost every country in the world says, of course, there should be the state of Palestine alongside the state of Israel. But The US uses its veto in the UN Security Council to block that. So that's the fourth plank. Enough of this.
This is the most basic point. And Israel got insanely greedy or insanely zealot zealous, depending on who exactly we're talking about, to say we get a 100% of the land. You know what we're talking about for this Palestine right now? It's 22% of what was British mandatory Palestine. And Israel says, no.
Not even 22% for what is half the population. Not even 22%. We demand everything. That's why we're a nonstop war. So that's the fourth point.
And the fifth point is that with a state of Palestine established and welcomed into the United Nations as the hundred ninety fourth member state, Hamas, Hezbollah, and any other militant groups will be disarmed. They will disarm. And they will disarm because all of the region will insist that they disarm, and so will the UN Security Council. And that will be, and they will disarm because the state of Palestine will be created. And this is how to make peace.
So what blocks this? What blocks this is a coalition of Israeli supremacism, of Israeli apartheid, of Israeli violence that goes back to Netanyahu and his party, the Likud, which in its founding charter in 1977 says that all the territory from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea will be Israeli sovereignty. That's why all of these wars across the region have raged, because that basic fact is against every standard of international law and decency, and countries have supported the Palestinian cause, and therefore, Netanyahu and The United States have gone to war to overthrow those governments that have supported the Palestinian cause.
Speaker 0: Wait. I yeah. No. I like this five step, but also like here our focus on indivisible security, though, because I think this goes at the heart of of what is required as well. Because, you know, states, they compete for security, and weapons for one state is often you know, security for one is insecurity for another.
So you have two ways of producing security. Either you have indivisible security where we elevate our common security. In other words, you know, I don't point a gun at you to have more security for me. This is one indivisible security. Alternatively, one can pursue hegemonic peace.
In this, you don't care about indivisible security. You have one dominate to such an extent no one can even dream of challenging it. I think this is this Iran source of the Iran war, but it's also the Ukraine war. If if we just Exactly. Accept that the hegemonic era is over, just as a matter of fact, the distribution of power has shifted, then we would have to essentially restore the principle of indivisible security.
Otherwise, if one wants hegemonic peace again like the nineties, one has to restore it. That means defeat Russia, defeat Iran, defeat China, and, you know, I would read China Israel's clean break into this because, you know, when it merged in '96, this is part of the hegemonic era. That is abandon diplomacy and compromise instead go for everything because they were backed up with overwhelming military force. And
Speaker 1: That is exactly right. And it and this is the delusion that such overwhelming force exists. It's immoral. That's another matter, but it turns out to be disastrous to hold such delusions. The United States held those delusions in, Ukraine because we should remember the Ukraine war started with The United States attempt to assert its, hegemony over Ukraine.
Zbigniew Brzezinski spelled it out. It was the doctrine of, the neocons. We're going to expand NATO anywhere we want up to Russia's borders surrounding Russia in Georgia, in the South Caucasus, in Ukraine, around the Black Sea. That's our business. We are the superpower.
Well, Russia had different thoughts about that, but that's where that war came from because no one cared to listen to Russia's security concerns at all, and that's still true today. It it's a blank wall to talk to any European leader that Russia has legitimate security concerns. Okay? And now in The Middle East, it's exactly what you say. Netanyahu thought, well, I got the easy plan.
I don't have to compromise on anything. We win because we have The United States. And there are famous clips of Netanyahu explaining to, I don't even know who he's talking to, we own the Senate. We own the Congress. We we can get The United States to do what we want.
The truth is our crazy CIA and, and, military as well have delusions. So they see Israel's hegemony in The Middle East is just fine because it's part of America's global hegemony. What's happening right now in part is Trump thinks I'm gonna corner every export of oil, Venezuela. I'm gonna demand that Mexico behave itself. I'm gonna take over The Americas as he's explained.
I'm gonna take over The Middle East. I'm gonna choke off Russian oil through sanctions. I'm gonna decide who gets energy in this world. Well, is a madman thought. It leads to global disaster, but it's exactly that hegemonic idea.
I don't have to deal with anybody. We don't have to discuss with Iran. We just have to kill them. That's all. And and that's what they think they're doing right now.
And it not only is it murder, but it doesn't work to achieve your own security. Israel is at far graver risk than it's ever been because of this, and so is The United States at graver risk because our risk is nuclear war. And we keep pushing the world closer to nuclear war through these actions of not respecting, even in discussion, the security interests of the other side. It's the same in Taiwan. We say, we're gonna send arms as we like to Taiwan.
China says, excuse me, Taiwan is part of China. Do not send arms on your own. That for us is a red line. The United States filled with the idiocy that it is, the recklessness that it is, says, we don't have to listen to them. It's our business.
We are The United States Of America. And by the way, it's Trump, but it's also the CIA. It's also the congressional armed services committees. It's also the arms contractors. It's also Silicon Valley.
They all have this delusion of we don't have to take into account anyone else's concerns. And that's what's leading us to disaster.
Speaker 0: Just as a last question, how do you make sense of the way that Iran was underestimated? Because, you know, you worked with a lot of state leaders around the world to see how they work, their strategic thinking, their considerations. How could it be that, you know, we have the reports suggesting that Trump dismissed the likelihood of Iran closing the Strait Of Hormuz, which should have been the most predictable thing. The attacks on The US bases seems to be underestimated the weapons that Iran has at its disposal or the belief that killing Khamenei would collapse the government and make people, you know, pour into the streets with American flags and essentially, also now the assumption that the threats will make Iran capitulate. Even though they see this in an existential fight, it's you know, it I'm just wondering how they got it this wrong.
Is this just hubris, or is this a, you know, disconnect with the intelligence community? I I just it's very you know, the the this I don't haven't seen this in previous wars. There have always been mistakes, but this seems to be something very, very different.
Speaker 1: Well, remember the Iraq war, for example, how every single thing was wrong, every prediction about the cakewalk that we were gonna have and how democracy was going to come and so on. And there was an interesting interview in 2004. I think it was a Time Magazine reporter, if I remember correctly, and a White House official, maybe Karl Rove. I'm not absolutely sure. But he was asked about, you know, about the reality of the situation and the response from the White House is, excuse me, we create our own reality.
And this is part of the issue, which is when you are so powerful and arrogant, you just think we'll make it work. Trump didn't know what he was gonna do after the first hour, but he said, we'll make it work. It's complete improvisation. Of course, the real lessons are that these are disasters. It said that it took twenty years for The United States to go from the Taliban regime in Afghanistan to the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
So that was a twenty year effort. And they credit Trump that it took nine days to go from hominy to hominy. So this is American efficiency. In other words, we're not accomplishing anything. We're going around in circles, killing a lot of people, spending a lot of money.
Maybe that's part of the point because they wanna spend a lot of money. That is profits for somebody and losses for all the rest of us. But I think the main point is we don't even have a process in the security state right now. The United States planning on anything has collapsed. We're just in improv mode.
We have a psychologically unstable president. We have a constitutional process that is over because Congress does not, use its constitutional, I mean, it rejects using its constitutional authority and responsibility. And I can tell you in every area that I know of, there's no thinking going on. There are no reports. There are no studies.
There's no careful scrutiny. There's no review. It's improvisation. It's flailing around. So frankly, none of this surprises me.
We don't even have minimal processes of thought. We have a president who just makes up things as they go along, and you end up with everything fake, and then desperation. Oh, NATO has to come to our aid. Even China, which was the target of much of this, has to come to our aid. Where are our friends?
Says Donald Trump. My god. A five year old would show more self awareness and responsibility, frankly.
Speaker 0: Yeah. And I'm thinking with all the religious adviser who comes comes to his office, he should have known that, you know, pride comes before the fall or that God opposes arrogance, but he has different religious advisers, it seems. So Anyways, it's late over there in Kuala Lumpur, so thank you very much for taking the time. I was very much appreciate it. You.
Speaker 1: We'll see you soon. Thanks.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Alex Krainer: Iran War Goes Global - Economic, Energy & Food Crisis https://youtu.be/WzWBIS17aqY https://t.co/K5JdZtll2n
Video Transcript AI Summary
The discussion centers on the cascading economic and geopolitical consequences of the unfolding West Asia conflict, with an emphasis on energy markets, food production, and the potential reconfiguration of global power relations.
Key points and insights:
- The Iran-related war is described as an “absolutely massive disruption” not only to oil but also to natural gas markets. Speaker 1 notes that gas is the main feedstock for nitrogen fertilizers, so disruptions could choke fertilizer production if Gulf shipments are blocked or LNG tankers are trapped, amplifying downstream effects across industries.
- The fallout is unlikely to be immediate, but rather a protracted process. Authorities and markets may react with forecasts of various scenarios, yet the overall path is highly uncertain, given the scale of disruption and the exposure of Western food systems to energy costs and inputs.
- Pre-war conditions already showed fragility in Western food supplies and agriculture. The speaker cites visible declines in produce variety and quality in France, including eggs shortages and reduced meat cuts, even before the current shock, tied to earlier policies and disruptions.
- Historical price dynamics are invoked: oil prices have spiked from around $60 to just over $100 a barrel in a short period, suggesting that large-scale price moves tend to unfold over months to years. The speaker points to past predictions of extreme oil shortages (e.g., to $380–$500/barrel) as illustrative of potential but uncertain outcomes, including possible long-term shifts in energy markets and prices.
- Gold as a barometer: gold prices surged in 2023 after a long period of stagnation, suggesting that the environment could produce substantial moves in safe-haven assets, with potential volatility up to very high levels (even speculative ranges like $5,000 to $10,000/oz or more discussed).
- Structural vulnerabilities: over decades, redundancy has been removed from food and energy systems, making them more fragile. Large agribusinesses dominate, while smallholder farming has been eroded by policy incentives. If input costs surge (oil, gas, fertilizer), there may be insufficient production capacity to rebound quickly, risking famine-like conditions.
- Policy paralysis and governance: the speaker laments that policymakers remain focused on Russia, Ukraine, and net-zero policies, failing to address immediate shocks. This could necessitate private resilience: stocking nonperishables, growing food, and strengthening neighborhood networks.
- Broader systemic critique: the discussion expands beyond energy to global supply chains and the “neoliberal” model of outsourcing, just-in-time logistics, and dependence on a few critical minerals (e.g., gallium) concentrated in a single country (China). The argument is that absorption of shocks requires strategic autonomy and a rethinking of wealth extraction mechanisms in Western economies.
- Conspiracy and risk framing: the speakers touch on the idea that ruling elites use wars and engineered shocks to suppress populations, citing medical, environmental, and demographic trends (e.g., concerns about toxins and vaccines, chronic disease trends, CBDCs, digital IDs, 15-minute cities). These points are presented as part of a larger pattern of deliberate disruption, though no definitive causality is asserted.
- Multipolar transition: a core theme is that the Western-led liberal order is collapsing or in serious flux. The BRICS and Belt and Road frameworks, along with East–West energy and technology leadership (notably China in nuclear tech and batteries), are shaping a move toward multipolar integration. The speaker anticipates that Europe’s future may involve engagement with multipolar economies and a shift away from exclusive Western hegemony.
- European trajectory: Europe is portrayed as unsustainable under current models, potentially sliding toward an austerity-driven, iron-curtain-like system if it cannot compete or recalibrate. The conversation envisions a gradual, possibly painful transition driven by democratic politics and public pressure, with a risk of civil unrest if elites resist reform.
- NATO and European security: there is speculation about how the Middle East turmoil could draw Europe into broader conflict, especially if Russia leverages the situation to complicate European decisions. A cautious approach is suggested: Russia has shown a willingness to create friction without provoking Article 5, but could exploit Middle East tensions to pressure European governments while avoiding a full European war.
- Outlook: the speakers foresee no easy return to the pre-war status quo. The path forward could involve a reordering of international trade, energy, and security architectures, with a possible pivot toward multipolar alliances and a greater emphasis on grassroots resilience and regional cooperation.
Overall, the dialogue emphasizes the profound interconnectedness of energy, agriculture, finance, and geopolitics, arguing that the current crisis could catalyze a permanent reordering of the global system toward multipolarism, while underscoring the fragility of Western economic and political models in absorbing such shocks.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined today by Alex Kraner, a market analyst, author, and former head fund manager. Also, we can add the host of the Alex Kraner podcast, and I will leave a link in the description. And I saw you had a new video come out just now. Thank you for coming on.
I we keep seeing this uncontrolled war unraveling in in Iran that is it seems to be spiraling out of control. There's no efforts to deescalate or seeking an off ramp. And I was wondering what do you see as being this economic consequences of this war around the world. So, you know, they can be the minor things. For example, if there's less oil, you know, fewer fishing boats go out, food prices go up, people can't pay their bills, you have socioeconomic instability.
And I guess what's fascinating here is that the entire world is impacted by this war. So what is it that you expect to see in terms of the very integrated global economy being affected by taking all this energy off the market?
Speaker 1: Glenn, thank you for having me. It's always a pleasure to join you. Unfortunately, here we are discussing fairly bad developments in the world. Let's say that it would be impossible to predict the fallout from the current war in the in in West Asia. And the reasons are because we have just had a a an absolutely massive disruption not only in the in the oil market, but also in in natural gas markets.
And then, you know, it impacts many other industries because, you know, natural gas is the main feedstock for production of of fertilizers, nitrogen fertilizers. So if one third of the feedstock is stuck in The Gulf and half of all the LNG tankers are stuck in The Gulf, we could be in a lot of trouble. I think that the the fallout will not happen overnight, and there's going to be a lot of discussion. Oh, this is gonna happen, and that's gonna happen. But we already start from a very, very bad point because many western nations have already been destroying their agricultural production for for many years now, you know, over over net zero policies and and and whatnot.
And you can already you if the let's say that the reduced food production in the West is already discernible. I live in France, and, you know, I'm one of those people who likes to buy fresh ingredients and and cook my food at home. And so I'm very you know, I I tend to be discerning about what I buy. And France has always had, of all the countries where I lived, the best food merchandising industry and food distribution. You know, you always had a very wide variety of high quality produce available at all times.
It was pretty much taken for granted. But even before this war started, I started noticing, I mean, this this started happening probably since the since the pandemic, that the both the variety and the quality of produce that's offered in the market has been on a on a decline, and I mean drastic decline. You know? This year, in the last, you know, maybe six to twelve months, for the first time ever, many supermarkets have signs we're out of eggs, for example. The meat section is visibly reduced.
I think there's less than half of what used to be available, and there are many fewer cuts that are available. At the same time, you know, the processed foods are doesn't seem that they're they're impacted. It's, you know, the the junk and the low quality stuff. So now add the largest ever disruption that ever impacted oil markets and and natural gas markets in the world, and we can't tell how this will unfold and and and you know, because this is a situation that will snowball. You know, now we now we're aware, we're rationally aware that something's not right and that it's going to have consequences, but what those consequences will be is nearly impossible to predict.
You know, I I used to be an oil market analyst, and I I remember that in 2012, I read I read reports drafted by the the American military intelligence, by British military intelligence, Ministry of Defense actually, and by the German Ministry of Defense, and they were all they were all predicting that we are going into a period of shortage of oil and that this is going to have extreme consequences. The British Ministry of Defense was predicting that by 2040, the price of oil will go to $500 a barrel. Now I know that that might sound high, but, you know, even even just as recently as 2022, we had a we had a analysis report by JPMorgan saying that the oil is going the the price of the barrel is going to $380 per barrel. Today, we are trading just over $100 a barrel, and the war has been going on for, what, just over two weeks. These types of large scale price events never happened overnight.
So we had a jolt because I think that two or three months ago, the barrel of oil was trading at about $60. So we are now 67, 70% higher than two months ago, but this could just be the first jolt. Large scale price events tend to tend to span months and years. So we can't exclude the possibility that the price of a barrel really does go to 380 or to $500 a barrel or or who knows where. And what the consequences of that will be, I think it's impossible to predict.
You know, we've been talking about gold prices for many, many years, and gold prices have done more or less nothing until 2023. Until then, they were, you know, kind of languishing between 1,600 and 2,000, you know, bouncing in horizontal range. But then once they went above, once the price went decisively above $2,000 an ounce, then it kept going, and then over the next two years, so between the 2023 and now, we now have gold at $5,000 an ounce. And, you know, there's no telling where it might go. It might go to 5 to to to 10,000 or 20,000.
Nobody can predict these things. And then another troubling factor is that over these over the over the decades, we've removed redundancy out of the system in the sense that, let's say if you have larger agricultural concerns that are producing massive quantities of corn and wheat and soybeans and these strategic crops, but you keep putting small hold farmers at a disadvantage and you are slowly destroying smallhold farmers, once these large concerns that that are producing food in in great bulk, once they start going bankrupt because they can't pay for the oil, they can't pay for the gas, they can't pay for the fertilizer and so forth, we don't have family owned farms to fall back on. Because, you know, in the past, if all these mountains of corn and wheat don't materialize, okay, there's still family farms that are producing food. It'll be expensive, but at least it's there. We have destroyed this to a large extent.
So I think that we are in a serious trouble because this cannot come back overnight. Know? This takes time and skill and know how and and and commitment and dedication. And once you uproot it, it'll take years for smallhold farming to come back if they allow it because they're still you know, the bureaucracy is still destroying family farming and there's no in a way, there's no reverse gear. They're not saying nobody's saying, Oh, this was a bad idea.
Let's quickly reverse these policies. All the incentives and all the directives that went from the EU from central governments to their bureaucracy are still there, and the incentives are still there. So the, you know, the the big train wreck is still happening. And so I I I I'm I'm afraid that we might be going to a place that nobody's prepared for because it hasn't happened in since maybe since since the the last World War. And, you know, people who lived through the through World War two, they do remember famine.
And so we might be going to a place of famine. And, you know, unfortunately, our policymakers, our governments are not taking this seriously. I don't know if they're discussing this at all. I don't I don't see it being discussed anything. It's an urgent matter.
But, you know, they are still obsessed with Russia, with Ukraine, with net zero policies and and so forth. And so, unfortunately, I'm afraid that ordinary people will have to take these things into their own hands and see if they can, you know, make make food for themselves, plant potatoes and leeks and tomatoes and, you know, stock up on nonperishable items.
Speaker 0: Well, that was part of the problem of the we've seen in the past few years with the Ukraine war alone, these limitations on artificial fertilizers and all of these things because of of the sanctions. This, of course, will add further to it. But there seems to be a much wider challenge at the sector. That is over the past few decades now under this neoliberal economics, we kinda let the market dictate everything in terms of, you know, outsourcing what others might produce more efficiently. So assuming that the markets are already or will always be open, we also saw The U US outsourcing its in the development of critical medicine to China.
I mean, critical minerals, of course, depend on China. And, again, not just nations, but we see businesses organizing this just in time logistics, there's no need for storage. We saw people as well becoming more dependent on living paycheck to paycheck. It's across society. It's it's it doesn't seem like we are capable of absorbing a shock unlike, you know, the second World War.
At least there was some strategic autonomy and, yeah, ability to absorb these kind of shocks. And even in the military sphere, I see the the the Iranians have blown up a lot of American radars worth, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars. I think it's their their t p y two radars. And, you know, if if you wanna rebuild this as well as the interceptors and all these weapons stockpiles, which The US has been burning through, it needs, you know, access to, like, gallium and other rare earths, which just happens that China controls, I think, about 98 of the total. So it's just it's just an unmitigated disaster.
So it's not clear what we're gonna do. We're not gonna make peace and restore trust in the supply chains. And yet, if if we want to have complete strategic autonomy, we need we need many years, if not decades, to reorganize the entire economy. But we seem to be just heading straight into massive conflicts, war, dismantling supply chains without any ability to absorb any of these shocks. I mean, how yeah.
If if if if we could predict what will happen, it would be one thing, but I think it's too many unknown variables perhaps, which is why it's so difficult to assess.
Speaker 1: Yes. Correct. I I I'm afraid that there's a there's a very significant conflict between the ruling establishments in the in the in the Western worlds and the people. And, unfortunately, this is one of those things that keeps happening throughout history, that people who hold the levers of powers, who enjoy all the privileges of the system as it is, you know, set up today, they don't want to change the system. And what happens is that, you know, with the, you know, with money lending and usury and this fraudulent money that we have, over time, you know, this this mechanism acts as a as a wealth extraction conveyor belt.
And so it creates a polarization of wealth, meaning that the people who are at the levels levers of power, they become more and more wealthy. A greater and greater amount of capital, of collateral, is in their hands, while the ordinary people are increasingly disenfranchised poor, have difficulty paying their bills, have difficulty making a living, live paycheck to paycheck and so forth. And so what has always been the first reflex of the ruling establishment has been to get rid of the people. And they usually did this by crying barbarians at the gate. If there were no barbarians at the gates, they would invent them.
They would orchestrate wars, and then they would sacrifice, especially military aged men in very large numbers in these wars because military aged men are exactly their greatest threat the the greatest threat to themselves. Well, I think that war against Russia was intended to serve this purpose, but it hasn't quite worked out and people are not convinced. And people in France, Germany, Poland, Great Britain, none of them think that Russia is the greatest existential threat, so none of them are willing to send their sons to to fight and die in that war. So I think that other other approaches are being used, and this goes into into conspiracy theory realm, which we all know that there are no conspiracies. You know?
Everything is a coincidence. But it does appear that a lot of what they do is now used as plan b, plan c, and so forth to keep getting rid of the people. And, you know, in Canada, we now see that the one of one of their leading medical treatments is called medical assistance in dying, and they're so excited about it that they already since the law passed, they already killed a 100,000 people for, you know, for a population of the size of Canada that's very significant. I think it's now become the third leading cause of death in Canada. Well, it's being passed in France.
European countries are enthusiastically adopting it, and it's one of those things where if you if you say the wrong word, you can't even opt out of it anymore. You know? If you if you say today, well, maybe I'll consider it, you're you're already done. They're you know, they don't give you an out. You you have to fight to save your life.
Then our our supplies are increasingly toxic, which very often turns out to be strange because it's like, oh, yeah. Well, sorry, you know, we got some lead in the water. That was, you know, a mistake. Oh, we have all these cancer causing agents in our toothpaste. Well, that's a mistake, obvious.
But, you know, there's been a lot of mistakes all going in the same direction. So the rates of chronic diseases, the rates of cancers, and so forth are exploding, and I have to be I have to wonder if that is not on purpose. And in fact, it's almost certain that it is on purpose because we have we have very detailed data from, let's say, the vaccine industry where, you know, the the the statistics from systems like VAERS in The United States show that over the last thirty years, the safety of these shots has been on the decline and the side effects have been increasingly severe. And then fewer and fewer people are recovering from these side effects ever. And, you know, that's that's a trend that has now been going on for more than thirty years.
So if you have this trillion dollar industry that has all the research money can buy, all these specialists, all all the all the production facilities, and the trend of safety is on a steady decline for thirty years going, you have to suspect that it's deliberate because otherwise somebody would say like, oh, you know, we made these mistakes, we correct them. And so with all the know how, with all the research, with all the investment, we should see an increase in safety and effectiveness but we see the opposite. Anyhow, you know, there's I I what I've been saying for since the pandemic now that it's that we are fighting a thousand battles at this time, and it's not just that. It's the CBDCs. It's the it's the digital digital IDs.
It's the fifteen minute cities. It's the net zero. It's the assault on farmers. It's the destruction of food production. It's the toxification of the environment steady.
It's it's wars breaking out everywhere and more and more of them breaking out almost as though it's it's being done deliberately. So in the end, I think that we won't solve it. We I I I don't see that we we're going to be able to vote our way out of it. I think that it's going to take people simply taking things into their own hands, making sure that they know how to take care of their families and their health, making sure that they know how to procure food, making sure that they have good relations with their neighbors, that they're net that they network in their community, that they know, you know, who can who can fix your car, who can fix your leaky roof, who knows how to treat wounds and and set broken bones and so forth. And in the end, you know, when the CBDCs get unrolled, and that's almost 100% going to be a train wreck, I I I think they're going to fail because it's an extremely, extremely ambitious complex problem that they need to tackle, we are not going to survive without gray and black markets.
And people are generally very, very good at creating gray and black markets because they simply have needs that are urgent and, you know, you need to eat, you need to have water and and roof over your head, and then these black markets self organize. But that means that the political establishment loses control, and then, you know, we need I I I think that ultimately the solution will be for the Western world to integrate with with the eastern solutions, you know, SEO, bricks and the bricks organization, Belt and Road, multipolar integrations, and so forth. And maybe this war in Iran now is a is a great catalyst that that will accelerate all of these all of these changes. But, you know, one thing that everybody has to keep in mind, we will not get solutions from our governments. That that that's just the way they're the way things are today, we cannot expect that our governments will will deliver us, and we shouldn't expect it even if we vote the current the current governments out of power and replace them with the new ones.
Just look at how things are going in The United States. You know? Voting Trump into the office was practically a revolution, and now it's it seems that Trump revolution is very, very much jeopardized pretty much by Trump's own goal in Iran. Yeah. Well, a lot of
Speaker 0: the problems we have today, we have different solutions in the past. This is not advocacy, but in the past colonization, it tended to have some be like a safety valve to release some pressure that is economic pressure could be unreleased could be released by colonizing political dissent. They could get a new if if, you know, you opened up to to send them abroad, it would release some of this, the sense of purpose, you know, built up nationalism, prestige. All of this could be done abroad, but the but the same kind of dynamics, the problems building up. We don't have them to we don't really have them today.
Yes. But, yeah, it's a very it's it's a good point with Trump because he was, like, he was seen as the the revolutionary, though he was definitely not part of the establishment. He would do something very different. You know, the fact that the entire political class and entire media went after him, it was kind of worn wore as a badge of honor to show that, well, they don't own me. And people, you know, they didn't not vote before because of it.
They voted because of it. This was important.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 0: Yeah, here is. And I'm I'm not even sure how to explain what happened to Trump because, you know, one can say, yes, that The US is to a large extent controlled or influenced by Israeli foreign policy, but that can't be it only because I I I don't doubt it, but but one also has to look at the threats against Panama, the, you know, the kidnapping of president of Venezuela. Now the war on Iran, of course, that can be explained, but he's already saying Cuba is next in line. They he might go for Nicaragua. He already attacked Cuba.
Why not threaten Canada? And it's just it's just yeah. Threatened Colombia as well and, yeah, Greenland, of course. I mean, they did the list of quite impressive for a second.
Speaker 1: It would be it would be quicker to list it would be quicker to list the countries that he didn't threaten.
Speaker 0: No. I know, which is why it's hard to understand what happened because he was, you know, he was the peace president. That that's that's what he was running on, and he prided himself in the first administration of not starting new wars, all of these things. So I'm not sure what happened to to Trump. He's you know, when he says, you know, we want peace, but peace through through strength, well, that's like the NATO motto.
That means essentially hegemonic peace. We'll be so powerful, no one can challenge us. We had hegemonic peace. That's why people voted for Trump because they they thought that this was exhausting The US. It was creating collective balancing, and but but here we are.
Back back to the same thing. That being said, this list of countries he wants to invade, from, you know, Venezuela, he said, oh, we got their oil in Iran. You know, Lindsey Graham made a point, oh, we're gonna make a ton of money if we can control their oil. Greenland have all these resources. How how do you see the are are we seeing the beginning of some energy war here, or because a competition over controlling the international resources?
You can say, yes. It's just The United States playing this game now. But if they're trying to, essentially, corner the market now with military force, other countries will have to respond in some way.
Speaker 1: Yes. But, you know, I think it's it's a lot more complicated than it has been for the past century because let's say this the scramble for The Middle East started, let's call it, about a hundred and twenty years ago. So it was nineteen o two, nineteen o three that the British realized that they need oil, that Middle East is very rich with oil, and they already started colonizing the Middle East in order to secure access to to to oil. And this has been almost a a constant of the foreign policy of Western powers. But, you know, today, we we do have a an energy transformation process that is based on, you know, advances in nuclear power and and electricity generation and battery technology and so forth.
And it's coming from it's coming largely largely from China, but it's other other countries are also participating. So, you know, at the moment where you have, you know, when you when you have battery technology that, you know, you can charge a a car battery in five minutes or ten minutes, and it runs, it can run 3,000 kilometers on one charge, that's a massive game changer that then impacts automotive industry. And then, you know, with respect to to, you know, the need for heavy oil for ships and diesel, you know, diesel engines and generators, well, you know, Middle East is not the only game in town anymore, and maybe this is why Trump was keen on controlling Venezuela's oil supply, and then maybe this this is why he's keen on securing Canadian resources. But, you know, then there's you know, Russia has massive energy supplies oil supplies is one it's one of the world's largest oil producers, and it's completely unrealistic for Trump to think that he can control Russia. And, clearly, they're losing grip on the Middle East, and I think that, you know, it's been let's say that it's been almost obvious that if he pulled the trigger on war against Iran that The United States would end up evicted from the Middle East.
And this is now probably going to happen. I don't see how they avoid it, and we can see even Trump in the last, I think, twenty four, forty eight hours has been saying, well, we don't really even have to be there because it's it's very it's it's very clear that this is an unwinnable war and that the longer it goes on, the more it plays to the advantage of Russia, China, and Iran, and the less it plays to the advantage of Western powers, which are growing weaker and weaker and weaker. So I think in the end, we're going back to the you know, I I I kind of predicted this in the past that either we're going to have the fall of the Western Empire or the West is going to close itself off into a block, you know, into into, like, a a former Soviet block, and we're going to have an iron curtain. And then they're going to try to regroup and reorganize themselves for for the next hurrah of of imperial wars and colonialism. But, you know, only the political establishments that are in charge in the West want this.
The people don't want this. And I think that today, unlike in the past, the people are more aware than ever before that their political establishments are basically Epstein classes and that the way we're going to win a better future and an emancipation is going to have to be by changing our political establishments rather than going along with, you know, whatever agenda they set in front of us. And, you know, given that they no longer control the narratives as as they one once did, then, you know, I think that the people have a very, good chance to actually prevail and that we see a complete transformation of the global order. And I think that, you know, like this is now that that discontinuity that we've been talking about for a while that the, you know, the five hundred years of Western centric global order is collapsing, and now it is collapsing. And so the energy dimensions will play a role, but maybe not in the same way that it has done in the twentieth century because oil is no longer the only game in town.
And then, you know, advanced technologies, we have a lot of catching up to do because, you know, China is leading the way. In nuclear technology, China and Russia are leading the way. The United States has nuclear technologies that are that are advanced and that could that could help them to catch up, but they're far behind, and they're too expensive still. American nuclear power plants generate energy that's five times more expensive than what the Chinese can build. So it's we we we really are far behind.
But, you know, if we integrate, if we if we say, okay. We have to give up on colonialism. We have to give up on imperialism. Well, then, you know, we can trade as partners in good faith constructively. And then, you know, we can sell them what we have, things that we do do well and buy from them things that we don't have, that we need.
And in that way, maybe, you know, the the dream of of the dream of peace and prosperity becomes realistic, not not a utopia. Because we also have to understand that the the wars, the misery that we've had to live with for so long are are the result of our money system and our political systems in the West, primarily in the West. West has been the driver of wars in the world. And so once this system is over overhauled and reorganized, then, you know, the the need to go to war drops away. It's it's not necessary.
So I'm I'm very hopeful in that respect. And maybe, you know, sometimes in history, very, very bad things happen, but, you know, they they blow open the path to very, very good things. So we have to we have to be very, how do you call we have to keep alert. We have to keep alert, and we have to make sure we're not hypnotized to sleep by our political leaders.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, a lot of this adjustment of of The United States away from the former model it had. That is after World War two, The United States was, you know, the factory of the world. It was the creditor of the world. It had dominated in technologies.
It controlled the maritime corridors of the world. It controlled the natural resources by allying up with the Arab states. It controlled the main development banks. It had the sole reserve currency. I mean, across all the economic levers of power, The US was dominant, and this is why hegemony could be established on the principle of a liberal hegemon.
Much like the Americans have criticized the British for in the beginning of the nineteenth century, they called it a free trade empire, because if the British were more competitive, all you have to do is push free trade, and no one would be able to compete with the British. But but now that this is gone, the essentially, the Americans can't compete well with the Chinese anymore. They're no longer the factory of the world. They can't produce that much. They're the deader of the world now.
And not just China, but you see through, for example, BRICS and these other multipolar form formats that a new world is being developed where it's not organized around The US. So having everything open and liberal is no longer the recipe for American leadership as it was intended to be after the nineties. But I heard some Americans refer to how they should reorganize the world. And remind me a bit of what you said there, that is, well, we have to stand up for then Western civilization, which means that the West should essentially, you know, block itself off a little bit from the rest. But this would mean for Europe to be exclusive economic zone for The US, which could be nice if it was after World War two, but a declining empire.
It's very different. That is, The US would be poor. It would be politically subordinated if it's not able to diversify and trade properly with the other great powers such as China and Russia. So how do you keep such a system in place? Because when you compare it to the Soviet system, that that seems about right.
Either you need some authoritarian model, or you have to demonize the outside world that is immoral to trade with Chinese or Russians. But anyways, this is not a model for prosperity. It's not a model for freedom. So I'm I'm just wondering how how do you see Europe how sustainable is this? Because after a while, the political elites, which advocate for this kind of economic isolationism and political subordination to, you know, what Rutte calls daddy, it it doesn't seem to have been based on much public support.
So after a while, wouldn't these governments just be washed away? And, I mean, in Europe, we just celebrated liberating ourselves from Russian energy and essentially liberated us ourselves from, you know, having industries. But now we see this extra hit in The Middle East. How how I mean, I can see why the Americans would wanna carve out zones of exclusive influence given that they can't compete properly with China and BRICS. But but why why how how would Europe look like in this formula format?
Speaker 1: Well, I think that the European system is is completely unsustainable, and I think that we are really in the danger of falling into some kind of an al Turkic Soviet type system, you know, where, you know, if you're unable to compete on world markets and you're unable to, let's say, destroy the regions and nations of the world that are are outcompeting you, then you erect an iron curtain, and you you you create, like, a like, a spider behind that iron curtain where, you know, it's all very, very austere. You know, you impose austerity. You impose a very, very rigid system of governance on on the people. But this is all these all these things with fifteen minute cities that they've been, you know, planning for us. But, you know, here we're talking about a very small political elite or, you know, quote unquote elite trying to exert control over, you know, hundreds of millions of people.
That never worked. That never ever worked in the past. It can sustain itself for some time. You know, Soviet Union was such a thing and it sustained itself for about three generations, but then it it it it still disintegrated. It still fell apart.
So it's not going to work anyway. And I suspect that in the West, it's not going to last as long as the Soviet Union did. You know? So it's going to fall apart anyhow, but something will inevitably have to take its place. And I think that that will largely depend on the people.
You know? It'll depend on a a a political awakening and people asserting themselves into the political process and rejecting war, rejecting an unaccountable system of democracy, you know, where you get to you get to vote between candidate a and b and c, but all three candidates have, you know, invisible strengths to some oligarchy that you are not allowed to even discuss. So I think that all of this has to change. And I think that in Europe, particularly, that transition might end up being very, very painful. And I hope that it won't involve revolutions and civil wars, but it might because, you know, the people who are in power now are not going to relinquish their power voluntarily.
So it's it's I I I think it's going to be very, very complicated in Europe. But, you know, history might be partly instructive in this sense, but but not not entirely. You know, we shouldn't we shouldn't fear French Revolution because, you know, back then, there were no other source you know, there were no other seats of power that had any influence in the in the same way that they do today. For example, Russia and China are, in in a way, leading the way towards a a different model of governance, and that will have a significant influence in Europe. And these are not fake models in the sense that, you know, Soviet communist revolution was a fake system in this sense because it wasn't it didn't emerge bottom up from the Russian people seeking seeking to over overhaul their system.
It was imported from the West, and it was a kind of a color revolution that happened. And then you had, basically, a government that you could in in some ways compare to Volodymyr Zelenskyy's, you know, Ukrainian government now. You know? Same thing. It was it was installed from outside.
I think this is you know, today we can we're we're not as vulnerable to these things, particularly since the the narrative is not under control. Well, I think that the beginning will be, let's say, the beginnings will take place through the democratic process, you know, because at some point point, Emmanuel Macron gets voted out, Friedrich Mertz gets voted out, maybe AFD takes takes power. We already are hearing sounds from European politicians that we have to reestablish good connections, good relations with Russia. You know, a year ago, you could not say that even. Well, yesterday we saw or today maybe even, we saw the Belgium prime minister say we need to fix our relations to Russia.
The Americans are dropping sanctions against Russia because of the, you know, market conditions. I think that the voices saying that we have to fix our relations with Russia, I think those voices are going to be growing stronger and stronger. Now we'll see how the other side will react. If they react with heavy handed repression, then we're moving in the direction of a civil war or a or a revolution. But if if they're forced to yield, then maybe we're going to have a gradual transition where, you know, Europe is going to be forced to open its markets to not just to Russian energy, but gradually towards towards the bricks, towards the multipolar integrations, Belt and Road, will need investment.
Investment might come from China and from the East. So I think that maybe there's a better chance in the near future that we are going to have a more orderly transition than we have had in the past. But it's basically, you know, it's very, very hard to answer these questions because even just us discussing this is already a step in the right direction, you know, in the sense that we are now aware that the current system is unsustainable, that very radical changes are coming our way, and that we have to be alert and engaged if we want positive outcomes out of this, and that we have to reject these simplistic narratives that tell us we're the good guys, those are the bad guys, and we have to fight, and we have to never give up, and we have to never let down the sanctions, and, you know, we just simply have to win. There's no compromise. I think that those arguments are going to be losing their hold.
So I I I genuinely hope for for good outcomes, but I I I think there's going to be a rough period for sure in the in the next probably one or two or three years.
Speaker 0: Well, you do see that the leadership of The United Kingdom, Germany, Scandinavian countries, the Baltic States, Poland, they seem not to care much about the you know, how the world is changing around them, that they will stick to their guns, that there can't be any compromise. So effectively, what what you described. But, yeah, this is a last question. I was wondering how you see this the possibility of this pulling in the Europeans into not just the Iran war, but possibly more direct with Russia. That is you know, you've probably seen in British media the reports that the Russians likely had Iran retaliate against British forces and provided intelligence in the Middle East region as as retaliation for the British attack on Bryansk.
I mean, I I don't have any difficulty in imagining this. I I think after four years of Britain taking the lead in in trying to, well, weaken Russia by essentially killing Russians, this is seems, yeah, very plausible. But but it does beg the question of whether or not this is something that can, again, pull the Europeans into the Middle East. Because if they get put pulled into the Middle East, I would assume that the Russians would step up any support for for Iran as well. So how how how do you see the possibility of this spreading?
Because this goes back to the main point. Everyone is affected by the Iran war. Usually, we we try to, you know, contain the conflict. You don't want it to regionalize or globalize, but this was always destined to, you know, become a global conflict. Because if Iran fears well, faces an existential threat, it will respond in a way which affects the global economy to to retaliate against Americans.
So now everyone has a stake in this. So it's just yeah. It's it's not the kind of war you wanna fight. So how do you see this possibility of the Europeans being pulled into this mess?
Speaker 1: I I think that the Russians will make this extremely difficult for the Europeans. You know, Russians have been very, very patient. They have been very, very careful not to make the mistake of providing any pretext for Europeans to evoke article five, to unite, to, you know, to pass the threshold of a collective war between Europe and the, you know, combined West. And I think that they know not to do this because that will be the fatal error for for the Russians. Not because they would lose that war, but be because it would it would become orders of magnitude more destructive.
Maybe Europeans cannot prevail over Russia, but, you know, together they can they can do a lot of damage, and so it will be it will be destructive for everybody. You know, the Germans made a mistake in World War one when at one point Kaiser Wilhelm no. Not Kaiser Wilhelm. I forget the name of the general, but, you know, they they declared unrestricted submarine warfare. And now they started sinking American ships that were they knew that they were shipping provisions for their for the Allied powers.
So in a way, from the military point of view, the Germans were justified to do that, but it created the pretext for Europeans to draw the Americans into the war. And I think that of all people, Russians have been very careful to study their history. So while militarily, they would be justified to strike at, let's say, British targets, like, I don't know, production facilities where storm shuttle missiles are being built. They will still not do this. But, you know, if I if I imagine that I was in a in in a Russian control and command hierarchy, I think if you wanted to retaliate, you could take advantage of the new situation in the Middle East.
And so, you know, Trump has been pressuring the French and the British to send their navies to the region and to try to keep the Hormuz gate open. And so if if French and French and British navy naval ships come within the range of Iranian missiles, well, then one one clever way of taking of retaliating would be to help the Iranians sink French and British naval ships. And I think that we might see that, you know, because that would that would do a few things. You know? It would destabilize French and British governments.
It would raise revolt against war. It would weaken them militarily. And in a in a sense, you know, I I I have to wonder if if that isn't part of Trump's agenda as well because he's already now saying, well, you know, if you don't wanna help us, well, I don't see what the point of NATO is. So we already see Trump taking advantage of this situation to say that, okay, you know, maybe we're done with NATO. Maybe NATO makes no sense.
So it's a it's the next you know, it's the next charge to blow up that alliance, which Trump has wanted to do for a long time, but he couldn't because he has too much opposition at home. But now with this new situation, he can can tell his audiences domestically, our European allies are completely useless. They left us completely alone to fight Iran. And so this this alliance is is there's no point maintaining it anymore. So I I I I think that the French and the British might get a black eye in the in the Arabian Sea or the Persian Gulf Persian Gulf or even, who knows, in the Eastern Mediterranean.
So that's that's going to be part of the unraveling of this whole situation. I think that NATO goes down the toilet, European Union probably with it, and in a in a very ugly, disruptive way, maybe the transition to the to the from from Western centric colonialist system in the world, we get a we get a multipolar architecture.
Speaker 0: Yeah. It could be. Well, all of this would have sounded like science fiction only a few four, five years ago, but now it seems it seems now it seems almost science fiction that the the status quo can't continue. So whatever happens after this, I don't think there's any going back to the way things were. So well, as always, thank you for taking the time.
And
Speaker 1: Thank you, Glenn. Always a pleasure to join you. Greetings to your audience, and until the next time.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Larry Johnson: U.S. Attack on Kharg Island Will Destroy the Gulf States https://youtu.be/h-VYTKzDMZ0 https://t.co/5QEvAEwMfS
Video Transcript AI Summary
Larry Johnson, a former CIA analyst, joins the program to discuss the dramatic developments in the war against Iran. The conversation centers on the strike on Karg Island, the strategic choke point for Iran’s oil exports, and the broader implications of escalating U.S. actions.
- Karg Island and the oil threat: The host notes that Karg Island handles 90% of Iran’s oil exports and asks why Trump isn’t targeting this area. Johnson argues the attack on Karg Island makes little strategic sense and points out that Iran has five oil terminals; destroying one would not end Iran’s potential revenue. He emphasizes that the U.S. bombed the runway of the major airport on the island, which he says remains irrelevant to Iran’s overall capacity to generate revenue. He notes the runway damage would not support U.S. objectives for invading the island, given runway length constraints (6,000 feet measured vs. need for 3,500–3,700 feet for certain aircraft) and the limited air force in Iran. Johnson asserts that Iran has indicated it would retaliate against oil terminals and Gulf neighbors if oil resources or energy infrastructure are attacked.
- Economic and strategic consequences of closing the Strait of Hormuz: Johnson states that the action effectively shut the Strait of Hormuz, cutting off 20% of the world’s oil supply, 25% of global LNG, and 35% of the world’s urea for fertilizer. He explains fertilizer’s criticality to global agriculture and notes that rising gas and diesel prices in the United States would impact consumer costs, given many Americans live paycheck to paycheck. He suggests the price hikes contribute to inflationary pressure and could trigger a global recession, especially since Persian Gulf countries are pivotal energy suppliers. He also points out that the U.S. cannot easily reopen Hormuz without unacceptable losses and that Iran has prepared for contingencies for thirty years, with robust defenses including tunnels and coastal fortifications.
- Military feasibility and strategy: The discussion covers the impracticality of a U.S. ground invasion of Iran, given the size of Iran’s army and the modern battlefield’s drone and missile threats. Johnson notes the U.S. Army and Marine numbers, the logistical challenges of sustaining an amphibious or airborne assault, and the vulnerability of American ships and troops to drones and missiles. He highlights that a mass deployment would be highly costly and dangerous, with historical evidence showing air power alone cannot win wars. The hosts discuss limited U.S. options and the possible futility of attempts to seize or occupy Iran’s territory.
- Internal U.S. decision-making and DC dynamics: The program mentions a split inside Washington between anti-war voices and those pressing toward Tehran, with leaks suggesting that top officials warned Trump about major obstacles and potential losses. Johnson cites a leak from the National Intelligence Council indicating regime change in Tehran is unlikely, even with significant U.S. effort. He asserts the Pentagon’s credibility has been questioned after disputed reports (e.g., the KC-135 shootdown) and notes that Trump’s advisors who counsel restraint are being sidelined.
- Iranian retaliation and targets: The discussion covers Iran’s targeting of air defenses and critical infrastructure, including radars at embassies and bases in the region, and the destruction of five Saudi air refueling tankers, which Trump later dismissed as fake news. Johnson says Iran aims to degrade Israel economically and militarily, while carefully avoiding mass civilian casualties in some instances. He observes Iran’s restraint in striking desalination plants, which would have caused a humanitarian catastrophe, suggesting a deliberate choice to keep certain targets within bounds.
- Global realignments and the role of Russia, China, and India: The conversation touches on broader geopolitical shifts. Johnson argues that Russia and China are offering alternatives to the dollar-dominated order, strengthening ties with Gulf states and BRICS members. He suggests Gulf allies may be considering decoupling from U.S. security guarantees, seeking to diversify away from the petrodollar system. The discussion includes India’s position, noting Modi’s visit to Israel and India’s balancing act amid U.S. pressure and Iran relations; Iran’s ultimatum to allow passage for flag vessels and its diplomacy toward India is highlighted as a measured approach, even as India’s stance has attracted scrutiny.
- Israel, casualties, and the broader landscape: The speakers discuss Israeli casualties and infrastructure under sustained Iranian strikes, noting limited information from within Israel due to media constraints and possible censorship. Johnson presents a game-theory view: if Israel threatens a nuclear option, Iran might be compelled to develop a nuclear capability as a deterrent, altering calculations for both Israel and the United States.
- Terrorism narrative and historical context: The speakers challenge the U.S. portrayal of Iran as the world’s top sponsor of terrorism, arguing that ISIS and the Taliban have caused far more deaths in recent years, and that Iran’s responses to threats have historically prioritized restraint. They emphasize Iran’s chemical weapons restraint during the Iran-Iraq war, contrasting it with U.S. and Iraqi actions in the 1980s.
- Final reflections: The discussion emphasizes the cascade effects of the conflict, including potential impacts on Taiwan’s energy and semiconductor production, multiplied by China’s leverage, and Russia’s increasing global influence. Johnson warns that the war’s end will likely be achieved through shifting alignments and economic realignments rather than a conventional battlefield victory, with the goal of U.S. withdrawal from the region as part of any settlement.
The conversation closes with mutual thanks and a reaffirmation of ongoing analysis of these evolving dynamics.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined by Larry Johnson, a former CIA analyst, to discuss the very dramatic developments taking place in the war against Iran. So, yeah, first, let me thank you for coming back on the program. It's good to see you again.
Speaker 1: Hey. Always appreciate the invite, Glyn.
Speaker 0: So I I wanted to, well, at least start by focusing on this Karg Island because this is this handles 90% of Iran's oil exports. So many commentators have been asking, you know, if this is really what can break the back of Iran's economy. So why isn't Trump going after this? Well, it appeared that, you know, we have reached this point now as we continue up this escalation ladder. Trump of course, The United States has now bombed Cargilland.
Trump claims to have totally obliterated, that's his words, the military the military facilities there. He did not touch the energy facilities, I guess for good reasons, but he is threatening now that the oil installations are next unless Iran folds. That is by opening up the Strait Of Hormuz. How are you assessing this situation? Because, you know, on one hand, if it's a bluff, Iran, you know, they they can't capitulate.
On the other hand, if Trump goes through with this, you know, this is like the nuclear option of, the energy war. So what does all of this mean?
Speaker 1: I guess Donald Trump reminds me of a casino's favorite client, you know, the one that keeps coming in and spending lots of money and losing. That's Donald Trump. This attack on Karg Island, but it just makes zero sense no matter how you look at it. They did not attack the oil terminal. Oh, that's the good news.
Iran reportedly has five oil terminals. So this is actually only one of them. Although it may pump the most oil or provide the most oil to a tanker to you know sell sell south out through the strait. This is not, you know, if they destroyed this, this wouldn't be Iran's only source of potential revenue. But they bombed the, the runway of the major airport.
So so, oh, good. That'll that'll keep Iran from using it except Iran's really doesn't have an air force. So the there's also talk of The United States invading, you know, trying to occupy Karg Island. Well, one of the ways you do that is you'd fly in troops or once the troops are parachuted in, gotta resupply them somehow. So you'd need to land on the runway except this runway is like I was told 5,000 almost six six thousand feet.
And they the way they bombed it, it means that it's only good for a 3,000 feet. Well, a c 17 requires at least 3,500 feet to land. So scratch the c 17 and that leaves you with a slow flying c one thirty. So I mean just it's like if you're planning a military operation on the island, you've now screwed yourself from The US standpoint. Iran has made it very clear that if you attack our actual oil terminals and resources, we will attack those in the of other Gulf neighbors.
And there are, you know, there are at least 13 different targets that they've identified. So Iran didn't react immediately or, you know, angrily last night when this happened or it happened early Saturday morning in Iran time. It was late Friday, East Coast time. So this was it's like just lashing out to be lashing out. It's not part of a strategic picture because you've got to sit back and say, what is Trump trying to accomplish?
Well, what has been accomplished as a result of this attack on Iran is shut shutting down the Strait Of Hormuz. And in doing that, you've you've now closed off 20% of the world's oil supply, 25% of the world's liquid natural gas, and 35% of the world's urea which is needed for fertilizer which you know about 75% of the arable land in the world is above the Equator. So that means we're now in planting season and you know the 35% drop in the fertilizer is huge. That means that there's some crops that aren't going to get planted or aren't going to grow. And then when it comes harvest time that means food's not going to be harvested.
And there's going to be a drop in the food supply, the global food supply. So literally can affect billions of people. On the gas front, the the price is now rising very rapidly even here in The United States. I've, you know, I've been monitoring it at my local gas station A week ago on Sunday, I paid 50¢ more than I had the previous five days. So last Sunday, was $3.00 4.
On on Wednesday, the price went up to $3.19. And then on Thursday, it was $3.24. And then yesterday is $3.32. So it's essentially come up almost 80¢ in a week, a little over a week. That is, you know, I'm fortunate.
I'm in a financial situation where that having to pay that amount of money increase. Okay. I prefer not to do it, but I can do it. But an estimated 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, which means that they're not they don't have a lot of spare cash. And so this is gonna impact not only their bottom line, but then the real killer is on the diesel front that the price has gone up over a 1.5 and it's approaching $2 Well, every truck that holds supplies for grocery stores, supplies for you know, the the hardware stores, for Walmart, for price club, for any of these major, know, vendors.
Their prices are gonna go up, and they so when the fuel price goes up, it's gonna get passed along to the consumer. So I get the strategy comes back. So you're you're trying to heighten inflation around the world. And in the course of doing that also put in place a recession? Because what we know from history is every time this has happened in terms of spiking oil prices, there has been a recession.
You know, that varies the length and the depth of it has varied. But we've never had a situation where the entire Persian Gulf has been closed off as it is and the shutdown of operations in the three, you know, three, four critical countries there apart from Iran when you look at Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and then Qatar and United Arab Emirates. Keep wanting to say Dubai and get it mixed up. So, you know, we're an uncharted territory as far as history goes. You have nothing to point back to and say, oh, yeah, this is what happened that time.
So the the potential of this to create actually a global economic catastrophe is high. And so Trump's response now is to double down militarily except they have they're in a situation that they that The US cannot militarily defeat Iran. You can't do it from air. Air power has never won a war. And there was an air force general that testified in The United States a couple of weeks back that that admitted that.
I mean, that that history clearly shows. So you say, well, what about ground troops? The the age in which, you know, twenty three years ago, The United States could assemble soldiers, over the course of nine months at bases in Saudi Arabia. They were quite safe. They weren't facing drone strikes.
They weren't facing missile strikes. Not today. You couldn't you could not do that. You could not assemble an army that would be required to take on Iran, number one. Number two, The United States doesn't have that size of army.
A total total current military strength is a 445,000 US army and about a 180,000 marines. You know, good luck. 600,000 against a million man army in Iran, that just, you know, doesn't work. So there are though there are valid reports that they're deploying for two different numbers, 2,200 marine amphibious unit and then a 5,500 or 5,000. I don't care whether it's you know 2,200 or 5,000.
Again, what are they going to do? The the notion that this is gonna be like World War two or, you know, the the marines are in their watercraft and they're charging towards the shore and the ramp's gonna come down and they're gonna storm into that's not gonna happen. Those craft would not even get close to Iran. They'd be blown out of the water. So it's it's it's unclear how they're gonna try to employ these marines.
You know, they could try to parachute them in some place, but again, once you parachute them in, how do you resupply them? And they're gonna be through whatever ammunition and food and water they carry within a day. And so if you can't resupply them, they're dead. Plus, his these American planners apparently are have not watched the with the war in Ukraine. And there's a real reason why you don't see mass movements of troops on either side because with drones combined with artillery, it it it it's impossible for soldiers to move in large units.
They'll be decimated.
Speaker 0: Well, one takes the Iranian oil off the market is one thing, but I'm just thinking that this mass Iranian retaliation I mean, I think there's a reason why the Iranians haven't attacked the Gulf States' energy facilities to such an extent because, you know, then it will be open season on the Iranian. Right. But if the Americans go after this, why why would Iran be restrained in any ways? Then it should, well, just essentially burn it all down, and the the Gulf States would essentially cease to exist, at least the smaller ones. So it is it's a very crazy even threat to make.
So and once making these threats, it's often very difficult to climb down, especially when you turn on the TV. I think, yeah, Keith Kellogg was also coming out, you know, we should just take it over. But, you know, one one thing is if if if the objective is to invade it, but the alternative is is, of course, just bombing it, destroying it all. But then, you know, the every energy facility in The Middle East would be on fire within the next few days. So Yes.
It just seems like an, yeah, insane escalation. But but Trump is under great pressure to do something, though, because now he's been, you know, committing himself to this rhetoric that, you know, he can open the Strait Of You know, ships should just go through. It's not a big problem. But how would you assess this, though? Like, how how can The US reopen the Strait Of Hormuz?
Speaker 1: It can't. No? Cannot. No. Cannot be done.
Well, it cannot be done with, acceptable losses. Yeah. You you can militarily probably do it, maybe accomplish it, but the the the cost, the actual physical cost and manpower losses would be horrific. And in in the actual ships, they can't do it just from the air. I mean, there are caves and and tunnels all along the side of that coast.
And, you know, Alastair Crook has been there and seen it. Now Iran's been preparing for this contingency for thirty years. You know, so they're not just a bunch of guys with a, you know, who built a wooden deck out on the side of a cliff with a machine gun. You know, that, you know, that's nonsense. If, if you've not had a chance, to watch the interview, that, Danny Davis did yesterday with, Robert Barnes.
Robert is an attorney, but he's he's well plugged into the Trump administration through J. D. Vance. And what he's what he said is that Trump is now shut pushed away. Anybody like Tulsi Gabbard and J.
D. Vance who have tried to counsel against the war and with Iran. He's only listening to those who are egging him on. Yeah. You could do this.
Yeah. We're winning. Yeah. Keep going. Who aren't giving him actually an honest assessment.
And we know, you know, we now know that the battle is underway inside of DC between the, let's call it the anti war crowd and let's go all the way to Tehran crowd. So the first indicator was when Daniel when raising Cain, Daniel Cain, the general in charge of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, when the word got out that he had told Trump, you know, this is this this is not going to go the way you think it is or major obstacles, major problems. Trump ignored that. The next was the leak from the National Intelligence Council of their report, assessment that had been delivered to Trump a week before this saying, you know, you're not gonna get regime change no matter what you do out of this. And so then when the leaks start coming out that Trump is pushing people away, it wasn't just Robert Barnes, but pushing people away or that the losses, The US is sustaining greater losses that are being reported.
You know that information started to get on to the press. So this shows that there's real disagreement within the government. They're not all pulling in the same direction on this. The Pentagon's lies also are beginning to be exposed. You know, that KC 135 that was shot down.
Let me emphasize. It was shot down. It did not crash. The Pentagon claimed that it, you know, it crashed. So you have to step back and say, explain to me how did it crash.
Planes can crash on takeoff because of an engine failure or they're too heavily loaded. But this didn't crash on takeoff or they can crash while landing because heavy crosswinds or again, too much, weight on board or, a broken, you know, something some mechanical failure while they coming in for a final approach. But planes flying along at 25,000 feet, they just don't crash. Particularly if there's not bad weather, you know, they they just don't fall out of the sky. Well, this one got shot down.
But so they're lying about that. This is this they are desperate to try to have a military solution. Trump has got it in his mind that he can can win this. And anybody that comes and tries to tell him different is getting shut out. So this is it's like a King Lear situation, the madness of King Lear to go back to Shakespeare.
Speaker 0: Yeah. This the rhetoric from Trump is getting a bit wild. Again, he already declared victory, which is if if you're threatening to attack Carg Island and you know what the retaliation will be, that is all energy facilities and the Gulf States will burn and energy marks and global economy goes down the toilet, you would make these threats, you know, if if you already won, essentially. This is immense escalation, but there's also other rhetoric, though. We we heard that well, he tweeted out that Iran was about to take try to take over all of the Middle East unless The US had to attack, which seems like a desperate attempt to to make the war seem defensive or even legal because I think this is people look into these things.
They don't necessarily look into it if there's a great success, but once there's a failure, people will look into these things. But also, one of the changes or interesting talking points now has been this Iranian sleeper cells
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
Speaker 0: And the possible surprise attack on California. I, you know, I guess this is to, you know, brand Iran properly as a terrorist state that, you know, could also engage in terrorism against The United States. So, you know, why not link link them to September 11, you know, if you're gonna go there? Yeah. But how do you make sense of this, though?
The the especially the, yeah, the sleeper cells and the, the the possible attack on California.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The the well, let's let's deal with this. So the attack on California. How the drone's gonna get there? I mean, you know, where where are those drones gonna be launched from?
Off the coast? You know, one of the nonexistent boats in the Iranian Navy that have you know, the Iranian Navy's been destroyed per Trump, so they no longer have a ship that could carry drones and sit off the coast of California and fire them into California. This, you know, this is all reminiscent of, you know, the Japanese attacking the West Coast of, The United States in World War two, claiming, oh, well, you know, we were prepared for that. It wasn't gonna happen, but, you know, nonetheless prepared for it. Now this is they have they've trotted out this scare story about Iranian sleeper cells so many times, and all you gotta do is go back and look at you know, we've got forty six years of data in terms of Iranian support for terrorism, and it just doesn't support The US narrative.
Iran has not been going out of its way to try to engage and attack The United States. Well over well, in fact, would say all of the attacks that are attributed to Iran or Iranian proxies on The United States were in retaliation for things The US did, you know, such as the the bombing of the marine barracks in '19 in October. That was in response to The US battleships back then. We still had the New Jersey. They were offshore lobbying shells into the Bacal Valley killing Shia.
And that actually wasn't carried out by an Iranian proxy. It was carried out by Amal, which was a longtime Shia group in Lebanon and had been there. You know, they formed in 1972, seven years before the Iranian Islamic Republic came into existence. We have not had a single terrorist attack in The United States in the last, you know, forty six years since Iran has come into existence that could be pinpointed to Iran or an Iranian proxy, not one. But it's, know, we always trotted out there to justify why we've got to make Iran an enemy.
And at the same time, the actual Islamic radicals that have carried out or tried to carry out terrorist attacks are linked to ISIS, which is a Sunni outfit. The, you know, Shia version of Islam is not big on suicide bombers. It's not big on that kind of fanatical sacrifice. Whereas the Taqfiri version of Sunni Islam, Wahhabi version, It is. We just saw this they had that attempted bombing the other day, two guys in New York City.
ISIS, not Iran, ISIS. So they did point to this one guy down in Texas that he showed up and shot up a bar killed you know killed 14 people I believe or at least four people. Again, he was not acting on orders from Iran at all. Because that's just not how Iran is operated. And when, you know, the reality is when you look at which country has been carrying out terrorist attacks against the other countries, The United States.
You know, we've we've we've funded rehabilitated the MEK. The MEK has been carrying out terrorist attacks regularly inside Iran, you know, well over the last thirty years. So but it's just it's well it's it's a it's a political manipulation. It's designed to manipulate public opinion, to reinforce the narrative against Iran without allowing Americans to step back and take an objective look at what is this all about.
Speaker 0: Yeah. I thought that was strange when, when Iran had to be, I guess, sold as the number one sponsor of terrorism in the world. And, you know, they have to flesh out the argument and referring to roadside bombs in Iraq against, you know, The US occupation forces and then going back to Lebanon in 1982 when World Technique was Hezbollah, I think, that did the bombing. It's it's it's not very convincing in terms of the in terms of listing it as the world sponsor of terrorism. Yeah.
But no. But how about the the the targets that the Iranians are going after? Because it does seem this that they're systematically going after key targets that is the radars, which are quite important. So they took out the one at the US embassy in Baghdad as well. Again, it's more difficult to intercept Iranian drones and missiles, and we see the military bases, embassies.
All of this kind of fits within the wider objective of expelling The United States from the region. But we also saw now this this message about a report about an attack on these five refuelers in Saudi Arabia. I think they were the KC one thirty fives. Yeah. And Trump went out and called this fake news.
But, again, he's he says a lot of things. So
Speaker 1: I'm No. No. That and and that's abs I I I knew about that before, it was reported. And they weren't just damaged. They were destroyed.
And, the the reality, there now is, the air defense system at, Prince, Sultan Airbase. It does it it's no longer intact. It doesn't work. So the Prince Sultan Air Base is basically quite open and vulnerable to Iranian attacks. And The US US is having to, you know, withdraw its troops from there.
The the Air Force personnel. Cause they're not protected. They're they're intense. And so they're the very vulnerable to an attack. So this is, you know, the the loss of those five tankers is just another example that Iran had a battle plan in mind that they were gonna do two things.
One, they were going to weaken and try to drive out the US military from the Persian Gulf and to do that by destroying the bases. Two, they were going to take out the radar systems that are critical for detecting launches out of Iran and monitoring air both threats in the air and on the on the sea, maritime threats. They did that. They did that within the first four days. And and despite the claims that you've although we had these robust air defense systems around the bases, one of the radars was taken out by a Gharan drone.
Not exactly a high speed missile. So this then their third objective was to degrade Israel economically, militarily, destroy their infrastructure. You know, I think it's worth noting that Iran, despite massive missile strikes in Israel, has not been trying to inflict massive civilian casualties so far. Because somebody said, well that's just because Israel's censoring that information. No.
If they really were if Iran was really targeting schools with children, for example, and killing them. Israel would make that public. In fact, I'm surprised they haven't even fabricated that story as well as try to build further public opinion against Iran. So Iran's been quite careful on that regard. But then also the you know, their eye for an eye strategy.
If you hit our oil, we're gonna hit your oil. If you hit our bank, we're gonna hit your bank. And so they just Dubai they just took out a Citibank building or at least hit it. I don't it didn't destroy the building but it was one of those big big skyscrapers and it suffered quite a blast. The one area, curiously, that they the Iranians did not respond to with the counter punch was when their desalination plant was hit.
And so in turn with it only accounts for about 8% of the water in Iran. So it's not a critical resource. But they declined so far to go after the desalinization plants in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait. Recognizing that that actually, that could jeopardize, put put a risk millions of people and really create a human catastrophe. So I think Iran, they are they're being thoughtful about this.
They're recognizing that there's a political consequence to some of their actions, and so they're keeping it in those bounds. But they the the the The US as was admitted in the Wall Street Journal, and and this is one of those other signs that the support for Trump is fading. They said, hey, the the The US grossly underestimated. They did they didn't even take into account the possibility that Iran could close the Strait Of Hormuz. They have Iranians have far more ballistic missiles than we assumed, you know, that kind of thing.
Speaker 0: Well, this well, of course, they can escalate the targeting of the Gulf States, but Iran doesn't have to destroy all US bases in the Gulf States. All they have to do I mean, they don't have to destroy these these countries. All they have to do is, I guess, incentivize them to decouple from The United States. And, you know, and you've seen, I guess, some of this was the rhetoric of, you know, that they will only target countries which host American bases, and, of course, the bases themselves. But that's why, you know, for Iran, the presence of these refuelers in Saudi Arabia, it kinda confirms that the Saudis are then assisting in what was a surprise attack on Iran.
But there's another but there's another thing that came out. That is the suggestion now. I haven't seen if it's been confirmed, but it came from, I think, yeah, some come Iranian commentators that Iran might consider allowing ships through the Strait Of Hormuz who are paying it in Chinese yuan as opposed to dollars. This will be you know, if this is confirmed, this will be another form of the the decoupling. Do you do you see any pathway forward?
Do do you think the Gulf States will be you know, would would wanna accept something like this? Because on the one hand, you know, The US does make them more more vulnerable to attacks. On the other hand, they don't have any militaries of their own. So how how would they defend themselves without The US? It seems like a bit of a security dilemma that is, you know, if you accept the help, then you'll have war.
If you don't accept it, you could be overrun. So yeah.
Speaker 1: We'll Yeah. I I I I think there's at least in in Saudi in the in the Saudi case, there's a reassessment underway recognizing that, you know, they made a deal with the devil, The United States back, you know, in the 1970s where The US went off the gold standard, The we convinced the the Saudis to go along with using the dollar as the primary reserve, you know, means for purchasing oil. And so the effect know, the the petrodollar as it's come to be known, reigns supreme. And then that foster this relationship between the Saudis and The United States. We guarantee their security against threats that, you know, we claim to exist or we'd create for them.
But I think now, Russia and China are playing this, you know, quite smartly. They're in a position now to create an alternative for to The United States. And I I I see it could it could be more attractive to the Gulf Arabs. At least it'd be it'd be less of a subservient position. Those those countries don't normally come in and, you know, tell you what to do and boss you around, like, you know, some servant.
So the you know, it's I think we're we're looking this is part of the realignment of the international financial system too because, you know, in the past, you know, you'd have to price of oil goes up and, you know, people were paying in dollars. Know, the Chinese are paying dollars, and then, you know, what they do with all their dollars? Or they'd buy US treasuries. Well, they're not doing that anymore. You know, one of the other, ironic outcomes of this war is before The United States now let's remember, The United States and Israel started this.
And you'd think that The United States would have stepped back and looked at it abroad. What's our what's our overall objective strategically in the world? But no, they didn't. So as a consequence of this war, whereas five weeks ago, Scott Bessent, the secretary of treasurer of the treasury was insisting that India stop buying oil from those Russians, and we're gonna punish any country that's buying Russian oil. Today, hey, India, we think it's a great idea.
Buy as much of that Russian oil as possible. And, you know, Russia, which previously was selling its oil as low as $55 a barrel to India, is now it's it's well over $80 or maybe closer to $90 a barrel. So they're raking in an additional $150,000,000 a day, which is 4.5, roughly 4,500,000,000.0, $5,000,000,000 a month. So, you know, all the Western analysts were predicting the the implosion of the Russian economy or that it was in trouble. Here here's Putin.
That's just the oil. They've they've also got an advantage. They got liquid natural gas. Hey. Anybody need any liquid natural gas?
Russia's got some. And fertilizer. Who's the other largest producer of fertilizer in the world? Oh, that'd be Russia. So in in a in literally from February 28 now to here we are at March 14 in fifteen days.
They have taken they've you know shored up the foundation of the Russian economy in a way that nobody could have predicted a year ago. So this, you know, again this goes along with the changing picture because when when this war ends with Iran, it's not gonna end with US troops marching through the streets of Tehran. It's not gonna be a victory march of Israelis and US soldiers waving their flags as the Iranians, you know, submit. No. It's gonna be The United States and Israel they're gonna have to figure out how to back out, you know, how to how to get a victory.
I I did raise the possibility that Trump in his wild rhetoric about, oh, man. We devastated Cargilland. Therefore, we've we've accomplished our objectives. Mission accomplished. We win.
So we're gonna pull out and we're gonna stop all these attacks on Iran because they're devastated. There's nothing left with their leadership. There's nothing left with their air force. We win. That's Trump's only way to get out of this mess.
Speaker 0: Well, yeah, but that's the problem. He doesn't there's no escalation dominance. He doesn't get to decide when the war ends. And if the Strait Of Hormuz remains close for hostile countries and, you know, for the Gulf States until they paid reparations for the damage done to Iran, You know, it's very hard to sell this as a victory no matter how many, you know, parades he might organize it.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah. But No. I I agree with you fully. That is you know, that's where they're they could get they did that with the Houthis. Okay?
They could get away with that with the Houthis because the Houthis weren't sitting there continuing to bomb US military bases. They they stopped launching missiles into Israel, but they continue to stop ships from going, into an Israeli port. So, you know, but nobody nobody is keeping tabs on the ships. They weren't easy to see. But this, how does he, you know, he can declare victory, but the very next day, Iran's gonna continue launching missiles, attacking US military bases than any that remain, and and hitting Israel over and over and over and over until the Israelis are gonna they're gonna beg for it to stop.
Well,
Speaker 0: I the I'm glad you brought up the Russians because I I saw from the British media that apparently one of the state media commentators in Russia, Karnilov, he he linked the British attacks on Russia, with the storm shadows
Speaker 1: Mhmm.
Speaker 0: With Iran's attack on British targets in the Middle East, saying, well, more or less that, well, you know, this this shouldn't surprise the British. Now they'll, you know, get it in return. Again, I I didn't watch the original clips, you know, have my skepticism towards the British media. But, again, it's seems also, I'm not sure if if that's a commentary correct, if it's actually based on reality. So, again, I don't know the substance, but it wouldn't surprise me.
And I kinda made the comment myself, I think, like, two, three years ago that, you know, in the native countries, we tend to fight a lot of wars. And at some point, the Russians will be in a position to do what we do in Ukraine. That is we're setting up a firing position where we can shoot at the Russians, but they can't fire back at us. And Right. I'm I'm wondering if you see that this is that the Russians might go for something like this.
Again, pure vengeance, I'm not sure, but certainly to restore deterrence that is to show that it will have to come with a cost, anyone who essentially attacks Russia.
Speaker 1: Well well, first, the I I did hear Alexander Mikuros discuss the possibility that the the British launch you know, supported this launch of storm shadows into Bryansk that killed six people, that that was retaliation for Russian attacks. So Russian support for Ukrainian attacks on British troops, in the region. And so we can't rule that out. What what I've what I found, you know, I'll call it amusing, is the West is all in a huff that my God, Russia's supplying support to Iran. How dare they?
It's like, you know, pot calling its kettle black. This is, you know, here's here's The United States and the NATO countries for more than four years. Not only provided weapons, they provided intelligence, they provided an intelligence surveillance reconnaissance data, ISR data. They've planned attacks against Russia. I think, you know, candidly, I think Russia has been far far too passive in reacting to these.
You know, I I think the the time has come that Russia needs to put The United States and NATO countries on notice that any reconnaissance aircraft, even if it's in international airspace, but it's in a position where it can collect data on Russia and and provide it to Ukraine, then it will be shot down. It's it's it's now these are now targets. This is an effective state of war exists between Russia and the West to back them off. They've got to understand. They've got to run away with this cost free.
And, you know, Russia's motives in helping Iran are not out of vengeance or to seek a revenge against the West for what it's done to them in Ukraine. It's just the opposite. Iran exists as a strategic site, a critical node in the multi nodal world or they want to call it multi polar, but I think a multi nodal is a better way to express it because it sits Iran sits at the crossroads both of the the new Silk Road coming out of China, as well as the North South Economic Corridor, though it comes out of Russia, as well as its strategic positioning in with the Persian Gulf, with the Indian Ocean. So both Russia and China have recognized that Iran has some very critical important strategically, which is their main reason to support Iran. What I'm fascinated by, let's call it, the maturity and restraint with Iran's diplomacy.
And how they've dealt with India is a case in point. You know, Prime Minister Modi was in Israel two days before the attack on Iran by The United States and Israel. And, oh my God, it was was obscene. It was so, you know, or if there was a way that you could watch something on television and get diabetes, this would have done it. I mean it was that sweet and trekly and he was just obsequious doing everything, but giving you know, bb netanyahu a back rub.
And it was made came out with claiming to have a strategic alliance with Israel. Well, two days later Israel hits Iran and kills Iranian leadership, kills children. And then when Iran shuts down the Strait Of Hormuz, all of a sudden you heard this loud puckering factor going on in India. Oh my god. Because 80% of their oil comes out of the Persian Gulf.
What were they gonna do? And in fact, I I really thought that Iran because here's you know, India is one of the founders of BRICS, and yet by siding with Israel in such a public way, it was really undermining its other BRICS partner, Iran. But instead, you know, Iran played it pretty mature. They came back and said, oh, no, no. This, you know, if it's an Indian flag vessel, if it's a vessel carrying oil to India, that'll be allowed to pass.
And that may have had something to do, know, the India obviously is gonna have to pay full freight. They don't get it for cheap like they did before. But it shows that the the Islamic Republic Of Iran is not this vicious terrorist beast that the West is portraying it as. And, you know, I cited the earlier example. They didn't also go after the desalinization plants.
And they've been relatively limited in their strikes. They have tried to avoid hitting purely civilian targets in all of the Gulf countries. Now the The US Todi that's in Bahrain or the reports are he's fled, the king, they continue the Bahraini government continues to take a very adversarial stance towards Iran. United Arab Emirates reportedly were involved with the attack on Karg Island last night, so they're gonna pay a price, a heavy price. But I I think Iran is they're still looking down down the road.
We gotta we ultimately wanna repair the relations with these countries, but we're gonna we're gonna get The United States out. The United States is gonna have to leave that region, as part of any settlement to this war. And until that war settled, Strait Of Hormuz is gonna remain closed and the world, I I believe, we're gonna be facing a global depression, not just a recession.
Speaker 0: I think, well, these kind of demands, they're understandable, but at the same time, they can't be met by The US. So this is kind of like a recipe for for a long war. But I I agree also agree with your sentiments on India, though, because they kind of they they played some of the cards wrong because they allowed themselves to bend to US pressure on on scaling back on the Russian oil purchases. But now, of course, the Americans say, oh, wait. Maybe you should do that after all.
But their their discount, so the oil is now premium priced oil. So it it it might not have been a great move. And but also the Indians with, you know, Modi visited Israel and this kind of, you know, does it is not good optics. And also after even inviting Iran to pray participate in this naval exercise, then The US sank its warship on the way home. And the Indians, as far as I know, couldn't muster condemnation.
I mean, this was they were invited by them, and they're sunk on their way home in international waters. And no. It it just yeah. It looks like they played some of the cards a bit unwise here. Just as a last question, what what do we know about the destructions in Israel?
Because, you know, they keep a very tight control over their media, and I think our journalists in the West are quite, you know, obedient or loyal to this to this restrictions on revealing losses or destruction within Israel. But what do we know so far?
Speaker 1: Well, we know through what we're not seeing. Let me explain. If I'm telling you, Oh, everything's fine, but you can't come take pictures. You can't come look. That tells you everything's not fine.
They've turned off the satellite, the you know, public satellite that are capable of taking real time images out of Israel. They've been turned off. They're not providing that product anymore. Now, you saw that CNN was allowed to go into Iran and report, and CNN was not faced with saying, oh, you can't report here. You can't report.
Turn the camera off. No, were they were allowed per it appeared pretty wide access. So this this tells me and and having watched there are a few images that get out, you know, every day. You've had, I guess, we're up to 42 waves of missile attacks into Israel since February 28. You know, that that's huge.
So that's roughly three waves of missile attacks per day. And these are now where they're they're carrying 2,000 pound warheads or upwards of 3,000 pounds. So this is, you know, it is definitely causing damage in Tel Aviv and Haifa. The port has been hit. The oil refinery reportedly has been hit.
They did there were images that emerged last night of Nevatim, the Air Force Base down in the Negev Desert. So this is Israel cannot take this kind of pounding. And people say, well, why do you what about Iran? Iran's, you know, what, times bigger than Israel? Israel's got 55% of its population in just two cities.
Now, as big as Tehran is with what, 10 to 12,000,000 people and some say with the metropolitan area it gets up to 15,000,000. Okay. They got 15,000,000. They still got another 75,000,000 people throughout the country in different cities and towns. And the next nine largest cities in Iran, they're all about a 2,000,000.
So there are not these huge metropolitan areas. So they're actually relatively dispersed. So the point being, if Iran and Israel are firing the same amount of munitions at each other every day, Israel's gonna degrade quicker and faster than Iran. And Israel's gonna be in a position that they will not be able to sustain this. Which then raises the issue of will they will they wanna use a nuke?
And there's that possibility. And I think the, you know, the guy wrote an article on the game theory behind this. And you know, basically the game theory solution is if Israel is threatening to use a nuke, the only thing the best solution for Iran is to immediately produce a nuclear weapon. If they've if they've got a demonstrated nuclear capability, it's going to force The US and Israel to change their calculations because no longer Israel in particular can't risk launching a nuclear strike on a nuclear armed Iran because Iran can then come back and destroy and literally destroy Israel. An Israeli strike on Iran would cause terrible loss of life, terrible damage, but it would not destroy Iran.
Israel would be destroyed.
Speaker 0: Well, I think the yeah. The Israel the Iranian territory should be about 75 times that of Israel or something. It's it's really huge. So, yeah, it's it it does require also the population, of course, with 90,000,000 people. So it does require a whole lot of more firepower.
But Yeah. It's yeah. This is this is the big thing that just perplexes me that they keep making these demands, ultimatums, bluffs for which essentially demands that Iran capitulates the same as, you know, giving up the ballistic missiles. And, yeah, and then they're they're left with the option of what Iran predictably won't and can't accept, then they either have to allow their credibility to falter or they must go up the escalation ladder, which will just make matters much worse. So it's you can see the destructive path we're going on, yet no one is doing anything serious to put an end to this.
And, again, given that what Iran wants and then to US presence in the region and compensation, you know, it will be different. And
Speaker 1: elimination of sanctions.
Speaker 0: That's right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And look, I think they've got We're seeing again something we've never seen in history where one country can choke off and close off a critical economic lifeline and has control of it. And the rest of the world or the parties that are most affected really can't do anything to reverse it without incurring a terrible cost that they're not willing to pay. And that cost would be loss of life and loss of ships. It would be very devastating for The United States, for Japan. The other really interesting thing that's playing out now is what's happening with Taiwan.
Taiwan's gonna run out of power in ten days. What do they do? So all this chip production that's there, that's gonna that's gonna stop. They don't have the energy. Oh, they've got to come up with an alternative source.
What source might that be? Gee, China? Russia? So China has now acquired increased leverage over Taiwan. Yeah.
This is, you know, this is a five d chess that's going on here. The the cascading effects across the board. You know, in fact, I didn't it never entered my mind when, you know, when I heard they closed the straight, I thought, oh, boy, that's gonna be bad for oil. And then when I started looking into it and ran across that this export of urea, I had no idea. You know, and at 35% of the world's supply, good lord.
That is significant. So all of a sudden, you begin to see that this in this, you know, the whole strategy that outlines that Iran is in a place now that it's going to be able to dictate terms of surrender. Because despite, you know, US tough talk and all that, the economic pain is gonna become such for so many countries that are aligned with The United States. The countries that are aligned with Russia and China, they're gonna be okay because Russia is an alternative source to the Persian Gulf and it's going to it's gonna even strengthen it further in terms of economic power and political power. The countries that have, you know, coming out, they're getting they're they're relying upon Russia to supply gas, oil, fertilizer.
That buys, you know, buys Russians more goodwill. What's and what's The United States done? United States has kicked off a war that's caused all these countries pain. You know? So when we come knocking on their door, they're not gonna answer.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Also, if if you're almost the only adversary, then The US could perhaps invest more resources, both, you know, blood and treasure into this. But as you suggest, you know, Trump never finished The US participation in the war against Russia, well, the proxy war through Ukraine, and also never made put an end to the the economic war and the the military threats or buildup in the competition with with China. So it's yeah. Going after all of these three at the same time, this defeat in Iran will be so much worse.
I mean, you know, and even America's worst enemies wouldn't want to see too much of a humiliating defeat because this is not a source of stability. So, no, I'm I'm worried what is coming. But but, yes, as always, my friend, thank you very much for taking the time. Do have any final thoughts?
Speaker 1: Yeah. One, I I just wanna go back to the terrorism thing. I just I pulled up the statistics for 2017 just to put a, you know, an exclamation point on this notion that Iran's the number one sponsor of terrorism in the world. And these are the stats actually for 2016 and 2017. Number one, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, ISIS.
And these stats did not include branches of ISIS like Al Nusra, Hayat, Harirah, HaShem. This was just strict up ISIS. Total deaths in 2017, four thousand three hundred and fifty. In 2016, nine thousand one hundred and eighty. So right there you're looking at over thirteen thousand five hundred dead at ISIS.
They were number one. Number two were the Taliban. They ran about 7,200 deaths in those two years. Number three was al Shabaab. Again, Sunni, not Shia.
They killed over 2,100 people in those two years. They list the Maoist Communist Party of India, the CPI Marxists. They actually were the fourth highest for 2016, 2017. And bringing up number five was Boko Haram, another ISIS, you know, not a single Iranian group in there. Not a single Iranian backed group.
And that's been the case every year except the statistics did show for 2023. They lumped in October 7 and Hamas now appears in the top 10 for that year. But, you know, this this argument, the demonization of Iran as a terrorist state is it's a damnable lie. And let me one final point. We go back and look at what happened to what Iran did in response to the Iraq war when Iraq used chemical weapons against Iran.
And those chemical weapons that were provided by The United States and built by Iraq used against Iran that started in August 1983, continued through August 1988 over 20 chemical weapon attacks, weapon of mass destruction. Iran never developed a chemical weapon and never used a chemical weapon on the battlefield. Why? Because as it was a sin against God to do that. So, I think the world underestimates as well the role of the religious conviction in Iran's policies in this.
That they're not this, you know, we hate the Christians, we're gonna kill all the Christians and Jews nonsense. Just the opposite. The Iranians over over the course of actual war have shown far more decency than has The United States in all of its wars in my
Speaker 0: judgment. Yeah. No. Well, reading from the media, you you oh, this this the the talks about Iran is you know, they they talk about burkas and suicide bombers, but, you know, first of all, they don't wear burkas in Iran. And second, the the suicide bombers have those extremist organizations have tended to be on the Sunni side, not the Shiites.
So Right. It's there's a lot of, yep, well, propaganda. There's no other words for it. But Yeah. Yeah.
Well, as always, thank you very much, and Thanks. Taking time out every day. Know you're busy, so thank you.
Speaker 1: Well, well, you're busy too, and you're doing doing great work. Keep it up, Glenn.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Yanis Varoufakis: Iran War Collapses U.S. Neoliberal Economy https://youtu.be/sxMrNecpBjM https://t.co/P3xqBOxby6
Video Transcript AI Summary
Glenn: Welcome back, with Janis Varoufakis, former Greek finance minister and founder of DM25. The world has grown more dangerous. He notes the war in Iran is asymmetric: the US is more powerful but Iran can shut down energy trade and view the conflict as existential, willing to shut down the global economy to avoid defeat. Glenn asks where the war is headed and whether there is an off-ramp.
Yanis: The US has a history of asymmetric conflicts where it enters with confidence and exits with its wings clipped—Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria. Iran has faced stronger opposition than those cases, and despite striking Tel Aviv and Gulf bases, the US pain threshold seems lower than Iran’s. He points out the difference this time is a broader regional and global resistance and Iran’s capacity to respond through strategic actions like shutting Hormuz, making escalation costly for the US.
Glenn: Economics show that industrial might, supply chains, and technological sovereignty matter, suggesting a shift away from free trade. He asks whether these lessons will redefine Western ideology and asks about the role of deindustrialization over the last decades.
Yanıs: He says the shift began after Bretton Woods and the era of financialization and neoliberalism, with industrial capacity shipped out and the West leveraging finance and, later, big tech. He notes Margaret Thatcher’s role in deindustrialization and shipping capacity abroad, and he is surprised Trump fell into a war against Iran without a clear exit strategy. He argues Netanyahu’s influence pulled the US into a long war, framing it as a tactic to keep Israelis in fear and justify annexation moves in the West Bank, thus sustaining conflict. He also addresses the liberal-imperialist claim of liberating women, stating that women of Iran do not need bombs and that liberation would require defeating the powers that prevent peace and democracy, citing the 1953 coup and the suppression of the left in Iran after 1979. He emphasizes that the regime’s survival has involved neoliberal policies within Iran and that both reformists and conservatives in Iran ultimately align around survival and regional power, with the regime having benefited from long-term Western hostility and recent escalations.
Glenn: Raises the point that the US miscalculated even the narrative—often incoherent, with statements about “liberating women” fluctuating between aims of freeing women and destroying Iran’s ability to rebuild.
Yanīs: He challenges the idea that this war is about liberating women, and reiterates that the people of Iran face a stark choice between the current regime and a failed-state trajectory. He argues the regime's popularity is enough to sustain it, and that external pressures are not driving a straightforward democratic outcome. He notes that the real losers are ordinary people in the US, Iran, and globally, with rising food and energy prices, while the leaders of Iran may see gains in rallying around a common external threat.
Glenn: Cites Trump’s tweets about higher oil prices and questions the populist credentials when the impact is on the average person.
Yanīs: He discusses the changing nature of warfare, highlighting drone technology as a major shift. A drone economy makes cheap drones capable of challenging costly missiles, altering the political economy of war and enabling autonomous, AI-driven weapons. He notes that drone warfare, as seen in Ukraine and now Iran, could lead to a permanent-war dynamic where peace becomes a system error. He mentions how tech companies like Palantir train AI for civilian and military applications, including hospital management, illustrating the broader commercialization of war tech.
Glenn: Reflects on how competition among NATO, Russia, and China could reshape power dynamics, particularly with autonomous weapons and the ability of adversaries to strike at vulnerabilities.
Yanīs: He cautions about the risk of a broader great-power war and notes that drones, autonomy, and AI could enable rapid decision-making with less human oversight, expanding the lethality and reducing accountability.
Glenn: Observes that Iran can absorb pain and still threaten Hormuz, while the US and Israel may be unable to declare a decisive victory without economic and political costs. He asks where US and Israel go from here.
Yanīs: He argues Netanyahu seeks permanent war to justify expansion, while the Trump administration would like a quick victory. He underscores that a clear victory is hard to define when Hormuz remains contested, and that Trump’s options may be to declare a triumph or continue the conflict, depending on midterm politics. He emphasizes that the war’s outcomes are measured by the cost to ordinary people rather than leaders’ narratives.
Glenn: Adds that the war’s casualties and economic effects will hit working people hardest, and notes Trump’s failure to align populism with real-world costs.
Yanīs: Returns to the moral dimension, explaining that he has opposed illegal wars by the US and Israel in various contexts and that his duty is to call out both sides, stressing international law and stopping his own governments from dropping bombs on Iran as the top priority.
Glenn: Agrees, adding that human rights should restrain war, not justify it, and warns against substituting humanitarian rhetoric for power plays.
Yanīs: Concludes by recalling past anti-war activism and reiterates that solidarity should resist imperialism, not substitute it with bombings of other regimes. He emphasizes choosing international law and opposing the gang-like rule of Western governments.
Glenn: Thanks Yanis; Yanis thanks him as well.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined today by Janis Varoufakis, a professor, the former finance minister of Greece, and a founder of DM twenty five, that is a democracy in Europe movement. So thank you. It's good to see you again, and the world got a lot more dangerous since last time we spoke.
Speaker 1: Yes. Indeed. Thank you, Glenn. It's always good to be back. Your your podcasts are, you know, array of sanity in this dark environment that we increasingly descend it into.
Speaker 0: Well, thank you. I appreciate that. But I do see that, well, this war in Iran, besides being dangerous, though, it's also very interesting as it's asymmetric warfare. So The US is obviously much more powerful, which, probably is why there has been a significant amount of hubris. It entered this war with a lot of confidence and assumption of escalation dominance, yet we see the Iranians are forced to fight with other means, including the ability to shut down the energy trade.
And given that they also see this as an existential threat, not just an efforts to, you know, liberate women or something, they they seem to be willing or prepared to shut down the global economy in order to avoid defeat. So where do you see this war heading? Because it seems like everyone is betting everything on it, and I don't see an off ramp for anyone.
Speaker 1: Well, you must remember that this is not new. The United States has engaged in a series of asymmetric conflicts where it entered with immense confidence and exited, sometimes many, many years later, with its wings clipped. So, you know, Afghanistan. They invaded Afghanistan. It took them twenty years to be defeated, but they were defeated.
And they left, you know, with the Taliban whom they had initially intended to eradicate by the original invasion, they left the Taliban stronger than ever. Iraq, you know, shock and awe. George W. Bush walks in there, effectively takes Iraq in a day or two, declares victory on the aircraft carrier, if you if you recall, I'm sure you recall. And then the the the attrition began until, again, The United States were defeated.
I think the difference here is that The United States, if anything, faced a lot more opposition than it did in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Libya, in Syria, countries that they devastated with ill intent from the beginning, then you know? So, you know, the Iranian regime has been preparing for this, and it is quite interesting, is it not, that they still are capable of striking Tel Aviv, striking American military bases in the Gulf area. And in the end, within a week or so, we now see that the United States government's pain threshold threshold seems to be much lower than that of the Iranian regime.
Speaker 0: That also seem that the if you look at the economics of this war, that much like in Ukraine, one sees that industrial might is important, that one can't rely on this international supply chains anymore. That is you know, the past, we would just assume if everyone does free trade, we'll do our comparative advantage. It seems that our lessons from both Ukraine and Iran is, you know, a great powers need technological sovereignty, some supply chain security, and, of course, the industrial might. Did did did this does this change our entire ideology now? Because over the past decades, everything had to be free trade.
That is, if someone else can make your weapons, then you should outsource it. But but but how do you think this is gonna change, essentially, essentially, the world? Because, yeah, this lesson seems to be, well, slowly learned.
Speaker 1: Yes. Well, you you make a good point that, the difference with the Vietnam War was that, everything that followed after the early seventies and the demise of Bretton Woods, the era of financialization and neoliberalism, which, as you indicated, was an era during which the industrial foundations of the West were given away by Western elites, by Western ruling classes. They were shipped out, and essentially, they leveraged their financial sector. Now they are leveraging leveraging their big tech sector. And they thought that they could get away without having an industry.
In the case of The United Kingdom, Margaret Thatcher, who actually led the neoliberal assault on industry, in order to eradicate the trade unions, essentially to defeat, the working class in a very nasty class war. She was the first to, pay the ground for this deindustrialization process and, shipping out of, industrial capacity to places like China, Vietnam, Southeast Asia, and so on and so forth. So, you know, the chickens are coming home to roost, but, I'm particularly surprised, Glenn, that, Donald Trump, fell for it. Now I would have thought before the foolish decision to start a war against Iran without any exit strategy whatsoever that he would try to do what he did in Venezuela, which is, you know, come in, do something really against international law, like abduct Maduro in the case of Iran, kill Khomeini, then declare victory and go home. Because if had if he had done just that, then he would have been okay, you know, in the same way that Venezuela in the end was just a very brief moment during which he could claim to have toppled a dictator, in words of commas, you know, some some to use Roosevelt's terms, a bastard that he considers to be his own bastard or not to be his own bastard as in the case of Trump.
But he didn't do it. And I think that the reason why he fell into this trap of, entering a war that is now sacking him in with devastating political effects on him is, Israel. Netanyahu proved yet again perfectly capable of dragging The United States Government into a never ending war, a permanent war, which is the strategy of Israel for the purposes of creating permanent insecurity in the mind of Israelis in order to constantly pursue another war in the region, whether it's South Lebanon or Yemen or Syria or now Iran, all that for one reason, to create a lot of noise, to have all Israelis hooked on warmongering and on, you know, this false notion that Israelis are fighting for their lives and for their survival. False notion, which is necessary in order to continue the one thing that Netanyahu cares about, which is the annexation of the West Bank, the steady permanent ethnic cleansing until there's no Palestinian life left in Palestine, which, of course, goes hand in hand since the days of area of Sharon, if you remember, with the conversion of Gaza into first a concentration camp and now a genocide site.
Speaker 0: But well, you mentioned Iraq and Afghanistan. And well, I guess what was different there, though, is that the The US had more, I guess, escalation dominance. It was able to control the, I guess, the war to a greater degree. This time, of course, not answering these questions that why go in, what can be achieved, how do we get out, it seems that well, I heard that the the Americans didn't consider well, they considered the possibility of Iran shutting down the Strait Of Hormuz as being, well, unlikely. So it wasn't really factored in as something they assumed would happen, which is very strange because this, you know, would should be the first thing they would do if if they face such an existential threat, that is to deny America this escalation control, to put Iran on the slow burner, and why do you think the miscalculation was so so radical?
Because we see this not just poor war planning, but even the narrative planning in advance. They haven't even come together with a shared story why they attacked. Once they try to come up with a shared story, they end up, you know, making it sound like Israel chose this war for them, and they can't say this. So you saw them flipping back and forth. They you know, is this about liberating women, you know, liberating Iran?
And the next day, Trump is saying, you know, our goal is so the Iranian nation won't be able to rebuild again. I mean, this is they it doesn't seem to be any cohesive narrative either. How do you explain them? Not just the miscalculation, but the poor planning. Is this just hubris?
Or because this is kind of spectacular.
Speaker 1: I'll be controversial and brief in my answer. Just because none of this makes sense to me. I just didn't think that Trump who let's not forget, in his first term, resisted successfully Israel's drive to cop him in the war against Iran. There was immense pressure on Trump as it was on Obama and other American presidents coming from Tel Aviv, coming from Israel, to, unleash a war against Iran. And Trump one point zero resisted that and very successfully.
So the question your question is, how did he fall into the trap that he's now, dwelling within? Because I don't see how he will be able to escape from that Trump. And the only answer I can come up with, Glenn, and this is is going to be the controversial part, is because there's no absolute no sense of why he's doing what he's doing. It seems to me that the only rational explanation is that Netanyahu had something on him, that Israel had some hold over Trump two point zero, which it didn't have on on over Trump point one point zero. And this explains why, he got in there, because there's can be no other explanation.
You you put it brilliantly when you said that what what were they what were they thinking? Did they think that the Straits Of Hormuz would remain open if they wage a never ending bombardment campaign against Iran? So in the absence of any other rational explanation of why they did this, the only conclusion I can reach is that, you know, Netanyahu had something on him, which Trump feared more than the quagmire in which he has now landed just before the November for for congress. But but this one very crucial point that you raised twice in our conversation so far, and I need to address that. You mentioned the excuse that they are trying to liberate women.
And this is a question that I think we have a duty to answer. I feel I have a duty to answer. When liberal imperialists say to me, whether it is now or years ago when it came to Afghanistan, but what about the women? Yanis, you are condemning American imperialism, but, that was a solution for women, wasn't it? Well, no.
It wasn't. The women of Iran, Glenn, do not need bombs coming out of f 30 fives being dropped upon them by, let's not forget, a misogynistic, misanthropic, racist Washington administration, or indeed by the genocide of the supremacists of Tel Aviv to evoke the wonderful slogan of women and men demonstrators, especially after the murder of Amini, the young 17 year old girl that was that died in custody in Iran for not wearing her hijab. Woman life freedom. Right? That movement.
Well, the path to woman life freedom does not run through the smoking ruins of Tehran. The idea Czakaravorty Spivak, the feminist political philosopher, put it beautifully when she said that the notion that white racist men will liberate brown women by bombing them, their children, and their brown men, and that they this is going to pass to their liberation from brown men. That is absurd. Absolutely right. Their liberation, the liberation of women in Iran, as in Afghanistan, as in Iraq before that, it runs through the defeat of the very powers that have spent seventy years ensuring that Iran can never know peace or democracy.
Remember the nineteen fifty three coup d'etat that overthrew the democratically elected government of Mosaddegh? That was the CIA. So my point is that the people of Iran must first be liberated from the clasps of the hideous choice between the current regime and a fate which is worse than Iraq, Libya, and Syria combined, because this is what the wants for Iran. And he's the driving force in this. This is not Trump.
Trump has been corrupted for reasons we would find out in five, ten, twenty years. Netanyahu's plan is to turn Iran into a failed state like Libya, like Syria. That is not going to be the liberation of the women of Iran. We have to be very clear on this. This is a feminist point, I believe.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, I saw yeah. The CPAC president, he was making the point that those 160 young girls, them dying might be better than them having to wear burqas, but, you know, they he did they don't wear burqas in Iran. He didn't seem to know that. And, you know, I was in Iran last year as well, in May, right before the Israeli began to bomb, and even there's across the streets, there's many, many women who choose not to wear the hijab either.
So it's I think the the impression one all all almost gets is that it's like the Shia version of the Taliban, but it's I I just it doesn't mean that the the government there is, you know, liberal and tolerant in every way. Just it just seems like it's been demonized a bit beyond what seems reasonable. But I like your data, this idea that the whole concept of liberating other peoples because you saw this after the French Revolution that is, you know, supposed to be a liberal ideal, and then, of course, they move on. We're gonna liberate other peoples as well. Or after the Bolshevik revolution, we we were now free from, you know, the capitalist class now.
We're gonna bring freedom to other peoples. It's always dangerous when when when this becomes when one mix these values of freedom with with the dominating abroad. But, I I how how do you see, though, the the the government of, Iran? What their objectives are now? Be well, first, I think many people in The US missed that the theocracy they have in Iran today.
That's also linked to this fifty three kudo. That is after the Americans installed a very brutal shah and his savak, which is essentially the Iranian SS at the time. You know, the only place you can have some open speech were in the mosques. So it kinda made sense that political discourse merged with religion. But, again, a lot of this seems to be something of their own creation.
But but the way Iran is today, how do you assess their objectives, their their goals? What what do they want to achieve in this war? I I know they didn't choose the war, but now that they're in this Mhmm. I mean, if if you're advising them or someone else is advising them, what what advice do you think they're getting?
Speaker 1: Well, before I answer your question, which is a very important question, let me say that in the end, The United States don't really change much today. Do you remember after my lie in Vietnam that American general who came out and justified the massacre of the of the Vietnamese civilians by saying that, oh, well, we had to we had to we had to destroy their village to save them from communism? This is very much, you know, the same argument that we had to kill those young girls in their school, bomb them bomb them to smithereens, turn them into a human pulp of flesh and bones and blood in order to save women. You know? This there is a continuity in the misanthropy of The United States imperialism.
Now coming to your question about the Iranian regime itself and whether it's been demonized or not. Of course, it's been demonized. And, know, I'm saying this as an opponent of theocracy. I'm saying this as a, you know, as a libertarian Marxist, as I call myself to confuse people, and a feminist. But, you know, compare and contrast Saudi Arabia with Iran.
Now in which country do you think women are more oppressed? I would say it's Saudi Arabia. Nobody's thinking of bombing South Saudi Arabia into the Middle East. Indeed, mister Trump and his sons, are doing brisk business in Saudi Arabia, and they are considered to be, you know, they are very faithful allies. So let's dispense with all this nonsense.
Now regarding the regime, look, here I'm going to speak to you as a left winger because the left in the West needs to be reminded of what this regime is like. In 1979, Glenn, when the people of Iran rose up against, as you put it, the fascist dictatorship of the Shah and his gestapo that the CIA had helped him build up the SAVAK. You know? To that you know, an intelligence and suppression agency that became synonymous with torture in Iran. First, have the 1953, overthrow of democracy by the CIA and British intelligence services.
They imposed this ruthless fascist dictatorship. So, you know, that's when they lost all moral rights to be talking about, you know, democracy in Iran. And that created the spontaneous revolution of ninety seventy nine, which was not just Islamic. There were progressives. There were socialists.
There were communists, And they all recognized the importance of the figure of Agathollah Khomeini, and they supported him. When The United States realized under, yeah, president Carter at the same at that time, who was supposed to be the most liberal and, you know, the nicest of of the presidents of the postwar era, When they realized that the Iranian revolution was going to succeed in toppling the Shah, the CIA, the Pentagon, the State Department immediately took the side of the most virulent Islamists within that movement. And lo and behold, once the Islamists took over that revolution, the first thing they did, Glenn, was to murder the left. They took the whole central committee of the Communist Party of today, you know, a party that had participated in revolution of nineteen seventy nine and who they had supported Khomeini and murdered them. Moreover, from the day the the the the the the from the beginning, while being less plutocratic than the Gulf States, than Saudi Arabia, and despite having more of a social conscience than those Sunni regimes in The Gulf.
Nevertheless, very soon after ninety seventy nine, nineteen eighty, the Iranian regime adopted in the context remember, this is the time when neoliberalism is beginning to establish itself in the West with Thatcher, with Reagan, and so on. They start adopting neoliberal policies. Especially in the nineteen nineties, there was a wave of privatizations, of subsidy removals, of effective austerity. Yeah? Effective austerity that was being imposed by the Islamic Republic regime upon the majority of Iranians.
And, you know, if if you go to 2017, 2018, the first rebellions, then again, 2022 when Masham Amini was murdered, so in police custody, as I mentioned before, and there was this uprising again, the undercurrent of that uprising was a response, a social upheaval, a social rebellion against the neoliberal policies of the regime. And, you know, anybody who has been watching the Western coverage of Iranian politics for the last, you know, twenty years, thirty years, would have noticed that in the West, we talk about the reformists and the conservatives. Well, you know, these are indeed two factions within the Islamic Republic, the regime, and they have differences. But their differences are not that much regarding, you know, right wing or left wing. No.
The difference is that the so called reformists are keener to integrate the private enterprises that they are controlling, the result of the privatization drive. They want those private enterprises to be connected, integrated with particularly the European Union and The United Kingdom. And if possible, The United States, but they understand that this is hard. And they were the ones who were so gung ho about the the Obama plan because Obama, you know, he actually said this to me personally when he was still president in the White House in April 2015, that his number one priority before leaving office back then in April 2015 was to reintegrate Iran into the international capitalist financial circuits. And, you know, he had signed the agreement.
He had the European Union on board. Then Trump comes in and tears this up. The conservatives were not keen to see their own own, the enterprises that they had appropriated through privatization, be integrated with the West. They they didn't trust that the West would allow them to be integrated without ditching their projects of creating an Islamic golden age. So they were more oriented towards China, towards Russia.
That's the split. Now ever since the Israelis turned the long standing, long term campaign of ethnically cleansing Palestine into a pure and undiluted genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. And following the bombardments last June of Iran by Trump and Netanyahu, the conservatives within the regime and the so called reformists, I think, realized that, you know, there is no room anymore for them to be at odds with one another. And they entered a new phase of survival. And, you know, they've been preparing for thirty years for that.
They have apparently very large stocks of drones and of missiles. And in any case, let's not forget that they sustained a hideous eight year war that The United States unleashed against them via their stooge in the area, who was their stooge, Saddam Hussein, whom, The United States controlled and whom they directed to invade, Iran in 1980 in order to topple the regime, funded by Kuwait and by the Gulf state the other Gulf states. And they they suffered more than 500 600,000 dead. They suffered chemical weapons provided by The United States. So it's important to remind ourselves of that because, you know, the the bombs that Israel and The United States are now unleashing from the sky just above the heads of the Iranians, both the people and the regime, I don't think they have the capacity to achieve that which Saddam Hussein failed to achieve using chemical weapons.
So to put it bluntly and to answer your question, I think that in terms of survival and maintaining their regime, I think that they owe a debt of gratitude to Donald Trump.
Speaker 0: Well, no. Definitely. Well, this is a common feature, though. Nothing creates more internal solidarity than an external power attacking you, but but they're also able, besides the government, to hold hold on to control and, you know, enjoy enough public support. They're also able to absorb the pain, it seems, in terms of the attacks on, well, military facilities, economic and other civilian infrastructure.
So given that they're able to absorb this pain and more or less Trump confirmed that they run out of military targets to hit, who do you think will win this war? And what would such a victory actually look like?
Speaker 1: Well, I know certainly that who's going to lose this war? It the people who are losing every day are the people of Iran, the women of Iran that supposedly the West is liberating, the people of The United States, the working class of The United States. So the working classes of Iran and The United States are losing. If you are a MAGA supporter who voted Trump into office, And, you know, you're driving on average a 100 miles an hour to go to work and come back from work a day. You're driving a very thirsty S U SUV.
You are hardly making ends meet, and now you have double petrol prices. So you are the great loser. You are a great loser if you are an Iranian who is not connected to the chronic capitalism of the regime, if you're a woman. These are the people who lose. So the vast majority of the Americans, of the Europeans, of the Iranians, of the people in the global South who now see increases in the price of food because fertilizers are going up, bit one because oil is going up, because natural natural gas is going up.
So, you know, the the workers of the world are united in being the losers of this war. And who is winning? I think, if anyone is winning, it is the leaders of the regime. Think of Khomeini, you know, the younger, who is now the supreme leader of Iran. From his perspective, he is occupying a high moral ground.
You know, his father was killed. His wife his wife was killed. His mother was killed. His sister was killed. His son was killed.
And he remains, to the extent that he's still alive, at least for now, he remains embedded within Iran where there is still very high support for the regime because that regime was not imposed from abroad. It rose up organically. Whatever one may think about it, and as I said, I'm an opponent of that regime. But nevertheless, it is one that has popular support, maybe a minority support, but a large minority support. And the most important thing is what I said earlier.
I'm gonna repeat this, Glenn. I hope you forgive me. Amongst the rational sen sensible dissidents, the Iranians, who on the one hand, loathe this regime, but on the other hand, have a capacity to think think things through, they can see that they don't have a choice between democracy and theocracy. This is not the choice that they are being offered. If if if that was their choice, they would have chosen democracy.
Normality. But that's not the choice. The choice that the Trump, Netanyahu illegal war is forcing upon them is between theocracy, the current regime, and a failed state, Libya, Syria. And they are reluctant to choose the latter just in order to get rid of the theocracy, and that is a great success story for the regime.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Find that Trump actually tweeted out that oil prices going up is good. America is an energy exporter. We're getting rich but rich, but as you said, it's important to look at the classes, I guess, because I assume the oligarchy will gain some money from this, but the average person is not gonna see anything. They will have
Speaker 1: Of course not.
Speaker 0: Higher prices at the pump. So, no, this does this does make any yeah. It's a bit strange because he ran not just on being anti war, but he also ran on populism that is arguing that the elites were too detached from the public. It seems like his tweets makes him the worst populist ever. He's he's he doesn't seem to appreciate how how this affects the man on the street instead only, yeah, how the large corporations will do.
How do you see, though, the warfare has been changed? Because I when I watched the Ukraine war over the past few years, I you know, one one couldn't help but to see that the western were able to put up a nice firing position in Ukraine, that is that they could essentially shoot at Russia, and Russia wouldn't be able to hit them back. You know, they could attack and destroy Ukraine, but but but for the West, we kinda have immunity. You can, you know, strike Russia. But but now we see, you know, Russia sharing intelligence with Iran or allegedly, but also it seems very, very likely.
And China also has a great surveillance in the region. I assume they would also be sharing with Iran. We see the Iran holding the Gulf States responsible for using, their territory. There's some talk about they should have compensation after this war. So the the rules of war appears to be coming more complex.
Do you did did you see this as being a, I guess, stable format, or or is this ready to or has it a potential at least to begin to expand into a larger great power war?
Speaker 1: Well, I hope it doesn't expand into a greater power war because then, you know, a nuclear winter is going to consume us all. Look. I'm not in the business of prediction, but what I can say is that the the the major change in relation to the past and to past wars is drone technology, the way in which drones have changed the political economy of war and the balance. I'm not gonna say anything that you don't know that our audience doesn't know, but it's important to bring this in. So when you have a $5,000.6000 dollars worth of a drone that is being knocked down by the Americans using a $1,600,000 worth of a Patriot missile, then the political economy is operating in a way that is inimical to the interests of to to the project of Donald Trump.
In in Ukraine, the drone wars have, I think, alerted us to a very serious danger that we are facing as a species, as humanity. And I think the war in Iran is now confirming that. Now if you look at the Russian Ukrainian war, it's a war between drones, and in particular, it's a war between the technicians that try to jam the signals of the drones of the enemy. That means that we are moving very quickly to a situation where the winners will be the ones that manage to create autonomous drones based on AI so that there's no need to have a human, directing the drone, wirelessly. That that that is important because once we rely on machines that we send out into the and then they operate autonomously.
Point number one. Point number two, when you have so many of them that all the other conventional weapons are rendered useless, like leopard tanks and, you know, conventional cannons and all that, and you have essentially a swarm of AI driven machines that kill each other and kill people. And no there's no human in the chain reaction where decisions are made every fraction of a second as to who is gonna be shot and who's going to be killed. Then suddenly, we are in a techno feudal kind of war game or, you know, battlefield or killing field where, you know, The United States president, the general of the American army, or indeed of the other side as well, have the capacity to make a decision. That they have a capacity to decide, okay, let's go to war.
In other words, we're again we're moving there's a very serious risk that we're facing as humanity, as a species, that we're going to move into a permanent war where, you know, war is the default and peace is a system error. And, you know, we are not there yet. But, you know, with the war in Ukraine, the manner in which Palantir and Tropic and Amazon and Google and so on trained their programs in Gaza, in order to sell software to the military, militaries around the world, but also for civilian use. Palantir developed a program for management managing the, you know, difficult moments in British hospitals, difficult moments, let's say, is a pile up and lots of patients, lots of injured people arrive at the doorstep of a hospital. How do you manage the nurses and the doctors in order to minimize panic?
Well, you know, Palantir trained its models, AI bots and software in Gaza to sell for millions and millions, if not billions, to the British National Health Service. So if you bring all this together, then I think we need to reexamine everything concerning war and peace.
Speaker 0: That's also interesting. The the competition would not just be, you know, more advanced technology. It's also more reckless decision that is the whoever would lower, I guess, the threshold for drone autonomous drones making kill decisions, they would have a competitive advantage on the battlefield. So it becomes a very ruthless weapon, the whole idea that we'll have moral guidelines. That's something that would hold you back, essentially.
So it creates very dangerous incentive system, but but also, you know, with technologies, you see opens often see this leapfrog that is, you know, the NATO countries had this very, you know, military advantage for many years now. But with the introduction of drones, suddenly, of course, after the Ukraine war, the the Russians will have the most battle hardened, you know, well, well well trained army in terms of knowing how to use this on battlefield, while the Chinese would have, I guess, a technological standpoint, very advanced weaponry, also given that they have the proper supply chain dominance. They, you know, they they're actually getting the rare earth minerals, the antimony, all these things which they need to build all these weapons. It looks as if the the shift in power is not just economic. It's also military technology.
Russia and China will look very different than they did only ten years ago.
Speaker 1: That's correct. That's correct. Yeah. Yeah. But
Speaker 0: if if we're going down the path, it looks like we're going. That is that The US the the Iran is able to absorb all the pain. Yes. There will be dealt a lot of death and destruction, but they're able to absorb it and essentially begin to weaken America's bases in the region, shut down continue to shut down the Strait Of Hormuz. This destroyed the economy.
Well, how do you think where where does US and Israel go from here? Because, you know, these are both two deeply militarized states. Mhmm. They base their security, Israel, on regional dominance, The US on global dominance. None of them can just pack their bags and go home and say, well, know, give you some superficial claim of victory unless they actually have a victory, and the Strait Of Hormuz is open, for example.
So where do they go from here in terms of
Speaker 1: I think the Yeah. I think the important thing to note is that Israel and The United States, even though they are completely united in this war a series of war crimes that they are implementing, that they are doing, they are very different when it comes to what their administrations are interested in maintaining. Netanyahu wants permanent war. Netanyahu wants to continue to expand the killing fields around Israel. He doesn't mind a few ballistic missiles falling into Laviv in order to keep the Israelis insecure.
This is what his game is. Maximum Israeli insecurity to justify his permanent war so that it creates a lot of noise in the cover of which he can continue with the that are part of his coalition with the IDF, with other agencies to throw Palestinians out of their homes, to burn down their olive trees, which is happening as we speak, the West Bank is totally annexed against the the, you know, the prohibition that even The United States under Trump has issued toward the notion of annexing the West Bank. So, you know, Netanyahu ideally would like to continue this bombardment of Iran and the engagement with Iran, the murders ad infinitum. But that's not the Trump administration. The Trump administration would like to end it as soon as possible.
The problem it has is that just like, you know, Lynton Johnson in the nineteen sixties or, you know, Richard Nixon after that, the he needs to to to to declare victory. Now, of course, Donald Trump has what it takes, unlike other American presidents, to do that which Roman emperors used to do when they sent legions to what is today Germany, and they got their backsides kicked by the Goths. And some of those Roman emperors just said, okay. Alright. Fine.
We can defeat those Germans, these Goths. So what we're going to do is we're going to declare victory and have a triumph in Rome and have a party, and, you know, eat and drink and enjoy ourselves. He could do that, but he's got the midterm elections. This is not a popular war in The United States. Unlike other murderous wars by The United States, illegitimate wars by The United States, illegal wars by The United States, which were popular in The United States.
This is not a popular war. So he needs to be able to say, look. Here's something that I achieved. He can't do that if he removes his troops and his troops, his aircraft and aircraft carriers. And the Iranian regime continues to close down the state of Hormuz and to say that, you know what?
This is not over for us. He killed our supreme leader. He murdered so many people. He murdered those girls in the school. We are not going we are going to decide when this war is over.
You're not deciding when this war is over. And this which is what they're saying now. That puts Trump in an awful situation because he can't even claim with any degree of credibility that he achieved something. So unless he proves audacious and he, you know, gives the spin and says, oh, I killed Khomeini. I killed so many of them.
I've taken out so many targets. He has no compunction. He could say that. Remember, he in June, he said that he took out the nuclear program of Iran. Well, now that he started this war, what was his excuse?
That he wants to take out the nuclear program of Iran. Well, mate, you know, you tell told us in June that you took it out. He doesn't care about being caught in a lie. That's the best hope we have, that he would do one of those, you know, Roman triumphs. And, you know, who cares what whether people believe that he won or not.
That is the best case scenario. But if he wants to open the stage of hormones and show the American people something that will convince enough of them to reelect Republicans in the mid November they in the midterms in November, then I think that we may be in there for the long haul.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Because there's nothing he can do really to open the Strait Of Hormuz's arrow. I mean, I mean, he keeps bragging about destroying the navy, but the I don't think they need that big of a navy to
Speaker 1: You just need a drone. Sorry? You just need a $5,000 drone. Yeah. And Iran has an endless capacity to produce those as, you know, not just Russia.
Ukraine does. Because, you know, the you mentioned Russia having panoply of drones, so does Ukraine. Yeah?
Speaker 0: Oh, well, they can build a set of apartment buildings, so there's no there's no need for massive military factories. So yeah. Maybe. No. This yeah.
That I guess that's what this makes the war so dangerous. Everyone's is locked in a position they can't withdraw from, and, yeah, the stakes are only raised. But
Speaker 1: Yeah. But can can I can I say something on a personal note?
Speaker 0: Yes, please.
Speaker 1: Glenn, I'm tired. I'm speaking personally. You know? Once again, I find myself caught in a in the conundrum of opposing an illegal war unleashed by The United States on a country whose regime I vehemently oppose. And and even bring just remind our viewers, because maybe some of them or many of them would have a similar feeling or experience.
In 1999, having previously campaigned against Milosevic in Yugoslavia, you know, I was forced to denounce NATO's and America's bombing of Yugoslavia. In 2003, after two decades of campaigning against Saddam Hussein, I was even arrested once in London for opposing Saddam Hussein when Saddam Hussein was the blue eyed boy of the West. Remember? You know, I demonstrated after that against the American coalition's invasion of Iraq. In 2011, I was indignant with Gaddafi's regime in Bolivia, and I opposed the American led bombings of Libya that turned that country into a quagmire.
Last year, I always called Bashar al al Assad a ruthless dictator, and yet I was lamenting the American Israeli machinations that turned Syria, in fact, overturning over to an al Qaeda operative. And now, you know, after having celebrated the woman life freedom rebellion, I find myself in a situation where I have no alternative than to, you know, condemn the American Israeli plan to devastate Iran. And there are many people who accuse me both of being a stooge of the Iranian regime and, you know, a stooge of The United States. And they accuse saying, oh, you're trying to be neutral, Yanis? This what what is this?
Both both sides and we are taking both sides. No. What I'm saying, and I I felt the need to Glenn, you know, to finish off with this statement, is that, you know, my duty as a westerner, leftist, is very simple. When the gang ruling our neighborhood because this is what we have. Our leadership now operates like a gang, both in The United States and in Europe.
So when the gang ruling our neighborhood launches an utterly unprovoked attack on a faraway gang that I also don't approve of, killing innocent bystanders, I refuse to stay neutral. And at the same time, I refuse to pick sides. What I do is I try to call out both. But at the same time, I recognize a special overriding duty we have in the West to stop our gang. Because, Glenn, it is our taxes funding their bombs.
It is our silence that grants them consent. It is our governments that are doing the killing in our name. So we need to stop our governments from dropping bombs over Iran, and that's our number one priority at the moment.
Speaker 0: I agree. Well, it doesn't have to be a contradiction. One can, you know, take a position on human rights and responsible governments without diminishing sovereignty. That is yeah. Just, I think, overall, being critical of of governments, you know, not using human rights as an instrument for great power politics.
Yeah. I think that's where often many people make the mistake. So that's why I I just often find it fascinating that for twenty years, they were able to tell people that we occupied Afghanistan for twenty years, so little girls could go to school, or we invaded Iraq because of weapons of mass destruction or democracy or destruction of Libya and Syria because The US and NATO really cared about, you know, human rights, or in Iran that we just wanna help, you know, girls or, you know, democracy or it's Ukraine for that sense as sake as well, the idea that this is about democracy or freedom or sovereignty. I you know, great powers don't fight goals for altruism altruism. They have a power interest, and you dress it up.
So I think it's often easy to take advantage of, yeah, the yeah, higher values, if you will. It doesn't mean that people shouldn't have some higher values, but no. It's it's a it's a it's a shame as well because democracy has now become almost an and human rights become an ugly world almost. That is when you hear governments speak of human rights, you can hear the bombs being loaded onto the plane already, which is, you know, not what it was supposed to be. Human rights was supposed to restrain what you do in wars, not to enable wars, but this is the path we've gone down.
So
Speaker 1: Indeed. Indeed. Can you imagine if, you know, back then when we were some of us were participating in the anti apartheid movement in South Africa, that was solidarity. That was international solidarity. You know?
Free Nelson Mandela. Let's work towards having sanctions against that regime in South Africa. Let's not allow the Rakuten to participate in in international games and all that. I was part of that. Now if somebody had said, let's bomb the population of South Africa, I'd say, what?
Are you confusing solidarity with imperialism? This this would have been absurd back then. So, you know, I'm I'm saddened sometimes by progressives and imperialists who say, oh, you know, if you're not with the the Khomeini regime, you that means you are with The United States bombers. No. Not in the slightest.
Speaker 0: I don't think we have to pick pick you know, whenever people ask you to say, are you with a or b, then, you know, they ask you to stop thinking because you shouldn't have to own the position of either side.
Speaker 1: So That's right. We are with international law. How about that?
Speaker 0: I like that. That's one thing we should have discussed, which is dying very quickly, but perhaps next time.
Speaker 1: So Next time.
Speaker 0: Thank you very much for taking the time.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Glenn. Thank you.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Chas Freeman: The Emerging Iran-Russia-China Axis & Israel's Possible Demise https://youtu.be/u5-E6huRJGM https://t.co/i9PZuCZTv3
Video Transcript AI Summary
Chas Freeman and Glenn discuss the broader geopolitical implications of the ongoing war with Iran, focusing on perspectives from China, Russia, and the United States, and then turning to regional dynamics involving Israel, Japan, Brazil, South Africa, and others.
Freeman argues that China does not have a unified view on the Iran war. He notes that some in the Chinese People’s Liberation Army are pleased to see the United States seemingly disarmed by its own stalemate and by depleting weapons stockpiles, including the pivot away from stationing intermediate-range missiles in the Pacific. Geopolitical thinkers fear the war destabilizes a central region for global commerce and energy, with the Hormuz Strait now effectively impassable. He asserts that Azerbaijan has become a primary route for Asia-to-Europe transit, while Iran’s control of the strait and safe passage for Chinese tankers complicate sanctions regimes. China, he says, is also recalibrating its economy toward renewables and away from fossil fuels due to the war’s effects. Freeman highlights how Asia-Pacific dynamics are affected: Japan is highly dependent on oil and gas imports and is stressed; Taiwan faces limits due to its own energy constraints; South Korea is economically hurt by the strait closure; Southeast Asia suffers from reduced petroleum exports; and the war pushes China closer to Russia, with Russia’s planned Siberia gas project gaining traction as a diversified supply route away from maritime routes. He also mentions Brazil and South Africa increasing military cooperation, noting potential Brazilian-Japanese collaborations and rising defense spending in Japan, with implications for US influence and global supply chains.
Freeman then discusses Russia, noting Trump’s call with Putin and the possibility that Russia is seeking to influence or assist in ending the war with Iran. He asserts Iran seeks to deter or destroy Israel and to decolonize West Asia, including removing American forces from the Gulf. He emphasizes that Russia and China do not want Iran subjugated and abstained on a Security Council resolution condemning Iran, aiming to avoid offending Gulf Arabs while not endorsing the war. The war has drawn Iran closer to Russia, with Iranian drones and technology transfers now in Russian use, and Russia increasing influence in Iran as Gulf reconstruction becomes necessary. Freeman also points out that Iran has demanded reparations and sanctions relief, and that sanctions have deeply distressed the Iranian population. He argues that Russia benefits from higher oil and gas prices and European energy dependence on Russian supply, while the conflict complicates Western weapon stockpiles and European defense needs. He contends Putin benefits from divisions within the US and diminished American global leadership, while the war is not advantageous for the United States overall.
Freeman emphasizes a broader moral and strategic dimension, criticizing what he sees as a departure from international law and ethical norms, including the suspension of targeting guidelines and collateral-damage assessments in certain operations. He cites concerns about human rights and humanitarian law, warning that the erosion of a universal moral order could have long-term consequences for Western diplomacy. He invokes historical and religious ethical frameworks (Kant, Grotius, and others) to argue for a return to principled conduct in war and postwar reconciliation.
The conversation turns to Israel, with Freeman suggesting that Netanyahu’s long-standing aim to reshape Israel’s security and borders faces a difficult reckoning as Iran becomes a tangible military threat. Freeman contends that Israel’s plan for regime change in Iran is failing, and he questions what Plan B might be if Israel cannot secure its strategic goals. He warns that Israel could contemplate extreme options, including nuclear considerations, if it feels existentially threatened, while noting the potential for Israel’s positions to undermine American public support for Israel and complicate US domestic civil liberties and freedom of inquiry.
Glenn and Freeman close by acknowledging that the situation has created a shifting web of alliances and rivalries, with European willingness to appease Trump waning and broader questions about coexistence in the Middle East. They stress the need for a more sustainable approach to regional security and a reconsideration of diplomatic norms to avoid escalating toward broader conflict.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined today by Chas Freeman, former US assistant secretary of defense and also, The US ambassador to Saudi Arabia. So welcome back. As always, it's great to see you.
Speaker 1: Great to see you, Glenn.
Speaker 0: So well, you have a background not just from your work in The Middle East, but also from East Asia. I think more specifically, you you did work some with Henry Kissinger during the time when he opened China to The United States. And for this reason, I've been looking forward to ask you a bit more about how you see this Chinese view of the war against Iran because it does seem like an important topic as this war has this important global dimension to it. It seems that this is well, the Iranian war is a is a sensitive one between the great powers that is The US, Russia, and China.
Speaker 1: Yes. I think the Chinese have do not have a unified view on this. There are those, of course, particularly in the Chinese People's Liberation Army, who are thrilled to see The United States essentially disarming itself by depleting its stocks of weapons and defensive mechanism interception equipment and so on, I noticed that all of the talk that had been going around in The United States about stationing intermediate range ballistic missiles in Pacific Asia has ceased. So some people are very happy about the military dimension. Geopolitical thinkers are disturbed on the grounds that this is destabilizing a central region of global commerce and energy supplies.
You can't get between Europe and Asia, Asia and Europe, and or Northern Europe and Africa except through West Asia. And that is now essentially impassable. I understand that Azerbaijan has become the primary route from Asia to Europe now because you can't go across Iran, you can't go across The Gulf, and so on. So they're disturbed on that level. But they're also disturbed, of course, because this represents a complete repudiation of international law, the UN Charter.
There's not even an excuse of legality being proffered for this war. And we, of course, come to the point that the Strait Of Hormuz is closed. It has not been necessary for Iran to mine it because it commands the land passage, one half of it, and is able to, sink anything that tries to get through. The Chinese have, very cleverly and in probably in return for additional help to Iran arranged for the safe passage of their tankers through the Strait Of Hormuz. So Iranian tankers and Chinese tankers can avoid the blockade.
But of course, this is also having major effects on Chinese economic planning. It's going to redouble their already very impressive turn away from fossil fuels to renewable energy and the like. And it is, deeply, in the Asian Pacific region, which is a description I prefer to Indo Pacific because the Indo Pacific is essentially a figment of the American military imagination, that it coincides with the command the area of responsibility for the command in Hawaii. But India is not really linked that closely to Southeast Asia at this point in history. In Pacific Asia, Japan is under tremendous stress because it is totally dependent on imports of oil and gas, and it has been cut off from them.
It has a strategic petroleum reserve, but it's not adequate for the probable length of this war. And of course, Japanese relations with China have been deeply troubled, particularly by the Takaiichi administration, but even before that. Similarly, Taiwan, which is phasing out its nuclear program. It had, similar to France, had great reliance on nuclear power. It has very limited storage capacity for oil and gas, And so it is going to be essentially incapacitated.
And maybe that will tempt some in China to advocate trying to bring the civil war to an end with the conquest of Taiwan. South Korea is a country that has an improving relationship with China. But it too, it has been terribly hard hit economically by this closure of the strait. The South Korean stock market has essentially crashed, and people are in a very foul mood there. Southeast Asia undoubtedly is suffering also because the Chinese have cut off diesel and gasoline exports.
They've been a major supplier for Southeast Asia of finished petroleum products. So they're mixed feelings, some geopolitical, some concerned about global order. And I should say last and another final point is this drives China definitively closer to Russia. The Russian supply of gas through the planned but never built power of Siberia pipeline is now becoming a reality because the Chinese want to further reduce their dependence on maritime supply chains. So the effect of the war is profound.
And I've not even mentioned its effects elsewhere. For example, Brazil and South Africa have just done a deal to cooperate militarily. And I suspected that the turn toward a purely military effort to dominate Latin America from by The United States would cause some Latin American countries to arm against The United States in ways that they had not. They never considered South Africa as a partner, although, of course, South Africa has a formidable arms industry developed during the apartheid era when it was subject to arms embargo, ironically helped in its development of jet aircraft, cruise missiles, and nuclear weapons by Israel. I suspect we're going to see a further knock on effect down the road that the Japanese who are emerging from pacifism and who are lifting the restrictions on their export of weapons systems and expanding what they will license, I think they're also going to become a partner of Brazil.
There's a very large Japanese Brazilian population. The connection's maybe not very well publicized, but they're very real. And again, you have a market because both Japan and Brazil are now going to be increasing their defense spending. Japan is one of the premier practitioners of capital intensive precision machine building, and that includes weapons. And how can The United States object to a US ally rather than China becoming the source of Brazilian military modernization?
So I mean, think the knock on effects of this thing are just beginning to become apparent or at least predictable and speculative perhaps. And the Chinese are in the middle of a lot of this.
Speaker 0: The other great power, though, which The US obviously has to consider would be Russia. And we know that Trump just called Putin. We don't know too much about the call. There's been, you know, some comment from the Russian side based on all the wording they use. It sounds as if it was not friendly because well, they never used the word friendly.
They used frank business like. That usually well, in other instances, it implies, yeah, less yeah, that it was more disagreements, at least. But how do you see what the Russians are after, and to what ex what are they willing to actually do? In in the past, you know, or you can say it's still to some extent, Russians have always been close to Israel, you know, some from, you know, from the liberate liberation of Auschwitz in the second World War to the amount of Russians who reside in Israel. But but I think the Ukraine war, it's with Israel's help to Ukraine, it created quite some divisions between two countries.
Meanwhile, the Iranian side, it seems, you know, from the the the the common, I guess, fighting they did in Syria, they look towards opportunities to go from this, you know, limited common interest to some to a strategic partnership, you know, to develop this greater Eurasian concept where they their economies are closer linked. So, you know, so this is a problem. And, also, of course, The United States fighting a war against Russia is still in Ukraine. I saw that Trump said that Russia thinks we are we're helping Ukraine. That's why they might help Iran a little, which I found to be an incredible statement.
I mean, I didn't but, you know, be that as it may. Yeah. So to summarize my question, how how do you see this US Russia talks contributing or affecting this war against Iran?
Speaker 1: Well, of course, we don't know really what was in the conversation as you indicated, but I think it's pretty clear that it was an effort by president Trump to seek Russian assistance in ending this war with Iran. And we know there have been other approaches to the Iranians to end the war. And they have firmly said that they're not going to accept a ceasefire or any negotiation with The United States until their conditions have been met, their objectives. And those objectives are essentially to do to Israel what Israel has been doing to them for decades, namely to deter or destroy them. And they Israel posed an existential threat to Iran.
Iran is now posing an existential threat to Israel. And its essential aim is the decolonization of West Asia, including the destruction of the Zionist state, the removal of American forces from The Gulf, and so forth. The conversation with Putin, apparently according to President Trump, included Putin's recognition of the intensity of the bombing campaign, impressively intensive bombing campaign The United States has mounted against Iran. I don't know whether it also included advice based on the experience of Russia, which is quite relevant. If you consider for a moment, let's assume, I think it's correct, that there are many in Iran who fear and love the Islamic Republic and would like to see it changed.
We don't know how many because these people, to some extent, are manipulated and funded by foreign forces, but they're probably a group. The experience of Russia is very relevant in this regard. When Germany invaded Russia, I suppose there were very many Russians who feared and loathed the system that Stalin had put in place, and even Stalin himself. And yet, they loved their country more than they hated the system. And I think we're seeing this also in Iran.
So there are parallels there. Of course, Iran had been helpful to Russia with a Shahed drone, a technical transfer technology transfer, which is now built in Russia in stupendous numbers. And I think Iran has received considerable help this time around, not before the June twenty twenty five war, from Russia in the form of technology transfer. We know that there are aircraft transfers going on and air defense systems and the like, also from China. Neither China nor Russia wishes to see Iran subjugated by Israel.
Both of them have a stake in maintaining good relations with the Gulf Arabs. And so they've they abstained on the on the resolution in the Security Council, which was one-sided in its condemnation of Iran's attack on the GCC countries, didn't mention that The United States and or I should say Israel, assisted by The United States, had inaugurated the war. So they basically didn't want to offend the Gulf Arabs. They certainly didn't want to endorse the war itself. And they just abstained.
I think the war, this war and the one last year, have had the effect of drawing Iran and Russia closer. Historically they were not friends. They are now very cooperative in many respects. I think Russian influence is growing in Iran. It will probably grow too afterwards, both Chinese and Russian influence, because The United States and Israel are doing huge damage to infrastructure, edifices, buildings, and so forth in Iran, and it will have to be rebuilt.
Let me sort of end this by saying that there's another element here, and that is Iran has officially demanded reparations for the damage. And it is insisting on sanctions relief, which of course it got under the nuclear accord which Donald Trump tore up in 2018. And and the sanctions are the source of a great deal, not all, but a great deal of the distress of the Iranian people. So I think the Russians have mistaken this too. Let me end by just saying of Russia that Russia's those Russians I've spoken with, not many, are chortling in their glee.
Oil and gas prices are going through the ceiling. I understand the European Union has just decided to take their Arctic gas from Russia despite its embargo on all energy from Russia earlier, which at least is pragmatic. Of course, The United States, in response to understandable demands from India and others, has suspended the oil sanctions on Russia for some purposes. Qatar has been removed, temporarily at least, as a competitor for Russian gas. Vladimir Putin is playing games with Europeans on the gas issue.
And Russian influence, Russian revenues are going up. Finally, this war is a blessing for Russia in terms of Ukraine because the exhaustion of American weapons stock stockpiles means that there will be no weapons for The United States to sell to Europe for onward passage to Ukraine. So Ukraine is going to get itself disarmed, to some extent at least, and that's going to happen fairly soon. So if you were sitting in Moscow, you might see this is very favorable. And indeed, one of the people I spoke with said he couldn't imagine how lucky Vladimir Putin had been.
You know, not only quoting Napoleon Napoleon said, if I must fight, let it be against the coalition, meaning I can divide my enemies. But he doesn't even have to do that because Donald Trump is dividing the opposition to Russia and simultaneously diminishing American global power, prestige, authority, moral authority, and and leadership. What more could you ask? So I you said that you thought the conversation had not been friendly, But I'm sure that Vladimir Putin has plenty of reasons to want to encourage Donald Trump to do more of the same. It's very good for Russia.
It's not good for The United States. It no one is gonna come out of this war, in my view, except Russia perhaps, better off than they were when when we went into it.
Speaker 0: I think Napoleon also said to never interrupt your enemy when he's making a mistake. Exactly. They seem to be Oh, no. This has
Speaker 1: become this has become part of the folklore of statesmanship, and its wisdom is constantly demonstrated by the American administration.
Speaker 0: I'm thinking, though, that it you know, one one one could imagine a situation where suddenly, you know, Iranian missiles perched purchased or given by Russia would suddenly begin to fly towards, you know, storm shadow factories in Britain or some, some weapon complexes in in Germany. It's
Speaker 1: Not impossible. Sorry? It's not impossible. No. So we have in in United States right now an example of our failure to understand our own double standards.
There's a great deal of condemnation. Well, my god, the Russians are providing intelligence to the Iranians to enable them to attack Americans. But what do they think we've been doing in Ukraine all this time? And, you know, I mean, you you know, one ill turn eventually leads to another, I think. So, yeah, we keep escalating, And the Russians have been very cautious, actually.
They have not responded in kind. And they have not given anybody targeting information in The UK as far as I can tell, you know, but or Germany. It's not out of the realm of possibility that if Europeans press them hard enough, they will decide that the answer is drones. I wanted to make a fundamental point here, which is that if you look at Moscow, look at Tehran, look at the Palestinians, they've all come to the same conclusion. There's no point in negotiating with The United States.
Diplomacy is useless. These issues are going to be solved on the battlefield, on the ground. Or in the case of Iran and Israel, they're going to be settled by the industrial capacities and inventories of weapons and defensive systems that each side possesses. And it's very clear that, as I've said before on your show, the Iranians have adopted Muhammad Ali's strategy of rope a dope. You know, allow your opponent to punch you so and exhaust himself before you deliver a knockout blow.
We just have seen in the last day or two the beginning of Iranian use of heavy missiles with warheads of around 1,000 or 1,500 kilos, depending on how they're loaded, aimed at Israel. And these warheads, these these missiles are extremely hard to intercept, and they have clearly saved these. They've been they these were in storage. I think what we're seeing is a very clearly articulated phased strategic plan on the part of Iran in which each phase makes the success of the next phase more likely. And we're now in a phase where the reserved most destructive weapons are beginning to be used.
Apparently they've got another missile which they plan to use which they have not fielded yet. That's according to the Israeli intelligence, which is quite fearful and has put the entire air defense system in Israel into its most intensive mode in anticipation of an attack by this so far undescribed new weapon. So I think this war is proceeding along the lines of the war last year in terms of exhausting Israeli interception capability, American interception capability. And here it's notable that on the very first day of the war, Iran took out the radars for the theater high altitude air defense system. It took out the radar in Qatar that was basically the means of controlling the entire airspace in the region and has been very carefully focused on specific targets.
They've even named them. They are now striking at the Israeli submarine force. They're striking at Unit eight thousand two hundred, which is the signals intelligence and the computer, the digital command structure in Israel. They're hitting the Israeli high command, and they're they're aiming at the the defensive infrastructure radars and that sort of thing. Have not yet, contrary to what might have been expected as far as I can see, emulated the Israelis and the Americans by attacking civilian structures.
They seem still to be focused. Whether that's because they're simply rationing their force or because they quaintly adhere to ethical standards is hard to say.
Speaker 0: Well, first, you you said something interesting before this idea that one can come in and bomb a government to assist opposition. This is a very flawed idea, which tends to, you know, confuse and even, you know, even if the public is opposed to an unpopular government. And and I do think that we exaggerate how unpopular the government in Iran is. That's mean that there's not significant dissent, but but this is very, you know, counterproductive. Even, you know, The United States at one point also invaded the Soviet Union to an extent.
It has an they had an expedition force after the Bolshevik revolution during the civil war. Right. Well, one could call it invasion, but anyways, the troops were sent in, and and this was to help the whites against the the reds, but it it did the exact opposite. It turned the public because the reds were now the ones defending the homeland, standing up for sovereignty, while the whites were, you know, plotting against their own nation with a foreign power. I mean, nationalism, even for the communist, which try to transcend nationalism, this is a powerful force deep in human nature.
This is this well, not that yeah. Well, defending the group, more or less. So this is kind of yeah. This should have been predictable from history that this doesn't work, especially, you know, if one deals with people like ESA, Alavi who, you know, supposedly supposed to be this unifier. I mean, it's it seems like fantasy.
But I I just wanted
Speaker 1: is fantasy. Sorry? It is fantasy. Yeah. No.
It seems like it. It is. I mean, you're absolutely right. And I would say we're beginning to hear anecdotal evidence, of course. But there are Western reporters in Tehran, people around they can move around apparently.
They can interview people. Of course, those people are quite guarded under the current circumstances. But apparently, some of them have have openly expressed opposition to the Islamic Republic, so they're not silenced. But anecdotally, what's also coming out is people saying, well, know, I thought when Donald Trump said he was gonna come save us that that was we were going to be liberated somehow. And and instead, we're being killed.
And I don't like that. And this goes back to the defense of the Rodina. I don't know what the word in Persian for that is, but I'm sure there's an equally a word that's equally resonant as that word is in Russian. And so there's a final point here, and that is Iran in a sense, the Islamic Revolution was the first of many uprisings, that one successful, in West Asia directed at ending Western tutelage, decolonizing the country, restoring its independence, and defending its cultural identity. In the end, I believe there's a hierarchy of national interests everywhere.
And the supreme national interest is your identity as a people, your culture, your political culture, your traditions, your language, your beliefs, your religion. They're all bound up in this question of national identity. And so I think the Iranian national identity, in addition to being very strong after all, it is a civilizational state. The Iranian national identity, despite the many minorities, it is a is a civilizational state, commends the loyalty of most. I think it's bound up very much with Shiism.
And Shiism is a religion that accepts martyrdom and glorifies it. In other words, it accepts contemporary current suffering and turns it into strength. My impression of Israel is that Israelis turn suffering into hatred, which is not a particularly auspicious or appealing approach to others. If you had to choose between strength and hatred, I think you would find strength more advantageous. Anyway, this is a contest which in the case of Zionism also involves a national identity, culture, religion, traditions.
And in the case of Zionism, the celebration of past victimhood and the desire for revenge against any non Jew for that past suffering, which is real. Of course, the people who did the who administered the suffering were nowhere in the Middle East. They were not Arabs. They were not Persians. Last I heard, I think they were Germans, French, Poles, you know, whoever, Europeans of one sort or another.
And so nonetheless, Israeli school kids are taken to Auschwitz to tour a tour to keep the myth, if you will, the inspiration of the state alive. And they're told, don't talk to the Poles. They're all anti Semites. Well, that's, of course, total nonsense, but this is a very the society which has chosen chosen to make the Holocaust its central myth of origin. And that's very powerful, I think.
We'll see how well Israelis bear up under the suffering I think they're about to experience. So far, the amount of destruction in Israel appears to have been less than in June, but it is escalating.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Noah, that's that's what struck me when I was in Iran as well, the the celebration of martyrdom. Not not not a desire to die, but the honoring of people who, you know, do this ultimate self sacrifice for for the the homeland. I mean, this is kinda strong, especially for the Shiite. Yeah.
That's why I thought killing, I mean, they make so little sense. The idea that, you know, you kill the top spiritual leader, and the result would be that people would pour into the streets welcoming Americans with flowers. It it begs the question, though, like, who who is who is advising here? Because it's it just sounds so cartoonish. I I don't understand how how this was the expectation, but then, anyways, they say that, you know, we spent twenty years in Afghanistan to replace the Taliban with the Taliban.
In Iran, we replaced the Khamenei with Khamenei. So new one will force. But this new one, not as moderate as his father, and, of course, his father was killed, mother, sister, wife, son, and, of course, his country had been bombed. So I'm assuming that we're gonna miss his father if
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think, you know, of course the objectives that have been stated for this war are incoherent and inconsistent. But two of them are directly affected by the murder of Khamenei Sr, Ali Khamenei. One is whether Iran will build a nuclear weapon. Khamenei was the principal opponent of that.
He stood by the fratroir that said it had an in it, but it it said basically, weapons of mass destruction, chemical, biological, nuclear, are all forbidden by religion because they're evil. He also said, however, if the existence of the Iranian nation is at stake, this moral restraint can be set aside. And there's every reason to believe on the basis of loss of information that Mutshavah Khamenei Desan, now the supreme leader, is a proponent of going nuclear. So I think as we have some of us have feared, we're seeing a replay of the scenario in North Korea in which implacable maximum pressure in the absence of real diplomacy as opposed to performative diplomacy, combine to produce a nuclear armed ICBM. And I think that's what's in the future.
So the second objective, of course, was in murdering him, of course, was this ridiculous theory that if you kill the leader in a society with deeply embedded institutions and traditions, that somehow that's going to produce the collapse of the government and the regime. That doesn't happen anywhere, and it didn't happen in Iran. In fact, quite the opposite happened. The regime now is strengthened, not only because protests are unacceptable to patriotic Iranians, but because the IRGC, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, is now greatly strengthened. The younger Khamenei is a patron of theirs.
His father helped to build them, but relationship between the younger Supreme Leader and the Revolutionary Guard, which is the hardline defender of the Islamic Republic, is very close. So I think we've also shifted Iranian politics away from any mood to compromise. And we see that in the response of Ali Larijani and others to the apparent overtures from the Trump administration. Well, let's stop this war, you know. Let's you agree to a ceasefire.
The response has not just been no, it's been hell no. We're not gonna talk to you. Why should we? Look at who you send to talk with us. Two real estate agents who don't know what they're doing and can't deliver Donald Trump and can't keep an agreement or an understanding, and who lend themselves to deceit, to deception and surprise attacks on us.
We're not going to talk to them again. This is the line. I suspect it in the end they will talk, but they will have to have achieved a great deal more than they have, they will be under pressure, the Iranians, from lost oil revenues, lost gas revenues from the public, which is probably already pretty tired of this thing. But like the Israelis, they're bent on revenge now. Israelis are revenging crimes committed in Europe against Iranian surrogates, the Iranians will avenge themselves against Israel.
And so we had a situation where Iran was a potential threat to Israel. Israel was an actual threat to Iran, now each is an actual threat to the other. How is this better? I suppose the definition of the purpose of war is that offered by William Tecumseh Sherman, the American general in our Civil War, who said the purpose of war is to produce a better peace. This may do that, but not without a great deal of destruction.
He, by the way, was famous mainly for having destroyed everything in his path as he marched to Georgia and other parts of the American South. And I think we're looking at a prospect which is very hard to define. But in the meantime, as I indicated earlier, geopolitical rearrangements are occurring. People are drawing lessons from this. I think in the case of Europe, the willingness to pamper and propitiate to appease Donald Trump, to flatter him in order to manage him, is becoming a little bit tired.
I don't see many people willing to do what Marc Ruta has done, which I've always thought was a bit quite a bit much, calling Trump daddy and so forth.
Speaker 0: It's understatement of it.
Speaker 1: Yes. But I think the willingness I don't know. I mean, you're sitting in Europe. I'm not. But I think the willingness of Europeans to abase themselves before the tyrant is is is running out.
Speaker 0: Yeah. No. It's not this observance is not fun to watch, you know, because not just the security, political relevance, and economics going down, but also all dignity and self respect. So but I I was wondering, there's a lot of Western observers, they kind of over the last few years expressed concerns that Iran was drifting more towards China and Russia through BRICS and the SCO. However, I'm thinking now that perhaps we should be happy that they are growing closer with China and Russia simply because I think their friends and allies are the ones that would restrain Iran in terms of of not not not not not not not not wanting to, you know, get the let let the thirst for revenge go overboard.
But I sorry.
Speaker 1: No. I think that's right. But there's another factor here. Just as there is in Christendom, in the Christian world, a lot of thought about proper conduct during war, which is obviously the exception to what Christianity imagines God's will to be, there is a similar tradition in Islam and a very strong one in Iran. And it's pragmatic.
In the end, when you start a war, of course, as you know, the first thing you do is state clear objectives, verify that they're feasible, devote the resources to them necessary to achieve them, have a plan to end the war so that it doesn't become a forever war. But you also need to bear in mind the need that after the war, the postwar period, you're going to have to reconcile people to the results of the war. And that means you have to behave in a relatively decent fashion and not gratuitously wreak violence on people. In January, when he came into the Pentagon, Pete Hegseth, the self designated Secretary of War, Secretary of Defense legally, did a couple of things. One thing was he suspended the requirement for human intervention in targeting.
And the girls' school was targeted by an artificial intelligence with no human check on it. And Pete Hegseth, I think, could easily be found guilty of having enabled that war crime. Perhaps he didn't order it himself. He has ordered other war crimes, the slaughter of people in The Caribbean after they have deserved rescue. But he also has suspended all respect for international law, said that there should be no rules of engagement.
He has altered the or basically eliminated the requirement to judge targets with regard to the collateral damage to the innocent that the child striking them may entail. And we are back to the morality of Genghis Khan, who who did not believe in either Islam or Christianity was quite ruthless, I'm told. At least the Russians tell me so. So I think the damage to decent world order, quite aside from how it's rearranged in terms of regional hegemony or regional systems substituting for the global system, which is dying, the UN is marginalized. And, you know, people are beginning finally to talk about what to do about that.
But I think the moral order that the world's great religions and philosophers have, I think of Immanuel Kant, who have who have Grotius, people who have developed really very strategically based reasons for compassion in the midst of war. I think this has all been swept aside. We need to rediscover it. Because in the end, as Rabbi Hillel said thousands of years ago in Babylon, you should not do to other people what you don't want them to do to you. The same thought, by the way, was voiced by the Confucians.
Jesus expressed it in the opposite way. You should do to other people what you hope they will do for you. But it's a basic element in ethics, and it's been dismissed.
Speaker 0: And well, regarding your comment, I'm pretty sure the Russians there did they tell you about the ruthlessness of the Mongols. They did they do keep this alive. When when I was teaching at the university there at Vizhkay in in Moscow, our officers were at the or the university was at Malaya Dinka. Well, they're still at Malaya Dinka, but it means the the hoarder. And the the the this this was on that same street was where the Mongols would come right in to claim their tribute.
So, you know, they they they don't forget.
Speaker 1: No. They don't. And and it's a good you know, it's a nice illustration of how if you do hateful things, you will be hated, and not just for one generation, but for many. This is something that The United States, and more particularly Israel, which is a small country, basically a European dominated colony in the middle of a different culture, need to need to remember.
Speaker 0: Just as a last question, I want to circle back to the Israeli issue. That is well, based on the American statements alone, it seems very clear that Israel pushed The United States hard for this war. Doesn't mean that, you know, Trump wouldn't have done it otherwise. We don't know, but at least Israel pushed for it. Now now that plan a, which I assume was regime change or dismantling of Iran, seems to have failed, Where does plan b go for the Israelis?
Because, you know, Netanyahu has pushed for this war for, what, thirty plus years. There's no attractive alternative. So what do they do if they're losing a war, but they can't afford to, well, to let the war end? Or or am I misreading it? How how are you seeing this?
Because it's a very dangerous situation, it seems. When you have a heavily armed nuclear armed country like Iran sorry, Israel, which is not prepared to lose a war, and they're losing a war.
Speaker 1: Yes. I think that is a fundamental problem, and it raises questions about whether the so called Samson option may not be exercised. Because there is Iran is now is now actually providing an effective challenge to the very existence of Israel. We'll see how many Israelis want to remain. Those who have passports, European passports or American passports or the South American passports or whatever they have.
This is the Ashkenazim, not the Mizahim, the Arab Jews who who were forced out of Arab countries in reaction to the colonization of Palestine by European Jews. So anyway, yes, big question and the the Israelis may, in extremists, think seriously about the use of nuclear weapons. So that is the main main concern. But the broader question is, you're quite right, what is plan b generally? Netanyahu spent almost four decades trying to find a president who was stupid enough to be manipulated into doing what Donald Trump has done.
You know, this was a moment of glory for Netanyahu. He's he's actually on videos gloating about how he finally, you know, got The United States to do what he always thought we should do on behalf of Israel. And it isn't working. And so Israel is going to be transformed one way or another by this. What is the motivation on the Israeli part?
It has been twofold. One is to establish greater Israel incrementally. They are taking trying to annex Southern Lebanon in the middle of all this and expand their borders north, not just to the Litani River, but to the river beyond that. And second, they wanted to ensure that nobody could attack them. Well, the best way to ensure that is to ensure that they have no incentive to attack you.
But Israel constantly provides provocations which lead to attacks on it by oppressed Palestinians or those in Israel's neighborhood who've suffered from its bombing and other campaigns. This isn't going to work. In the end, if you want to exist in a region like West Asia, you have to pursue peaceful coexistence with your neighbors and with others. And they have not done this. Will they now do it?
I don't know. But it's clear that they're overdue for a change of leadership. This man, Netanyahu, is a brilliant politician and manipulator, very good at manipulating my own country and its politics, strongly supported by billionaire plutocrats who are Zionists in The United States and some elsewhere. And he's been a catastrophe for Israel, not just in terms of the suffering on October 7 when Palestinians broke out of the concentration camp of Gaza. And many Israelis died, probably about half of them from friendly fire as it were under the Hannibal directive.
But still, that was a terrible tragedy. And he was brought around by Nadineo, he's not been held accountable. And the subsequent events, the conduct of genocide in Raza by him and his cabinet full of people who make the Nazis look humane, has destroyed Israel's reputation entirely. And nobody wants to deal with Israel except those in The United States, I guess, and a few other countries who are beholden to it politically, or the Germans who are, cursed with their own guilt for their terrible behavior in the 1930s and 40s. So where does Israel go?
How many Israelis are going to remain in Israel? Is Israel able to try any approach to living in its own neighborhood other than sniping at people, bombing them, contriving their violent death. What's the answer? I don't know. It's an answer that Israelis have to find.
And I hope that my country, and this is the final point, one of the things Netanyahu has done with his pattern of behavior is destroy American support for Israel at the popular level. Even Republicans are now split. But Democrats are overwhelmingly favorable to the Palestinian self determination cause. And as part of this effort that Netanyahu has mounted, He's destroyed the American constitutional restraints on the war power. He has damaged the civil liberties of Americans.
We have censorship, corporate, not government imposed. We have, well, government imposed in the case of the inroads on academic freedom. This is a tragedy. And Americans will react to this. Israelis have to react to it.
We have to find a new basis for coexistence between Israel and The United States. And more particularly, Israel needs to find a way to keep for peaceful coexistence with its neighbors. And it has not done so. But it's clever enough to do so, I think, if it puts its mind to it.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, this is my my concern is the the possibility that the Israel would use the nuclear option if it feels its existence is a threaten. But when this point in time is and whether or not there are, you know, the proper mechanisms in place to put an end to this war before that happens because this is this should be front and center, it seems, of the discussion is how because Iran has to deter, restores deterrent. It has to make sure that this isn't done again. On the other hand, any excessive retaliation as it is, if that would trigger a nuclear response is also not ideal.
Because I've seen comments come out of Israel that Iran will never be happy before Israel is exterminated. That's the kind of rhetoric you would assume would come before, well, essentially the Samson Yeah. Option. So
Speaker 1: Yeah. And and it may given Israeli behavior at present, it may be true. I mean, after all, Israel has said it can't continue without the destruction of Iran. This is not a promising path to long long life in The Middle East in my view. So but I know Iran, as I said earlier, was a potential threat, not an actual threat to Israel.
Now it's an actual threat. How the Israelis deal with this, if they deal with it with a bit of rethinking about the long term and their own interest in surviving as a state in an environment where they were implanted by colonialism and are not welcome, have not made themselves welcome, then maybe there's hope. But I don't see any evidence of that sort of thinking yet.
Speaker 0: I think first we have to accept cause and effect. I saw on Fox News a discussion about know, how the Iranian closure of the Strait Of Hormuz essentially proved why this attack was necessary, which kind of Ruts the yeah. And but this is a little bit like in NATO. We say, you know, the Russian invasion of Ukraine proves why we need more NATO, why the Ukraine needs NATO. So everything is kinda put on its head.
We don't recognize Yes. That the Iranians, they were close to the Strait Of Hormuz before they faced this surprise attack, which threatens their existence. Again
Speaker 1: In logic, it's called post hoc ergo proctor hoc. And this is fallacious reasoning. Yeah. And it deserves to be called out. And you called it out, and god bless you for that.
But I don't think you get much applause for it. And
Speaker 0: I sure do not. Well, Chas, as always, I look forward to our conversation. So thank you very much for taking the time.
Speaker 1: Have a pleasant evening, and and hope to see you again.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Ray McGovern: Israel Lost the Iran War - May Use Nuclear Weapons https://youtu.be/2tKW17kQKRY https://t.co/1bcjReIMLG
Video Transcript AI Summary
Rain McGovern argues that the current conflict with Iran is truly an existential war for Israel, with Iran likely to survive whatever comes next, while the U.S. “hopefully will” as well. Israel has “put all its eggs in this one basket,” influenced by Netanyahu and by what she describes as Washington’s handling through Marco Rubio, who she says is the funnel for intelligence to Donald Trump via the National Security Council. Rubio allegedly admitted that Israel attacked Iran to trap the U.S. into acting, fearing Iranian retaliation if Washington didn’t respond. McGovern contends the war was launched by Israel to preempt Iranian escalation, and notes that most Americans are unaware of this dynamic because it’s not in major news outlets.
She recounts a Geneva mediation process in which Oman’s foreign minister acted as an honest broker between the U.S. and Iran. After a session in Geneva on February 26-27, the Oman mediator reported that Iran had backed off on enrichment demands and could allow inspectors, suggesting a near-deal. McGovern claims that Rubio and perhaps Kushner then pushed for an Israeli attack, undermining the talks and pushing the U.S. toward war. She emphasizes that the question on her daughter’s lips (and among many Americans) is why there was no plan for such a major action, while insisting the truth is that “we got in this war for Israel,” a point she says is not widely reported.
McGovern connects this to a broader pattern in U.S.-Iran relations, arguing that the leadership in Tehran now has the upper hand, having demonstrated greater missile capabilities and a willingness to close the Strait of Hormuz, which has global economic consequences. She suggests Netanyahu could resort to extreme measures, including a nuclear option in extremis, to avoid defeat, drawing a parallel to the Samson option and noting Kennedy’s crisis-era caution about provoking a nuclear power. She argues that Kremlinology does not apply cleanly to Trump—public statements can diverge from private intent, making it hard to predict outcomes or the briefer’s assessments.
The discussion shifts to the U.S. domestic and international implications. McGovern notes the Gulf states’ reliability as U.S. allies has weakened; Putin quickly signaled to Gulf leaders that the U.S. defense posture was unreliable, urging them to reassess their alignment. She cites Lavrov’s Bedouin line about not riding two camels at once, highlighting Russia’s role as a potential mediator and its desire to leverage the situation for its own benefit. She points to Russia’s backing of Iran and China’s ties, suggesting Moscow could press Washington to back off to minimize midterm political damage.
A historical digression covers Iraq War intelligence failures. McGovern recalls the 2002-2003 run-up to Iraq, where Colin Powell claimed links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda and weapons of mass destruction—claims later shown by the Senate Intelligence Committee to be “unsubstantiated, contradicted, or nonexistent.” She cites Tom Finger’s 2003 assessment that Iran stopped pursuing a nuclear weapon in 2003, a finding reiterated by the intelligence community through 2007 and, as she asserts, up to Tulsi Gabbard’s March congressional testimony. She warns that Iran may continue advancing its capabilities, including hypersonic missiles, and predicts further pressure on global markets via Hormuz.
Regarding regime change, McGovern contends it is now out of the question given the Iranian leadership’s resilience, the new supreme leader’s position after the deaths of family members, and Tehran’s insistence on not dealing with Trump. She suggests that Russia and China could try to broker a deal, requiring Iran to back away from confrontation and urging Washington to back off. The discussion ends with a reflection on civilian casualties and the propaganda around the Minab incident and U.S. claims about Iranian responsibility, including critique of Peter Hegseth and the broader narrative around civilian targets and U.S. strategic messaging.
McGovern closes by urging accountability for civilian harm, citing the deaths of 168 young girls in Minab, and accusing Hegseth of deflecting blame. She reiterates the brutality and the moral concerns surrounding aggressive actions, warning of the implications for U.S. credibility and the global order.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined today by Rain McGovern, who was a CIA analyst for twenty seven years, who chaired the national intelligence estimates and also prepared the president's daily briefs. So, thank you for coming back. It's been a while.
Speaker 1: Glenn, thank you for having me.
Speaker 0: So well, this war against Iran, it's we see this treated almost as an US Iranian war, but in reality, it's already a regional war. However, one actor was here surprisingly little about, given that they're the one who fired the first shot, is Israel. Guess part of the reason is we don't get much video or information about the damages which are being done in Israel. But I thought it could be a good place to start to just discuss how vulnerable you think Israel is in this war. And, I guess, overall, how is the war going for Israel?
Speaker 1: Well, Glenn, as usual, you asked the right question. I was gonna start out with this if I could, and now I can. This is an existential war for Israel. Iran's gonna survive this in one way or another. The US hopefully will.
But Israel has put all its eggs in this one basket. They've twisted Donald Trump in such a way that they started this thing. And by the admission of our secretary of state, Marco Rubio, who also is the national security adviser to Donald Trump, which means, by the way, that he's the funnel for which all intelligence comes. In other words, the CIA, they report through Marco Rubio, the National Security Council's director. Okay?
And so what Trump gets, he gets through Marco Rubio. That explains part of it. But, I mean, if people don't know this, Marco Rubio admitted that Israel said, oh, we're gonna attack. And then they did. And we were afraid that the Iranians would say, oh, maybe The US is guilty of this.
And then they would attack us back. And so we had to preempt a retaliatory attack from Iran retaliating because Israel attacked it. He said that. It's right out there. Okay?
My god. Well, just to reduce this from the sublime to the mundane, we have an adult young girl who helps us out here. And she was here this morning. I said I said, please, Rosanna, tell me, what are your friends all saying about this war? And they said, oh, well, they don't like it at all.
And they're the the thing that they don't like is there's no plan. There's no plan at all. And how can they do this without any plan? I said, okay. Fine.
Well, why did he do it? Now my daughter is really smart. Like, she went she's just okay. She went to college and all that kind of stuff. She's like, I don't know.
I said, what do your friends say about that? They don't all they care about is Trump won't rule out sending sending true our trips are are so our sons are brothers. But, yeah, but why did he do it then? Don't know. It's crazy.
It's crazy. And I said, Rosanna, you don't know it because the majority of American people don't know it even though the secretary of state of The United States has said it because Israel attacked Iran and mousetrapped us into doing precisely the same thing when we were this close, this close to a deal. Now, how does McGovern know that? Come on, Roman McGovern. I don't see that in the in New York Times.
Was a mediator in these very crucial talks in Geneva between the Americans and the Iranian foreign minister. Okay? And when the mediator, the Omani foreign minister, that is the foreign minister of Oman, who was the honest broker here and dealing with the two. When that session was finished, he got on a plane and went to Washington and said to the vice president, we almost have a deal. The Iranians have really backed off on their requirements about enrichment.
They're they're making all kinds of concessions. Matter of fact, we might even get you an inspectors there for the first time in history. So, oh, it is close. And then, I think because he smelled a rat, he went on Margaret Brennan, CBS person, and told her the same thing. We're really close now.
This is ver I'm elated. Now, that was the February 27. It was the twenty sixth that they had met in Geneva with this same Omani foreign minister mediating, if I have to say that again, Okay? What happened? All of a sudden, within hours, after getting this news, Rubio, first and foremost, there was the attack on Iran.
So how does this figure? I mean, there are complaints now. The the latest one is that the Omanis and others think that Whitcuff and Kushner lied when they gave their report to the president saying, no. No. The Iranians are in transition.
I don't rule that out. The two of them are shite ho. In The Bronx, we call them shysters. Okay? They can't be trusted.
But in any case, the deal was this close. Okay? All of a sudden, Rubio and maybe, well, Hexis for sure, maybe the vice president said, no, no. Bibi has already launched his attack. We'll do it for Israel.
So I said to my daughter, look, you ought to ask the last question. Why, if all this had no planning or why did we did it? And that you should realize that the reason none of you even think of the question is because it's not in the news. It's not in the Times or the Post or even even online, it's very rarely said that we got in this war for Israel. Now, just let me tie up this dissertation here.
For Israel now, it's an existential war. That means that they are about to be obliterated. Pardon the term. Okay? The Iranians had the wherewithal to do that.
That was proven in June, and that's why I naively thought, well, would have this would never happen. I mean, would Trump want to risk obliteration of Israel, closing of the Straits or Hormuz, losing the election the election in November, having gas prices of $10 a gallon. I mean, of course, he wouldn't he wouldn't be so stupid or dumb to start a war against Iran. And he did it. So two things here.
We have a president, not only a delusional narcissist, but I'd suggest that he's he's. Okay? Now I know you Norwegians don't like to use German terms and all that, but I know German. All I know is in in Taussian. Okay?
In German. It means just off your off your rocker. Okay? An inflated kind of thought that you could do what the hell you want. Okay?
Is almost as bad as which means really crazy, and which, when I lived in Germany, you could be convicted for calling somebody. Okay? Well, I'm not in Germany. That's what we have here. And just to tie this up, I've spent a half century trying to put myself in the shoes of Kremlin leaders.
I know that they have a equivalent of the branch we had. Now it's a division in the CIA, which did, at a distance, psychological profiles. Okay? At a distance, well, you can't interview Trump, but you can you can get all the information together and even though the psychiatrists don't like to do this without having access, well, you do it anyway. Why?
Because the stakes are so high. Now when I was on board at the CI, we had wonderful people working on this. I had a biographical profile on Chernenkov and theropov, and and later and on Gorbachev. So the Kremlin, I'm sure, has this kind of unit. Now it boggles my mind to put myself in the place of a Karabakhov president's daily brief briefer, which I was one on one during Reagan's first term, '81 to '85.
What are they gonna tell Pucci? Well, we know this guy is unreliable, that he's that he's deceitful, and that he he tells a lot of lies, and he he's kind of narcissistic. But now we know he's a bunzinist. Now we know he's for lucked. And what will he do?
Last thing here. Maybe I'm projecting here, but I thought they would never do this stupid thing for precisely the reasons of what's happening now. Okay? So when people talk about putting boots on the ground or threatening to use a nuclear weapon, say, my. We'll never do that because because because but the be the becauses don't matter anymore.
The logic does not obtain. And maybe this is I'll I'll just add this. In Kremlinology, we had a very very sustained orderly way of analyzing public media. And when people were saying things like x y z would be preconditions for negotiations or for a settlement, and then all of a sudden all they said was x, and they didn't mention y and z, wow. That meant and I can tell you this is accurate.
That meant that they were willing to deal on intermediate nuclear forces, and the deal was made, and it obtained for thirty two years. Okay? We saw that they're backing off from public statements, but it doesn't work with Trump. Trump can say, we require a, b, c, and d, and then he says five times, We require A. Doesn't mention it.
And his vice president says, We require A four times in four minutes on Fox. McGovern thinks, Oh my god, maybe there's a little bit of hope there. Forget about it, McGovern. Kremlinology and logic do not obtain in analyzing Donald Trump, and that is a real burden for the presidential daily briefers of Vladimir Putin. I think you all agree.
Speaker 0: But I sorry. But when you say it's existential for for Israel, you know, that's usually a word you don't wanna hear when it comes to, you know, powerful states because once something existential, they can't afford defeat, which then begs the question, what what might Israel do? Because difficult position. The Iranians as well consider this to be an existential threat, and they can't just let The US walk away and then reopen the Strait Of Hormuz. And then in six months, The US and Israel is back yet again.
And given that they haven't none of the underlying problems have been resolved, the objective will remain to knock out Iran free from the Eurasian chessboard. So given that this is the case, Iranians can't afford to to, you know, to to to let this one go without, you know, go back to the old status quo. So what does this mean for Israel? Because if they risk being decimated here you know, they have nuclear weapons. They they don't strike me as the most restrained of countries, as as we've seen in all of the wars currently ongoing as well.
So did what do you think Israel's gonna do if the pain becomes too great? I mean, at the moment, they're we're not seeing any pictures coming out of Israel. They want to project the idea that, you know, they're not taking that big losses, but, you know, this could flip at some point where they want to do the exact opposite, show how much destruction Iran has done. At that point in time, you know, one one one risks, starting to hear more about the possible nuclear weapons retaliation, you know, the Israelis' right to survive, essentially, the right to exist. You know, there's a lot of crazy things happening these days.
This this doesn't seem that crazy that it would happen, if not with strategic nuclear weapons, at least something limited with tactical just to essentially force the arms of the Iranians to do as they're told, to capitulate essentially. Do you see a pathway there towards actual use of nuclear weapons?
Speaker 1: Glenn, that's your second most interesting and appropriate question. That's what I was gonna say. Yes. You know, when I look at Netanyahu and Trump, but in this case, primarily Netanyahu, I ask myself, okay. Given what you know about this fellow McGovern and what he's willing to do in terms of genocide, forced starvation, when he's been given to believe that he have some sort of handle on Trump.
Maybe it has a lot to do with Jeffrey Epstein, But anyhow, he's confident that he has his handle on Trump. Well, would he accept defeat? Would he say, okay. It was a bad idea. I don't think so.
And I don't think the Iranians would let him do that now that they have the upper hand, and that's the big new reality. I think it's been proven now that the Iranians have more weapons, more rockets, more missiles, and the Iranians are gonna prevail in this thing, not to mention the damage that is happening to the whole world because of the closure of the Strait Of Hormuz, which was entirely predictable. So what's Netanyahu gonna do? Well, Cy Ersche wrote a book a couple of decades ago about the Samson option, the biblical narrative being that once Samson pulls the temple down rather than don't, better than capitulate or whatever. You just pull the whole temple down.
Or would the I mean, Netanyahu do that thinking that maybe he could fly off to Berlin again and hide in one of those little shelters. I don't know, but I think the chances are more than even, and this is scary as hell, that he would not stop before he used, not just threatened, but used a nuclear weapon or two. And whether that would work or not, I just don't think it would. And the opprobrium, he would become he would be he would be crowned as the rogue state of the world forever if he did that, and nobody would cooperate with him, I don't think, unless maybe people like, oh, people neocons coming out of the woodwork that supported both the war in Iraq as well as this war in Iran would support Netanyahu. So, yeah, as a long winded answer to say that four weeks ago, I drew a parallel.
I said, look. I think that Nathaniel would probably use this nuclear option in extremis. Okay? Fancy words for was really having his back up against the wall. That's why it's it's new, Glenn.
As you know as a historian, and I know as an old old guy, not since the Cuban Missile Crisis has any nuclear state been forced in extremis? Okay? Now John Kennedy, one of my idols, president John f Kennedy, who brought me down to Washington together with a whole bunch of really great people, saying, well, we think there's something for our country, and some of us are still around. What he said in his major speech at the University of Maryland in well, in in early nineteen sixty three was this. The thing that must be avoided in our relations between two nuclear powers, that is US and The Soviet Union at the time, is never ever to force a choice on a nuclear power, a choice between humiliating retreat and using those nuclear weapons.
Now why do you say that? Because that almost happened. If he hadn't been adroit enough to dismiss his generals and go with his brother Bobby and other people like Llewellyn Thompson, the previous ambassador. They said, look. Khushchev is willing to do a deal.
Talk to him directly, and they did. And there was no war, and you and I today get to talk about these things. Okay? It was that close. So that was October, September, October 1962.
Here, John Kennedy is in 06/10/1963. Count the months between, and now he says, look. We've been through the worst. I know what it's like to think about blowing up the world. The last thing you wanna do is have to choice another nuclear power with choice between humiliating retreat and using nuclear weapons.
Now Khushchev Gotzedank or Slavabogu, thank god, was adrite enough to say, okay. If we make it look like a deal that you're pulling the the Eurobissiles out of Turkey, yeah, I could I could talk talk to my military and say, well, we got a deal. And that happened. So Kennedy was hell bent and depend and determined not to let that happen again. And so he reached out to the Russians.
He said, look. Our children breathe the same air. We want the same good things for our children. We, among among all the powers of the world, Russia and and and The United States have never been at war together almost uniquely. So let's let's deal.
And, of course, he said we're gonna cease testing nuclear weapons. And within months, because of adroit political actions, the Senate confirmed a partial TETBAT TESPAN treaty. So what I'm saying is that this goes back to the beginning of the real nuclear confrontational age. And since then, since 1962, there has been no likelihood that The US or the Soviet Union would overstep that red line and threaten the other with a humiliating retreat. Now, what was the next big issue?
Russiagate. Now, as you know, my friends and I and veteran intelligence professionals for sanity, I knew that that was a that was a distrustful, dishonest thing from the get go. Well, one of my colleagues said, Ray, you know, why why do you why you you're a you're a one act pony. Right? Why do you keep focusing on this?
And then a a radio guy says, well, why do you keep pounding on the ice? Because because Russia has nuclear weapons. That's why. Oh, yeah. I mean, Ukraine was judged to be an existential threat to Russia, and we know how that's coming out.
Okay? Luckily, that's not gonna be a a nuclear explosion. So all I'm saying here is that this is unique. Since the Cuban Missile Crisis, do the math, that was 1962. What is it?
Twenty twenty twenty six now. So we have a state now that stole nuclear technology from The United States, that whose prime minister was one of the thieves that stole that technology. And one of the reasons that John Kennedy was so disliked by our military and by our Zionists was because he wanted to prevent Israel from getting a nuclear weapon. Some people think, and I think there's some evidence for this, that's one of the reasons they got rid of them. Let's face it.
The chief plotter was the CIA counterintelligence master. The chief plotter was the liaison with Israel. And nothing I or any of my colleagues or my branch people wrote if it mentioned Israel, even if it was just about Sino Soviet relations, if it just mentioned Israel, we had to get it cleared with this guy. So he was the one that was the the ringleader of all this. And, of course, he was like this with Israel.
So there's ample evidence that Angleton, James Angleton, was involved in both of these escapades so close to Israel, and so much report of getting rid of John Kennedy, partly because of his resistance to Israel getting a nuclear weapon. There's even evidence that Angleton was participating in at least turning a blind eye to the provision or the stealing of nuclear technology under under Kennedy's back or behind Kennedy's back. So, you know, it's just well, so let let just rest my case here and just say, look. If very educated 50 year old children of mine are just completely adrift at saying, oh my god. There's no plan.
There's no plan. And why did he do this? And, oh, though, they don't ask why he did it. They always say, oh, it could be this. Peep boots on the ground or oh my god.
You know? But none of them have time to ask why Trump did this. And why Trump did this was because he's subservient to Israel, and that may include this heinous talk about moral turpitude. Well, you got it in spades with Epstein and the people that Trump has been associating with and the fact that Netanyahu is certainly not above bringing his own little portfolio of photos and videos to Mar A Lago. So, know, we just wanna remember, you know, the FBI is able to block out a lot of this stuff, but, you know, we have the just just as you know, we'll protect it, mister president, unless unless you don't cooperate.
That's a mafia type approach. And would Trump be above that? I don't think so. So sorry for this long explanation, but feel really strongly about this because Israel has had this hold on us to the to the to the tune of shooting up 34 US sailors on the USS Liberty during the nineteen sixty seven war and not never being held accountable. Then, of course, they learned without any doubt that they could literally get away with murder and the senate and the house and even the US Navy would cover it up.
Speaker 0: No. The US Israeli relationship is quite interesting, not just in terms of understanding a lot of US foreign policy, but it's also interesting now to see what's happening in the domestic politics because I think the especially well, not just on the Republican, but the Democrat side is the the split you see now, that the sympathies towards Israel have declined so much. And also within Trump's own camp, this whole idea of America first, you know, it it yeah. I think it united a very broad variety of people, and a large part of this group believed that America first meant that US interests will be put before Israel. So now that they see this war, which they can't really explain without talking about Israel, Yeah.
It's something that also divides the home base of of of Donald Trump. But you said something interesting, though. That is, yes, it's an existential conflict for Iran and for Israel. But for The US, it's not really existential. However, that being said, there's a lot at stake here.
That is its credibility as a superpower. Also, if this war is lost, the Gulf States might no longer be viable frontline states. They could be swept away, or alternatively, they if they wanna survive, they might, you know, come to the conclusion that, you know, being a frontline state does not make you safe. It makes you more vulnerable. If this happens, the whole petrodollar system begins to fall apart without these recycled dollars.
The, you know, the AI bubble, the AI race comes to an end. Alliance systems around the world could be challenged, know, also in domestic politics. You know, this would be a disaster for Trump. You know, he he already declared victory, a little bit like George Bush's, you know, mission accomplished moment, which he came to regret. Of course, and his ego on top of all of this, so it doesn't I can't imagine Trump accepting defeat.
That being said, I can't imagine him using nuclear weapons either, but he has other options, though. I mean, he may what I'm getting at, I saw two comments come out, I think, on the same day. That is, you know, we're gonna hit Iran 20 times harder, but also we run out of targets to hit, which then suggest how do you bring Iran to the negotiation table, make them make concessions? It just sounds, you know, that they need the Gaza treatment, that this is the direction that The US might go. Anyways, that's too much of my my thoughts.
I was wondering how how do you see this. What will The US do now that it didn't get the regime change? It didn't get the people standing up, you know, going against the government. The army did not collapse. The US sorry.
The Iranians are able to absorb pain and also to bring pain to the to The US, the Gulf States, and Israel.
Speaker 1: Well, let's deal with the Gulf States, the Arab states first. Putin got on the phone just two days after the attacks and talked to each and every one of them. What was that all about? Well, I think he knew what was coming and said, look. Recall that you've been real cozy with The United States and buying all the weapons and all that stuff.
You have this deal where they're gonna defend you. Watch next couple days and see what happens. I'll call you back later. My god. That deal has fallen apart because the defense against against Iran has completely been gone.
Iran has full reign now, and they are doing it. They are attacking all these US bases and trying to reassure the the Gulf States that look, you know, this is not about you. It's just about your stupid policymakers who thought that The US could protect you, and they can't. So what are you gonna do now? So what are you gonna do now?
You do have a lot of riches. Who are you gonna trust to deal with? Americans? Well, see what happens the next couple of days. Okay?
Well, the next day, you have Lavrov getting up. Now this is really interesting. He's in a meeting with other Arab Gulf leaders, right? And he says, so. Very clever.
I will use an old Bedouin expression. Have you not learned that you cannot ride two camels at the same time? I don't know who gave him that line, but it was exactly the right line, okay? So as far as I'm concerned, The US are not gonna get bases back in these Gulf countries. The Gulf countries still have their oil to the degree that they're not obliterated at these sites, so they still have the wherewithal to persist.
But are they gonna throw their their lot in with The United States? Certainly not in the way they used to. Okay? Now I forgot what else you got into, but I had some comments on on your other remarks to see if I made some some I made some yeah. I I meant I want you to mention this that one of the things that most Americans don't understand, because many were not of age in 2,001, 2002, and 2003, all they know is about 09/11.
Right? And then they know, or think they know that we had to go after people who might have been responsible for nine eleven. And the Afghans, well, that was the one thing, but we tried to identify the head of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, with nine eleven. And how did we do that? We said that Saddam Hussein had ties, active ties with Al Qaeda.
75% of the American people in '19 I'm sorry. 2002, 2003 thought that to be true. Okay? Colin Powell spoke authoritatively at the UN, and he talked about a, quote, sinister nexus between Baghdad, Saddam Hussein, and Al Qaeda. Colin Powell knew that he was lying.
He said it anyway. What was the other thing? Oh, yes. Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Now we veteran intelligence professionals for sanity set up our unit in January 2003 in full knowledge that they didn't have weapons of mass destruction, that our former colleagues were lying through their teeth to get promoted, and and bonus awards, which they got for writing that terrible estimate on 10/01/2002.
So what happened? Well, they falsify the evidence, and you don't have to let me just quote the Senate Intelligence Committee report. Now, this was five years in the making. In June 2008, they finally came to their conclusion, and it read, quote, the intelligence used to justify the attack on Iraq was uncorroborated, unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even nonexistent, end quote. Nonexistent?
What the hell does non existent intelligence look like? Well, I don't have to tell you. Okay? It was manufactured. Okay?
So why do I raise all this stuff? It's happening again. And most people are not cognizant of the fact because the press has concealed it and no one was ever held accountable for Iraq. So it's worth mentioning what we're saying now is, of course, depending on who you listen to, Iran with the n. Now Iran is close to getting a nuclear weapon.
Okay? What are they gonna do? They're gonna give it to those terrorists. You know? All those terrorists, which I call resistance forces according to international law in Lebanon and elsewhere.
Those terrorists are gonna those nuclear weapons, you know? And, again, don't take McGovern's word for this. We had the the real good fortune of having a copy of the authentic notes of a briefing given by sir Richard Dearlove, head of Britain's MI six, to Tony Blair on 07/23/2002. And what was that all about? Well, Blair had been recruited by Bush to join in this war.
It's gonna be a great war. The other Europeans, well, they weren't real the Germans and the French, forget about them. We can do it by ourselves. Okay? But you know what?
When you're planning a war, you like to be more in more than just telephone contact with the other plotter. Right? So even though Bush was calling Blair or vice versa once a week, Blair said to his intelligence chief, look, would you go over and talk to George Tenet, which was his opposite number, director of central intelligence, head of all intelligence agencies. Talk to him because he's so close to Bush. He'll know the reals.
Can you talk to him? Well, Tenet, they weren't any point of this. No, I don't. No, I don't. And Bush insisted.
And so I know. There were people I know there. On the 07/20/2003, at CIA headquarters in Langley, and Sir John Dearlove was thoroughly briefed, got on the next aircraft, went back home to London, and three days later, at a meeting of the 12 apostles at twelve his big cabinet meeting there, Blair's cabinet meeting with all the major dignitary. Okay. Now, sir sir Richard Dirla, please tell us what the real scoop is.
And this is what it was. This is a quote from the most operative paragraph. George W. Bush has decided to attack Iran. It will be justified by the conjunction of weapons of mass destruction and terrorism.
My comment. Translation, we're gonna say that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction. He's gonna get him the terrorists. Okay? And then the final sentence of this paragraph, but the intelligence and facts are being fixed around the policy, period, end quote.
So the intelligence and the facts were being fixed around the policy. Yeah. What's my lesson here? An unnecessary war, completely unnecessary. Intelligence fixed around the policy.
That's what we got now. That's what we have now with respect to Iran. Why? Because no one was ever held accountable. Those senators that wrote that bona fide accurate authentic report saying some of the intelligence was nonexistent, never held anybody accountable.
George Tenet was allowed to go to his shelter in New Jersey and still get lots of money from the corporate entities that he ostensibly works for. No one is held accountable. The people who wrote that National Intelligence Estimate of 10/01/2002 got pay increases and pay bonuses. So now, it's not quite that bad. Because what's really interesting here with respect to Iran is that after that debacle, people who had some sense in Washington saw that the neocons, that Cheney and Bush, wanted to do Iran next.
Matter of fact, the neocons were openly saying to everyone who would listen, real men go to Iran, not to Baghdad. Right? They had the plans. Okay? They were gonna justify it by the same reasons.
And what happened? But he says, let's get a national intelligence estimate done. Now, think I've said this on your program before, but long story short, they got an honest guy from the State Department named Tom Finger. He came in with his own people. They worked for a whole year.
They benefited from some luck with new intelligence. And they said Iran stopped working on a nuclear weapon at the 2003 and has not resumed work on a nuclear weapon. We say that unanimously, all 16 intelligence agencies at the time, and we say that with high confidence. Now the good news is that the intelligence community has reiterated that judgment to include the fact that nuclear weapons are prohibited by the supreme leader, recently deceased, by a fatwa, which means a hell of a lot more than encyclical or any other high sounding religious statement. Okay?
Now, how long did they stand by that judged by that authentic judgment after all the pressure from the lobby and from my god! As recently as look at it, it's March, right? Last March. The March, Tulsi Gabbard, the national intelligence director, repeated verbatim what The US intelligence community had been saying since November 2007, namely that they stopped, that is Iran, if it had a nuclear program at all, stopped at the 2003. Unanimous, high confidence, no reversion of the.
Oh, she said that in under oath in congressionally required testimony in March. Where is Tulsi Gabbard? Oh, wow. A friend of mine did a little cartoon with a milk carton. You know, two and a half or half a gallon milk carton.
Missing. Tulsi Gabbard, you know, tell us where if you see her, let her in. So what's gonna happen now? That is congressionally required. What will happen when they come before the the senate do their oath and are asked, well, what do you think now?
Did did Iran stop start working on a nuclear weapon and he never told us? And the answer the honest answer would be no. They don't need a nuclear weapon. They have the kind of hypersonic missiles that can deliver heavy warheads. And I daresay, Glenn, that they'll be doing precisely that in the next few weeks.
Iran's not gonna stop. And as Alex Krayner, one of the best analysts in all this, when he talks about the closure of the Strait Of Hormuz, he says, you ain't seen nothing yet. And that's gonna that's gonna hurt all of us, but it's gonna hurt especially what Trump thinks he can do because he can't do much. The only thing he he could do, presumably, but maybe not, is restrain Netanyahu from using the ace in the hole, which you correctly called attention to using a nuclear weapon or two.
Speaker 0: Let me just one final brief question. That is the the the hopes of regime change. Is this out the door now? Because, again, the core of a regime change operation would also entail, you know, winning the hearts and minds of the people and have them turn against their own government. But after killing their leader, which is, you know, this this was not celebrated as it was, for some reason, believed it would be.
But also the as The US runs out of military targets, we see more civilian targets to put pressure on the government. So we saw the attacks on the desalination plant, the fuel depots, which then polluted and destroyed the air essentially in Tehran. The, yeah, the destruction of the capital. And Trump also, you know, just to make the really drive the point home, went out on TruthSocial and wrote that, you know, they would hit Iran so hard that the nation itself would be destroyed, that it would be unable to rebuild. And, of course, I assume accidentally, but, of course, the killing of those 168 young girls as well and then lie about it in such an obvious way.
Have they is is now regime change completely out of question?
Speaker 1: Well, any kind of regime change is out of the question if you're thinking about a a more malleable management there in in Iran. You know, you don't have to be a crackerjack analyst. You have to figure it out. The new supreme leader was in the house, and he was injured when when his father was killed, his wife was killed, His teenage son was killed. He was spared, but apparently he's still in the hospital.
That's why you don't see him. Okay? So under those circumstances and under what he what was said in his name or what he said yesterday, there is no go no give at all in the Iranian position. They are they have the upper hand now. You know?
When we talk about our military leaders, I'll tell you one thing that comes from from Larry Wilkerson who worked with Colin Powell, not only as his chief of staff, sorry. Not only as his chief of staff in the state department, but also when Powell was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and when he was national security adviser to Bush, the first Bush. So what he said was, you know, at one point, Powell turned to me and he said, Larry, oh god. The worst thing you can do is make an Air Force general head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff because all I know is bombing, bombing, bombing, and it's sailing off again and bombing some more. And if we didn't learn that from war two, if we didn't learn that from Vietnam, if we didn't learn that from Afghanistan, it'll be oh my god.
So never never pray for an Air Force general to be head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Now where did Trump get this guy? Well, the smart people say, well, he was retired. But before he retired, he he appeared in this nice blue uniform, except he didn't have his cap on. He had a mega hat on.
And Trump said, oh my god, Yanomabonga. We took a a shine to him right away. What's this guy like? My god. If he has an ounce of honesty in him, he's gotta tell Trump, look, we warned, that is my colleagues on the Joint Chiefs, that they said that this not might might not work.
I don't know whether there is ounce of honesty in it. It's not working. Okay? And if the military can't restrain Trump in his present mind, my god. I don't know who can.
We have we have neocons now appearing Wormser, David Wormser. We have Douglas Fife. The brain trust, so to speak, behind Cheney's war against Iraq coming out and making idiot pronouncements. So the neocons still live. They're still in still given a lot of leeway in the press, and they get their op eds printed.
So I'm a little bit forgetting now exactly what your point was. Let me ask you if you could repeat your main question there, and I'll try to be more brief.
Speaker 0: Yeah. No. If if if a regime change is now out of the question and yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, if it's out of the question and the Iranians are not willing to deal with with Trump, and you can understand why they might not be willing to deal with Trump. I mean, two times right away, you know, they while negotiations were nearing completion, they were tricked into there was an attack. Okay. Two times. So was it that George W.
Bush said, fool me once or fool me twice? He couldn't get it right. Right?
Speaker 0: That would fool me in the Right.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So the Iranians would say, fool me once? Well, we never thought you'd try to fool me twice, but you did, but we're ready this time. We're ready this time. Fool me thrice?
Fool me three times? Give me a break. So they have the upper hand. Now, are there forces for moderation here? And there are the Russians and the Chinese can come in and support the new Ayatollah, the new supreme leader.
He's not quite an Ayatollah yet, I'm told. And say, look, mister Trump, when you called me, says Poojin, when you called me just three days ago, I made the best of it. I I had Ushakov say that that we had a business like and a constructive, but and and also a open, frank discussion. So I'm not cutting off ties with you. But you know what?
This is crazy. We're not gonna let this happen. You say, oh, please use your good offices with Iran. Forget about it. You say, please don't give Iran intelligence that they need.
Mister Trump, have you heard do you know what the word karma means? Look it up. Karma. What are you guys doing with the Ukrainians? We're not gonna stop our aid to Iran.
So we're gonna have to make a deal. Now short term, midterms, that's one thing. But the topsy-turvy in the economy with the Strait Of Hormuz continues to be closed, that's bedlam. Okay? So, mister Trump, we can help you, but you're gonna have to lay off, and you're gonna have to restrain Israel.
Now we, we Russians, says Putin, have a unique chance to mediate this thing. We have good ties, reasonable good ties, with Israel. I mean, there are 2,000,000 Russians in Israel, right? And of course, we have very good ties with Iran, ties with China. We have a lot to offer here, but you're gonna have to however we however we kind of make this look better than it is, you're gonna have to back off.
And the sooner you back off, the sooner you'll lose less in the midterm elections. And so we're willing to help, but Iran doesn't want any help from us or anybody else right now. They're winning. So let's wait a while, And, yeah, come back to us, and we will try to be honest brokers. Now can they do that?
Well, you know, they almost had a mutual defense treaty with Iran. Oh, see, Iranians, it says, no. God's sake, that shows. Now let's reflect on that. The Russians wanted to make their strategic treaty with Iran a mutual defense treaty.
And it was the Iranians that said, no. No. We're not ready for that. I think they probably regret that now. But that shows how important Iran is to Russia.
I mean, it's a soft underbelly through which all kinds of terrorism and other threats come. Okay? So that's one thing. The other thing what was what else was I gonna say here? Oh, yeah.
Well, you know, they abstain on this resolution at the UN yesterday. I was appalled. I mean, you can't condemn. I mean, you can't vote against the measure that criticizes Ukraine. I mean, criticizes Iran and doesn't even mention that they over attack.
But they've then why do they abstain? Well, I think that they're just trying to preserve what what's left of a of an image of being able to be honest brokers. They want to be in a position to be able to say, Okay, you know, we might have vetoed that thing, but, you know, we're trying to work things out. And the stakes are very high, not least of which, of course, is the continued human destruction exemplified by those little girls in Minab, as well as the the threat that Newt and Netanyahu will be tempted to use when it was you know, thinking about Minab, when I I had a poem that I had from from Daniel Berrigan, a good friend of mine, that I recited on another platform. But I have another one now from a a good a very close Iranian woman poetess.
Her name is Avide. It would take about a minute, minute plus, to read. She is addressing the little girls of Minap. I don't know if we have another minute where I could No.
Speaker 0: Of course.
Speaker 1: Is that okay? Okay. The title is In Memoriam. Where were your dreams? Where were your hopes, sweet little girls at Minap?
Were you to be the new blooms of the tulips or the taphitos, sweet little girls at Minap? Were you fasting, hungry, thirsty, sweet little girls of Minup. When the tomahawk blew you to smithereens, then burnt you to ashes without leaving a trace of you, my angels, my beautiful, sweet little girls. I mean, now, tell me, who has the heart? Who has so much hatred in their hearts to burn to ashes, sweet little girls?
Help me now. With hopes and dreams, as tulips and daffodils swaying under the blue dome of the sky, innocently hoping and waiting for a new spring to arrive. Tell me, who has so much hatred? Who has so much hatred in their hearts? Now from the sublime to the mundane, we know how that happened.
We know who killed the sweet little girls of Minop. His name is Hekseth. He calls himself the Secretary of War. Why can I pin the blame on him? Because he deleted the unit in the Pentagon that verifies that there'll be no civilian casualties in this target list, Blaming the Defense Intelligence Agency or outdated, target lists does not suffice.
There was a way to check on those things. There was a procedure. And Peter Hechtsef, Secretary of War, who says, have no mercy, deleted that unit. Now, how do I know that? Scott Ritter knows chapter and verse on this.
And he has pointed out that there were four strikes from tomahawks. And then another one had the ability to loiter over the scene, send back photography to Control Tower. Control Tower wrote back, yep. There are other people coming on. Oh, look.
There are a lot of people. These were the little girls going into the prayer shelter, okay? And the parents coming to pick them up. Vaporized. Why?
Because there were thoroughbarek capabilities within that fifth tomahawk. So, you know, it's okay to be a little bit angry about this thing. And when I see the president of The United States say, no. The Iranians did it themselves. That was a physical.
That was a temple temporal impossibility. And I could say that because this was the first wave of the attack on February 28, the same wave where the supreme leader was killed in his own home, not in a deep shelter. Okay? Same wave that happened before the Iranians even know there was something coming. So the Iranians are gonna be firing off inaccurate missiles at at a school before they even know they're under attack.
Give me a break. So what we what we have is a mere matricious, that's a nice way of saying, a lion son of a gun, as president. And Hegseth says, no, no, we're investigating. You're right. Hegseth is gonna investigate what he himself is personally responsible for, a man who gives no quarter and who says, show no mercy, that's what it would become.
And American citizens need to realize that, need to apportion blame where it belongs. And when you kill a 163 little girls between the ages of six and 12, you must be held accountable.
Speaker 0: I very much agree. That's a that's one of the startling things, the the that the brutality is so celebrated now that this idea that if, you know, Hegseth says even following the rules of engagement is somehow politically correct something, you know, which prevents us from being strong. It's it's, yeah, quite grotesque. And if you're on Twitter, if you follow the White House, every day almost they put out the little videos where they make clips of video games with the bombing of Iran is is is war porn. It's a celebration of violence.
It's it's something, yeah, very ugly, especially coming from the White House. But, yeah, here we are. It looks like, yeah, imperial decline can be ugly indeed. So thank you very much for taking the time.
Speaker 1: Thank you for inviting me, Glenn. Much appreciated.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
The US may try to seize Kharg Island, which handles 85-90% of Iran’s oil shipments. If the US does this, then Iran will likely strike every energy facility in the region. https://t.co/dBt5Bv8JgR
Video Transcript AI Summary
Speaker 0 discusses a strategic move focusing on Karg Island in the Northern Persian Gulf. He states that the island is offshore about 18 miles. He asserts that if that island were taken out, it would affect “80 to 9% of the petroleum usage that the Iranians have,” implying a substantial economic impact on Iran. The speaker contends that removing the island would essentially shut Iran off economically, preventing it from supporting China and also preventing it from supporting Russia.
The argument presented suggests that such a disruption would have broad geopolitical consequences, weakening Iran’s ability to back allied actors. The speaker predicts that sooner or later, the opposing side would realize that this scenario constitutes “just a bad news thing,” implying that the economic impact would become evident and influential in international relations.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: What I would hope they would do would would really go take Karg Island. Karg Island is in Northern Persian Gulf. It is an island. It's offshore about 18 miles and if you take that out that island, that's 80 to 9% of the petroleum usage that the Iranians have. You basically shut them off economically.
They cannot support China. They cannot support Russia as well. And sooner or later, the other side's gonna realize this is just a bad news thing. So
Video Transcript AI Summary
Karg Island, 15 miles off Iran's coast, is described as Iran's main export terminal and essentially the country's cash register, serving as Iran's oil lifeline. It is stated that if this terminal is seized, “it's over,” and that option remains on the table.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: And we also have Karg Island, 15 miles off Iran's coast, their main export terminal, essentially the country's cash register. Karg's Iran's oil lifeline. If we seize it, it's over. That option remains on the table.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Seyed M. Marandi: Threat of Seizing Kharg Island & the Use of Nuclear Weapons https://youtu.be/mW8sDiiKUbU https://t.co/jJEL7zgBXB
Video Transcript AI Summary
Glenn: Welcome back. We’re joined again by Seyyed Mohamed Marandi, a professor at Tehran University and a former adviser to Iran’s nuclear negotiation team. There’s talk in the US of seizing Kharg Island, which would handle 80–90% of Iran’s oil shipments, effectively a nuclear option to shut down Iran’s economy. What would be Iran’s likely response if the US pursued this path?
Marandi: It would be a major problem to access the island because the US would have to fly over Arab regimes in the Persian Gulf. Iran would retaliate if Iranian territory were occupied, taking the war toward a major escalation. The regimes hosting the island would have to pay a heavy price, far greater than now. For the United States, the island is well protected, with Iranian assets on the shore supporting the islanders, and it’s farther from the US Navy and closer to Iran’s shore. But more importantly, such an aggression would be futile: it would not change the Persian Gulf trade through Hormuz, which Iran has effectively controlled by requiring permission to pass. An invasion or occupation would lead to fierce combat and punishment of the regimes that enabled it—Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar—desert-based states with oil and gas but little water. If the US succeeds in taking the island, Iran’s retaliation would involve destroying assets of the cooperating countries. Long-term, Hormuz could be effectively closed, with upstream infrastructure damaged and no oil or gas able to move, making a later reopening contingent on a peace agreement. The operation would be logistically, militarily, and economically disastrous for global markets.
Glenn: There are reports Iran is mining Hormuz. Do you know anything about that operation?
Marandi: Iran hasn’t mined Hormuz, the Persian Gulf, or the Indian Ocean. The Iranian navy capable of wartime actions is largely in underground tunnels and includes speedboats, surface-to-sea missiles, and a network of underground bases. Iran has not moved to mine the Gulf. It does not want escalation. Iran has always negotiated; US claims that Iran wanted nuclear weapons at the negotiating table are rejected by Iran, the fatwa, and IAEA history. If negotiations had failed, the US invasion would be unjustified. Doha and Qatar are prepared to restart gas facilities and allow oil to flow if peace returns. If the US escalates to destroy key infrastructure, Iran will retaliate, and Iran can hurt US assets and its proxies more than the US can hurt Iran, with long-term global energy consequences. Iran has been striking bases in the region and says it is prepared to continue until after the midterm elections.
Glenn: The US energy secretary says the US Navy is studying options to escort tankers through Hormuz. What are the main challenges?
Marandi: It would be virtually impossible. Iran’s navy is largely underground, with mines, surface-to-sea missiles, and drones capable of targeting Hormuz from Iran. If open war begins, Iran would retaliate against regimes hosting US bases. Even if Hormuz were opened temporarily, without oil, gas, tankers, or production, there would be no purpose, and energy prices would spike permanently. The US would likely be forced to accept Iran’s terms for peace to allow oil to flow.
Glenn: Trump has spoken of further destruction if needed, but says he’s run out of targets. What do you expect from the American side?
Marandi: The US is already targeting nonmilitary sites and civilian targets in Iran. They slaughter civilians, including families and children, with premeditation. They could intensify attacks on oil, gas, electricity infrastructure, which would invite Iran to retaliate. Iran’s society is united, with people on the streets despite the bombardments. If the US destroys infrastructure, Iran would respond, but Iran does not want escalation; it would be catastrophic for the global economy. The media in the West is controlled, and there is little outrage at threats to destroy Iran.
Glenn: Israeli and American aims now—what’s at stake, and how end this?
Marandi: Since the Gaza genocide and Lebanon escalation, Zionism is increasingly viewed as evil, and public opinion against Zionism is growing in the US. The destruction of Israel’s credibility is the greatest defeat, not battlefield losses. End this war now would be prudent; as Iran strikes back, global sympathy for Iran grows and the empire weakens. If Israel were to use a nuclear weapon, that would be catastrophic and could prompt broader proliferation.
Glenn: Any chance Iran could retaliate against Britain or European states?
Marandi: Europe and the US will have diminished presence in the region; bases would be forced to leave. He notes the possibility of false-flag attacks in the West and asserts Zionist manipulation as a risk, but emphasizes Iran’s determination to defend sovereignty and support for Palestinians and others.
Glenn: Just a final note—Iran had three negotiations, not two, including the JCPOA. Thank you for joining.
Marandi: Thank you.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined again by Seyyed Mohamed Marandi, a professor at Tehran University and a former adviser to Iran's nuclear negotiation team. Thank you for coming back on. I know you must be quite busy there in Tehran. It does appear that this will be a long war, and we're also seeing a rush up the escalation ladder.
From the American side, there's now growing talks about seizing Iran's Karg Island, which will reportedly handle somewhere between 80 to 90% of Iran's oil shipments. If the Americans would go through with this, it appears to be, well, essentially, the the nuclear option in terms of trying to shut down the Iranian economy, which then begs the question, what what do you think is the likely Iranian response if The US would go down this path? Because I'm guessing they fear a response. Otherwise, they would have already either attacked it or attempted to seize it.
Speaker 1: Well, first of all, thank you very much. Sorry. Thank you very much for inviting me. I think it's quite clear that it would be a major problem just accessing the island because The United States would have to use the territory of these or fly over territory of the Arab family dictatorships in the Persian Gulf. And that would mean that Iran would have to retaliate.
So if Iranian territory is occupied, then that takes the war towards a major escalation. And so these regimes would have to pays pay a very heavy price, far greater than what they are paying now. But for The United States, it would be very difficult because the islands are well protected, and also Iranian assets on the shore would be there to support the islanders and the people on the island and the defense capabilities there. And it's far away from the US Navy, and it is closer to the Iranian shore. But most importantly, I think, is the futility of such an an aggression.
This this aggressive move would not change the status of the Persian Gulf region. It would not change the situation in the trade of Hormuz. Iran has shut the trade of Hormuz, and therefore, nothing can leave or enter the Strait without Iran's permission. The the the Strait is not formally shut, but ships that want to pass through have to gain permission. And so an aggressive act by The United States, it gets an island.
Carrot for the Islamic Republic Of Iran would mean fierce combat. It would mean that the countries that were used to enable such an aggression would be severely punished. And we have to remember, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar. These are largely deserts. All they have is oil or gas.
They don't even have water. They have desalination plants. They're completely vulnerable to Iranian retaliation. And then, again, as I said, it's not going to change the let's say if the Americans carry out such an operation and succeed in taking the island, hypothetically, it's not going to change the the global energy market for the better. It will make it worse because Iran's retaliation will include the destruction of assets of these countries that are engaged in cooperating in the invasion of Iranian territory.
So and that would mean long term damage because we have two issues here. One is that the Strait Of Hormuz is more or less closed. So there is every day 20,000,000 barrels of oil is are are not reaching the global markets, and gas and, fertilizer and everything else alongside that. So every day, this is happening. But if there is war in the Persian Gulf, those installations will be destroyed.
And that means that even if they open the Strait Of Hormuz later on during an after some sort of agreement, there will be no oil. There will be no gas to transport, and there will be no tankers to to do the transporting. So it would be a a ridiculous move, logistically very difficult, if not almost impossible. And Iranian defenses, of course, would be taking for destroying a lot of The US military capabilities. And it would be futile, and it would actually it would be more than futile.
It would be very detrimental because of the long term effects effects that would it would have on the global markets.
Speaker 0: What what should we make of the reports of Iran mining the Strait Of Hormuz? Because this would also then prevent Iranian ships, I would assume, to some extent, and as well as friendly nations' ships to transit through the strait. Do do you know anything about this operation?
Speaker 1: Iran hasn't mined the Strait Of Hormuz or the Persian Gulf or the Indian Ocean. That is all non Most Iranian navy, which can be used in the time of war is in underground tunnels. They are speedboats, very very powerful weapons that can be used, for asymmetrical warfare. And Iran has published some of some footage of these tunnels. It's sort of like the underground missile bases and the underground drone bases.
So you have you have speedboats both inside the Persian Gulf and outside in very large quantities with surface with sea to surface missiles, sea sea to sea missiles that can destroy anything in the Persian Gulf region and outside of the Persian Gulf. These are all underground and well protected. Americans can't touch them. And Iran's capability to mine the Persian Gulf region are also underground, so they're all safe. But Iran has not moved in that direction.
Iran does not Iran does not want escalation. I'm I'm sure your audience knows this, but from the very beginning, the Iranians negotiated. Even though the negotiations Iran even if the negotiations had failed, The United States had no right to invade attack Iran and to murder Iranians. But Iran was negotiating, The United States, attacked Iran even though the Omani foreign minister said that progress was made. And, basically, the claims that Trump made, Iran said to The US negotiators, meaning his his son-in-law and his best friend who are both the highness, he said that he quoted that saying that the Iranians at the negotiating table said that we want to build nuclear weapons, which is ridiculous for two reasons.
One is that, fortunately, the negotiations were indirect. So Iran has witnesses, and one witness is the Omani foreign minister, who when he went to The United States and did interviews, said nothing of the sort. So, obviously, either Trump is lying or his real estate buddies are lying. The second is that Iran has always said we're not developing nuclear weapons, and that our peaceful program is peaceful. And we have a fatwa.
And the the IAA has always has never has always has been consistent at least in saying that there's no evidence that Iran has ever at any point tried to make a nuclear weapon. And even the CIA admitted admits, US intelligence admits that at at least after 2003, that has that Iran's nuclear program has always been peaceful. So why in the world would the Iranian negotiators go and tell their enemy that wants to bomb and kill them, that threatens them, that we want to make nuclear weapons at the negotiating table? It's it's obviously a foolish lie, and any only the most naive supporters of the mega cult would believe otherwise. So the I think it it it's it's clear as day that the Iranians do did not want escalation, and they do not want escalation.
So as we speak, the the the for example, the gas facilities in Doha and in Qatar, they are all prepared to restart if there is a peace. The oil can again flow if there is peace. And most of the tankers, the tankers that that did not violate Iran's directions, those tankers can move and take oil and gas out of the Persian Gulf region once there is peace. So there's not a chance in the world that under these circumstances, Iran will however, if The United States escalates, if they start just trying to destroy our key infrastructure, our gas installations, our oil installations, our electricity, then everything all bets are off, and Iran will retaliate. Iran can hurt them far more than they can hurt Iran because US assets and the asset of its assets of its proxies on the other side of the Persian Gulf are enormous, and they will be destroyed.
So this is sort of an a type of mutual assured destruction, a type of mad. If they go after us, we'll go after them. But we don't want to do this, but we are prepared to do so. Another thing, Glenn, that I wanted to point out, even though it's not linked to your question, but I think it's very important. We all remember US and Israeli assessments and what we've been told in the media that Iran has a certain number of missiles.
Well, we're seeing that Iran has been firing missiles twenty four hours a day on at multiple bases. Both Israeli regime's assets and US Regime assets are being targeted. So what this shows is that Mossad and CIA and MI six intelligence is very poor, that they actually know much less about Iran than they pretend. So they they're constantly telling the world how they know everything and how they're the best at gathering information, and these are the most competent intelligence gathering organizations in the world. But Iran's military offensive capabilities is the most important thing that Iran has in this conflict that is linked to this conflict, and they are clueless about it.
And Iran is firing, and they keep saying their launchers are running out, their missiles are running out, their drones are running out. They've been saying it for two weeks now, almost two weeks now. But Iran continues to strike, and Iran says it's willing, it's prepared to take this war till after the midterm elections.
Speaker 0: Oh, that is quite interesting, and that's one of the weak weak points of Trump as well, not just the running out of weapons and the economic problems and energy, but also, of course, the politics at home. Regarding the Strait Of Ormuzdow, the The US energy secretary said that the US Navy, you know, after getting many requests, is not yet ready to escort tankers through the Strait Of Hormuz. And and we were also told that they are currently studying options how to get tankers through the Strait Of Hormuz. What what is the main challenge? And is is it even feasible at this point?
Because, I guess well, my my first thought was that Trump made a big deal out of sinking ships from the Iranian navy, but but it doesn't seem like the Iran needs a large navy in order to close the Strait Of Hormuz. So what do you see as being the main the main challenges? I mean, as they're now sitting, that is The US energy secretary sitting around the table studying options for how to, you know, get these tankers through the Strait Of Moose, what are the problems you they're running into?
Speaker 1: It will be impossible for them to do that. First of all, there's the Iranian navy. The bulk of the navy, the important part of the navy that would be used in time of war is all and they're all they're the the speedboats are all in huge tunnels underground. Then the there's the mines that can be used. Then there are the surface to sea missiles that can be used.
Then there's, of course, the the short range missiles and but also the medium range missiles and medium range drones, and then the long range missiles and drones, and the cruise missiles. Iran can target the Strait Of Hormuz from almost from anywhere in Iran. So how is The United States going to to to open it? And then if you when there's open war, then Iran is going to retaliate, and it's going to punish those regimes in the region that are host to US bases at a at a higher you know, with a higher degree of intensity. So you open let's say, hypothetically, you do open the Strait Of Hormuz, which is impossible virtually.
It's like it's just like the issue of the island, the Khark Island. So you hypothetically, you open it, but if there's no more oil, if there are no more petrochemicals, if there's no more gas, and if there are no more ships, then what's the purpose? You lose hundreds, if not thousands of men. You lose significant parts of your navy, and then you drive up the price of energy permanently. In other words, there's no a solution, a a an agreement that will ultimately come will not save the global economy then.
If The United States is forced to accept, and it will be forced to accept Iran's terms for peace, then the oil can flow now. But if the ISIS intensifies the war, then what would be the long term effects? It would be catastrophic for the world. It's already cat becoming catastrophic. People don't yet understand what's coming.
But but, hopefully, countries across the world, the international community, public opinion in the West, and sense. The British government is helping The US use heavy bombers to slaughter Iranians. People in Europe have to force their governments to change, and The United States have to do so. People across the world have to put pressure on The United States. That's how the war will will end.
And other than that, things are, as I said, they they things will be as I said they won't be.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, I see that Trump already gave something of a victory speech saying that the war has already been won. On the other hand, he can't really deliver a convincing victory and pull back with his, you know, head held up high unless the Strait Of Hormuz is open. Because if this is closed, any, you know, declaration of victory as The US pulls back doesn't really make much sense. So Trump, for this reason, he also warned much more destruction.
I think he was, yes, 20 times more destruction if this trade is not opened. However, he also said that The US has run out of targets to strike. So it kind of begs the question, what what do you think or what do you expect from the American side now? Because it seems if there's no good military targets anymore to hit, but they have to escalate to go up the ladder in order to try to compel Iran to do as America demands. What what do you think is the action plan on the American side?
Speaker 1: Well, they're already doing it. They're already start striking nonmilitary targets. They did it from the first hour when they slaughtered those girls and those children in the in in the elementary school. And only after a week, The New York Times, under pressure, began to expose the truth, not because it it The New York Times has any morality or any shame. No.
We all knew it had happened on day one. The world knew by day three. But, you know, they have to you know, when people in The United States are seeing it on social media, someone has to do something, and, of course, an opponent of Trump would obviously begin that. So they've been slaughtering people very regularly, and it's premeditated. They they know exactly what they're doing.
The targets that they struck in Tehran today, yesterday, the day before, last night, these were civilian targets. These are ordinary families. They bomb homes. They slaughter kids, women. You know, they it's intentional.
So but what Trump could do is he could take it, further. He could start start trying to destroy Iranian key infrastructure, like oil, gas, electricity, and so on. But that would mean Iran would do the same. That would mean that there will be no more electricity on the other side of the Persian Gulf, and that would definitely lead to the collapse of those regimes. Iran would not collapse.
We've seen how united the people are. Anyone has been look who has been looking at Iranian social media accounts inside Iran, they'll they'll know that people are on the streets every day and every night in huge numbers under fire. As missiles strike close by, they don't budge. There's there's ample evidence of this. Anyone can go and and see this on Iranian accounts or press TV or whoever.
I I don't do this because it's just too it's too difficult for me to just constantly download footage of people in different neighborhoods in Tehran or different cities. And then as the bombs explode nearby, they continue chanting women, men. They don't budge. So Iran is going to stay put, and it will rebuild itself. But the but these proxies on the other side of the Persian Gulf, they'll be swept away.
Those regimes, they have no legitimacy in the eyes of the people under their thumb. So and it would end the global economy. The US economy would collapse. So if they destroy Iran's infrastructure, the the infrastructure in The United States may not be bombed. But when the energy crisis hits, it doesn't matter if it's bombed or not.
They'll all be they'll most of it will become useless because the economy will collapse. So, hopefully, The United States won't do that. It won't be stupid enough to make or put immoral in well, they're utterly immoral. But the Trump regime will hopefully have sense enough not to do that. But the very fact that he says this, Len, tells you a lot.
It shows a lot. He's not only about Iran. He said this about Cuba. If you recall, when, the Supreme Court voted against his tariffs, he got very angry, and then the press conference said that I can just, you know, destroy countries, but I can't, like, put tariffs, like a $1 tariff. No one in the Western media went and called them out and said, hey.
What do you mean you can destroy countries? I think at that moment, he was talking about Cuba. And then here, he says he'll destroy Iran so that it can never recover, and there's no outrage, whether it's The Guardian or The Washington Post or The Los Angeles Times or none of them, because the media is owned and controlled by the oligarchs, by the Epstein class. They have their journalists have no sense of morality. So they can talk about destroying nation after nation, and there's no shock in the media.
So I think, you know, they they in ever since gods, they revealed themselves. But every day that goes by, it becomes more clear, and even the naive begin to wake up. The most of the unless those who you know, except for those who want to you know, they're like cults, cult members of MAGA or whatever. Everyone else is seeing the truth.
Speaker 0: Well, I saw a speech by the Israeli foreign minister Gideon Saad, who was well, it looked as if and it's been interpreted in different ways, but it looked like he was climbing down from the very high objectives being put forth. So it wasn't gonna be an endless war, and and, you know, they will make a decision to when to end it in you know, mutually with The United States. How do you assess the the Israeli and the American position now in terms of what they want out of this war, what they can achieve, and when they wanna put an end to it?
Speaker 1: You know, Glenn, again, you know this better than I, and so does your audience. But ever since the genocide in Gaza began, and the slaughter in Lebanon, and the escalation in the West Bank and the coming to power of Al Qaeda in Syria and it it being openly a regime in affiliated to the Trump regime. And people are and and and the Israeli regime. People are waking up to the reality that Zionism is evil, that Zionism is a problem. Americans have turned against Zionism in The United States.
The youth have turned against it, and others are turning against it. So as the price of oil goes up, as the price of energy goes up and life becomes more difficult, who are the people going to blame for their personal financial problems that are going to get worse and worse by the day in the weeks and months ahead. Who are they going to blame? They're going to blame Trump. They're going to blame Netanyahu.
They're going to blame the Zionist lobby. They're going to blame the Israeli firsters. They're going to blame the neocots. So this is a catastrophic catastrophic calculation. Talked over the seventh has been one, and we discussed this before.
I've I've always said that the biggest defeat that the Israeli regime has suffered is the destruction of its image. They've not succeeded on the battlefield, by the way. Remember, they were all they how they always say how Hezbollah has been defeated. Look at what's happening now. Look at look at how the the the resistance in Lebanon is hammering the Israeli regime.
And we have to remember the the Lebanese resistance has has been making these sacrifices for the people of Gaza to stop the the genocide. Their their their fight has been for another people. Even though we have a project and everyone of of the resistance in Lebanon is is is extraordinary. But in any case, I always said back then, and I continue to believe, that the greatest defeat of the Israeli regime has been the destruction of its image and credibility and the the fact that it's increasingly being seen across the world as illegitimate. So if you add public misery and blame for that public misery being attributed to Zionism.
How does that help the Israelis? What impact does that have on the influence of the Zionist lobby in The United States? So, ultimately, if I was on the Israeli side, God forbid, or on with Trump, God forbid, I would be saying, end this war yesterday. End it. This is catastrophic.
Not only are you losing the war, because every day that Iran strikes back, people across the world are are seeing Iran as heroic. People are increasingly interested in Iran, and they see that the empire is much weaker than they had envisaged. They thought The United States was this invincible power. Now they can see that The United States and this collective coalition against Iran is failing. But, you know, that aside, the as the as the economic crisis hits harder, things are going to get a lot worse for the Israeli regime and and The United and its and its backers in the West.
And I think that the destruction of the the end how should I phrase it? The influence of the Zionist lobby, it the the the decline of its influence will be more far more rapid as a result of this war. And the longer this war lasts, the more rapid that decline and and fall will be.
Speaker 0: Well, I I was wondering what do you see as the the risks of, I guess, Iran being too successful. I was watching, some comments by professor John Mersheimer, and he was making the point that if the Israelis believe that they're going for a massive strategic defeat, that it's quite possible that they would contemplate using a nuclear weapon to essentially pressure or force Iran into capitulation. Do do you see this being part of Iran's calculation that this is this is a possible direction? I mean, this is, I guess, one of the challenges in the nuclear wars. If one defeats a nuclear power too too severely, this is, this is a risk one is running.
Do you see this challenge as well?
Speaker 1: You know, this is let me put it let me break this down into a couple of parts. First of all, if the Israeli regime uses a nuclear weapon, the very fact that that is contemplated shows how immoral and brutal and genocidal and evil the regime is. The very fact that anyone can contemplate that they would use such a weapon. It just it just tells us everything about the regime itself. Second of all, if the regime actually use a nuclear weapon against anyone, I think that would be the end of the regime.
And third of all, if they did use a nuclear weapon, then that would basically be telling everyone build your own nuclear weapons. And that's what they'll be telling the Iranians to do. And the Israeli regime is very small. But, ultimately, Len, this war for Iran is a defensive war and a fight for survival. We are not going to accept any threat.
We're not going to submit to any threat and accept the destruction of our country because someone is threatening us. That is why we're fighting today. Trump has already said that he will destroy the Iran Iran, and and it'll never recover. He he can do that. So what?
Do we capitulate? No. Because we are an independent nation. We have dignity. We have honor.
Why do we fight? Because we are on the right side of history. Our sin for the last forty seven years has been that we've been saying, stop killing Palestinians. Stop the ethnic cleansing. As human beings, as Muslims, as Shias, we have to support the oppressed.
We're we are willing to face martyrdom for that. We we cherish life more than anyone else. That's why we support the Palestinians. That's why we support victims across the world, because their lives are valuable to us. But we are willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to retain our dignity and honor.
That is our obligation. So we are not going to be intimidated by The United States or the Israeli regime, but the use of nuclear weapons will change the planet. And it will, one way or another, lead to the swift destruction of the Israeli machine.
Speaker 0: Just last question. You mentioned before that, you know, that that you will likely, well, that there's just not that many pathways to peace, but, of course, yeah, that peace is ultimate goal. Where do you see the well, your overall assessment of this war? Where is it heading? And under what condition do you think it's possible to to put an end to it?
Because I also started saying it it looks like there's gonna be a long war. And the again, the the The US feels it has to come out, you know, looking victorious. Iran seemingly can't afford to allow The United States to come back every six months and and bomb it until it finally gets it right. So so it's very difficult, it seems, for for both sides here to to put an end to it. So what what do you see as being the the possible conditions for peace?
Speaker 1: Well, again, I'm just speaking in general terms, and I I don't have any details about what the Iranian position is is. But first of all, it will it will go beyond just Iran. There will have to be a change in the way in which the Palestinians and Gaza are being treated. Lebanon's sovereignty will have to be respected. The so called ceasefires will have to be respected in full.
The Israeli regime will have to leave Lebanon. They'll have to abide by the agreements in Gaza in full. No more murders and assassinations. No more killing kids on a daily basis in in Gaza and Lebanon. So it not just be Iran.
But the threat of war against Iran will have to be dealt with. No piece of paper that The US president signs is of any value to us because we've already negotiated twice, and he already betrayed the negotiations. So we'll have the facts on the ground will have to change, and part of that will be in the Persian Gulf region. US bases will no longer be these centers of threat against Iran that won't be tolerated anymore. And so the regimes in the Persian Gulf region, their policies will have to change.
They will also have to pay for compensation for everything that has happened. That is that will happen without a doubt. Doesn't matter who pays that compensation. But someone will pay. So these regimes, they are already being severely harmed, but they will pay.
They will pay that compensation. So this is not just this is about Iran's long term security. We will not accept a situation where the American the the Trump regime goes and rearms and attacks again. And by the way, because this was discussed many times before, and I didn't speak about this earlier in the months in the previous months because I didn't think it was appropriate. But after the twelve day war, many were saying, why did Iran accept a ceasefire?
It could have just continued. The reason why Iran accepted the ceasefire, even though it was winning the war and it didn't accept it on day one. It continued striking for, like, three or four days. I don't know exactly how long. And then it accepted a halt in hostility.
But the reason was that during the twelve day war, even though Iran gradually gained the upper hand and was winning, Iran knew that if the war continued, The United States would have an incentive to enter the war and bring in all these weapons systems that they brought. And Iran recognized that while they were doing well, relatively speaking, they had many shortcomings. Therefore, they decided to end the hostilities and prepare themselves for the big war. And so for the last eight, nine months, Iranians have been working twenty four hours a day. And now even though the combined firepower is much bigger than from the the enemy is much greater than it was during the twelve day war, the number of launchers that have been destroyed are much lower.
The number of martyrs in the military, much lower. And Iran was able to, this time around, remove its key assets from from from bases, and so so most of these strikes were on empty buildings. Iran had to prepare itself for something much bigger than this the Israeli regime. The Israeli regime is not a threat to Iran. It and and if ever any any strength that it has is given to it by the West because they support this racism and ethnosupremacism.
But The United States is a real threat. And so the twelve day war was an excellent opportunity for Iran to figure out what it has to do. And they've been preparing themselves, and now we see the success. So, ultimately, there will have to be an end to this, but it will be in a way in which Iran feels that in the years to come, its people are safe. And its allies across the region, they get security.
Those regimes that hosted US bases, they're guilty. They have to compensate. I mean, Glenn, let's say I gave this example last night to George Galloway. Let's say France gives bases to the Russians, and the Russians attack The UK. Let's say the Canadians gave bases to the Chinese and they attacked The United States.
And then Canada and France, they were neutral. Is anyone in The UK or The United States going to accept that argument? Right now, b two bombers are being prepared in The UK every day to to carry out heavy strikes on Iran, and they they target ordinary people. Those underground missile bases and drone bases and those factories are untouchable. So they and because the fighter jets are not very effective since they have to because of Iran's drone and missile capabilities and and its air defenses, but mostly it's drone and missile capabilities, they have to be stationed very far from Iran.
But when they fly, they have to refuel, come back, get get to Iran, and then go back, refuel. It's very expensive, not very and and not very effective. So and so now they're increasingly using these heavy these long range bombers, which are also very expensive. But the ammunition, you know, that they drop is is is quite a lot, and it's it devastates people. The British are part of this war.
They are murdering children. The British regime is a child killing regime. So that was just a footnote. It wasn't linked to the broader argument. But the point is that all those regimes that are involved in this war are guilty.
They have Iranian blood on their hands. But the East Persian Gulf regimes are our neighbors. They betrayed us once in the nineteen eighties. They all supported Saddam Hussein, gave him hundreds of billions of dollars back then, which was worth a lot more than what it is now, to kill Iranians. After the war and after the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam, Iranians forgave them and tried to establish better ties.
This time around is not going to end like that. They will have to compensate.
Speaker 0: So just one last off question whole question off this. Do do you see any possibilities for Iran to retaliate against countries like Britain who participates in this war, or or is that, I guess, a bridge too far?
Speaker 1: Well, I think that in future, their presence in our region is going to be diminished. They won't allow it anymore. Europe and The United States, their their presence in our region will be diminished. There's no doubt about that. But one thing that I should add here, and I think it's important for your audience to know, is that all this talk about drones in The United States and the Iranians, these are all lies.
The same people who carried out nine eleven I used to be one of those who didn't believe the you know, I thought it was just Al Qaeda. The same people who use Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and in New York and in Syria and in Libya, the same people may try to carry out an attack in The United States. That will definitely be a false flag operation. They're losing the war, the Zionists, and so they need something. And the only thing that I can think of is for them to carry out a, god forbid, a a major attack against civilians in The United States to change the mood among ordinary Americans, to convince them that the war against Iran is justified and has to continue.
So if anything happens in the West and in particular in The United States, there's not a doubt in my mind that it will have been carried out by by the Zionist or the Zionist regime or someone affiliated to them or some naive fool or a group of naive fools that had been manipulated by them.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Just a quick correction to what you said before. You said Iran had negotiated twice. Actually, it was three times. It also signed the JCPOA.
So it's yeah. No. I I can see the I can I can understand the, yeah, the the declining trust in the diplomacy? But I I know yeah. It's not easy over there in Tehran at the moment, so thank you very much for taking the time.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much, Glenn. It's always a great pleasure being on your show, and thank you for all the heroic work that you do, and god be with you.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Scott Ritter: Trump Calls Putin for Iran War Off-Ramp https://youtu.be/rQt351IzD54 https://t.co/HtiG15YLVO
Video Transcript AI Summary
In this discussion, Speaker 0 interviews Scott Ritter, a former UN weapons inspector and US Marine Corps intelligence officer, about the implications of a phone call between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin and the broader geopolitics around Ukraine, Iran, and energy.
- On the Trump-Putin call and diplomacy with the US: Ritter notes that Trump initiated the call, and Russia has kept a diplomatic channel open with the United States, despite tensions and distrust. Russia reportedly invited figures like Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to continue diplomacy. He interprets Russia’s openness as a strategic move to maintain influence in decision-making, particularly with the US seeking Russian assistance on energy and conflict termination in Ukraine and Iran.
- Russia’s behavior in response to Western strikes and its strategic calculus: Ritter argues Russia has deliberately avoided a rapid military overreaction to Western actions (e.g., UK strikes on Bryansk using Storm Shadow missiles and Flamingo systems) to prevent elevating Ukrainian nationalism or provoking a harsher Western stance. He suggests Russia can legally justify countermeasures against British facilities tied to Storm Shadow and Flamingo production, but chooses restraint to avoid elevating domestic political backlash and to exploit diplomatic openings.
- Economic dimensions and sanctions: He contends Russia benefits from the lifting of oil sanctions, with Russia able to sell crude at much higher market prices, improving its budget and war finances without further escalation. This is framed as a strategic reward for keeping the diplomatic channel open and for not overreacting militarily.
- The strategic objective in Ukraine and the West: Ritter states Russia aims to remove Ukrainian nationalism from Europe’s security equation and to establish Ukraine as a neutral party. He argues that Russian actions, including potential pressure on Ukraine and Western states, are designed to compel a settlement more favorable to Moscow, with less emphasis on Ukrainian terms.
- The Iran context and US leverage: The conversation posits that Russia’s phone call with Trump could enable further discussions with Kushner and Witkoff on terms that reflect Russian objectives, given the US’s urgent need for Russian help on energy and geopolitical cover. Ritter suggests Moscow could pressure Iran to negotiate in a way that aligns with broader Russian goals and reduces US influence, including potentially linking Ukraine settlements to Iran’s termination or moderation.
- Off-ramps and the Iranian war: In Iran, the sole off-ramp is one Iran accepts; the US and Israel no longer control the process. Ritter argues that US strategies (e.g., general Cain’s claims about missile successes) are misguided, with Iran reportedly evading decisive pressure and maintaining leverage. The path forward would involve Russia acting as mediator and engaging Iranian leadership more directly, while the US’s ability to impose a decisive settlement appears limited.
- US military options and feasibility: Ritter points out the limits of US military options in Iran and the Strait of Hormuz. He argues that large-scale ground involvement (e.g., 80,000 Marines to seize territories around Hormuz) is impractical given resource constraints, political risk, and logistical challenges. He criticizes the reliance on bombing campaigns with insufficient precision munitions and questions target selection and legality, highlighting a historical precedent where strategic air campaigns did not compel German surrender in World War II.
- Broader geopolitical consequences and alliances: The discussion covers how a perceived US strategic defeat could reshape global alignments. Ritter foresees BRICS strengthening as the US loses credibility, with China advancing in Taiwan and the South China Sea, and Russia expanding influence in the Middle East. He suggests Iran could emerge as a regional power, while Israel’s nuclear program could come under renewed pressure. Russia’s involvement in the Middle East, grounded in a strategic framework with Iran, provides Moscow with diplomatic legitimacy to lecture Gulf states.
- Lavrov’s stance and Gulf politics: The speakers address Lavrov’s public admonition of Gulf states for pressuring Iran and seeking Western support, arguing this reflects Russia’s adherence to its diplomatic framework and a legally grounded position. Russia’s recent strategic framework with Iran underpins its legitimacy to influence Gulf behavior.
- Closing assessment: Ritter emphasizes that the war’s trajectory is being driven by Iranian resilience and US strategic miscalculations. He maintains that Russia’s role as mediator and its leverage over energy markets position Moscow to shape outcomes, while the United States appears increasingly constrained, resource-drained, and vulnerable to strategic defeats on multiple fronts. The result could be a reordering of global alliances and regional power dynamics, with Russia and Iran gaining greater influence and the US recalibrating its priorities accordingly.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined today by Scott Ritter, a former UN weapons inspector, a US Marine Corps intelligence officer, and also an author. So thank you for coming on. Trump has called Putin. They had this conversation, I assume, about ending the Iran war and also the Ukraine war.
Although, I suspect the emphasis was on the former. The Russians referred to this call as frank. They did not use the word friendly. So I was wondering, what do you read into all of this? What do you suspect they discussed?
Speaker 1: Well, a lot of speculation thrown into that one. I I think we do know that it was Trump who initiated this call, so this is an American initiated call. We also know that Russia has, to the dismay of some, surprise of others, kept the door open for diplomacy with The United States despite The United States being less than a perfect diplomatic partner. In particular, they've they've they've kept the invitation out for Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to continue to participate and even take a lead on diplomacy. Again, given their track record with Iran, one would think that that would have been a disqualifying factor.
But the reason why I bring this up is that Russia is not doing anything precipitously to close down the diplomatic door and you have to ask yourself, why would they? I mean, there are some purists out there, I count myself amongst them, who in times of passion sometimes forget that there is an art of diplomacy and since war is an extension of politics by other means, diplomacy is sometimes the more sound path to take than confrontation. But we're dealing with this time when Vladimir Putin was an assassination attempt against his life using 91 drones targeted by CIA intelligence while the president was engaged in a conversation. That was December 28. Great Britain has attacked Votkynsk using a British made storm I'm sorry, Flamingo missile, you know, using Ukraine as a proxy, but it was targeted built and targeted by Great Britain.
Now seven storm shadow missiles have hit a strategic industrial facility in the city of Bryansk. Normally, these are red lines and yet the Russians leave the door of diplomacy open. The question is, why? I think the answer is that Russia is playing a very strategic game on multiple fronts and that they've avoided successfully falling into the military trap. To give you an example, why would you respond to because logic dictates and Sergey Kheragunov has articulated this that if England strikes Russia, Russia strikes England.
And we know that there's a facility in a British town in The UK that produces storm shadows and it has literally become a legally justifiable target. Russia would have every right under international law to put an Ereshnik on that facility and cease its existence. Same thing with Flamingo. We know Flamingo is a British design. The British all but admitted it when they unveiled it at their Abu Dhabi Arms Expo under the flag of a British company.
Russia would have every right to take out that headquarters and any facilities associated with it. So why haven't they? Kirstarmer is in the process of political freefall. If you attack The UK, you've suddenly made Kirstarmer a wartime leader and you create the potential of his political revival. So, you know, Russia has taken seven storm shadows in a in a flamingo.
Some damage has been done, but the strategic picture is collapsing the British government, which Russia only has to wait and do nothing. So sometimes military action isn't the well, I say with The United States, One of Russia's strategic goals and objectives is the lifting of economic sanctions. And here, by doing nothing, Russia had all the oil sanctions lifted. I mean, I'm not an economist, but I could imagine that if you were selling euro euro grade crude at $23 a barrel discounted and you're now able to sell it at $80 on the mark open market, that $53 barrel profit is that helps balance budget, helps pay for war, it helps any number of things, cash shortages, the whole thing. This is good and Russia didn't have to do anything except keep the door of diplomacy open to pick up a phone call, answer the phone call and have a frank discussion.
I think the Russians had a very frank discussion about world energy. The president has become suddenly very well informed about the potential of Russia to deliver oil and gas into a market that now faces a critical shortage because of the closure of the Strait Of Hormuz. The president has been educated about, you know, what will happen to the American economy if if a balance isn't found in the energy supply market globally. Russia doesn't need to tell the president about the political consequences of a failed economy. The president understands that.
So I think the Russians have kept the door open because it plays to their advantage. A Russian overreaction, for instance, assassinating Zelensky, which would be a very crowd pleasing thing to do in Russia. The man is a dog. He's a criminal. He's a Nazi.
He's committed horrific crimes. He's now attacking Russian civilians and has been. It would be a very pleasing thing to do, but strategically, your job is to remove Ukraine from the side of Europe and The United States to eliminate the Ukrainian nationalism and to make Ukraine a neutral party. Do you do this by carrying out actions that would inflame Ukrainian nationalism? Zelenskyy right now is identified as one of the worst leaders possible for Ukraine.
The longer Zelenskyy rules Ukraine, the better off it is for Russia. They gain everything, the collapse of confidence in the Ukrainian government, etc. We now see a political three way death match between Zelensky, Zeluzny and Budanov. A Russian targeting of Bankova would literally turn Zelensky into that which Russia doesn't want him to be, a wartime leader with credibility. Give him justification for everything he's done.
So for the Russians to do nothing is actually the best course of action, to let Ukraine devolve, to let The United Kingdom devolve. Now, in the context of Iran, for Russia not to take that phone call removes them from the decision making cycle in The United States. But by taking that phone call, Russia is able to make its voice heard and the president is desperate. By taking this phone call, Russia has set up the potential for an additional phone call, an additional phone call, and a face to face meeting, maybe with Kushner and and Witkoff. But that face to face meeting will be done on terms that are far more influenced by Russian goals and objectives because it's The United States that now desperately needs Russian assistance to achieve an outcome that's politically useful to the American president.
You know, I think you might see Russia being willing to put pressure on Iran to bring conflict termination or not to do certain things in exchange for The United States removing some of their demands when it comes to Ukraine. I think that you see The United States is literally running away from Ukraine as fast as possible. Russia wants to encourage that, which is why Russia does nothing except leave the door open for so I think what you saw is a very frank conversation, not one that put Trump on the defensive, but one that educated Trump about the reality that he's facing and the role Russia could play. But, you know, letting the president know that there are conditions that have to be met. Russia's saying we want to negotiate and enter this war, but they're not gonna accept Ukrainian terms, and The United States needs to stop backing Ukrainian terms.
And I think you're gonna see Russia and the United States come to an agreement that, more closely resembles Alaska, but we'll call it Alaska modified because now, since The United States reneged on Alaska, they can't just throw it back on the table. When you throw it back on the table, it now has strings attached to it and the Russians could start calling in those strings. For instance, the idea of freezing the line of contact in Khersona and Saporezia might be the longer valuable the Ukrainians might be called upon to give up those territories as well. We get into buffer zones. Again, I don't know the details of the Russian position, they haven't been made public, but I think Russia is in a better position to admit, to force, to compel The United States stick to Alaska plus, meaning the Alaska plus the current reality, to get to to bring about, you know, an end to this conflict.
And I think The United States isn't in much of a negotiating position. Time is not on their side because this conflict with Iran is going south quickly, and they need Russia. They need Russia to, you know, get involved in the energy market, and they need Russia's help with bringing it into this conflict. And, again, Russia can help provide some political cover for the president. Imagine if the president said that he was able to get a Ukrainian peace deal and an Iranian peace deal in the same day, and suddenly that Nobel Peace Prize is looking pretty good around his neck.
I mean, he's the man, I mean, because he is the peace president. And Russia is more than happy to play that game. I mean, trust me, the Russians know better than anybody that President Trump is the least qualified person in the world for a Nobel Peace Prize, but since the Nobel Peace Prize has already been politically compromised, why not just give it to a politically compromised person? So I think the Russians, they know how to play Trump, and I think this phone call was all about playing Trump.
Speaker 0: But at the same time, though, it seems that the the cost of doing nothing is that Russia's deterrence keeps weakening. The fact that the British would dare to do this kind of thing, strike inside Russia, the fact that there are people like chancellor Mertz can sit in Munich at the security conference and brag about, you know, in Paul, how he has imposed all these casualties on Russia. It just I I got the impression from the that the decapitation strike against Iran that this had brought back well, made the Russian rethink a bit what was done in December against Russia involved. Do do you see this pressure, though, on Putin to, well, to essentially do what Iran has done? That is tell anyone who attacks Iran, assists in any way, allows US to use bases, its airspace, everyone will be struck.
I mean, you I would expect in the future that a lot of the Gulf nations will be very cautious, allowing their territories to be used again if, again, the can't this is the consequence.
Speaker 1: Well, again, only Russia can make that call. But I would say that if I were Norushkin advising the president, I would say that Starmer is history. Kyr Starmer is toast. And the continued devolution of the British, political system is to the benefit of Russia. That it when Starmer goes, there will be a political vacuum in fighting, and you're gonna see, Britain continue to collapse of its own volition.
You know, the case can be made for patience. You know, what has Britain done beside I mean, you know, giving European politicians bragging rights is meaningless. Mertz bragging about what he did to Russia doesn't change the strategic equation that the German economy is trashed and is gonna get trashed even further now because of a looming economic crisis brought on by an energy shortage. You know? So, you know, Mertz's domestic political, you know, status, let him brag.
Who cares? It's words. It's nothing. And Starmer, if he wants to sit there and, you know, talk behind the scenes about how, you know, England is, you know, enabling Ukraine to strike strategic targets, in in the short term, yes, it would be pleasing. I mean, I I I think I could say that I speak for a lot of Russians who would love to see British factories go up in smokes and love to see Oreshnik rain down on on German factories and, you know, you know, and it would feel good for a moment.
But is the goal to end this war or is the goal to expand this war? Because right now the European Union is in trouble. They they're they don't know how they're gonna fund the continuation of this conflict. You know, Germany, again, is a collapsing economy with and Mercy's political fortunes are collapsing. Starmer's on the way out.
Macron's in crisis. You know, sometimes you you when the enemy is doing what you want them to do, just let them keep doing it and and take the peripheral hits. You know, there will have to be a balancing act because, you know, you know, this is it's not sustainable. But I think there's ways that the Russians would be able to strike targets inside Ukraine without empowering Zelensky, you know, to focus more on the bases in Western Ukraine where these missiles came from. I think you might be seeing a Russian accused more liberally to take out these air bases where the aircraft that fired the storm shadows are located to strike targets that you know, we know that the British have built certain refurbishment facilities.
I believe there's some flamingo assembly facilities, again, in Western Ukraine, maybe close precipitously close to the Polish border. These are targets that need to be taken out and taken out decisively. And, you know, there's been some political risk associated with taking out these targets, and I think it's time you eliminate that political risk. So that's where I would think the Russians could, you know, could go to flex their muscle. But let Europe continue to commit suicide.
I mean, you know, they're they're weaving the rope. They've put it around their neck. My god. Don't stop them from getting on the stool and kicking it out from underneath themselves. That would be my advice to the Russian president is, you know, we're winning.
So let's keep on track. Don't allow ourselves to be deflected off course because, you know, the British landed a punch. I mean, you're in a 15 round boxing match. You know, round nine, the British hit you. You know?
Got got a nice kidney shot. Okay. Don't change your plan. Get back to the game. You're wearing them down and you're gonna knock them out in around 14 or 15.
But if you change it now because you got mad and start, you know, aggressively punching, you might be playing into their game plan. So I I think Russia stays to the script. This oil, the lifting of oil sanctions, think, is just a gift from God. I again, I'm not an economist, but I can't imagine that this doesn't solve a lot of pressing economic problems for Vladimir Putin. No budget issues.
You keep making $57 profit margin over what you were making, you know, and who knows how high this goes if if this war you know, Russia right now has its has the ability to influence, how long the straight Hormuz stays shut. So Russia's in the driver's seat. The United States went to Russia for a solution. I mean, that's the thing. Russia didn't go to The United States for a solution.
The United States went to Russia for a solution. And so The United States is looking for Russia to do something. So Russia's you in the driver's seat here. I think this is this isn't a sign of weakness on the part of Russia. It's actually a sign of their diplomatic strength.
Speaker 0: Well, I assume that in these talks, Trump was looking to what extent Putin could help to put an end to this war. In other words, offer some kind of an off ramp even if it could be concessions from the Iranians, which probably isn't forthcoming. But but we also see in this reports coming out of well, at least in the Washington Post suggesting that Trump's adviser, you know, argues we have to put an end to this because, yeah, we're not winning. And also, in the Israeli media, there's suggestions now that many Israeli leaders are also worried that Iran is not collapsing, and it's not gonna capitulate. So where is this all going?
Now I guess my question is twofold. Is there an off ramp to this? And in Iran, that is and if not, what will Trump do? Just inflict destruction, or where what is the war plan now that regime change isn't happening?
Speaker 1: The only off ramp is one that Iran agrees to. The United States and Israel have no vote on this. They started something. They're no longer in control. This is gonna go as long as Iran wants it to go.
That's just the reality. What can Trump do? I mean, we had general Kane come out and they outline his plan. Basically, he said we're we're having great success against the Iranian missiles. Last night proved that to be this is straight up lie.
We've sunk the Iranian navy. Who cares? The Strait Of Hormuz continues to be closed, and you're not gonna open it up because it was never about the Iranian navy. And now you're gonna expand your target set to strike strategic industrial targets inside Iran. They're all empty.
If you think at day 12, Iran continues to have high value industrial equipment stored in known strategic industrial facilities. Please pass that marijuana cigarette because it's pretty damn good. And I want some of it even though I don't smoke marijuana. I might if it's that good. If it allows you to hallucinate that well, I'll do it because those sites are empty.
There's no strategic strategically important equipment in any known facility anymore. It's all been moved. It's all been evacuated. So we'll just be bombing empty buildings. So all Trump has is a expansion of the empty bomb empty building bombing campaign, which makes us feel good because we get a lot of war porn.
We get to watch things blow up and go, oh, ah, and the mouth breathers get to breathe heavily and post stupid stuff on X and other social media outlets. But Iran just continues winning. At some point in time, it's gonna become clear to The United States that it doesn't dictate the end of this war. Iran does. And they need therefore to talk to people who have connectivity to Iran.
Well, The United States has no connectivity. Iraqi will not pick up the phone and talk to Witkoff. It means that Russia now becomes the anti locketur. And and now Russia gets to talk to the Iranians and gets to play a role as mediator, and, you know, and that's where that's where the value of of Russia comes into play.
Speaker 0: Yeah. So Trump put up a tweet something along the lines that we hit 5,500 targets, which isn't much of a strategy just to blow things up. It's, yeah, it it as you said, it begins to look childish. One would want to see what objective is and how these targets, you know, achieve that objective. But you mentioned the inability to open Hormuz.
The Trump has argued this is a an an objective to open the Strait Of Hormuz. I guess it's necessary to get the energy flowing again. And, also, he argued if the Iranians dare to close it, keep it close at least, he will hit them 20 times as hard. And Macron has also now suggested that the French will also, you know, he said, have a defensive mission in the Strait Of Hormuz to open it up. To what extent is is such a military option actually possible, though?
Speaker 1: Oh, la la. The French getting involved. That's a that's a game changer. I mean, my god, Macron, the military genius that he is. And I can't imagine, you know, the I mean, the French, that that changes everything.
I think Iran's gonna surrender tomorrow. The stupidity. Look. There's a way to get the Strait Of Hormuz open, brute force. You come in and you seize Karg Island.
You seize all all islands, Kashyyyem Island, and you project power ashore. You seize the the shoreline on on the Iranian side of the Strait Of Hormuz. You go in with, you know, 80,000 marines and you and you and you seize and you hold that territory and you could extend an air air air bridge over it and the Iranians couldn't touch it. You can do that. It'll cost you.
It'll be very heavy, and we don't have the resources available right now. You know? So that that's a that's a time, you know, time intensive thing. And still, once you get there, you'll be vulnerable to Iranian ballistic missiles. You may not get you know, Iranians able to push you with troops because with your air supremacy, you'll be able to hold back any concerted ground effort, and you should be able to push back against most local threats.
But we don't have a solution to to to ballistic missiles, and we don't have a solution to drones. And so we would just now be parking ourselves on Iranian territory trying to, you know, force ships through. The Iranians will still, on occasion, target a ship, and they'll just start pounding, you know, our forces. Logistics becomes a problem. You put 80,000 guys ashore in Iran.
You gotta support them. You gotta sustain them. Need poor facilities. Those poor facilities will be under, you know, under duress. You know, so and and and again, we just don't have the Marines to do that.
You know, we would have to redirect a lot of Marine manpower and bring in amphibious shipping that would be vulnerable. And it would take months to do this. And meanwhile, the the international economy is gonna collapse well before that. So this is just fanciful thinking on the part of The United States and on the part of France that they they have a vote. US has always bragged that they could open up the Strait Of Hormuz anytime they wanted to.
And the Iranians have always said that that's a pipe dream. So far, appears that it's a pipe dream that Iran can shut this thing down. There's not a damn thing The United States can do to open it up. The inclusion of France into the war mix, I think, only weakens the the case for for milit because France has zero military capacity that's that's that's meaningful. And French involvement with The United States would just complicate planning.
So, again, game set match, Iran. They've they've planned this thing out better than than we have. The fact that we're sitting here talking about this at day 12 means we didn't consider it on day one, which means we're making it up as we go along. We're we're the Iranians are on their war plan. Are constrained to their war plan.
They've thought this thing through. John Boyd, a famous colonel, you know, talks about getting inside the enemy's decision making cycle. He talks about the OODA I'm sure you're familiar with the OODA loop. Observe, orient, decide, act. Well, the Iranians are inside the American decision making cycle.
We've changed our war plan five, six times. They, on the other hand, haven't changed theirs at all. They're sticking to it. We are reacting to them. They are driving.
They are in the driver's seat. They're the ones, you know, initiating the action. We're reacting. When you're when you're reacting, you're losing. You need to be in charge.
You need to be the one precipitating action, getting the enemy to react. The Iranians are in charge. We are reacting to them. We are going to lose. If we're talking about putting ground troops into the theater to open up the Strait or Hormuz, it means we we hadn't considered that as an option early on, which means we've done zero logistical planning for this.
So, no, it's it's just not gonna happen anytime soon.
Speaker 0: So what are the war plans going from here? What what what are the cards that The US can play? Because it looked as if in absence of its own ground troops, it could get Kurds armed then. There were some reports to see I had already done this, but now reports comes from the Kurds suggesting that they they're not gonna do this. Azerbaijan looked like it was gonna be pulled in, but instead of retaliating against what was allegedly an Iranian drone, they're now sending humanitarian aid instead.
And, you know, Lindsey Graham, he threatened Saudi Arabia with consequences unless they would, you know, join in on the fight, because they don't want to fight Iran directly either. I guess a lot of the infrastructure is quite vulnerable. So what does this I guess, what what are you what cards are there to play? As and, you know, how short is The US on ammunition here?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, we have plenty of of, you know, dumb bombs. We have some kits that can be, you know, attached to them so, you know, we could drive you know, drop a laser laser guided munitions. But, you know, we've been supplying Israel. What how do you think Israel leveled Gaza? So there's a finite level of these, you know, number of these of these sets.
We're running out of standoff precision mission missiles, which means future strikes would require aircraft to actually penetrate the air Indian airspace. Iran has held back on its air defense. They've retained a significant portion of it. And if we start penetrating the air defense, I think you're gonna start seeing air air defense ambushes, and we'll start losing aircraft, which is gonna be problematic because then we have to rescue pilots, which they put in combat search and rescue team. They could go down.
We get a black hawk down, Persian style. It's just a bad it's a bad it's a bad look all around. We we we are running out of precision standoff weapons. They're very expensive. And, again, anybody knowing anything would have said we just it's it's we don't have enough.
We're gonna run out of cruise missiles. We, you know, we fired enough to kill a bunch of children, but we haven't retained enough to sustain this this conflict. So, you know, the next steps are just to blow up more things. I mean, that's what general Cain said. That's the only option we have is to blow up more things.
That's all president Trump could threaten to do, to blow up more things. We don't even know what they're blowing up, though. Again, if we've shown so much confusion in our initial wave of our attack where we should have had the best intelligence possible, and yet we put out of four places targeted in the Manab naval facility, two were empty warehouses. One was a hospital. One was a school.
50% of our targets were illegal under the law of war. Makes you wonder what the percentages that we're striking today that are illegal. We will never know because Pete Hegseth closed down the the units responsible for screening targets to make sure that they were not civilian in nature. And but now as we become more and more desperate, we're just gonna start expanding the target deck. And, you know, if if we've bombed 5,000 targets and now Trump says we're gonna bomb more, where are they gonna come from?
What targets are they? Who's making these targets? Who's making the decision? This is AI driven. How many homes are we gonna strike?
How many schools are we gonna strike? How many hospitals are we gonna strike? How many monsters are we gonna strike? And the answer is a lot because this now has become literally a war of, you know, cultural genocide. You know?
And that's that's what The United States will be. We're not gonna win. The Iranians are not gonna blink. I mean, I'm I'm sure I'm sure you have studied, at least peripherally, the strategic air campaign during the second world war against Germany, and you're cognizant of the reality that it didn't achieve the strategic results they wanted to achieve. The German production actually went up, became more efficient, and the the the will of the German people to resist was not broken by the strategic air campaign.
So what we're proposing is basically to, you know, increase the scope and scale of a strategic air campaign that history shows doesn't work, doesn't doesn't achieve the outcomes you want. Know, there's a reason why Azerbaijan backed off. This this war was sold as a regime change war, even though now Trump says it's not. Well, it's not because we can't, but we tried. And, you know, the idea was, you know, if you kill Ali Khamenei and you have people in the streets shouting death to the the Ayatollahs, the Kurds might be more inclined to say, okay.
We're in. The the Azeris might say, yeah. Zanghu's in our corridor. It's looking pretty good right now. Let's let's jump in on this one.
But when you kill the supreme leader and the end result is a unified Iran screaming for revenge, the last thing you wanna do is get your list on that revenge list. And the Kurds are suddenly they woke up, and they went, well, we're not doing that. And the Azeris went, yeah, we're not doing it either. The Saudis, they're not doing it. Lindsey Graham can take talk till he's pink in the face.
But, you know, he may look cute to his never mind. I'm not going there. You know, I don't like Lindsey Graham, but no reason to get ad hominem on him. You know, but he he this is a man who talks tough, but he there's nothing tough about him. He's a pancake.
He's a perfume princess. He's nothing. He's a senator who, you know, for whatever reason people listen to, but hopefully he's being disgraced right now. And I think he's embarrassed. I think he's embarrassed by the fact that he sold a war to Trump and that war is going bad, and his political capital is going out the window, and he's coming up on a contentious election that he may very well lose, which would be the greatest thing South Carolina has ever done.
So he he become more desperate, threatening Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia doesn't care about his threats. The biggest consequences to Saudi Arabia would be the destruction of their energy production capability, which is a guarantee if they jump in two feet into this war against Iran. The United States has proven that it can't defeat Iran. Iran has proven that it can continue to inflict destruction beyond its borders even after absorbing 5,000, you know, bombs dropped on its territory.
So it doesn't matter what Lindsey Graham says. He's irrelevant. He's simply fodder for the mainstream media to sell a war that is increasingly becoming impossible to sell.
Speaker 0: You know, I it does look like strategically, they got a bit lost after the original regime change operation failed, and, of course, the whole premise that Trump would be allowed to choose the next leader, it's it is it it does show a certain amount of detachment where they think what they think Iran is and the Iranian people. Just as a last question, what do you think are the wider implications of this? Because this is, of course, not just a war between Israel, The US on one side, and Iran on the other. The this will have wider, I guess, global ramifications. What does this mean for, I guess, the future of Israel, nuclear proliferation, the Abraham Accords, the, I guess, the the partnership between Russia and Iran.
Sorry. A lot of questions packed in there, but more more generic. What what what do you think is the wider consequences of this war? Not just the war happening, but it's going south as well.
Speaker 1: I I think this will be a huge strategic defeat for The United States. Trump will try to mitigate that by creating, you know, a political cover at home. But globally, I mean, look what's already happened. We've stripped air defense out of South Korea, and we've proven that our ballistic missile defense shield over Asia doesn't work. If we were trying to intimidate the Chinese, remember the national security strategy document of the Trump administration speaks of conventional military overmatch against China in the Pacific.
We've just proven that we are woefully inadequate. If you wanna see a nation that has more missiles than Iran, look at China. I want us to be looking at this saying we're screwed. It's over. If we're if China ever decided to unleash their ballistic missile fury on us.
So we know that the ballistic missile defense won't work. We know that they'll destroy everything. We know United States can't come to our assistance, so it's over. South Korea and Japan have to re be reconsidering their their tripartite nuclear deal with The United States because United States has been exposed as a toothless tiger. Not only that, we're stripping away their defenses.
So this is this is bad for The United States all around strategically. We we're not gonna recover militarily from this even though we're not suffering significant material loss in terms of aircraft, munitions, you know, the what what this is gonna do to American, you know, defense priorities in terms of, you know, rebuilding ammunition. You know? Because once you have no ammunition, your military is useless. And so who's gonna step in and take advantage of this?
I I think that, you know, we're gonna have to leverage Ukraine away, meaning that the the Russia is gonna get what it wants in Ukraine. I think China's gonna get what it wants in Taiwan. I think China's gonna get what it wants in the South China Sea. I I I think India is gonna realize The United States is not the partner. It should be an India will jump in even further with BRICS.
And I I think that Iran will emerge as a as a regional power. The United States will be evicted from the Middle East. Israel this is the this is the one place where I think Putin's intervention could, you know, could come into play because Putin has said straight up that, you know, Israel, because of its heavy Russian Ukrainian population, is an extension of Russia. So Putin's not gonna let Iran sit there and continue this war to the point where they depopulate Israel. I'm not talking about killing Israelis.
I'm talking about making Israel unlivable and people start to flee. So I I I think that Israel will be retained, but now pressure can be brought to Israel on their nuclear program. I don't think Israel gets to stand around as a unilateral defiler of nuclear proliferation. Either the entire world goes nuclear or Israel's gonna have to be compelled to talk about, you know, talk about this. And maybe that's the leverage Russia could use too for the Iranian program, meaning to finally dispose of this 450 kilograms of 60% enriched uranium.
Iran's not gonna give up that for free now. United States has lost all negotiating posture. Can't be trusted. But Russia might be able to get Iran to put that on the table and and get the deal that that closes the door to any breakout potential in exchange for Israel putting its nuclear program on the table as well. So, you know, there's a lot of possibilities here.
But in order to do that, this war is gonna have to continue for a little bit more time. You're going to need The United States to feel real economic pain. That's the only way you're gonna get The United States to make some of the decisions that need to be made. And then, you know, the the president again, I think the president, you know, being the con artist he is, that he can sell that I'm the man who brought peace to the Middle East and peace to the, peace to Ukraine and Russia. I'm the guy who did it.
Me, Donald Trump. I'm the best thing in world. This never would have happened if I hadn't gone to war with Iran. This war with Iran, you know, we we we achieved the lasting peace. Look.
We brought stability to the Middle East. There's no need for American troops in the Middle East anymore. We brought peace. We can bring them home. I told you I'd bring my troops home.
This is a great victory. And I think he'll try to sell it that way, and he may succeed because the American public has shown itself to be very ignorant and vulnerable to this kind of nonsense coming from Washington DC.
Speaker 0: Sorry. Just yeah. Last last question. Did it surprise you that Lavrov was essentially scolding the Gulf nations? Because many had assumed after Syria that the Russians would try to do a more balanced approach to the Middle East.
That is, you know, its engagement in Syria alienated many of the Gulf states. But so but but here we see Russia, Guatislavrov, making it very clear he's not a neutral actor in this conflict and such a, you know, scolding the Gulf States for participating in the attack on Iran and then coming to Russia trying to make them put pressure on Iran. It's did did this come as a surprise?
Speaker 1: No. Because, as a longtime student of Russia, Russia acts upon the diplomatic foundation that that exists. To parse away Russia's involvement in Syria and see what Russia's obligations were. It wasn't black and white. Russia was not obligated to, you know, get involved.
Russia was there to achieve stability. Russia made recommendations to the Assad regime that were ignored. A situation occurred, and Russia did not have the the authority to expand that conflict, especially once Assad started to weaken. So people, I think, throw a lot of weight on rep, but Russia is a an actor, a global actor that requires the diplomatic foundation to be in place. They believe it or not, they actually adhere to the rule of law far better than anybody in the West does.
They have domestic issues that, you know, things have to be done legally, and they they also have relationships with nations that are defined by agreements. This is why the twelve day conflict was so frustrating because everybody's saying, where's Russia? Where's Russia? But it was Iran that didn't ratify the strategic framework agreement. So there could be no Russia because there was no agreement.
Now they have an agreement. Now they have a strategic framework agreement. This gives Russia a tremendous amount of political legitimacy and and viability. There's a foundation now of diplomacy upon which they can act from. They can act aggressively against a against a a Gulf region that has behaved egregiously because they they are empowered to do so because of their agreement with Iran.
And so that's why I think you see Lavrov doing what he's doing because Russia's firmly in a legal a legally sound position, a legally secure position for them to be lecturing people about their about their behavior.
Speaker 0: Well, thank you for sharing your insights and, yeah, taking the time.
Speaker 1: Okay. Thanks. Sorry about the Internet, but, hey, it is what it is.
Speaker 0: It happens. Okay. Bye bye.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
John Mearsheimer: U.S. Already Lost Iran War - No Off-Ramp in Sight https://youtu.be/1e9NhLfPNKU https://t.co/cc7CUaaIDa
Video Transcript AI Summary
John Mersheimer argues that the war against Iran is not proceeding as the United States hoped and that there is no plausible off-ramp or decisive pathway to victory. He contends that Washington cannot narrate a decisive end to the conflict the way it could have against Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan, because the war has not produced a decisive Iranian collapse. Instead, Iran has an incentive to convert the fight into a protracted war of attrition and possesses the means to do so, including a broad set of missiles and drones and the ability to retaliate across the region. The result, he says, is a stalemate in which Iran would drive a hard bargain to secure sanctions relief or other concessions, and escalation by the U.S. and Israel will simply provoke Iran to escalate further.
On why Iran will not settle on American terms, Mersheimer emphasizes that Iran has a strong hand and time on its side. He notes that the more time passes, the more desperate the U.S. will be to settle, which strengthens Iran’s position. He argues that even heavy bombardment would not compel Iran to quit; rather, Iran could strike back against Gulf states, Israel, and American assets with significant effect. The Gulf States are particularly vulnerable due to a small number of petroleum sites, short-range missiles, drones, and, crucially, desalination plants that provide most of their fresh water. He cites Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Oman as heavily dependent on desalination, implying that destroying such infrastructure would have catastrophic humanitarian and economic consequences. Iran could also target energy infrastructure, and even if the Strait of Hormuz remains open, widespread damage to Gulf energy infrastructure would devastate the regional and global economy. He warns that Israel could suffer increasing Iranian pressure as time goes on, especially as interceptors become depleted.
Regarding energy and the Strait of Hormuz, Mersheimer stresses that 20% of the world’s oil and gas passes through the Persian Gulf, making the energy dimension the war’s most consequential aspect. He argues that opening the Strait of Hormuz would be exceedingly difficult, and destroying desalination and petroleum infrastructure in the Gulf States would negate any advantage of keeping the straits open. He suggests that escalation without a viable endgame will have grave economic repercussions for the world, pushing the U.S. toward a coerced end that would not be a victory.
Mersheimer contends that strategic bombing or air power alone cannot win such wars. He contrasts World War II and Korea/Vietnam with the present, where there are no boots on the ground and no clear path to victory via air power alone. He notes that the deterrent value of air power is limited, and a regime change strategy is notoriously difficult without ground forces. He argues that the decapitation strategy and ongoing escalations are unlikely to produce a decisive American/Israeli victory, and could instead lead to a stalemate or American concession under economic strain.
On leadership and credibility, Mersheimer critiques U.S. leadership, particularly President Trump, for ignoring warning from generals and the National Intelligence Council that regime change was unlikely to succeed. He cites General James Mattis-era warnings that there was no viable military option and notes the pre-war intelligence that suggested limited prospects for quick regime change. He points to Trump’s sometimes contradictory and inaccurate statements about Iranian capabilities, including claims that Iran possessed Tomahawk missiles and that U.S. strikes had erased Iran’s nuclear capability. He argues that such statements undermine U.S. credibility, though he distinguishes between outright lies and genuine mistaken beliefs by leaders.
The discussion also covers Russia’s involvement, with Russia believed to be providing intelligence to Iran and possibly supplying matériel and oil if needed. Mersheimer asserts that the war benefits Russia strategically: it diverts U.S. resources from Europe and Ukraine, potentially worsens Ukraine’s trajectory, and could raise global energy prices that benefit Russian revenue. He suggests that Russia, and possibly China, have strong incentives to aid Iran to counter American power.
Europe’s role is analyzed as largely symbolic or marginal in determining the war’s outcome. Mersheimer argues that European elites are aligned with the U.S., prioritizing NATO continuity and the maintenance of American military presence, despite the damaging consequences for Europe. He suggests a radical approach for Europe: adopt a hardball stance toward the U.S., diversify its economic and strategic relations (including with China, Russia, and India), and resist being economically manipulated or coerced by Washington. He emphasizes that Europe’s interests would be better served by reducing overreliance on the United States and pursuing a more balanced set of strategic partners.
Towards the end, the hosts revisit the idea that leaders lie and that liberal democracies tend to rely more on public persuasion and propaganda, with Trump’s statements illustrating the complexities of truth in international politics. The conversation ends with a reflection on whether Europe should recalibrate its posture toward the United States and broaden its strategic hedges to protect its own interests, rather than assuming continued U.S. leadership in a costly and protracted confrontation with Iran.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined by professor John Mersheimer, to discuss the war against Iran, which is, definitely not going as planned. So thank you very much for coming back on.
Speaker 1: My pleasure, Glenn.
Speaker 0: So, well, as I said, the the war definitely not going as, Trump had hoped, but, it seems to be going as, many would have predicted. Indeed, Trump himself had, was met with a lot of warnings before he went down this road. And, now, of course, it's unclear what direction he should take. We also see reports from the Israeli sorry, from the American media that even Israel is now growing concerned. They don't think is that Iran's gonna collapse.
They don't think it's going to surrender. So what exactly if time is on Iran's side, why go down this road? And the Wall The Wall Street Journal said something similar that Trump's adviser would like to find a quick exit from this war. So what do you make of this? Is is this reaching the end of the war, or will Iran not permit this?
Speaker 1: Well, it's quite clear that the war is not going well for The United States, and that president Trump, I think, would like to put an end to it. And the problem that he faces is he can't find an off ramp. I think nobody can tell a plausible story about how this war ends. If we had decisively defeated Iran the way we decisively defeated both Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in World War II, then you can say the war is over with, we are the winner, and we're gonna impose terms on the loser. But that's not what's happened here.
They haven't won anything approximating a decisive victory. And in a very important way, the Iranians have an incentive to continue the war, to turn it into a protracted war of attrition, and they have the means to do that. So the question then is how does President Trump get Iran to agree to settle this war. When you listen to people in the administration talk, they sometimes talk as if we're the only player in the game. Of course, the Israelis as well.
But the Americans and the Israelis are in the driver's seat. We determined when the war started, we determined when it ends, we determined the conditions that the Iranians have to accept. This is the sort of view you get from inside the administration. But this is not the way the real world works. The Iranians have a say in this.
And the question is how do you get the Iranians to agree to stop fighting? Now some people might say that we are inflicting so much punishment on the Iranians that they would be happy to quit. Pete Hegseth has been saying that today is going to be the day of the heaviest bombardment that Israel and The United States inflict on Iran. Okay. Let's assume they inflict more punishment today than they have in any of the previous eleven days of the war.
Does that mean that the Iranians are gonna throw up their hands and quit? I hardly think that's the case. I think that Iran has prepared itself to accept massive punishment by The United States and Israel. So we can dish it out, but the Iranians are not going to throw their hands up. And in fact what the Iranians are gonna do is they're gonna up the ante from their side.
As we go up the escalation ladder, they'll go up the escalation ladder. If you start destroying critical infrastructure inside of Iran, they'll destroy critical infrastructure inside The Gulf States and inside of Israel. And they can do it. They have lots of ballistic missiles, they have lots of drones, almost all of them are highly accurate, and they're operating in a target rich environment. It's not like they can't find targets to hit.
They can hit vulnerable and important economic and strategic targets with relative ease. So they have a strong hand to play. And when I say they, I mean the Iranians have a strong hand to play. And they have no incentive to settle this one on America's terms. They have a deep seated interest in making sure they get something out of a settlement, sanctions relief, reparations, who knows?
But they're going to drive a hard bargain because the more time goes by the more desperate we are going to be to settle this one. So all of this is to say, I don't see what the off ramp is at this point in time for President Trump. I hope I'm wrong. I hope I'm missing something and the war can just be shut down. But nobody's been able to tell me a plausible story as to how you bring this thing to an end anytime soon.
I would just say one final point, Glenn. I think if the effects on the international economy are significant, it looks like we're heading off a cliff and that is possible, I think at that point the Americans will bring the war to an end, but that will not be a victory. We will have caved in to the Iranians if that scenario plays itself out. And that is, as you well know, a very realistic scenario.
Speaker 0: What do you describe though, what The United States hoped or thought the war would be like, it it's, you know, what we refer to then as escalation dominance, this assumption that one can decide the pace of moving up or down the escalation ladder. This seems to be something that is reasonable once one is in a comfortable hegemonic position, that is, when one can dominate, that is to dictate when the war starts, who should be involved, what are acceptable targets, when do we put an end to it. But but but it just seems that Iran can't end this war because if they end it now, except some ceasefire, then I guess the main fear, not unlike what the Russians are fearing, is then that The US would just be back again in a few months. So but but if there is no deal I mean, if if you look at the Russian conflict, if they can't get a deal which gives them security, they will take territory to make sure. But on the Iranian side, if they can't get any deal which gives them proper security to make sure this doesn't happen again, you know, they're not going for territory.
It looks as if, well, kicking The US out of the region by eliminating these Gulf States could be a reasonable pathway. I used the word reasonable, well, probably not correct here. But but what do you think is the consequence for the Gulf States here? How vulnerable are they?
Speaker 1: Well, the Gulf States are remarkably vulnerable. I mean, first of all, they have only a handful of petroleum sites where they reprocess the petroleum and the liquid natural gas and so forth and so on. The petroleum infrastructure is just very vulnerable. These are big fat targets and there's no question that the Iranians can take out the petroleum infrastructure in all the Gulf States with relative ease. They have the short range ballistic missiles and the drones to do it.
But the other set of targets that really matters are the desalination plants. These countries in The Gulf States are heavily dependent on fresh water that comes out of the desalination plants. I was reading the other day that there's one desalination plant that services Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. And if you take that desalination plant out, you're taking away 90% of the water that Riyadh depends on. And overall it appears that the country of Saudi Arabia depends on 70% of its water from desalination plants.
Kuwait, the number is 90%. Oman, the number is 76%. I mean these countries are just massively dependent on desalinization plants. And water, you can't live without water, just think about that. So you have this vulnerable set of targets, these desalination plants that the Iranians can easily take out.
And then you have the petroleum sites that I talked about earlier that are few in number, easily targeted, and can be taken out. You can wreck these states. You can take, you know, Abu Dhabi and and just wreck it. So Iranians have really serious options here. And then if you turn to Israel, I don't think that Iran could do that to Israel.
But as time goes by and as the Israelis run out of defensive interceptors, you know, interceptors that can knock down these incoming ballistic missiles, the amount of damage that Iran can do to Israel will be very great. And, you already see evidence that the Iranians are pounding Israel and that pounding will get greater with the passage of time. So this is why it's so obvious that the Iranians have real options. The idea that we have escalation dominance and that, you know, we can beat the Iranians as we go up the escalation ladder think is a fallacious argument. They have in a way an assured destruction capability.
They can destroy The Gulf States and that would have a profound effect on the world economy. Surely President Trump and his advisors have begun to realize that That's one of the reasons I think they're interested in looking for an off ramp now. But then the question is how do you find the off ramp? And I don't think there is an off ramp at this point. And I think what they'll do is they'll escalate.
And they'll think that escalation will solve the problem. This gets back to my point about what Pete Hegseth is saying about today, Tuesday being the day when we will inflict the most punishment on the Iranians that we have inflicted so far. Okay, we start walking up the escalation ladder, but then this brings me back to my point about what the Iranians can do if they go up the escalation ladder with us. And the point is they can do massive damage to the Gulf States. So they have options here and they can do massive damage to the international economy.
So I think going up the escalation ladder is not gonna produce a satisfactory outcome for us, for The United States, and for Israel.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Given that they're so vulnerable with the desalination plants, it's a bit strange that The United States would have chosen to escalate by attacking the desalination plant within Iran because now Iran can almost well, can can retaliate by by the same means without being seen as the the main aggressor, essentially having an alibi to do so. But what how significant though is the attack on the or the suspension of the trade in energy? Because did you know, when people make the point, it's also linked into the entire international financial system with the petrodollar, but but this is seems to be one of the areas where the Trump administration is worried. Again, they make the point now that if Iran tries to block the Strait Of Hormuz, then well, according to Trump's tweet, they will hit Iran 20 times harder.
And now we hear Macron also say, well, we're gonna come and help defensively somehow to open up the Strait Of Vermouth. So how how do you see how important is the energy aspect here, or what what kind of dimensions are there to it?
Speaker 1: Well, the energy dimension is of enormous importance. 20% of the world's oil and gas comes out of the Persian Gulf. It just matters enormously and everybody understands that if this turns into a long war it will have disastrous consequences for the world economy. Again, this is one of the principal reasons that President Trump is looking for an off ramp. He likes to talk about opening the Straits Of Hormuz.
All I can say is good luck on that one. If that was easy we would have done it earlier. I don't think we can open the Straits Of Hormuz. You remember not too long ago President Trump was talking about escorting tankers in the Persian Gulf And the Navy basically told them that was not possible. Those naval ships, American naval ships, would be too vulnerable.
So I don't think that they can open the straits. The other thing you want to remember is if they actually destroy the petroleum infrastructure in the Gulf States, it doesn't matter whether the Straits Of Hormuz is open or not because there's going to be no oil coming out of the Straits Of Hormuz. And if they destroy the desalination plants and the petroleum installations in the Gulf States, are effectively not going be any Gulf States left. I mean the point is that the Iranians have options here. They can play hardball and the consequences would be devastating for the Gulf States.
And as I say, then it wouldn't matter whether the straits are open or not. But I don't think we're going to open the straits anyway. I don't think we're going to put naval ships in the Persian Gulf either. So I think in a very important way the Iranians are in the driver's seat. If I can just make a historical point that gets back to an issue that you were raising before having to do with escalation dominance and air power and even decapitation.
If you go back to the period before World War I, as we all know wars before World War I had no air dimension. Wars were fought between armies and navies. And it was in World War I where we first saw air forces employed by the fighting forces in Europe. Then after the war, this is in the nineteen twenty's and the nineteen thirty's, this is before World War II, you developed independent air forces. And those air forces became very interested in strategic bombing.
And strategic bombing is another way of saying long range bombing. And the idea was, and this was of course popular in the air forces of the world and among air force thinkers, that an air force by itself could independently win a war. In other words, you would no longer have to win that war on the ground or at sea. You could just take your air force and you could hit the other country's homeland. You could hit its economy, you could hit its population, you could hit its military forces, whatever.
And you could bring that country to its knees with air power alone. And in a very important way we tested this in World War II and we have tested this theory many times since. Now there are still some people who believe you can do magical things with strategic air power, which again is another way of saying with air power alone. But the fact is there are real limits to what you can do. There's no question that you want to have a powerful air force if you go to war.
And there's no question that in some cases strategic bombing helps win a war. But strategic air power by itself cannot win a war. It just can't. The historical record is unequivocally clear on this. So when you go to war against a country like Iraq in 2003, you definitely use air power.
You remember shock and awe Glenn. That was the American Air Force pounding Iraq before we sent the ground forces in. Strategic bombing came before the ground forces went in. But the fact is to create regime change and win a decisive victory in Iraq we had to use land power. We had to send in ground forces.
We couldn't do it with air power alone. Fast forward to the present. This is a campaign where we have no boots on the ground. There's no land power. And we're talking about doing it with air power alone.
We're talking about doing it with strategic bombing. This is what the decapitation strategy in the opening stages of the war was all about. And when people now talk about going up the escalation ladder, when you talk about Pete Hekseith announcing that we're going to punish Iran more today than we have in any of the previous eleven days, what they're saying is that we're going to win this war with strategic air power, with air power alone. We don't need ground forces. Well the historical record again is unequivocally clear on this.
You can't win wars, especially against formidable adversaries, with air power alone. It just doesn't work. So here we are in a world where we have no boots on the ground and president Trump does not want to put boots on the ground, I mean serious boots on the ground, are we gonna conquer Iran the way we conquered Iraq? I don't think so. So of course the end result is that we're relying on strategic air power alone.
And what are we gonna do? We're gonna punish Iran like it's never been punished before. There's no question about that. You turn the American and Israeli air forces loose on Iran, they're going to inflict an enormous amount of punishment, do an enormous amount of damage to Iran. No question about that.
But again, the historical record is clear that countries can absorb that punishment. Look at what we did in World War II. Look at what we did in Korea. Look at what we did in Vietnam. You can inflict massive punishment on civilian populations and the countries fight on.
And in terms of military targets, we're not going to get all those ballistic missiles and drones. They're going to continue to fire ballistic missiles and drones at Israel, at The Gulf States, and at American military assets. So strategic bombing is not going to produce a decisive victory here in all likelihood unless there's a miracle. And I don't believe in miracles. I hope I'm wrong.
You know, I hope this war comes to an end. But I don't think that's going to happen. And I think the historical record is on my side. So when Pete Heksith and President Trump talk about escalation dominance and pounding Iran more than ever, don't believe that that's gonna gonna work. It hasn't worked in the past, and there's no reason to think it's gonna work now.
Speaker 0: Yeah. This is a problem, how to put an end to the war on stars. I think it was Ottoman Bismarck who made the point that it was something along the line that it was easy to lure the Russian bear out of his side, but difficult to get him back in. You can say the same about the Iranians here, because they they didn't want this war, but now that it's here, it's it's very dangerous for them, I think, if it ends on terms, which would will allow the whole thing to play out yet again. So not not to draw too many parallels with the Russians again, but I also think that for them now restoring their deterrent to make sure that no one goes down this path again is, I guess, a key a key objective.
But this comparison to Iraq, though, I mean, even if even if one would introduce ground troops, Iraq is Iran is almost four times the territory of Iraq, and it has almost twice the population. This is a massive country. The I don't know. I thought it was strange that the idea of introducing some a few Kurdish troops was was somehow gonna overrun this country. It's I mean, as you said, it will contribute probably probably significantly to disrupt and destroy things, but but but in terms of if if there's an objective besides just causing death and mayhem, then it it is unclear.
Is is this the source of the miscalculation, though? Because the idea that you could regime change a country only with an air force, because, you know, there had to be a plan. It appears to be have have been regime change. And it again, in in this country, we actually had in Norway, we actually had a political leader of one of the political parties who who went out on Facebook or Twitter and actually wrote that, well, now the Iranian regime has fallen because they saw that Khomeini had been assassinated, so that's it. Now the government is over.
I mean, is this the kind of the thinking that, you know, you have one bad man. If we just kill the bad man, then the regime is gone. I it's very hard it's so remarkably stupid if if this is the case. Well, that fact that you have leaders, political leaders who think in this way, communicate in this way, it makes you think no one's behind the wheel, I guess.
Speaker 1: Well, a couple points. I think that the initial strategy, and we have gotten at this issue in our previous comments, but the initial strategy was decapitation. And then if the decapitation didn't work, I believe that we felt that we could punish them in ways that would force them to throw up their hands and surrender. We would have escalation dominance. And this is another way of saying we thought we could do it with air power alone.
Now, very importantly, the administration was told by insiders, two sets of insiders before the war, that this was unlikely to work. You remember that General Cain, who was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and was handpicked by President Trump to be the Chairman Remember, he brought him out of retirement. He was only a three star general. President Trump brought him out of retirement, made him a four star general and made him chairman of the Joint Chiefs. So he was, in a very important way, Trump's general.
Much to his credit, General Keane told President Trump that we did not have a viable military option. This is before February 28. Furthermore, the National Intelligence Council, which is separate from General Kane, did a study before the war that said, you're unlikely to get regime change and bring this war to a quick end. This was careful analysis done by the National Intelligence Council, done by insiders. So there were two flashing orange lights, if not red lights, that were in the president's face that he just ignored.
And as I said to you before, you know, we have a huge body of literature on air wars and sanctions and regime change that anyone can easily access and easily figure out what the bottom lines are here. It's not a complex literature in the sense that almost everybody agrees that air power alone or strategic bombing doesn't win wars, that sanctions have real limits, that regime change is wickedly difficult. First of it's almost impossible without ground forces, but even with ground forces the whole process is wickedly difficult. The literature is unequivocally clear on this. So when you marry what we know from previous analysis by scholars and policy analysts with the fact that you had General Kane and the National Intelligence Council warning the president not to do this, And when 20% of the American people approved it but the rest didn't, you want to think about that, only 20% of the American people were enthusiastic about this war.
The other 80% either opposed it or wasn't too sure. To go to war, you know, in those circumstances is quite remarkable and you just sort of wonder what was Trump thinking? How could he have possibly done this? And when you look at where we are today, given everything I just said, it's hardly surprising that we're in a real mess and there's no apparent way to get out of it. It's just not surprising.
What is happening now is consistent with the historical record. And just to add one more dimension to this, go back to the twelve day war last June. The twelve day war between Israel and The United States on one side and Iran on the other side. It was the Israelis and the Americans, not the Iranians, who wanted to end that war after twelve days. Decapitation didn't work in that war.
We didn't have escalation dominance in that war. I mean, what more evidence do you need before February 28 to tell you that this is a bad idea? But nevertheless, Trump jumped in along with Netanyahu who, of course, was pushing him and promising him that we would have a quick victory, and here we are.
Speaker 0: See, that's a great point. That makes this even more extraordinary, the fact that we already had this war back in June for twelve days, and it was the same problems. I mean, the the weapon shortage, that was a key problem. That's why they had to put an end to it. And, of course, because it was only with Israel, Iran was more willing to put an end to it.
But how does it surprise you The US didn't pack a bigger bag for this war, though, and that they didn't have more weapons? Because I heard they only prepared for a few weeks at most, but this is yeah. Or it was was or was it just assumption that if it didn't work, then we can just put it to halt again after twelve days like last time?
Speaker 1: Well, you're assuming that president Trump is a rational legal thinker. Right? You're assuming that he does the careful analysis that you would do or I would do if we were taking our countries into war. But that's just not the way he operates. And it's clear from listening to him talk that he has all these pictures in his head that bear no resemblance to reality.
He's constantly saying things that are just simply untrue. And if he believes them, you know, you can see why he just does foolish things. He's recently been saying that, first of all, Iran has weapons that are not accurate at all. These are all inaccurate weapons. Nothing could be further from the truth.
They have ballistic missiles and drones that are highly accurate. Not all of the ballistic missiles for sure, but many of them and certainly almost all the drones. But to say that they have an inventory of weapons that are all inaccurate is a foolish thing to say. And then furthermore, he made the outlandish comment that Iran has Tomahawk missiles. There's no way Iran would have Tomahawk missiles.
How could he say that? And then he tells all these stories about, you know, how we decimated last year Iran's nuclear capability. We basically erased it from the map. But now we find out that that wasn't true, that 60% enriched uranium that Iran had before the twelve day war started, before we, The United States, bombed those critically important Iranian nuclear sites on 06/22/1965. Despite all that, the Iranians 60% enriched nuclear material is still there.
We didn't destroy it, but he said we did. So you never know exactly what he's thinking, but it does seem quite clear that the pictures, many of the pictures that he has in his head, don't square with reality. And in that circumstance he can understand how he could be bamboozled by someone like Prime Minister Netanyahu into thinking he could win a quick and decisive victory. And by the way, if there's one person who was telling him that this was all going to work out in a magical way and we were going to live happily ever after a quick military victory against Iran. It was Prime Minister Netanyahu.
He's been arguing for a long time that the regime in Iran was vulnerable and all we had to do was hit it hard and it would collapse and apparently more moderate leaders would take over in Iran who would be willing to be subservient to The United States and Israel. But we just had to show that we had the courage this is Prime Minister Netanyahu speaking we just had to show that we had the courage to really hit Iran hard, to pursue a regime change strategy. And Netanyahu, for God knows how long, had been trying to get The United States to do that. He's trying he had been trying to drag us into a war against Iran by promising us that it would produce a great victory. But every president before Trump, including President Biden, avoided falling into that trap because they all understood that it was a trap and that we would not win a quick and decisive victory.
But anyway, it appears that prime minister Netanyahu bamboozled president Trump, convinced him that we would win a quick and decisive victory. And we have not won that quick and decisive victory.
Speaker 0: We can set another great irony here that is the whole argument that the Iranians are, you know, an irrational actor while we see now this kind of a bit unhinged rhetoric coming from the White House because only over the past twenty four hours, I've seen Trump's claim that, the Iranians told Witkoff that, you know, they would insist on developing nuclear weapons no matter what, that Iran was gonna take over the whole Middle East if we hadn't, attacked first. We had maybe three days before Iranians would have attacked The United States, and, again, with this attack on the girls school, killing 160 girls, very young ones as well. It looked many of them were between eight and ten. I I use again, I went with assumption that this was at least well, I think a safe assumption that it was a mistake. You know, no one hopefully doesn't target and kill 160 young girls on purpose, but I don't understand, first, the claim, well, there was an Iranian missile, then find out there's a tomahawk.
His whole administration then goes on, you know, moving away from, okay, Iran didn't bomb, you know, kill these girls on their own. But then moving on to the tomahawk that, yeah, Iran could have it. I mean, nobody else in the administration would go out, you know, with such an absurd statement. Just seems that, you know, governments always lie, all governments, but this really, you know, takes it to a new level to the extent that the credibility, not just of Trump, but The United States could be at at risk. And, you know, that's a, you know, it's a nonmaterial asset, you can call it, but it's still very vital, it would seem, though.
Speaker 1: Well, I think if you look at both Iran and Russia, whether you like the regimes in those two countries or not, I think the leaders, and here we're talking about Putin in the case of Russia, and of course Ayatollah Khomeini and now his son, all the evidence is that these regimes are rational legal, that they're thinking strategically. I mean, just to segue to Putin for a second, Putin is a first rate strategic thinker. I don't know how anybody could disagree with that. The idea that he's some sort of fool who's detached from reality makes no sense. You don't have to like what he's doing.
You can think that he was wrong to invade Ukraine. I understand that. But he thinks in a very logical way. I think he has a powerful strategic mind. And I think if you look at the Iranians, you listen to the foreign minister talk, he is an impressive individual.
Again, you don't have to like the Iranian regime and you can view Iran as an adversary. But I think it's very important when you're in a war and you're trying to assess the other side that you do it in a rational, legal way. And if the other side is smart and clever that you appreciate that fact and take it into account as you put your plans together for dealing with the adversary. But all I would say is that The United States, when it comes to dealing with Russia, when it comes to dealing with China as well, and when it comes to dealing with Iran, you're dealing with leaders in those countries who are smart and who know how to think strategically. But then when you look at the Europeans and you look at the Americans, especially President Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and you listen to them talk, you say to yourself, it's not clear that these people understand strategy 101.
It's not clear that they're operating in a rational, legal way. Sometimes I think it's quite frightening to hear President Trump talk about a particular issue because the things he's saying are just simply not true. Again, the point about Iran having Tomahawk missiles. This is just not a plausible argument aside from the fact that it's not true. It's just not plausible.
And he tells stories like that all the time. So I think that when you look at our side of the equation, it's not a pretty picture.
Speaker 0: Well, you have no. No. Definitely. You have written a book on this topic that is titled Why Leaders Lie? So the truth about lying in international politics.
What how do you make sense of this then? Or or why? Because I I remember from from your book that one of the key arguments was that often we find more lying in from from liberal democracies. I remember I cited that once in political propaganda because we often portray propaganda simply coming from authoritarian states. But if you go back to Walter Lippmann, Edouard Bernays, all the original scholars on on propaganda, they all made the point that, you know, if you're a liberal democracy, then, essentially, sovereignty has been transferred to the people.
There's more need to to manage the masses. So there was was more demand for propaganda. But kinda we we we propagandize the concept of propaganda to only mean what other people would do. But but how do you have any conclusions why how it came to this? Because as I said, this is the stories in the media is is just you know, it it yeah.
It's beyond belief. It's it's not credible in any way.
Speaker 1: Let me excuse me, Glenn. Let me make a couple points. First of all, in the book that I wrote about lying, one thing you discover is that there are not many lies told by states to other states. And one of the reasons is that if you lie all the time then lying becomes an ineffective tool. In other words, lying only works when the other side suspects that you're telling the truth.
So if you're a habitual liar, lying is just a waste of time. So I was actually shocked to discover when I wrote the book and many of my audiences refused to believe the argument that states don't lie to each other very much. And the argument I made was that you see more lying by state leaders to their own publics than you see cases of state leaders lying to other leaders. And this is counterintuitive and I found it hard to swallow at first, but I just gave you the logic. Now, as you point out, I also found that in democracies leaders are more likely to lie than they are in autocracies for the reasons that you laid out.
So you see quite a few instances of presidents lying to the public. And of course this book was written before President Trump. So how does President Trump fit with this book? First of all, President Trump doesn't lie on a lot of occasions because he actually believes what he is saying, which is scarier than him lying. I think he actually believes a lot of these statements that he makes that bear little resemblance to reality.
I wouldn't be surprised, for example, if he believes that Iran has Tomahawk missiles. He has a lot of false beliefs firmly embedded in his brain. So that's point one. Point two is I do think that he tells lots of lies. I think he lies, one could argue, almost all the time.
He's constantly telling lies. But the fact is that they're ineffective because everybody understands that he's lying. He just says whatever he thinks. As I said before, he may believe some of those things and if he believes them then they're not lies. But then there are other occasions where he says things that he has to know are not true.
But the fact that he tells so many lies means that lying is not an effective instrument for him. Lying, again, is only effective when people think that you're a truth teller or that you're not going to lie. If you and I have a personal relationship that spanned twenty five years and we've had a huge number of interactions, you, Glenn and I, and I've always been truthful to you, it's easy for me to lie to you because you trust me and you let your guard down. But if you've dealt with me for twenty five years, we're friends but you know that I lie all the time, I really can't get away with a meaningful lie because you just don't trust me. You see the logic?
So I think with regard to president Trump, the fact that he lies just doesn't make that much difference. It doesn't buy him anything. And if anything, because some people think some of the time that he really believes what he says, you think that he's not playing with a full deck.
Speaker 0: Well, I'm I'm glad you well, before pivoted a bit towards Russia because that seems to be a possible well, an an important component now. Well, for for two reasons. I guess one would be well, how how do you see Russia's involvement here? There's been a lot of noise in the media that the the Russians are providing intelligence to Iran to, yeah, to hit American targets. I, yeah, I kind of assumed that this was happening.
I think I assumed the Chinese were doing the same as they have a war concern, of course, that Iran could be defeated. But also, of course, because, well, The United States is doing the exact same thing in Ukraine, but but also how what do you think the the extent of the Russian involvement is? But also, how do you think this war is affecting our war in Ukraine at the moment?
Speaker 1: I think, to start with the latter part of your questioning, that this war is wonderful news for the Russians. First of all, it means that The United States is wasting precious assets in this fight that it might otherwise give to the Europeans or allow the Europeans to buy to give to the Ukrainians. I think that there's no question that this is hurting Ukraine's efforts on the battlefield because we're expending huge amounts of munitions in this fight. Patriots, THAADs, things like that are being used. And by the way, you notice that we're bringing THAADs and patriots from East Asia to the Middle East.
And this means that we're weakening our deterrent against China. We're weakening our containment policy vis a vis China. But going back to the Russians, the Russians fully understand that this is going to have deleterious effects for the Ukrainians. Furthermore, as you know, The United States has been working overtime, the West has been working overtime to inflict pain on the Russian economy. This war is going to have the opposite effect.
If, you know, the flow of oil and gas out of the Persian Gulf is greatly reduced, that means the demand for Russian oil and gas is gonna go up. And we already see evidence that The United States is willing to allow India now to buy more oil from the Russians because India is hurting as a result of the cutoff in The Gulf. So economically this is wonderful news for Russia and again in terms of the battlefield it's wonderful news. So I think this is a net positive for the Russians from that point of view. With regard to what the Russians are doing to help the Iranians, as you know that's hard to tell, I think that it is quite clear that the Russians are providing intelligence for the Iranians and that that intelligence is helping the Iranians wage the war.
And it's limiting what the Americans and the Israelis can do to defend against Iranian ballistic missiles. So I think that is almost certainly being done. And I wouldn't be surprised if at some point if Iran needs oil that the Russians provide oil or gas to the Iranians. It's hard to say for sure what's going on there, but that's another possibility. And I wouldn't be surprised if they provided some weaponry before the war and they'll provide weaponry during the war.
What exactly they'll provide in terms of numbers and quality, who knows? But I wouldn't be surprised if the Russians and the Chinese as well are helping the Iranians. Both of those countries obviously have a deep seated interest in seeing Iran defeat The United States and Israel in this war. I mean, if you or I were playing China's hand or playing Russia's hand, we would want to see the United States suffer a humiliating defeat in its fight with Iran. So the incentives here for Russia and China to help Iran are great.
And exactly what they're doing is hard to say, but it does look like they're helping out, especially with regard to intelligence. And that's complicating our problem.
Speaker 0: It seems another benefit for the Russians though would be to, I guess, improve their image within Iran because, you know, if you take a step back and stretch out for, you know, your viewpoint over the past centuries now, the Iranians and the Russians have you know, they had quite a few wars behind them, and there's every reason in the war in the world for the Iranians to distrust the Russians as well. This is a, I guess, a good opportunity for the Russians, though, to be seen as a savior instead of a nemesis or, you know, someone who who, you know, stab them in the back at the most critical hour. But it's yeah. I my last question was really about Europe, though, because it doesn't it it also has, well, responded in some very strange ways. The the the EU, of course, is, you know, is giving its full full support, at least rhetorically.
I think Mertz, he positions himself now as the number one Trump man to support whatever Trump wants to do. The British are also, of course, supportive, but they didn't wanna send any weapons. Then now they do wanna send weapons, but Trump doesn't want it because according to Trump, they already won. How how do you make sense of the European position on this? And, you know, how much what's the relevance of French participation, you think?
And how how how is Europe impacted by this war? Because, you know, we just cut ourselves off or we like to say liberated ourselves from Russian energy, and now the Iranians are liberating us from Middle Eastern energy. It's it's not much more, coming our way, it seems.
Speaker 1: I think the economic consequences for Europe, if this war escalates and some of the scenarios we described at the start of the program play out, the consequences of that for Europe would be catastrophic. And I think the European elites understand that. I think they wish very much that this war had never started. This is a war that is not good for Europe. But as is almost always the case, the Europeans do pretty much what the Americans want them to do.
And they're kissing up to the Americans and supporting the American war effort, failing to condemn The United States and Israel for this brazen war of aggression, for assassinating the leader of a foreign country. The Europeans are not condemning this, save for the Spanish. It's really what you would expect from the Europeans. And what drives this, as we've talked about many times before, Glenn, is the European fear that The United States will leave Europe or at least markedly reduce its military footprint. The Europeans don't want that.
They want to keep NATO intact. They want to keep the Americans fully committed to Europe. And the European elites believe that the only way you can do that is to lick America's boots. And in this case that means lick president Trump's boots. And so as you would expect, the Europeans are following the Pied Piper.
The question is do the Europeans matter in terms of winning this war? And the answer is no. I mean who cares whether the Europeans get involved or not. Maybe they'll help on the margins but that just doesn't matter at this point. There's nothing the Europeans can do to, you know, fundamentally affect the balance of power between Iran on one side and The United States and Israel on the other side.
I mean, President Macron talks like, this is, 1799 or eighteen o five where France is, you know, under Napoleon and by far the most powerful state in Europe. It's Europe's Godzilla and France can do X, Y, and Z. Those days are long gone. France has very little military capability and it certainly has little capability to affect events in the Middle East. So it just doesn't matter very much.
This war is gonna be settled between the Iranians on one side and the Americans and the Israelis on the other side. And what's in the interest of those three actors is what really matters here. And from Europe's point of view, the sad truth is that their interests are going to be largely ignored because the Americans are just not going to pay Europe's interests much attention. We don't care that much about Europe. President Trump views the Europeans with contempt.
The idea that he's going to go out of his way to help Europe is not a serious argument. In fact, if the Europeans get hurt in the process, I would imagine that President Trump will think that's a good thing. Know, he has contempt for the European elites. So Europe is in real trouble. It started with the Ukraine war, and this war just makes a bad situation much worse.
Speaker 0: That seems like, again, I I always agreed with the idea that The United States is the pacifier, and we and Europe's gonna have a lot of problems fragmenting if not so much if more than when United States departs, but it it looks as if the efforts now to keep The US there is will will only fragment Europe faster because we're gonna keep The US there by prolonging the Ukraine war, which means we're turning we we turn on the Slovakians, the Hungarians, you know, ignore them, or now that Mertz was sitting next to Trump, and Trump could just hammer away threatening Spain, and, you know, Mertz has to sit there obediently, not say anything critical because he has to show loyalty to Trump. And now, of course, they're alienating the Spanish, so it just seems, you know, always the worst of both worlds is what the Europeans are are going for. It's quite, yeah, it's quite extraordinary to watch. It doesn't give one a lot of optimism.
Speaker 1: Yes. Let me make a radical statement, Glenn. I think that one could make an argument that it's in the European's interest to in effect pursue the Spanish model vis a vis The United States, to play hardball with The United States, to tell The United States that you're going to greatly improve your relations with China, you're going to trade with China, and you're going to trade sophisticated technologies with the Chinese. And if the Americans don't like that, well, we'll cut a deal then. But in the meantime, we're going to fundamentally change our relationship with China.
And furthermore, with regard to the Middle East, we're going to condemn what you're doing in the most powerful terms. And we're even going to look for ways to punish you. Aggression. We're going to condemn you for collaborating with the Israelis and waging a genocide. We're going to condemn you for assassinating Ayatollah Khomeini.
Pursuing a really hardball strategy with The United States, and given that The United States needs Europe in all sorts of ways, that will provide the Europeans with some leverage so that they can protect their own interests. And what we're saying here is that by constantly kowtowing to the Americans by licking President Trump's boots, you put your situation you put yourself in a situation where your interests are not protected and if anything your interests are hurt and you're getting yourself into more and more trouble as the years go by. That's the way I'd look at it if I were a European, but again this is radical argument and the European's brains have been grooved to think that this is heresy. That the arguments I'm making are wrong. They're just simply wrong.
We don't have to analyze them. We just dismiss them out of hand. We've learned all along that the only way to deal with The United States is to be nice and to be subservient. That might have been true at one point, but I don't think that's true with President Trump. And I'm surprised they haven't figured that out.
I think the Spanish leader has figured that out. President Trump is a classic bully. In many ways, The United States is a country that is a bully and long has been a bully. But President Trump is a classic bully. The only way you deal with a bully is you stand up to that bully and if you show weakness, the bully will walk all over you.
And of course this is what President Trump is doing with the Europeans. He walks all over them. He doesn't pay attention to their interests. He does what he thinks is in America's interests and if that hurts the Europeans, tough luck for them. That's his approach.
And you would think that the Europeans would have learned this by now and would have altered their policies towards The United States in fundamental ways. But apparently, that's not the case.
Speaker 0: No. I just like I said, I I don't think it's radical at all. I I always make the point as well that the the most important partner for Europe, should be The United States. But if you want to keep this relationship, then, you know, the Europe should do exactly the opposite of what its instincts tells it, that is not to put all its eggs in that one basket. What you wanna do is diversify, work with the Russians, the Chinese, the Indians, and all others, because if you have this asymmetrical interdependence where all of Europe's relations depend on The US, but Europe is not really that important to The US, with this asymmetry, The US can walk all over Europe, and the relationship isn't any more sustainable.
So if you wanna save the relationship, you need a balance of dependence, diversify as well. I mean, this is the logic of the Russians. For them, the the Chinese relationship is the most important they have, but they also realize there's asymmetry there, that they would become much too dependent on China compared to China's dependence on Russia. So they recognize if they want the Chinese relationship to work. You diversify as well.
You also would deal with the Indians and all others. And, you know but I think the mindset in Europe is just, America's our liberal democratic partner, so let's just show our loyalty. Let's cut ourselves off from the Russians, cut ourselves off from the Chinese, you know, threaten the Indians a little bit, and now the Americans will reward us for our loyalty and, you know, sit in front of his desk, call him daddy, and somehow everything will be fine. It's it's very strange. I don't understand where where the thinking is, but yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. With with regard to India, I've given a number of talks in India recently, and I was recently in Mumbai. And my advice to the Indians, I hate to say this as an American, but if I were an Indian, I would not get too close to The United States. As I like to say, The United States is a rogue elephant and if India gets close, it will pay a certain price. It discovered this last year when we put when President Trump put 50% tariffs on India.
And I think that basic logic which applies to India applies to the Europeans as well. You just do not want to get too close to The United States because when you do that you give The United States all the leverage and The United States will use that leverage. That's certainly true of President Trump. So you want to give The United States as little leverage over you as possible and you want to maximize the amount of leverage that you have over The United States. This is my point about trading with China.
The United States has a vested interest in making sure that European states don't trade sophisticated technologies with the Chinese. Okay. But that tells me that the Europeans therefore have leverage. They can threaten to trade sophisticated technologies with the Chinese. The Americans will not want that and the Europeans can exact the quid pro quo from the Americans if they cut off the flow of cutting edge technologies to, China.
Speaker 0: Well, thank you very much, John, for taking the time. As always, I always learn a lot listening to you. So, thank you, and I hope you come back on soon.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me, Glenn. I enjoyed the conversation. I just wish the subject wasn't so depressing.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Seyed M. Marandi: Iran Rejects Ceasefire - Demands New Status Quo https://youtu.be/0bjW0uh1J60 https://t.co/7ddzGgCcLI
Video Transcript AI Summary
Seyed Mohamed Marandi, a professor at Tehran University and former adviser to Iran’s nuclear negotiation team, discusses the war launched against Iran, Iran’s aims, and the shifting regional dynamics. He argues that Western analyses over the years have been incorrect and that Iran’s objectives are clear: Iran will not accept a ceasefire until its demands are met, will no longer tolerate U.S. threats or Gulf regimes acting as bases against Iran, and will seek compensation from regional adversaries for destruction and slaughter attributed to the conflict. He asserts that Iran’s position and strength are growing, with widespread street support for the leader and resilience under missile and drone strikes against U.S. assets and Israel’s regime.
Key points on Iran’s war aims and the conflict:
- Iran’s demands: ceasefire is not an option; the war will continue until Iran’s demands are met. Iran will no longer accept a situation in which the United States can threaten it again, and will demand that Gulf regimes stop operating bases that threaten Iran. Yemen will demand and obtain full compensation for destruction.
- Regional balance: Iran views the Palestinian and Lebanese causes as linked to regional resistance; Hezbollah, Yemen, Iraq, and other groups are actively undermining the regime’s regional military and political position.
- Ground realities: Iran’s missiles and drones are striking U.S. assets across the Persian Gulf; Israel is being heavily targeted; resistance in Lebanon and Iraq is damaging the regime; Yemen is prepared to escalate its actions. The longer the war lasts, the more compensation Iran anticipates extracting from Gulf regimes.
Escalation and tactics:
- Civilian targets: Iran’s leadership says the United States has failed on the battlefield and is now targeting civilians and infrastructure, including attacks on fuel depots, desalination plants, and oil facilities, creating toxic rain and ecological harm in Iran.
- Desalination and water security: destruction of desalination plants is described as a major risk to civilian water supply; Iranian civilians face environmental and health consequences from the attacks.
- Economic impact and energy markets: Marandi contends that 20 million barrels of oil per day are missing from the market and that Western reserves could only offset two months; closing the Strait of Hormuz or sustained disruption could precipitate a global economic crisis and undermine the petrodollar system.
- Strategic posture: Iran will respond with countermeasures, and if Gulf regimes push further against Iran, Tehran asserts it could take actions that would profoundly affect the region’s energy infrastructure and Western interests.
International actors and alignment:
- France and other Western allies: France has announced a defensive mission to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, while Trump has made highly contradictory statements about ending the war or destroying Iran, illustrating perceived Western moral and strategic hostility.
- China and Russia: Marandi notes closer alignment among Iran, China, and Russia, with China and Russia benefiting from opposing U.S. dominance in West Asia; Iran’s geography allows multiple overland routes for weapons and supplies, and Moscow and Beijing are seen as unlikely to allow a Western victory in the region.
- Azerbaijan and Turkey: Azerbaijan’s response and Turkey’s involvement are discussed; Iran emphasizes it would respond decisively against Gulf and regional actors supporting Israel if pushed.
Domestic and regional reactions:
- Iranian public sentiment: there is strong public support for the leadership, with mobilization and resilience evident in Tehran and across the country despite missile and drone strikes.
- Perceived Western narratives: Marandi argues that Western elites have remained morally and strategically bankrupt, using demonstrable inconsistency in statements and policy to justify continued escalation.
Broader implications:
- The war is reshaping regional power dynamics, with Iran asserting greater confidence and influence, and with China and Russia increasingly integrated with Iran against U.S. hegemony in West Asia.
- The deteriorating situation could produce far-reaching consequences for global energy markets, security arrangements in the Persian Gulf, and the dollar-centered economic order, depending on how escalation and potential reciprocal actions unfold.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined by Seyed Mohamed Marandi, a professor at Tehran University and a former adviser to Iran's nuclear negotiation team, to discuss, yeah, the updates of the war being launched against Iran. So thank you for coming back on.
Speaker 1: Thanks to you, Glenn. It's always a pleasure.
Speaker 0: So while we see now Trump arguing that the war could end soon, and according to the world to the Wall Street Journal, Trump's advisers are recommending that he puts a quick end to this war. It's still unclear what The US demands are, but what do we know about Iran's demands? Because it's been attacked twice now in surprise attacks during negotiations only within the last year and, well, seemingly with the intentions of regime change and the the destruction of Iran. I don't think this has changed and which begs the question, what is it that Iran wants? What are what are its war objectives now that, again, this war is going on?
Speaker 1: I think by now, it's becoming clear that the things that we've been saying for well over a year now have all turned out to be true, and that the assessments made by Western think tanks, Western pundits, Western media, and Western regimes have all turned out to be false. And this is the story of the last forty seven years. And it's not just Iran. Remember, Ezbollah was literally destroyed, but now we see Ezbollah's hitting Israel and the regime very hard. So their assessments are based on wishful thinking.
Now after, well, almost two weeks now of war where The United States has brought its fire excuse me. Where The United States has brought its firepower to the region and alongside the Israeli regime. And you, three, using its assets in the Persian Gulf and in Turkey and the Jordan, it's waging this all out war on Iran. They failed. I think we already see clear signs that The United States is heading for a defeat.
The Iranians are not going to accept the ceasefire. Ceasefire is not an option. This war will continue until Iran's demands are met. Iran will no longer accept a situation in the region where the United States can threaten it again. That's that's over.
Iran will no longer allow regimes in the Persian Gulf to be bases, to act as aces for The United States to threaten Iran. And Yemen will demand, and it will get full compensation for the slaughter and the destruction. And the longer that this will last, the more compensation Iran will take from the regimes in the Persian Gulf or whoever else. You know what? Iran will receive his compensation.
That is inevitable. We have seen how the Iranians have emerged stronger. Yes. They've destroyed our civil infrastructure. They've bombed many apartment buildings.
They've massacred schoolchildren. They've destroyed hospitals. They do what they always do. I mean, this is not new for the regime in Washington nor for the genocidal regime in Tel Aviv. We've seen it in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Libya, in Syria.
We've seen it in Cuba. We've seen it in, of course, in Gaza. But Iranians are emerging stronger. There's there's no doubt about that. And we've seen people in huge numbers come to the streets every night and sometimes during the day from the beginning of the war in support of the leader, in defiance of Trump and the Trump regime and under fire, under missile fire, under the threat of being murdered.
Yesterday, in the gathering in Tehran that I participated in, they bombed Tehran as, huge crowds were, in Central Tehran, but no one budged. No one moved. There was no panic. So I think that when we take all this into account, the fact that Iran's missiles and drones are striking US assets across the Persian Gulf region. And the the fact that the Israeli regime is being pounded day and night, and the fact that the resistance in Lebanon and Iraq are actively hurting the regime, And the fact that Yemen is prepared to carry out its, offensive actions against this, aggression of this this, Epstein coalition, It just indicates that it's only going to get worse for The United States and worse for its proxies in the region.
Speaker 0: This sounds a bit like the the the idea, though, of the ceasefire is not acceptable because, well, they will only come back again that a need there's a need for a different status quo or a political settlement. It sounds a bit also like the war in Ukraine that is with the Russians not wanting simply NATO to regroup, replenish, and then have another go at it. But but I was wanting to ask I wanted to ask what is happening on the ground there, though, in Iran? Because what we've seen over the past few days is the attacks on its fuel depots, which has caused this toxic rain that apparently burns the skin, destroy lungs. Also, it's a bit of an ecological disaster, if I'm not mistaken, as it produces cancer and other diseases possibly for decades to come.
We also seen the destruction of the desalination plant that is the you know, what cleans the water, which is considered only yet another war crime, oil tankers being attacked. How how are you assessing this? Is this a US and Israel not able to defeat Iran on the battlefield, so go after population? Or but, also, how would Iran retaliate? Because this is an escalation once the civilian population is the target.
Speaker 1: Yes. I think it's pretty clear by now that The United States has failed on the battlefield. It has failed to stop our missiles and drones. So since they cannot destroy Iran's underground facilities and its factories that produce missiles and drones, it is taking it out on ordinary people. It is trying to slaughter people to create panic and fear among society.
It is destroying key infrastructure to make Iranians worry about the days and weeks ahead. And, of course, the airstrikes on the refinery and the massive fires that that were caused and we which burned quite a few people alive, that that the that has that spread across Tehran and beyond. And the our if you if you I mean, if you look at my car, it's covered in oil. It's oily. If you look if you drive across Tehran, you'll see automobiles, many of them, those that were parked outside in the open, that they face the same situation.
And when you go out and touch something, your hand becomes dark. It becomes oily. It becomes dirty. And, of course, our children are inhaling this. Our grandchildren are inhaling this.
Men and women are inhaling this. Elder people are inhaling this. People like myself who who are victims of chemical attacks by the West, through Saddam Hussein, especially the German regime, which was key in providing those chemical weapons. We are at risk. Messages were sent to all those who were victims of gas attacks to take extra precaution.
But how can you take extra precaution? There are things you have to do. So this, think, is is clearly an act of desperation, and it does seem that Trump is desperate. He does seem that he is he is that he is not that he's not doing well. Over the past few hours, he's been saying all sorts of crazy things.
And at one moment, he speaks about the war coming to an end, then he speaks about destroying the Iranian nation. And you don't see any outrage in the West. You don't see European leaders outraged when he talks about destroying the Iranian nation. You don't see CNN or the BBC or Fox News or The Guardian outraged when he says that he he will he can he will attempt to destroy the nation. This is extraordinary, and it shows how morally bankrupt the elites in the West are from, you know, from any of these major political parties and entities that are controlled by this, you know, the oligarchs and the Epstein class.
But even those threats and those inconsistent and those constantly changing, statements coming from Trump, they're not going to affect Iran. Iran is going to keep the Strait Of Hormuz closed. He can try his best to talk the markets down. It will work for a couple of days, but the fact is that there's going to be a shortage of energy. Every day, 20,000,000 barrels of oil at the and it could increase if you want the regime in Baku, The Republic Of Azerbaijan, or if the Yemenis strike Saudi the oil Saudi oil pipeline that goes to the Red Sea and so on, it would get worse.
But for now for now, 20,000,000 barrels of oil a day are disappearing from the the marketplace. And every day, an extra 20,000,000 is added to it. So he can talk down the market for a couple of days, and the and Western media and Western governments can help them do that. And then they can release their reserves. But their the the reserves, as far as I know, that the the g seven have can only last two months.
I mean, they can only compensate for two months. They have two months' worth worth of reserves, and I don't think that they they rum plans to open the Strait Of Hormel anytime soon. So we're heading for a global economic crisis, and this is something that we discussed. You and I discussed this multiple times, and I'm sure you and your other guests have discussed this many times before as well. So the fact is that the West is ignorant.
They could have listened to your show, Western Elites, and they would have discovered that six months ago, what would be happening, what would happen under the current circumstances. They brought this upon themselves. And, again, it's I'm I'm constantly, I constantly think, or remember what Trump said early on. He said, we didn't expect Iran to to attack its assets in the Persian Gulf. The the amount of ignorance that exists in in Washington is just beyond belief.
Why would they not have expected it? He was 100 certain that that would happen. But so it shows that Washington is blind to reality, and so and I don't see any reason why that blindness has suddenly been cured. So I don't believe that they're going to make the dis decisions now that are realistic either. But in any case, whether Trump's aides want him to succeed in having him look for a off ramp or not, Iran is not going to accept a ceasefire.
That's out of the question. Conditions will have to be met, and those conditions will be met. And these Arab family dictatorships in the Persian Gulf, first and foremost, are the ones who are going to have to obey and accept Iran's conditions. Iran is now talking about controlling the Strait Of Hormuz from now on and receiving money or allowing ships to pass through. This is what these Arab regimes had brought upon themselves, these dictatorships.
They thought that they could have their cake and eat it too, that they could have US bases and threaten Iran and bomb have Iran bombed, and then Qatar and The Emirates and the regime in Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudis, they could, say that we're neutral and get away with it. That's not happening. Right now, they're paying a price. But even when the war ends, they will continue to pay a price. They have to compensate for all the things that they've done against Iran.
We're leaving in a new reality, Glenn. Iran is much more confident now about itself, and great harm has been done to its people by adversaries. And Iran sees its strength. The people see their strength. The people on the streets recognize their strength, and this is a reality that the Americans are going to have to deal with for now.
Speaker 0: I think, well, what you alluded to is one of the key weaknesses, I think, we see in the West now, something that I've definitely warned a lot about that is, I think, we've been captured by our own narratives. As you said, the people I've spoken to on on this program here, there's always all almost been a complete consensus that if the US would attack, then the first thing Iran would do is to knock out all of its bases in the region. So it should have been predictable. I think the reason why it wasn't predictable is because the governments and their laptops and the media, they they they organize around these narratives, which means, you know, they they all have to explain why why one side is good and the other is evil. So the kind of narrative they land on is, well, this is all about liberating Iranians.
We want to liberate the the women of Iran from an oppressive regime. And if if you if you buy into this premise, then, you know, it is possible to elevate, escalate the costs on Iran, and then it will make concessions and, you know, a little bit like the Afghanistan thing. We apparently, NATO occupied Afghanistan for twenty years so girls could go to school. This is you know, it's it's not okay for adults, grown adults to believe this, but but that's essentially the consensus. But this is a problem.
Then if if if you don't accept the world as it is, then you end up with this very silly expectations, and it's not that different from how we trapped ourself in narratives with the Russians as well. This is something I spoke a lot about with the former CIA director for Russia analysis, Bebe. He was making this point as well that we got captured in narratives because if you argue that the Russians invaded, it was unprovoked. All we have to do is send some weapons, elevate the cost, and then they will, you know, see that it's not worth it and back down. But, again, we're not allowed to say that the way NATO started it, that it's an existential threat, which means that any escalation will be met on the Russian side.
And I think, as I always say, same with Iran. The poor analysis leads to poor politics, and the fact that this wasn't predictable is well well, honestly, frightening. We see the narratives continue. Trump made a speech where he said that Witkoff had told him that well, the Iranians had told Witkoff that they would continue to develop a nuclear weapons no matter what. I mean, this is just really wild.
Know, even the hardcore MAGA people can't buy into this. I mean, this is just really, really too much, it seems. But the you you did mention the The Strait and we now hear from France that they're sending all their all the possibly aircraft carrier and some warships, and they're gonna on the defensive mission to reopen the Strait Of Hormuz. While Trump says that if Iran doesn't permit it, they're gonna hit Iran 20 times harder, which is oddly specific. How do you how do you assess the possible entry of France into this war?
Speaker 1: Well, I think from what we've seen in Ukraine, it's quite clear how powerful the French Armed Forces is. The entire European Union has been spending everything it has and doesn't have to to defeat the Russians, and they failed. And it's going to get a lot worse now because a lot of their resources have been sent to the Persian Gulf region and have been wasted and lost because they've been firing off anti missile systems day and night. So the situation in Ukraine is going to deteriorate. That is going to be even more painful for the EU and the British in the days, weeks, and months ahead.
And I think the Russians have obviously are going to be very much empowered. They are selling oil at a much higher price. They no longer have to give discounts, and their enemy in Ukraine is being severely weakened. So I think that that will cause will lead the Russians to take advantage of this situation, to push their advantage. I have no doubt that the French have no capabilities that would impress Iran.
And The United States is already doing whatever it can against the Iranian people, slaughtering people. Just a couple of hours ago, they carried out air strikes in Tehran and bombed highways and bombed the civilian targets, slaughtering more people just like they did last night. Last night, they carried out multiple massacres in Tehran. So what more can they do? If they want to destroy Iran's key infrastructure, that's a possibility.
But then Iran will destroy all key infrastructure in this region. Everything. All the oil and gas installations in the Persian Gulf region and in the Caucasus will be gone, finished. They won't be damaged. They'll be destroyed.
And that will mean that the key infrastructure of The United States will collapse. The world will collapse because the we will enter a severe global economic depression. If that's what The United States wants, that's what it will get. But the world will know that it's The United States that did this. It will know that the Zionists did this.
It will know that Netanyahu did this because Iran does not want war. Iran does not want to expand the war. We want to live in peace. We want the rights of Palestinians and the Lebanese and the people of Syria, to be restored. That's a very normal expectation.
But if war is opposed imposed upon us, we will respond with countermeasures. We will punish the enemy. And now The United States has lost everything in the Persian Gulf region. And and the damage that has been done to The United States is far greater so far than Tehran because the Persian Gulf region is an all of these are American assets. The oil that is sold I mean, think about this, Glenn, and I'm sure you have, but I'm just, you know, I'm sure your audience also knows this because they're very politically aware.
But let's think about this. This oil is not being sold. What is it sold in? It's sold in dollars. That's one.
Two, a lot of this money goes to The US stock market. And for bonds, there's no money. So it's not going to go there, and there's huge damage that's been done to these regimes. It's not just the drone or the missile that hits. It's the it's the the entire confidence that used to exist about these regimes where huge amounts of money from across the world would go to The Emirates, for example, just as one example.
That's disappeared. So these are all US assets, and and they're and they're they're huge consumers. The amount of consumption that these Arab family dictatorships in the Persian Gulf have is is equivalent about some maybe the African continent or the Latin American continent. I can't say with specifics, but they are huge consumers, huge consumers. Well, they're not consuming anymore.
So they're not selling oil. The price of oil is going to go up. There are no dollars from those exports going to US US stock market, and less dollars few less dollars are circulating that makes the US dollar less important as a global currency. None of this is and, of course, that the the the worth of the entire Western Side or Southwestern Side of The Persian Gulf has collapsed. It is no longer a place where you can, in future, you can invest in or you can have confidence in.
And as I said, this area is controlled by The United States. So the the damage done to The United States and the West through its own aggression against Iran and, of course, the Israeli regime, which is being hammered day and night. One fool is going to invest in Israeli regime in future. This is the second time Iran has been pounding it for eight in the last eight, nine months. So all of these are huge we're the we're the country that's sanctioned.
We don't have foreign investors. Any investment is carried out by individuals in Iran and the government. That will continue to be the case. But I think, for The United States, this is this is a sea change. Yeah.
Well, it kind of
Speaker 0: points to how much is at stake here because if if The United States would be successful in terms of well, as they keep saying on Fox News to seize control over Iran and its oil, then, well, essentially, China would be cut off from Iranian energy, The US would have a strategic advantage against its main peer rival. However, if it's unsuccessful and then now the petrodollar is essentially under threat, This would then impact things like the funding of, the AI bubble in, The US, which would then end the the the race for dominance in high-tech, in the high-tech industries, artificial intelligence, robotics. So it's there's a lot at stake here. And, yeah, as you see, Iran is, of course, bearing the brunt for of this. But given all all the that is at stakes, and we know that The US will will likely intensify the pressure on Iran that is to escalate.
What what is it that possible for Iran to to do if it want to goes up forgo also up the escalation ladder? That is the Iranian government said that they might have that they have some surprises coming. I know they're not, you know, whispering in your ear, but what what kind of surprises do you think this could be in terms of what, you know, what what is the next step on the escalation ladder? You know, then it's not just The US bases that are vulnerable. The as you as you inferred before, the all this Gulf Nations energy infrastructure is also very exposed and vulnerable.
Is this the kind of thing the Iranians would go after? Or
Speaker 1: I think it depends on the pace of escalation and the type of escalation. And, of course, not only is there are there capabilities that Iran has, but Yemen has not yet entered the war, and it is preparing itself, and it is upgrading its capabilities. And the resistance in Iraq, while it has been active and it has been doing a lot of damage to US interest, it can expand a lot more. And but as, you know, every day that goes by, Glenn, every day, 20,000,000 barrels of oil do not go to the market, and that number just increases. So over, let's say, the last last ten days, if, you know, if if no no oil, you know, let's say, three about ten days, no oil has lapsed, that's 200,000,000 barrels.
The entire stock stocks of the g seven, they say, is 1,200 pounds. So if this just continues for a few more weeks, then imagine where the prices will go. So already, Iran is escalating despite keeping the Strait Of Hormuz shut. But, as you know, Iran has not yet used its most advanced technology. Over the last couple of days, it has used more, fewer drones than before.
But almost for the entire first week and a bit after, Iran was exclusively using old drones and old missiles. And as we speak, the Iranians have yet have refrained from using their newer technologies. So it's it's there's a lot that Iran can do if if damage is done to Iran's infrastructure, if The United States takes a a further step to destroy more of Iran's oil or gas or energy installations, then the same won't happen in areas controlled by The United States, in in Kuwait, in The Emirates, in Saudi Arabia. If they strike our our desalination plants, we don't need them the way they do. If we destroy the desalination plants in the Persian Gulf region, everyone will have to leave.
They'll have to drive across the Arabian Peninsula to Syria, Jordan, Iraq. It'll be over. So you know, because these are countries that are deserts. The their Iran has you've been to Tehran. The mountains above Tehran right now are full of snow.
And that Tehran hasn't had an extraordinarily good year. We've had droughts. Lots of large parts of the country have had good rain this year. Tehran is a bit excluded, but we still have we have snow. We have water.
Today, it rained. As I was telling you before the show, it's good rains, I think, as we speak. So, we're not like these Arab regimes. We have our own. We have 15 neighbors through which we can do trade.
We have agriculture. We have our own indigenous industries. So but they have oil, and they have a gas. And if there are no desalination plants, they won't be able to stay even with those assets intact. But everything can be destroyed.
And as I said, these are American assets. These are not Qatariac's assets. Qatar is a country of 400,000. The ruling family is is stealing a lot of money, giving handouts to, its own people, not the indentured servants and the slaves and so on that live there. And then the rest goes to to Western companies and corporations.
The World Cup, they spent, some say, almost $200,000,000,000 on the World Cup. Just, you know, they are, you know, paying to build hotels and the stadiums that are now all empty, that have been empty before the war. So these are not real countries. They're completely dependent on oil and gas, but they're American assets. They're Western assets.
And so their destruction means the destruction of American assets. Their weakness means American wealth is diminished. So they can hurt us, but we can hurt them far more than they can hurt us, especially since the West is so financialized and it no longer has a production base. High prices of fuel and would be enormously destructive, but the wealth and assets that they've accumulated in this region, that will all be gone as well.
Speaker 0: I did wanna ask about about
Speaker 1: those Oh, one thing I should add. One thing that I should add is probably Americans don't export anything anymore, but they do export very expensive weapons. And these Arab regimes in the Persian Gulf, they have they always buy weapons, and they don't even have the pilots to fly the planes. They just buy the weapons to as, you know, as to to give the Americans money, give the Europeans money, and to give kickbacks to western senators and their own princes. That's basically how it works.
That's gone. There won't be money anymore. There won't be money to buy American jets and American styles that could just go somewhere in some bunker because they don't have anyone to use. So the The United States is going to is losing in in all respects, and this is the huge weapons market for The United States. But when they don't have money, then what are they going to buy?
Sorry for interrupt. No. Well, I want to ask
Speaker 0: what has been referred to as or suggested could be if the false flag attacks. That is we we've seen Iran take credit for well, all all of the attacks, the retaliatory attacks, with some exceptions. They said the the attacks on the oil facilities in Saudi Arabia, they said, well, this wasn't us, if I'm not mistaken. Same as the attack on Azerbaijan was said that wasn't Iran either. And, of course, there's one one ballistic middle missile heading towards Turkey, which was then brought down, and Iran said, well, that's not us either.
What I thought was interesting is Azerbaijan would retaliate, but now instead, it announced that they will be sending humanitarian aid to to Iran. Is what what is happening in in this regard? Is Iran, I guess, cleared the air with some of these countries, or are they possibly it's possible that they will enter the war as well?
Speaker 1: Well, the ballistic missile that, over Turkey, and I don't know the details. Now if I'll if I remember to ask, if you remind me later to ask, and I'll I'll get back to you on that. I think probably it was heading for Israel, and it was down. And maybe it strayed over. It went over, like, parts of Turkey, but Turk Turkey is helping Israel.
I mean, the the the radar base in Turkey is being used to give feed information to this radio machine. Erdogan is clearly helping Israel. There's there's no doubt about that. But that aside, I I mean, I don't think Iran targeted anything inside Turkey. I think they just NATO down the missile that was probably heading for Israel, but I'll look I'll look into this and and get back to you later on that if you remind me because I'm very forgetful.
But with regards to Azerbaijan, I mean, no one takes the drone strike in Azerbaijan seriously. If Iran wanted to hit Azerbaijan, it wouldn't be with a little a small drone. Iran would Iran would destroy its oil and gas infrastructure if they wanted to, especially after what Azerbaijan has done to Iran, what the republic what the regime has done. In your nuclear, Iranians many Iranians believe that Azerbaijan belongs to Iran, and most Azeris in Iran believe that Azerbaijan belongs to Iran. And as you know, this is not the policy of the state by any means.
But if Azerbaijan pushes continues helping the Israeli regime against Iran with The United States, the regime will mess. Iran won't tolerate this. And Iran has many supporters in Azerbaijan. All their leaders are in jail. They've been in jail for years now.
But if if they push, they'll be destroyed, the regime, and a new government will come to power, which is friendly to Iran very swiftly. It'll take just a few days at most. So on that by John, you know, on the I mean, it it started making a lot of threatening the Aliyev, the the the regime's leader, started making some statements, then he spoke. I guess he got the message from Iran that, you know, watch out. We're we're we're not in the mood.
So he he changed too. And the same is true with the Kurdish groups in Northern Iraq. If they attack Iran, Iran has told Adabir that they they will destroy it. They will destroy the regional government in the North Of Iraq, and so will the Iraqi resistance. And that can be done very easily.
The and then there will no longer Iran and Iraq will no longer tolerate a a, you know, an autonomous regime in the North Of Iraq. That will be brought to an end. And these groups are just exposing themselves because, you know, these Kurdish groups are exposing themselves to Kurds, ordinary Kurds. They're they work with the CIA and Mossad, and I don't think, yeah, I don't think Kurds and Iraq and definitely not Kurds and Iran. Although the Kurds and Iran are not being large in number, but they are they're not the sort to cooperate with the CIA.
And but everyone has exposed its that had you know, themselves. I mean, Erindovan has imposed has exposed himself as being an an asset of of Trump and The United States over for over two years. And this this is important, Glenn, because the Islamic world and beyond and people in Latin America and Africa are seeing who is standing up for the Palestinians and who is colluding with the enemies of the Palestinians. And this has an is having an enormous effect. There's a sea change in attitudes taking place towards Iran across the region, on the streets, and beyond.
Not just like the Islamic world, not just among Sunnis, but, among people everywhere because they see and they and they're becoming they're they're recognizing that these forty seven years have been antagonistic narratives towards Iran that, you know, they they're now questioning everything, and they see Iran as heroic. This is something that I I feel when I'm when I'm in contact with intellectuals and thinkers and in in activists abroad, when I, when I'm active online and I see the responses, it's clear that there has been a very substantial change in the way people are seeing the world that they live in. And these regimes that have been pretending to support the Palestinian people, pretending to be critical of the Israeli regime, they've all all they've all all been exposed. They are now naked in front of everyone. And I think that that is that is going to have a that is going to facilitate even greater change in the in the coming months and years.
Yeah. No. I I remember
Speaker 0: well, when I was a student was back in 2003, it was when the the Americans invaded Iraq. It was almost common sense at well, this was the universities in Australia that, you know, after done with Iraq, then if if Iran could be taken out, this would essentially be what would bring peace. I mean, this division the the the the presentation of Iran, the very demonized version of it, it's very it was accepted by all, I I think. And the yeah. The I think after the twelve day war back in June, the the narratives begin to shift dramatically.
I haven't seen any anything that could be even interpreted as empathy for Iran unless it's about regime change, you know, say, want want to help its people free from the government, but but it's such empathy for Iran's position. I've never seen this before, really, until 2025. So something, yeah, definitely has has changed. But, yeah, my my last question was about the, well, the the the involvement of China and Russia because, as you know, there's a lot of comments now about satellites photos coming up, which originate from China from China. And, of course, the American media as well as the European is full of accusations that Russia could be assisting Iran with intelligence that is, yeah, the a possible targeting.
Again, no no reflection at all that that this is what Americans and Europeans are doing to Russia in Ukraine, but, you know, be that as may, how do you see what do you what do we know actually about China and Russia being involved? Because, well, the Kremlin doesn't wanna comment on any of this, but I guess it's common sense they're involved in in some regard, but it's very unclear to what extent.
Speaker 1: I don't know the details, but what I do know is that the the the Chinese and the Russians and the Iranians have moved closer to each other. This has been ongoing for years, But after the twelve day war, they moved even closer. And as I said earlier, Iran has 15 neighbors. It's a large country. Iran is this is I think it's a bit larger than The UK, Germany, and France combined.
It's it's not a it's not a small country, and it has many neighbors, and it's a crossroads. That's why all the key transit routes really have to go through Iran in in Asia that would connect the West Asia and East Asia and the the the Persian Gulf to to Europe and the Caucasus and Central Asia. So the ability for Iran to receive weapons or anything that would help with the war is is is there. It can be done through its eastern borders. It can be done through its northern borders, and there would be nothing that The United States could do about it.
And the Chinese and the Russians can easily use these routes to to trade with Iran for Iran to send what Iran purchases. It's a it's an you know, I'd I'd you hear about certain weapons, air defense weapons, and so on that Iran has purchased. Again, I don't know the details, but I it's it's I think it's clear as day that the the Russians do not want The United States to succeed in West Asia, and the Chinese obviously don't want it either because aside from Zionist expansionism and what the US senate The US ambassador to Israeli regime said that if, you know, they take West Asia, if they take the region, that's fine. And, of course, he also said they're the most moral army in the world. So they could probably from I mean, they can slaughter everyone across the hundreds of millions of people across the region and take the land, and that's that's fine with The United States.
And, of course, the ambassador has never been rebuked. He hasn't been removed. He hasn't been punished. So we can we can assume that this is unofficial in US policy, and it always has been. And and European policy as well, I think.
That would it's fair to say it's just like the West Bank where they they always spoke about the two state solution, but they always facilitated the colonization of the West Bank. So the unofficial policy was to support Israeli expansionism, but the official policy was to say, no. No. We have to have a two state solution. So, obviously, this is a threat to China because his Zionist expansionism would basically mean further empowerment for the Trump regime in the The United States.
And they would have all the they would have control over all the oil that are no longer leaving the Persian Gulf as we speak, but they would have control over everything. And that would put China in a very, very dangerous situation, more than dangerous. So it's I think it's only natural to assume that the the Chinese and the Russians are going to cooperate with Iran more, but also I mean, equal in this work. Well, it's really what you know, the it's cooperation with Russia and China. That that aside.
But what The United States has done is that it has cemented the relationship between Russia, Iran, and China for the years to come. They've cemented it. Those that small minority that rioted, that small minority that supported the riots in Iran, they are a small minority, they were. Many of them have changed. I don't know if I told you this before, but three students from my faculty have contacted me have and they each of them separately have said that they were involved in in the riots.
I assume not as, like, the the the people with guns who were killing police officers and burning auspices or clinics and slaughtering and burning ambulances. I don't think I I I don't ask. I don't want to know. But I assume they were on the streets and probably burned, let's say, a few yeah. I don't know.
You they hung out with these people for whatever reason. They wanted to make up for what they did. And they asked me, how can we help? What can we do to defend the country? And a couple of them were quite emotional.
So The United States has destroyed itself. It's destroyed its image across the world. It has shown itself to be brutal and ruthless, and so has the entire Western political elite, and so have their proxies across our region. But they've also you you know, they've united Iranians in a way that even during the Twelfth Day War, have not seen. But in addition to that, the self confidence of the Iranians is extraordinary.
This is it's quite fascinating to see. And, again, a lot of this goes back to the fact that it's a civilizational state, but even more importantly, it's the the religious culture and the impact of the of the grandson of the prophet in Karbala and his the stance that he took against oppressors and in support of the oppressed and his barrage with him there. I mean, if if if Western analysts were smart, they would just be in particular. And then if we really did that, they would have recognized that, you know, Iran is a bridge too far.
Speaker 0: Well, it looks, yeah, the war planning wasn't done very well, neither the study on what Iran Iran Iran actually is, and I always make the point. This is the problem of this relentless war propaganda. One ends up believing one's own nonsense, and, well, we end up in these situations. So thank you as always for taking the time, and I, yeah, hope your new family stay safe.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Glenn, and thank you for all the extraordinarily important work that you do. It's quite heroic.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Jiang Xueqin: New World Order - Iran War Ends U.S. Empire https://youtu.be/6rTlI_Qwd1I https://t.co/tIwdOitPyE
Video Transcript AI Summary
Professor Zhang returns to discuss the Iran war and geopolitics through historical patterns and game theory. He argues that Trump has failed to articulate a clear purpose or strategy for the war. Initially, the narrative centered on preventing Iran’s nuclear uranium enrichment, but the Oman foreign minister reportedly told observers that Iranians had already agreed to zero uranium enrichment even for civilian purposes, calling the nuclear weapon pretext into question. He notes that Rubio proposed preempting Israel’s anticipated attack, suggesting the U.S. acted to defend itself. After initial strikes, Iran bombarded U.S. bases in the GCC and closed the Strait of Hormuz, causing significant global economic disruption as oil prices rose toward around $120 a barrel. Iran’s aim, Zhang says, is to pressure global economies and the GCC to push Trump to end the war, while the United States and its allies pursue a destructive approach, including strikes on desalination and oil facilities, which he characterizes as civilian targets that would jeopardize civilians’ access to water and fuel. He cites a 170 schoolgirls’ deaths in a Tomahawk strike as an example of the civilian toll and argues the war’s conduct suggests a focus on destroying Iran rather than regime change.
Glenn observes the narrative’s inconsistency and compares it with other wars, where a single organizing narrative typically emerges. Zhang expands the view: the war is a war of attrition for Iran, pressuring global energy supplies and GCC partners to influence Washington to end the conflict, whereas the United States and Israel pursue a path of destruction. He emphasizes Iran’s vulnerability of Gulf States, arguing their dependence on U.S. protection—despite their vulnerability when Hormuz closes and their desalination capacity is threatened. He explains that Gulf economies depend on oil revenue and import food and water; closing Hormuz and attacking desalination plants could collapse the GCC’s economic and physical stability. He contends that the Gulf’s petrodollar system ties the region to the U.S. economy, and destroying that link would threaten both American debt and the AI/flood of investment in the United States from Gulf capital.
Zhang further argues that the war’s broader global impact could unsettle the current liberal international order. Iran seeks to push the U.S. out of the Middle East, gain control of Hormuz, and finance rebuilding domestically, while the U.S. and its allies resist recognizing the limits of empire. He asserts that the petrodollar system ties Gulf investments to the U.S. economy; if Gulf States stop funding American growth, an AI-driven financial bubble could burst, triggering a severe downturn reminiscent of a Great Depression. He counters a belief that the United States could gracefully withdraw from the region, labeling such thinking as wishful and attributing the U.S. position to imperial hubris.
Glenn asks about the war’s potential global spread and how the conflict might draw in other powers, including Russia, China, Turkey, and Pakistan. Zhang contends there is likely no off-ramp; Israel intends to widen the conflict to achieve its Greater Israel project, while Iran would strike GCC targets more than Israel. He notes Turkey’s weakness and predicts possible broad regional engagement, with Pakistan obligated to defend Saudi Arabia and potentially becoming a participant due to mutual defense pacts. He suggests a multi-vector expansion: from Pakistan, Iraq, and Azerbaijan to secure the Shatt al-Arab and Hormuz, leading to broader regional escalation and eventual intervention by Southeast Asian economies reliant on Hormuz oil.
Discussing Russia, Zhang argues that Vladimir Putin has a grand strategy. He believes Putin is waiting for a U.S. ground invasion of Iran; once U.S. forces commit ground troops, Russia could exploit the distraction to advance objectives, notably Odessa, potentially triggering a European defense and a prolonged, draining conflict. This, he says, would exhaust Europe and push for a political realignment favorable to Russia, potentially replacing the current order with a new balance of power.
Towards the end, Zhang forecasts three major post-war trends: deindustrialization due to energy scarcity, mercantilism with localized supply networks, and remilitarization as Pax Americana ends and Pax Judaica or similar regional orders emerge. He suggests Japan might lead East Asia in deindustrialization and remilitarization, while China remains tied to the old global order. He predicts a potential rapprochement between the United States and China but maintains the global order will not be saved. He also notes that Europe is in a dire condition, facing demographic and economic strain, refugee integration challenges, and political fragmentation, which undercuts Western liberal hegemonies.
In closing, Zhang reiterates that his earlier prediction from two years prior—that the United States would invade Iran—has been fulfilled with shock, and he expresses sympathy with the unsettling realization of the unfolding dynamics.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined today by professor Zhang, who uses historical patterns and game theory to predict the direction of geopolitics. And professor Zhang is famous for many things, among some predicting the return of Trump and also the war against Iran, now a second war that is. So thank you for coming back on the program.
Speaker 1: Thanks, Glenn.
Speaker 0: How how do you make sense of this war, though, against Iran? I mean, how how do you measure how this war is developing in terms of where the successes or failures are?
Speaker 1: Right. So first of all, Trump has failed to articulate a purpose and a strategy for this war. At first, it was about nuclear uranium enrichment in Iran and the fear that Iran would develop a nuclear weapon. In fact, in Trump's state of the of the union address, he said that he would never allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. And both chambers of congress, the both the Democrats and Republicans rose to cheer and applaud.
It was really the first time that congress demonstrated any unity during that speech. It was a extremely political speech. But the problem with that is that the Omani foreign minister, a few hours before the Americans and that's really struck Tehran, told us that the Iranians had already agreed to zero uranium enrichment even for civil civilian purposes. So the idea that Trump needs to prevent a nuclear weapon, that doesn't hold. It's just a pretext.
And they tried different many different excuses. And then finally, Rubio said this. Rubio basically said, look. We had to attack because Israel was gonna attack first, and then the Iranians would retaliate against both the Israelis and us. So to defend ourselves, we had to preempt Israel and attack first.
Okay? So they're struggling for a narrative. They're struggling to explain to to the American people why this is happening. They're also struggling to contain a fallout because after the Americans initially struck Iranians, the Iranians start to bombard US bases in the GCC, and they closed off the Strait Of Hormuz. This is doing tremendous damage to the global economy.
So oil right now, it's approaching $120 a barrel, $110 a barrel. I'm not quite sure. Okay? But this is double from a a week ago. And remember that the Sheriff Hormuz delivers most of this oil to the Asian economies of Pakistan, India, China, South Korea, and Japan.
Japan relies on 75% of its oil from the servant of Hormuz. So in about seven, eight months, prime minister Takayashi has informed her cabinet that Japan will be out of oil. And Japan is, you know, a manufacturing powerhouse. So this war has been a disaster. And even today, Trump has failed to articulate why the Americans are doing this, what the purpose is, and what the off ramp is.
And what we're seeing day by day is pretty rapid escalation. In fact, I think sec the second day or third day into this war, there are rumors of ground troops. Yesterday, there's rumors that the eighty second Airborne Division of of the American army was given deployment orders, meaning that meaning it is possible Americans will choose to airdrop these soldiers into the middle of Iran. For what purpose? We don't know.
There's talk of the Americans seizing Karg Island, which is the oil depart of of Iran and which accounts for 90% of Iranian oil exports. There's talk of the Americans funding proxies. There's talk of using tactical and nuclear weapons. There's talk of a national draft to find 500,000 soldiers for ground invasion of Iran. So this war is completely out of control, and it's completely unclear what the Americans hope to accomplish with this war.
Speaker 0: Yeah. The narrative, I think, was very poorly planned, even worse than the war has been planned, because it began, as you said, with nuclear weapons, then moved over to ballistic missiles. Then as apparently, they want to help protesters, and they was about to oil, that they should be taken out of the hands of Iranians. Then Trump mentioned Iran might take over the Middle East unless, you know, so we had to go in. And as I said, the Israel thing was interesting because if the argument is that, Israel will attack Iran, then Iran will retaliate against Israel now, I guess, Israel and The United States, so they had to go in first, and they're essentially admitting that they're fighting Israel's war, but they can't say that either.
So so the, you know, the the ability to find a narrative is was kind of poor compared to other wars. Other usually have one narrative, all the media, they they organize around it, and everyone obediently repeats the same talking points. It's hasn't been done well. But this is a war of attrition, though, to a large extent. That is both sides seeking well, not both.
There's many all all sides seeking to exhaust each other. But this is in terms of weapons, ammunition, but it's also spilling into energy and, yeah, water, if you will, or just general economics. How how do you see who would exhaust whom first?
Speaker 1: Right. So I think Iran is trying to fight a war of attrition where it is putting pressure on the global economy, on the GCC nations because Iran believes that the GCC nations, especially Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and UAE, can apply pressure on Trump to end this war as quickly as possible. By closing on the street of Hormuz, Iran is trying to pressure the Southeast Asian economies of China, Japan, and South Korea to press apply pressure on Trump to end this war as soon as possible. So the Iranians are fighting a war of attrition. Unfortunately, the Americans are fighting a war of destruction.
So even though they haven't stated the purpose, it is clear from what is happening on the ground that the Americans and the Israelis are intent on complete and out of destruction of the government's of their any government's capacity to deliver basic services to its people. What I mean by that is that they yesterday struck a desalination plant in Iran. It and, you know, so you're denying fresh water to the civilian population. That is a war crime. Then the Americans struck oil facilities in Tehran.
These are these are civilian oil facilities so that citizens in Tehran can drive their cars. And if you look at footage from Tehran, it is the apocalypse. It there's acid rain. The entire the entire sky is black, and these people have to breathe that air so they're they will develop cancer. They'll have birth defects.
It's almost like chemical warfare. So if you are just saying it's a war of attrition, that makes no sense. A war of attrition means when you embargo Iran economically. Why are you targeting civilians? You know, in the first of the war, a Tomahawk Tomahawk missile hit a school in Southern Iran and killed about a 170 school girls.
These are this is an elementary school. 170 school girls were killed in that. And and this war, the way it's being constructed, the way it's being fought, seems to me that the Americans are first and foremost focused on the destruction of Iran as opposed to regime change.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, I guess that's a good description of that. Iran is fighting a war of attrition, so time won't be on their side while The US is, well, seeking to destroy the country with its, yeah, 90,000,000 people inside. So this is quite problematic. But the Iranians, of course, is limited what they can do to to The United States.
They can, of course, hit their bases. And but but it seems that Iran is obviously prioritizing going after the Gulf States because that's a good way of creating some pain for The US led alliance. How vulnerable do you see them being here, though?
Speaker 1: Yeah. So the Gulf States are the great vulnerability of the American empire because Israel, it has an eschatology. Unfortunately, religiously zealots have taken over the state of Israel. So they're perfectly okay to die for what they believe in, and they can live in bomb shelters for years and years. That's how strong their faith is.
And Israel was designed as an extremely resilient, extremely creative society. So Israel will emerge from this war intact and probably even stronger. The but the Gulf States are different. The Gulf States are basically mirages. These fifty years ago, these were just deserts.
Right? They and for most of human history, the the Arabian Peninsula was not that inhabited because it didn't have access to fresh water. It didn't have much agricultural output, and so it cannot sustain a large population, and most were desert nomads engaged in trade. But Pax Americana changed all that because Pax Americana could could needed oil to fund its empire, and it could offer protection to the Gulf State. So they they developed really rapidly.
So cities where maybe tens of thousands of people before now are in the millions. And one striking example is Dubai. You know, you go to Dubai, it's just skyscraper after skyscraper. It is a very glitzy city, and it it's trying to be the financial capital of The Middle East. And there are thousands of extremely wealthy individuals who've transferred their savings to Dubai because they believe that it's safe, it's comfortable, lots of good Michelin restaurants, lots of good five star hotels, and I'm not taxed.
But this image of Dubai as a financial hub is now shattered by this war, and they'll never recover from this. In fact, we're already hearing rumors of of millionaires just fleeing with with their wealth. Now they're going to Singapore. Now they're going to Southeast Asia. A bigger problem is this.
A bigger problem is that because the Strait Of Humores is closed, their oil economies have collapsed. They can no longer sell their oil and they shut down their their oil production facilities. What people don't recognize is that the Shreve Hormuz takes GCC oil to to Asia, but then it brings back food. This is usually import eighty eighty to 90% of its food supply. So Dubai was the rumor is Dubai will run out of food in about a week's time.
Then there there's issue of fresh water where the greatest vulnerability is actually desalination plants. So the GCC nations desalination plants provide about 6% of all their water needs. And so if these desalination plants are destroyed, then they run out of water in one or two weeks. And this means the entire destruction of the GCC. Now now, I mean, destroying desalination plants will be the nuclear option for Iran, and so I don't think they would use it very lightly.
But there's really no coming back from what's happening. I mean, for the longest time, the GCC had a reputation for being safe, for being extremely wealthy, and now that mirage, that illusion has been shattered. And once the illusion is shattered, you can't ever resurrect it again.
Speaker 0: No. I'll no. I very much agree. The well, the Gulf States not just are not just dependent on energy, but the the finance, the real estate market, which is propped up by all the expats. But what you're also describing, though, is that is the these small monarchy is selling the oils in in dollar and The US in return offering protection.
This was also the petrodollar system that replaced Bretton Woods once they closed the gold window. So how what do you see being the possible consequences for the global economy?
Speaker 1: Right. So what Iran wants to do is basically kick The US out of the Middle East for a lot of reasons. And the main advantage is that once The US leaves, Iran will be able to control the Shreve of Hormuz. Therefore, it will control trade access for the entire world. And that and and so the Gulf States will base basically become client states of the Iranians rather than Americans, and that oil money now will be able to finance the rebuilding of Iran.
So so that's the end goal or the end game for the Iranians. The problem with empire is the hubris. And so another saying this is the empire would rather destroy the world than surrender its power. Right? So the idea that the Americans will just leave the Middle East peacefully is this wishful thinking.
Everyone's saying that, you know, this war can only lead to the defeat of America. So America should just admit defeat right now and then go home and let Israel and Iran settle whatever problems that they have. Like like, the Middle East is not America's problem. But again, the problem is that America is addicted to the petrodollar. Leaving the Middle East would destroy the petrodollar.
And if the petrodollar is destroyed, it would collapse the American economy as well. So America has $40,000,000,000,000 in debt, And this debt is a is a ponzi scheme. Like, the American economy is is sustained by a ponzi scheme. And so the Gulf States, what they do is they sell the oil, get petrodollars, and then they recycle it back into the American economy, mainly by investing into AI, into data centers, which is now the main engine of growth for the American economy. So the Gulf States were to stop investing in America, the AI financial bubble would burst and with it the entire American economy.
America would suffer a much greater depression than the nineteen thirties. That's how dire the situation is for America right now.
Speaker 0: But The United States though, they must have known that this would be a disaster. I mean, they many of the top military people in The United States warned in advance that they they would have limited weapons. They would have a limited ability to go on for too long, which, of course, could explain why they're instead going for burning down Iran if if they can't if time is essentially on Iran's side. But but there's been war games in the past where they show that they they couldn't pull this off. I mean, you had god knows how many American presidents who wanted to attack Iran, but they always knew that, yeah, that's not a good idea.
So how how do how do you make sense of this? Because that was my one when when they were building up to this war, sending more and more military hardware to the region, my main reason for thinking this might not happen was it would simply be too crazy. The the likelihood of success, the amount of things that could go wrong, I mean, it just indicated that this that they can't possibly go down this path. So so why I guess, why why did they? They do have informed people in The United States.
I you know, we know. So how how do you make sense of this?
Speaker 1: Right. So, again, you I agree with you in that this war doesn't make any sense. It's not rational. And everyone everyone knows that America was gonna lose this war. The problem is that when empires are in decline, this is just the way they behave.
And this is the the the historical record, it's pretty overwhelming in that when empires decline, they lash out against the world. They start these stupid war to kind of possibly win. They overextend themselves and the collapse is terrible for the world. And America very much is an empire in decline. Look at things such as the collapse of the family.
Look at things such as the collapse of the currency. Currency debasement in in America is just a tremendous problem. US dollars no more worth as much as it was like like ten years ago. The political polarization in America, congress just cannot function properly. The president has so much power nowadays because congress has basically decided to just not do anything to avoid any political responsibility.
And so it's destroying the checks and balance systems of the US constitution. The economic depression in America is great. Young people feel as though there's absolutely no hope in the world. They're refusing to have families. They're refusing to invest in the future.
They gamble all the time. And so America is really the end of empire at this point. And so what they do is they go and start wars in order to distract people's people's attentions, in order to prove to the world that they still have it, to you know, they're still the bully in a playground, and they can still beat up every other kid even though they're old and they're and they're weak and they're handicapped. And so, you know, you were talking about Iran, but, like, look at what was happening before Iran. Right?
Trump kidnapped the president of of Venezuela, which went which went against national law. Trump deployed his navy in the Caribbean and started to bomb drug boats, which is again again against international law. Trump was trying to annex Greenland. He was threatening to invade Canada. He was threatening to attack Mexico.
Right now, he's embargoing Cuba. And people people people don't even recognize this is happening because there's so much going on in the world, but Cuba was dependent on Venezuela oil. That was its energy supply. And now that Venezuela has fallen to the Americans, the Americans have embargoed Cuba, and so now people don't don't have access to electricity. And there are actually people who are starving in Cuba.
So this is an empire in decline. It just lashes out against the world. It attacks everyone. And Iran is just the most current iteration of this anger and this hubris. But this hubris made the Americans underestimate the capacity of Iran.
They went in thinking that once they decapitate the regime, then the government would fall. And what they what the Americans didn't recognize was the resilience and resolve of the Iranian people.
Speaker 0: Well, about to say imperial decline, it it reminds me of something that Emmanuel Todd, the the the French scholar, argued because, well, again, he predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union already in seventies by looking at these different social variables. But he also predicted the US empire was heading towards, well, a similar fate already in the in the early two thousands. And he described essentially what you did, this strange, she called it, micromilitarism, this this, yeah, brutal use of military force in an effort to show power when it's obviously draining. So it is an interesting development. But you you mentioned that the Americans are losing as if it's a given.
How how do you why do you assess this? Is this the mainly the focus on on the military hardware at their disposal, or is it the lack of a clear objective? Or I guess regime change will be very hard without the ground troops.
Speaker 1: Right. So America right now has several disadvantages. The first major disadvantage is the lack of political will, and that just means the lack of of a strategy, the lack of a purpose. It cannot unify the American people in order to make the sacrifice necessary to win this war. In fact, most Americans are against this war.
Right before the war started, seventy seventy to 80% Americans voiced their disapproval of a possible war with Iran. Usually, when a war starts, people rally behind the flag, but not in this case. Most Americans are still against the war. So the first issue is the lack of political will. If you look at the Iranians, they believe that this is a struggle of of life and death.
So they've set aside the political differences, and they've committed to winning this war. Okay? So that's the first factor, political will. The second factor is just manufacturing capacity. So these past thirty, forty years, America went from a manufacturing based economy to a financial based economy, and they export their manufacturing capacity to China.
Now when you fight a war, what really matters is your capacity to produce ammunition, to replenish your your ammunitions, logistics. And America doesn't have manufacture capacity to fight a long war. In fact, what's happening already is that America is cannibalizing munitions from other parts of the world. So stuff so they are now transferring munitions from South Korea over to the Middle East, which is stupid to do because now you've you've basically opened more flanks, opened more vulnerabilities throughout the world. So manufacturing capacity is a very important factor.
On the other hand, Iran uses drones and ballistic missiles, and we know that Iran is able to manufacture about 500 drones a day. Quite honestly, you you only need to, like, have 10 drones hit their targets in Middle East every single day in order for the GCC to cry uncle. Right? So manufacturing capacity is a very important factor as well. And the third factor is that America is hamstring by a lot of political considerations.
So because they lack political will, they do not want to take too many casualties. Right? So Trump has said that six Americans have died in this war so far. There's absolutely no way this is true. We are we are having hearing rumors that there are a lot of casualties being flown to Germany to try to disguise the fact that the middle in the Middle East, many Americans are are are dying.
But this tells us that America has actually no appetite to sustain any casualties. If you refuse to have any casualties, how are you gonna fight a war? Right? On the other hand, the Iranians are very eschatological. They are very religious.
They are Shia Muslim, and they're not afraid to die. In fact, they believe it is the highest honor to monitor yourself for the higher good. And the the clear example of this is the Ayatollah Karmanad who was killed in the first day of strikes. And, you know, he could have gone to Moscow and he could have hit his bunker, but instead he chose to go go to his office and carry on with his life because he he's 86 years old and he does not wanna die afraid of Americans. And so he set the example that is galvanizing the Iranian people.
Just look at some social media footage from Iran. The Iranian people are now extremely energetic, extremely galvanized, and they will fight this war to the bitter end.
Speaker 0: Yeah. No. I was in Tehran last year, and I was also a bit well, that's one thing that really stood out, the culture of martyrdom, the way they would put the martyrs' pictures on the walls at many places. The it this is, you know, an important variable, but beyond the material variables, if you wanna assess how a country would actually fight. And the whole idea of, you know, killing Khomeini, and now everything will fall into place, I mean, his son has taken over now.
And it has to be pointed out that Americans killed his father, his mother. They killed his wife. They killed his sister, and they killed his son. I mean, the idea as Trump said, well, we we will pick the next guy, and, you know, he will have to be acceptable to us. He has to be more favorable to America and accommodating and more moderate.
It it doesn't make any sense. How how can you, you know, burn down the country and, again, just if you look at the new leader, slaughter his whole family, and then assume that they will just fall in line. If you look at the culture in Iran, again, the martyrdom culture, which is strong, you know, you can say among Shiites in general, this was always crazy, but for somehow, this seemed to have been the assumption. But how do you see, though, the possibility of this war spreading? Because they're, of course, they're attacking US bases, which, you know, covers a lot of country.
So you have US proxies being used, such as Kurds, which could then trigger a civil war in a country of 90,000,000 people. There's now I mean, the American and British media, especially, they're all up in arms that Russia is giving intelligence to Iran to try to, you know, make Trump push harder against Russia in Ukraine even though this, you know, is a, yeah, also also dangerous path. I'm not sure if what to what extent China would get get involved. I mean, do you see a pathway here from it being coming a proper regional war or or a world war? How how do you see this?
Speaker 1: Well, first of all, I don't think there's an off ramp for this war. I think it's very hard to deescalate. The idea that the Americans will just give up their petrodollar and the American bases and just go home is just absurd. That is not how empires behave. Also, Israel, because it wants to achieve the greater Israel project, is heavily invested in creating a regional conflagration to create as much havoc as possible so that that they could destroy the region and then be the only one left standing.
K? And so what Israel wants to do is drag everyone into the war, including Turkiye, including Saudi Arabia, including, basically, the entire Middle East. And so during the first couple of days, there's reporting that an Iranian throne had struck a Saudi Aramchol oil facility. And so Aramco closed down all its energy production. But then later reporting came out to reveal that, actually, the drone came from Lebanon.
So it didn't come from the E East. It came from the West, which meant Israel. Torok Carlson on his TV show sorry, sir, on on on his show said that he had received information from the Qataris, but they they had arrested two Mossad agents. And they suspected these Mossad agents of trying to sabotage the Qatar oral facilities in order to create a false flag. So the Israelis are heavily invested in trying to create as much conflict between the GCC and Iran as possible.
And now there's talk of Turkey coming in as well. Recently, there was a drone attack from Iran against Azerbaijan, and Azerbaijan was very angry about this and even felt the possibility of sending in ground troops against Iran, but then it was later discovered that this was probably a false flag of of the Israelis. So the Israelis are in are heavily interested in spreading this war as far as possible and creating as much destruction as possible. And they want this war to continue for as long as possible because they have nuclear weapons. So Iranians the Iranians are not gonna hit them too hard.
The Iranians are going to hit the GCC much harder. And so it's just for the for the Israelis, they just have to endure. Right? It's a war of attrition. And then once Saudi Arabia is destroyed, once the GCC is destroyed, then Israel will be the only power left standing.
Okay? So that's so that is Israel's intention. Other nations will eventually have to be drawn in as well. So one wild card is Pakistan. So during the twelve day war, Pakistan supported Iran.
But after that, a few months after that, Saudi Arabia signed a mutual defense pact with Pakistan. So if Saudi Arabia is attacked, Pakistan must come to its aid, and we know that Pakistan has nuclear weapons. So it is very likely that at some point, Saudi Arabia will join this war on behalf of the Americans because the animosity between Saudi Arabia and Iran go way back. Iran is a theocracy. Saudi Arabia is a monarchy, and they see each other as as as heretical.
Okay? As against Islam. The Iranians hate Saudi Arabia because Saudi Arabia is the home of Mecca and Medina, the two holiest sites in the Islamic world. At the same time, they host a lot of American soldiers. These are infidels in the eyes of Iranians, and so the Iranians are heavily interested in trying to topple the Saudi regime.
And they're gonna apply pressure to cause uprisings throughout the the GGC. And I believe that at some point, the Saudi government will decide to enter this war. And if they enter this war, then Pakistan is obligated to enter this war as well. If the Americans were to launch a ground invasion, it would make sense to attack from multiple vectors. And one vector would be from Pakistan.
Another vector, of course, would be from Iraq. The last vector would be from Azerbaijan. They would also try to seize the should of Hamus as soon as possible in order to maintain global trade. So that in the short term so in the short term, we can expect the entire Middle East to be engulfed in this war at some point. In the long term, eventually, the Southeast Asian economies will have to intervene.
So South Korea and Japan are extremely reliant on oil from the Strait Of Hormuz. In fact, they will basically starve to death if it were not from this oil from the Strait Of Hormuz. But there's a wild card, and that's North Korea. So if you're in North Korea and you are analyzing the situation, you recognize that now is the perfect opportunity to threaten South Korea because Americans are distracted in the Middle East, and the South Koreans don't have access to the oil they need to protect themselves against the North Koreans. So just threaten South Korea, and then the Americans are forced to to direct their attention back to Southeast Asia, and Japan is forced to come into this conflict as as well.
And the North Koreans aren't doing this to start to start a war, that means to settle. They're doing this to extort as much as possible from South Korea and Japan, And so I expect that to happen as well. The Western Hemisphere will not be quiet this time because while this is happening, Trump is still intent on toppling the Cuban government. Okay? So it's possible two weeks from now, while this war is still raging, Trump attacks Cuba or Mexico or Colombia.
It is complete insanity. But this is again, unfortunately, this is the way an empire behaves as it declines.
Speaker 0: So, yeah, what you're describing is more or less a suicide or death of empire at least. But after this war is over, of course, there's no going back to the way things were. So how do you see this the wider change to the Middle East as a region?
Speaker 1: Well, I think the GCC is done for. I don't think it's possible to come back from what's happening. And after this this war is done, I think that Israel emerges as a dominant power in the Middle East. It achieves the greater Israel project. And the Iranians will not lose this war.
They will maintain their sovereignty, but this war is gonna destroy a lot of their infrastructure, and they'll have to rebuild. Fortunately, they will be able to control the Shirdir Hormuz, and so they'll have the financing necessary to rebuild their nation. And I think that after this war, the Iranians will actually come out much stronger than before. They will be they will control the Khosil who moves. They will have a more vibrant, coherent national identity, and they will will have upgraded a lot of their military capacity.
So maybe at this war, they're destroyed, but they'll rebuild and they'll come out much stronger. And this will lead to, in a long term, regional regional conflict between Iran and Israel. And in eschatology, in Islamic and in Jewish, and in Christian eschatology, this conflict between Iran and Israel and this is a long term thing. Right? But it is often referred to as the wharf gog and magog when the entire world attacks Israel.
K? So but before that happens, Israel will achieve the greater Israel project, and it will create something called Pax Judaica. So imagine that the center of gravity basically transfers from Washington DC to Jerusalem. Why? Because at this point in history, Israel, it controls all global trade.
It's it's already built the Ben Gurion Canal, which cuts through Gaza and replaces the the Suez Canal. It is the technological and financial center of the Middle East because GCC has been destroyed. And so since whatever oil money there is is put invested into Israel. You know, the Indian prime prime minister Modi visited Netanyahu before the war struck out before the war began. And it was a very pleasant meeting.
And the reason why is that in order to build Pax Choudhaka, Israel needs to import millions and millions of cheap laborers and India is the best source of cheap laborers for for Israel. So I think that that is what they have in mind. You know, a lot of technological companies in United States, Google, Nvidia, Oracle, they are they will probably move to Jerusalem and help help build the technological center of the world, create an AI an AI surveillance state. So these past few decades, they create this surveillance model in Gaza, and then they'll just scale it out to include the entire Middle East. So that's what I see happening.
In the short in the short term, this will be devastating. In the midterm, Israel, what's the greater Israel project and create Paxhedeka. In the long term, Israel will face the world in in in a global conflict.
Speaker 0: But to what extent would Israel be in a positional to to project this kind of power? Because after this war, there would be a seemingly very diminished US presence in at least the ability to project power in the Middle East. Turkey is also growing more concerned about Israel. Indeed, Israelis also have a very tough rhetoric about Turkey and especially Erdogan. And with the war as well, the the amount of destruction that will be levied against the Israelis, the economic complications, the demographic problems as many settlers might be simply leaving.
I mean, it's not a big country. What is this? Million people now? Seven, eight? How how how would they be able to, I guess, sustain themselves in this region once all of these things begin to kick in?
Also, political instability, one could put out to the list, I guess. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I think let let's talk political instability because Israel is notorious for political divisions. Right? It's almost impossible to get people to agree on anything. Israelis argue all the time. But this war is gonna have a traumatic traumatic effect on Israeli society.
The democracy is going to to give way to a theocracy. The religious zealots are going to gain greater control over Israeli society. And what is whatever is left of an open cosmopolitan democratic society will wither away. Basically, Jerusalem will replace Tel Aviv as the heart and center of Israeli society. So that's part one.
Point two is that people severely underestimate Israel because it is a small nation in a desert with very few resources, but the real wealth of Israel is a Jewish diaspora spread all around the world. They are extremely well educated. They're $10 really savvy, and they are and and they are extremely united. Like like, they believe in the greater greater Israel project. So it's possible for Israel to draw on basically unlimited financing on the most advanced technology, on political support from all over the Jewish diaspora.
And I think that once this war is over, Israel will have no peer competitor in the Middle East, meaning that Saudi Arabia Saudi Saudi Arabia will probably be destroyed and Turkiye will be similarly weakened in the process. I'll be honest with you. I have very little hope for Turkiye. It has suffered a great deal under Edelgarn. If you go back and look at how how Edelgarn came to power and how he cemented power, I believe it it it was in the '20 what what year what year was it?
Twenty eighteen coup? And, anyway, my my point is that Turkiye is a extremely corrupt and ostified society that is a paper tiger. And if Turkeya were to enter this war, you'd be surprised by how badly it it it does. So the so Israel, in other words, doesn't have a regional competitor. Iran will be a competitor in the future, but that is in the future.
Speaker 0: Yeah. No. I think yeah. No. No.
The the the coup attempt in 2016, I think this was very clear. Well, it's not the first time they have this every now and then that the stability might be quite fragile. But you you kinda covered very well the Middle East, how The US is impacted, how this could spread to East Asia. Israel could become a theocracy. Iran, even more confident regional power.
How about Europe? Because we, you know, our the Americans liberated us from the Nord Stream pipeline by blowing it up. European leaders recently congratulated themselves for liberating themselves from Russian energy and gas and oil. Sorry. And now, of course, we've also been cut off from energy from the Middle East, and all of this was the backdrop of The United States seeking to pivot away from Europe.
So how how does this debacle in The Middle East with the war in Iran impact the Europeans?
Speaker 1: Well, it's I mean, like, the Europe Europe is completely hopeless. It's a hopeless situation. You know, for the past twenty years, it's America has screwed over Europe. So these wars in The Middle East created millions of refugees who then went to Europe. And I don't know what the Europeans were thinking in allowing these millions of refugees to come into their society when they didn't have the capacity to absorb these millions of refugees.
Right? So Edmund Merkel, the chancellor of Germany famously said, we can do it. No. You can't. And time has shown that these millions of refugees have put a turn on a strain on the social cohesion, on the capacity of the state to govern Europe.
So there's tremendous political fissures within Europe at this point, and so that's why you see the rise of these right wing parties throughout Europe. The but the main problem as you point out is the economy. So Europe suffers from an aging population, so the population itself is not no longer as dynamic as it used to be. Before, the model the German model was very good. It was this, you know, buy cheap Russian energy, make really good German cars, subcontract the labor to Poland, and then sell extremely expensive German cars to China.
It's a great model for Germany. But then when Trump came to office, the China market Germany lost lost access to the China market. And then when you have this war break out, Germany will can no longer buy cheap Russian energy. As you point out, the Europeans then pivoted to the Middle East, primarily Qatar, and now Qatar has basically shut down all in LNG production. And so Europe is completely screwed in the process, and Macron has talked about sending an aircraft carrier to the Middle East.
What's that gonna do? I mean, send an aircraft carrier so that the Iranians can sink it with ballistic missile? I mean, what's the point of that? So and and still at this time, the Europeans are still talking about drafting young men to go die in the trenches of Ukraine in in 2029. So the Europeans, the European elite have their head in the sand.
They have actually no idea what's going on. They have actually no solution to the multiple crises that they face. And the Europe is a dumpster fire. I hate to say this, but it's a dumpster fire.
Speaker 0: Well, it's hard to disagree with that assessment, but, no, things are going from bad to worse. I think the the reason why Europe went from this immense optimism to now just crash, you know, you can say hubris and all this, which is all correct, I think it was post cold world order, though. It it became ideal for the Europeans. That is, The United States were, you know, declared a unipolar moment. The the role of the Europeans in this world was, well, let's have a collective hegemony of the political West standing on these two legs of The US and the EU, hoping that Europe would be an equal partner to The United States.
And not only would the political West dominate the world, but it would be a force for good because not only would it prevent great power rivalry, but also by dominating the liberal democratic West, we'll be able to elevate the role of liberal democratic values, humanitarian ideals. So, again, it's it's almost like a civilizing mission. The dominance is us, and sovereign inequality is a force for good in the world. The world will thank us for dominating. So this is the benign hegemon.
It's very appealing if you're a politician, you say we dominate, and the world will love us for it. So now that, of course, this is falling falling apart, I guess a bit of a mirage like the Gulf States that we're relying on, it's there is no no no clarity what what to do, and there's no political imagination because they they outsourced all strategic thinking to The US for the for eighty years. Now The US is essentially, well, pulling out its knives for the Europeans. They they've done this, as you said, over the past twenty years, but they did it did it more covertly. Now they were quite open about their contempt for Europe.
So no. No. I think Europe is done. But what what does this mean for the wider world order? Because this idea of, you know, the international distribution being focused around US global primacy legitimized then by liberal democratic values.
This world order, the post cold world world order of the liberal hegemony is gone. So The US is not dominant anymore, and liberal democratic values I mean, no one really thinks this is what the Western powers are, that these are their objectives in foreign policy. It's a thin veal which has been tossed away. So what is the new world order then from your perspective, or what will follow this? Right.
Speaker 1: So there'll be three major trends that follow from this. Okay? The first major trend is deindustrialization because you don't have access to cheap energy. So you need to make your economy much more balanced before we have the growth of urban centers, which engage in a knowledge economy, which engage in AI, in EV, in solar panels. Right?
But all that but all of that requires access to cheap energy, which is what The Middle East provided. But now that The Middle East is gonna be destroyed or being gulfed in war for the next ten, twenty years, you have to deindustrialize. Have to focus more on self sufficiency. Okay? So that's the first trend, deindustrialization.
Second major trend is mercantilism. Okay? And what I mean by that is that the global order is dead. And so what you need to do is basically focus on local trade or creating your own supply networks, spirits of influence. Okay?
And the third major trend, which is most troubling is remilitarization Because pax Americana is dead and pax judicas are interested in protecting you from big bad bullies. Okay? So it's either you rearm as soon as possible and defend yourself or you will be or you'll be eaten alive by a wolf. Right? So I think in East Asia, the the first nation to recognize the changing world order, because it has no choice in the matter, is Japan.
I think that they brought in partnership with Takeuchi because she appealed to the young, and she has the charisma to galvanize the young to make make this make the sacrifices necessary in order to de industrialize, remilitarize, and create a self sufficient economic system. So I think that Japan will actually suffer in the beginning, but they will actually be in the forefront of global change. And nations that absolutely refuse to make these three necessary changes will be the most likely to suffer. And quite honestly, I have very little hope for my own country, which is China. I think that because of these changes, Japan will start to emerge as the local hegemon while China is still stuck to the old global order.
But in the short term, what this means is that The United States and China will have a rapport month. Okay? So even though this war has started, Trump will still visit Beijing March 31 at the end of this month for a three day state visit. And I think that people will be surprised by how friendly and productive this meeting will be. And in fact, actually, this year, this vote, there are scheduled three major summits between China and The United States.
And so I think that both nations are working towards a rapprochement in order to repair the global order, but there's no saving the global order. It's dying. And so if you omit this reality and commit to revamping society, the as sorry, deindustrialization, remilitarization, and moving towards a self sufficient economy, then you are much more likely to weather the storm that is coming.
Speaker 0: Well, you said that China's, yeah, stuck in the old world order, and one can see why well, with forty years of unprecedented prosperity and growth in human history, one can see why one would want to, at all cost, keep this world going even though it already went away. It's not that unlike the Europeans, though, because then, you know, the nineties, you know, it's a rebirth of Europe or, you know, thought together with The US was the center of the world. I remember having books at university, which were with the title why the twenty first century belongs to Europe. I mean, was kind of the mentality. I thought that was also always a bit ridiculous.
But, anyways, there was reason for optimism, it seemed. So that's why they also cling on to a world order, which is dying, which is why they're not able to to adjust to the new world. One place though where there's a lot of pressure to readjust to the new order is Russia. That is, you know, the spokesperson, Peskov, he was he made a comment now recently saying that we have lost what well, we have all lost what we call international law. So the system is essentially dying, if not dead.
And I think what really shook them was the decapitation strike on Iran because this is, you know, the desperate act of a dying empire, and why wouldn't they do the same towards Russia? Indeed, they've been attacking their nuclear deterrent very openly, I would say. They there was a I I think this is likely that they tried to assassinate Putin at Valdai with this attack, at least, you know, it's a theory. And, again, why why wouldn't they go for a decapitation strike against Russia? This is what many are thinking.
They look what they have done to Iran. There's no rules. So why then is Russia doing this slow war of attrition? And, also, they did this at expense of their deterrent. That is they allowed the Americans and Europeans to openly, you know, launch missiles deep into Russia.
You can have a German chancellor sitting on stage saying, oh, yes. We imposed untold casualties on the Russians. I mean, this there's so much pressure now on the Kremlin to drop this whatever they've done the past four years, and why not do like the Iranians? Time to, you know, bring some pain to the Europeans because the Europeans for the past four years said, why should the war be limited to Ukraine? Why not also extend it to Russia?
Well, why shouldn't the Russians bring it to Europe? This is what I see as the direction, which is, well, terrifying because this is you know, recipe for a much larger war. I was wondering how do you see this, the Russian component here? Because, you know, they're also one of the great powers.
Speaker 1: Right. So what so look. Look. I personally think that of all the world leaders, Vladimir Putin is the only one only one with a grand strategy. He's a very capable leader, and he sees the big picture.
He he plays chess. And so what he's waiting for is a US ground invasion of Iran. That's what he's waiting for. Because once The United States sends in ground troops, then The United States is all in. It can't extricate itself from the situation.
And at any point, The United States can stop this air campaign and say, you know what? We killed the Anatolia. We destroyed the Iranian nuclear threat. So we're gonna go home, guys. Goodbye.
Okay? But once The United States is in ground troops, then it's locked in to this Iran quagmire for five to ten years, and there's no escaping. It'll be like it'll be like another Vietnam. Right? This gives Putin and Russia the perfect opportunity to move towards Odessa, which is the real goal and the end goal of this war in Ukraine.
Because once they have Odessa, then they have basically achieved all their major military objectives. And so what's gonna happen is the Europeans will have no choice but to defend Odessa to the last European. And that's where the next major conflict will be, the siege of of Odessa. And if the siege of Odessa were to happen, the Europeans would exhaust themselves defending against the Russian attack. The Russians have perfected drone artillery warfare in the trenches of Ukraine, and that's a perfect combination if you are to besiege Odessa.
And so the Europeans, they may be fresh, but they will be inexperienced. And so they will make a lot of mistakes. They will lose a lot of casualties. And this war will eventually become so unpopular back in Europe that the that the population would would revolt against the governments. Okay?
So remember, this is a time of nuclear war, so you can't actually destroy each other's military. What you what you can do is put so much stress and pain on the global system that the citizens ultimately rebel and overthrow the the political system and and impose a new system that is much more friendly towards Russia. So that I think is the grand plan that Putin has, and it's gonna work.
Speaker 0: Well, as I think it's a Chinese who say it's we live in interesting times, so thank you very much.
Speaker 1: It's not too interesting.
Speaker 0: Well, thank you for taking the time, and, yeah, it's as as you began saying this war against Iran, like, it's hard to believe that they went through with this given all the risks, but this is I always make the point that this is gonna be the the greatest catastrophe is this illusion of escalation control, the assumption that they can control all the variables, decide how it ends, who's allowed to participate, how they contribute. I mean, this is really the same as with the Russians in Ukraine. The this assumption of escalation control. This is what's gonna kill us effectively, though.
Speaker 1: Well, I will say this. I made this prediction two years ago of The United States will would invade Iran. I've been saying for two years consistently that this would happen. The moment that it happened, I was shocked and bit wilder, and I couldn't sleep because I was like, why would they do this? So so yeah.
I mean, I I I sympathize with what what you're feeling.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Jeffrey Sachs: We Are Now in the Early Days of World War III https://youtu.be/DeRETBWnNWA https://t.co/SgZsSrO1QP
Video Transcript AI Summary
Professor Jeffrey Sachs argues that the current moment represents dramatic and dangerous upheaval, with the war against Iran in its second week and a “regime change operation” not going as planned. He says there is tremendous confusion about war aims and the ground situation, describing Washington as “fogged” and characterizing Donald Trump’s public messaging as “ravings” from a “madman.” He contends that escalation control is illusory and that the world is sliding toward a broader and more dangerous conflict.
Sachs asserts that the war is not limited to Iran: Iran has claimed to strike U.S. bases in several countries while denying attacks on Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan, and Turkey. He suggests the U.S. and Israel are pulling in proxies, including Kurdish fighters, and that Russia may be supplying Iran with intelligence while the U.S. supplies Ukraine. He contends that after decapitation strikes on Iran, Moscow faces pressure to deter NATO attacks, while Europe contemplates increasing nuclear weapons. He views the conflict as part of a wider global struggle, with fighting across the world and potential linkages to energy markets, indicating that an energy crisis is likely to be severe and poorly priced in by markets. He argues that if China and Russia support Iran, it underscores a broader strategic dynamic, given China’s oil interests and the U.S.’s efforts to cut off oil supplies to China from Venezuela, Russia, and Iran.
On international law, Sachs reiterates his argument that the U.S.-Israel attack on Iran is also an attack on the United Nations. He asserts that the U.S. under Trump “despises the UN” and seeks to kill it “through a thousand cuts and through a devastating blow,” pointing to the U.S. withdrawal from UN agencies and rejection of key treaties. He emphasizes that Europe is complicit, with European leaders and ambassadors at the UN Security Council focusing critiques on Iran rather than on the U.S.-Israel strike. He invokes Article 2(4) of the UN Charter as the essence of the UN’s purpose to stop the use of force, contrasting this with the belief that the U.S. “rules the world” and uses violence to impose demands, including the call for “unconditional surrender” in Iran.
Sachs describes the U.S. foreign policy machinery as dominated by the CIA and a network of “off the books militaries” that pursue regime change and hegemony. He recalls historical episodes: the 1953 coup in Iran, the Kennedy and Eisenhower era, and the long-standing pattern of U.S. interference in other countries’ leadership. He asserts that performance of checks and balances is deteriorating, with democracy weakening under threat and dissent punished, both in the U.S. and in Europe. He likens Trump’s rhetoric to a hyperbolic assertion that he would determine Iran’s next leader, calling this symptomatic of a broader U.S. imperial project.
In discussing European responses, Sachs criticizes Germany for showing subservience to the U.S. stance, with European leaders at times prioritizing confrontation with Iran over engagement with Russia or seeking peace. He laments the decline of European strategic autonomy and the EU as a whole, noting the Danish ambassador’s focus on Iran while ignoring U.S.-Israeli actions. He argues that Europe’s leadership has failed to act in the spirit of postwar peace, contrasting current leadership with figures like de Gaulle, Mitterrand, Kohl, or Schroeder.
Toward multipolarity, Sachs traces the idea back to Roosevelt’s vision for a United Nations-centered postwar order and contrasts it with the post-1990s U.S. unilateralism. He argues that the United States, Britain, Russia, and China would need to cooperate to avert catastrophe, and that the current trajectory—led by an obsession with global dominance—risks war, economic crisis, and widespread destabilization. He suggests that China and Russia are the most likely to push back against U.S. hegemony, with India possibly playing a role, though its alignment remains ambivalent. Sachs closes by noting that a move toward peaceful multipolar cooperation would require different leadership and a rejection of the Leviathan-style dominance mindset.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. Professor Jeffrey Sachs joins us today to discuss, well, seemingly the unraveling of the world. So thank you very much for coming back on.
Speaker 1: These are dramatic moments. No question about it. Absolutely unbelievable.
Speaker 0: We are seeing now though the that we've entered the second week of the war against Iran, and it's well, the regime change operation is not going as planned, obviously. What do you see being the strategy of The United States now that they failed in the initial objective?
Speaker 1: Strategy is a big word when it comes to Donald Trump. I I don't think there is a strategy. I, we don't really know. And of course, wartime, we will not be told what is going on behind the scenes. But what we can gather is tremendous amount of confusion, that confusion about expectations of what would happen, a confusion about war aims, a confusion about the real situation on the ground.
So fog of war is the usual simile. I think we are absolutely befogged right now when it comes to Washington. The only public outlet we have is Donald Trump's posts on true social. These are the ravings of a of a madman. And this is also part of what we are experiencing.
We have a war with great danger and complexity, and we have a president that is, in my view, mentally unhinged.
Speaker 0: Well, I'm I've repeatedly warned that well, the illusion of escalation control is what could take us to a third world war because this war is spreading fast and it's very much out of control. Indeed, it's not just a war in Iran. We see, of course, Iran taking credit for hitting US bases in several countries, yet it also denies the attack on Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan, and Turkey, which doesn't seem to make much sense and could be, of course, The US and Israel attempting to pull in proxies. Well, we don't know. But we do know that The US is arming and pulling Kurdish fighters as a proxy into the war, and there's now arguments that Russia is giving Iran intelligence, which I'm not sure is true, but it seems likely as The US gives Ukraine intelligence.
And also after the decapitation strikes on Iran, there is immense pressure on Moscow now to restore its deterrence from further NATO attacks while the Europeans talk about more nuclear weapons in quantity and spreading it around. Are we already moving into a World War three here?
Speaker 1: We are probably in the early days of World War III, and the question will be whether it is contained, but we're already in a global war because there's a war in the Western Hemisphere underway. And even as the attention is on Iran, Trump is signaling in his not so subtle way that The US will take Cuba. This could very well happen. The war in Ukraine, of course, continues. The war in The Middle East is now across the Middle East.
The war between Pakistan and Afghanistan is perhaps somehow related to this Iranian vessels, an Iranian naval vessel was sunk off the coast of India. For all of these reasons, fighting is across the world. The fighting is at least loosely linked. We don't know how closely linked it is. Part of American strategy seems to be to try to corner and control the energy markets.
This is not playing too well because the energy supplies are being blown up by the hour. And so we're entering also a worldwide energy crisis that is likely to be extremely serious. As they say, it's not yet been priced into the markets. So this is the usual way that cataclysmic global events are turned into financial jargon. But the point is, we're going to enter a, an energy crisis that is extraordinarily severe as well.
This will hurt Europe considerably. It will threaten Asian countries deeply. It will probably mean spreading war. So there's no doubt by the way, I shouldn't say no doubt. I'd be shocked.
Absolutely. If Russia and China were not supporting Iran, why wouldn't they? They have a strategic relationship with Iran. China depends on Iran for oil. The United States is basically at war with China.
And much of what The United States is doing is really aimed at China. For example, cutting off Venezuelan oil supplies to China now aiming to cut off Russian oil supplies to China, though the waiver was just lifted because of the chaos, aiming to cut off Iranian supplies to China. So if China isn't supporting Iran, something's wrong with all our textbooks, that's for sure. If China were to stand by and let The US take over the world, that would be quite strange.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Just, well, this efforts to take over the world energy markets, It's very blatant. I mean, I just watched a clip on Fox News where they have an interview going, well, yes, any any price we're paying in this war will be outweighed by the massive benefits once we get control of Iran's oil as well. And it made me think about the article you wrote recently about arguing that The US Israeli attack on Iran is also an attack on the United Nations. And indeed, well, international law obviously has been violated in the past, but now there doesn't even seem to be a pretense to abide by it.
Indeed, there seems to be a pride in it. For example, Hegzeff, he dismisses the rule of engagement as being politically correct in the weak. So there seems to be almost direct efforts to dismantle international law as, you know, the Board of Peace, more or less, makes this clear. Was wondering if you can flesh out that argument.
Speaker 1: Well, the US government under Trump, but I would say more generally, but still to a dramatic extent under Trump, despises the UN, wants to kill it, is aiming to kill it both through a thousand cuts and through a devastating blow. If you believe that you are the world's hegemon as Emperor Donald believes, then anything that tries in Lilliputian ways to hold you down is pathetic. So they want to smash the United Nations. And they've been absolutely clear about it. Earlier this year, The United States walked out of more than 30 UN agencies.
The US has repudiated fundamental UN treaties and objectives. We've had an end of the nuclear arms control agreements, which were part of the UN system. The US doesn't pay its bills to The United Nations. The US doesn't respect the institutions of the United Nations. And it's clear, at least Trump and this US government, And I would say the CIA and the deep state more generally aim for global hegemony.
And the UN is the opposite of that. We're not maybe not quite the opposite of it, but it's co responsibility with other countries and The US does not accept co responsibility with anybody. So everything that is being done, I completely sneers at the UN. And if the topic is raised, those are, as you said, whether it's by Hagsef or by the White House, those are pathetic niceties in a world of power. We've not really seen this kind of brutality of sentiment, of rhetoric and of action since 1945.
By anybody, by the way, whether it's by the Soviet Union, or by The United States in an earlier vintage, or by any other country, nothing remotely close to this. I calculate each year with my colleagues an index of UN aligned multilateralism, which we report annually in a report called the Sustainable Development Report. And even before this war, The United States far and away and not even close, Glenn, was the least aligned with the United Nations of all 193 UN member states in terms of engagement with UN processes, including votes in the General Assembly, where The US almost always votes in a tiny minority with Israel and Paraguay and a couple of other countries against the will of the rest of the world in terms of not signing treaties or leaving treaties. The US is simply rogue or out to destroy the UN. Let's put it that way.
And this is all accelerated in recent weeks. What is disturbing, if I could use a light term, because I love to use a stronger terms. Europe is completely complicit in this. Europe doesn't show one morsel of support for the UN system processes, or most importantly, the UN Charter. The core of the UN Charter, the very purpose that you find in the preamble, and then in the opening articles, is to stop the use of force and the threat of force by one nation against another nation.
This is the essence of the whole UN system. Article two paragraph four of the UN Charter, which I encourage people to go online and read, says that no nation may threaten force or use force against another nation. It's simple. And as the opening words of the UN charter made clear, this is to prevent the scourge of war. Well, we have a US President who does believe that The US rules the world, and that violence is a core instrument of ruling the world, and that if countries don't exceed to US demands, what Trump calls unconditional surrender, with Trump picking the new leader of Iran, well, then force will be continued until that outcome occurs.
It's in the mold of Hitler or Napoleon, or other delusional actors who thought that they could rule. But even in those earlier cases, they did not believe that they ruled the world. They aimed to rule their neighborhood. They aimed to rule Europe. They Hitler aimed for living space in the Slavic lands.
Trump's rhetoric and behavior is that he believes that he rules the world. By the way, he believes it in a personalistic level, as well as at a political level. And I'm not exaggerating, and it's not Trump delusion syndrome. It's just the overt behavior. The man's loony, and you can watch it.
He's got every trait of megalomania, grandiosity, narcissism. And it's quite clear, by the way, that The US governmental processes where US foreign policy is typically run by the CIA is little bit being run ragged right now, because they can't keep up with this madness. So there's a lot of unpredictability and a lot of danger in what's happening. Because we have a mix of US normal grandiosity, which is a deep trait of The United States. It was true during Bush Jr, Obama, and Biden.
But with Trump, it adds the usual US institutional grandiosity and militarism with a personal level delusion of leaders. We know this through history. This is not for the first time. It is for the first time though in the nuclear age. We've never had circumstance like this in the nuclear age.
And I would say the world is in a more dangerous situation than it has ever been.
Speaker 0: Period. You mentioned the European response to this. And when we see that Germany is trying to position itself as the number one supporter of Trump, hoping almost explicitly that disobedience in over Iran would be rewarded by with deeper US involvement in Ukraine war, also for US to make no concessions towards peace in Ukraine while UK and France are looking now to enter the war in a more direct way. And this, of course, comes at the backdrop as Macron arguing that the reason why they need more nuclear weapons is because for France to be secure, it has to be feared. Same as Europe, they have to be feared.
This is the path to security. Right? How do you make sense of this? This is very different than the peace project that, you know, I was teaching students only fifteen, twenty years ago.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Europe has completely lost any any identity and any sense. I would say that just as the European, as the UN is dying right now, the European Union project is not coming together in strategic autonomy. The European project is falling to pieces as a vassal of The United States. We have the weakest leadership in Europe in generations.
Again, we have the worst German leadership in particular, and Germany is key to the European project. If you think about German chancellors, I'd known several of them. Do you think about Willy Brant, Helmut Schmidt, or Helmut Kohl, or Schroeder, or Merkel. These were personalities. They were also decent.
They understood German interests, but they also understood the idea of Europe as an aim of peace after centuries of European devastating war. The last two German chancellors have been out of this approach. Schultz was simply the weakest chancellor, a complete non entity. People said that The US had the goods on him, so that he was suborned in one way or another. I don't, I have no idea whether that's true.
And with Mertz, you get the idea that, oh my God, you get the idea that this man wants a reversion to German militarism. I could be less polite. But when when you look at Mertz, you see somebody who seems to know nothing of modern history. I he's belligerent, ignorant, a mix of fawning to The US on the one hand and warmongering on the other hand, incoherent. And not in Europe's interest or Germany's interest in the slightest.
He doesn't understand his job, I'm sorry to say. His job on the first day should have been to pick up the phone and called his counterpart in Russia, President Putin, and begun to discuss this vital relationship between Germany and Russia to head off disaster and to rebuild some kind of collective security on the continent. He hasn't lifted the finger one time, hasn't even crossed his mind that this is his job. So between Trump's madness and Europe's subservience, it's really an extraordinarily depressing scene. I was at the UN Security Council last week after Israel and The US attacked Iran.
And there were the German, I'm sorry, not the German, the European ambassadors, excuse me, at the UN security council, one after another, on the day that The US and Iran, on the day that The US and Israel had attacked Iran, all of them berating Iran, most of them not mentioning the Israel US attack on Iran. You can't even believe, Glenn, how surrealistic it is. I, I was especially perturbed and bemused by the Danish ambassador. Denmark is a country that will be invaded by The United States sometime soon with very, very high likelihood. The US will declare that Greenland is America's because of national security.
Watch that space that is basically underway right now. So you might think that Denmark would have some notion that international law might be important, because someday they're going to come crying to the world. Look how unfair Emperor Donald is to us. He's taking away our territory. But there was the Danish ambassador, full out fulminating against Iran without mentioning the war that Israel and The United States had started against Iran.
I went up to her afterwards to exchange my concern about this. But she looked at me and turned around and walked away. They don't want to engage. They don't want to have the discussion. But the pathetic nature of this is really something sad for Europe to simply completely fall into line with American and Israeli madness is something that you wouldn't not have thought of Schumann or Monet, or the other architects of Europe, people who knew what World War II had meant, and who aim to stop a World War III.
They would have behaved differently, as would generations of leaders in Europe. Again, whether it was Willy Brant or Helmut Kohl, or De Gaulle or Mitterrand, you would have had a completely different idea. A Europe that's Europe, that is the era of thousands of years of civilization that knows something or two that has seen war and wants peace. But this is not at all what we see. We have Vanderlayen, we have Mertz.
You just can't make this up right now, how this project has collapsed. And that's why we're in the early days of World War III, because nobody has sense right now to say to emperor Donald that this is not a good idea.
Speaker 0: Well, only it's becoming more warmongering though, but we also see as in many wars, the the rule of law weakens. And I wanted to ask how you see the rule of law and the division of power as being weakened because, again, well, unlike Continental Europe, The US has strong traditions on on, you know, democracy, the division of power, and ask because democracy and freedom doesn't tend to fare well under wars. As we saw during the Cold War, this was not great either for liberalism. And during times of external threats, we see governments often develop authoritarian tendencies, and we had this now for more than a decade. That is we went from Russiagate to the Ukraine war, we had the we had the economic war with China.
None of these things actually stop, by the way. They just, you know, stack on top of each other. And now, of course, the Middle East is set on fire. Under these conditions, it one one would expect that the rule of law would weaken. Certainly, I see the case here in Europe as well.
We we have the EU sanctioning, you know, its own citizens. We have any dissent or criticism of the government's wars is essentially, well, then you stand with the enemy, and you will be punished accordingly. But how do you see it in The United States, though? Because, you know, if if it's game over there on the rule of law, then it doesn't bode well for Europe.
Speaker 1: I think in The United States, foreign policy has been in the hands of the CIA as lead for many decades. And CIA is convenient because it can be completely secret. It is operating through a network of so called intelligence agencies. These are not intelligence agencies. These are off the book militaries.
And this has been true for many decades, especially if you are the US government, where the foreign policy is an imperial policy of regime choice and regime change. Trump just says out loud, and in a crazier way, I have to say what has been US policy. Trump, because he is really what he is psychologically, says that he will pick the next Supreme Leader of Iran. Okay, this is rather startling. Of course, I have to add no European leader murmurs a word that this is at all strange, that this is a good way to have a war escalate and continue and on its way to getting us all killed.
Not a single European leader scratches her head or his head to say, Oh, that's our ally saying the weirdest goddamn things you could possibly imagine. No, they don't say that. But in any event, that mindset you might think is a little odd. But remember, the CIA has always had that mindset. And in 1953, without public scrutiny, without explanation, The US did choose who would lead Iran.
They installed the police state that overthrew a democratic government in 1953. And The US backed that police state until 1979. When lo and behold, the public revolted against it as that police state leader was dying of cancer. That's where the Iranian revolution came from in the first place in 1979, not out of the blue, but out of a US imposed police state. Well, look all over the world, including in Europe, The US imposes governments of choice.
And that means that the rule of law in The United States, it comes to foreign policy has always been a veneer. I find it very notable. I think it's very important for historians and analysts to reflect on the famous farewell address of Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was the Supreme Allied Commander, the top general of The United States who became president from nineteen January nineteen fifty three to January 1961. And in his farewell address of the 01/17/1961, he warned famously of the military industrial complex.
We should understand that farewell message in a different way. What Eisenhower was saying to the American people is, it's already happened. This is already a military state. The institutions of government have already been fundamentally weakened. I think Glenn and, you know, not to take us too far aside.
But I think the evidence is quite overwhelming that the CIA killed Kennedy in 1963. And that's not meant as a flamboyant remark, or as conspiracy theory or something else. It's meant in an explanatory way that no American president since Kennedy took on the security state. Johnson reversed all of Kennedy's peace initiatives. And every president since has essentially gone along with the agenda of The US Security State, including nice people like Obama, who came in and then presided over several regime change operations.
And Obama thought, yes, I'll choose who leads Syria. I'll choose who leads Libya. They didn't put it that way. They had manners. Trump has no manners.
Trump has grandiosity, but it was the same. Obama and his deputy, who's now my colleague, Victoria Nuland, and Hillary Clinton, also my colleague at Columbia University. And I say it with interest. They decided who would lead Ukraine In February, actually, it's probably late January twenty fourteen, Victoria Newland is picked up by the Russians on a phone call on an open line to The US ambassador talking literally about who would lead Ukraine. And she picks a man named Yat senuk who became the leader after the coup.
So when Trump says, I'll choose who the supreme leader is, it sounds outlandish and it is. And it is a step of World War III, but it's also US behavior. It just is the usually unsaid part of US behavior. So I'm unfortunately not very impressed with the so called checks and balances of The US system, or with the constitution. We've had a military state for decades.
I often think that just as the Roman Republic became, the Roman Empire and The US, Republic has, become, the US Empire, What is the actual date of that happening? In the normal discourse, people point to the Roman history as a warning to The US, don't let this happen. But I think it's quite arguable that not only has it happened, but that it happened several decades ago. And I wonder if we were in Rome in twenty seven BC, when Augustus declared himself princeps, whether we would have felt that that was a dividing line. That's historians' dividing line, but there was still the Senate.
They still, the senators still wore togas. There were still consuls. It looked like the Roman Republic institutions were still intact. And I I have a sense that this is The US situation, that maybe The US Republic ended in November 1963 with Kennedy's assassination. And since then, we've been in, The US Empire.
I don't know. But I just raised the point to say that Trump is outlandish. He's he has this dark triad personality of extreme Machiavellianism, malignant narcissism, and psychopathy, which we can see when he expresses absolute lack of interest in who's dying. There is no feeling there. So we know that this is a very unusual psychological character, but he's on top of a machine that already existed.
Speaker 0: Well, on this issue, though, this is the last question, the this insistence of choosing other leaders of other countries and the the reluctance to find peaceful solutions with adversaries and primarily other rising powers, be it Russia, China, Iran. To what extent do you think this is linked to the reluctance or the unwillingness to see hegemony go away? Because the Europeans, at least, they very much bought into the whole idea after the Cold War about a world order based on the collective hegemony of the political West led by The US. But I remember this whole unipolar moment when it was introduced as a concept by Charles Krauthammer back in 1990. You know, he just he framed it as, you know, this is the distribution of power.
All power is in America, but he was making a point as well in this article once the world shifts to a more multipolar international distribution power, then we shift away as if this will be a rational decision that will be made. But after thirty five years of having this political class raised on the ideology that the dominance on perpetual hegemony of the West would essentially be this, you know, democratic peace theory, it would destabilize the world. It would transcend the chaos of the past. So essentially, the hegemony was yeah. So essentially humanity's salvation.
After you had thirty five years of politicians like this, it you know, there's there won't be a peaceful transition to multipolarity. Just do you see this as being the reluctance to even accept to have other powers to that the that the West won't dominate anymore? Why there's no alternative to plunging the world into World War three? Because, you know, this a lot of people criticize Marco Rubio at Munich Security Conference, but I I don't see this is essentially the logic I hear from political leaders across Europe as well. Well, not all, but many.
Speaker 1: Well, I think this is another case where this is a profound process that has been underway actually for eighty years. The idea of multipolarity was both born and died in 1945 for the following basic reason. The brainchild of the United Nations was also the brainchild of the victory in, in World War II. And that was Franklin Roosevelt who understood that he and Stalin and Churchill, and with Franklin Roosevelt's insistence, Chiang Kai shek, who was head of a struggling and invaded China in the 1940s, invaded by Japan, of course, jointly had to operate to defeat Hitler. This was a collective enterprise.
It was an enterprise of the United Nations, a term that was used early in World War II. And Roosevelt believed in that unity, that these nations together had to stick together to defeat Hitler, and then afterwards to make the world safe. And he really believed in world peace and safety. Now, on the ground, the Soviet Union bore the brunt of defeating Hitler by far losing 27,000,000 people, and being the key to breaking Hitler's war machine. And Roosevelt knew that.
The United States played its particular role as the industrial backbone of the defeat of World War II, providing weapons, air airplanes, technologies, radar and so forth, that helped this. But the Soviet Union bore the brunt of the war. Roosevelt was absolutely intent and capable of cooperating with Stalin throughout the war, often pushing Churchill to the side. Roosevelt wasn't much taken with the British empire. Roosevelt saw that major powers and that there really would be major powers after the war for in particular, The US, Britain, Russia and China.
France was led in late in the day for tactical reasons. But the idea was that these countries would cooperate, cooperate, not fight each other, not veto each other in the UN, but cooperate to help keep the global peace. And Roosevelt believed that lesser powers, the rest of the world should have its place. And he was the opposite of US arrogance he had that he introduced from the first moment he came in as president, the good neighbor policy towards the Americas. He said, we've got to stop invading the Americas, like Trump has done recently in Venezuela and is about to do in Cuba.
So that's how the UN was born. Just one problem. Roosevelt had untreated high blood pressure and he died on 04/12/1945. And that was the end of the American multipolar vision because Truman, his successor was a much lesser person, not experienced, FDR was a gifted individual also and Truman bought in immediately to the idea that this is now a war with Bolshevism. FDR wasn't much impressed with these labels, I have to say.
He was just a great pragmatist. He didn't care who called what, whom, what labels, titles, ideologies. He was going to get along and he was going to get along and he was going to be practical. But already in the second 1945, and that's why the bomb was dropped twice on Japan to impress Mr. Stalin.
The US was now at war for global control. The idea of shared responsibilities was already out the window in the American mentality. And this was of course, put most vividly in, NSC memo 68 in 1950, that this was going to be The US battling world communism for dominance. I say all of this, Glenn, because when the Soviet Union fell in 1991, the insanity of a country of 4% of the world population deciding it would run the world, into overdrive and it went into overdrive. And it's been in overdrive since 1991.
The US has viewed itself and by US, I mean the CIA, the military industrial digital complex, the ones that make the war decisions that have brought us nonstop into war, that allocate the trillions of dollars and so on. They believe they run the world. When China rose in power over several decades, and that was noticed by The United States sometime around 2010. This freaked out these would be hegemonists. Now there's an enemy.
Russia was dismissed as any way has been useless. So not really to worry. So we don't have to listen to anything Russia says, but the attention turned to China and we have to defeat China the same way. That's been The US foreign policy for the last fifteen years. Just quickly, a couple of flies in the ointment.
First, all of this is delusional. That's the first starting point. The idea that The US runs the world, rules the world, dominates the world, have its way is a madness. It's been a madness for decades. But it's been a repeated madness that leads to millions of deaths all over the world, whether in Vietnam or across wars of the Middle East.
Second, the misjudgment about Russia is the reason for the Ukraine war. The US never expected Russia to resist NATO enlargement. Never expected to be able to stand up to The United States for one moment. This is, both the denigration of Russia and a profoundly delusional exaggeration of American power. Both go hand in hand, but the war in Ukraine is fundamentally the result of an American delusion spelled out helpfully by his big new Brzezinski in 1997, because he spelled out in the grand chess board exactly what the delusion is.
And he concluded Russia could not resist the eastward enlargement of NATO and Europe. So that's, and then the other fly in the ointment is Israel. Israel is a crazy rogue state with half its political leadership in the mindset of the fifth century BC. Reading some text from King Josiah. And there Israel has just plunged the world into probably the third world war, but into a phenomenal economic crisis.
This is the timing, the instigation is Israel's. The fact that The US goes along with it is because it's completely coherent with The US hegemonic project. But this is Israel, complete madness. And because of the hold of the Israel lobby in The United States, that madness isn't even examined. Excuse me, we had to have an ambassador in Israel, The US has an ambassador named Mike Huckabee, who is a, let's just say a minor, Protestant evangelical theologian, if I could put it that way, but that's a very polite way to put it.
And, he said, two weeks ago, yes, Israel owns the land from the Nile to the Euphrates. And when Tucker Carlson asked him, excuse me, they own the land, could they take it? He said, sure. Yeah, sure, they could take it. This is again, what's sometimes called by psychologists or psychiatrists, folly adieu.
This is a craziness of Israel matched by a craziness of The United States. Israel wants to be the hegemon from the Nile to the Euphrates or beyond. The United States wants to be the hegemon of the world. That's a long standing project. And here we are in the early shooting of World War III, unless, unless somehow somebody stands up and stops the madness.
The ones that are most likely to do it in the end are China and Russia, because they are mature, aware and not really so happy about this US hegemonic project. If India would recognize its own interest clearly, it would also play a very major role in this. But India has signed on to The US project to some extent. And it raises a big question. What is India thinking?
What are the Indian leaders thinking? They had the British Empire for a couple of centuries. It should have been enough. They should have good instincts to know don't follow the US Empire in this kind of madness. Yeah.
Speaker 0: Well, I think pragmatism as you say is what we need. In 2003 Condoleezza Rice, she made the comment that the multipolarity, she called it a theory, not the distribution of power about competing interests and competing values. So she said, no no one should want this at all because this is you know, if you value freedom, you don't wanna put a check on it. So this is kind of the logic that is we need to have dominance. Without dominance, there can't be freedom.
And I think this is the Europeans as well, we buy full into this. When I listen to our politicians, journalists, this is why they're willing to go to war with Russia. They're willing to go to war with China. They're willing to go to war with Iran and burn down the world because otherwise, there can't be freedom. There has to be dominance.
This is kind of the virtue of dominance that is selling it as freedom.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. And incidentally, you know, I've been thinking about this from the especially the Anglo American mindset, because Britain and The US have done the most to wreck things for a couple of centuries in this way. The mindset goes back to the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, who said that in the state of nature, life is life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. And Hobbes said that to get out of the war of all against all, you need a Leviathan, he called it, you need a superior power. And that was his theory of national government, that people would give up their sovereignty to kill each other, their freedom to kill each other, to a sovereign who would then keep order and everyone would be better off because they wouldn't be killing each other.
Then you turn that logic to the global order. And the way that that is turned into the global order by the CIA or by MI6, or by these intelligence agencies in the West is to say, well, we don't have a supreme ruling Leviathan. So it is a war of all against all. And we have to be brutally realistic. It's us or them.
And sometimes you have to strike first, like Israel and The United States striking Iran. That's the mindset. But another part of the mindset is The United States says, we'll be the Leviathan. Thank you. Britain was the Leviathan in the nineteenth century.
The only way to be safe is if we are the Leviathan. In other words, there can only be one that runs the world and will be the one that runs the world. Now, there is another way in life, which is that you get along with each other. You make some common rules, you share the sandbox, we teach our five year olds to do this. It's not impossible that you don't need one ruler of the world to have peace.
And this is what the American hegemonists or supremacists cannot understand, but I think it's partly they're trapped at an emotional level, maybe before age five, I don't know. They don't really see that there's another way that in a multipolar world, we actually really could get along, we could make some rules of the road, we could have some cooperation. The one who understood that, as I said, in The United States was Franklin Roosevelt. Another one who understood that more recently was John F. Kennedy.
And probably he died because he held that belief and he was killed from the inside because he held that belief. So this is a tough struggle and we're in an extraordinarily dangerous moment in the world. We're if this continues, if, mister Trump continues, to believe that he will pick Iran's next leader and that this is going for unconditional surrender, Of course, things will then depend on military outcomes, but one real possibility is an economic crisis globally instigated by Israel and The United States, the likes of which we've not seen for a long time.
Speaker 0: I wish you could have finished on a more optimistic note, but thank you very much for taking the time. I know you have a busy day in Rome there, so try to enjoy it in these perilous times and, yeah, hope to see you soon.
Speaker 1: See you soon. Thanks.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Gilbert Doctorow: Attack on Iran Hardens Russia's Stance on Ukraine https://youtu.be/eczyryj1eDU https://t.co/xZzhQuyE27
Video Transcript AI Summary
Gilbert Doktorov and the host discuss how the Iran war is shaping Russia’s strategic thinking, deterrence, diplomacy, and domestic political psychology.
- The central impact in Russia is not economic bets on oil or gas, or European gas demand, but a shift in elite psychology in Moscow. Russians feel they have been jolted by a disaster scenario for their country, prompting a re-evaluation of strategy and leadership. This has driven a more acute public scrutiny of Putin and the feasibility of gradual, negotiated restraint versus decisive action.
- A key theme is the perceived weakness or inconsistency of Western deterrence. Russians note that Trump's actions against Iran showed that American leadership can be unpredictable and capable of abrupt, decisive moves that undermine Russia’s sense of security. This has contributed to a loss of confidence in the long-standing belief that restraint and negotiation would preserve deterrence.
- The discussion emphasizes a perceived “electric shock” in the Russian political class: doubts about the wisdom of a slow, nuanced approach, and concern that Washington might carry out decapitation-like or otherwise aggressive actions if Moscow does not appear capable of credible deterrence. The panel cites examples such as past American strikes and drone activity that highlighted vulnerabilities in Russia’s security posture and raised existential anxieties about Russia’s own durability.
- Some interviewers and analysts describe a growing perception that Russia’s deterrence has been eroded by Western escalation, with NATO posture and Ukrainian military support intensifying pressure. There is fear that restraint by Moscow is interpreted as weakness, pushing Russia toward recalibrating its own posture to reassert deterrence, potentially through more aggressive or rapid actions.
- The conversation notes internal Russian media dynamics and the shifting stance of influential figures. Salovyev’s and Lavrov’s recent critiques of negotiation, the discussion of Sergei Dabkov’s “spirit of Anchorage” remark, and other domestic debates reflect a broader realignment away from pacific, slow negotiations toward a more hardline posture. Alexander Dugin’s criticisms are mentioned as a sign of growing dissent about the current course.
- The broader strategic environment includes concerns about Russia’s relations with China. Russian observers are disappointed that China’s support for Iran did not translate into the expected practical backing; Chinese aid and the efficacy of Chinese weapons are questioned after the Iran-Israel conflict began. This has undermined Russian confidence in China as a reliable partner in countering U.S. pressure.
- The discussion highlights the possibility that Iran’s use of economic and political warfare—such as threatening Hormuz and impacting Gulf economies—could have major global consequences, increasing Europe’s energy insecurity and persisting higher prices, which could influence Western political dynamics and, in turn, Russia’s calculations.
- There is speculation about whether Russia might seek to draw in Iran more deeply or exploit broader regional escalations. The interview notes that the Russians never concluded a mutual defense pact with Iran, viewing Iran’s reluctance as a factor that complicates Russian confidence in Tehran’s reliability. The possibility of Russia assisting Iran more robustly remains uncertain and is framed as a sensitive strategic option.
- The interlocutors stress that the situation is developing into a high-stakes, all-or-nothing dynamic for major powers. Putin’s future decisions, Trump’s political fate, and the Western willingness to escalate further all feed into a fragile balance. The experts warn that escalating to large-scale action becomes a dangerous and destabilizing path for Russia, the United States, Iran, and regional players.
- In closing, both speakers acknowledge the difficult, precarious trajectory ahead. The analyst emphasizes that if Russia does not bolster its deterrence and adapt its strategy, the domestic and international consequences could be severe; the host notes the dangerous incentives created by an all-or-nothing strategic environment and the potential for rapid, unintended escalations.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined by Gilbert Doktorov, a historian and an international affairs analyst, to discuss what how the Iran war is impacting Russia. So thank you for coming back on the program.
Speaker 1: No. It's a pleasure.
Speaker 0: So there there's a lot of discussions about how the Iran war impacts Russia. Some would say that, oh, this is an opportunity for them in terms of the air defenses weaponry being diverted, the international focus being diverted, others point to energy prices. Are those who are critical arguing this is not in this interest would look towards the the, yeah, the instability, the possibility of knocking out Iran, and but if you look at it from a, I guess, different angle, how the Russians view The United States as a negotiator, how Russia looks at the war of attrition, and because some most certainly look towards Iran thinking perhaps we should have restored our deterrence too. How how are you assessing how the Iran war is impacting the discourse within Russia?
Speaker 1: I agree completely with this second set of set of impact that you have described. That is to say, it is not a question of whether the Russians will profit from higher oil prices, whether the Europeans will come begging for gas. These are petty things. The real issue is a change in psychology in elites in Moscow. They're shocked out of their skins.
The what they saw was a disaster scenario for Russia itself, and they it unbuttoned lips. It's been a big contentious issue in the broader commentary community over Mr. Trump, Mr. Putin as the only adult in the room, Mr. Putin, the man who's saving our necks because he doesn't respond violently to provocations and so forth.
There are a lot of people among my peers who view mister Putin as god's gift to humanity. I'm not one of them. This wasn't this is a situation that's developed over time. I took readings over four years, and I have come to conclusions. But that I came to conclusions is not relevant.
That the Russians have come to conclusions, that is very relevant. You know, I worked for a large company called ITT in the 1980s. We had factories all over Europe. And my job as a country manager was to meet with their export managers, technical personnel at the factories at these various locations, and to discuss our strategy in given markets for which I was responsible, which were at that time Yugoslavia and Poland. And I visited Sweden several times a year.
They were selling some very interesting, very high technology radio equipment to Yugoslavian. And I was just among the guys. We would take lunches in the lunchroom, not in executive rooms, and we chatted. And everything was fine. They were happy with life.
They were happy with their country and so forth. And then, Olof Kama was assassinated. And you know what happened? These fellows who found everything thought everything was fine with their country were saying, they finally got the son of a bitch. That is what conformism is all about.
And that is what's that is the switch that's just changed in Russia. Like a switch of a light on and off. People who have their doubts about the wisdom of the go slowly, negotiate a settlement, keep the Americans separate separated from the Europeans, that is all the features of mister Putin's policy have now had an electric shock because they saw where it's all headed. They saw in what Trump has done to to Iran, what Trump can just as easily do to Russia. You know, we all remarked that there was the assassination attempt on Putin going back about a month or so, the last two months now, at his Val D'I residence.
And all of the incoming drones were down. Everybody was happy in the mid light of it. Some people may bite a bit. But I think when they saw what happened to the Atollah, Russians of serious mind stopped making light of it. Mister Putin is not always in Valdai surrounded by the world's best air defense, or nor is he always in the Kremlin.
And so if the Americans want to to do a decapitation strike on Russia with Putin and all of his buddies, they can do it. And that sank in, and Russians got very frightened. And they wondered what the hell is mister Putin doing. When they saw how in three days Trump has has virtually destroyed the senior leadership, military and civilian, the air defenses, a large part of the the critical infrastructure, ports, facilities, and so on. And they asked, what the hell are we doing?
Why isn't Putin doing that to Kyiv and to Lvov and to Dnipro and to all the other cities where there are command and control and policy making centers, which Putin from the start of the special operation said would be targeted if red lines were crossed. Those red lines were crossed, and they were crisscrossed. And you and I have discussed the three components to deterrence, of which probably the least important is military hardware. And the most important is will and readiness to explain to the adversary your determination to use it. That is what's come missing.
Pleasant example, in the evening with Vladimir Solovio two nights ago, it came up in the panel discussion. The panel discussion was completely against the everything that Putin's policies have been. Of everything said except the name Putin, it was not raised. But anyone understood, any mature person understood whom they were talking about. And they said, my god.
How is how are we conducting negotiations with with Witkoff at the same time that American spy planes on the coast of the Black Sea, on the Barents Sea coast, and all along our borders. And we know what these are for. They're for bearing a preemptive strike just like The US has done on Iran. Why don't we shoot them down? Man, we shot down the U-two.
Gary Powers was captured. Why don't we shoot these down? I know you can object that these are in international waters. So what? So if they're one kilometer away from the border, so what?
Who's gonna be able to say that they didn't cross into Russian territory? Nobody. And what's The United States gonna do about it? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
So while Russians are furious, what is their government doing to protect them? And I think the fist loosened lips. I've never heard a program like the one two days ago, and I probably won't hear one for a while. Because the next day, the same Salvirov started out the twenty minute soliloquy on our president is tireless working for the nation. He's up until three in the morning doing the state's work.
He is like a monk. He is like a saint. I won't go on. You got the idea. And he made reference to the eszlicher in chief, the journalist Zarumin, who has a program called Kremlin Moscow Kremlin Putin, which has been going on for maybe five years and is the most despicable exercise in cult of personality.
And here is Salabrio for suddenly praising him, oh, our wonderful journalist. Of course, it's a protege of Sarubin is a protege of both Kislyov and Salaryov. And the program is awful. It says heads Russia in the absolutely wrong direction. Anyway, this all came out the day before criticism that yesterday, they were licking Putin's toes.
So what's going on? A war was going on in and around the Kremlin. And we had the first tip-off, and you and I discussed this back, I think, in December when Sergei Dabkov, the deputy minister of foreign affairs, had a very stealthy look on his face when he was giving an interview in which he said that the spirit of Anchorage had exhausted itself, that further negotiations were not useful, and that the war would be solved on the battlefield. He was immediately reprimanded. I think it was Peskov came out with some remarks.
A little bit later, Lavrov, his boss, the minister, came out with critical remarks. Well, time passes and and thinking changes. As you know, in the last few weeks, Lavrov himself has been fiercely critical of further negotiations. So there is a war going on. I'm very hopeful that mister Putin will rise to the challenge as a good politician and listen to the best advice of his colleagues and not persist in the policy which is leading Russia to doom.
Now why should you and I care about Russia going to doom? Because it will be our doom also. If Russia fails to exercise its deterrence, Just to one way or another, mister Putin will not be in office forever. And one way or another, whether he's carried out feet first or walks out, someone else will take over who will make up for all this. Again, in the last week, I heard remarks on the same fellow of your program, which I couldn't have imagined with respect to Gorbachev.
They said openly that he was a traitor. Not mistaken, a traitor. And a traitor because he withdrew Russian troops from Germany and Central Europe without getting any concessions in return, without demanding the dissolution of well, he's dissolved the Warsaw Pact, and he should have asked for the dissolution of NATO. He didn't ask for it. I've never heard Gorbachev addressed as a traitor on state television.
He was this last week. That is the fate that mister Putin will have in x days, weeks, months, when, if unless he listens to reason and to the best advice of his serious professional team.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, it's it's hard to deny, though, that the deterrent, of course and we've spoken about this in the past, have has definitely weakened. If you think during the Cold War, it would be completely unthinkable that the Americans or Soviets would attack each other in such a way. There were always some proxy wars that is well, the at least semi proxy. You know, the Soviets assisted the the Vietnamese.
The Americans had, I guess, a much greater role in Afghanistan against the Soviets. But, you know, there were some set rules. Where where does the boundary go between proxy war and direct war? And as I, you know, had a conversation with John Mersheimer, and he kinda made the point to, Glenn, why are calling it a proxy war? We crossed that boundary a long time ago.
This is a direct war now. And I just feel over the the longer such a war goes on, the more the the the rules of proxy war changes. As as we remember from the beginning, sending Abrahams was a bit problematic. We can't really do that. HIMARS, that's not good.
F sixteens, as Biden said, well, that's World War three. And then, you know, we jump forward to now, we see long range strikes into Russia. This is US contractors pulling the trigger, sending US missiles on targets within Russia picked by US intelligence, as you said, with US drones flying along the Black Sea coast picking these targets. And, you know, only recently we had this Munich Security Conference, and I watched a German chancellor sitting there, you know, boasting about how we, and used the word we, have, you know, inflicted the untold costs and the casualties on Russia. He had the Danish prime minister arguing we have to get rid of all the red lines, and we have to start striking deep into Russia.
This is this is rhetoric of war, and, you know, they they justify themselves based on this moral arguments that, well, let's justify this and that. But, you know, in in the real world, this what they're doing is essentially eroding even more of Russia's deterrence. You can openly not just attack them, but then rub it in their face as well, saying we have to hit even harder. And this idea that that Russia's restraint had has emboldened the West, I mean, that's not that's hardly Russian propaganda. You can go through our own media as well, and they will point to, well, why can't we send more weapons?
The Russians had many red lines. They never do anything anyway. So restraint definitely is interpreted as weakness, and that's very bad for our side as well because at some point, the Russians will have to do what the Iranians did. People were so surprised by the Iranians. Why does striking hold American bases?
Well, you you can't just have the Americans bomb them every six months if they don't succeed in regime change. Well, we'll just pull a pull a put a put a pin in it to give it a break. We'll come back in six months and have another go. I mean, if you grant the adversary this amount of escalation control, when you can start a war, what's acceptable targets, when you pull out, when you finish the war, and when we go back again, eventually, you will perish. And I think this is a dangerous lessons which the Russians are being taught that is dangerous to us, that it's time to get their deterrent back.
And the irony, I think, is the way in the in NATO, they keep daydreaming of building opposition to Putin, but the opposition is the those argue, which they've had, by the way, for the past twenty years, that he might be too moderate. He might be too liberal. He have too many too much optimism about the possibility of integrating with the West, you know, especially since 2014. Why why isn't he preparing more for war? NATO's not looking for a settlement.
They're looking to build up a Ukrainian army. This is what his generals were saying. This is what very influential military commentators were saying as well. It's just it seems reckless, but I I don't see any critical commentary. If, again, if it wasn't a critical commentary of this, the incentives being put in Russia, you know, it would be this censored in the West as being pro Russian comments.
But this is something that should terrify us, the fact that Russia sees its deterrent as being squandered, thrown away by being too weak, and now it's almost existential. It's time to rebuild it. And, of course, the the the attacks on Iran I mean, why wouldn't The US or NATO do a decapitation strike against Russia? They might not do anything. I mean, this is it's really weird, or not weird, but absurd that we have gone to this length.
But how do you see, though, the Russians possibly looking now to reassert their their deterrent? Because I see the rhetoric is definitely changing. More and more starts to sound a bit like Dmitry Medvedev, who more or less wants a very hardline approach now towards the West.
Speaker 1: It was devastating critique of Putin's foreign policy, no military policy. It's not a Russian state. Interview with with Justin Politano yesterday, in which we went through many of these issues, was translated into Russian two hours later. It was on route to this doesn't happen by itself. Russia does have fairly close observation of its of its media.
As we as I just said a moment ago, mister Saviov was forced to eat his words, which is a sign, unfortunately, as one reader wrote to me, it's a sign that he's not listening and that he's not ready to make compromises and change direction. Is this more balanced? People who think, oh, Russia has a vertical of power, not wait a minute. What happened to mister Gabor, two of them? He was, oh, arrested.
He could have had a pretty miserable fate if there had not been patriots in Moscow to stare down tanks and to reverse the the removal of the president. Why don't we think that such a thing is possible today and not by bastards, but by real patriots removing a man who is simply not up to the job anymore? Now I'm not giving recommendations to anybody, but to ignore this is would be a failure to perform our risk for our job as analysts, and as people who understand how Russia functions and where at a sign like this, somewhere, I omitted mention of Alexander Dugin. I've never been a great fan of Dugin. I don't think he's a very high quality philosopher, but that's my personal opinion.
A lot of people think a great deal of mister Dugin. He was said at one time that he was a close adviser to president Putin, but that doesn't mean much. A lot of people have been said to be close advisers. Julian is known to the the broad Western world because of the tragedy of his daughter, who four years ago, was assassinated in what was probably an attempt to kill him, but instead killed her. She was an activist journalist, patriotic Russian, and a very fierce critic of Ukraine.
That's incidental. The point is everyone knows who Dugan is after that, and after that, Dugan is untouchable in Russia. Maybe mister Putin can shut up Saloveyov, but he sure as hell cannot shut up Dugin. And Dugin came out with an essay a couple of days ago in which she said the same sort of thing as what I heard us all the other. A devastating critique of everything that Putin is doing with this war.
Oh, the only thing is he did not name Putin specifically, but everyone knows him what he was talking So something is afoot, and I don't believe that Putin can hold on to power if he continues in being stubborn and of failing to do what he must do if Russia is to survive.
Speaker 0: What makes the question of what how do they also view the issue of diplomacy then? Because I think what what appears the past week has proven is that there's no more rules. All rules are out the window. And, and with with Iran, I think, you know, this should have been evident, long long time ago. But and now now the kidnapping of Maduro also kind of puts a lot some of shock waves is that, like, this is now normal to go in and kidnap presidents.
And but but with the Iranians, the the fact that, first, it was the Americans who walked away from the JCPOA, the nuclear deal, but then they had the first surprise attack in June, then a second surprise attack now. And, surely, the Russians must see some parallels because in 2014, you had this the the European government negotiating this unity government in Ukraine, which was supposed to be away for Yanukovych and opposition to you find a compromise. And, again, this was toppled. Then they had Minsk that was just taken advantage of us. Angela Merkel said it was an opportunity to build buy time, to build a Ukrainian army.
You had Istanbul with this the sabotage there. And, of course, now we've seen very open statements by many Western leaders about the long war. And even now, I get the impression The US isn't really looking to end the war anymore. I think they just wanna transfer ownership over to the Europeans, especially the cost. And also the drones, remember in the first that that those who are smuggled into Russia used to attack its nuclear deterrent?
Then the same thing happened to the Iranians during the first surprise attack on them. At at some point, though, I would be if I was advising the Russian government, I would start to be very skeptical of whether or not there's any authenticity here or if if this is good faith diplomacy. It doesn't feel like it anymore. And especially, by the way, they're engaging with other parts of the world. It doesn't seem that there is any diplomacy.
There's no willingness to give any concessions. There's any deal, as you said, they made in Alaska. That whole spirit was yeah. We're just abandoned. They they came back from Alaska saying, well, okay.
There won't be a ceasefire. We're gonna instead address the underlying issues. And then the week after, almost after meeting the Europeans, we're back to the ceasefire. You know, I go back and forth so many times I lose track. But how do you see the appetite for diplomacy now that it's in Moscow, now that it's meeting, I guess, fierce opposition?
Speaker 1: Well, I think the diplomacy is poisoned now for any reasonable, objective, and patriotic Russians. And if mister Putin persists in this, I don't see how he can hold on to go. It is so obvious that the Americans are duplicitous, utterly untrustworthy. And the problem with the Maduro of escapade is it fit into latent hubris of Pete Hegseth and and the Pentagon fellows and a supposed state, Rubio, they were certain that they can do anything now, that they can change reality. And that has been a very dangerous change in American foreign policy.
Mister mister Trump will go with the with the with the flow when it looks like it's flowing in the direction he likes. And so he stopped being a peace president who doesn't have any problem problem being a war president. Now in Russia, the impact of this was devastating, but we've admitted speaking about another dimension too. China. China is nowhere.
Chinese equipment for support supposed to save the necks of the Iranians. What happened to it? My colleagues were military experts who were all speaking glowingly of the Chinese assistance to Iranism the week before the the attack. Oh, the Americans would get battered. That's sort of nonsense.
The first day, America established complete air air control over Iran. So they either there's something wrong with the Chinese equipment doesn't work at all, or something was short in what they supplied, or lord knows what. But I think the Russians view of the Chinese as an important ally in in their contest with America, I think that went down the rat hole after the American strikes on Iran. So that is a very big change. Oh, Putin has relied on some backing from Xi.
Forget it. That's history. That went at the what mister Trump has done in in his attack on Iran has changed everything in the perceptions of the Russians who are their foreign policy establishment. And, well, that will come out, Not today, tomorrow, but in the short term, it will come out. And I think it's will create a tidal wave that mister Putin cannot resist.
Speaker 0: I've seen media reports in Europe that whenever if Russia strikes Ukraine hard with the drones, then the the commenters often, oh, this would anger Trump. Putin may have made a mistake. It's a very strange analysis. I mean, the Americans are deeply engaged in this. The Americans are still attacking Russia.
They're at war with Russia, and yet an American and a Russian strike on the American proxy, oh, well, that we can't do that because it might anger mister Trump. I mean, it's very it's very strange that this is how it's seen. I mean, we're we're it seems that we're very close to a possible direct war, and they they make it sound as if the first objective of Russia should be to make sure that they please Trump. I'm just wondering if the Russians see the same thing that Putin isn't just cautious and pursuing a war of attrition, but that he's also too worried about what Trump might think of him because Trump was playing these games anyways, which which side can bow more to his will. And whoever bows the most, then he will direct this anger in the other direction.
And this way, he gets everyone to essentially, you know, dance according to his tune. But but do do see that this is a key problem, or is it just that the whole war of attrition is becoming a bit grotesque? Because by having a war of attrition where two sides essentially stand toe to toe and pounce each other, it's causing not just the massive casualties in Ukraine, but it's the casualties in Russia are all are are also ramping up. I mean, this can't be popular. This you know, a lot of fine young men are gone.
So how I don't know. It's I I can see why the war of attrition would seem very dark to to to to many in Russia. But is this is it which which of this component? Is it this just a version to this four year long war of attrition, or is it the issue of of being well, essentially starting to bow to Trump too much like the Europeans? Or how do you see it?
Speaker 1: Well, as I said, the biggest trigger here is change of thinking in serious analysts and political class who appear on these talk shows is their understanding of their of Russia's vulnerability and its opening itself to the type of attack that The United States has made on Iran. I heard there are a lot of people, the people who are based in Tehran, who were talking about, oh, not so bad. We we've been really striking at Tel Aviv. Listen. I don't mind an military expert, but I certainly respect Russian military experts who don't have any reason to give a biased account.
There's no favor to be obtained. And when one of the most responsible ones appeared on sixty Minutes two or three days ago and with an ashen face said, the Americans are either the Iranians have lost the war. And he explained why, how they're being everything's being degraded there. And sooner or later, the most many of these caches of missiles will be exhausted. Now and he was saying, I'm not being an apologist for Trump.
I'm just telling you how it is. Now before the our our our viewers get too depressed, let me explain that I don't agree with the overalls the overall conclusions that he reached. Yes. On military bases, sure. Iran has lost the war.
And the same way you answer it around, on a military basis, Russia has won who won the war. And what do you get for that? We know they don't get much in Russia right now, and you and The United States will not get much for having military victory if the Iranians persist in what is their winning their winning hand, which is economic and political warfare. By that, I mean closing the Straits Of Hormuz, subjecting Europe and and other major borders of both natural gas and and petroleum to a cutoff of 20% of global supplies. We've already seen how in Europe the price of natural gas has skyrocketed.
And at the very moment when Europe should start buying for the next season, they're all afraid to do it because the prices are wild. That's just the beginning. We haven't really reached this just a few days into the the closure of Qatar's production and export. And then on petroleum, the same story. They the Iranians are counting on the political defeat of Trump, and I think they've got their hands around something very serious.
In his state of nation's address, Trump boasted about gas gasoline at the at the stations at the pump in The States having to send to $2 or even below per gallon. Well, I think it's $3.50 today, and it's gonna go headed towards $5.06 in a matter of a few weeks. Even though The United States is 8590% self sufficient for petroleum, it isn't enough. Export producers in The States will export to meet the demand for prices that are vastly higher, and there will be shortages which will raise prices in The States. So mister Trump is going to be devastated politically when his words of a week ago turn out to be as stupid.
And Americans are very sensitive to gasoline prices. So that is one aspect of closing the Straits Of Hormuz. The other element is destroying the economies of the Gulf States who have been the hosts to all of these US military bases. The attack on refinery in Saudi Arabia, it wasn't massive. It wasn't hypersonic missile with some drones, but it did the job.
It put it out of action. And it's exactly for reasons like that. The facades had agreed to restore diplomatic relations with Iran. Was it a year ago, a year and a half ago with Chinese brokerage because they wanted to put to to remove themselves from the Yemen civil war. No.
That's Saudi. That's the least of it. We're looking at resources. I'm looking at the whole economy of the area. I was in Dubai.
You've probably been there also. And you know the 80% of all of the international business, which is what all those skyscrapers in Dubai are all about, they're all populated by expats from various places, lot of Brits, a 100,000, 30,000 Brits applied to their government to get the hell out. I've been through periods of change like this, 1998 and the brigade crash in Russia, and I saw how these abrupt and very adverse changes result in dramatic changes of policy at the board level in major corporations. With reason, without reason, even if there could be a recovery in two or three years, the companies in the West that are behind all these lovely offices in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, the rest of it, they're gonna close down. The prices of all that fabulous apartments in Dubai will have in a few weeks, they will crumble because they're all built on, literally, on sand, and that is the point that the Iranians are making.
They are gonna cripple the just with a few drones. They didn't even have to bother with their hypersonic missiles. People were saying, oh, it is why why why are you comp do citing as terrorism the raiming attacks on hotels and office buildings and so on? They're all directed against against CIA and other military people who were in these places. Rush.
That would be valid if they actually killed people. They had broken windows and some fires, and already you got a 130,000 Brits fleeing, heading for the hills. This is what terrorism is all about. It's to change the the psychology of the broad public. They have done it, and they will do it, and mister Trump will be finished.
Speaker 0: Yeah. If the the condemnation of Iran is a bit interesting because the the the attacks they had, it's quite restrained. I mean, if you look at what the Americans are doing with the assistance of the Gulf States indirectly, in terms of the what looks almost like carpet bombing was a bit of an exaggeration of of Tehran, but definitely, these are some massive bombs they're dropping now in populated areas in the middle of Tehran. You know, Iran hasn't done anything like this against its neighbors yet, so this is still a far way they can go up the escalation ladder. But I very much agree this, Gulf Kingdoms, the the lack of, natives, that is the, yeah, the amount of foreign nationals, what this means for the real estate prices, the dependence on oil and energy.
I mean, all of this can be shut down quickly as it has. So if this especially is prolonged, there's gonna be a massive shift there. That is The US closest allies in the region will fall away fall apart. And and, again, the ramifications are difficult to predict. But in in terms of just as a last question, in terms of Russia's more possible direct or indirect support for Iran, What what do you think the Russians are currently doing for the Iranians?
Because the support by the Chinese and the Russians, it seems tepid or risk averse, at least. That is they I'm assuming, they're giving some intelligence. They're probably giving air defenses and some other weapons. But now that the war is spreading as well, I saw a drone allegedly from Iran hit Azerbaijan today. There was some talk of a missile heading towards Turkey, which was intercepted.
Again, I'm not sure what of this is is just to well, who's who's if it's actually Iran or if this is just to widen the coalition. But but how do you see any of these possibilities of possibly drawing in Russia somehow? It didn't took to a greater extent. They of course, they wouldn't fight the Americans, but now that Americans are gonna use Kurds, could the Russians do what they did for Syria in 2015 and help to knock out America's proxies at least? They just there seems to this war of what is the most frightening thing is the amount of possible areas it would escalate, not just in terms of how Russia would would fight the Ukraine from here on on and NATO, but also how it would get engaged in that reach in the Middle Eastern region.
Speaker 1: Alright. And this is bringing up another important dimension of the shock that the that The US attack on Iran has created among foreign policy establishment in Russia. They see Iran's weakness and its failure to conclude the mutual defense pact with Russia, which the Russians wanted. Going back to the '25, Russians wanted it, and the Iranians didn't want it. So the question of the one thing that you can take out of the equation, there's no feeling of guilt or embarrassment in this Russian foreign policy establishment over their failure to provide material assistance to Iran up to now or their unwillingness to do it further on.
Now why do I say that? Because they see in Iran exactly their own problem. That's why this is such a terrible indication of what's wrong with the way Russia is being governed and has been governed in a certain respect, very limited respect, but right now, terribly important respect by Vladimir Putin. That is the longtime tolerance of the Zapotecan, of the Westernizers, of the liberals with a capital l, two of whom are from the standpoint of patriotic Russians, still throttling Russia and holding it back in the war, namely Nabilina, a liberal with a capital l at the helm of the state bank, and the minister of the economy. These are liberals.
And what is the problem with Iran liberals? They didn't the the going back was two years, two and a half years that Iran had a Russia friendly prime minister, Emraisi. And he had an unfortunate helicopter crash. That's not by being naive. That was not an unfortunate helicopter crash.
It was a Mossad m I six assassination. A man who was willing to do a pact with Russia was removed. In his place eventually came in Pazhakian, a weak link, let's be clear about it, and a Zapitnik, a man who was much more interested in doing a deal with The United States and having sanctions lifted than he was in doing a defense part with the Russians and encouraging further American aggression against his country. There are too many. There have been too many.
The Iranians sympathetic to the states and antipathetic to Russia to have let done what was necessary, which is advance defense pact with Russia, was not concluded in December. So the Russians owe the Iranians nothing. They also have a long memory on how Iran crushed the its own its communist party. Nobody forgets. You and I may not have known about it, but I assure you the Russians know about it, And it doesn't make them terribly sympathetic to Iran.
But the fact that Iran refused to conclude a mutual defense pact, that sealed the relationship. So many of us who are waiting I don't say that I wasn't one of them, who are hoping with some optimism that the Russians would step in. No. They didn't, and they had good reason not to. I don't know about the Chinese.
That's a different story. They're the most interested party. They had 15% of their oil supplies coming from Iran. And what have they done? Where were those wonderful military exercises in the sea?
Remember that? That was all of my military colleagues in The States were talking about, oh, yeah. Like this, that they were they were Iran, China, and Russia with their ships taking them stamped up to the American armada. Did it happen? No.
I don't know where they all head of off those ships, but nothing happened. So the Russians have great feeling of being deceived or disillusioned now with China. They have no feeling of regrets about Iran because they didn't want to be helped, but they are in shock over what it all means for themselves and the way their country is being governed.
Speaker 0: Well, I'm wondering if some of this pressure, which might be building on Putin, is is gonna force him to shift a bit because now that we see the that the the the Ukrainians the well, front lines have been weakened. Much of the defensive lines are now behind the Russians. And, again, the weather is getting warmer, and there's much talk about a massive spring offensive coming. I'm wondering, yeah, to what extent this pressure building on Putin to escalate the Ukraine war in a big way might actually, yeah, come forward. That is as a way of all no.
Not not abandoning his position, but at least showing that the war of attrition is not forever. That is this is what is opening now up the opportunity to go more into maneuver warfare or, well, essentially, you know, escalate in a in a very big way to also please some of the people who are now pushing back. But, yeah, it remains to be seen. As I began saying, this is for our opponent, which is Russia here, this is not a message you want to send to it, that your we don't respect your deterrence. And if you if you want us to respect your deterrence, you better, yeah, escalate in a big way.
But I think we've reached that point now as well. So, yeah, unfortunate times, I guess, so hard times coming ahead. But thank you very much. Do have any final thoughts before we wrap up?
Speaker 1: No. I wish you weren't so such a a pessimistic outlook. But I said if we were wrong, it doesn't it doesn't look as bad as everyone as as people think. I I as for mister Trump, I think he looks very bad. I don't see how any way he can survive the November, in which case he will be politically neutered, which is not a bad thing because now he's really with this hubris that we've seen ever after Maduro capture, He really needs to be reigned in.
So things could be worse. I think that one way or another, Russia will firm up its resistance to Western provocations. I hope that mister Putin does this voluntarily.
Speaker 0: Well, that's a problem. Just a final thought one. Yeah. What you never wanna do is put large or great powers in a strategic position where it's all or nothing, where they risk everything, and they feel like they have their back against the wall. That is and I see almost all of these powers now in such a situation.
As you said, Trump, he has a lot to be fair now. If this war doesn't work out, it's it's hard to see him him surviving this. The United States, that is a country, it it can see its entire credibility as a powerful great power with seemingly infinite resources, you know, so it has to win this. Iran also fighting an existential war. It has everything to lose.
It should also then lash out in well, fight with everything it has. And, of course, Russia all sees this as an existential threat now. You know, they they could fear an American decapitation strike. Everyone is put in a situation where they it's essentially all or nothing, and now is the time to either defeat the enemy or we do defeat it ourselves. This is a horribly, very, very dangerous position to be put in.
But no. It's very hard to be optimistic. But I appreciate not the optimism, but your candid analysis. So thank you.
Speaker 1: Well, thanks for hearing hearing me out.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
U. S. General Wesley Clark (2007): "We are going to take out 7 countries in 5 years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and finishing it off with Iran" https://t.co/jVaPRU3CpW
Video Transcript AI Summary
About ten days after 9/11, the speaker describes going through the Pentagon and seeing Secretary Rumsfeld. A general then pulls him aside and says they must talk briefly. The general says, “we’ve made the decision. We’re going to war with Iraq.” When the speaker asks, “Why?” the general replies, “I guess they don’t know what else to do.” The speaker asks if they found information connecting Saddam to Al Qaeda. The response is, “No. There’s nothing new that way.” The general explains they had “made the decision to go to war with Iraq,” and that it seems, as the speaker reflects, “we don’t know what to do about terrorists, but we got a good military and we can take down governments.”
A few weeks later, the speaker returns to see the general amid bombing campaigns in Afghanistan and inquires again, “We still going to war with Iraq?” The answer is presented as worse than prior: the speaker says the general tells him, “I just got this down from upstairs, meeting the secretary of defense office today.” He describes a memo that outlines “how we're gonna take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finishing off Iran.” The speaker asks if the memo is classified, and the general confirms, “yes, sir.” He adds, “Don’t show it to” (the transcript ends there).
Key elements include the asserted decision to invade Iraq without evidence of a direct link to Al Qaeda, the perception that the administration chose military action because other options were unclear, and the claim of a broader plan to “take out seven countries in five years” beginning with Iraq and extending through Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran, with the memo described as classified. The account ties the Iraq invasion decision to a larger strategic agenda and emphasizes a chain of communication from the secretary of defense’s office to field-level comprehension, all within the context of ongoing Afghanistan bombing.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: About ten days after 09:11, went through the Pentagon and I saw secretary Rumsfeld. And one of the generals called me and he said, sir, you gotta come in and talk to me a second. I said, well, you're too busy. He said, no. No.
But he says, we've made the decision. We're going to war with Iraq. I said, we're going to war with Iraq. Why? He said, I don't know.
He said, I guess they don't know what else to do. I said, well, did they find some information connecting Saddam to Al Qaeda? He said, no. No. He says, there's nothing new that way.
They just made the decision to go to war with Iraq. He said, I guess it's like we don't know what to do about terrorists, but we got a good military and we can take down governments. So I came back to see him a few weeks later. And by that time, we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, we still going to war with Iraq?
And he said, oh, it's worse than that. He said, I just got this down from upstairs, meeting the secretary of defense office today. And he said, this is a memo that describes how we're gonna take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finishing off Iran. I said, is it classified? He said, yes, sir.
I said, well, don't show it to
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Peter Schiff: Iran War Creates Chaos in the World Economy https://youtu.be/006qiqgvpVs https://t.co/5tCDOgZ3t3
Video Transcript AI Summary
Peter Schiff discusses the economic dimension of the Iran war, arguing it will have negative implications for the U.S. and global economy. He notes the economy was weak before the war, citing February jobs data showing 92,000 lost jobs (the worst report in five years on the initial numbers) and later downward revisions indicating a larger October 2025 job loss. He says three of the last five monthly job reports show net losses, indicating a weakening labor market that will deteriorate due to the war. Inflationary pressures are already present, and he expects oil to rise toward $90 a barrel (up more than 60% so far in 2026). As a result, consumers face a weakening economy, job losses, and a higher cost of living. He also highlights the war’s cost and the likelihood that, if it lasts longer than anticipated, it will extend the period of volatility and expenditure.
Schiff questions whether the war can achieve its stated objectives, suggesting that bombing alone may not produce regime change and that the ensuing vacuum could be filled by a regime more hostile to the United States. He warns that a ground campaign could entail substantial casualties on both sides and implies that a prolonged conflict could be economically and politically damaging. He argues wars are expensive and tend to fuel inflation through debt and money printing, describing the war as a net negative. Politically, he expects increased Republican losses in the midterms and a Democratic White House in 2028, which he views as detrimental to the U.S. economy due to a presumed shift toward more expansive socialist policies.
Regarding whether war can serve as a distraction from domestic problems, Schiff allows the possibility but points out related risks: he notes Trump had accused Obama of starting a war with Iran to distract from domestic shortcomings and argues the current conflict could similarly divert attention from other problems. He contends that Trump’s tariffs and broader economic policies have been problematic, and he criticizes the administration’s handling of various policy areas, asserting that the war could undermine Trump’s previous anti-war stance and appeal.
On regional dynamics and energy, Schiff emphasizes that Iran may target U.S. assets in neighboring countries, and missiles in the region could cause collateral damage and draw in other countries. He discusses potential spillovers, including possible alignment changes among regional powers and Russia and China, and raises the specter of a broader regional or even global confrontation. He criticizes the idea that the United States should be deeply engaged across multiple theaters and reiterates his preference for accountable congressional deliberation on war decisions. He argues that a wider conflict could involve escalation risks and that the U.S. finding itself bogged down and unable to achieve swift victory would damage its standing.
Energy implications are highlighted: higher energy prices would burden consumers and limit spending elsewhere, with some winners (oil producers benefiting from higher prices) and many losers. Schiff notes Europe’s energy choices, political shifts toward restricting fossil fuels, and argues that energy costs will eventually impose political consequences in Europe. He also discusses the potential for the Gulf States to move away from the dollar as the petrodollar system faces stress, predicting that the war could hasten dedollarization and increased interest in gold.
Gold and silver are discussed as price hedges: Schiff notes that gold and silver prices were not quickly dramatic in the immediate aftermath, with gold around $5,150–$5,300 and silver around $82–$83, but he remains bullish that prices will rise as the dollar declines and deficits expand. He predicts a substantial upside for precious metals and contends that the long-term trend toward dedollarization and greater gold ownership will intensify. He frames the war as a strategic and economic inflection point, with potential winners and losers, and argues that the overall effect on the world is negative, even if some actors profit.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined today by Peter Schiff, the CEO of Euro Pacific Asset Management and also host of the very popular Peter Schiff Show podcast, and I will leave a link in the description. So thank you for coming back on again.
Speaker 1: Glenn, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 0: So we know that politics and economics often go hand in hand, so I've been looking forward to the opportunity to ask you about the, I guess, economic dimension of this war against Iran. I'm not sure, yeah, where was a good place to start, perhaps the Iran's deterrence. Is this simply or efforts to push back The United States? Is this aimed mainly at, I guess, trashing the economy, or how do you see the the economic dimension of this war?
Speaker 1: Well, I think it's gonna have negative implications. I think the economy was already weak before we launched this war. In fact, we just got the jobs numbers today from February, which, of course, was before the war, and we lost 92,000 jobs. It was the the worst report in five years on at least the way they initially reported it. But with downward revisions, there was actually a bigger job loss now in October 2025.
But three of the last five monthly job reports have shown losses, net losses in jobs. So we have a very weak labor market that's now gonna get even weaker because of the war. We already had inflationary pressures building. Now they're gonna build even more. In fact, oil is now almost $90 a barrel.
It's up more than 60% so far in 2026. So, you know, consumers are gonna get hit with the worst of everything, a weakening economy, job losses, a rising cost of living. So this is, you know, very damaging. The war, you know, obviously is expensive. If the war lasts longer than the administration hopes, which it probably will, because I don't know a war that's really ever gone the way, the warmongers have have promised.
You know, we get into the Middle East, and we're there a lot longer. It takes a lot longer. Who knows if we could win the war based on what our objectives are? I mean, can we bomb Iraq Iran, rather, ultimately into submission, I suppose we could drop enough bombs on them. But I don't know that that accomplishes regime change because the regime that rises to fill the vacuum that we create could be even more hostile to The United States than the one that we destroyed.
And and who knows? I mean, you know, we may not be able to do this with missiles and bombs. We may have to have troops on the ground, and that could be an even longer process. And there could be a lot of casualties, if that's the case on both sides. So, you know, I think this is a net negative.
Wars are expensive. They often lead to a lot of inflation because governments tend to pay for wars, with debt and, you know, money printing. So I think I think this is bad, and I think it's also politically, gonna damage the president further. I think Republicans are gonna take a shalacking in the midterms, and I I I think the Democrats will get the White House back in 2028, which is not positive for The US economy because I think they're gonna be emboldened with a with a a socialist mandate, at least that's what they're gonna claim, and a complete repudiation of everything Trump supposedly stands for, which would be capitalism, even though he's really a socialist too based on the policies that he advocates. So I think all in all, it's a it's it's a it's a big problem.
Speaker 0: But isn't a benefit of war to divert a bit tension away from failings at home. I mean, definitely here in Europe, the whenever things are going bad at home, there tends to be excessive focus on foreign policy. But with with this war in Iran, what there's already some problems with the tariffs, the bond markets. You can look at the Epstein files. Did you think at least this will fall in the background as this war progresses or not this time?
Speaker 1: Well, there's always the chance that that's exactly why we went to war as a distraction from all these other problems. In fact, if you look at some of Donald Trump's, older posts on X, and at the time, it was it was, Twitter. But he accused Obama of potentially starting a war with Iran, to, you know, be use it as a distraction from his inability to negotiate, from his faltering poll numbers, from problems in The US economy. So it's very possible that Donald Trump is doing exactly what he thought Obama was gonna do. And, you know, he he did have some significant losses.
The Supreme Court rightly, declared his tariffs unconstitutional. Also, the tariffs were never paid by foreigners the way Trump claimed. They were paid by Americans. In fact, if you look at import prices year over year from before the tariffs were implemented or before Trump was even really president until now, import prices are basically flat. They didn't go down.
And the only way foreigners would have paid our tariffs would have been if they dropped their prices enough to compensate for the tariffs that we pay, but they did not do that. So Americans are still paying full price for the imports, and they're paying the tariffs on top. Now I think that's gonna change this year. I think you're gonna see import prices rising, in addition to the tariffs. Now the tariffs might be lower now because the Supreme Court has struck down a lot of them, so we'll see.
But they're gonna end up being a policy and economic disaster for the president. And, of course, yeah, look what was going on with the Epstein files. Howard Lutnick, you know, in the president's cabinet looking particularly bad when it comes to his relationship with Epstein and the obvious lies he's been telling to try to downplay the significance. Not that I necessarily think he was involved with with with anything illicit, but I think he's lying about his relationship with Epstein. He's afraid to come clean and admit, I think, you know, how how, you know, how how big that relationship actually was.
But and it was not just Lutnick. I think the whole Trump administration wanted to get past the Epstein files. It was a a developing story. And, yeah, this, war certainly knocked everything off the headlines. And now the war is the big topic of conversation, and so it may have been started to achieve that purpose.
I don't know. But I don't believe what Trump said. I I don't believe for a minute that he had any credible reason to believe that Iran was about to attack us. It doesn't make any sense that they would do that. And I think that we put them in a stronger position by attacking them because now they look like the victims, and we look like the bad guy.
And, you know, if they were gonna attack us, we should have let them do it, and then we could have retaliated from a much higher moral ground. And there would have been a lot more support for the war had we been attacked by Iran. Instead, we chose to go to war with Iran, and we put them in a position of having to defend themselves.
Speaker 0: Yeah. That's it's a bit disappointing. I I initially was a bit enthusiastic about the potential of a Trump presidency. That is the promise of of reindustrializing, ending all these expensive forever wars, having more transparency in terms of flushing out the Epstein class, but all of this kind of reversed at some point, which was
Speaker 1: Yeah. Disappointing. I mean, I I was disappointed in the president's economic policies. The big beautiful bill was a spending disaster. I was against the tariffs.
A lot of his other economic policies that he's advocated, you know, capping credit card interest rates, banning, private companies from buying residential real estate, you know, the efforts to potentially privatize Fannie and Freddie, what he's already done with the GSEs as far as having them go into the market and buy mortgage backed securities. Pretty much all of his economic policies have been wrong. But at least, you know, at least, you know, on as the military on defense, he wasn't starting any wars. You know? But now he's ruined that.
You know? Now now so he's betrayed everything that he supposedly stood for. And I think this is gonna be the biggest political blunder since George, Herbert Walker Bush read my lips, no new taxes, because he made a promise to the American people and then broke it. That's exactly what Trump did. Trump ran to end wars.
He specifically criticized prior presidents who went to war in The Middle East and said that never would have happened if I was president. And so nobody voted for Trump hoping that he was going to start a war with Iran. In fact, there were people who were told that if you voted for Harris, you were voting for war with Iran. And so we needed to vote for Trump to make sure that didn't happen. And and so now, Trump is president, and we're fighting a war with Iran.
Speaker 0: Yeah. That was the advertisement as well. Trump vans the peace ticket, so that didn't go as planned. But this war, of course, is taking place in a very sensitive part of the world. And given that the retaliation from from Iran isn't only going after the US military, but it appears to be going after US allies, more specifically economic interest.
The The Gulf States, they do have an interesting position, I think, in the world economy. They're much of these, well, I guess, states well, family run countries. They organized a lot around energy because they are, well, lushed with energy, also finance, real estate, often populated by mostly expats. So how do you see the potential of, I guess, this region unraveling?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, obviously, there's a lot of potential there. I mean, first of all, you've got the disruption in the Straits Of Vermuz. You you've disrupted all of the the the traffic through that particular, you know, water body. About a quarter, I think, 25% of all the world's oil is moving through there. But you've also got missiles flying around The Middle East because I I I Iran is in a position where it has to attack US assets in its neighboring countries.
I mean, we've got bases all over the Middle East. And now, you know, Iran is having to launch missiles at, you know, at those bases to try to take them out because we're using those bases to, you know, attack them. But in the process, with all these missiles flying around, you know, you're gonna have some collateral damage. You're gonna have some civilian targets that are in inadvertently hit. But there's also the chance that other countries get dragged into the war because they they perceive what Iran is doing as an attack on them because their missiles are going into their country.
But you never know. Other countries could side with Iran, you know, in the Muslim world. They could, you know, look at Iran as the victim, especially since we put them in the position to claim that status by being the aggressor and by by by launching an attack with them. I mean, there were negotiations going on. Now Trump claims that they weren't going anywhere, but, you know, you're not supposed to attack your you know, the guys that you're negotiating with.
I mean, it's not, you know, really good good form to do that. You should break off the negotiations first. But so I think, you know, other countries could side with Iran. There could be an entire war in the region. And who knows?
Other countries could be dragged in. Iran has some power for allies. I mean, the Russians, the Chinese. I mean, now you're talking about a world war. So you never know, you know, what could happen.
Right? You open up a can of worms, and you just have no idea what what what you've let let loose. And that's why we shouldn't have done this in the first place. I mean, I was I'm I've been against it for all sorts of reasons. First and foremost, that I think it's another unconstitutional war.
It's another war started by a president. The presidents are not supposed to start wars. Congress needs to declare war. The decision to go to war needs to be deliberated, and it needs to be arrived at by a consensus of congress, not just the whim of one man. We can't have one individual deciding that America is gonna go to war.
That that's not how our republic was formed, and I don't think it's a good idea because wars are gonna be a lot more common and a lot more frequent if one person can just decide to take us into a war for whatever reason he wants or no reason whatsoever. And, it's much more difficult if you have to convince congress that the war is necessary, and they all have to go on record voting for it. You know, I'd much rather see that than than just have a president who doesn't even have to there's no even, know, reelection. Trump can't run again. So, you know, other Republicans could bear the consequences of his decision, but he doesn't.
But at least the congressmen and the senators, you know, they're always gonna be held accountable for their decisions and their votes because they have to run for reelection. At least they want to. These guys constantly run for reelection. So I'd rather have accountable politicians deciding to take us into war than than than someone who's not gonna be accountable to anybody.
Speaker 0: Yeah. I guess the strange dimension was Trump seemed to be leaning towards the idea that the The US had to make a pivot, it can't be everywhere. So pivot to Western Hemisphere, Asia. In other words, get out of Europe and The Middle East. Now it's
Speaker 1: still I guess I Europe and Middle East. I guess the the Nobel committee now is happy that they decided not to give him the Nobel Peace Prize after all. He was really pissed off that he didn't get the Nobel Peace Prize. They'd they'd be asking for it back if they if they gave it to him, and then he goes and starts a war.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, I guess, it is a bit strange. The military should, you know, be the last resort because it's, you know, expensive, not just in monetary terms, but also on society. And, but I guess what you
Speaker 1: need We dropped a bomb on a school. We killed, like, a 100 plus schoolgirls. Obviously, that wasn't our intent, but stuff like that happens. You know, it's just a unavoidable consequence when when when when when when you're, you know, launching missiles. You know, they don't always hit on target, you know, or whatever.
But I just think about all the brothers and the fathers of these girls. How much are they gonna hate The United States now compared to before? You know, we're we're making a lot of enemies when we do stuff like this. Yeah.
Speaker 0: Well, it's a problem when all you have is a hammer. Every problem looks like a nail. I think it's one of the curse of having a big military that creates when you have the supply, it creates, you know, seemingly demand for it. But but regarding the the energy, because you mentioned not just the Gulf States, but as you said, they closed down
Speaker 1: the Strait Of Hormuz where 20% of the world's oil goes through. What what is the what are the wider consequences, though, for this in terms of the energy wars or how how how the other great powers might position themselves? Well, I mean, obviously, higher energy prices will take a toll on consumers of energy now that it becomes more expensive. And to the extent that we have to spend more money on energy, we have less money to spend on other things. So, yes, there's obviously consequences.
Now there are winners, you know, obviously, companies to the extent that, you know, they can actually produce and sell their oil at the higher prices, then they're gonna be winners. But but overall, I think, you know, it's gonna do a lot of harm to the global economy that that lives off of energy. And we need more energy than ever ever before, especially now with all the build out of the AI data centers. All these data centers need energy. They all need to be powered.
So this was not a good time to start a war in The Middle East. You know? Not that there ever is a good time to start one, but, you know, there there are a lot of reasons that we should have tried to avoid going to war. And I don't think there was an imminent threat to The United States. I don't know exactly what the threat was to Israel or why they thought it was so imminent that, you know, they needed to attack Iran.
But if it was really something that Israel needed to do, I still think that The US could have stayed out of it, and, you know, that may have been better for for The US and for the reason region because then Iran would not be attacking our military bases in these other countries, and it would be concentrated between Israel and Iran. And I'm sure the Israeli army could take care of itself. But, you know, by by having America come into it, that really raises the stakes and and makes it a much bigger deal because, you know, we're the big, bad, you know, evil guys as far as they're concerned, and a lot of other people in the Arab world will will will see it that way. And the longer it drags on, the more they're gonna see it that way. You know, the more civilians that end up dead, the worse we're going to look.
Speaker 0: Well, regarding energy supply, the China, of course, they they in a very impressive way, been building up their energy production, which is a quite an astonishing growth to have in terms of the supply of cheap energy, which is a great indicator, though, for industrial might if you want that lifeblood to feed your industries. But in Europe, we have a bit of an opposite problem. That is our leaders recently celebrated that they liberated themselves from Russian energy. And now, I guess, against our will, we're also liberated from Middle Eastern energy. Do you how do you see the European the European economists being influenced by this?
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, they've made a lot of bad decisions on the altar of, you know, global warming and and trying to move away from fossil fuels, and that's been a disaster. And, you know, they need to move away from that and and start, you know, exploiting the best possible sources of energy and, you know, and and forget about this nonsense. You know? But, politically, that's kind of, you know, how the pendulum has swung.
But I I do believe that eventually high energy costs and the damage that that inflicts on economies will ultimately have blowback against these politicians and will force some kind of change in in the agenda here over there.
Speaker 0: I I did also wanna ask about the gold and silver markets, though, because, you know, after reading your books, this is what really motivated me to buy gold and silver. But how do you see these price? Because they've already been exploding over the past weeks. How do you see gold and silver moving as a result of this? I mean, all inflation Well, they haven't really
Speaker 1: or yeah. They haven't really moved much at all over the past week. I mean, gold's still around $5,151.50. Silver's $82.82 dollars, somewhere in there. So the metals prices haven't moved very much.
There was an initial move up the evening, the, you know, the Sunday night after the bombs dropped on Saturday, but it was muted. I mean, gold didn't even make a new high above 5,500. Of course, silver didn't even come close to its high that it set. And and then, you know, we gotta buy the rumor, sell the fact. I think it was pretty obvious for a while that something was gonna happen with Iran, and I think some traders had positioned themselves along the market in anticipation of that.
And when it happened, they they sold the news. But I think after we start digesting the implications, gold and silver prices are just headed much, much higher. I mean, it it was already a bullish case even before the war, but the war just makes it even more bullish. So I think we're gonna see a big move up, especially when the dollar rolls over and falls. The knee jerk reaction, just like every conflict, is buying the dollar as some kind of safe haven.
But I think that's gonna wear off pretty quickly, and the markets are gonna resume the dedollarization trend that was already in place, you know, especially when they start to pencil in the massive deficits that we're going to be running as a result of the war and the recession that the war helps, you know, create, the deficits are gonna be in the stratosphere. And so we're gonna be cranking up the printing presses like never before to pay for it. And I think, you know, the world's gonna recognize that and run and and and move even faster to dedollarize and embrace gold.
Speaker 0: Well, just the last time we spoke, you you mentioned that you foresaw a big economic crisis coming much worse than the one in 02/1989. Do how do you see the overall trend now? Is is this speeding up towards that end, or or do you or do
Speaker 1: you see some possibilities of, well, America coming out on top of this somehow with some, I guess, economic benefits? I mean, the war Look. I I suppose if we actually can achieve the objectives in just a few weeks where the Iranian government is replaced with a more Western friendly government that's not, you know, a religious state where the Iranian people enjoy, you know, more freedoms and more liberties. So it's a more tolerant society and more western type values, and it's not a military threat to anybody. They're not a sponsor of terrorists or any of that.
If, you know, if we get this Goldilocks perfect scenario and The Middle East ends up being a lot safer and more prosperous, then, yeah, I guess it could it would be a win. But, I mean, I think it's kinda Pollyanna ish to, to to believe that that's gonna be the outcome. Yeah. I just don't see any historical precedent for that kind of outcome. All of the prior adventures that we've had, have not ended that way.
And and so I don't expect this to be any different. I think we're going to be in there for a long time. We're going to spend a lot of money, and we're not going to make the situation better. And there's a pretty good chance that we make it worse. That's what I think.
Speaker 0: Just the last question, Do do you see anyone gaining from this war at all, or is this just a massive loss for the world?
Speaker 1: Well, there are always gainers. Right? First of all, the military industrial complex gains because now they get orders from the Pentagon for more weapons and more bombs. You know, these things, you know, are expensive. And so that's why the military stocks have really taken off because their earnings are gonna explode based on this war.
I mean, war is very profitable for the companies that supply the war effort. And, yes, the war is gonna disrupt things in ways that some lose and others gain. So there are gonna be companies and countries that are better off because the world's at war. But, you know, there are gonna be plenty of countries and companies that are worse off. And overall, it's a net loss for the world, and it's you know, I don't even think it's zero sum.
I think overall, the world is poor, and that's not even taking into account the human toll. Forget, you know, the the the individuals who lose their lives and the impact that that has on their families. Apart from all that, right, the world is worse off. I mean, we're we're talking about destroying a lot of infrastructure in Iran, and now we gotta rebuild it. In fact, Trump is saying that we're gonna help rebuild it.
With what money? I mean, we're gonna destroy the infrastructure with expensive bombs, and then we're gonna build it back up again. So we're gonna pay to destroy it, and then we're gonna pay to recreate what was already there. That would've waste. But we're already in debt.
So, look, I I think there's gonna be winners and losers. I think The US will ultimately be a big loser. I think the dollar will be a loser, especially if we lose the war. I mean, imagine that. I mean, that's not outside the realm of possibility.
I mean, what if Iran hangs tight? What if we blow up all our bombs and our missiles, and they're still there? You know? Yeah. We kill a bunch of them, but they don't surrender.
The regime is still in power, and they're still firing missiles at us. Then what? And then we're are we gonna have to have a ground war? Are we gonna bring all our troops in? Mean, if we have to do that, we pretty much lost the whole idea that we're just gonna do it, you know, from the sky.
And then could we win the landlord? I mean, Iran's a pretty big country. You look at it on a map. You know? And, yeah, I mean, how many troops are we gonna send over there?
And, you know, I mean, the Iranis could be, you know, hunkered down deep in the ground. I mean, I don't know. It may not be a cakewalk. I mean, look. I mean, we didn't we didn't win the Vietnam War.
I mean, we're a much bigger country than Vietnam. We couldn't beat Vietnam. So who the hell knows? It's possible. It can be an embarrassment to The United States, and our our our, you know, reputation can go down, militarily.
You know, Trump is out. We're so strong. We're so great. We got the greatest this. We got the best that.
Well, we'll see. You know? I I I mean, anything is possible. As I said, you open up a can of worms. You just have no idea which which you're in for.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, it's a country with 90,000,000 people on a territory, I think about 2.7 times the size of Ukraine. So it's a it's a massive mountainous country as well. So, also, without ground troops, it could be, a difficult thing Yeah. Look.
Pull off.
Speaker 1: And Russia hasn't even won in The Ukraine yet. Look how long they've been fighting that war. Yeah.
Speaker 0: No. It's no. It doesn't seem like a very good good good good strategy at all. But I would just final question. A lot of the, you know, the post Bretton Woods system is built up all around the petrodollar, the the The Gulf States selling selling the energy and oil and sorry.
Selling their oil in dollars and then reinvesting the dollars into The US. Do a lot of this is premised on the idea that The United States would be you know, that that security guarantee would be solid. Do you see any do you see possibility of the Gulf States, I guess, pulling back after this or any disruption to this system?
Speaker 1: Yeah. There I mean, I've been predicting that even before the war. I mean, I think this could hasten that. Now maybe there are some people that think it'll slow it down, that the war will cause people to buy the dollar, which has happened so far. But I don't think so.
I think that as the war wages, you're gonna see a reversal in the dollar. I think you're gonna see more money continuing to flow into gold, and that's gonna undermine the dollar's position as the reserve currency.
Speaker 0: Well, as always, thank you very much for taking the time. I know you're busy, so very much appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And, you know, your listeners, you know, take advantage of the fact that the markets are in a wall right now. You know, just like oil was a delayed reaction. You know? For the first couple of days, you know, everybody was celebrating.
Like, oh, look. Oil's barely up. It's all because of Donald Trump's drill, baby, drill. Well, you know, we're we're barely producing any more oil now than we were in in in 2024, so that's got nothing to do with it. I think it was just a delayed reaction.
And now oil's up almost $90 and headed higher. I think gold's gonna have a delayed reaction. I think gold's gonna explode much higher. We could be at 6,000 very quickly. So before that happens, people should buy it.
You you should go to my my company, Shift Gold, at shiftgold.com and buy gold, buy silver now before the next big move up, which could be happening any day. And, also, as I mentioned, there's winners and losers. I think the investment strategies that we are pursuing at Europacific Asset Management, think our clients are gonna be big winners economically. I mean, we all lose as Americans. We lose as human beings, but we could win as investors.
And and that you know, that's all we can do. We can't control the war. We can't stop it, so we can either lose or profit. And given those two choices, I'd rather make money than lose money. Most people are gonna lose money because they're following the wrong strategies.
But I think the strategies that we're pursuing at Euro Pacific Asset Management are gonna win. You can you know, people should, you know, go to our website, contact our advisers at Europac dot com, or if you wanna do it yourself, learn about my mutual funds. I've got five mutual funds that we manage. You can get information on all five at europac.com, and you can buy them no load at any, any of the major discount brokerage houses throughout the country. So, do your homework now and and get positioned because, you know, if you wait too long, I think it's gonna be an unfortunate outcome.
And, unfortunately, most people are gonna be in that boat.
Speaker 0: Well, I I will leave a link in the description because I very much agree when the world burns, it's an important consideration to to protect the wealth as well. So thank you very much.
Speaker 1: Alright. Take care.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Larry Johnson: U.S. Desperation in Iran War - Ground Troops, False Flags & Weapons Shortages https://youtu.be/UNjvIkR4obI https://t.co/6v2Y4m5rqK
Video Transcript AI Summary
Larry Johnson and the host discuss the rapid developments around Iran and the wider regional implications, challenging the narrative of visible damage and highlighting inconsistencies in Western reporting.
Key points about Israel, Iran, and propaganda:
- Johnson argues Israel’s situation may be worse than Tehran’s, noting that Iran seeks to destroy Israeli infrastructure while Israel aims to project resilience through propaganda, including social media controls. He cites a video on sonar21.com showing what he sees as the ineffectiveness of Israeli and US air defenses in Israel, with four missiles impacting Tel Aviv and across the horizon.
- There are reports of significant pushback in Israel: divisions between police and military, shortages of food, inadequate shelters, and protests. Johnson says Western propaganda claiming Israel is unscathed is contradicted by these reports.
- Johnson suggests Israel is attempting to broaden the conflict with Iran through false flag attacks (oil facilities in Saudi Arabia, and incidents in Azerbaijan, Turkey, and Cyprus) to draw NATO into a broader confrontation, but asserts Iran has been effective in debunking these false flags.
Weapons, logistics, and supply constraints:
- A major theme is American and allied weapon shortages and the sustainability of a prolonged campaign against Iran. Johnson and Speaker 1 discuss limits in Patriot and THAAD stocks, and the difficulty of sustaining Tomahawk production due to rare earth minerals controlled by China.
- Patriot missiles: production data show a ramp-up from 2015-2020 (approximately 1,800 units total) to higher annual outputs since 2020 (about 550 per year, plus 620 in 2025). Ukraine reportedly exhausted its 974 Patriot missiles.
- THAAD missiles are even less abundant (about 79 produced per year; each costs around $12-13 million), with a small overall stockpile. This implies a limited capacity to sustain long campaigns.
- The discussion notes that the United States’ missile inventories are not as unlimited as sometimes claimed; logistics and manufacturing limits are real constraints, and resupply for long conflicts would be challenging.
- The availability of Tomahawk missiles depends on rare earths from China, adding another constraint beyond factory capacity and labor.
Ground force considerations and regional dynamics:
- There is skepticism about any credible prospect of American boots on the ground in Iran. The Kurds, if mobilized, would face severe logistical and operational challenges in Iran’s rugged western border, making sustained insurgencies unlikely to impact Iranian politics. Early reports indicate Kurdish infiltrations were quickly repelled by Iranian forces.
- Russia’s transfer of 28 attack helicopters to Iran is discussed as part of a broader assessment of Iranian military readiness. Iran has shot down several US air platforms (including multiple F-15s) in the past few days, reinforcing a perception of Iranian resilience.
- Johnson notes that the West’s strategy to portray Iran as weak has backfired, strengthening internal Iranian unity and resolve, particularly after the February 28 and earlier June incidents.
Regional and global reactions:
- The war’s geographic expansion, including the submarine incident near Sri Lanka and broader Gulf security concerns, risks drawing in more regional actors and complicating alliances.
- The Gulf states (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, Qatar) rely heavily on US protection and expat labor, and there is growing concern about the United States’ ability to guarantee security. Johnson argues this could erode Western credibility and investment in the region.
- The strait of Hormuz is pivotal; Iran’s potential control could disrupt global oil flows, with cascading economic effects. Saudi Arabia’s oil infrastructure may be shielded by alternative pipelines, but LNG exporters like Qatar would suffer significant downtime.
- The broader strategic picture suggests a shift away from US-dominant security arrangements in the Gulf, with Turkey coordinating with Iran, and Gulf states re-evaluating security guarantees and economic dependence on the United States.
Outlook and possible endings:
- Johnson forecasts a prolonged attritional conflict, with the United States unlikely to break Iran’s defenses without a substantial and sustained shift in strategy. He argues that air power alone fails to achieve regime change and notes historical examples across Iraq, Serbia, and Vietnam where air campaigns did not produce the desired political outcomes.
- He predicts an endgame in which Iran could leverage the Strait of Hormuz to negotiate terms that reduce sanctions in exchange for reopening traffic, but only if Washington concedes to major concessions (including ending military bases in Saudi Arabia and Qatar).
- He warns this crisis could accelerate regional instability and potentially erode the United States’ credibility, with domestic political repercussions and potential shifts in both US and European political alignments.
Final thoughts:
- The discussion emphasizes the mismatch between optimistic Western narratives and the practical limits of militaries, economies, and logistics in sustaining a longer confrontation with Iran.
- The speakers stress that a straightforward, decisive victory seems unlikely; instead, the conflict risks deepening regional instability, economic disruption, and lasting strategic realignments in the Middle East.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined by Larry Johnson, a former CI analyst, to discuss the developments now in Iran and beyond. So we we're getting a lot of pictures coming out of, Iran of some very terrible bombing. But we know in Israel, they keep, they have much more stricter rules there now in terms of, what they're allowed to report on. I was wondering what what do we know about the the hits that Israel is taking?
Because we see Iran. We see the Gulf States, but we're not seeing any or not any, but we're not seeing much footage coming out of Israel these days.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think the the situation in Israel is probably, worse than it is in Tehran as a as a consequence. Now you've not as had as many people killed because Iran, again, is not trying to kill Israelis, but it is trying to destroy their infrastructure. So both economic and military intelligence. But one of the reason you know, one of the ways you're doing this is we we have these ardent Zionists, Larry Ellison and his son who bought TikTok.
So they can they control TikTok. And and so several of the social media platforms that in the past were used to you know, where people took videos and posted it, that that's very difficult for people in Israel to do today. And so they they've tried to cultivate this image that, oh, Israel's not suffering any damage whatsoever. And in fact, you know, I posted last night at sonar21.com a brief video showing the complete ineffectiveness of the Israeli and US air defense systems that are deployed in Israel and and then four missiles, ballistic missiles impacting in Tel Aviv, you know, and across the horizon. So there are reports coming out.
I've heard, you know, our mutual friends Danny Davis and Doug McGregor. The three of us are sort of in conversations behind the scenes, but they're saying that there is significant pushback in Israel. There's growing divisions between the police and the military, and then protests or shortages of food. The shelters are not adequate and people are, you know, they're supposed to be within a minute of a shelter in the event of an attack. So this this propaganda that's being pushed out by the West that says that Tehran is suffering and everything's great in Israel, it's just the opposite.
So I think what we're seeing is increased desperation on the part of the Israelis. They're trying to they're trying to expand the war against Iran, and they're doing that through some false flag attacks. There was a report of an attack on an oil field in Aramco in Saudi Arabia. Well, Iran got in touch with the Saudis and say, hey, that's not us. We didn't do that.
Similar things happened in both Azerbaijan and Turkey and Cyprus. So clearly, the Israelis are trying to do a number of false flags, implicate Iran, particularly do it against a NATO member so that article five would kick in and hopefully would bring all of NATO to fight Iran. That's what Israel is trying to pull off, and they're and and thank God they're failing at it so far.
Speaker 0: Yeah. So Mark Rutte just gotta give a speech saying that they weren't gonna trigger NATO's article five because missile was heading towards Turkey. And, yeah, I heard about the the Saudi one as well. It, well, one would think it's credible if the Iranians are taking credit for everything they're doing, but saying, no. Not not this one.
That's not us. And, you know, it is interesting. It also seems, I guess, reckless almost if Iran would behind be behind the attack on Azerbaijan. And why one missile? It just and or one drone.
I don't know. I'm I'm skeptical at least. Let's say it like this. But but another key issue though is as we're, you know, a few days into this war now is how about the weapon shortages? Because there's been a lot of talk whether or not The US actually packed up properly for such a long war or if it pretty much bet on it being very short.
I saw both Hegzeth and Trump referring to them having unlimited weapons, but I saw at the same time their discussion now about pulling weapons, that is THAAD missiles and Patriots out of, South Korea and send it down to the Middle East. And, it it makes, yeah, it makes you question. Well, I know they didn't have unlimited, but it makes the question about how long the Americans can keep this fight going. Of course, they have every reason in every reason in the world to to to pretend as if they can fight forever. But but what do we know?
Because, you know, it's not publicly available information how much weapons Americans have.
Speaker 1: Well, there are two, let's call them defensive weapon systems that we absolutely, know what the status is. The PAC three missile that is fired from the Patriot missile battery that started production in 2015. Between 2015 and 2020, they were producing between one hundred and three hundred a year. So let's let's go with a higher total. So, you know, 2015, '16, '17, '18, '19, '20, that's six years.
So that gives you 1,800 possible maximum in that period. Then from '20 from '21, '22, '23, and '24 of this year, the production went up to about 550. So again, let's let's just take the the five fifty times four, that's 2,200. So twenty two hundred and eighteen hundred, my math's not great, but that's, you know, a 4,000. And then in 2025, they produced 620.
Now that's that's the total production over those periods. Well, Patriot missiles have been fired in Ukraine. And normally, when, you know, they're being attacked, you fire two, a minimum, two Patriots against the target. So Ukraine was given 974 of these missiles. I I suspect they've used them all up now.
And then the other element is all all of the patriots are not in central command. They're not under the control of the commander that is responsible for for the whole Middle East. You've got you know, it's supposed to be some patriots in INDOPACOM for you know, they gotta be prepared to fight China, and European command should have some as well. Well, so you get down to it. There's a very, very, very small number of patriots left.
And unlike what Russia did at the start of the special military operation where they basically they had factories that they could open. They had materials to produce. They just they doubled production, tripled production. They put their personnel at work twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. The United States doesn't have that.
So the the the Patriot missiles, there in fact, in this current campaign against Iran, I anticipate The United States would no longer have any Patriot missiles to fire by the end of next week. They could be out that quick. The THAAD missile, the the what do they call it? The Terrain High Altitude Area Defense Weapon, That's like the Patriot except instead of costing between 3 and $6,000,000 a missile, each of those missiles cost like $13,000,000, 12 to $13,000,000, and they only produce 79 of them a year. So the The United States is not sitting on ample supplies of weapons.
And then you get to the issue of things like the tomahawk. Producing tomahawks requires some rare earth minerals that China's holding on to. So it's not even like even if The United States had the industrial capability, you can't just go flip a switch and all they're gonna start cranking it out. So there are supply chain problems. There are structural problems with, you know, the lack of factories, lack of trained workers, lack of material.
So, yes, you know, the this this burst of activity we've seen since last Saturday, United States is not gonna be able to sustain it over another three weeks in my judgment. They'll they'll have to curtail, cut back.
Speaker 0: But how do you see the given that the war isn't going well, The United States could begin to run out of ammunition. The Iranians obviously struck some bases, which makes it difficult to to refuel and replenish weapons. So if they have to, you know, sail very far away, this is it the logistics becomes a problem too. So it looks as if the strategy changed a bit. Instead of liberating Iranians, they now seem to be just mass bombs dropping on Tehran.
But there's also now not just talk. There's movements already about boots on the ground. Probably not Americans, I think, at least Yeah. But at least proxies like the Kurds. What what do you make of this?
Speaker 1: Well, if the Kurds are stupid enough to believe the promises of the CIA, they're gonna join a long, long line of people around the world through history that have trusted the CIA and wound up being betrayed, killed, and impoverished. Look at what happened in Vietnam or actually Laos to the Mong. They were they were recruited to fight against the the North Vietnamese. And then when the the North Vietnamese prevailed, won the war, the Mong found themselves on the Alps. And instead of The United States rushing to save them and take care of him, we just started to, you know, so too bad.
You're on your own now. This the the this is a a bizarre strategy to, quote, try to put boots on the ground in Iran. The Iranian territory, along its western border with, Saudi Arabia and Iraq is, know, is rugged terrain that is is equivalent to what we've seen in Afghanistan. Mountainous, difficult to operate in. So, yeah, you could put an insurgent group in there, but they're they're gonna be so isolated.
They're they're not gonna be affecting the country's politics at all. And then you get to the issue of logistics. How do you keep them supplied? You know, if they're if they're shooting any kind of ammunition, and they they get into a firefight, where do they get more ammunition to to fight with? Because, you know, I don't know if you've ever carried an an ammo can.
They they were about 22 kilos, you know, well over, you know, forty, forty five pounds. Know, one man can maybe carry one of those, but you're not gonna be carrying two. You know, you've gotta have other other things on your back. So this this notion that they're gonna put a ground force in to put pressure on Iran is gonna end in a disaster for that ground force. In fact, there are early reports already overnight that the Kurds did try to infiltrate, and they were immediately ambushed by Iranian forces.
Why and and this frankly, this was expected. Why do you think that Russia sold 28 attack helicopters or gave those 28 attack helicopters to Iran three weeks ago? Because I think that they your intelligence is such they knew that this is part of the plan. We we've seen the west is trying to paint a story of Iran as it's being shredded, its defenses are shrinking, that it can't withstand the might of The United States onslaught. Yet, there have been in the last three days, there have been four f 15 Eagles shot down.
And the last one yesterday was shot down over Iran. There was a what they call a combat search and rescue mission. US helicopters flew in and rescued the two pilots, but the plane was taken down. We're seeing a remarkable number of false flag reports coming from, you know, the the attempt to to attack the Saudi oil facilities that they tried to blame that on Iran. Iran got ahold of the Saudis and say, hey.
That's not us. The attack in Cyprus, the attack that took place allegedly took place in Turkey, and then one in Azerbaijan. And each of those what what the Israel strategy is right now is they want to pull in NATO and make this expand this war so it's NATO against Iran, not just US and Israel. But but I think Iran's been pretty effective in in knocking down these false flags. So it is The United States anticipated that by killing Ayatollah Khamenei and the key leadership, the sec the minister of defense, the head of the IRGC, that this would have caused a collapse of the Iranian regime.
Now what comes after that? Even as Marco Rubio said the other, I don't know. So the the the the this thing has not really been been planned at all. There has been some planning, but in terms of trying to figure out what kind of outcome do does The United States want, all they want is that there are no more mullahs running running Iran and that whoever is running Iran will be obedient to us and do what we tell them to do and give us complete unfettered access to their oil and gas. I think that's what this is all about.
Speaker 0: So the Venezuelan solution. But but once that doesn't play through, it looks as if they're going for the Syrian solution here, which is, yeah, sparking civil war. This is Yeah. Yeah. This could be yeah.
But this isn't just horribly destabilizing in Iran, and one has to ask to what extent one wants a civil war to break out in the country of 90,000,000. But I guess, Rubi doesn't have a plan for that either. But this, of course, creates shock waves outside Iran as well. I mean, the Turks can't be happy. How how are the how's the rest of the region looking at the potential of Kurdish troops being used, well, to to to attack Iran?
Speaker 1: Yeah. No. The the Turks have have been in touch with the Iranians, and so the actually, that's that's sort of the good news out of this. Turkey Turkey and Iran are coordinating. Now the the Western analysts are the people advising Trump and the Israelis.
They genuinely believed that by launching these attacks that they would rip the social fabric in Iran and and create more opposition to the government. The exact opposite has happened. You know, I know you've had discussions with professor Morandi, and, you know, Morandi represents sort of a a break point in the generations in Iran. Professor Morandi was he went into the Iranian army when he was about 17 years old in nineteen eighty, eighty one. So the Iran Iraq war started in September '80, and professor Morandi who entered service was wounded twice.
But that event, that war for the people who were 17 years of age and older was a became an important part of their psyche. It influenced how they viewed The United States, how they viewed the West. And the people that came after, let's say the the folks who were, you know, 10 years old in 1989 when the war ends. Well, you know, that's that's thirty seven years ago. So those are those people are now 47 years of age.
They really they haven't had any other event in their life that was galvanizing them for let's call it as as patriots for their nation until last June, the the surprise attacked them, but now even worse, what happened on February 28. As a result of this, you've got this new generation who are late teens, in their twenties, in their thirties. They are now, if you will, enraged at the duplicity and the perfidy of of the West that to to have attacked Iran in such a cowardly fashion, especially when there was negotiations underway, And then to top it off to kill, you know, to to not just killed, but to murder a 100 and at least a 165 little girls who are aged six to 12. This this is united Iran in a way that it wasn't united say, you know, a year ago. And so, you know, it's we we saw that same phenomena happen in The United States in the immediate aftermath of the nine eleven attacks in 2001.
And and that's that's what these, you know, so called geniuses at the in Israel and The United States who did the plan this operation, they didn't take into account. So right now, they've made it more difficult to overthrow the the Iranian regime. It's got more support, not less.
Speaker 0: I well, besides other countries being pulled in, we also see the war expanded in terms of the geography that is The United States. So a US submarine sank Iranian worship, I think, not that far off the coast of Iran no. Sorry. India.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It was near nearer to Sri Lanka, but they had been invited to participate in in a naval exercise. So Iran had gone as part of that. I mean, this you know, it was the ship was not armed for combat. It was it was it was basically on a diplomatic training mission, and The United States ambushed it.
Speaker 0: Yeah. So Hegseth very triumphantly even posted videos of it on Twitter, and Hegseth argued that this was the first time a ship had been sunk by a submarine since World War two, again, very triumphantly. Not correct, though. I think that the British sank Argentinian cruiser warship during the Falcons War. But, you know, if you put that aside, what what I thought was interesting, though, is the reference to World War two because then one often thinks of the the German Nazis.
But but actually, the Nazis, they sank ships with their submarines, they they rescued the survivors thereafter when the ship went down, you know, being the decent, honorable thing to do. And, again, Nazis, The US did not. They left it to the Sri Lankans to save them. Yeah. It's a it's quite shocking.
I mean, it reminds a bit about the the attacks and even double taps on these boats off the coast of Venezuela. It's there's something that's died here, like the civility, and there's a certain pride behind it because what is it? Yeah. Higgseth keeps making these comments all the time that, well, we're not gonna be politically correct when we fight, you know, just very basic rule of law. Yeah.
So rules of war, which is just being ignored because it's somehow seen as politically correct or woke to I mean, the the effort of civilizing the process of killing each other is not easy, but it's all being thrown away. It's quite shocking.
Speaker 1: Well, this is why, you know, he's setting himself up for a Nuremberg trial. You know, if let let let's assume that if somehow The United States has a complete collapse and the actually, Iran would take over. You know, they'd hold they'd be on trial as war criminals, which is what Trump and Heksef are. They are war criminals, and that's what they're engaged in. But, you know, I I was smiling as we talked about this.
You you you know who Vovaan and Lexus are. Correct?
Speaker 0: Yeah. I I saw their video as well. That's in all this horror. I enjoyed the comedy.
Speaker 1: Where the Sovovan, you know, I I I know both of them. I was I got to spend some time with with them when I was in Russia last. They're they're great guys. They're both lawyers in their thirties, and Vovind dresses up. He he he claims to be an adviser to to Friedrich Mertz.
And he says, yes. My name is Adolf h. Word of know? He was talking to the shah of Iran, the the aspiring shah of Iran, this the former the son of the former shah. And, god, what an incredibly stupid man Palevi is because he he was getting pranked and had no clue.
And and and he's dealing with I mean, as soon as I saw the photo of with the black hair and the black mustache, the postage mustache. Knew right away what it was. But, no. He didn't. So, you know, this is
Speaker 0: Advisers of Mertz, actually, one of them dressed up like Hitler. Yeah. Called himself Adolf. And but but beyond the the humor of it, I I thought it was fascinating because what they were promising. Yeah.
Oh, we're yeah. The German has decided we're gonna join the war. Our Taurus missiles will now be launched on Tehran. And, you would wonder, you know, there's a new aspiring leader of Iran. How does it feel about Germany sending missiles attacking Iran?
He's like, oh, this is wonderful news. Now, you know, we were hoping more people will join this, crusade. I mean
Speaker 1: Well, you know, the the what is fascinating is how quickly Iran retaliated this time compared to last June. So when they got hit on June 13, It took them about ten to twelve hours before they could actually launch a missile back at Israel. And what was the other major difference between what happened, you know, eight months ago and what's happening now is it wasn't until the very last day of that missile exchange on June 24 that Iran finally launched a missile at a US military installation, and that was at the Al Udid Air Force Base in Qatar. And apparently, was sort of a quid pro quo that had been negotiated. I'm not sure who the intermediary was, but The United States and Iran agreed, okay, You hit me.
You hit us. We'll hit you this one last time, and then you Iran get to continue selling oil to China. So, you know, that came off. This time, they didn't wait ten hours. Within the hour of that ambush and that killing of Khamenei, Iran was already firing back and they started going after The US bases in particular.
And not just firing randomly, they destroyed at least two and I've seen the reports that it's as many as five of these billion dollar radar systems. One what we know for certain one that was at Al Uddeed was destroyed and another that was in Bahrain at the fifth fleet naval station destroyed. And what what that they have what's called a multilayered air defense system. So think of it like, you know, it's it's a pyramid and here at the bottom, the foundation are those radars because what those radars do is when there's a missile missile launch, they they identify where was launched from, they identify the direction it's headed, and then that information is communicated to the other elements that are, know, whether it's a Patriot missile battery or whatever. Those were taken out early on.
So now both The United States and Israel are effectively blinded. They're not gonna necessarily know when a missile's being launched and where it's headed. So they can't can't anticipate it like they did back during the twelve day war. But note this, even with that information during the twelve day war, Iran was still very effective in hitting targets all over Israel. And we've learned that the Iron Dome, it it's probably effective against subsonic right rockets that, you know, maybe a drone.
But beyond that, they have zero capability to interfere with or intercept ballistic missile that's traveling at Mach six or higher. And the same for the Patriot. You know, Ted Ted Postal has been on a couple of different podcasts showing how these these Patriot missiles are they fire, they miss, and the missiles continue to to rain down on Israel. So I I anticipate that this as this attrition continues in Israel, Israel's gonna get more and more desperate because they can't stand the the the pain. It they're too small.
Most people don't realize that Iran is almost three times the size of Ukraine. And you look you look at how much firepower Russia has brought to bear on Ukraine over the last four years. And with that, it had that's not forced the collapse of the Zelensky regime. The park is supported from the outside, but it's just a reminder that defeating a military force that with what Russia had with its size and at and not having long logistics lines. I mean, they're next door.
And here's The United States trying to take out a country three times the size of Ukraine with with stronger stronger beliefs about their their nationality and their patriotism, much stronger than anything in Ukraine. It's just, you know, The United this is an incredible miscalculation because The United States is going to lose this. And, you know, I think the the biggest way it will not be so much through a military defeat, though that that's gonna play a role, but it's economic defeat because the Iranian control of the Strait Of Hormuz is going to choke the world's economy. Now some were thinking, oh, boy, this is gonna really hurt China. They forget that at least from Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia is not I don't think Saudi Arabia is gonna lose much in terms of oil exports.
The price will go up, but it has a pipeline that runs from this East Shore all the way across Saudi Arabia to the Red Sea. So they can pump it across there, load it up, and then, you know, it's on its way. It's just gonna add shipping costs. So that it'll make the oil a little more expensive. The the the two cut the two Gulf states, three actually that are in real trouble are Bahrain where the, naval base is located.
It's the only one in The Gulf that has 80% Shia Muslim population. So the possibility of an insurrection there is quite high. Qatar and which is a, you know, liquid natural gas producer, large largest in the world. It it's completely shut down its facility, and the reports I've read said that even if they restarted it tomorrow, it'd be a month before they'd be back in service doing what they were doing. And so that income's number one falling off the table.
And then where do the countries that formerly were buying that natural gas, that liquid natural gas, where do they get alternative supplies? Because the way the natural gas industry works, you buy you pay today for what you're going to receive six months down the road. So you you get a contract. So, literally, what they were producing today was for somebody that had placed the order six months ago. Anybody that shows up new, you know, they're gonna have a six month to a year wait.
So, you know, that's a problem. And then the same with The United Arab Emirates. They are you know, they become sort of, let's call it a false front tourist destination. And, yeah, you've got a lot of expats, a lot of Americans living there. Well, the ships supplying them with with beef and all the luxury items, they're they're sitting outside the Strait Of Hormuz.
They're not traveling. So this is gonna be very, tough on the on the the Qatar and The United Arab Emirates, less so on the Saudis.
Speaker 0: Well, it's yeah. Also saw the Qataris. They had to shut down their aluminum smelter as well. Right. Yeah.
And this one, according to the media, takes a year to restart. So it's quite a it will have a profound impact. But I was wondering how you see the wider transformation of the region because of this. Because a lot of these Gulf States, they do have well, they rest on a lot of expats. Many of them, well, people from abroad.
They're not nationals living there. A lot of them easily leave once things become unstable, less prosperous. They're also very dependent on energy, which is being shut down. They're much linked to all the security to The United States, and some of that trust is also diminishing, especially as their frontline state positions are now you know, making them vulnerable instead of more secure. Mhmm.
And I think overall, many of them are also growing worried. You know, many people make the you know, make it seem almost like common sense that, well, of course, we should reduce Iran's ballistic missiles. You know, they shouldn't have this capability. But but what is the alternative? You know, if you have a large power like Iran, it doesn't have a proper conventional deterrent, then it should get a nuclear deterrent.
I mean, this is the logic. You you want a country not to be completely vulnerable and have no weapons to defend itself. It just seems and also being attacked to get rid of these weapons. Now you have a vulnerable Iran, a big power, like you said, almost three times the size of Ukraine, and 90,000,000 people. It's been it's it's a reason to fear for its existence, and it's being denied conventional deterrence.
I mean, it almost seems foolish at this time not to develop nuclear weapons, and that's something I don't think anybody wants. So what what happens in the neighborhood now that America's allies are taking all this punishment, The Turks can't be happy with what's happening. All of this is happening at the backdrop when the American ambassador to Israel, Huckabee, says, well, if Israel wanna take half the Middle East, then, you know, God gave it to them. None of this it just seems like muscripting their own defeat. This is a horrible, horrible strategy if there is one.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, yeah. It would be generous in calling it a strategy because strategy assumes you've thought something through, and they haven't this this has not been thought through. I think the the most immediate consequence of this attack is it's driving The United States out of The Gulf. So, you know, we've had at least 10 military bases, you know, airfields or, you know, ground troop you know, some ground troops deployed.
All of those have been hit, and I don't wanna say destroyed, but rendered inoperative. In other words, The US soldiers can't just, you know, show up there for work every day. It's a combat environment. They're a high threat, and they've actually had to close down and transport transfer personnel. When this is over, I don't necessarily see, you know, cutters throwing open the doors.
Okay, guys. Come on back in. Let's get out there to Al Udin and make things happen. I I that's not gonna that's not gonna take place. The attacks on US embassies and specifically CIA, stations they call, you know, the that again, Iran is sending a message.
They're gonna they're gonna force The United States out of the Gulf. So when this is over, The United States is gonna have a more at least a diminished presence at best and at worst could be completely shut out. I don't I don't think they'll wind up completely shut out, but it it it's gonna be it's not gonna be like it was. The the golden age where The United States basically had these these countries as its prostitute, and, you know, they they trusted in the protection of The United States. Now they're finding, particularly the Saudis, they're they're a little miffed.
They feel that United States is taking greater efforts to protect Israel than than to protect the Saudis. So the that that's I think that's gonna be a major change, but also investment dollars. Who's who's gonna want to invest in Qatar or United Arab Emirates now or Kuwait for that matter or Bahrain? So the, you know, what looked like a great place to invest and, you know, it seemed secure because the assumption was whether The United States will protect us. Well, The United States can't protect.
You not only is is it proven that the Iron Dome doesn't work, the Patriot really doesn't work. It's not effective, particularly against ballistic missiles and THAAD, the the terminal high altitude area defense missile. You know, not only is it terribly expensive, but it was not effective. So all of a sudden, there's gonna be a change in the perception of The United States on top of its duplicity. You know, Here, who can trust The United States in anything?
Whatever they say. You know, they promised that they were going to negotiate in good faith with Iran, and they didn't. They used it as a pretext to attack Iran. And so, you know, next time somebody says, hey. Let you know, United States wants a ceasefire.
That's why Iran said no. There's nothing to talk about with you. They'll Iran's gonna talk with its missiles.
Speaker 0: Yeah. I can I kinda empathize or understand where the Gulf States the the the planning there, though, because when The United States was the only great power, the the only hegemon, it was unrivaled, the only game in town, then then, of course, it makes complete sense to bet your security on The United States? We saw the same dynamic in Europe. That is countries who would join NATO, they would be safe. Those who would stand on the outside, they could possibly become a target.
So, you know, you you wanna be on the inside, not on the outside. And
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 0: And I can see why the, yeah, the Gulf States bet everything on the only horse in the race. But but that was the comfortable the unrivaled hegemon of America. The problem in the international system is when hegemon is in decline, when other rival powers comes up because then the instinct of the hegemon will be to weaken those other centers of power. And suddenly, those frontline states can be used. You see this in the economics here, by the way.
There's a willingness to essentially cannibalize the industries, the fear of Taiwan, South Korea, all all of Europe. And suddenly, you know, all the nostalgia about the past using this as a reason to still continue the cooperation, it doesn't make much sense. And I think, yeah, the the the problem for the Gulf States, where did they go from here on? Are they gonna make peace with Iran? And what?
You know, the Americans are gonna let this allow this either. So what exactly do they do? But did you have any do they what what is the do you know much about internal divisions there in in these Gulf States? Because surely many of them must be worried about this new plan, Sahara, the rhetoric coming out of out of Israel as well.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, none of these are popularly elected governments. No. These are these are autocracies essentially. They're, you know, autocrats, tribal autocrats. And they they operate with a you know, they're dependent upon what I'd I'd call a sort of modern slave labor.
They import people from The Philippines and from Asia, and they do, you know, they do all the menial tasks, and they they live in horrific, horrific conditions. You know? That's across the region. That's why there's some real alarm right now that this the reaction by the average man and woman on the street in Bahrain. They were cheering when those Iranian missiles were pouring down and hitting The US naval base there in Bahrain.
So, you know, the the prospect that you could you could get of the rise of a political movement in any of these Gulf states, Qatar, United Arab Emirates that would challenge all these, you know, the current rich rulers that are there because I get they don't have a base of support. It's not like, you know, the you know, they're like, there's not some beloved father figure. And, you know, in Saudi Arabia, it gets even more complicated with you got the different princes all competing. You know, they're not all loyal to Mohammed bin Salman. So, yeah, this the the instability in the Persian Gulf, I think it will be a a high probability, continued high probability when when this war is ended.
Because I you know, and I've I believe the key to ending the war will be Iran's got to will open up the Strait Of Hormuz again to traffic, but it will only do so with agreement in hand that something like the economic sanctions have been lifted, and United States will no longer put a military base anywhere in Saudi Arabia or Qatar or wherever. Yeah. I I think Iran's gonna actually be in a position to dictate some terms. Right now, you say that in The United States, they laugh at you. Oh, no.
No. Iran's Iran's in trouble. But, you know, I wrote a piece last night looking at sort of the history of the use of air power for regime change. We don't have a single example since World War two of air power bringing about regime change, and that includes, you know, Vietnam. We had Operation Rolling Thunder.
We had the attack at Serbia. And then the big ones were look look at Israel and Gaza over the last two and a half years now. It's been largely an air war there, and they've an air war even with troops on the ground. They can't beat Hamas. The the the failure of The United States in operation Rough Rider last, last March.
The the failure of The United States to al Saddam with just air power back in 2003. You know? So never ever have we accomplished it, and now we're expecting to accomplish it against Iran. We're in that list. You know, we run down the list of countries that have, you know, Iraq attacked twice, Gaza, Vietnam, or North Vietnam at the time, Serbia.
The the only country on that list that's comparable to Iran militarily and and economically be Vietnam. And so the reality is we're sitting there saying that Israel who cannot defeat the the Hamas after two and a half years of complete military they got a complete dominance on every every aspect are now going to defeat Iran. And similarly, The United States who spent seven weeks trying to stop mobile missile launchers by the Houthis failed after seven weeks that these these two combined are gonna take down Iran? It is I mean, it's ludicrous. But, you know, that's the level of delusion that it infests right now, Washington and and Tel Aviv.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, the memory of we don't have to go to Vietnam, but the memory of Iraq should be fresh in The United States. Iran has almost four times the territory of Iraq. Yeah. And also yeah.
About, I think, twice the population of Iraq. So it's a it's a massive country, and also they're yeah. They they are properly developed. This is a it's it again, given that they had to pull away from Yemen, it's kind of fascinating that they decided, well, let's go for Iran then. It's a very different adversary.
But I have I have to say, though, in Yemen, at least, there was some wisdom on Trump's side. That is he went in. You know, he was gonna do it much better than Obama because he's so much smarter. It it is yeah. It it didn't work.
And but then what do do when you fail? Do you escalate or deescalate? You know, he didn't double down. He said, well, mission is a good
Speaker 1: accomplished. Yeah. We did. Hey.
Speaker 0: Let's go home. Yeah. But but even Greenland, they you know, he was gonna go, then the Europeans, they put up a bit of resistance and at least temporarily walked us back a bit. But but in Iran, it appears this is not an option, that there will only be escalation from here on. And or do you or do you see any, I guess, off ramp for Trump here?
Or if not, just, I guess, I'll ask a question. Where do you think this war is going? Because we're on the end of day six now. How, Where would you see this going in a week or two from now?
Speaker 1: Well, by I think by the end of next week, The US supply of Patriot missiles, THAAD missiles, will be exhausted. And then there will be a fight underway within the Department of War between the commander of INDOPACOM and the commander of CENTCOM. CENTCOM will be demanding that they get all the remaining air air defense supplies from INDOPACOM, and INDOPACOM who's got they have three batteries or three battalions, three Pershing Patriot missile battalions. Each battalion contains four to six batteries. And each of those batteries per battalion can fire they carry a stockpile of between seventy two and ninety six missiles.
So you're gonna have an internal fight within The US defense establishment over who gets what. You know, are we gonna prioritize China as a threat, or are we going to bleed ourselves out with Iran? I do not see The United States militarily being able to bring Iran to its knees. If anything, these attacks, particularly the murder of Ayatollah Khamenei, have had the exact opposite effect. It's galvanized the people in a way that they've never been inspired or not not since the Iran Iraq War in nineteen eighties.
So they are more committed, more determined than ever, and you're seeing it, you know, on social media. It's not just in Tehran, but it's across it's across Iran. You know, I I bet you Iran has at least a 100 cities that are bigger than Tel Aviv and or or let's say 50. In fact, I'm gonna look this up. But it has a lot more cities with population greater than Haifa and Tel Aviv.
And what that gives Iran the ability. They don't have to hit a lot of targets. I mean, they're targeting you target Haifa, target Tel Tel Aviv, and and you target the military bases. You know, basically, five or six distinct kinds of targets. And they they don't have they don't have to cover a massive landmass to find this, whereas, Israel and The United States do.
There there are too many. Think, you know, okay, we bombed Tehran. Tehran's a city of 12,000,000 people. All of Israel is just 7,000,000. So, you know, roughly Tehran is almost twice the size population wise of of of Israel.
So Israel presents a much easier target to hit and to devastate. It's far easier to destroy Israel in a because it's a small confined area compared to trying to break Iran. And and let's again, use the use the example of the kind of firepower that Russia has poured on Ukraine over the last four years. And they've and Russia has inflicted massive damage, but that still hasn't caused the government in Ukraine to collapse, at least not yet. Maybe maybe someday it will, or or it will collapse once the military starts to get you know, the ground operations expand.
So, yeah, I think this war Trump is now in a war of attrition. His only way out is to declare victory and leave, And I don't think he's gonna do that. And it will if look. This is gonna end his presidency. I predict that by November, the anger at Trump over getting us into another needless foreign war despite his promises to the contrary, will, put the control of not just the House of Representatives, but the Senate in the hands of the Democrats but then be in a position to impeach Trump.
And frankly, think you'll find a lot of Republicans willing to jump on board that train because what Trump has done now, he he didn't even go he didn't even try to build support and make any kind of coherent case of why we quote need to attack Iran. He just did it. And that that and that the the resentment and anger among his supporters is real. Yeah.
Speaker 0: Oh, I but I also don't know where the deal is gonna go from here because if they can't defeat Iran, what can you do? One can escalate the brutality that has bomb populated areas, could try to compel Iran to accept the ceasefire, or they can, you know, pull in other states, be it Azerbaijan, form proxies, like, under the Kurds. Hopefully, no one's thinking about nuclear weapons, but, yeah, I I I wish I could see an off ramp somewhere. Otherwise Yeah. We could have a massive this could get, yeah, very ugly very quickly.
Uglier, one should say. Anyways, any final thoughts before we wrap up?
Speaker 1: I don't know. Do you see the comments of these Elizabeth Warren, the senator from Massachusetts? She came out of a CIA briefing on the war in Iran yesterday, and she she said, it's worse than we it's worse than you can imagine. It's it's much worse what's going on and then the incompetence and the capabilities of Iran. You know, this really has the potential to to blow back on Trump and the and the politics of it.
It's it's gonna haunt him. And and and and it's gonna it's the reputational damage to America is profound because previously those who thought, oh, well, America is so powerful, you know, who can stand against her? And now when Iran is standing at the end of this and The United States is begging Iran for a deal to get out to stop this, they're gonna step back and say, wait a second. It is like that moment, if you saw the original Wizard of Oz and when Dorothy gets to get to the palace of the wizard, the great and powerful Oz, and then the dog goes and pulls back the curtain, and there's this little old guy behind there, you know, working this machine. That's that's gonna be that moment.
The wizard of Oz moment for The United States where it turns out to not be the great powerful wizard, but instead, it's a it's a little old man behind a curtain.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, I think that's also been part of the Israel strategy. People are always taken aback by their their brutality when they go to war, but this is also it makes some strategic sense. That is, if you want to think Israel is all powerful, if if you go toe to toe, you know, it will destroy any adversary. No no limits.
Countries see it as, okay, as such a no go. But, no. They I think a lot of the, yeah, the ideas and images and reputations will shatter, and they also have quite a significance beyond, you know, not only the materials. But, yes, as I said, thank you for for taking the time. That went fast.
Well, oh, yeah. Yeah. Time flies, Sony.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Of course.
Speaker 0: We're not the end of the world. So We're we're
Speaker 1: having a good time. But, anyway, thanks for all you do, Glenn. You do great work. Keep it up.
Speaker 0: Thanks, Larry. Okay.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Lawrence Wilkerson: U.S. Arms Kurdish Fighters in Iran to Start Civil War https://youtu.be/H3r8Ie-yNZU https://t.co/gcu1F4pT5J
Video Transcript AI Summary
Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson discusses the Iran conflict in depth, emphasizing that its outcome depends on multiple interconnected variables. He expands on a prior list of factors, adding his own: the actions of Russia and China, shortages of vital munitions, the resilience of the Iranian people, on-the-ground actors and energy facilities, the status of the Bab al-Mandab strait and the Strait of Hormuz, and the American public’s reaction to the war. He asserts that the conflict’s nature is central to understanding how events unfold.
Wilkerson recounts his long experience in the U.S. military and in planning for war, noting his involvement in past U.S. positions toward Iran, including support for Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war and later naval engagements in the Strait of Hormuz. He highlights a historical episode in which a U.S. Aegis cruiser fired missiles at an Iranian passenger airliner, a move he identifies as decisive in prompting Iran to accept a UN resolution and end the conflict. He argues that the current conflict is fundamentally misunderstood by U.S. policymakers, who he says fail to grasp the nature of a war against a "3,000 years old" and 90 million-strong people who would defend themselves violently, and who are willing to sacrifice to resist what they view as an imperial confrontation.
Wilkerson criticizes public statements from U.S. officials—specifically Marco Rubio, Pete Hagseth, Donald Trump, and others in the administration—for lacking a coherent understanding of the conflict’s nature. He contends that Netanyahu’s objective is chaos in the region, extending beyond Iran to a broad Lavant corridor, and he adds that Turkey is watching closely, concerned about Israeli arming of Kurdish groups and the potential for battlefield shifts that could involve Turkey indirectly. He argues Turkey has already moved from being a bystander to a participant, given intelligence networks on the ground and potential strategic alignments.
On the Kurdish issue, Wilkerson discusses U.S. considerations of arming Kurdish groups, noting that such moves would strain U.S. relations with Turkey and destabilize regional dynamics across Iraq, Syria, Iran, and Turkey. He recalls past U.S. actions—like support for Kurdish groups in Iraq after Operation Provide Comfort—and cautions that arming Kurds in multiple countries could provoke serious geopolitical fallout, including undermining Turkish cooperation and complicating Iran’s internal security.
The conversation also delves into broader strategic implications. Wilkerson suggests a multipolar world is emerging, with China and Russia potentially benefiting from American overreach and regional chaos. He cites the Chinese decision to promote the renminbi as the world’s transactional reserve currency as indicative of China’s willingness to confront U.S. dominance, while acknowledging that China would avoid direct military engagement in a major war if possible. He warns that a nuclear-armed Israel alongside the United States attacking Iran presents a dangerous paradox, given Iran’s JCPOA-era transparency and nonproliferation commitments, contrasted with Israel’s undisclosed nuclear arsenal.
Addressing U.S. military capacity, Wilkerson argues that the United States lacks sufficient munitions and will struggle to sustain an extended ground campaign in Iran. He contends that ground forces would face immense challenges, given Iran’s terrain, population, and the potential for civilian casualties. He also questions the credibility and consistency of U.S. political leadership, contrasting promises to restore the strategic oil reserve with failures to fund it, and he notes the potential consequences for allied countries like South Korea, which might reconsider its alliance given Washington’s willingness to reallocate defense assets.
Wilkerson points to the broader humanitarian and strategic costs of the conflict, arguing that the war has already triggered civilian harm and that the narrative around supporting protesters and stopping missiles has evolved into a broader destabilization strategy. He emphasizes the risk that a limited victory could prompt renewed aggression elsewhere, and he suggests that the geopolitical chessboard in the region—Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and the Black Sea—could be poised for further turbulence if Western powers miscalculate.
In sum, Wilkerson warns that the Iran conflict could escalate beyond a regional skirmish into a global confrontation, driven by misperceptions, overlapping national interests, and the strategic ambitions of major actors, including Israel, Iran, Turkey, Russia, and China.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined today by colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to the US secretary of state. Thank you for coming back on. I've been, yeah, dying to get your take on what's happening in in Iran. But first of all, you you sent in a text to a newspaper on the first day of the war where you said that how this war developed depends on many things.
It depends on the actions of Russia and China, the shortage of vital munitions, the resilience of the Iranians, the actions of other actors on the grounds, the energy facilities, how they are impacted, also what will happen to this critical strait. That is Bab Al Mandab, which is then can block off the Red Sea and the Strait Of Hormuz. And also you ask, well, it also depends how the American public reacts to this war. So now that we're in day five, how do you assess this war? You I have to say in terms of identifying variables, which are important to see, you pretty much was a good way you nailed it.
It's a good I was saying.
Speaker 1: Well, first of I'd have to say I've I've developed some new variables too in addition to those. But you introduced me as chief of staff to the secretary of state. I
Speaker 0: Oh, no. Sorry. I meant oh, yes.
Speaker 1: Yeah. That's right. You're right. You're absolutely right. That was my last position, but I just want your listeners to know that thirty one years in the United States military, a lot of which were spent as a military planner planning for war, particularly in the largest unified command, then in the repertoire, the US Pacific command, which fed forces to central command.
Central command was just a tiny little blot on the map. We gave them all their forces or didn't give them to them most often because we didn't want to give them to them. Different business today. It's grown to be the most powerful command arguably in the unified command plan. And I I I say all that so everyone who's listening knows that I've been here, and I've done that with regard to Iran.
I was there when the war started, like World War one in The Levant between Iraq and Iran, and we backed Iraq. I was there when we made decisions to back Iraq, to defeat Iran because we didn't like Iran after the revolution. I was there when they stood up to Iraq, and we're gonna march on Baghdad. And then we entered the war ourselves with naval combatants in the Strait Of Hormuz, one of which was hit with a mine, and we almost lost it. Another one limped back after Saddam Hussein fired two exocent missiles at it and hit it.
Bridgerton, an oil tanker, was hit. The captain was very angry with us and on and on. All to say, know this region well in terms of military action and in terms of geography and in terms of the difficulty of the terrain and the, shall I say, the nature of the Persian people who are resilient to a fault and who fought that bloody eight years of war against our chemical weapons supplied to Sodom and Gomorrah's aid, and we're gonna march to Maghdad. The culminating act, as most people will not remember or never knew, is a US Aegis cruiser in the sea fired a missile or two at a Iranian Airbus with 290 some odd people on board, and we killed them all. And that's when the then Ayatollah said, I'm throwing in the towel.
I'm accepting a UN resolution on how to end this conflict because I can't fight the empire too. And since that time, all to say, they've been trying to figure out how to fight the empire. And that's the first thing I would say about the nature of this conflict, which if you read your Klauswitch, you know the one thing you need to do anytime you're contemplating using the military address to turn policy into violence is you need to understand the nature of what you're entering upon, the nature of the conflict. We do not. Every statement from Marco Rubio, every statement from Peter Hagset, every statement from Donald Trump, indeed, every statement out of the administration to include that bimbo who is the spokesperson for it, that blonde bimbo, has indicated to me they do not understand the nature of this conflict.
The leading factor of which is we're taking on a people who are 3,000 years old, 90,000,000 strong, 53% Persian, and who have lots of problems, but who will seal themselves into their very doom in order to give us a truly vicious headache. And that's what they're embarked on. And they're not gonna stop. They're not gonna cease until the last one of them is dead. I mean, we can route out all the Kurds we want to try and hire them to fight for us and others like that in the region.
And therein lies another disconnect in our understanding of this conflict, the nature of it. The objective of Bibi Netanyahu for whom we're fighting this this war is chaos, not putting in Tehran, a regime that would run a reasonably quizzling state or at least a state that got along with The United States and sold us the soil and everything else. He wants chaos, total chaos in the region just like he tried to get in Syria because it's his plan and people behind him like Natal Naftali Bennett and others to run rampant over the entire Lavant from ho ho. Ready for this, Erdogan? From Turkey to Eastern Africa.
That is Netanyahu's goal, and, oh, by the way, all the Arabs in between. That's what he's after. Don't think that when he dies or goes to jail or whatever, it will stop there because they'll still be doing it. Turkey right now needs to worry about, for example, intelligence assets of Mossad and other assets too that are operating in Cyprus and in Southern Greece, preparing the battlefield, if you will, for when they march on Turkey. So the nature of this conflict that I did not necessarily touch upon in my response that you sort of quoted from there is that it has every potential, not just to go regional, but to go global.
To marry itself with Ukraine, for example, with our efforts in Georgia, with our efforts in Armenia and in Azerbaijan, with our efforts all along the southern rim of the Soviet Old Soviet Union to destabilize Russia and ultimately to aim an arrow at the heart of China. All of this is a part of that. Every bit of what I just said and more is part of the warp and woof of the nature of this conflict. And we're crazy if we think that it's gonna be confined to a few days and a few bullets and bombs, and then we're gonna march triumphant up on the hill and say, have a new regime in Tehran or whatever. First of all, Netanyahu is not gonna permit that.
And second, we're not gonna be able to achieve it. So that's what I meant by those general comments is we do most importantly of all, to a t, we do not understand the nature of the conflict upon which we have embarked.
Speaker 0: Well, how would you have planned it? I mean, not not not that you would endorse it, but if if again, from your previous roles there in the US government, how would you carry out such an attack if if indeed that this was an objective to and what would be the main risks, I guess? Where where where would your concerns be?
Speaker 1: Well, the only answer to that question, if I were chairman of the joint chiefs of staff or advising him as I was with going out, I would say, don't start this conflict. You do not wanna use the military instrument in this way in this region, period. It was forty years US policy not to use the military instrument from ground bases in the region. We're seeing one proof of that right now, and I can't believe that Marco Rubio was so delinquent in his duties. But I probably have to blame every secretary who stayed all the way back for Tony Blinken and Rex Tillerson and a host of others.
The forms, the f 70 sevens, the neocombatant, noncombatant evacuation operation forms that tell you where everyone is in your ambassadorship, every American, every American citizen. You have to have their name, telephone number, passport, all these things, and you have that all so you can evacuate them. We didn't. We didn't. And I'll tell you why we probably didn't if it just wasn't crass stupidity on the part of Marco Rubio because we didn't wanna give warning.
We didn't want the Iranians to see the not come back noncombatant evacuation operations taking place and to understand, woah. Diplomacy notwithstanding, we're going to war because the Americans are gonna attack. So now we have a lot of American citizens stranded and very difficult to get out because the airports have been closed. You can't fly in. You can't get them out.
So we might have some civilian casualties there before this is over, and I lay that directly at the feet of the secretary of state for an incompetent job concentrating on too much other than his real responsibilities. So all that to say, I wouldn't start. The military instrument is not the instrument to use in the Lavada, period. That's my advice to you, mister chairman. Please, under the new law, the Goldwater Nichols Act, the DOD Reorganization Act of 1985, I have the same power you do to advise the president.
So you come in with me to the White House? That's what I'd say to the second Pete, you come in with me to the White House? I'm exercising my right under Goldwater Nichols. I'm going to advise the president. You come in with me?
If you're not, I don't care because I'm gonna tell him, don't do this, which apparently Kane did try, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, did try to register some objections. I'm told they were based on munitions we don't have, particularly air defense missiles, on the danger for surface combatants in the region given the incredible array of missiles Iran has and some other things like that. But he was not a happy camper, I don't think, about using the military in this matter.
Speaker 0: I wanted to circle a bit back to what you said about Turkey because this is this is an interesting element, this whole war, It's spreading so fast. I mean, we're in day five, and we already see yeah. Lost track of how many countries have been pulled into this and been attacked. And Look
Speaker 1: look at India, for example. They don't have a twenty five days of on hand. It's about $15,000,000,000 they've gotta raise immediately just to reach the oil prices as they are now, and they're gonna go higher. So you're right.
Speaker 0: But the pulling in Turkey, think, yeah, that would be a disaster. I I don't think they could be pulled in because they say they're not a participant. They don't wanna let they deny that Israel and The US allowed to use their airspace. They, you know, they don't like Iran attacking the Gulf States, but they're also not happy about America attacking, you know, Iran. So they they they kind of just want to distance themselves from the whole thing.
But you were you were you were mentioning this wider ambitions of Israel in in the region. And when you had The US ambassador to Israel, Huckabee, he was in interviewed by Tucker Carlson. And, you know, Tucker Carlson asked, what what you know, does Israel have right to do this? And, well, you know, more or less half the Middle East, if they can take it, they should have it. More or less, that was the message because God gave it to them or something along those lines.
Half you know, this is a this must surely shock the region. And as you said, with with Turkey, it's also trying to reposition itself in the world. Again, America's not the only game in town. There's a multipolar world. They wanna diversify.
They don't wanna join any anti American groupings. But on the other hand, they have to look after their own national interests as well. So how do you see the do you see any pathways to Turkey being pulled into this mess now?
Speaker 1: I think they're already in it, really. I I know what you're saying, and I know what their public voice has indicated, but I think they're already in it. I think they are very concerned about Israel storing up the Kurds and arming the Kurds, which is happening, I think, in order to fight Iran and having that battle turned around the other way because Erdogan is not like any any Kurdish group being armed to the teeth as Israel is apparently doing with these people. So I think they're already watching it very closely. They've got people on the ground.
They got people in the area. They got people reporting back to Agra. I I don't know where they'll go, though. That's the question here. Because they Erdogan and Netanyahu apparently had a meeting that I'm told was really, really pure Netanyahu convincing Erdogan that his future lay with the capitalist ingenuity, the energy, the bombast, the talent, and so forth of the Jews in Israel.
I mean, Netanyahu is very explicit about this, especially when he's talking to other leaders. You join with me, and we'll own the Mediterranean and much more than that. You join with me, and you will have access to the highest degree of technological talent, the highest degree of AI skills. And don't you believe for a moment that the empire is that? We are.
We are. So align yourself with me, and you'll be on the cutting edge of the new Mediterranean world led by Israel and you. He always would add that. I'm I'm telling you how that today works, and and it's stunning that people keep falling for it. Not Trump, but Erdogan is supposed to be a little smarter than that.
But I think he and I'm not so sure Modi, and Modi is almost as bad as Netanyahu in his desire to kill Muslims. So that's why he's been so supportive of what Netanyahu is doing in Gaza and on the West Bank and elsewhere. So but Modi's got a shock coming to him too as I was indicating in my preliminary comments. India doesn't know what it's gonna do now. 60% of its oil oil comes through the Strait Of Abu 60%.
China only has about 21%. And already, they've they've only got twenty five days on hand right now. Already, price of West Texas Intermediate, Brent crude, the benchmarks, is going up. And when I did the exercise in Beijing in a much more cooperative world with the Chinese, the Japanese, the Europeans, everybody was there. Lloyd's of London, MARAD, most of the shippers were there looking and observing.
It went to $200 a barrel until, in this case, in the Strait Of Malacca and in off Rastinura in Saudi Arabia, which at that time was about 8 and a half million barrels per day productive capacity. That was a serious blow. That that's what really sends prices up. And shippers wouldn't ship and insurers wouldn't insure. So you had a real problem.
And because of the cooperative the the cooperative spirit in the world at that time and very visible at this simulation, the Chinese actually went back to their MOFA, their Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to get permission to make a decision in this game. It was so serious to them. Chaz Freeman was there, and, you know, he speaks manner and fluently. They didn't know that. And so Chaz is sitting there listening to everything they're saying and understanding it.
At a later breakfast when he revealed the fact that he did, they were quite stunned, and they were going over their notes to see what they'd said. All to say that we came to agreements on shifting oil all across the world. We shifted oil away from China toward Korea, away from Alaska and toward Russia. We moved oil because it was so serious. This is the only commodity on the face of the earth that every state extant needs, and we found that out in that game.
As I said, the price went over $200 before we got through. I think we're looking at another potential for that and without the cooperative spirit in the world. I mean, can you tell me what kind of spirit we got in the world right now? Much of it laid at the feet of the empire we're creating. But I don't know what it's gonna mean in the long term, except I think a lot of people like Putin are gonna make a windfall profit, and a lot of people like Modi are gonna be sorry they ever said a word about anything because they're gonna be in tough, tough shape.
I was told this morning by an Indian who knows India pretty well, knows business in India pretty well, and he said this will be a tragedy of the first order for us if we really have to pay what is being forecast that we might have to pay. On top of all of that, let's look back at the empire. Trump made a promise. I think the promise actually started in his first administration, but it certainly recurred at in his campaign for the second and in the opening days of the second. He made a promise to the American people that he would restore and fill up the strategic reserve.
500,000,000 I think it's billion gallons. Yeah. It has to be billions, is the figure that is what the security state says essential. We're at 415 right now. He didn't put a penny in there.
He didn't put a gallon in there. So we're sitting in a situation too where we might have to ramp up production. We might have to do all manner of things in order to get what we need, and it's gonna cost it's gonna cost majorly. And it's all because he didn't bother to do anything in fulfilling his promise to put the reserve back where it should be. So all of these things are playing in the nature of this conflict to make it what I say a much more serious exchange of arms, if you will, than anybody right now is thinking, even probably including Tehran.
This is serious business. And the fact that I know positively that nuclear weapons in Israel are being moved, that some have probably already been uploaded or at least put in the stages of uploading. I know that Netanyahu would not hesitate to use a nuclear weapon. That's another dimension to it. We have a really strange phenomena here.
We have two nuclear armed states, one avowed, The United States, and one criminal, Israel, attacking a non nuclear state. You can't make this stuff up. This is extraordinary what we've done, showing Iran that they made a huge mistake. They should have built a nuclear weapon, and then they'd be in North Korea's state. They might be a pariah, but they would be safe, and they wouldn't be being pummeled with bombs and missiles.
But there's the other question that I have of my military colleagues. How is it that you're going to win this exchange of modern day armaments that you were schooled in majorly or should have been since the special military operations started in Ukraine? How are you gonna do this when you don't have the munitions? And from everything I'm hearing, Iran does. And you are not attriting what Iran has fast enough to keep up with the missile shortage you have.
And Iran is doing this very carefully. They're not expending things rapidly. They're pounding Israel as they can. They the very first time they shot something in there that Israel wasn't aware of, it was just a simple little drone, and they they kill something like 60 people, wounded twenty two, or killed twenty two, wounded sixty, six were missing, whatever. And they're all civilians, which is not normally what Iran does.
But when you've got a barrage coming in now and Israel hides a lot of military facilities underneath or alongside civilian installations on purpose because it knows Iran doesn't like to hit civilian targets. So you you just you have so many imponderables here. And when I hear people like Hanks, Seth, and others saying or Trump bragging that we have more missiles as you shake a stick at, well, I know how many missiles you have, mister president. I can give you the total. You probably don't even know what the total is.
I can also tell you that when they hit Bahrain and Bahraini's cheered, for example, cheered that Bahrain had been hit, fifth fleet headquarters, they also took out apparently, I've got pretty good word of this, took out the vertical missile launcher loading apparatus, the crane and everything you need to load the vertical. Very complicated process loading these vertically fired missiles in these combatants. So they gotta go all the way to Diego Garcia now, which is a fairly long trip to go there and go back. So all kinds of things are happening right now that lead me to believe that not only do we do we not understand the nature of the conflict, we simply don't understand our capacity to wage it. And the president talking, however, offhand about ground troops and Hagsef talking about ground troops is pure nonsense.
You could put a million American soldiers in Iran, and they disappear in five years. They either all be dead or prisoners or, you know, lost somewhere. We put 12,000,000 men into a 70,000,000 country called Germany, if you will, and Japan was another 70. And that was a that was a colossal effort that we only restricted because we needed so many people back in industry that we counted on the Soviets, of course, to really take the bear mob on and do the damage to it, and they did. But look at the comparison.
I mean, here we're looking at a 90,000,000 country, huge country, much larger than Iraq, and the terrain, much more difficult than Iraq, and pretty good cohesion among the 53% that are Persian, if not most of the rest of them, especially since we've done what we did, like bombing the school and killing the children. No better way to fuse a population against you. And for that matter, killing the religious leader who wasn't hiding, who wasn't stuck down in a bunker. He was in his office in his home because he was ready to be martyred, and he was martyred. And he will be remembered as a martyr, and he's probably done more to bring the two sects of Islam, the two major sects of Islam together than anything in a long time.
So the nature of this conflict is going to eat us up, and they, except Rubio, Trump, have no concept of it.
Speaker 0: But, yeah, I well, this what you're saying is it's there's so many strange things that have happened. For example, The US spent all this time trying to convince India not to buy Russian oil, and now they, you know, they they wish they they were buying more. But also this idea about the all the the shortage of ammunition. Trump, he went out on truth social and wrote that, you know, we have unlimited of these weapons. And then on the same day, they started pulling back at least discussing putting sending the THAAD missiles and Patriots from South Korea.
It's to send it, you know, to the war theater in against Iran. So, you know, all this everything it says is just is just nonsense. This is just they still value it. But
Speaker 1: If you give me just one moment because that's great. That's a very poignant subject. Nothing gives an ally less faith than you than when you get into duress. I've been there. I've done this.
And you take your equipment designed expressly to defend them away and put it in another conflict. That says to that ally, I can't trust these people. And right now, in this case, South Korea is debating. Every day they debate in their in their clustered rooms. They debate whether or not they wanna stay in the alliance.
And it's obvious why. Because they understand the only reason we're on the peninsula is to fight China, not to protect Korea, and they don't wanna fight China. Thank you very much. They've got a good relationship with China. It's a hell of an economic relationship.
They don't wanna fight China, and they know we're there to fight China from their peninsula. What's that mean for them? So we're gonna lose Korea. I I predict we're gonna lose them within twenty four months, and this just sped that up a bit.
Speaker 0: But on the on arming Kurdish groups, this is something The US now is seriously discussing. Again, the the ramifications is beyond it it's it's a huge topic because, first of all, what would this mean for The US Turkish relationship? Because this is something that will alienate the Turks even more as you start building up the Kurdish groups. But this has also been done before, though. That is in 1991, president Bush encouraged Iraqis to rise up against Saddam Hussein, and they were, you know, they were said that they were, you know, left to their own and slaughtered.
Also in Syria, they were also seen as being used to Kurds again against Assad, and then, yeah, also seemed to be abandoned. So I'm not sure I'm not sure how how well you know the Kurdish groups in Iran, to what extent they're able to get them on board as, well, being frontline soldiers. But but if you have these four countries with a lot of Kurds, that is in Iraq, Syria, Iran, and Turkey, and the The US now armed the Kurds in three out of four of those regions, This can't be good for relationship with Turkey. This is a massive military power, by the way. And, also, what will do this mean for Iran?
That's also tied to it because it, you know, a few days ago, we were still pretending that the the purpose of the war was to help protesters and, you know, stop ballistic missiles. Now we're this is about this was about stoking civil war. This is burning a country down, 90,000,000 people with hundreds of thousands, without millions dead if we're if they're successfully in triggering a civil war. So I guess the humanitarian way of selling the war was always stupid. We do it every every time, and it works every time.
So I I I get I get it, but but but surely that must be out the window now.
Speaker 1: I think it's unconscionable what we've done. That's you know? So what's new? People tell me. People ask me in emails.
What's new, Larry? You were there. You saw how unconscionable we are under a whole series of presidents since especially since George w Bush and 09/11. But I think there's a new tone intent to this, and it it it's that way, I think, because we have, as I said, so little understanding of the region and so little understanding of the people. At the same time, we're killing them at a rate that's probably fantastic once we find out how many are dead already.
I'm hearing a 150 or a thousand or whatever in Iran. I with all the ordinance that Pete Hegstaff says has been dropped, if that's all they've killed, then they are sorry shots. That's all I gotta say. Because there are people all over the place in that country, especially where they're attacking. And we already seen they killed children in the school.
I think they hit a hospital now. They had nurses running out in the street. Not very good targeting dudes. All to say that I don't think we care anymore. I really don't think we care.
We've been taught, carefully taught, by Netanyahu who doesn't care a hang about all the civilians, men, women, children, babies, dogs, cats, and everything else he's killing in Gaza and the West Bank. Now listen to John Hagee just a few minutes ago right before I came on with you, the head of Christians United for Israel. Here's John Hagee up there just like Huckabee saying this is a holy war. This is a holy war. And you you boys and girls out there, we're praying for you.
We're praying for you, but you are on the right side. You are bringing about Armageddon. You're bringing about the return of Jesus Christ. This is this is a guy who influences a lot of Americans with his preaching about being on Israel's side, like Huckabee demonstrated in that freighter interview he gave, but nonetheless, he told the truth, told the truth on Netanyahu in particular. So we've got all these different currents working right now.
We've got Hegseth working on the US armed forces at the rank level with preachers and Christianity and taking their oath to God and Jesus instead of the constitution. And we got him working on the upper ranks by letting people go. This director of the joint staff, three star navy admiral that he just let go. He's carefully vetting the military so that when January 6 comes again, the military will not stand on the sidelines. He's building the military to support whatever coup has to whatever Trump has to do, whether it's a full fledged coup or canceling the midterm elections or something in between.
He's building a military to do that, and it's really alarming watching him do that. And this is a perfect reason once we find out how badly enmeshed we are and have to either withdraw or double down and can't double down because we don't have any men and women to double down with in terms of ground forces. And hexes has already talked about ground forces. We can't do that. The most we could put on on the on the ground in Iran is 400, 500,000, and I don't think we could do that just as Netanyahu's finding out with this 90,000 reservists call up.
Lots of them aren't showing up. Tell me where 18 and 19 year olds in this country where we'd have fully mobilized, would go if they suddenly found out they were subject to the draft, Mexico and Canada. We we can't do this, Glenn, and yet we are posturing as if we can, even to the extent of going all the way and mounting an invasion of Iran. Someone asked me, well, how would you ever do that? I said, oh, oh, you you got amphibious bottoms.
We don't have many. Marine Corps has been complaining for twenty years, It's gotten worse every year, but there's enough if we throw them all together, even the broken ones, and we sail them over there, and we put the marines, even the broken ones, on these bottoms. We could probably somewhere around Banderabas or, you know, somewhere on the Southern Coast there, we could put a force ashore. It would be swallowed. Within six months, it would disappear.
So that's where we are, and it's absurd. Your question about the Kurds from which I deviated majorly, I dealt with the Kurds most closely in Northern Iraq. Operation provide comfort and then the absolute backing away from our promises to them, and they're saying never again and starting a fairly in fact, in terms of Iraq today, modern Iraq today, they're probably the most successful portion of Iraq. So many other Erbil and other places up there, and they've gotten a good agreement now with Baghdad about the oil. And the majors are back in because the majors did not wanna go in there and mess with that Kirkuk and Mosul oil because if there was a dispute between Baghdad and the Kurds, the majors didn't want the lawsuits that might fall out of that.
So they're apparently going back in now because they've settled that. This will perturbate that. This will perturbate that measure. So that's your your Iraqi Kurds who had come to a modus vivendi with Turkey. They they they were getting along pretty well because the they did they said they would not rile up the Turk the Kurds in Southeastern Turkey.
They would not send agents into Turkey, and they pretty much live by that. And Turkey promised not to invade them. They periodically invaded them and pounded them a little bit. In Syria, it's a different ballgame altogether. I think what best describes Syria is chaos for everybody, all the groups, except Israel.
Israel has been busy going around and making sure every little foot it consolidates is consolidated in a way that's defensible. So they're taking little pieces of Syria as they go along, and they don't give a damn about Damascus. They'd like to have it and probably covet it very much, but they don't give a damn right now about it. And then as far as the Kurds as they overlap in Iran and Syria, I think that's the most dangerous group right now because they haven't gone through this process of learning, such as it was, that the Kurds in Northern Iraq have. So they're apt to try something just just because it's arms and they're free or whatever.
But I don't think they'll be very successful because I think the Iranians have that sort of thing in mind. One of the reasons they got the the helicopters from Russia, the latest shipment of major end item equipment from Russia was helicopters, attack helicopters. I think the reason they got those was just that. They're the best weapon to use against these border infiltrators, if you will, these armed people that are trying to overthrow the Iranian Republic and coming from places in the in the northern part of the Persian Gulf and on up into the Azerbaijan and Armenia. They're best filled with helicopters.
So I think that's what they got the helicopters for. They anticipated this, and they said, okay. Come on. That plus SAS. They wanted to take on the British SAS with these helicopters too because the warfare has proven over the last decade or so that's the best way to use against irregular forces like that that are regular, you know, guerrillas that are actually working for a state.
So I think the Iranians have thought this out. I really do. I think they've thought it out. No doubt there will be some surprises for them, but of all the contestants in this conflict, they've thought it out the longest and the best.
Speaker 0: As you spoke, some contradictions came to mind. That is the USS, the running government is unacceptable because it's a theocracy that you have the religious leadership having political power. But at the same time, you have The US ambassador Huckabee saying Israel should control half the Middle East because God gave it to them, and also we have to prepare for while you're fighting a holy war, you know, and pledging allegiance to Jesus, all of this. And but it's a little bit same with the nuclear weapons as you also suggested. That is, we have to fight the Iranians so they can't develop nuclear weapons.
However, they said that they won't develop nuclear weapons. Our intelligence say they're not developing nuclear weapons. They signed a nonproliferation treaty. They said they agreed to the JCPOA with additional inspections for transparency, allowing in the IAEA. And they were all doing all of this while an illegal nuclear power, Israel, which didn't sign the nonproliferation treaty and acquired nuclear weapons, and that they demand that Iran must be disarmed on nuclear weapons it doesn't have or or stop a nuclear program it doesn't have, nuclear weapons program.
It is it's all very bizarre to to see these contradictions.
Speaker 1: But Throw one more bizarre aspect of it in there. Trump destroyed that program, remember, with the b twos?
Speaker 0: Oh, yeah. It's obliterated. And also in the White House press release, it said anyone claiming it's not obliterated are spreading fake news. Yeah. Now here on the other side of that, I say, it is very bizarre.
It's I I don't think they thought out the narratives yet either in terms of I saw Rubio talk to the to the journalist. He was making the point that, listen. The the this was we had it was justified war. We had the right to attack because the threat was imminent. So why why would Iran attack you?
Well, Israel would attack Iran, and when that happened, Iran would attack us probably. So that that made it imminent. Now it's legitimate. So then they said, okay. So Israel started it.
They they they pulled us in. No. No. No. That's not what I said.
It's like, yeah. It's pretty much what you said. So He got the they don't have the story. It's very at least in Iraq, as horrible as it was, they were hammering on about weapons of mass destruction. All the media were repeating the same talking points.
You know, there was a narrative in place. When it wasn't, you know, they had the fallback option of, okay. We're just spreading democracy. But here, they're actually contradictory narratives, and it it doesn't you know, we have to help Iranians. You know, they deserve freedom and peace and, oh, a brutal government.
At the same time, we're bombing, you know, the airport, hospitals, schools, the civilian residents. I mean, it's just this yeah. Just to to top it all off, even, the speaker, Mike Johnson, he he he came out and gave a speech, and he was making the point that Iran started this war. They declared war on us. We never went to war.
We had an operation. He didn't call it a special military operation, but an operation. And and then now they they Iranians started the war. It wasn't us. We were just bombing a little bit.
And, he was also making the point that what they did is un unforgivable. They attacked American embassies in Saudi Arabia, and all this is sovereign territory. But but you bombed their schools, their hospitals. This is also sovereign territory. It's really you should watch this.
It's a crazy speech. And but it's the same kind of contradictions and the failure to construct a cohesive narrative for everyone to kind of rally around, but there's nothing there.
Speaker 1: At least I'll say this for John Ege. I I I find it really makes me ill to listen to him, but he says the truth. We are out there. You are out there. You are crusaders for Jesus Christ.
We are going to win. And, of course, what he's gonna win is the rapture. Then Jesus is gonna come down and kill all the unbelievers and establish a thousand year kingdom, and all these people will be wafted up to heaven in this kingdom. But he at least he's consistent, and he doesn't make any bones about it. These people lie all the time, and the lies are becoming so pow one on another that Rubio if you saw that, you you you've saw the same one I did, I guess, because he's actually picking the questions because he knows this reporter's smart or he knows this one.
So he's like, I'm not extra. I'm not talking to you. You. You. You.
He got so flabbergasted. I thought he was gonna flip a lid lid right there on the spot. I wish he had. We we can't keep our narrative straight, not only amongst people, except Rubio, Trump, anybody speaking that Bimbo who speaks for the administration. Not only is that inconsistent, but the individuals are inconsistent themselves from hour to hour and day to day.
Who the hell in America could make heads or tails out of anything in terms of what Trump is really trying to achieve? And I think that's why you're seeing polls that show less than 29, 28% of Americans support this.
Speaker 0: Well, he ran on no wars. Now he's doing exactly the opposite. But early on, you you were discussing how how, like, essentially, the world won't be the same again after this perhaps. That is, how will this affect the relationship, you think, between The Gulf States and The United States or Israel and The United States for that sake? Those are big questions.
But,
Speaker 1: you know, those are huge questions. I I think you you probably need to start with how much of this and I I've been taking the task by a number of listeners in the last forty eight hours that for not enumerating my thoughts on this. I'm not sure what they are. There are some people out there who believe, and some of them are in a position to know more than I, that this is all about China and secondarily Russia. And that what we saw was an avenue of opportunity, if you will, that we could mask in things like Iran's nuclear program and ballistic missiles and everything else about which we don't give a hang.
What we're trying to do is damage China and along the way Russia. And they cite as prima facie evidence of that the fact that what did Russia and China do? They signed a trilateral, not a bilateral, each with Iran, but a trilateral defense back with Iran. That showed everyone that they were in for whatever might come. Well, we're we're using this to go after China and, as I said, secondarily, Russia.
We're still agitating in Georgia. We're still agitating in other states along the southern rim of the old Soviet Union, Russia today. We're still trying to do damage to Russia in that way. Tbilisi is the most obvious one right now where the government's hanging on by the skin of its teeth. And that's a sound argument.
If if the great game is afoot again and afoot in a way that shows some astute players, I just don't see the astute players. I see chaos. I don't see the great game being orchestrated by a czar in Moscow and, you know, a potentate in London and someone else in the Ottoman Empire or whatever. What I see is chaos, and I see China and Russia ultimately benefiting from that chaos. Maybe not prima facie in your face ultimately or in this particular theater, but I think ultimately they're gonna benefit from it because they're winning.
I'm sure Xi Jinping doesn't want anything to do with the hot war, but I'm sure he would not refuse it if it came to an opportunity to do mortal damage to the empire that would not accrue to his disadvantage. One of the reasons he hasn't moved any faster with economic sovereignty, if you will, over the world is because he understands how important the Western economies, particularly The US, are to the global economy, and he doesn't wanna do it precipitously and dangerously. I was really surprised he just came out now with the new mandate that the renminbi is gonna replace the dollar. He essentially said in that statement I passed it by Chaz Freeman so I'd know that the Mandarin was translated probably. He says in that statement, we are the number two economy in the world.
I think he's, you know, not boasting industrially, Chinese capitalism, technologically, militarily, and so forth. I think they're the number one. The one area we aren't paramount in is finance. And then he goes on with the operative statement. The only way we can do that I didn't want to do this.
Deng Xiaoping is rolling over in his grave as I say these words. I didn't wanna do this because I know how debilitating it is. I am gonna put the renminbi forward as the world's new transactional reserve currency, a replacement for the dollar. He said that in writing. So that means he's ready for the fight now and ready to finish it.
But I don't think he wants to finish it in terms of blood, in terms of bombs and missiles, and maybe even nuclear. I think he wants to finish it indirectly, if you will. Good good old Sun Tzu action out there. But I wouldn't try him. I wouldn't try him.
And if he figures out that this is an effort not just to block his Southwestern Road base road initiative and the effort to build a new trade route up along the Gulf and into the heart of Russia, If he figures out that this is really aimed at him, he will throw his way into this conflict and terminate it very early. Just submarines, Glenn. Russia and China together could take care of every combatant in the Arabian Sea, just with submarines. It is the most hospitable seawater on Earth to submarine operations, convection zones, salinity levels, convergence zones. You can actually be in the top of the art attack submarine beside a top of the art enemy attack submarine a 100 meters apart and not know where you are, not know your enemy's over there or he know you're over there.
Passive and active sonar is not operative to the extent it should be in that kind of water. So you you got a 100, maybe a 100 submarines that could be active in there with this with the Chinese diesel electrics that are very slow and quiet. You got torpedoes that can be fired that don't show wakes, that sink ships without identifying what sunk them. You're talking about a real naval war here that we would lose. No question in my mind.
Yes. We've got some very sophisticated submarines too, but the old adage about the best weapon to use against a submarine is another submarine. It's hogwash. The submarines are the most deadly weapon on the face of the earth. They still are.
They were in the war in World War two, and they are now. We took a lot of casualties in The Pacific because Chester Nimitz and Doug McArthur and even Franklin Roosevelt didn't understand that nor admiral Stark or admiral King. Submarines had Japanese eating rats in August 1945. We had just devastated them with our submarines. People say, well, you couldn't get a diesel.
Are you kidding me? Tang and Wahoo, the two top killers in the Pacific, made 10,000 mile patrols. They went all the way to the Formosa Straits and attacked Japanese shipping and then went back to Pearl. Yeah. They they got long legs, long legs, and speed in those long legs too.
So, you know, this is just ripe for exploitation by people who know what they're doing, and Putin's navy is not tied down.
Speaker 0: Oh, it is well, that's what I meant. There's so many ways this can go terribly wrong. And if you're sitting in Moscow or Beijing and you see the possibility of The US, you know, knocking out the Iranian peace on this massive Eurasian chessboard, it will be it will be a disaster. So it's also an opportunity to rebalance, essentially, the hegemonic ambitions. So and much like the way the Chinese saw the war in Ukraine.
They know that if NATO was able to knock out Russia, that they're next. And so it's no. I think it can go wrong. Do you see other any other wider implications here in terms of China challenging the dollar? They can't live with this.
But the the Ukraine, surely, they're running out of weapons as well as Zelensky is not looking happy these days. He's trying to trade, you know, trade in some get some more patriots by offering drones, but that's not happening. So did you see other parts of the world being in impacted by, yeah, the the attack on Iran?
Speaker 1: I do, and I see an indirect impact of Ukraine, and it's this. You know, in 1865, right after most of the observers on our battlefields in that civil war went home to Europe, They've been at Coal Harbor. They'd been well, they'd been at Antietam. They'd been at Gettysburg and then Coal Harbor and then a few other battles at the end of the war. Their messages back to Europe said, beware to their foreign ministries and to their leaders.
Beware. This is a million man army, battle hardened. We've seen them on the battlefield. They'll be after you next. Of course, eight by 1866, we pretty much demobilized and put a few soldiers out on the prairies to fight the Indians, you know, the Native Americans.
That was all. But they were scared. They were very scared. Russia has that kind of army today, the most battle hardened, well trained, well fought army in the world. And I would not be messing around with Georgia and Armenia, Azerbaijan, whatever down there.
I just wouldn't be doing it right now because, again, they are extremely competent. And we've had observers on that battlefield. So I know we have people, marines, soldiers, and others who are reporting back that this is not the army that started the special military operation. It's learned throughout the experience of new drone warfare techniques and such. It's learned.
So it is probably the deadliest army on the face of the earth right now. Okay. You slip off the line right now and you head on down to Odessa. You finish off consolidating Carson, you present that as a. You own the Black Sea and the Sea Of Azov, and now you say, you wanna mess with Georgia?
I mean, this is this is the game. It's afoot, and some of the people playing are neophytes, if even that.
Speaker 0: Well, I think that what they might be banking on as well that any minor peace deal, not only does it risk having a having a yeah. Giving a temporary pause for for NATO to rearm Ukraine and start again later, but also if it's limited in victory, the same problem could, you know, manifest itself other places. That is if you have NATO expanding eastwards, what happens to all these divided societies, be it the Moldova, Georgia? All of them can be new flashpoints. So I think a big victory in Ukraine would then send a clear message to, yeah, Moldova and Georgia to well, don't don't go down this path.
I also
Speaker 1: Lavrov, actually, I I think it was Ray McGovern or Larry Johnson or somebody told me this. They met with Lavrov when they were there. He actually said, the concern is NATO. The concern is NATO moving eastward. And anywhere it moves, we will check it.
And this is the most obvious example right here, the special military operation, but you need to understand what our concern is. No further.
Speaker 0: Well, if common sense would return, perhaps we would find solutions to these things. But well, thank you for taking the time and, yeah, giving us some of a hope for insights.
Speaker 1: I've been watching your shows, by the way, and I congratulate you on having several of them that were really informative.
Speaker 0: Oh, thank you. Appreciate it. Sure.
reSee.it AI Summary
I see the Trump administration shifting rhetoric from regime change to degrading Iran’s ballistic missiles, claiming an imminent attack to render the war legal. With regime change unlikely, they present an off-ramp framed as destroying missiles, arguing strikes reduce Iran’s stockpile, and push a narrative of victory to cover what seems like a predictable defeat.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
The Trump administration adjusts to the disasters that are coming: 1) They claim an attack from Iran was "imminent", a legal term suggesting the war is legal. 2) The objective of America's war has shifted from regime change to destroying Iran's ballistic missiles. This is an off-ramp as regime change is highly unlikely, while "degrading" Iran's ballistic missiles production and storage can be argued to have already been achieved. Indeed, the Iranian missiles raining down on US military bases is also reducing Iran's stockpile. These are the new narratives as the US must find a way to declare victory to cover up a predictable and humiliating defeat.
Video Transcript AI Summary
The speaker states that the United States is conducting an operation with a clear goal: to eliminate the threat posed by Iran’s short-range ballistic missiles and by Iran’s navy to naval assets. The speaker says the operation is focused on this objective and is progressing “quite successfully,” with the details of tactics and progress to be discussed by the Pentagon and the Department of War.
Two reasons are given for acting now. First, the speaker asserts that if Iran came under attack by the United States, Israel, or another party, Iran would respond against the United States. According to the speaker, orders had been delegated down to field commanders, and within an hour of the initial attack on Iran’s leadership compound, the Iranian missile forces in the south and in the north were activated to launch. The speaker notes that those forces were “prepositioned.”
Second, the speaker explains that the assessment was that if the United States stood and waited for Iran’s attack to come first, American casualties would be much higher. Therefore, the president made the decision to act preemptively. The speaker emphasizes that they knew there would be an Israeli action, and that action would precipitate an attack against American forces. The implication is that delaying a preemptive strike would result in greater casualties, potentially billions of dollars in losses, and more American lives at risk.
The overarching message is that the preemptive operation aims to neutralize Iran’s short-range ballistic missiles and navy threats before they are used in consolidation with anticipated Israeli actions and any Iranian counterattacks against U.S. forces. The speaker frames the decision as prudent and anticipatory, intended to prevent higher casualties and to maintain safety for American personnel and assets. The speaker stops short of detailing specific tactical methods, pointing listeners to the Pentagon and the Department of War for a deeper discussion of tactics and progress.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: United States conducted this operation with a fair clear goal in mind. I haven't got a chance to see a lot of reporting. I don't understand what the confusion is. Let me explain it to you, and I'll do it once again as clearly as possible. Perhaps, they'll report it that way.
The United States is conducting an operation to eliminate the threat of Iran's short range ballistic missiles and the threat posed by their navy, particularly to naval assets. That is what it is focused on doing right now, and it's doing quite successfully. I'll leave it to the Pentagon and the Department of War to discuss the tactics behind that and the progress that's being made. That is the clear objective of this mission. The second question that's been asked is, why now?
Well, there's two reasons why now. The first is it was abundantly clear that if Iran came under attack by anyone, The United States or Israel or anyone, they were going to respond and respond against The United States. The orders had been delegated down to the field commanders. It was automatic, and in fact, it bared to be true because, in fact, the within an hour of of the initial attack on the on the leadership compound, the missile forces in the South and in the North for that matter had already been activated to launch. In fact, the the those are even prepositioned.
The third is the assessment that was made that if we stood and waited for that attack to come first before we hit them, we would suffer much higher casualties. And so the president made the very wise decision. He we knew that there was going to be an Israeli action. We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn't preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties and perhaps even hire those killed. And then we would all be here answering questions about why we knew that indeed.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Douglas Macgregor: A New World Emerges: Iran Will Win & Israel May Not Survive https://youtu.be/yd_uJiRcl0Q https://t.co/mTmmysndFG
Video Transcript AI Summary
Colonel Douglas MacGregor and Glenn discuss the unfolding Iran war three days in, arguing that the conflict has become a regional war with global economic and strategic reverberations.
Key points and allegations:
- Iran has targeted at least 27 bases and port facilities across the region, from Kirlik Airbase to Dubai, effectively regionalizing the war. Oil markets anticipate disruption; Europe’s open price rose about 20% on expectations of supply cuts, with a potential rise above $100 per barrel.
- In the Gulf, inexpensive drones have breached what appear to be expensive air and missile defenses, affecting airstrips and airports. A large expatriate workforce in the UAE (about 4.6 million Indians and many Europeans and Americans) is stranded, highlighting economic disruption. Oil infrastructure damage is just beginning, with some Saudi refineries struck; more damage anticipated.
- The war’s consequences extend beyond Iran and Israel, potentially affecting India, Northeast Asia, Turkey, and Europe. The conflict did not begin with a joint US-Israeli attack; it began with an Israeli attack, with Rubio (Secretary of State-like comment) indicating that Israel started it, which the US later joined due to perceived insufficient posture.
- Reports indicate three F-15s were downed; casualties include American sailors and Marines, though the exact numbers are unclear.
- The rhetoric from Secretary Hagel (likely Hagerty) and Trump about Iran as a state sponsor tied to Israel is criticized as incautious. MacGregor argues the focus should be on Pakistan and Syria (where remnants of ISIS/Al Qaeda reside), noting Pakistan’s long-standing role as an incubator of radical Islam. He views the war as primarily about Israel’s aim to destroy Iran to enable greater Israeli regional hegemony, with the US fully committed.
- He predicts a long regional war and warns that logistics will be decisive: missiles are finite, and the US may exhaust its stock; many missiles used in Ukraine reduce available stock for Iran-related defense. He notes Hypersonic missiles and decoys complicate defense capabilities.
- European involvement is uncertain; Britain’s rapid response is unclear, and the broader European willingness to intervene remains doubtful. China and Russia are viewed as potentially pivotal if they decide to intervene; India is suggested as a potential mediator, given cultural ties and BRICS interests.
- The US’s strategic credibility and military power are questioned. MacGregor contends the US has shown unreliability, damaging its legitimacy and triggering broader regional and global realignments. He emphasizes that the world is moving toward a new order, with the end of Sykes-Picot-era maps and shifting alliances; Gulf monarchies may seek US withdrawal.
- Iran’s resilience is stressed: even if the supreme leader was killed, unity of command remains, and Iran’s dispersed military network complicates US efforts. Iran’s survival could enhance its regional influence; the longer the conflict lasts, the weaker the US and Israel appear, and the stronger Iran, Turkey, and others may become.
- The possibility of an escalation to nuclear warfare is raised: if Israel uses a tactical nuclear weapon to stop Iran’s missiles, Russia and China might intervene; this could force a broader confrontation. MacGregor doubts Israel’s ability to sustain a large front and warns this could lead to a strategic pivot by major powers.
- On outcomes and endgames: Iran seeks US withdrawal from the region; the US’s presence is likely to be forced out as Gulf states demand it. The interview suggests a collapse of US influence and a reshaping of the Middle East, with Persia re-emerging stronger. Israel’s survival is uncertain; extended fronts and exhaustion are anticipated.
- Trump’s role is described as constrained by Netanyahu: Trump is not a free agent, and there is little expectation of near-term strategic change in Washington. The potential for a negotiated end is deemed unlikely so long as Iran remains intact and steadfast.
Overall, the conversation frames the conflict as a turning point: a regional war with profound economic and geopolitical ripple effects, signaling the decline of US military hegemony in the Middle East and the possible reconfiguration of global power blocs, with Iran poised to gain relative strength if the conflict persists.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined today by colonel Douglas MacGregor, a decorated combat veteran, author, and former adviser to the US secretary of defense. Thank you for coming back on. We are now, yeah, heading towards the end of day three of the war against Iran, and I I think well, it's fair to say that I think Trump was hoping for a quick war, but this it doesn't appear that there will be any quick regime change operation happening here. How are you assessing it, though?
Is how how how should we, I guess, measure the developments of the war and what to expect?
Speaker 1: I think the first thing we can say is that the Iranians have targeted at least 27 bases, including port facilities in The Middle East, ranging from in Kirlik Airbase all the way down to, Dubai in The Gulf. So the war has been effectively regionalized, and the consequences of these actions cannot really be fully appreciated yet. Everyone knows about The Gulf and what the what has already happened in the oil markets. Today, the oil markets in Europe opened about 20% higher simply based on the probability that the oil supply would be disrupted for some period of time. So I think we're headed towards more than a $100 a barrel, and we'll get there pretty quickly.
How high? I don't know, but I think that's gonna happen. And if you look at a place like The United Arab Emirates, very inexpensive drones have defeated what appear to be some of the world's most expensive air and missile defenses and put a number of airstrips, airports out of business. You have to understand that in The Gulf, there are all sorts of international conglomerates, especially a lot of Indian conglomerates that do a huge, huge business through The United Arab Emirates and Dubai. All of this is effectively being shut down.
You also have millions of people. There are about 4,600,000 Indians who own businesses in The Emirates who are now stranded, and they are a critical component of the economy. In addition to those are, you know, hundreds of thousands, probably millions of Europeans, Americans, and others who are stranded. Right now, you've gotta cross the mountains down to Muscat in order to find an aircraft that'll take you out. I think the damage that's being done to the oil infrastructure is only now really beginning.
We have evidence that some oil refineries have been struck, particularly in Saudi Arabia. I think we're going to see more of that. So we're at the beginning of what is ostensibly a long regional war, And we haven't even begun to assess the possibility that others may become involved because this emergency created by the Gulf War affects India, it affects Northeast Asia, it affects Turkey, It affects Europe. Effectively, the entire world is now focused on this, war that is ostensibly between Israel and Iran. Now the funny thing about this war is that it did not begin with a joint Israeli American assault.
It began with an Israeli attack. And senator or I shouldn't say senator, secretary of state Rubio seems to have told the group of eight, these are senators in the US senate that are part of the senate armed services committee, that Israel began the attack. We had not been informed of it. We were not warned that they were going to do this. All we knew it was always a possibility.
And we decided to simply join in because we were not yet satisfied with our posture at the beginning of this. So we seem to have come late to the party, and now we've begun to feel the full impact of all these missiles. Number of missiles have been fired at ships that have yet to strike them, and we know that three f 15 fighters were downed. We're attributing that to friendly fire, Although, are some disputes about that in terms of others in the region and the world who seem to think the Iranians did it. In any case, we lost three f fifteens.
We didn't lose the pilots, but we have lost American sailors, soldiers, sailors, airborne, and marines. We just don't know how many. We've admitted, I think, to three or four, but I suspect there's more than that. So the question is, where are we headed? I think we're headed into a long campaign.
And, you know, you listen I'm sure you listen to statements by secretary Hagsef and president Trump laced with all this business about the the state sponsor of terrorism and how it has to be it will have to submit ultimately to Israel and The United States. I think these are very incautious and stupid statements. They don't comport with reality. I mean, frankly, Glenn, if we were interested in combating radical Islam, we would probably be focused on Pakistan and certainly on Syria right now, which is headed by the remnants of ISIS and Al Qaeda. Those two states don't seem to come up for discussion very much, and Pakistan in in particular has been the sort of incubator of radical Islam and Islamist terrorism for a long time.
So this is really about Israel's interest in destroying Iran and removing it as an obstacle to Israeli military hegemony or Jewish supremacy, however you wanna put it, And we're we're into it. We're committed to it. And I think, ultimately, logistics will probably have a big impact because we will eventually run out of missiles. And I think we're on the road already because I just don't think president Trump or his, advisers really believe that they would end up in a long war with Iran, and that's where they are right now.
Speaker 0: Well, besides from the military targets, we as you mentioned, we've seen attacks on ports, oil refineries oil refineries, shipping, airports, some hotels. There seems to be several civilian targets as well. How how do you did this take you by surprise, and how do you see the, I guess, the cost benefit to Iran here? Because on one hand, they wanna inflict as much pain as possible, but I assume they don't wanna pull in too many other external actors. Because doesn't this risk the the entering into the war, the Gulf States, even the Europeans suggested that they would come in and, you know, defend their assets, their bases, and their allies.
How how do you assess the, I guess, the calculations on the Iranian side?
Speaker 1: I think the Iranian is know that the Emirates and the Saudis have played a duplicitous game, that they have tried to play both sides to the middle as we say. So I don't think the Iranians regret any of that, and I think they want to make the world feel pain because they are feeling acute pain. So that's not surprising in the least. As far as Europeans are concerned, they've known from the very beginning Iran presents no threat. You know, that that was laughable when we insisted on this installation in Romania, this anti ballistic missile installation on the grounds that we were protecting our European allies from Iranian missile attack.
Nobody believed in that. That's nonsense. As far as Europeans intervening to do anything, I think the British have sent their f 20 twos. Whether or not they've done anything, I don't know. Now I know that their bases on Cyprus have been struck, and I assume probably put out of action.
So I I don't know what to make of European intervention. I think that's more hot air, but we'll see. They could certainly send some ships, but then again, they would be in harm's way. And it all depends on whether or not the European peoples are going to sign on for this. Again, you've got to distinguish Iran and the Shia from the vast majority of is is Muslims, who are Sunni and Arabs and Turks.
And I think the Europeans are a little more sophisticated than the Americans. They do not mix them up. They understand Iran is different, and Iran's interests are different. And Iran as a civilizational state, Persia, is a different is an entirely different animal from the rest of these post World War one artificial constructs. So, you know, we'll we'll see, but I I I don't expect much out of the Europeans.
I'm I'm more concerned about the Chinese than the Russians. And when I say concerned, I mean, I wonder how long they sit on the sidelines and allow this to go on because this is not in their interests, obviously. They want Iran to survive. Iran is a critical component of BRICS. It's part of the Belt and Road Initiative.
The Turks want Iran to survive. I haven't heard any complaints out of the Turks about destroying our air base at Enkirlik because they know that that's our air base, and they have always been reticent to allow us to operate from that base against anyone we wanted in the region. So I think we're we're seeing the world sort of move in an entirely new direction. I would argue this is the end of Sykes Picot. I think the maps are going to change.
I'll be very surprised if all these family dictatorships in the Persian Gulf survive in their current form. I think the damage that's being done economically is going to stay with us for some period of time. The Indians have already turned to purchase oil again from the Russians, and that makes perfectly perfect sense for them. I'm surprised they ever went along with us to begin with. The dollar is losing airspeed and altitude.
I mean, economically, this is a catastrophe. Financially, for us, I think it's a disaster. It's gonna take more time, but over time, it's going to get worse for us. Remember, we are the ones that have been boasting to the world about how powerful we are and how the entire world needs to shake in fear of the, American military power. Well, then people are gonna expect us to perform.
Iran, on the other hand, hasn't got to do anything other than survive. As long as Iran survives and the longer the war lasts, the weaker we look, the weaker Israel looks, and the stronger Iran looks. And I think Iran is going to survive. I don't see any evidence that it's going to suddenly pick up the phone, call Washington, and beg for mercy. Don't see that happening.
So we're in a real we're in a real trick. I think at the end of the day, we're gonna be swept out of the region. Look at what's happening in Iraq right now. The Shia are rising and the the Iraqi government wants us out of the country. It's wanted us out for years.
I think we're gonna have to get out. I don't think anybody living in The Gulf is gonna want us in in proximity to any of their harbors or or airports or anything else. So I I think this is a developing disaster for us. And Israel Israel's iron dome isn't working very well, and although we are definitely trying to fire missiles in support of Israel at air air and missile defense, the is the Iranians seem to have moved technologically much further than we anticipated. They are now able to deliver missiles that have decoys that, you know, produce multiple warheads, and then the real dangerous missile that you're trying to penetrate with flies through while we are preoccupied with decoys.
So this this is not working terribly well for us. But the interesting part is in the West, the media, as always, is showing us a a wonderful picture of American and Israeli military success. It's quite astonishing. I don't think that's the picture the rest of the world is is beginning to get.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Recently checked the media, and they one gets impression they're already planning for the new government to take over and how relations will be shifted. And it's quite strange how the narratives deviate so much from reality. But but this is then looking to be a long war. So do how do you expect the The United States and Israel, for that sake, to be exhausted?
Because you said you assume they will be exhausted first, and then I guess it's over. But will they run out of interceptive missiles? Are they have the limited ability to hit Iran? Or or what is it that you expect to first give in, or or is it simply that the Gulf States will demand that The United States put an end to it?
Speaker 1: Well, all of the ports that we habitually use to replenish our naval forces and to reload our naval forces with missiles and rockets and so forth, all of those have been destroyed. In other words, we're forced to fall back all the way to India, which is quite a distance from the region. Now we we can fall back to Italy at this point. I think Crete may be just out of reach. I hope so.
But but the point is that everything that we were accustomed to doing now has to change. War has become a much more arduous task for us. Remember, they've not only shut down the Straits Of Hormuz, they've also shut down the Suez Canal for all intents and purposes because they've shut down the Red Sea. So the commercial picture is grim. The military picture is problematic.
And I don't think that we can manufacture missiles at a sufficiently fast rate to keep up with their expenditure. And we have been supplying all the time vast numbers of missiles to Ukraine, And now we're beginning to feel the pain because so much of that is gone. It won't be long, perhaps a few more days before we begin to more economically expend our missiles, and that means that you can't shoot down most of what's being shot at you. Remember, you're talking about shooting at least two or three missiles at every incoming missile, and we still can't target successfully and knock down hypersonic missiles. And a lot of these missiles are coming in at Mach three, four, five, and six.
Those speeds are beyond our technological capability to to defeat. So I think logistically, yes, we're going to have a huge problem, and we may pause. Now whether or not the Russians and the Chinese are willing to mediate or the Indians. I think India would probably be the best choice for mediation. They are after all neutral despite Modi's recent visit to Israel, which I think was ill considered.
But nevertheless, Modi and and India have cultural ties to Iran. Sanskrit and Indian civilization are a component part of Persian civilization itself. So I I think there's an opportunity for the Indians to bridge the gap between us, the Israelis, and Iran, but we'll have to see. Right now, I think Iran is not dissolving into chaos. Yes.
We killed the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, but I don't see any evidence that that has disrupted unity of effort and command and control. So I and the other advantage that the Iranians have, and this is an important one, is that much of their capability is widely dispersed. That makes it very hard for us. And even on the best day, you know, historically, we've had a lot of trouble dealing with anything that's mobile. So, you know, I I just don't see in the near term any good news at all, and I hope that we are talking in Washington to others who may be able to help mediate some sort of end to this catastrophe.
But I know that over the weekend, we apparently expressed an interest in negotiation. I don't know through what channels, but apparently that came from the Trump White House, and the Iranians said not only no, but hell no.
Speaker 0: This is the cost are not ready to put an end to this war then. I mean, all it seems a bit foolish perhaps to put an end to it now given that, you know, the the other side could simply just replenish their missiles and come back again in a few weeks. But what what do you think the Iranians would want out of this war before they would let it come to an end?
Speaker 1: I don't know what they will say, but I think what they want is to get us out of the region. And I think we are going to oblige because this this war is something that we've helped to bring on, and we've aligned ourselves with Israel, which is a Pariah state in any case. Meaning Israelis are all already widely hated and despised for their program of mass murder and expulsion in Gaza. Now this war is only going to make those those matters much, much worse. So I think the Turks are now going to feel much more comfortable asking us to leave.
And I think, as I pointed out earlier in The Gulf, we will be invited to leave. In other words, I think we're sacrificing our position in the region strategically for the benefit of Israel, but I don't think Israel's going to benefit. And, you know, this sort of thing is going to have widespread repercussions. If you're sitting on the Korean Peninsula, you're already tired of the American military presence. You don't see the need for it because the Chinese are not interested in starting a war, and the Chinese have made it very clear to the Koreans that if they do anything, they will not be helped in any way by China.
I think the Koreans are probably saying it's time for the Americans to leave, and then we need to work with China to reunite the peninsula and come to some sort of stable solution on the peninsula. I think the Japanese are watching this and beginning to wonder just how tightly aligned with us they want to be. I guess my point is, do we look strong, powerful, and invincible and vulnerable or not? And unfortunately for us, we need to look invincible and invulnerable. Now we've opened ourselves up to all sorts of extraordinary problems that we might have otherwise avoided.
You know, military power is one of those things where until you use it, nobody really knows what you've got. Remember it in 1940, everyone was saying, thank God for the French army. The largest army in Europe, the best equipped, more tanks, more of this, more everything. That went away pretty quickly. So did the British army.
It didn't last very long. I I think we're living in a world today where the old era is ending and a new one is beginning, and there will be new rules for the future. And those are not going to be written in Washington. They're going to be written, I think, largely in Asia and to some extent in Europe and The Middle East, but it's going to be written by indigenous peoples, not us. That's the long term forecast.
How long will this take is anybody's guess. But right now, the Iranians are feeling a lot of pain, but they're inflicting a lot of pain, and there's no incentive for them to stop.
Speaker 0: Well, if one would wanna kick The United States out of the Middle East, I guess, well, we can go for three areas. The one would be, of course, the military presence, and the military bases are being pummeled, but the second, of course, is the economic interest. But the third would be what you also alluded to, The US credibility that is as, you know, all powerful, and essentially all countries that wants to have security should align itself with The US. How how do you see them wider, I guess, geopolitical ramifications of this, of US credibility being shattered in this way because this was seemingly what opposite of what Trump wanted. He he wanted to build up a very well, his whole approach, I think, is to show a lot of strength and hope that adversaries, yes, stand down.
And I thought this was also kind of the assumption that he would mount all this military force. As Witkoff said, Trump was very surprised they hadn't capitulated yet given that they saw all of this US military might. But what what happens now if it becomes evident that it's The United States that has to walk this whole thing back and find something of a dignified exit?
Speaker 1: Well, you're you're talking about an ignominious retreat, which is the last thing in the world that Donald Trump wants. We need to talk about, you know, how do we get there from here. And the problem is that we we've already displayed in the first twenty four to thirty six hours our tactical expertise, our tactical supremacy, if you will. We managed to kill a number of key personalities, not only the supreme leader. Tactics win battles, but ultimately, strategy wins wars.
We we have no strategy. When everybody asks, well, what's the purpose? Well, it sounded like it was regime change, but I think we've discovered at this point that regime change hasn't worked. This is a large country, 93,000,000 people, size of Western Europe. It seems to be holding together.
There's no reason to believe that it won't stay together at this stage. And the strategy is what then? If you can't remove the government, what do you do? Do you continue to lob missiles and rockets at it in the hopes that somebody will say, please please stop. We'll do whatever you want.
Maybe that's the goal. I don't think that's a reasonable goal. I don't think anyone has thought through the criticality of ending the war. How do you end it? And the thing that's funny is that I listened to secretary of of war say this morning, we didn't start this war, but we're going to end it.
Well, I think we did start this war. The Israelis started it, we jumped on board. All of the things that we continue to cite about it, the reasons for going to war are specious, but the most most depressingly stupid reasons are ones that go back forty seven years ago or forty years ago. You know, the numbers of people that have actually you could whose death you can trace back to Iran is in the low hundreds. It's not a large number, and the Iranians did not behave during the Iraq war any differently than we would have behaved if there were a similar war in Mexico.
In other words, you do what you can to deter the force that's on the ground in the neighboring country from entering yours. You know, the other thing is that we have, I think, 4,000 missiles left in our inventory, something in that in that regard. Maybe those are different kinds, cruise and ballistic. I don't know. Iran has about 450,000, so that's, that's quite a gap.
You know, the other thing is, you can kill a leader, but but you can't bomb a civilization into submission, and we've never understood what we were dealing with in Iran. Everybody talks about Iran as some sort of radical Islamic state. Nothing could be further from the truth. Iran is ultimately Persia, and that civilization is much older. And Persian civilization, Persian thinking, Persian philosophy, Persian art and history, all of those things have been asserting their dominance over the last twenty five to thirty years.
And the people of Iran have largely walked away from this more ideologically rigid form of Islam. It's not they didn't hate Khomeini and they didn't dance in the streets when he was killed. On the contrary, people saw him as a very, I I think, humble and decent human being. He sacrificed his life. He he stayed where he knew he would be killed.
Killing him has made him a martyr that even people that don't like Islam can honor. So I think we've galvanized the place against us. We've mobilized the people against us. I don't see anything good coming out of this. And and this is this is the problem with us.
We we project our values, our thinking, our experience onto others. Well, our experience may hold up in connection with European experience, but it doesn't match the experience of people in The Middle East and Asia or Africa for that matter or even Latin America. So that's why I think, you know, we're we're in a different world right now, and we don't even understand it. The the world is changing, and the old world is is ending, and we're fighting the emergence of the new world. I think we could say that, you know, the future of the world is not being written by us anymore.
And what is victory in this war? Well, I think truthfully, victory is stability. And we've done everything that we possibly could to destroy stability. Stability in markets, stability in trades, stability in commerce, stability in in interstate confidence. You know, we've once again demonstrated conclusively that we're completely unreliable.
You know, I've I've been saying for months that the decision to attack Iraq is made, and it was. It was only a question of when, never if, yet we continued with the fiction that there were negotiations underway. This has hurt us with Russia. It's hurt us with China. It's destroyed us in the Middle East.
We are rapidly following Israel into this corner reserve for pariah states. You know, I I you know, for instance, the Indians depend on 2,600,000 barrels of oil from the Persian Gulf to flow into their ports every day. You know, when that closes, every Indian family is going to effectively be made to pay a war tax that they never voted for. A $10 rise in crude means $15,000,000,000, in terms of the burden on the Indian economy. They're not the only ones.
This but we're we don't think in those terms. We don't think of what the impact is on others. There's no sense, of this sort of thing. And we're gonna pay I think we're gonna pay a terrible price, Glenn, and it's only just beginning.
Speaker 0: When Trump came to power a year ago, he I mean, he seemed to have some of the right ideas. Again, one of my concerns about The United States is it seems that the the strategy of the past thirty years doesn't work anymore. That is The United States exhausts itself and then incentivizes the other great powers to collectively balance it. So from my perspective, made sense for The US to pull a bit back, then it can strengthen its position, and the Eurasian powers will, to a greater degree, balance each other. And it looked like Trump was heading in that direction, so pull back from Europe, from the Middle East, focus instead on the Western Hemisphere, and and, well, it it all made sense.
Doesn't mean the Venezuelan operation was, you know, stroke of genius or anything, but at least, you know, he looked towards, yeah, their homeland, if you will. What happened here? How how I mean, after a year, he hasn't he's still in Ukraine. Again, that's one of the problems now, I think. They gave away a lot of the air defenses and other weapons, which could have been used, but also now cementing used position in in the Middle East.
Perhaps not cementing it, but he's spending a lot of resources. How how do you explain how well, what seemed to be a strategy, yeah, doesn't seem to be followed?
Speaker 1: Well, first of all, there is no strategy. You know, this is the problem. This new document that was published as a was supposed to represent new national military strategy, there's no real evidence we followed any of it. You know, focusing on the Western Hemisphere does not and should not mean invading other people's countries in the Western Hemisphere. You know, this is just ridiculous.
And, you know, again, it's sort of similar to what I said before. Talk about radical Islam and Islamist terrorism, and you attack Iran. It doesn't fit. If you turn around and say, we're gonna focus on the danger in Pakistan, the danger in Syria, that would be plausible, but not in Iran. At the same time, you say, we've got a huge drug problem.
We have a problem with human and drug trafficking. The locus for that, the main locus for it is Mexico. That is what is most dangerous to us, but we attack Venezuela when there was no real reason to do so. Venezuela was willing to do business with us. And then we kidnap the president and his wife.
We paid millions of dollars to pay off various people in the country to let us in. And then we talked about this brilliant military operation. Well, I'm sure it was brilliant. It's a police operation, a paramilitary police operation enabled by the US military. It's not a strategy.
It's not really an outcome. We don't control Venezuela. Venezuela controls Venezuela, and they can wait us out almost indefinitely. And that's exactly what's happening right now. In the meantime, we've changed nothing on the border with Mexico.
Oh, it's better than it was, but we haven't stopped the drugs and the human trafficking from pouring into our country. It's still coming in. It's not coming in as in the same rate as it was, but it's still coming in. And billions of dollars in in terms of hard cash are still flowing south into Mexico. So there's an awful lot that's just fiction, and I don't think there is any strategy because any sober minded American would have looked at the Middle East and say, this place does not need American military power.
If we involve ourselves here, we'll blow it up. Now that may suit Israel, at least temporarily, but I've never believed that that was good for Israel. I don't see any evidence that this thing called greater Israel that they talk about openly, which involves the acquisition of territory all around Israel to make Israel into this great state with, what, six, seven million people in it that are Jews has any chance of success. And I think what it has done is it has offended, angered, alienated virtually everyone in the region. So that I think before this is over, the question we'll be trying to answer is does Israel survive all of this?
That's the real question. I'm not sure they will. Iran will survive. It's been with us certainly for two thousand seven hundred years. You know, it's like going to war with China.
Will China survive? Of course, it will survive. It's been around for five thousand years. So will India. You know, the question is if you involve yourselves in these stupid wars is whether or not we, Americans, can survive it.
We're relative newcomers to the world. We're not a civilizational state per se. So all of these things are going to come up for discussion over the weeks ahead. And I think that for the moment, president Trump is just going to order everybody to continue to attack and bomb and and target and strike. That's all he can do.
He can threaten more sanctions, but I think that's lost its bite to a large extent. I think that's responsible for the hatred and hostility inside of Iran towards us. So I see nothing good coming of this for us. I think Persia, though, will reemerge from this as a much stronger and more influential entity.
Speaker 0: You say Israel may not survive. How would it go under, you think? Is it from The US pulling out, or is it economic consequences from this war? People will simply flee, or do you see them being militarily defeated? What what is the path?
All of the above.
Speaker 1: I mean, just go back and listen to mister Netanyahu explain his so called seven fronts. You know, that's not sustainable. Supposedly, the Israelis have now mobilized another 100,000 reservists. It'll be interesting to see how many of them show up for duty. There is talk in Israel about invading Lebanon to go after Hezbollah because you can't do everything from the air.
At at some point, Israel is going to end up exhausted and tapped out much like Ukraine. Today, the question is not will Russia survive, it's whether or not Ukraine survives. What will it be? It it certainly won't be what it was. So does that mean that Israel survives in some form?
Maybe. But it won't be what it was or what it is today. You know, the these things depend on a a number of things, but you've gotta look at the trend lines. The trend lines right now are not favorable.
Speaker 0: Well, what do you see now happening, though, over the days and weeks? I mean, what is a possible escalation? I I don't see necessarily what The US can do differently except perhaps, you know, attack or continue what what it's doing. But how do you see Iran possibly escalating? And given that, as you said before, the conflict's already very quickly become regionalized, do you see a possibility of it becoming global?
Well, under what condition do you think the the Chinese or the Russians would join? I mean, if they're watching what we're watching, they they might conclude that the Iranians are taking care of things on their own.
Speaker 1: Well, if the Israelis decide to use a tactical nuclear weapon or any nuclear weapon with the goal of stopping Iran's relentless missile attacks, attacks, I think that will change the situation dramatically. I'm not sure Israel will survive it. The Russians, the Chinese at that point would definitely intervene and make it clear to us that if this is not stopped and continues, that they will actively join the fight against Israel and us. And remember, I I don't think the Israelis are gonna do something like this immediately. I'm I'm forecasting that at some point, the Israelis say, you know, if the if if Iran will not stop, we will launch a nuclear weapon.
That's kind of what I think might happen. Well, we don't have any control over Israel controls us. That's very clear. So if we can't control Israel and Israel does this, then Russia and China intervene. Well, they would intervene at a point in time where we've exhausted our inventories.
So how do we how do we put up a significant fight? You know, until this point in time, all during the proxy war in Ukraine, behind the scenes, and even in public, people raised the issue of we we can't go too far. We have to think in terms of our war reserves. But eventually, over time, those that caution was thrown to the wind because there was no evidence that Russia was being defeated, that Russia was being destroyed, that the sanctions were doing their work. And so we we decided we'll put more and more and more into the Ukraine war.
Well, that's failed miserably, and they've exhausted their war reserves in Germany, in France, in Britain, and other countries. We have done the same thing with much of our munitions. So if you've done that and then all of a sudden, the Russians and the Chinese say, that's it. Stop. Israel's used a nuclear weapon.
We will not tolerate that. And if they don't stop, we may use a nuclear weapon in response. That's always a possibility. What do we do? I think we have to tell the Israelis, you've got to stop.
And if you won't stop, we're leaving. I think we'll get to that point. And that's not a an end state that we've planned for. We've planned for the other end state. Iran and its evil leaders who are responsible terrorism and threatening the whole world will have to submit.
No. They don't, and they won't.
Speaker 0: It's difficult to predict how this will develop. I mean, if you look towards the Ukraine war, how cautious the rhetoric was in the beginning, how cautious the west was in terms of sending weapons, and where we are today when you have a German chancellor bragging about how they or we have caused untold casualties in Russia. I mean, this is you you didn't see this in the beginning of 2022. So given how fast this war with Iran is escalating, it's definitely possible. Just a last question.
Do do you see any possibilities or any pathways for Trump to to put an end to this war, or is it simply impossible because the Iranians need to, I guess, evict the Americans from the region?
Speaker 1: Netanyahu is in charge. So listen carefully to Netanyahu, and you will know what Trump is going to do. Let's be frank. He's taking his orders from Netanyahu. He is not a free agent.
He has people at home pushing him in particular directions. As a result, I don't see anything changing near term in Washington at all. Everyone will simply say, well, we'll continue to bomb. We'll continue to launch missile strikes, and eventually, we'll be successful. We did that for seventy eight days over Kosovo, and ultimately, it was not the air and missile war that persuaded the Serbs to get out of Kosovo, it was Russia's decision to pull the plug on the Serbs and say, no, we can't provide you with fuel and food and medicine over the winter.
That happened because Strobe Talbot, the deputy secretary of state, went to Moscow and negotiated a deal, as president Trump likes to say. And the deal involved some numbers of promises we made to persuade the Russians to do that. The Russians now, in retrospect, regard that as a moment of deep shame in their history, and indeed, I think they're right. But I don't think they had much choice at that point. Well, they have a choice now.
The Chinese have a choice. The rest of the world is no longer as weak as it once was. This is part of the groundswell of of new changes in our civilization and world that the American government doesn't want to accept. We we we are in a in a fight at this point when it comes to missiles and rockets and conventional capabilities with almost a near peer, as they say. You know, that's something we we could never have imagined, you know, and I think president Trump has expressed shock and surprise just as mister Witkoff said that the Iranians had not already capitulated.
Because from their standpoint, based on their experience in the New York real estate business, this kind of damage is so terrible that you cry uncle and and walk. You walk away. You submit. You sign the deal. Well, this is not real estate.
This is not New York City. This is a a civilizational state that absolutely will not surrender to the demands of the Jewish state in the Middle East that are then backed by American military power. So I don't think we're gonna get very far with president Trump at this time. Maybe down the line, something will break. The one the one area that we haven't talked about that everybody needs to watch carefully is our bond market, especially the ten year bond, and the yield will rise.
Look at de dollarization. Look at our financial weakness. Those things are important. I think we could end up in a very serious financial crisis, certainly worse than what we faced back in 02/1978. That is probably the other factor in this multivariate equation that could fundamentally drive us out.
But whatever whatever ultimately happens, we're seeing the end of the old Middle East. We're seeing the end of American military hegemony and political That's what we're watching.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Alastair Crooke: Iran's Strategy - Evict the U.S. from the Middle East https://youtu.be/AknMi7th6Uo https://t.co/OUR59GpeG4
Video Transcript AI Summary
Alastair Crook outlines a two-component Iranian retaliation that is unfolding in three stages. The first component, driven by Iran’s missile and drone capabilities, was expected to target American bases in the Persian Gulf and Gulf area rather than Gulf States themselves. Ali Larragyani has stressed that the attack is not on Gulf States but on American bases and CIA facilities that use Gulf States to pursue Iran’s conflict. The second element, aimed at Israel, focuses on degrading Israel’s early warning radar systems and AIGs that allow United States and Israel to monitor Iran. This involves striking major radar sites in Gulf States such as Qatar and other locations to hinder Israel’s ability to attack Iran. The second phase then employs older missiles and drones to exhaust Israeli air defenses, wearing them down so they can no longer intercept subsequent strikes. Observations of Israeli intercepts against incoming missiles, with many intercept attempts yet frequent misses, are cited as evidence of this wear-down strategy.
In the Gulf, Iranian drones have begun to operate more freely over Dubai and other sites, indicating that Gulf air defenses are strained or exhausted. Iran may continue destroying American bases and evacuating certain installations, notably in Bahrain, where the Fifth Fleet facilities have suffered significant damage. In the Israel domain, after degrading radar and defense networks, Iran may transition to more modern, faster missiles. There is speculation about hypersonic missiles with higher speeds (potentially Mach 8–10) and multi-warhead configurations arriving in Iranian inventories, though Crook hedges that he is not a military expert.
A longer-term objective of Iran, according to Crook, is to drive the United States out of the Middle East, with the broader aim of reconfiguring regional power dynamics and energy infrastructure—potentially shifting influence toward BRICS and reducing Western dominance over seaborne oil and gas routes. He notes signs that the United States is attempting to control chokepoints and detain or seize tankers linked to Russia, China, or sanctioned states, albeit with questionable legal justification.
The economic and geopolitical costs are significant: gas prices for Europe have surged, oil prices are up, and markets are crashing. He suggests the Gulf States may never be the same, with security concerns driving some Western residents to relocate. The conflict is also prompting discussions among Gulf States about changing their relationships with Iran and potentially limiting future American or British military presence on Gulf bases, as illustrated by warnings to the British about the Cyprus and broader Gulf basing roles.
On the American side, Crook argues that the U.S. strategy is not going as planned. He asserts the killing of the Iranian supreme leader (Khamenei) was a grave miscalculation that failed to trigger regime change and instead sparked widespread protests in Baghdad, Bahrain, and Iraq, potentially destabilizing Bahrain’s ruling Emir and provoking regional unrest. He emphasizes that the attack undermined U.S. credibility and highlighted the vulnerability of American interests, with protests and regional backlash challenging the U.S. narrative and complicating domestic political considerations, including potential ramifications for Trump’s political standing.
Regarding the Israeli-American relationship, Crook suggests the clash and miscalculations are likely to affect U.S.–Israel ties. He argues that attempts at decapitation strikes and hopes for a Western-aligned Iran have not only failed but also intensified anti-American and anti-Israeli sentiment in parts of the region, challenging the traditional “Israel-first” posture and implying significant implications for how the United States will engage with Israel in future policy, diplomacy, and security commitments. He also notes that even within the Democratic Party, there may be demand for a thorough rethink of U.S.–Israel relations.
Crook concludes that Iran’s hard-to-predict responses, combined with U.S. miscalculations and regional blowback, signal broad and potentially lasting geopolitical shifts in West Asia, with the possibility of broader implications for Russia–Ukraine dynamics and global energy security. The discussion ends with an acknowledgment that an immediate diplomatic de-escalation seems unlikely unless substantial concessions—such as lifting sanctions, returning frozen Iranian assets, and a broader shift in U.S. policy—are offered.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined today by Alastair Crook, a former British diplomat and negotiator who worked for decades on conflicts in The Middle East. He's also the founder and director of, the Conflicts Forum. So, make sure to read his sub stack, and I will leave that link in the description. So thank you very much, for coming back on.
Speaker 1: It's always a pleasure. You don't have to you don't have to ask. It's always the pressure.
Speaker 0: Well, we are now way into the third day of this war against Iran, and Iran is retaliating in a big way. If you look at Iran's strategy or structure, how do you how do you read it? Is do you see the retaliation organized in phases, or is it is it planned properly, or how how do you make sense of this?
Speaker 1: Yes. I I mean, there are two sort of separate components to it. But the the first component, largely because of the array of missiles that they have in their possession, is was always going to be, first of all, and I think I may have said this at times to you, but it was always going to be the main focus was going to be on American bases in the Persian Gulf in the Gulf area. And why I say it depends on the array is because they can be reached. They have a large stock of drones with big stock of drones and short range missiles, missiles that can't reach or easily reach Israel.
So it made sense, if you like, to focus to begin with on the Gulf, on the American base. Ali Larragyani has emphasized, again, that this is not an attack on the Gulf States per se, but on the American bases and CIA facilities that take advantage of our Gulf States to pursue their conflict against Iran. So that was one element. The second element is likely related and does have three phases. The second element, which is more focused towards Israel, of course, the first component of this is attacking the radar systems.
The radar systems, the AIGs that allow America and Israel to see into Iran. And they've done that taking out major radar bases in Gulf States, in Qatar and in other places, embarking to, I think, I can't remember, but they've taken out a large number of major radar sites belonging to the Americans in the Gulf States. So the first exercise is is focused on the radar, which also incapacitate or limit, if not incapacitate perhaps, Israeli missile systems and their attack on Iran. And the the second phase is to continue to use older missiles and drones to draw out and to deplete the Israeli air defense intercept capability to wear it down, to reduce it to the minimum. And you can see that I mean, this is pretty obvious.
You've probably seen the videos or any way you can see the videos of Israeli strikes into Tehran, although now they've moved to the faster into the higher, more sophisticated missiles in some cases. But you can see that I mean, the Israelis are using huge numbers of intercepts against each single inclusion. So, I mean, you you see easily eight, ten, 12 used against every arriving missile strike and missing, mostly missing. So where we are now is at this sort of stage, stage three, the Gulf States have almost exhausted entirely their adipose system. So, I mean, there are signs you can see Iranian drones that fly, you know, freely over Dubai and other sites.
They they have used all their air defenses, and so, you know, the the Iranians can, at their leisure, destroy continue to destroy American bases, and they are destroying American bases to a very large extent. I think, you know, they're evacuating a number of bases. I don't know exactly which ones, but they're evacuating bases and others, particularly in Bahrain. And they in Bahrain, there's been huge damage done to the facilities of the fifth fleet, The US 5th Street. But going back then to the phases, so in in with Israel, the aim is to use older TUXLOWA missiles, again, to deplete their intercept capabilities as in June.
And then the next phase, the next, you know, if you like, stage of the plan is to move to the more modern and more sophisticated and faster missiles. I think they say I'm not a military expert at all, not at all but, I mean, they say that, you know, the air defense of Israel can't cope with anything about MACH four, so anything that's faster than MACH four is not likely to be intercepted. That, of course, hypersonics are moving much faster at match 10 or match eight. So eliminating those, reducing those is the priority. And then the third stage that the Israelis that the Iranians have and we don't know anything about is that they say they have new new weapon.
I think we have had a glimpse. I don't know if it's all of their new weapons, but we have seen now hypersonic missile missile with a multiple warhead arriving. Certainly a while. I don't know if it would be Mauthnack that have been new weapons because we haven't seen them with sort of cluster warheads before, to my knowledge at least. Right?
I I don't I'm not a nerd. I may be wrong, but I think I'm pretty much right about that. So that's essentially the plan. And so the objectives of it really ultimately, I think, are to drive The United States out of the Middle East, which is underway. I'm not sure that, you know, as things stand, if it continues in this way, that The United States will be able to keep their presence, maintain their presence in the Gulf States.
I mean, they are being hammered by by by these drones only. And I think the second element, of course, with Israel is to degrade the Israeli military test such that it can no longer really threaten Iraq as it has done, to degrade it sufficiently that it is no longer a threat to to Iraq. I think the other objectives are to impose a price on The United States and on Europe, an economic price. And the economic price is the price that comes from closing of the Hormuz Strait. Well, they're not entirely closed, of course.
I mean, because what they're doing is allowing vessels from states that are not have not been complicit in the attack on Iran. They come back pass. But and Chinese, for example, vessels pass without hindrance, but not NOK ones of The United States or NOK ones from states that are associated with a large American base in the area. So the economic costs are important element. And I think there's more to it.
I mean, this is my own speculation. I haven't got no support for it. But in a sense, in the bigger geopolitical picture, we have seen how The United States is taking control trying to take control of choke points, if you like, seaborne choke points, and to try and control the the passage of tankers reaching both China and Russia by attacking and seizing tankers, which they say are part of the shadow fleet of Russia or of China or or that are sanctioned in connection with Venezuela, Chinese vessels sanctions in connection. I mean, what the legal position of that is beyond me. I mean, there's no Security Council resolution.
I mean, you know, this is just, again, you know, The United States just stating it and doing it willy nilly without any sort of legal basis. I can't see how on what basis America can claim, you know, the legal right to seize Chinese vessels at sea, but they do. So I think in this context, what we're seeing actually is perhaps a retaking of some of the, if you like, the energy infrastructure. That is the energy infrastructure of the Persian Gulf and perhaps also that the that whole of the of you like that West Asian area, taking it back, first of all, under Iranian control, but more broadly under BRICS control. So I think it is an element also in sort of maneuvering and reorganizing the encountering the American attempt to dominate oil and gas corridors itself by showing that it is going to the BRICS are going to dominate some of its corridors, of course, in that in this geography.
So I think, yes, pain is going to be a very important element, and you can see it already. Gas prices because, of course, it's not just oil. I mean, from LNG, Qatar and so on is is being a star. And so gas prices for Europe is have already I don't know what they are at this very moment, but they shut up already by 40% overnight well, over the weekend and the dead. Oil prices are up.
They're substantial and markets are crashing quite whiting. So there is a big economic cost as well as a political cost of losing the basis of that. I do think also. I don't know quite how you term it and what you how you sort of put a cost on it, but I don't think the Gulf States will ever be the same again. You know, they were they had a certain I would call it a certain Kaohok brand, which was, you know, markets, AI, hotels, tourism, fun, hotels, you know, the easy liar.
And airlines and revenue from airline airline, major contribution to go prosperity. I think that this is a change. I don't think we will see because I we really have telephone calls from reaching us from people in Dubai saying, how do we get out? We wanna get out, you know, and trying to take taxis across the six hour desert drive to Oman to catch a flight. I don't know if they got their flight, but, anyway, that is I mean, you know, some people will stay, of course, but a lot of, you know, security conscious Europeans, I think, will probably move on or take a permanent somewhere else if they can.
So I think that's changed. I think also, you know, the the question is what happens to the to the wealth and how they are going to look at the future. I mean, the Iranians have said to them, you have been attacked because you chose to facilitate Israel and The United States and to have bases and CIA offices on your territory, case of Dubai, which has been attacked. So, you know, do they then shift and move and decide they would like to have a different relationship with Iran and, you know, they will not have American bases in the future. We'll have to see.
I noticed even the British have been warned, by Greece that, you know, you if you're you're not allowed to use your base for anything but humanitarian reasons, you can't join in providing defense for the Israel and The United States from a criteria base or your other base in Cyprus. So, I mean, I think that's just it's not in itself serious, but it's a harbinger that, you know, the change might come and people would say, well, you know, if you're gonna be here, it's not gonna be for military purposes or intelligence purposes. And so all of that sorry. A long answer, but all of that seems to me to suggest, you know, geopolitical shift potentially is unfolding, and that is the intention. And, of course, then we look at what might be the case, what will happen with Israel, and of course it's too early to draw any real conclusions from that at that point.
Then we look at The United States and we can draw a few early conclusions, I think, from that and from the headlines in The US, even today, say, you know, that the antigen is in neoptymic mode and they are very worried and they think, you know, that the whole thing is out of there's a risk of the whole of this exercise getting out of control. It is out of control. It's like shit. It is definitely out of control. They say there's a risk of it getting out of control.
They don't want to see, you know, dead Americans coming back and, you know, what are they going to do? And it seems, you know, that American officials are scrambling around to sort of change again, you know, what was the justification for this war and who started it, and was it Iran started it? Was it Israel? It wasn't us anyway. We didn't do it.
So, you know, you can see that already this is the problem. And the second one so one is public relations problem, presentation problem. And the second big problem is how long will Israel's intercept capacity last. And my guess is it will by Friday, they may be in trouble.
Speaker 0: Well, on the American side of the strategy appears to not be going well, as they had hoped. I was wondering how you interpret them.
Speaker 1: The That's that's a that's an understatement.
Speaker 0: Understatement. Yeah. Well, the the the killing of the Khamenei was I was wondering how you see the significance here, because it it appears in the American calculation that they would, you know, kill the highest religious authority in Iran, and somehow the people would then be liberated and take to the streets and celebrate their American liberators. I'm not sure exactly why this would trigger a regime change or or what the calculations were. But how do you assess the killing of Khomeini, what it what it was, or what they hoped it would achieve, but also what is actually happening?
Speaker 1: An incredible error if you take it on its own merits of what it was supposed to do. A complete error of judgment, which shows how the heat cognitive dissonance of not understanding was who or what he meant at all and just seeing him in the sort of crude terms of prank calling him and his colleagues thugs and murderers. And so what it has done, I mean, has two things. It started a fast dunk around the reach, a real fast dunk around the reach. You've, I'm sure, been seen.
Mean, there'll be massive protests over the weekend against the American embassy in Baghdad. The green zone is being stormed by protesters. There were protesters attacking the constituent in in Pakistan. In Bahrain, there may be the first regime change of this whole operation. Between 7080% of Bahrain is Shia, and the ruling Emir is Sunni, and he is surrounded himself with a Sunni protective defense, of course.
And there'd be massive protests. And they're trying to imprison ringleaders and stop it, but they've been they've been already, you know, again besieging the the the Bahrain as the state by the protest already very well. And then you have this in Iraq with the Iraqis attacking the American air defenses in Erbil and elsewhere. It is really fired up everywhere because he was either the first or the second, depends who you ask, most important. Xi, Maja, in in the Middle East, hugely significant as a religious leader, as a scholar and a religious leader.
And they killed him, murdered him. He was killed in his office at work on Saturday morning, and it's pretty clear to me that he actually deliberately chose us. I mean, of course, he could have been in some protective place somewhere else. But as he himself said, you know, he is. I'm eighty sick.
I'm semi crippled. He said, I have the only thing I profess for is my dignity, and that comes from you. And so my life is more significant in those. So I think he just stayed working, and he must remember very clearly given the sort of mentality of the Americans and the Americans that are supporting Israel and of Israel. They would surely come and want to kill it.
And he thought maybe that was the best in the best interest of Iran. So I do think they completely misunderstood. You open up a very important question, but one which really is probably beyond this program to get into, which is, I mean, what are the roots of this deep hatred that exists amongst those elements that were determined to to to that the supreme leader would be held. But why did they why do they I mean, why did they why were they so vicious and vitilpous against him and dancing in the streets that he's there, not in Tehran, but in Tel Aviv. You know, this is something to do with psychology and and western ways of thinking that, you know, would have to be explored a bit further, but it was enormous.
You know, there is something very deep, but even when there was a journal a journalist an Israeli journalist working on the nine seven two magazine coil, and she was writing about how she sort of put up a post about the killing of all those school bells with fire bomb attack, killed many, many school girls in Iran, and how many she was inundated with hate messages saying, good, you know, we're pleased. I mean, it it's really you know, there is a sort of ugly side to just on to just sort of vicious and embossary. Not saying that, you know, that that isn't in other parts of the world and other places too, but it's very pronounced at the moment in in this geography between Israel and Iran. Anyway, you know, they have made I mean, this of the biggest messages that comes out of this, I think, most clearly is that we all have been told how wonderful Israeli intelligence is, the Mossad's so clever. Technically, you know, when it comes to exploding pages, maybe they are.
But when it comes to understanding the region, how badly they have done, Three times in this last period, they assumed that, you know, that the whole of Iran was just waiting to erupt against the state to take it over and to turn it into a pro Western, like, Pelavist government. And, you know, on Earth, I mean, do they not do, you due diligence on their analysis? I mean, it's so it was so obvious you be to tear off nervous. I mean, you I don't think you experienced this sort of vicious anger against the supreme leader while you were there. I said, and it didn't happen over the years I've been in Iran at all.
In fact, mostly, they love him and. And he's a highly respected person. He's, you know, he's very humble. As he knew, I went to see his house at one point, you know, Tehran. I think it's the one he would probably kill them.
I don't know too sure. Very simple. Very, very, very basic. Very simple, clean, empty house. I mean, he he he was not a man of potential.
Speaker 0: Well, you mentioned now that it seems the main Iranian strategy is to push The United States out of the Middle East. Of course, hitting its bases, imposing some casualties, weakening the Gulf States, imposing a cost for hosting American bases, going after economic interests. Of course, degrading Israel will be a key aspect. But I was wondering, to what extent might there be an unintentional, well, let's call it achievement? That is, how do you see this war impacting the relationship between The United States and Israel?
Because this seems to be more there seems to be more tension in this relationship than it has been, well, at least in my lifetime.
Speaker 1: Oh, you you make a very important and correct point. I mean, it is going to change, that's the whole question. I mean, first of all, you know, the miscalculations that I've just been describing, the idea that, you know, that regime change was likely. And, you know, this was the third time after there was a decapitation strike festival in June. Then there were the protests that was supposed to where a a a, you know, militant train insurgence were put in to to give the impression of a a state that was collapsing in January.
And then now, again, they've killed and tried to do a second decapitation strike. Not quite as extensive, but a a decapitation strike, including the screen reader, in the supposition that this would change the whole state and that it could become a prose a sort of ally of Israel. I mean, you know, really, it's unbelievable what you see. You know, gushky statements about how, you know, a new world has opened me up before us with The United States at our side, and that very soon we will have a new coalition working with Israel, Israel, a new westernized Iran, and India taking on all the radical Islamists from both Xi and Sunni. I mean, fantasy, religious fantasy.
So, I I mean, yes, it you know, it is going to affect The United States because I think Trump is not gonna recover from Elizabeth Day. I mean, even if he finds, I think it'll be very hard for him to find an exit, a quick exit as he usually likes. You know? Okay. I'll just say I'm out.
Well, the Iranians are not open to negotiation. The Arab jammies may back. Yeah. No. Thanks.
No negotiator. So he'll find it hard to get out. And already, I think if you look at the American press, you see many of those in the Pentagon now sort of trying to say, well, you know, we warned, we, you know, avoiding blame or the, you know, the the retribution that might come back. Well, will be a humiliating, you know, extric from the dark? They they they're already sort of, you know, throwing the leadership under the bus and say, well, we did tell him.
We told him. We told him that we couldn't guarantee, you know, there would be regime change. We told him we couldn't guarantee there'd be no casualties. We told him, you can't guarantee a quick in a type of, you know, in boo of the Trump fight, and we told them it wasn't gonna be like Maduro and Venezuela. So already this is starting to come out.
And so, yes, I think there's gonna be political consequences. And I think if you look at the MAGA reaction, they are strongly against the Israeli first policy and the betrayal by by Trump of his repeated promises. He was not here to start wars. He was here to stop wars, and there would be no more forever wars. And the era you know, it was only in I think it was May he was in Saudi Arabia or was it March?
May or March. But earlier this yeah. He was in Saudi Arabia proclaiming the end to regime change. He said there will be no more that's over, that era. It failed.
It wasn't successful. There will be no more. And he said that in Riyadh saying there will be no more regime change. So I think there's going to be quite profound consequences in in The United States on this, especially in Mantis Bay, and the consequences could be very serious because the popularity for this war was never high even before we've reached this point. It was only had something like 21% support, I believe, and switched power.
The ones I saw was by 21%, Of course, higher support in the Republican Party. But the end of it is, you know, he is likely to lose the midterm election. I mean, of course, midterms are, you know, a week in politics is a long time and this is until November. But his his ratings and everything signaled very clearly he could lose the house. But if he loses the house and the senate, then I think he will risk impeachment or even imprisonment.
So it's very serious from the point of view, and he recognized that. And he said that literally in coaching. He said, you know, if we lose the house, you know, I'm I could be finished. But if we lose the house, we lose both houses, then I'll be in court, and that won't be pushy. That's what he said.
That's the way he's worked. So, you know, this is Carries. Now people will say, oh, yes. But the Democrats will come back, and they'll, you know, make peace with the Israelis, and it will be back in normal. I I I mean, it's early days, but I see something different taking place.
I see something slightly different in that I think even in the Democratic Party, people are saying, you know, what we have to have, we, democrat, we have to have a thorough discussion about the future relationship between The United States and Israel and how they interact together. Clearly, that hasn't happened yet. It would be wrong to sort of try and guess what it's going to emerge. But I think even there, there is the thinking that, you know, this will have to be radically reviewed about exactly what is how we relate as in United States with Israel. Yes, big changes.
Speaker 0: My my last question is about how if there's a possibility of getting well, get walking this back or or putting an early end to this war. Because overall, first, let me say, in regards to what you said about the Pentagon, I thought that was interesting because domestically, if Trump wants to make this legal, I think he has to make the case that this was imminent, an imminent threat by Iran, which he had to respond to. But when the Pentagon comes out and tells Congress there was no immediate or imminent threat from Iran, they they are literally throwing him under the bus here. It's well but
Speaker 1: And by the way, sorry to interrupt you just quickly on that point because they've even come gone further. Now I can't remember who it was, but I think in in the briefing to the gang of eight briefing, I may be wrong, but I think it was in in in this when questioned, American officials said, no. There is no we have no assessment that Iran will would will preemptively attack Israel. There's no assessment that they would preemptively of course, there was no assessment of the African was there any threat to The United States? But they specifically, I think, said in that briefing, and it's been reported, they said there was no intelligence to suggest or assessment that they would attack us.
And quite clearly, you know, the attack by Israel had been talked about at the end of the year and agreed. And even the timing of Baoxing agreed at that meeting of Mar A Lago on the December 29. So, I mean, you know, to the legal basis, of the action is on very, very shaky grass. And, you know, the the the the language coming out about how from I think it was Rubio saying, oh, you know, yes. It's absolutely right.
I mean, they're building ICBMs. They're under threat in The United States. I mean, I don't think even in the sort of heightened atmosphere of politics today in The United States, anyone believes that. And certainly, there's no evidence of it or what can be produced. So I think that, yes, the legal grounds are are indeed very shaky.
And that's why I say, you know, the difficulty is he has not sought permission of congress. And, you you he I mean, he has not sought permission of congress, and he has taken the initiative to kill a head of state. We are congressional consultation. I mean, I think the I can't remember the exact times. The the kind of way generally, people who period, are the eighth most the key congressional leaders in The United States from both congress and senate, from the house and from the senate.
Either he was the the the leader of the houses and so on. The eight must sort of see the institutional placeholders get special breeding, classified breeding, which is not available to armaments, to the senate or congress. And it was out of that, I understood, his comments came. So, you know, so he is on on on shaky grounds which would could easily provide if they can't find a better reason, could would find whether it would whether it could be turned down or not, but would be the basis for an.
Speaker 0: But it seems based on the previous conflicts over the past year that Trump's main approach is well, he sees the weakness of and relative decline of America be caused by weakness, and he sees this in leaders such as Biden and, Obama. So the idea is to, you know, have a show of strength, go in, don't get drawn in over too long period of time, so a quick victory. Ideally, regime change in Iran, but, of course, you can walk away with some other trophy to, you know, to give him credibility at home, but also to, I guess, strike some fear into other adversaries on the international stage. This would be ideal, but it's not playing out as he had hoped. And I think the longer this goes on, the more the advantage shifts to Iran in terms of, you know, being able to absorb these different blows and being able to dish it out.
But but I've heard some comments now that I well, at least I expected if Trump wanted to put an end to this, he would make statements that, well, the Iranians want to talk. You know, they they're coming to the table. You know, there's something along the lines to make a
Speaker 1: Well, he said that. He just said that, I mean, you know, the Iranians want to talk, and they got, you know, to held to air for by by the Iranians when they the Italians brokered the So the. Cease fire.
Speaker 0: What does this mean then? If if Trump wants to put an end to this war, do you is it possible? Do you do you think the Iranians would let that happen, or do they have other objectives they want to achieve before they're willing to let Trump walk this one back?
Speaker 1: No. They won't. They won't let they won't help them out. I mean, first of all, you know, they he's, you know, he's perceived them twice. And even and this is a long history of deceptions because the killing of Qutan Sohamane was a deception too.
You know, he was coming to he'd been invited at being all set up. And, of course, the Americans knew about it for a discussion about peaceful relations between Iran. I think it was Saudi radio or something, but they was going to be and he was there on an official visit coming on a commercial airline, and he was he was he was shot down with a missile as the Iranian official delegation was standing in this meeting. So, I mean, you know, deception after deception of, you know, amiased into Iranian thinking, clearly, about how they should behave. And I think, you know, they know that they're in the driving seat.
I mean, there are, you know, factory things that important that perhaps people are not seeing very much, but it is not going well. I mean, I talked about, you know, interceptors, but there are only a limited number of tomahawks. You know, we keep hearing the talk about, oh, Tehran has been bombed badly. It's like well, when people talk about being bombed, they imagine aircraft going over and dropping bombs. That's not what's been happening.
There are no there's no evidence of Israeli aircraft in the Iranian airspace at all. And in fact, what we've seen actually is signs of aircraft being shot down. One could have been in an in in Iranian airspace, but three may have been taking off from Kuwait and were locked on by the Iranians, f fifteens, and were shot down. They say it's friendly far, but friendly far for three aircraft taking off at the same time when they don't have much far far. I don't know.
Anyway, look. There are no signs, visible signs up to now despite the defense minister Katz saying, we're gonna have a corridor. We've got air superiority, dominance of the skies across Tehran. We can fly where we want. There's actually all of the evidence points to the opposite, that they cannot fly because they are frightened.
And, obviously, things have changed in the last seven months because Iran seems I mean, you just take the evidence of drones. All 22 drones that have been flown over, pilot's drones, of course, flown over into Iranian airspace or are being shot down. 22 being destroyed by the Iranians. So something is working. Something is working quite well.
You see, these were some of the most advanced drugs that The United States and Israel has. So these things means, you know, Iran feels pretty confident with the physician. Yes, of course, it's paying a certain price, but then so is Israel. And so they are quite confident they're changing the geopolitics of the West Asia, of the Gulf States. And so if you say to me, is it what would it you know, just to stop diplomacy again?
Come on. You know, they've been through this and what and twice, you know, as they sat down with or about to sit down with the Americans, they they they get attacked. I I think you know? And and, you know, this is gonna have a wider repercussions on Russia and Ukraine talks. I mean, about, you know, what is a phone to talking with Ian Trump.
I'm not saying that won't happen, but I'm just saying it is going to make people reflect happily about the whole approach there. What would they take? Well, I I have no idea, and I'm not saying that in the basis of some, you know, information I've got, but I would say anything less than a complete lifting of sanctions, tariffs, and the return of all the Iranian frozen plants in total or at once now, they might consider that.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, I I can understand why the Iranians wouldn't want to simply put an end to the fighting and wait a few more months for for the next attack or the next, you know, stage revolution. So I I guess shifting realities on the ground in terms of pushing the Americans back or ideally out of the region or get some proper diplomatic victory. It's just that's gonna be very hard for the Americans to to swallow, though, after thirty five years of hegemony and being able to dictate all outcomes and, yeah, to simply accept this. It's yeah.
I'm curious.
Speaker 1: You know, that it it is you know, there is just a risk in this. I mean, because, you know, I don't think they had anticipated what's happened in the dark. I don't think beforehand they thought this was, you know, possibility, so they are shocked. And, you know, people can do dangerous things or unwise actions when they're desperate and in those circumstances and feeling they will otherwise be humiliated. So, of course but what we're talking about then, we're setting a course into error created one, which is is not really sensible to speculate because it's not possible to speculate.
Speaker 0: Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule. I appreciate sharing your insights.
Speaker 1: My pleasure. Thank you for inviting me on further.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Alex Krainer: Iran War - Economic Disaster & End of Trump? https://youtu.be/p8oka89hzHc https://t.co/aCn8jelCHc
Video Transcript AI Summary
Alex Kraner and Glenn discuss the geopolitical and economic fallout from Iran’s weekend strikes and the broader shifts in global risk, energy, and power blocs.
- Oil and energy impact: Iran’s strikes targeted energy infrastructure, including Ras Tanura in Saudi Arabia, and crude prices jumped about 10% with Friday’s close around $73.50 and current levels near $80 per barrel. Prices could push higher if Hormuz traffic is disrupted or closed, given that one in five barrels of crude exports pass through the Hormuz gates. The potential for further oil disruptions is acknowledged, with the possibility of triple-digit or higher prices depending on how the conflict evolves.
- Market dynamics and energy dependence: The guest notes a hockey-stick pattern in uptrends across markets when driven by large asset holders waking up to energy exposure, referencing shadow banking as a driver of rapid moves. He points to vast assets under management (approximately $220 trillion) among pension funds, hedge funds, endowments, and insurers that could push energy markets higher if they reallocate toward oil futures and energy-related assets. He emphasizes that energy is essential for broad economic activity, and a curtailed oil economy would slow economies globally.
- European vulnerabilities: Europe faces a fragile energy security position, already dealing with an energy crisis and decreased reliance on Russian hydrocarbons. Disruptions to LNG supplies from Qatar or other sources could further threaten Europe, complicating efforts by Ursula von der Leyen and Christine Lagarde to manage inflation and debt. The panel highlights potential increased debt concerns in Europe, with Lagarde signaling uncertainty and the possibility of higher interest rates, and warns of a possible future resembling Weimar-era debt dynamics or systemic stress in European bonds.
- Global geopolitics and blocs: The discussion suggests a risk of the world fracturing into two blocs, with BRICS controlling more diverse energy supplies and the West potentially losing its energy dominance. The US pivot to Asia could be undone as the United States becomes more entangled in Middle East conflicts. The guests anticipate renewed US engagement with traditional alliances (France, Britain, Germany) and a possible retraction from attempts to pursue multipolar integration with Russia and China. The possibility of a broader two-block, cold-war-like order is raised, with energy as a central question.
- Iran and US diplomacy optics: The negotiations reportedly had Iran willing to concede to American proposals when the leadership was assassinated, prompting questions about US policy and timing. The attack is described as damaging to public opinion and diplomacy, with potential impeachment momentum for Trump discussed in light of his handling of the Iran situation. The geopolitical optics are characterized as highly damaging to US credibility and to the prospects of reaching future deals with Iran and other actors.
- Middle East dynamics and US security commitments: The strikes impact the US-Israel relationship and the US-Gulf states’ security posture. Pentagon statements reportedly indicated no signs that Iran planned to attack the US first, raising questions about the strategic calculus of the strikes and the broader risk to regional stability. The conversation notes persistent supply chain and defense material challenges—including concerns about weapon stockpiles and the sustainability of military deployments in the region.
- Long-range grim projections: The discussion concludes with caution about the potential long arc of decline for Western economic and political influence if current trajectories persist, contrasted with the rise of Eastern blocs. There is warning about a possible long-term, multi-decade period of geopolitical and economic restructuring, with energy security and debt dynamics at the core of those shifts.
- Closing reflections: The speakers acknowledge the unpredictability of markets and geopolitics, refraining from definitive forecasts but underscoring how energy, debt, and alliance realignments will likely shape the coming period.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. And, back by popular demand is Alex Kraner, a market analyst, a political commentator, and a former hedge fund manager. And, of course, we can add author to this as well. So thank you for coming back on the program.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me, Glenn. Always good to join you, and warm greetings to everyone, but especially those who created that popular demand.
Speaker 0: Well, I I wanted to ask you about how how you're reading the the economic situation from this after this weekend. That is Iran, it has many targets and pressure points in its retaliatory strikes. Iran is hitting US bases, Israel, The Gulf States, but what is very interesting though is the energy targets and the economic targets. Indeed, this morning alone, Iran hit Saudi Arabia's Ras Tanura oil refinery, one of the largest in the world, and the Saudis have, yeah, thus shut it down. I was wondering, how do you assess this economic targeting by Iran?
Speaker 1: Well, you know, this is this is where, Trump and his administration are in for, an avalanche of consequences because, you know, already this morning, crude oil prices opened about 10%. So Friday close was, I think, around $73.50. Now we're trading very close to $80, maybe a little bit below, but I can even check that for you in a real time. 74 $79.46 dollars per barrel. And the, you know, the way I read oil prices, I I have I have these trend following algorithms, and they've already shifted into the uptrend.
So, you know, we were we were trading in low sixties just a few weeks ago. And then by Friday, before the attacks happened, the market closed at $73.50, so we were more than $10 from from the low. And now we are at close to $80 a barrel. And that's just in a couple of days' times, which is which is extraordinarily rapid price change. As far as the you know, predicting what happens is is always a very thankless task.
But, you know, trends usually when they get going, they don't necessarily reverse as easily, and we can't say that this is a trend yet. But I think that at this time, it's the geopolitical events that are maybe exerting the decisive influence on the markets. And from what I can read, this war will not go will will not be over so soon, and it could be very, very disruptive. One in five barrels of crude oil exports passes through the gates of Hormuz. If the Iranians close the gates of Hormuz, and they've apparently done so, and if they keep it closed, we could see the price of oil reach deep into triple digits where it's impossible to say.
But one predictions that one prediction that I've been making over the last ten years or so and which has proven correct time and again, it's it's a very broad brush prediction. So, you know, you have to take it with a grain of salt. But what I've noticed is that over the last ten years or so, when when an individual market goes into an uptrend, it often creates what we call a hockey stick progression. You know, it it launches up and then it it accelerates And at some point, it becomes vertical. And so we've seen that in market after market after market after market.
And the reason why I I think this happens is because we have something called the shadow banking system, which is, let's say, financial institutions with large amount of liquid investable assets, which grand total in the world is estimated about at about $220,000,000,000,000. And so these are pension funds, hedge funds, endowments, charitable organizations, insurance companies, entities like this. And so if if people who control these $220,000,000,000,000 wake up one day and say, You know, maybe we should have more more exposure to energy markets, and they start buying, crude oil futures or, oil related exchange traded funds and so forth, they could overwhelm the market. And this is why we get this vertical progression. And we've you know, the the most recent markets that we've seen were, gold and silver because in the last two year, years, gold has appreciated by more than 150%, and silver has very near nearly quadrupled.
So this is what I'm talking about, and this is the reason why I'm not comfortable giving a prediction because whatever I say might end up to to to be lower than what we'll see. You know, I I read some people today talk about a $100 oil, but we were already at 120 in $2,121 a barrel is not exactly doesn't reflect the global emergency. We go to $200 a barrel or we can go to $300 a barrel, nobody can predict this. And it will depend on how this war evolves. The the the the fact that Ras El Tanura oil facilities were were targeted, and I I I I'm not, you know, I I I don't buy that it was necessarily the Iranians.
There would be many people who would have an interest in in disrupting the oil industry. That means that somebody's targeting the oil industry. Right? Which means that we might see a lot more disruptions, and any any prediction might end up being might be might might end up under underestimating the the forces that are now pushing the oil price higher.
Speaker 0: Yeah. No. Well, usually, there's economic incentives to both start and end wars. I see that there's a the son of the shah, that is the puppet monarchy and dictatorship that ruled Iran before the Islamic revolution of seventy nine. He, you know, he gave an interview arguing that The US could get a trillion of dollars in business if they would just topple the government and put him in power.
So this talk was in almost a complete copy paste from Machado in Venezuela, so maybe he will get the Nobel Peace Prize as well. But but but but what what are the wider economic ramifications you think, though? Because, again, shutting down the Strait Of Hormuz is important for oil. That's the main concern, obviously. But overall, given that we see Iran also striking some ports, again, the this could have a military purpose as well.
But but do do you see any other problems with shutting down global supply chains, or is this mostly I mean, is the economic aspect the same as energy, or do you think it will encompass more?
Speaker 1: It will certainly encompass more because energy is essential for all kinds of things in in our economies. You know? Today, again, a broad brush estimate is that 50 times more work gets carried out with the aid of hydrocarbons than manually. So, you know, if if if oil economy is curtailed, the whole the whole economy slows down. And I think that some nations in this will be winners, other nations will be losers.
I think that Europe is in a particularly vulnerable position because we're already in the middle of a of a self inflicted energy crisis. This only makes it worse. Europe has you know, because we don't like the the dirty Russian hydrocarbons, we wanted the Europeans reoriented towards more democratic hydrocarbons like American and Qatari ones. And so now even natural gas from Qatar flow might might get disrupted towards Europe. So I think that Europe is in a in a in a huge deal of trouble, and we've we've been destroying nuclear power plants.
We've been destroying our relationship with with with with Russia. European powers have also antagonized The United States under under Trump administration, which now might might all be changing. You know? Trump has made an absolutely colossal blunder by attacking Iran. And look.
Two days later, he is flanked by the dream team of Emmanuel Macron, Kirstymar, and Friedrich Mertz along with Benjamin Netanyahu. So even even Trump's geopolitical strategy, even his it it it's all in jeopardy now. And, okay, United States now secured Venezuelan oil flows. They have their own. He might this might put pressure on Trump to to try to gain control over Canada, which was his which was his intent from the get go.
But I think the European economies, which were which are already in recession, in a severe recession, are now looking to accelerate into depression and probably hyperinflation. Because even, you know, even if you go back before before the war started in Iran and you look at the speeches by Ursula von der Leyen and Christine Lagarde, Ursula von der Leyen is is pitching rearmament as a great way to revive European economies and bring prosperity and jobs to to the Europeans. At the same time, Christine Lagarde did not sound confident at all. She was she was pretty much saying, we have to get prepared for for a period of heightened uncertainties, which is, you know, central bank speak for we're losing control. And then two days later after that speech, she announced that she would be retiring retiring early.
Her I think her term goes to the October, November 2027, and she will step down one year sooner, which and that's not the only speech she gave like that. She's already made some speeches like that saying things are bad. And but what what she said in Munich in the Munich Security Conference, she was worried about European debt, European bonds being dumped at fire sale prices in the international markets, meaning that international investors are going to be dumping the bonds of European countries. What does that tell you? It tells you that interest rates are going to move sky high.
So I, you know, I I I think that Europe is looking at a future that's going to be some combination of Weimar Republic in Germany last century and the collapse of the Soviet Union. So I think that's probably one of the one of the big events that's ahead of us, which will of course, these things never happen overnight. You know? It's it's the the event itself might span many months or even years, and we don't know what the trigger point is going to be. You know?
Markets are good at pretending like nothing's wrong, and then one day, you have a panic reaction. And I think that we'll probably see it in in dumping on of European bonds, which is not going on yet. European bonds and British bonds have been trading great for the past three or four months or so. But if you look back in the last four years, we they they sustained the greatest bear market on record, the biggest bear market on record between 2021 and 2023. There's never been that much of a bear market on European bonds.
And maybe that was just the first act. And this war in Iran with all of its consequences and collateral damage and then Emmanuel Macron, Kirstarmer, and Friedrich Mertz, of course, as as as as one could have predicted joining that war or, you know, supporting The United States in that war, it's only putting their may making their situation worse.
Speaker 0: But the I was wondering how how do you see the wider shift in the risk global geoeconomics? Because a lot of money is being put into The Gulf States because, well, it's it's a it's a lot of real estate. It's a seems like a safe place to put money. What happens if those governments begin to look shaky that The US can't protect them? Also, the the larger powers, China, Russia, and others, to what extent do they see it necessary as further decoupling from the West?
Even if this war now comes to an end through some diplomatic way, you know, the diplomacy now is kinda meaningless. It doesn't mean, you know, whatever the Americans sign, you know, in six months, they might be back. You know, do you expect to shift deeper into economic blocks where they reduce their vulnerability? And you mentioned the bond markets, but what what what would in East Asia, the ones who are very dependent on Middle Eastern energy, will China lean heavier into Russia to reduce reliance in Middle East? How about countries like Japan?
It's you know, they have a very hostile relationship with Russia now because all their financing, the proxy war in Ukraine. But but but at some point, they also have to diversify a bit away from the Middle East if this becomes, you know, an unreliable supplier? So that's a very, very long question. But, yeah, to summarize, what do see being the major economic shifts or geoeconomic shifts as this also have political consequences?
Speaker 1: I'm afraid that it might lead to you know, rather instead of instead of, stimulating, multipolar integrations, we might see the world falling into two blocks, and then maybe energy is going to be one of the critical questions. And two blocks meaning, what are the consequences of this war in Iran, on Iran, would be that The United States gets pulled back into its traditional alliances. You know, Donald Trump has been trying to break free of that. He's been trying to well, this has been an overt explicit position of his administration that the post World War two global order is obsolete and that The United States intends to embrace multipolar integrations. Now I think Trump may have committed a fatal mistake, and now we see him flanked by exactly the his allies of the post World War two global order, France, Britain, and Germany.
And so if The United States gets pulled back into this block and and and distances itself from Russia, China, India, and so forth, then we get we get two blocks again and and a cold war. And the BRICS block today controls most of the global energy supplies. Not only that, but they also have their their energy supplies are more diverse because they still rely on coal or nuclear power, oil, gas, they have a lot of it. The Western hegemony over the Western Asia or The Middle East is slipping away. And so I don't, you know, I don't know how to predict this, but maybe West goes back to whaling and extracting whale oil or because, obviously, solar and and wind didn't work out.
Okay. The United States has nuclear technology, but American nuclear technology is a lot more expensive than Chinese nuclear technology. And they have certain innovations in the pipeline, but they are they are far behind. So I I think that we might we we might get the world recede into into some kind of a two block cold world. And maybe, you know, maybe this will get maybe this will thaw out again with you know, maybe we're not in in for forty years of Cold War, but the I think the net result is going to be that the East is going to eclipse the West and that the West is going to fall behind.
And as things stand, you know, we have to consider that if we don't change course, the West could end up like the Western Roman Empire, meaning we could be going into into into total collapse. You know? Total collapse where you know, when the Empire was one of the most important empires one of the most powerful empires in history. It was very similar to today's rules based global orders order in many ways. But it never reformed and it persisted on it on the road to collapse to the point where, you know, stone houses ended up disappearing from the archaeological footprint.
Dirt floors became the norm. Markets disappeared because money disappeared. So the world of the under Western Roman Empire went to a self sustained community that bartered. That was the economy. Until that lasted until they managed to sack sack Constantinople and plunder its gold and silver with which then they got a new credit impulse.
And then we got the Renaissance and, you know, revival of the of the Western world. But I I'm afraid that there's a risk that we are now on that road. That road, you know, that that that magnitude collapse could could span centuries, like two centuries. So it's very difficult to make predictions about that. But I I I'm afraid that Trump's tragic blunder in Iran has now created, like, a point of gravity, you know, like a point of gravity in space that could, you know, curve the space leading the American fall of foreign policy and and and it boomerangs right back to the to the old colonial order.
I'm I'm afraid that's a very broad brush prediction, but I you know, it's it's very difficult to see past it's very difficult to see past today in these in these circumstances, let alone years or decades from now.
Speaker 0: Yeah. No. No. One should be careful to look too deep into the crystal ball because there's too many unknown variables. But, you know, energy production is, as we know, is often considered to be, yeah, the key indicator of the potential future economic power because it reflects a country's ability to enhance industrial activity.
This is also true, of course, in the age of AI when you need the energy to operate this data centers and all this. But But, you know, the Europeans, they always obsess about energy security, and I'm all for that. I think that should be a top priority. And that means not having excessive dependence on Russia. I agree as well.
Well, you don't want too much dependence on one actor. But energy security means not to cut yourself off from from any of the sources. You wanna diversify one of as many and cheap access possible access as possible. I don't understand the Europeans, though. They, you know, they celebrate liberating themselves from Russian energy.
It's a bit like liberating yourself from, you know, oxygen. You you do need these things, and, you know, you don't even have any any, you know, good replacement. So everything becomes less safe. It becomes more expensive. So I I don't I don't get it.
But, of course, as you said, now that the The US and Israel has set the whole Middle East on fire as well, I just just looks like all the problems we've they've been building up will just accelerate now. It's, yeah, it's very frustrating to watch. But but how does this also affect The US pivot, Because they were supposed to pivot to Asia. Now they're bogged down in
Speaker 1: Yes. It's it's it's horrifically problematic now because, you know, the optics of this war are about as ugly as it gets because, again, we had the situation where Iranian leaders were assassinated in the in the middle of the process of negotiations. My understanding is that they met together to discuss the American proposals, and we have information from Omani officials who said that the Iranians were very yielding, that they were very accommodating, and that they were practically giving the Americans everything they wanted, and then they got killed. And, you know, when this happened in Oman, with the Hamas leadership, I was not inclined to believe that it was that it was deliberate or that it no. I mean, obviously, it was deliberate that it was the deliberate policy of the Trump administration.
But this is not the third time this happened. It happened in Oman with Hamas. It happened with the Iranians seven months ago, and now it happened again the third time, which you know, now you go back to 90 plus drones that were launched towards Vladimir Putin's compound. And I was not at all inclined to think that that was unite you know, that that was anybody from Trump administration attempting to assassinate Vladimir Putin. I I I would be more inclined to believe that it was a joint venture between the Ukrainian and British intelligence.
But now I think a lot of people are going to suspect that this is this is what Trump is doing as a as a as a matter of course. So who is going to be negotiating in good faith? I I I think it's in terms of optics, it's about as bad as it gets. And, you know, we shouldn't think that optics is just a, you know, a soft tissue on the side because you remember when when when when Benjamin Netanyahu was in The United States a few months ago and he met up with a group of influencers when they, you know, when they decided to buy you know, Larry Ellison decided to buy TikTok and everything. And Netanyahu, who understands this, was saying, what's the most important weapon of all?
It's public opinion. And this is why TikTok for them at that time was the most important weapon of all, more than bombs, more than airplanes, more than everything. Because public opinion matters a great deal. And I think that Trump has blundered so badly that in terms of public opinion, I I believe that the only way he could recover now is to publicly sack everybody in his administration who has advised him to go forward with this and then to apply a radical truth truth therapy, which means probably opening up Epstein files completely and letting letting history take its course from there. Everything short of that, I'm afraid, is is a is a is a stain that will not wash, and it will mark his it will mark his administration and his name.
This makes this makes his legacy. The reason why I'm saying this is that if the world sympathizes with Trump, they say, okay. He committed many mistakes, but he's trying to do something good for for the American people and the world, then he can negotiate with the Russians. He can negotiate with the Chinese, with the Indians, with the Japanese, with with with Iranians and so forth. And he could get concessions.
Investments. He could open markets. He could create a large economic space opening for American corporations and so forth. But now all of that is in jeopardy. You know, if if if people in any country regard you as a lawless rogue, they will not be wanting to deal with you.
And, you know, this is this is now becoming a realistic possibility. He's going to be thrown back to his old allies from World War two and, you know, maybe maybe in the next administration, The United States is right back being the military enforcement arm of the of the Western European empire.
Speaker 0: Well, the optics problem, though, it appears to also extend to the to Europe. That is, as you said, Iran, you know, made huge concessions. The CNN reported on this as well that they seem to be hours away from a deal before before, yeah, The US and Israel launched a surprise attack in killing much of the Iranian leadership. And, again, if if this was a once off but this was the exact same thing that happened six months ago in back in June when they also in the middle of negotiations and then just you know, they saw Iran had its guard down, so let's just, you know, wipe them out instead. So the whole optics of it, I mean, is Iran is always sold as being this irrational, you know, the mullahs, Yatollahs who want nuclear weapons.
This is kind of the successful narrative which has been built. But now this is the Iran that also had accepted the JCPOA before the Americans walked away. So Iran seems suddenly very reasonable. It's very strange to see Iran almost capable of controlling the narrative here because they are not the one with the media power. But my my my point was with the optics.
The the EU also doesn't look good now. The I see Mertz, you know, giving speeches where he blames Iran for defending itself. So it's disproportionate. You know? You shouldn't attack this or that.
You know, we we we will tell you what what they're allowed to retaliate against. I mean, disproportionate. If if this is a war for Iran's existence, then this, you know, this it is sort of strange comment to make. Also, Wunderland come came out now saying that what Iran needs is a transition away from this government, regime change, and also abandon its ballistic missiles. So capitulation, a bit like, you know, in in victory, they want Russia to capitulate.
Now as Iran seems to triumph, they want Iran to capitulate. It just this is just very, very bizarre diplomacy. There's no olive branch. There's nothing. Even even even when you're being defeated or at least the Iran is giving you a good beating, this is what you put on the table, capitulate?
Speaker 1: But I think in a way we got used to that from European from the Europeans. You know? So that's not that's not surprising. That's almost like a constant. Europe has staffed its key positions with probably the least competent professionals that they could find, and this is how they've been dealing with other, you know, Kayakalas and Ursula von der Leyen.
They go to China to negotiate deals, and they end up lecturing the Chinese leadership on human rights. The I don't think that Europe is almost inconsequential in all this. Iran has, in addition to many regional proxies, they have two of the most powerful allies in the world, which is Russia and China. So this is this is the people with power to change things on the ground. The Europeans are virtue signaling out of out of their own conceit of righteousness.
You know, they think, oh, you know, we we matter, we are Europe, and Iran should listen to us. I think that Iran has more economic exchange with Afghanistan than than they have with the with the whole of the European Union and by, you know, by a lot. So I I I take that as as statements for domestic consumption, which are completely inconsequential to to the rest of the world. But the anyway, you know, Europeans don't Europeans, their their positions aren't surprising at all. But the Trump's turn the Trump administration's gambit is is absolutely shocking.
And I I I have to say I always thought that they wouldn't go through with it because I thought that going to war against Iran would be so staggeringly dumb that nobody could possibly be that dumb to actually pull the trigger, but they did. And I think that allegedly Trump was convinced that by hitting Iran with big bombing raids that the Iranians would soften and become much easier at the negotiating table, and that they would accept all the conditions and that maybe there would be even a regime change and so forth. But the opposite happened, and now it was a completely reckless gamble, and now the war is not gonna last two or three days. It's probably gonna go on for considerable time. And you any idea of being able to control the consequences and the fallout is completely unrealistic.
There is no way that anybody in Trump administration can predict how this is going to unfold. And Iran has the whole Iran has all the advantages. I mean, short of using nuclear weapons against Iran, which, you know, we can't unfortunately, we can't discount either. Iran has all the cards because they're at home. They are dug in.
They've been preparing for this encounter for more than twenty years. They have enough missiles and drones to feed a 20 fourseven conveyor belt of missiles and drones against Israel and against Western assets in the region. United States is there with their military bases which are surrounded and their naval assets which are very limited. You know, they have so many planes on them, but, you know, every time you use up all your weapons, have to sail two, three, four days to Diego Garcia to to replenish. So you you don't have the staying power.
You cannot sustain a long campaign. Iran can, which means Iran wins this one. There's no question about it. And so it's it's the attack on Iran is so staggeringly dumb, I still sometimes think like, am I dreaming, or did they really do this? But they really did this.
Speaker 0: It just seems like they bet everything on this. I mean, for The US, this will The US Israeli relationship will be shaped by this. The relationship between United States and the Gulf States were not under protection now, but instead getting hit heavily for being frontline states. So The US credibility of being this all powerful state to which all American presidents suggest, you know, and that we can take down anyone, and this is a reason why countries ally with them. The US weapons, as you said, the now all of this is going into shortage.
There's some big concerns, like general Keane warned last week. How are you gonna contain the China? How are you gonna do all all these other things you want to do when you're running out of these weapons? The the energy issue can sink. The European economies, which are already sinking.
The global economy could go. And the Trump administration itself, I mean, he could be impeached by the sea. He could be finished. Indeed, I just saw the reports that the Pentagon informed the congress that there was no indications that Iran had any intentions of attacking The US first. So so it looks like the Pentagon is ready to throw their old Donald under the bus here.
So it's it just seemed everything was bet on something, which just seemed so ridiculous in terms of the the the likely success. The idea that you kill off Khomeini, and now suddenly the whole instead of rallying around the government, they they would all surrender and, you know, bow to the Americans for having liberated them from their, you know, highest religious authority. I mean, all of this made no sense at all, but I I just don't understand how any of this like you said, it does seem like a dream. How how how could any intelligence he had been fed been been so just horrible?
Speaker 1: Yeah. And, you know, with regards to impeachment, this time, the impeachment will almost certainly be successful because so far, you know, they were they were going on nothing. They were going on a lot of it was it was always going to be a big stretch whether they were going to be able to impeach him and where the impeachment will go. Now I think they have a they have a slam dunk Yeah. Because Trump really broke with every protocol, with the constitution, with with with the usage and customs, and he's completely and totally in the wrong.
So I of course, and and the troops are probably up in arms because they see this as as as dying for Israel and the Epstein class. They, you know well, you saw that every time over the last two last year since Trump has been in in the White House, when they were being sent to the Red Sea to confront the Houthis, when they were being sent to the East Mediterranean or the Persian Gulf to con con con confront whoever, Syria, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and so forth, you always had these technical problems. Right? You know, there was there was first the Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group was sent to the Red Sea from the from the Persian Gulf, and then their oiler ran aground. And, you know, that's fuel supply for the whole group.
So without fuel supply, you're not going anywhere. They didn't even have a fuel supply in a fuel vessel in reserve. And then another aircraft carrier was being sent from Malta to towards Egypt, towards Eastern Mediterranean, again, in support of of Israel. Yeah. Maybe they were being sent to to confront the Houthis as well.
And then they they collided with a commercial vessel in the off the offshore off the shore of Egypt. And now we have Gerald Ford, is sinking in its own excrement because the troops have been stuffing the toilets with with socks and t shirts. You know, this is when you're in the military, you can't you can't really mutiny. You can't disobey orders because you could be court martialed. You could be dis get a dishonorable discharge and so forth, But you can always sabotage the equipment and make mistakes that that set you at a disadvantage and maybe pre prevent the deployment.
And so when this happens again and again and again, what it tells you is that troops are not at are not at all with their hearts and minds in this fight. They don't wanna do it. So, of course, there are going to be blowback through the Pentagon to stop the commander in chief. I mean, it's it's a completely incomprehensible gamble because it was a gamble. You know, the worst thing is it really was a gamble.
Like, alright. We do this and if we're lucky, the regime falls, people take over, we're welcomed with with flowers and and parades, and everyone lives happily ever after. First of all, to even believe that, you have to be completely misinformed about what's really out there. And then second of all, this is not real estate speculation. So, you know, if we if we fail, we we lose on the deal.
This is history. It it doesn't end the day you say, like, oh, you know, didn't go well. The the avalanche of consequences is going to continue rolling. And then the the the most amazing thing to me is that I cannot figure out for for the life in me what was his upside because the downside was very clear. You could get ejected from the region, you could sustain hundreds if not thousands of casualties.
Israel is probably finished. You know, that's probably past tense. All of this to gain what exactly? I I can't figure it out. It's it's very close to nothing.
This must go down in history as one of the dumbest policy decisions ever, and it's very regrettable because I think that Trump had a great chance. He had a very strong popular mandate. I think he started moving in the right direction on so many important issues. And how how he got seduced into into this boondoggle is I have to say, I I find it very regrettable because if if if the whole Trump machine falls, The United States could find itself back in the camp of, you know, the WHO is gonna go be back, USAID is gonna be resurrected, LGBT ideology is going to gain strength again, Children are gonna be getting, you know, transitioned to whatever gender they choose or is chosen for them. And all these all these things that I I I I was hoping that we transcended are going to come back with a vengeance.
So that's that's where that's where the whole thing is actually heartbreaking. But then again, you know, it's it's it's ultimately going to be up to the American people who didn't vote for this. They act they voted exactly for the opposite.
Speaker 0: That's why this was different than Yemen. You know, Yemen, you can launch some strikes. If it doesn't work okay, you pull away. You can manage the situation, but this this is a real, you know, horse show.
Speaker 1: Quick this is quick send.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Anyways, I know you have a place to go, so thank you very much for taking the time.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much for inviting me, Glenn. Until the next time. Thank you.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Daniel Davis: U.S. Miscalculation - War Not Going as Planned https://youtu.be/w3F5HY8K5vM https://t.co/GCuM45tNcH
Video Transcript AI Summary
Speaker 0 and Speaker 1 discuss the unfolding conflict with Iran, focusing on miscalculations, strategy, and potential trajectories.
- Speaker 1 says the war is a major miscalculation, identifiable before it began. Signs were evident: movement of military equipment, force postures, and statements suggested that absent an eleventh-hour change by Trump, the plan was to use prepositioned forces and enablers for sustained combat. He notes this pattern matches previous experiences in which the U.S. saw a buildup as a precursor to war, citing Russia’s 2022 invasion and his own observations of earlier prepositioning, logistics, air support, refueling, and large-scale aviation assets (C-17s, C-5s, fighter jets, aircraft carriers).
- He argues Iran’s leadership intended to pursue war rather than negotiation, pointing to what he calls a central missed opportunity: the Oman foreign minister’s Friday-night submissions to the Iranian negotiator offering zero reprocessing, stockpile reductions, and at least preliminary talks on long-range missiles and proxies. He asserts that if the Trump administration had accepted those terms, a ceasefire or settlement might have been possible; instead, he claims the next morning’s attack signaled that negotiations were never the aim.
- Regarding U.S. objectives, Speaker 1 says the stated aims from Trump were unattainable given Iran’s resolve and the regime’s calculations that fighting a war with the U.S. is less risky than submitting to U.S. demands. He cites a New York Times report indicating Iran believed war with the U.S. was a viable risk, yet he notes Iran’s leadership now appears to be consolidating support at home and regionally after the Ayatollah’s assassination and the subsequent martyrdom of Qasem Soleimani’s successor in Iran’s internal narrative.
- On battlefield dynamics, he emphasizes that Iran’s force deployment is not merely pressure but designed for use, with extensive underground facilities capable of withstanding sustained pressure. He forecasts continued high-intensity operations for a period, but warns the U.S. faces a tightening window: if the Iranian side holds firm and the U.S. cannot sustain supplies and missiles, the U.S. could reach a crisis point.
- He discusses possible ceasefire dynamics and political reaction: Trump’s suggestion of a ceasefire could be “complete BS” if the Ayatollah’s position remains solid; the martyrdom and regional protests strengthen Iran’s stance. He expects continued escalation and a hardening of Iran’s demands, including sanctions relief or designation changes, should the conflict drag on.
- On regional response, Speaker 1 notes that Iran has drawn regional actors into the conflict, with protests supporting Iran across Iraq, Pakistan, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Israel. He says many Iranians—though opposed to the regime—are unlikely to embrace Israel or the United States as a path out of the crisis, given decades of antagonism and past betrayals by Western powers.
- Regarding U.S. vulnerabilities, he says there are reports of U.S. casualties (three killed, five seriously wounded, others lightly wounded) though some figures are disputed; the public reporting may lag behind direct sources. He mentions possible gaps in air defense and the risk of shortages in interceptors as drones and missiles proliferate, warning that Iran could escalate if U.S. stocks are depleted.
- Looking ahead, Speaker 1 argues the conflict is a battle of wills and a war of attrition. The U.S. attempted a “cheap” approach with naval and air power but no ground forces; Iran appears ready to continue long enough to force concessions. He warns the Iranian threat could extend to oil infrastructure and the broader economy if the United States or its regional partners target Iran’s energy sector, potentially broadening the conflict.
- In sum, he characterizes Iran’s strategy as all-in, aiming to impose pain to compel a negotiated settlement unfavorable to the U.S., while the U.S. faces a narrowing margin to sustain supply chains, missiles, and air defenses as the conflict potentially drags on for weeks to months. He cautions that the escalation ladder remains with higher rungs available, including strikes on energy infrastructure, if the conflict widens.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined by lieutenant colonel Daniel Davis, a four times combat veteran and host of the very popular Daniel Davis deep dive YouTube show, and I will leave a link in the description. So thank you for coming back on. We only spoke a few days ago. You were warning that this war was coming, and, well, sadly, you were right as usual.
But as this war now gone on for two days, it's it doesn't seem to go as planned. I mean, all sides have to put on a brave face, I guess, and claim success in any war. But over the past two days, we have seen a lot of chaos, and it's very hard to suggest that this was intended. Do you see any strategic miscalculation on the side of The United States, or or was this, such a cost that they were prepared to absorb?
Speaker 1: I it is. It's a major miscalculation, but, unfortunately, it was one that was self evident before it ever started. All the signs were in place. You mentioned that I I saw this coming and called it. It it frankly wasn't that hard to me because the signs that we were giving were made it really clear that absent an eleventh hour change of mind by Trump, which was always possible, so I always left some some room for that.
But based on the movement of the tops of military, equipment and gear, and the statements that were made and where the forces were, I it's it looked to me like because I've been through this. I've lived it once, well, twice, really, as a member of an armed force watching this exact same kind of buildup in The United States. And then one of the reasons I was so effective in calling the Russian war when it broke out in 2022 because remember, most people thought, oh, it's just gonna be another buildup. Russians aren't really gonna do that. They're gonna posture.
But I said, no. This one is fundamentally different for the same reason as the other two that I saw, and then now that this was played out. When you see the types of force that Russia had amassed in, it wasn't just demonstration forces. They had everything they need with all the enablers. They had the logistics.
They had the medical support. They had lots of things to sustain combat operations, and they were all being parked forward just like what I I went through when I myself was part of that deploying force. And so I said, no. This is something that is being prepositioned to use, and I wrote that extensively before the case. So, you know, you couldn't come back and just say, well, you called it later.
But that's why I was so confident in this one for the same reasons. Just when the air it was the air logistics. It was the refueling capabilities. It was the c seventeens, the c five transport, the massive number of them, like 50% of our entire inventory. And then, of course, the large number of of of fighter jets and and the aircraft carrier strikers and all that.
When you look at all that, it's like, no. This is being designed for use. This is not pressure. This is not trying to convince anybody to reach an outcome because they already were. That was kind of the the linchpin to me that that kinda convinced me Iran already was willing to have a negotiation.
And in fact, I think history is gonna look back and say, if there was a central moment where the our failure was, crystallized, it's on the night before when the, foreign minister from Oman, I believe it was on a Friday night, came and said on a USCBS news and said he had gotten or he had agreed to the, Iranian negotiator to make some profound submissions and and changes and concessions that they wanted in the nuclear agreement. They would they would not do any reprocessing zero, which they had said wasn't even on the table before. And then they said the stockpiles they had, they would get rid of that too. And then they said at least on the table were the long range missiles and the proxy forces, which heretofore had not even been on the table. They said, we'll do that later, but let's get the nuclear part first.
It was a golden opportunity for the Trump administration. If that's what they wanted, they had it in their hand. And when he is attacked the next morning, then that that, that made it clear very clear that none of this was ever about negotiations. It was always about war. Well, now then, we're on a situation to where we have, started something that we can't finish.
And I and I don't remember. Maybe it's what you and I talked about last time. My big frustration was this is a war you can't win. You're setting about unattainable military objectives. And when president Trump came out, you know, early in the morning that this that Saturday on March at Mar A Lago, he put out all the objectives for this, and and I just was cringing because I'm like, unless the the Iranian side does what the unexpected and just collapses and crumbles just out of fear and whatever, there's no way you're gonna be able to accomplish those if they have a if their backbone stays stiff and they're and they already understood ahead of time that this was gonna be very costly for them, but that they had calculated this was in the New York Times just days before that they have calculated that fighting a war with The US was less risky than submitting to The US.
That, again, was another signal that they had made this decision to go. And now so far, that's exactly what they had done, and they are paying a price. And there's no doubt that there's been profound destruction of their armed forces, of their senior leaders, of course, their political and military, and definitely their military infrastructure's taken a beating. But it's this I I'm pretty sure you and I did talk about this. They have these underground facilities throughout the country, and they have the ability to withstand a lot of this for an extended period of time, but we don't.
That's the key issue here. I said that we had to we had maybe four or five days of high intensity flight. Maybe we could stretch that out to a couple of weeks, if you're judicious in the youth. But then what? If the other side doesn't capitulate, you're in real trouble.
And now then that's where it looks like we are. There's reports out just in the last few hours that president Trump is saying, hey. Maybe we can have a ceasefire. They're they're asking me for it, which has gotta be complete BS. There's no way they would ask for it.
Not now. Not after their Ayatollah has been assassinated. It's the last thing they're gonna do is ceasefire under those conditions. Otherwise, he would have been taken to secure location. Evidence suggests that he knew he was gonna be assassinated, and Athene willingly sacrificed his life to be used as a martyr because he didn't go to a protected place.
He stayed where everyone knew where his compound was so that when the strike came in, he was killed. That's what it looks like happened intentionally, and now that result looks like it's having a situation to where it's not causing the backbone to to quiver, but it's actually consolidating support behind the regime and throughout the Shia world. There's lots of protests going on around the world in support of the Iranian side because of the sacrifice of the Antola. So I think it has been a profound and and I mean, to say miscalculation is bad because that almost implies that you thought maybe it was gonna be good, but, you know, you what you base it off of, you thought it was gonna work, but it didn't. This was well known ahead of time that unless the other side just quit and everything in the world said they wouldn't, then you went ahead anyway, that was a profound error.
So, yeah, I think it's a major miscalculation.
Speaker 0: Well, they didn't seem to predict that, yeah, Iran would attack bases across the region. So Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, obviously, Israel. But also, as you said, they're killing Khamenei. This is a very strange thing that they thought the government would collapse then. You know, this this is a in the Shia culture, the martyrdom is so deep.
This is, you know, something that would, you know, as you said, get them riled up, but or consolidate. But as you saw but also in the Shia region, Shia communities across the region, see from Iraq, Pakistan, Bahrain, they're all, you know, taking to the streets in support of of Iran given this attack and killing of their religious leader. And I saw Trump giving a speech now in which he, you know, argued that the Iranian army should put their weapons down and, you know, their civilians should take to the streets and like, this is does he really think this is what's gonna happen now? It it's just
Speaker 1: You know what? I I really do. I think that I think that he does think that. I I I think that in his mind, you know how a lot of people often do projecting. They whatever your values are, whatever you would do in a circumstance, you just project onto another actor.
And I think that's what he did because he's thinking, yeah. If I came in and somebody from the stronger position came in and just started bombing the crap out of me and killing some people, I'd give up. I'd just say, yeah. Let's roll in. So that's what's gonna happen.
And then he's like, that's that's kinda what happened with all those speedboats. I killed all these people and blew it up. Nobody did anything. I stole the the leader from another country in Venezuela. Nothing happened, and they just rolled over, the whole the whole leadership in Venezuela.
All you gotta do is just show how tough you are, and then they'll just roll over. And I think that's what he thought was gonna happen here, not recognizing the radical and profound differences between Venezuela and and the the Shia, country of Iran, as you pointed out. So I think it was a big miscalculation. I I I will say the one area where I wasn't I I did not foresee properly, Iran had said that they would attack the bases of all everywhere America was in the region. We took that seriously and bolstered up a lot of the air defenses, but I did not think that they would, from the beginning, also attack the civilian sectors of those countries.
It appears to me that their message was, hey. You guys are are we're we're suffering from The US. We have since 2010 from The from Israel. And then starting with the assassination of the Soleimani by The US in 2019, we've just been hit mercilessly, and you guys are protecting them. You guys are putting these bases in there, and they're using that against us.
So it's time for you to feel some pain too. It it looks like that's kind of what they said, kind of like a big f u in a in a big way, and there's been some really big strikes. I thought that they would not do that in an effort to say, hey. Don't don't take action against us. This is just against The US.
But it looks like they're saying, I'm just tired of getting pushed around, which is another indication. The reason I bring that up is because that shows that they're all in on this. And they're gonna say, listen. We're even gonna hit other regimes in the areas to see if we can put pain on United States, on Israel, and on their backers in the region, and they're gonna start suffering until everybody backs off. And then maybe we will too.
Maybe they'll do some negotiation later. I don't think they're gonna do it right now, though.
Speaker 0: No. That's what I'm thinking as well. I probably yeah. They would want an end to this, but I I think they want to, inflict some more pain. Otherwise, you know, you're gonna have a similar war again in six months as well during negotiations probably.
But what do you see though, the the wider war strategy of Iran here? Because I I was also a bit surprised by the civilian targets that is airports, hotels. The foreign minister said we attacked the hotels because they house American troops, but still, I've seen a lot of other civilian targets which didn't you know, it it, yeah, it fits more within your analysis here that is more about causing pain. But they jumped straight into the closing off the Strait Of Hormuz. They attack ships, I think, four oil four oil tankers so far, if I'm counting correctly.
So what is the strategy now of Iran? I mean, if, yeah, if you would, you know, sit down with the war planners, what do think they would say?
Speaker 1: I think that they have calculated we're gonna run this out for a number of months. That that's my that's my guess. Based on what they're doing, these things aren't short lived. These things aren't, like, well, we're trying to do this, and we'll we'll ratchet up bit by bit to increase the pain. But if you back off at any time, so can we.
This sounds like they have said, no. We're all in. And so we're gonna shut down all the stuff. We've been we've been signaling we were gonna do the stuff. You didn't believe us, and I'm sick of it.
After forty seven years of taking this kind of punishment from their perspective, I'm done. And so now then, new rules are in effect, and you're gonna go by what we say. You're gonna finally taste some of the pain that we've been taking because I think that they view this as a genuine existential crisis. And I think that they said we're gonna have to it it looks to me like in their councils, they must have calculated that we're gonna suffer real bad for this. There's no doubt about it.
But we're gonna have a shot at having a positive outcome at the end, which is to drain The United States dry. The whole issue with the Russia Ukraine war is that it's a war of attrition, and both sides have a lot of inputs. And so it's taken years, and they're still not there. As bad as Ukraine's been hit, they can still keep going. The United States, on the other hand, is not analogous to the Russian side in that one.
We don't have that much capacity to just go for years like this. As a matter of fact, you heard general Jack Keane on the morning of the attack say boasting that we could do this for two or three weeks. And he said, but maybe it'll be done faster because they assassinated the Ayatollah, and they said, well, now then maybe it won't even take that long. Well, if that's your planning range, what that was that was, to me, another major blunder of The United States to admit that we have a narrow window here. So what you're telling Iran, make sure you spread this out further than three weeks because we're gonna have a really hard time of maintaining enough, you know, gasoline for our jets, bullets and bombs for our jets, the missiles, the air defense missiles, the air offense missiles, the attack missiles, all of those kinds of things.
We don't have that many to just get into an indefinite expenditure here. We just don't have it. And however many Ukraine or Iran has, they also have limited. So it's not like they can go on also for years, but they can go for more than three weeks, I think they have calculated. And when you see these now increasing videos from from Israel, and now then you see what I had feared about and was angry and I'm angry about now about the casualties of The United States, when those start to pile up, and believe me, they're gonna do everything they can to accelerate those number of casualties in both places.
People at home are gonna start saying, wait a minute. Why did you do this? Where's this quick victory? And especially if it drains out past three weeks, they're going, hang on. You guys said this would be an easy win or that that it would be something that we could get done.
Now then, we have it because Trump is now saying, hey. Maybe within three days, we can have a ceasefire and negotiation. But what if now it's the fourth day and the fifth day and there's still no sign The bombs and missiles keep falling from Iran side. Now they start getting into more stuff. When we start running low on air defense missiles as well, now if they start pulling out a, you know, wave upon wave of, you know, three, four hundred at a wave of these Shahid drones.
So the reportedly, they have, like, tens of thousands of them, and they could do that for a long time. We haven't even seen any of those yet. Not at not at scale. And we have seen some of the smaller number of drones get through American defenses as it is at Bahrain in particular. There's one famous video that's out there.
If you keep going down that path and now all a sudden, we can't even stop drones because we're running low on air defense capabilities and we start suffering even more casualties as the time goes on, then there's gonna be incredible political pressure on both Jerusalem and Washington to start looking to something. And now then now then I think and you asked me what their objective was overall, I think, from the Iranian side, is it to cause so much pain that now then we come back with, you know, hat in hand and looking for a negotiated settlement that is much worse for us than the one that was on the table the night before all this from the Oman foreign minister. Now then, they'll those deals are gone. They're never gonna come back with those kind of generous terms again. Now then, they're gonna be demanding a lot in return.
They're gonna be demanding drop in sanctions, you know, change of designation, get rid of this terrorist designation, etcetera. I don't know that they'll trust us on anything, but if they if they get something like that at least, you know, a change of the of the negotiations and the the sanctions, that could be a win from something they might consider. But, you know, I there's it's gonna take a lot of pain on our side to get to that point because the the anger and the hatred is so high for them. And now then you have our arrogance has been called into has been challenged here. Because for us to admit that we're not strong enough to compel compliance from little Iran, that's gonna be a major, major problem for our side and something that they won't do easily and will be fought fiercely among all these war lusters and these warmongers who loved all this and had been pleading with Trump to do it, and he finally gave in.
You could imagine they'll continue on, and then, of course, then they'll blame Trump if he agrees to anything like this and say, oh, he just didn't have the stamina. He didn't have the the stomach and the courage to keep going. We should've stayed. You know, they'll blame everybody in the world except for themselves and see the the disaster that what they got, what they wanted, how much it cost us. But that's a lot of stuff on the table here, but that's that's kinda where I see this going, means a lot more people are gonna die and a lot more things are gonna get blown up.
Speaker 0: Were you surprised, though, that there was no gradual escalation ladder here that they went out well, all out so so quickly? Again, this has has been the end of day two, and, you know, all these countries hit the Strait Of Hormuz, the civilian targets. I mean, like you said, they're going all out. Did this take you by surprise?
Speaker 1: I it it it was fifty fifty. I I I wouldn't I wouldn't shock. I wasn't fully onboard. I didn't think they would like I said, they they did go a little bit further than I thought, but then it's logical. I I it's what I would have done, but based on their forty seven year history, I didn't think they would.
I thought that they would, go bigger than they did in the twelve day war. I thought they would attack The US bases, and I thought it was a a coin flip on the Strait Of Hormuz. I thought that might be a negotiating tactic that, alright, we'll ramp this up. But it looks like, like I said, now that it looks to me like based on evidence that in their our councils of of discussion before this started, that they said, no. We're all in.
If if The United States and Israel start this war, we're just all in. And so now then I think that their their calculation is just, yeah, there's no more ramping up anything. Now that you've assassinated our our and and in that same council meeting, it's now my assessment based on evidence that they said, hey. 86 year old, he didn't have that much longer to live anyway. And I think he said, I'm not going into the tunnels.
I'm not gonna hide. I'm gonna put myself right there where I'm always at every day. And when the bombs come, they're gonna take me out at that time, use me as a martyr, and then use that to rally people in our country and around the other parts of Shia Islam. And it looks like that's succeeding, at least so far. And and I've I've seen I've talked to one, and I've read that a a friend of mine interviewed another Iranian who were just passionately against the Ayatollah and have protested against him in the past and said, listen.
Y'all are putting us in a terrible situation because we we hated the Ayatollah and and wanted to get rid of that regime. We've been protesting for years in this case. I and I've known this guy for well over a decade in in my case. And then others have said the same thing that, look. Well, we don't like him.
But you think that we're gonna embrace, you know, Israel, the in our in our biggest enemy in the region who's been doing all this stuff to us since, like, the twenty ten Stuxnet and on forward and, you know, assassinated people and our people in in in in Tehran, blown up our embassies and stuff, and then now attacked us twice. You think that we're gonna, like, embrace what they're doing and we're gonna succeed? No. And they're not gonna come tell us that Reza Pavli is gonna be become the the new leader of Iran. I mean, that are you serious?
That's who we rose up against in 1979, that that family. There's no way they're gonna take him back, that he's gonna be able to govern any kind of coalition in Iran. At least, that's my opinion. So they they are angry at at Israel. So they're not gonna embrace it.
So if our thought was that we'll cause enough mayhem that the and woo the leadership of Iran, then they'll rise up because we've killed a bunch of their people and done stuff, and then that's gonna be yay good for us. Like Lindsey Graham, he's the biggest proponent of that. I I think that they're angry at him too because they're they're your assumptions were badly flawed because now that they're in bad position, they're not gonna turn against their own country and embrace, you know, what they've been calling the the little Satan for forty seven years or the great Satan in our case. So I think that no matter what weird words comes out of Trump's mouth, like, oh, these great and wonderful people of of Iran, you know, we we look forward to having them because they said, listen. We know it's the same kind of language you guys have been using to everybody.
You said that about the people in Libya. You said it about the people in Somalia. You said it about the people in Afghanistan, in Iraq, etcetera. You always say that kind of stuff, and then you walk away the minute it's unhappy. This is what they're saying.
And so we know how that works out. We've seen this play before. So we know this is not about us, and then you're gonna not do anything for us once you get what you want, which is the loss of that regime. So that's another reason why they're not exactly falling all over themselves to to do what we're asking them to do and to basically become our boots on the ground so that we don't have to send in an army. I think that they're saying, yeah.
You want an army? Bring an army. If you wanna roll in and do this stuff, do it. Don't don't ask us to die in large numbers on the ground because you don't wanna send in an army. By the way, we don't even like you.
So that's complicating our strategy too.
Speaker 0: Yeah. It's know, in The United States, there's many people who really hate Trump. Some even moved away from the country because they don't like him, but even those people would not back, you know, Chinese forces bombing Washington or New York. I mean, it is quite kinda crazy that that this assumption that you can just sell this idea that, yeah, well, we're fighting with you guys, the the people. This is a good way of, yeah, weakening the opposition, if anything.
I I did wanna ask you, though, about the vulnerability of the aircraft carriers and, overall, the US Navy because the Iranians seems to have the missiles seems to go through everywhere in in know, hitting these bases almost in, you know, all the countries of the region. However, the the US Navy, though, it seems to be well, I'm not sure if it's been untouched. I haven't seen anything. Have the Iranians attempted, or is it simply, you know, beyond the reach?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I saw I've seen one video that claims to be from some Chinese tourists or something like that, and and I I don't remember if it was Haifa or Tel Aviv somewhere where they claim to show this grainy video of a US ship getting hit. I don't know if the you know, there's so many deepfakes out there. You you can't take anything at face value anymore, even really good looking videos. So I don't know.
Certainly haven't heard any reports on that. I had heard that there were some reports of US casualties killed in action earlier on in the process, like in the early hours. And the Pentagon I'm sorry. The cent Central Command, CENTCOM, you know, said, no. There hasn't been any.
Well, from some direct sources that some of my friends know that they knew there were, but that's what they were saying. And then, of course, today, they have confirmed that there were three killed, five seriously wounded, and a number of others less wounded. And and my sources are saying even that number is not true. It's low. It's higher than that.
So we can expect to see that coming out. So it's possible that there have been some, but then we haven't been reporting it so far. We're afraid of the of the news because unlike unlike all these where there's, you know, 10,000 cell phone cameras every time there's anything happening in the city, that's not the case out to sea. No one would know unless it's reported. So maybe there has, maybe there hasn't.
I don't know. That that has been one thing that surprised me. I expected to see that. But whether it hasn't happened or whether we just don't know about it yet, I can't really say at this point.
Speaker 0: Well, how would you assess the the developments going forward in the next days and weeks? Again, this is a war of attrition then. That is it should be assessed by the ability of each side to, I mean, cause pain to the other and also the ability to absorb the pain, or is this how you should understand the actions on both sides, or or is The United States more looking just for, yeah, some Ultimately
Speaker 1: ultimately, it's a it's a battle of wills. I mean, you can generally say that about every war, but this one even more so. Because we chose to try this on the cheap. We said, let's bring all this naval and air power in, but no boots on the ground because it's like a bugaboo in The United States, and there's many people, to include senator, I think senator Cotton, but senator Cruz and senator, Lindsey Graham, they all repeatedly bragged about how there were no boots on the ground. Nobody was talking about that.
President Trump said that because they know that that's something that American voters hate. So they thought, well, maybe we can win this on the cheap. And instead of, like, in 2003, when we had a lot of air and naval power and a credible ground force of hundreds of thousands of troops that, when it was necessary, rolled in on the ground. And so, you know, if you're talking about the president Trump telling the IRGC, the police forces, and the besiege, and everybody else to put down your arms, well, that didn't carry any weight if there's nobody there to make you do it. Just bombs falling, and and unless you have an army that can come and compel it like the Iraqis did.
When we said the same thing to them and now here comes the first armored division rolling up the street, that's gonna have some teeth. But this one here, there is no armored division. There's nobody on the ground whatsoever. So there's no reason for them to capitulate. They just like, all we have to do is survive the onslaught.
And, you know, and they know how many weapons we have, or they have a pretty good idea. They know that we have been bled, you know, deeply, maybe not dry, but we bled been bled deeply by all the support we've given to Israel since October 2023. They know that we've been bled because of the four years of nonstop sending stuff to Ukraine, and it doesn't matter that Trump hasn't given it away. He sold it, and we've still given you know, our inventory has gone down and our production has gone out there, so nothing was replaced that was lost during the Biden administration. It's continued to dwindle.
And now all of a sudden, you need it. And they they know that, look, they piled up all this stuff for years, for decades because they've always foreseen this being a possibility. We have no idea how many missiles that they actually have, how many drones that they actually have because they're underground, and, you know, we can't count those. We can't go on with with satellites, but we can imagine that they have a lot. Senator Ted Cruz today said that his understanding is that this is today that Iran can produce right now with all of these sanctions and everything else and all these fires and all these attacks we've made, still a 100 missiles per month per month.
So whatever was lost in the in the twelve day war has been replaced, and we don't even know how many they had before that. I've heard wildly different assessments. But whatever it is, it's a decent amount, and that's on top of the tens of thousands of drones that they have. So I think that they have just said, it's gonna be a test of political will. Our will is gonna say, we're gonna keep this going beyond your two week window, and we're gonna start spreading it out for, two or three months after that when you're gonna be hurting.
Because if we now don't have very many air defense missiles and we start getting like the Ukraine side is, where they have an inadequate number of of Patriots and the Irish tea and all the other kinds of air defense they have, and all of a sudden, Russia can come and flood the zone with more missiles than they have interceptors, the stuff is gonna get through. Iran could be in that same, weirdly enough, position of Russia to where we use all of our our you know, the bulk of our interceptors like this rate we have right now anyway, and all of a sudden, now that we can't knock that many down. And by the way, there was some the pretty dramatic footage. I I think we're gonna show one of the scenes on our show this afternoon of an American reportedly, an American videographer on on one of I think it was on Bahrain, where they had the camera up there, and they could see an incoming missile. And then you saw a Patriot interceptor fire up to intercept it, and you can see because the angles were just flawless.
It missed. The Patriot missed, and the other missile came in and just hit very close to where the guy was on the ground. I mean, that's that's that's date one. That was the first day that you're seeing we're already missing. Now imagine if you don't even have enough of those.
And so now that instead, the missile comes in and there is no defender. There's not even one missile going up. And and you can see that now then you can start putting more and more of these lower cost drones in the air because you can't knock those down in in quantity either. So I think that the Iranian side is calculating, we're just gonna increase the pain on you until you can't survive anymore. Our strategy on the other hand is like, oh, snap.
I thought this was gonna be done in a few days and in a week, maybe two weeks, and then they would capitulate. So it's and and that's still the hope. They're still saying we still have we do have a couple of weeks of really high intensity strikes that we can have, and there's a lot of pain that we can bring on the Iranian side. I'm So sure that we're gonna continue on along with Israel to try and bring as much pain as possible, hoping that they can get them to that point. But if we get beyond that, and the Iranian side is still viable, and our side is now that we're down to our inventories of missiles, offensive and defense are now in a smaller condition.
It doesn't matter how powerful our navy is, how many fighter jets we have, how many air patriot missile batteries we have. None of that matters if you don't have the missiles. That's the key issue that too few people recognize. It's about the inventory of your offensive and defensive missiles, and it could be it could be that Iran has more of them. It's certainly more to use here without us making the rest of I mean, unless we rape everything out of INDOPACOM or everything else out of everywhere else in the world and bring them in here, and now they were literally, you know, empty handed everywhere else, then that could be a real problem, but there'll be a temptation to do that.
This could be a major, major problem for our side if it doesn't end within a couple of weeks.
Speaker 0: So much for the pivot to Asia. This is this is opposite of what Trump was gonna do.
Speaker 1: Be the raping Asia to to get what we need to fight here.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Sorry. Just a last very quick question. You you mentioned that The US can, well, exhaust itself. The the Iranians can put a lot of pain on The United States.
But what do you think is the most vulnerable area, though? Because, you know, if I was advising the Iranians, I would, you know, point out, you know, you have many pressure points you can, you know, push against The United States. You can hit the American assets of the region that is all the military bases. You can you can hit the Gulf States, even the, you know, the civilian targets to make sure that, yeah, these countries go through a lot of pain, even oil refineries, whatever you wanna go for. You can also go after the global economy, for example, shutting down the Strait Of Hormuz or, yeah, shutting down some of the air traffic.
You can also focus a lot on Israel. And, you know, as we speak, you have all these missiles raining over Jerusalem. So there's which which area do you think is most likely to break first? Because
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. This will this will tell us really where the the Iranian mindset is right now. My guess is based on what we've seen so far is that they made a statement with with firing in Dubai and and, Bahrain and some of these other cities. I think that they're like, okay.
Message sent and received. I think that we told you that. But now that I think because quantity is is is important thing, I think Navinil turn into the more higher value targets that they have. And I think that is for The United States, I think that pressure point is casualties. I think that they cause it because there's already been a lot of anger in The US, social media space even at some high levels about the casualties that have started here.
So I think that they'll prioritize anything that's gonna be high casualty producing on The United States, throughout the region at all of our bases with it, and maybe they'll start going after the ships. I don't know. And then the same thing when in Israel, I think that they'll they'll go after casually producing capabilities. I think they're going after the military first, especially anything with the intelligence. They'd love to go after those, and I had seen some reports that they did go after some intel facilities inside of Jerusalem to try and cause some, degradation of their ability to track anything that's going on inside of there.
And, of course, if they can go after missile launchers on the Israeli side or their aircraft, that would be a high high value target. Same with the with the United States air air force. If they could knock those out, if they could knock out the tankers, that's a big thing too because that will limit our ability to even use the fighter jets that we have. But I think that, depending on what we do would be what they do next. If we don't go after the Iranian oil infrastructure and their energy supplies and and their refineries, etcetera, and I haven't seen any reports that we'd get that yet.
Maybe we have it. I just didn't see it. But if we start going after that, especially at scale and we can, it's a fixed target, it wouldn't be that hard, then I think you're gonna see Iran also start to pivot. Because there I think that part of the signal also, would imagine, so what I would do, when I see hit all of these civilian targets, I can say, that's bad for you, and like, I think it was Qatar, there was I think it was Qatar anywhere, may have been, Dubai, where they hit a a high high profile, hotel in the middle of the city for for which tourists and other things. They hit an airport.
But they're like, you know, we could also hit something else that's important to you, and that is your oil infrastructure. We can hit your refineries. We can hit your their transfer stations at the at the ports, etcetera. We could cause profound damage that would take a long time to fix and come at much, much higher cost for the kingdoms themselves. But I don't think they'll do that unless we go after theirs.
And so if we try to ramp this up to bring more pain on the Iranian side, then I think you can see an expansion. So you talk about the the up the escalation ladder. I think the escalation ladder started on wreck rung four or five, but there are still rungs above it that it can go to. There is some room left to escalate, and and I hope we don't get there, but those are the things I'm worrying about.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Glenn Diesen: NATO's War of Choice - The Sabotage of the Istanbul Negotiations https://youtu.be/VnL4s-b6hxo https://t.co/cReTKLr4AM
Video Transcript AI Summary
On February 24, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine after sabotaging the Minsk agreements for seven years. The video argues that the primary purpose of the United States and United Kingdom was to sabotage the Istanbul negotiations in April 2022 in order to keep a long war going, using Ukrainians as a proxy to weaken Russia as a strategic rival. The author asserts that a US hegemonic strategy relies on perpetual dominance and NATO expansion, and that US aims include preserving global primacy by weakening rivals like Russia. The video emphasizes that this view is controversial, but presents evidence of Western actions that allegedly undermined peace talks.
Before Istanbul, Zelensky had signaled openness to discussing Ukraine’s neutral status immediately after the invasion (February 25–26, 2022). By February 27, Moscow and Kyiv agreed to peace talks without preconditions. Meanwhile, US and UK officials signaled opposition to peace without preconditions and framed diplomacy as contingent on Russia’s withdrawal and a de-escalation, framing Moscow’s proposals as negotiation under the barrel of a gun. Ned Price of the US State Department stated that Moscow was proposing diplomacy at the barrel of a gun and urged Russia to halt its bombing and withdraw. UK comments by James Heappey on February 26 framed regime change as the objective, asserting Putin’s days as president would be numbered and that Ukrainian sovereignty must be restored. The EU’s €450 million in military aid approved on February 27 was said to reduce incentives to negotiate with Moscow. UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson on February 28 framed measures as bringing down the Putin regime.
In March 2022, US officials framed the war as broader than Russia or Ukraine, emphasizing world order and rules to uphold, with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin stating the aim to weaken Russia so it could not quickly reproduce aggression. Former CIA Director Leon Panetta described the conflict as a proxy war with Russia, advocating direct actions to “kill Russians.” Bloomberg reports by Neil Ferguson in March 2022 suggested a preference for extending the conflict to bleed Putin, with the endgame being the end of the Putin regime.
Zelensky’s March 27, 2022 interview with The Economist noted that “everyone has varied interests,” including some Western factions preferring a long war to exhaust Russia, even at Ukraine’s expense. Despite this, negotiations proceeded in Istanbul, where progress was reported as substantial and a deal near. Ukrainian media (Ukrainian Pravda) quoted Boris Johnson as telling Kyiv that Putin is a war criminal and that even if Ukraine were ready to sign guarantees, the UK and US would not support it. Johnson would later advocate “strategic endurance” and a long war, while Zelensky’s party leader Andriy Arakhamiya indicated Johnson had told Kyiv not to sign any deal at all, opting to continue the war.
Turkey and Israel played mediator roles; Naftali Bennett argued that Russia wanted to end NATO expansion and make huge concessions, and that Zelensky accepted neutrality, but the West blocked a peace agreement to keep pressuring Putin. Turkish officials suggested Zelensky was ready to sign a peace agreement before US/UK intervention, and implied the war is not simply Russia–Ukraine but a war between Russia and the West, with the West prolonging the conflict to weaken Russia.
In later years, Western leaders publicly praised using Ukraine to weaken Russia and pivot focus to China, framing continued arms support as essential. By 2024, as negotiations stalled and Ukraine’s situation worsened, Johnson warned that Ukraine’s fall would threaten Western hegemony, while European diplomacy was downplayed in favor of weapon aid as the path to peace. The speaker concludes that recognizing the Istanbul negotiations’ sabotage matters for seeking the best possible deal today, rather than pursuing a protracted proxy war that harms Ukraine and prolongs the conflict.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: On 02/24/2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. That is after the Minsk agreement had been sabotaged for seven years. Russia decided to invade and impose neutrality by force. In this video, though, I will put forward the evidence for how primarily The United States and United Kingdom sabotaged the following negotiations in Istanbul in April 2022 in order to create a long war where they could use Ukrainians to fight and weaken Russia as a strategic rival. I'm well aware that this is considered to be a controversial argument, but we should also ask why it's consider it's considered to be controversial.
That is, The United States has a hegemonic strategy in which its security is based on the idea of perpetual dominance of The United States. NATO expansion is, to a large extent, an instrument towards this end. And to maintain hegemony, The US seeks to weaken rival centers of power, Russia being one of them. So why then is it diff difficult, if not controversial, to argue that, US strategy is about preserving global primacy and as opposed to being an en amnesty international with nuclear weapons that merely seeks to defend democracy and the freedom of other peoples? Now I could be wrong about NATO seeking to fight to the last Ukrainian, but let's address at least evidence of the sabotage of the Istanbul agreement and which is not permitted in the media as it tends to disrupt the war narrative.
But again, this evidence can't be refuted, yet it's not really part of the discourse. So just to be very clear about the purpose of this video, it's not a statement of support for the invasion, an attempt to legitimize, or even suggest that Ukraine does not have the right to defend itself. The the purpose of this video is simply to support the argument that there's an overwhelming evidence for The United States and UK having sabotaged the negotiations in Istanbul in order to use Ukrainians to fight as a proxy to fight Russia. Now this is important to understand why we have a war, why it hasn't ended for four years, and what's required to actually put an end to it. So what happened before the Istanbul talks?
Let's begin at the beginning. That is on the day after the Russians invaded Ukraine, that is on the 02/25/2022, president Zelensky had already confirmed, and this is a quote, today we heard from Moscow that they still want to talk. They want to talk about Ukraine's new neutral status. We are not afraid to talk about neutral status. On the next day, that is the second day after the invasion, on the 02/26/2022, Zelensky reaffirmed again his willingness to negotiate about Ukraine's neutrality.
And he said, quote, if talks are possible, they should be held. If in Moscow, they say that they want to hold talks, including on neutral status, we are not afraid of this. We can talk about that as well. The day after, on the February 27, that is the third day after the invasion, Moscow and Kyiv announced that they would hold peace talks. This without preconditions.
So this looked like it could be an extremely short war. And here comes my point. If my thesis is correct that the objective is to use Ukraine as a proxy, you don't wanna put an end to war and restore Ukraine's neutrality after you spent years building a large proxy army to weaken a strategic rival. So let's see what happened during those same days on the NATO side. Well, on the 02/25/2022, the first day after the Russian invasion, this is after Zelensky had agreed to discuss neutrality, The US spokesperson Ed Price announced that Washington rejected peace talks without preconditions as insisted The US could only accept diplomacy after Russia would have withdrawn from Ukraine.
In the words of Ned Price, quote, now we see Moscow suggesting that diplomacy take place at the barrel of a gun. And he goes on, if president Putin is serious about diplomacy, he knows what he can do. He should immediately stop the bombing campaign against civilians, order the withdrawal of his forces from Ukraine, and indicate very clearly and unambiguously to the world that Moscow is prepared to deescalate. We heard on the February 26, that is the second day after the invasion from The UK minister of the armed forces, James Heape, who wrote in The Daily Telegraph, again, on the second day about Putin, quote, his failure must be complete. Ukrainian sovereignty must be restored and the Russian people empowered to see how little he cares for them.
In showing them that, Putin's days as president will surely be numbered, and so too will those of the kleptocratic elite that surrounded him that surround him. He'll lose power, and he won't get to choose his successor. So we already then saw from the second day that the objective of the war had become regime change. Then on the February 27, that is the third day of the invasion, the same day that Russia and Ukraine announced that they would hold peace talks, the EU approved €450,000,000 in military aid, which then would also reduce the incentives to negotiate with Moscow. On the day after, on the February 28, the spokesperson for prime minister Boris Johnson of The UK, stated, and this is a quote, the measures we're introducing that large parts of the world are introducing are to bring down the Putin regime, just to bring home the argument that this is about regime change.
Then in March 2022, as, the talks were gonna start between the Ukrainians and the Russians, The US spokesperson, Ed Price, was asked if The US would support the a negotiated settlement, that Zelenskyy was advancing, in which Price answered, quote, this is a war that is, in many ways, bigger than Russia, is bigger than Ukraine. Principles are at stake that must be maintained. And he went on suggesting that this was more about world order and the rules that America had to uphold. So again, it was not the main objective to put an end to the Ukraine war at the negotiation table. The US Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, also outlined The US objective in the Ukraine war as weakening a strategic rival, in which he said, we want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can't do the kinds of thing it's done invading Ukraine.
So it, that is Russia, has already lost a lot of military capabilities and a lot of its troops, quite frankly. And we want to see them not have the capability to very quickly reproduce that capability. We had even more direct language coming from Leon Panetta, a former CIA director who argued then also in March 2022, quote, we are engaged in a conflict here. It's a proxy war with Russia, whether we say it or not. The way we get leverage is by, frankly, going in and killing Russians.
Yet in the media, the the narrative was still that this was all about Ukrainian democracy and sovereignty. However, more evidence rolled in on the 03/22/2022 when Neil Ferguson, reported in Bloomberg. Actually, he cited sources from The US and the UK governments, and he concluded that the preference now was for, quote, the conflict to be extended and thereby bleed Putin as the only endgame now is the end of the Putin regime. So we see time and time again coming from several Western countries, especially US and UK, that this is an opportunity to to pursue regime change in Moscow. So why hurry with an end to the war?
But to really bring the point home, we have, none other than president Zelenskyy on the 03/27/2022 giving an interview with The Economist. In this interview, he says, and this is direct quote, everyone has varied interests. There are those in the West who don't mind a long war because it would mean exhausting Russia, even if this means the demise of Ukraine and comes at the cost of Ukrainian lives. Nonetheless, the Russians and Ukrainians met in Istanbul to negotiate an end to the war. Great progress was made, and they were even close to a deal.
It was then sabotaged by the US and UK, to a large extent, executed by Boris Johnson as it came to Kyiv and told Ukrainians exactly what the US and UK would not do, and that was to support any early peace agreements. According to the Ukrainian media, Boris Johnson went to Kyiv and delivered the following message, and this is from Ukrainian Pravda. Quote, the first is that Putin is a war criminal. He should be pressured, not negotiated with. And the second is that even if Ukraine is ready to sign some agreement on guarantees with Putin, they, that is The UK and US, are not.
So some have questioned if this really happened, the extent to which Boris Johnson actually wanted to keep the war going. Well, we we could look at Boris Johnson's own comments. For example, later on in June 2022, he made this statement in a speech. He said, quote, now is not the time to settle and encourage the Ukrainians to settle for a bad peace. Instead, Boris Johnson argued for what he called strategic endurance, which is a nice word for a long war.
Similarly, in December 2022, Boris Johnson published an op ed in the Wall Street Journal arguing against any negotiations. He said, quote, the war in Ukraine can end only with Vladimir Putin's defeat. Later on, the head of Zelenskyy's political party and head of the delegation of Ukraine in Istanbul, David, Arakhamiya, he said in an interview that the negotiations were primarily about restoring Ukraine's neutrality. And then he said, and this is a direct quote, Boris Johnson came to Kiev and said that we will not sign anything with them at all, and let's just go to war. So that was the contribution of Boris Johnson.
Yet the talks took place in 2022. We had Turkey as the mediator in Istanbul, but also the Israeli former prime minister, Naftali Bennett, playing a supportive role. So let's address how they assessed the negotiations. While prime minister Naftali Bennett of Israel, he argued that Russia wanted to end NATO expansion and was willing to make, quote, huge concessions to achieve it. He also argued that Zelensky had accepted the terms of neutrality.
So in the words of Bennett, quote, both sides very much wanted a ceasefire. However, he then goes on explaining that the West blocked the peace agreement because there was, quote, a decision by the West to keep striking Putin. So this was the general idea. They trained hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians. They armed them, and now it was an opportunity to use these Ukrainians to bleed Russia, a strategic rival.
Why would The US and UK then agree to any peace agreement in which Ukraine becomes neutral? It's again, it does it's not hardly a conspiracy. It doesn't even make sense. But yet, we can also look at the Turkish side. What did the Turkish negotiators argue about what happened there in Istanbul?
Well, the Turkish foreign minister, he said, quote, after the talks in Istanbul, we did not think that the war would take this long. But following the NATO foreign ministers meeting, I had the impression that there are those within the NATO member states that want the war to continue. Let the war continue and Russia gets weaker. They don't care much about the situation in Ukraine. These were the words of the Turkish foreign minister.
Yet we can also listen to the deputy chairman of Erdogan's political party, who then confirmed also that Zelensky was ready to sign the peace agreement before The US and UK intervened. In his words, quote, this war is not between Russia and Ukraine. It is a war between Russia and the West. By supporting Ukraine, The United States and some countries in Europe are beginning a process of prolonging this war. What we want is to end this war.
Someone is trying not to end the war. The US sees the prolongation of the war as in its interests. We can also look towards the Ukrainian side where the Ukrainian ambassador, Charlie, who participated in the negotiations. He said later on, quote, we were very close to finalize our war with some peaceful settlement. He goes on saying that Putin tried to do everything possible to conclude an arg an agreement with Ukraine.
And he then goes on saying that they came along, and they found, quote, a very real compromise. We also heard similar comments coming from others, such as the retired general Harald Kuyat. He is the former head of the the German armed forces, and also he was the former chairman of NATO's military committee, which is the highest military position in NATO. He also confirmed not just that NATO had helped provoke this war, but that Johnson, Boris Johnson, had sabotaged the peace negotiations to fight a proxy war with Russia, that is weaken Russia by using Ukrainians. Now one after another, American leaders also came out praising the brilliant statecraft of using Ukrainians to weaken Russia, which would then allow The United States to refocus on confronting China instead.
We saw US general Keith Kellogg arguing in March 2023 that, quote, if you can defeat a strategic adversary not using any US troops, you are at the acme of professionalism. Then we had Mitt Romney, who argued that sending weapons to Ukraine was, quote, the best national defense spending I think we've ever done. And why did he say this? Well, because they spent a very relatively a small amount of money and were losing no lives in Ukraine. We heard similar comments from Mitch McConnell.
However, he argued that The US should not be, you know, swept away by idealism as he argued that, quote, the most basic reason for continuing the Ukraine to is sorry. The most basic reasons for continuing to help Ukraine degrade and defeat the Russian invaders are cold, hard, practical American interests. We all know that Ukraine's fight to retake its territory is neither the beginning nor the end of the West's broader strategic competition with Putin's Russia. They similarly heard Richard Blumenthal, senator Richard Blumenthal arguing that we're getting our money's worth on our Ukraine investment because for less than 3% of our nation's military budget, we've enabled Ukraine to degrade Russia's military strength by half. Lastly, we also have Lindsey Graham who came in arguing that I like the structural path we're on here.
As long as we help Ukraine with the weapons they need and economic support, they will fight to the last person. Now in 2024, it became evident that, NATO could not use Ukrainians to exhaust Russia, and indeed that Russia was winning. At this point, Boris Johnson stated the following, quote, if Ukraine falls, it will be a catastrophe for the West. It will be the end of Western hegemony. However, we've also seen that in every war, the Europeans have argued that diplomacy is the most important tools to end a conflict or a correction in every conflict not fought by the Europeans.
However, this time, the Europeans boycotted diplomacy for four years, and instead, the NATO secretary general proclaimed that weapons are the path to peace. So how can we explain this shift when it was evident that the Russians wanted a deal? What do you expect to happen if you trigger a war which the opponent, which is Russia here, considers to be an existential threat, which means that the Russians will not and they cannot back down, then you suspend all diplomacy to find a peaceful end. And you claim that the only way to end the war is to send weapons and for more Ukrainians to be sent to the frontline. This is not a recipe for peace.
This is a recipe for a proxy war where we fight with Ukrainians. So recognizing the sabotage of the Istanbul negotiations, it's important to find peace because our governments and their mouthpieces in the media begin with the same premise. They always argue we must stand with Ukraine. We must support Ukraine. And with this, I fully agree.
We should support Ukraine. But how do you support Ukraine means how do you get the best possible deal for Ukraine? Four years ago, that would have been in Istanbul. Of course, seven years before, we could have actually implemented the Minsk agreement instead of sabotaging it. But what do we do today?
Four years into this invasion, now it entails getting the best possible deal. So what standing with Ukraine should not entail is to hunt for Ukrainians, pull them out of their homes, and send them to the frontline to fight to the last man in the hope of weakening Russia as a strategic rival to NATO. Every day this war goes on, the Ukrainians lose more men, more infrastructure, and more territory. So are we still going to pretend as if the objective in this war has been to help Ukraine when the evidence is overwhelmingly showing that objective is to use the Ukrainians to weaken Russia?
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Jeffrey Sachs: Four Years of War in Ukraine - Hegemony or Peace? https://youtu.be/h7WmEAu87WE https://t.co/kB5RGNh8hQ
Video Transcript AI Summary
Jeffrey Sachs and the host discuss the four-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and reference the 12-year anniversary of the NATO-backed coup in Ukraine. They frame the conflict as humanitarian and strategic disaster, arguing it risks Europe and potentially nuclear escalation. They question why the war persists given high stakes.
Sachs argues the war started from Western delusions in the 1990s that the US could bring Russia into a US-led world and reduce Russia to a secondary power or even fragment it. He cites Zbigniew Brzezinski’s 1990s predictions of a divided Russia as evidence of “triumphalism” and says when Russia resisted Western demands after 2014 and 2022, those resistances were used by Western politicians to justify prolonging the conflict. He condemns Boris Johnson for saying Ukraine could not sign a peace with Russia without threatening Western hegemony, calling the situation “millions of lives” lost over a game of Western dominance. He characterizes European leaders as complicit, noting resistance to NATO enlargement in Europe but eventual acquiescence, and criticizes German leadership (Merkel, Scholz, and Scholz’s successor, Mertz/Merz?—context suggests Olaf Scholz and then Olaf Scholz and Friedrich Merz) for lack of truthful or constructive intervention. He emphasizes that the push for NATO enlargement and the Maidan coup signaled a failure by Europe to prevent war, with specific reference to the 2008 Bucharest Summit (NATO enlargement), the 2014 Maidan coup and the 2015 Minsk agreements, which Sachs claims Germany and France did not enforce. He asserts Merkel initially resisted but capitulated on enlargement, and that Minsk II was treated as a holding period to build Ukraine’s strength for war, a point he attributes to Merkel’s later statements. He argues Germany bears high responsibility as the largest EU member and a central actor in these decisions.
Sachs then discusses what could have prevented the war, arguing that Germany should have counseled peace with Putin and engaged directly with the goal of avoiding escalation. He asserts that Merkel, Merkel’s successors, and the German leadership failed to prevent the conflict, calling for German initiative to seek peace.
The conversation shifts to the possibility of negotiated settlement. The host notes Russia views NATO expansion and Ukraine’s invasion as existential threats, while Ukraine sees an existential threat from the invasion. The host asks what settlements might look like and what role the US and Europe should play. Sachs reiterates Germany as the key actor and calls for direct diplomacy between Germany and Russia to explore peace, suggesting a need for a political settlement and a reconsideration of Ukraine’s status.
Sachs expands the discussion to global order. He references Brzezinski’s The Grand Chessboard, describing how Russia’s shift toward Eurasia and China challenged Western assumptions. He argues the West’s sanctions failed to keep Russia aligned with Europe, pushing Russia toward China and India, and turning the world toward multipolarity. He characterizes the US as a declining hegemon and Europe as demoralized and divided, with BRICS and other regions seeking prosperity through partnerships with China, India, and Russia. He argues that Europe should move away from Russophobia and toward collective security.
The hosts touch on Joe Biden’s 1997 Atlantic Council remarks and Joseph Chamberlain’s imperial rhetoric as examples of misjudgments about global power dynamics. Sachs concludes by underscoring the need for a more realistic approach to the world order to avoid further conflict, and the host agrees to continue the discussion in the future.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back to the program. We are joined again by professor Jeffrey Sachs to discuss the four year anniversary of Russia invading Ukraine. That was on February 24 in 2022. It's, also, to some extent, the twelve year anniversary of, the NATO backed coup in Ukraine on 02/22/2014, which, well, can be argued triggered this war to begin with. So thank you very much for coming back on the program.
Speaker 1: Sad that we're still talking about this war and that it's still going on after all this time. Really amazing.
Speaker 0: I agree. This is yeah. This war has been just a disaster on all levels. Of course, it's a humanitarian disaster, especially for Ukraine, and it's also been a strategic disaster that is destroying Europe and will continue to take us closer and closer to a possible nuclear war. So given that we have these, yeah, two anniversaries now, why why do you think this war is still going on with so much at stake, so much destruction?
Speaker 1: Well, the starting point is that, The US assumed that it would never get to war. This whole debacle, this whole disaster starts with the ideas in the nineteen nineties that at the end of the Cold War, The US reigned supreme, and it could bring Russia into a a US led world. That was the basic idea. And that, in fact, not only could it bring Russia into a US led world, it would reduce Russia, to a third rate power, maybe divide Russia. Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was the most articulate of all of these delusionists, wrote in the nineteen nineties that perhaps Russia would fall apart into three weekly confederated states, a European Russia, a Siberian Russia, and a Far Eastern Russia.
This was triumphalism. The idea was that The US was unchallenged and unchallengeable, and that, therefore, there wouldn't be war. Russia would exceed to whatever demands The United States made. And when Russia did not exceed to whatever demands The United States made, this was the reason that the war went on. And when Russia proved that it could resist what the United States and Europe thought would be a crushing blow to Russia after 2014 and after 2022.
And Russia resisted that and proved that the Western power was less than was thought, this became in itself for these politicians the necessary reason to fight on. Boris Johnson, is one of the real criminals in all of this, real culprit of this war, said in an interview that he could not let Ukraine sign a peace agreement with Russia in the 2022 because that would be a threat to Western hegemony. So this is children playing a board game. Of course, it's not a board game. It's millions of lives lost.
Its economies crushed. Its opportunities for life squandered at the hands of small group who have been playing what they think is a game of Western hegemony. There have been no stakes in any of this for European or US security. This is not a matter of US or European security. This is a matter of first The US and then European dominance.
The Europeans, I should add, are a little strange in this. The US led them into it. The Europeans knew that this was a bad idea. I know that's the fact that when The US pushed for NATO enlargement to Ukraine, there was a lot of resistance in Europe that this would lead to war. But now that Trump, who is has his own set of delusions, is interested in other delusions, not this one.
The Europeans still can't find an off ramp because they became delusional themselves that, well, if it isn't The United States that's gonna assert Western hegemony, we'll do it ourselves. And so it's a grudge match of of Germany, France, and Britain against Russia that is that's slogging on and which prevents these miserable leaders and miserably unpopular with their own people. I'm speaking of Mertz, Macron, and Starmer from telling the truth that this was a bad idea to begin with and that it should end and that the best thing for Ukraine is Ukrainian neutrality and an end to war. They just can't tell the truth.
Speaker 0: So how can we possibly get a realistic negotiated settlement today? Because I I see the commentary. It ranges between optimism and then, well, full out rejection that it's not possible because the situation is quite complicated. That is Russia obviously sees NATO expansion and especially the incursion into Ukraine as being an existential threat, So it has very strong demands. Ukraine also sees itself as facing an existential threat with the invasion.
And what they we see as the solutions are exactly the opposite. The US seems to hold some keys because it's worried that this conflict now will bog it down in Europe and also push Russia further to China. But well, I don't understand really what the Europeans are doing. As you indicated, it doesn't make much sense at all to con to keep this going. But but what do you see as possible settlements or solutions?
Speaker 1: The real solution here belongs with Germany. Germany is the key. Germany's terrible leadership is the reason why this war broke out and why it continues. It's very poignant to read the memoirs of of Angela Merkel where she describes the point where Germany gave in to The US demands for NATO enlargement in the Bucharest NATO Summit in 2008. On the first day of that summit when George Bush was recklessly pushing NATO to commit to enlarge to Ukraine and Georgia, France and Germany, and I know others, Norway and others, all thought this was a very bad idea.
But and they tried to resist explaining to Bush that this could provoke war, this would provoke a crisis in Europe, and so forth. The United States persisted. This is this this is just an example of The US deep state. In this case, Bush being a very weak president, Cheney being a very dark figure behind him, but really the deep state still pursuing a policy that it had already set more than a decade earlier that, yes, NATO would enlarge, pushing the Europeans to accept that. Merkel resists the first day of the summit, but then gives in on the second day.
That to my mind is the turning point of Europe. She says, salvaged something because we didn't have a literal plan for accession, only the commitment to accession of Ukraine and Georgia to NATO. That didn't make much difference from the Russian point of view, and it didn't make much difference from the politics that was to unfold afterwards. So Merkel, was a very decent person in my view as chancellor, gave in. That was her mistake.
Scholz was hit just impossibly weak and confused. He didn't utter one sentence of truth or sense about any of this during his time as chancellor. And Mertz has been grave disappointment as well because when Mertz came into office as chancellor, he just beat the drums of war from the first moment. He didn't say, well, I'm newly arrived. I'm gonna contact my counterpart, Vladimir Putin, to see whether it's possible that we work something out.
He just said we're heading towards even a bigger war. So German leadership has been terrible. And it's consequential because Germany is really at the center of this story in a lot of ways. Most importantly, in 1990 Right. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, when Germany was still divided in two between the People's Democratic Republic, the GDR in the East, and the and the Federal Republic in the West.
Helmut Kohl was chancellor and wanted to move towards fast reunification. That required the approval of the Soviet Union. And to, obtain that approval, Cole explained to Gorbachev on 02/10/1990, that German unification would not threaten Russian national security because in part, NATO would not move eastward. And that commitment was made by coal to Gorbachev, and it was made repeatedly by Hans Dietrich Enscher, the German foreign minister, publicly, privately, in countless ways. That's the basis of the German reunification.
Mertz should understand this. Germany cheated in a very big way. Of course, it cheated alongside The United States. It was both Germany and The US that in 1993 onward started to push for NATO enlargement. I often talk about The US being the main push for this, and I think it was, but Germany was an enthusiastic NATO enlarger even though Germany was the main, in fact, the overwhelming beneficiary of the commitment that NATO would not move one inch eastward.
This is all well documented. Mertz should know it. Then to bring us to the anniversary of the Maidan coup in which The US did a lot to overthrow a neutral government in Ukraine, we should recall that on 02/21/2014, the German, French, and Polish foreign ministers negotiated an agreement with Yanukovych for an end to the unrest in the Maidan, most much of it stoked by The United States itself, in return for elections later in 2014. Germany was a signatory of this agreement or a party of this agreement. This agreement was also brought to agreement with President Putin and President Obama.
On the next day, the coup leaders stormed the government buildings in Kyiv and overthrew Yanukovych. And at that moment, the western government should have said, we don't accept this coup. Yanukovych is the legally constituted president. He was in Kharkiv. That day, he said, I'm still president.
But Obama immediately recognized the new government who was part of The US deep state plan. Germany went along. Again, this is terrible. Europe failed. Europe had signed an agreement with Yanukovych and then completely within twenty four hours buckled to The United States.
Then Germany cheated again because in 2015, after the war had broken out, the two oblasts in the Donbas, Donetsk and Lugansk, had broken away and declared that they were not following the coup regime in Kyiv. And a war began with the Kyiv coup government attacking the breakaway regions. President Putin helped to orchestrate to what became first the Minsk one and then the Minsk two agreement, more importantly, in 2015. The Minsk two agreement said that the fighting would stop on the basis of political autonomy for the two ethnic Russian and Russian language regions of Lugansk and Donetsk. And the guarantors of that agreement were to be Germany and France.
And we now know by the testimony of both of them that they did not enforce the agreement. They did not pressure Ukraine to follow through as was their responsibility. They, as Merkel later said in a rather shockingly brazen statement, regarded the Minsk two agreement as a holding period, a time for Ukraine to build up its strength for war. I don't know if Merkel meant that at the time in 2015. That's how she explained it in twenty twenty two, twenty twenty three.
But in any event, Germany did not fulfill its role. So to my mind, Germany has the highest responsibility as the largest country in the European Union, as the one that was at the very center of this story from 1990 onward and as the one that has failed in its political responsibility at the crucial moments on the question of NATO enlargement, on the question of the putsch or the coup in Maidan in February 2014, and on the enforcement of the Minsk two agreement. Germany failed repeatedly for Mertz to come into office as chancellor and just declare that Putin cannot be trusted betrays either a basic ignorance of the key facts of the events of the last twenty five years or a brazen disregard of those facts. I hope that it's an ignorance of them. The way that one would solve the question of ignorance is through dialogue.
Mertz should have immediately picked up the phone and called his counterpart and said, I'm newly elected as chancellor of Germany. We have a major responsibility to try to find peace, and I believe that our foreign ministers should meet and discuss what might be done. Maybe we won't reach an agreement, maybe we will, but we should try. Nothing of that sort happened then. I believe that's what should happen immediately.
I assume that after mister Mertz hears interview just now, he will immediately call president Putin and try to find peace.
Speaker 0: I do like your optimism, but it does. Well, if the key is Germany, we may have some problems because one of some of the most dangerous rhetoric comes from Germany now. And, also, as Mertz stated at the Munich Security Conference, he essentially denounced the whole efforts by Orban to talk to Zelensky and Putin. Well, Zelensky is okay to speak with, but you can't talk to Putin. You know, this was immoral, essentially.
So I'm not having too much bet on this, but I I like the wider perspective you take here, though, because the Ukraine war is to a large extent about the collapse of this pan European security architecture. So I think this wider context is important. But at that time, at the beginning at the end of the Cold War, then, when you when there was this ambition to have a common European home, a greater Europe in Moscow, there were a lot of opportunities there not taken. Again, you were there then negotiating negotiating, or advising, sorry, Poland. You advised the Soviet Union under Gorbachev.
You advised Russia under Yeltsin. What is it that they wanted and vis a vis what the Americans wanted? Why why wasn't it possible to essentially reach a mutually acceptable cold post Cold War settlement?
Speaker 1: I began advising in Poland in 1989, and Poland, of course, entered into a coalition government of president Yaroslavsky, who was the, the Soviet backed president with the Solidarity Movement, which was the anti communist movement in 1989 to form a government. And I was very much involved in that and involved in the economics around that. And when it came to the economics, the point was that Poland was broke. It had no foreign exchange reserves. Its currency was collapsing.
There was very high inflation. There were shortages of goods. So as a macroeconomist, I was able to devise a program of stabilization that I recommended to, the Polish government, and to, the European governments. And those recommendations, broadly speaking, were endorsed. And from a practical point of view, Poland was able to end the high inflation, stabilize the currency, and begin after about a year, a process of economic growth that would last for the following thirty years.
So it was a very successful transition from a very, very fraught financial situation. And the tools to do that are rather well known if one studies such crises or has been involved in solving them as I had been. When it came to the Soviet Union, the same situation applied, although on a scale that was much larger. So I recommended a similar package, on a much larger scale. Those recommendations were flatly rejected by the West.
The same kind of economic policy that was working for Poland was turned down by the US government. Twenty five, thirty years later, I read the minutes of the White House meeting in which it was turned down. I was shocked by the flippancy and the brazenness and the ignorance of the participants at that meeting. So there was naturally the element of Machiavellianism and the element of bravado of the winners in the Cold War as they saw it. But there was also, Glenn, just stupidity of people who understood nothing about economic stabilization, understood nothing about what it was that Gorbachev's government needed, and so on.
So the incompetence always needs also to be highlighted in this. Well, it turned out that both for the Soviet case and even after the Soviet Union ended for the Russian case, the West was completely uninterested in even the most routine kind of financial support to end a deep crisis. At the same time, I heard directly from president Gorbachev and from president Yeltsin, how what they wanted was the same as what Poland wanted, an end to the divisions, a united European home. President Yeltsin's favorite word was normal. Russia should be normal.
No more revolutions, no more Bolshevism, no more divisions, no more Cold War, just normal. But The United States wasn't having peace. The US was having hegemony. That's a difference. Peace means you deal with your counterparts with respect and even help in the short term.
Hegemony means you crush your counterparts because your aim is to dominate. And that's what we got instead. That's why NATO enlargement was on the table when Russia was not only no threat, it was saying exactly the opposite. It was asking to join NATO. It was wanting to have a common European security.
There was no threat, but The US wasn't interested in no threat. The US was interested in dominance, and that's what I witnessed at the time.
Speaker 0: Well, I was gonna ask, how how do you think now the Ukraine war has reshaped the global order? Because the world doesn't look well, it looks very different than it did only four years ago.
Speaker 1: One of the interesting chapters in Zbigniew Brzezinski's 1997 book, The Grand Chessboard, asked the question, as Europe and NATO push eastward and surround Russia, what will Russia do? And Brzezinski devotes a chapter to this. And he asks, well, Russia might, agree, buckle in, or Russia might, resist. And could it form an alliance with China, for example, or with Iran? And Brzezinski analyzes all of this, and he declares very confidently, there's no chance that Russia will do anything but accept its European vocation.
Russia has no other option. That proved to be decisively wrong. Russia said, okay. Goodbye. We turn towards Eurasia.
We turn towards China. We which by the way is a great economic fit. Russia and China are very complementary economies as Russia and Europe were, by the way. That was a good fit too. That was good for Germany and good for Russia, that fit.
It was destroyed by the West through its 20 rounds of sanctions and so forth. But Russia said, yeah, we will look in a different direction towards India, towards China, towards Central Asia, towards Western Asia, towards Africa. That's the world that is being built right now. So The US thought, we're the hegemon, we'll run the show. But in fact, what we have is a bully in The United States, still very violent and and very powerful, no doubt, and a vassal Europe utterly confused, demoralized, and divided.
But The US and Europe and Britain and Japan and Korea somewhat and Australia somewhat and New Zealand together constitute about 12% of the world population. Maybe if you're the most expansive, maybe up to 15% of the world population. What is taking shape is a multipolar world that increasingly the other 85% of the world population say, what is this US bullying? What is this US hegemony? Now, we're not past the delusions of The United States.
If you were to ask Donald Trump, is a master delusionist, what is your map of the world? He would say the following. He would say, we own all the Americas. That's the Dunro doctrine. That's that we just own all the Americas.
And we proved that we kidnapped a president in Venezuela. We own all of Europe. We don't really want it. It's pathetic. These people are useless.
But anyway, we own all of Europe. We own all of the Middle East, and we're gonna prove it because we're going to go to war with Iran. We own India because India is afraid of China. And we own half of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, so we're surrounding China. So we're pretty good.
We're still in charge. That's the American delusional view of the world. Quite dangerous. The other view of the world and by the way, Africa I didn't mention because The United States doesn't think about Africa except getting the cobalt. That's all.
And some rare earths. The US has absolutely no attention span for Africa as Africa, only that is a place where there's some minerals that we want. Now, if you look at the world from a different point of view, the BRICS countries would say, well, we're basically half the world. We are Russia, India, China, Brazil, South Africa, now Egypt, Ethiopia, United Arab Emirates, Iran, Indonesia. We don't wanna be bullied by anybody, and we're about half the world population.
The African Union as a whole, that's 55 countries, with almost 20% of the world population. It'll be 25% by mid century. And we don't want US hegemony. And we're real. We're not just a bunch of minerals.
We're real. And of course, the other parts of the world are contested. And Europe once in a while even says, do we just wanna be pathetic vassals of The United States or do we have some history, culture, society, different points of view that we would like? So Europe doesn't quite totally accept its vassalage. And I think the fair way to put things is The United States, in relative terms, doesn't have anything like the authority, the reputation, or the desire for alliances in the rest of the world.
The Western world is a small part of the world. And the vast truth of the 85%, outside of The US, and Europe and a couple of East Asian countries, is they want prosperity. They wanna make good, trade. They wanna advance in technology. And China will be a good partner for them.
India will be a good partner for them. Russia will be a good partner for them. And so this is hardly The US hegemony that Trump and American deep state imagine. That's how I think is a much more accurate view of the world. The faster The United States gets beyond its delusions, I hope it's fast enough to avoid a war in Iran, would be disastrous, the better the whole world will be, including The United States itself.
The faster Europe escapes from its pathological Russophobia and says, you know, we were led down a path that we ourselves chose to walk. It was a mistake. We need to make our continent safe, secure, based on collective security the faster Europe can thrive once again.
Speaker 0: The chapter of Brzezinski, it reminds me of a speech given by Joe Biden at the Atlantic Council back in '97 where he was said that the, yeah, the Russians were worried about NATO expansion and, you know, and they said we might look towards the East to China, and he mocked it and saying, yeah, well, if that doesn't work, you can always work with Iran, and the whole audience just breaks out in the laughter, and, you know, it's the funniest joke. It's That's it. Yeah. It's the inability to predict possible consequences, you know, what seems awfully patriotic. And today, it's a very foolish policy perhaps, which, you know, puts us in a very difficult spot for tomorrow.
Speaker 1: But I recently reread a famous speech of, the arch, imperialist Joseph Chamberlain, the head of the colonial office of Britain that he gave in 1897. And one of the notable points of a completely obnoxious imperialist speech is he says, the British realms extend throughout the world. We are a quarter of the whole world. There is no one that can begin to challenge us in all of the future of history as far as we can see. And a half century later, it was all gone.
And so these predictions, this bravado, this arrogance, this belief you can run the world is the pride before the fall. And that's been America's and Europe's big mistake.
Speaker 0: Well, thank you as always for taking the time. I very much appreciate it, and I know you have a big day ahead of you, so I'll let you go. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Good. We'll we'll talk to you again soon. Take care.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Seyed M. Marandi: "War for Survival" - Iran’s Strategy in the Face of Imminent, Existential War https://youtu.be/yS_b4Yjq_Ps https://t.co/t7G7UcmOhS
Video Transcript AI Summary
Seyyed Mohammed Marandi, a professor at Tehran University and former adviser to Iran’s nuclear negotiators, joins the discussion amid rising tensions around Iran. He notes that the Strait of Hormuz has been temporarily closed for Iran’s military exercises, describing it as unprecedented and potentially a warning, while the United States continues to accumulate assets in the region, including the USS Gerald Ford entering the Mediterranean. He observes that given the scale of U.S. assets, it will be hard to reverse the momentum, and wonders how Iran views the severity of the situation and what an off-ramp might look like.
From the outset, Marandi says a major confrontation seems likely, though it’s unclear whether it would involve actual military aggression. He asserts that the Zionist regime, the Zionist lobby, and the so-called Epstein class in the West would do anything to aid the Israeli regime, citing the U.S. ambassador to Israel who said that if the regime takes the whole region, that would be acceptable. He argues that Iran, Hezbollah, and the resistance in Iraq are the principal forces resisting the “greater Israel project,” while other regional governments—Erdogan, the Emirates, Egypt, Qatar, Jordan—are part of the American empire and unlikely to prevent Israeli gains until it is too late. He states that Iran will not back down and that there is no scenario in which the Americans win a potential war.
Marandi emphasizes that Iran has said it would shut down the Hormuz if attacked, and that this would not be a last-resort measure. He recalls that in the twelve-day war (presumably 2021-2022), the conflict mainly involved Iran and the Israeli regime, with the Americans carrying out a token strike and not destroying the global economy; Iran does not desire to cause global economic suffering. He argues that Iran has friends worldwide, and ordinary people in many countries desire peace and the ability to earn a living. He contends that Gulf monarchies hosting U.S. bases have contributed to planning against Iran, and that Iran and its allies would respond with strong measures. If attacked, Iran would do everything to protect itself and would hit hard to bring down the global economy; the war would be costly and devastating for the United States and its Western allies.
Regarding U.S. strategy, Marandi says the American plan for surprise is central, and he doubts Washington can win without a full-scale ground invasion, which would be economically unfeasible for the United States. He argues that the on-the-ground resistance in Iraq and Yemen, and the potential instability of Gulf regimes, would tempt political upheaval in those states. He asserts that the longer the conflict lasts, the more irreversible the damage, with Iran’s drones and missiles capable of striking oil facilities, ports, and ships across the region, threatening Gulf and Caucasus oil flows.
Marandi critiques Western media coverage, accusing it of fabricating or inflating numbers about Iranian casualties and portraying Iran as the aggressor. He points to demonstrations in Iran—millions in Tehran and across the country on February 11—versus Western reports that try to depict the opposite, and he argues that independent Western journalists who witnessed Iranian demonstrations were attacked and smeared for challenging the narrative. He says the media’s role is to lay groundwork for war, and that in his view the “Epstein class” in the West has exposed itself.
On negotiations, Marandi says the United States publicly focuses on Iran’s regional allies and military capabilities, not on the nuclear deal, and that Iran will not discuss its regional policy. He notes Iran’s insistence on negotiating with the Americans directly (not in a multilateral format) and in Oman, while observing that the talks are often used as deception. He asserts that Iran restarted indirect talks to show that it is not the aggressor, and that Tehran remains prepared for war but not initiating it. He argues that Iran’s preparations have strengthened its capabilities since the twelve-day war, with more drones and missiles directed at the United States and its proxies, and that Iran’s underground bases and air defenses have advanced.
Concluding, Marandi says the window for a U.S. decision is limited by the regime’s costs, and that Iran’s home-field advantage, the widespread unpopularity of Gulf monarchies, and the broader resistance in the region would shape the outcome. He believes a U.S. victory is impossible, describing a scenario where, after heavy destruction and economic collapse, Trump would be forced to retreat under the guise of victory, with the West blamed for the catastrophe. He asserts that Iran will defend itself and that the global economy would suffer far greater damage than Iran’s own infrastructure, with mass movements of people worldwide as a consequence. He closes by affirming his commitment to continue communicating despite the risks.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined again by Seyyed Mohammed Marandi, a professor at Tehran University and a former adviser to Iran's nuclear negotiation team. So, thank you for coming on the program. We, yes, see the situation, yeah, keeps getting more and more, well, let's say, tense around Iran. The Strait Of Hormuz was temporarily closed for military exercises or fire drills by Iran.
Yeah. This seems quite unprecedented, something that many thought would be last resort, which now instead, of course, as a little warning perhaps. At the same time, The United States continues to, yeah, accumulate more assets, especially than The US as Gerald Ford, who just just entered yesterday, I think, the Mediterranean Sea. So with so many assets, it's hard to see this being reversed as there's very difficult for Trump to find an off ramp. I was wondering how how you're seeing the situation now.
Is it how how severe is this?
Speaker 1: From the very beginning, it was clear that we're heading towards a major confrontation, Although, we don't know if it's actually going to be aggression, military aggression or not because it's Trump. That was clear that the Israeli regime, the Zionist lobby, and the Epstein class that rules over the West, that they will do or want to do or wish to do anything possible to help the Zionist regime. And we saw how The US ambassador to Israel basically said that if the regime takes the whole of the region, it's fine. And that I think is something that we Iranians have been saying all along for many, many years, and others have been trying to hide this both in the region and beyond. And, of course, the reason why there's so much antagonism towards Iran, towards Hezbollah, towards Amsarallah, towards the resistance in Iraq, and of course, towards the Palestinian people, is that they are the only ones who are standing in the way of the greater Israel project.
All all the other countries, whether it's Erdogan or The Emirates or Egyptian government and so on, Qatar and and others, Jordan and so on, they are a part of the American empire. And therefore, they will not make any move to prevent the Israeli regime from making progress until possibly when it's far too late. But Iran is not going to back down, and I do not see a scenario where the Americans win any potential war. The Iranians have said that they will shut down the Strait Of Hormuz. It will not be a last resort measure.
In the twelve day war, there was no need for Iran to shut down oil and gas trade in the region. Because the war was largely between Iran and and the Israeli regime, the Americans carried out a token strike. They didn't obviously obliterate the nuclear program, but it wasn't enough to justify destroying the global economy. Iran does not does not want the global economy excuse me. Iran does not want the global economy to suffer.
Iran has friends across the world, and ordinary people in all countries want to live in peace and and in and maintain the ability to make money and to raise kids and have families and have decent communities. So Iran, even though the regimes in the Persian Gulf region all host US bases and were all helping the Israeli regime in during the twelve day war through those bases, through allowing the Americans to use those bases. Iran, since it saw it could easily manage the war and defeat the Israeli regime, and ultimately, the regime had to seek a ceasefire to end the war. It did not even contemplate moving in that direction. However, if The United States carries out an attack on Iran, that would be a different thing altogether.
This would be an existential threat, and this would be a war for survival. It would be a war of choice for the Americans. It would be done for the Israeli regime, obviously. But in this scenario, Iran will do everything to protect itself. And since all these countries in the these tiny Arab family dictatorships in the Persian Gulf region are hosting US bases, and as you and I speak, the those bases are being used to plan against Iran, that then Iran has every right to shut down the oil and gas trade, and that will not be a measure of last resort.
That will happen at the very beginning.
Speaker 0: Well well, this is a good point. If this is a war existential threat, a war of survival, as you say, it makes sense that Iran would play its cards very differently. And well, the Gulf States obviously seem like this is unavoidable to be pulled in. But how else do you see The United States coming in? Because the whole element of surprise will be difficult to do now that they'll be building up in these amounts.
The rhetoric has clearly indicated that this is the intention. I mean, when assessing threats, you're looking at the intentions and capabilities, they're all pointing toward an attack, which wouldn't you know, could happen even over the next few days. So do you see any other possible elements of surprise they they could introduce? I mean, would they use foreign fighters coming in from abroad to sabotage? Do they have the same the same networks within Iran, which can disrupt?
Do they can they, you know, attack through Azerbaijan? How are you seeing, yeah, the the element of surprise? Because I think this will be very critical for The United States to be successful. And, again, with all the power or the the the military hardware it's been occurring in the region, if it has the element of surprise as well, this this could be, you know, important. I wouldn't necessarily say decisive.
Speaker 1: Iran's intelligence is quite effective. It knows what goes on more or less in surrounding countries. And inside the country, we saw The United States and the Israeli regime and British intelligence and possibly the French carry out a an armed rebellion, a a semi coup in the country, something that they admitted. Although Western media pretends that this was all about peaceful protesters, It was obviously not the case. We've seen endless footage of extreme violence carried out by the rioters and terrorists and the trained rioters.
And we saw clear admission by The US secretary of treasury, by the Mossad in their Persian language statement, by Pompeo, about both Israeli involvement, and later on, he admitted US involvement. And, of course, Israeli Channel four fourteen close to Netanyahu, which said that foreign agencies brought in weapons to kill hundreds of Iranian police and security officials. So it's clear as day, while they're gloating about what they did, Western media pretends that none of this has happened and just inflate numbers even though the West and the Israeli regime in particular are responsible for the bloodshed, inflate the numbers and try to blame and say that the Iranians are killing peaceful protesters to justify death and and destruction and massacre. They want to help build the case for war, whether it's The Guardian or Fox News, it doesn't make a difference. But but after that, we we saw that on after January 9 and the tenth when this armed insurrection took place and immediately collapsed, And then we saw people come twice to the streets in defense of the state and the constitution, both on January 12 and on February 11 at an even bigger numbers.
I think it's clear that The United States has no capability nor the Israeli regime to do anything substantial inside the country. And neighboring countries are far too vulnerable. Aliyev in Azerbaijan is is is very vulnerable. He's a dictator. He's he's not capable of harming Iran.
In fact, the it's the other way around is quite possible. And if he pushes too hard in his alliance with the Israeli regime, I think it's quite possible that he will be overthrown with the help of Iran. So I think he would probably he he probably is very nervous right now. That's why he's constantly traveling to The United States and taking part in peace board and all that sort of nonsense with Trump. Actually, I think it's clear that it is really the other way around.
Iran's allies across the region are being prepared. In Iraq, the resistance knows that an attack on Iran, an existential attack on Iran is an existential attack on Iraq for obvious reasons. In Yemen, the same is true, and these are countries that have enormous populations. US allies in the region are all family dictatorships, and some of them are quite insignificant and small in in their capabilities, like Qatar, which is a passport holding population of three hundred fifty, four hundred thousand. The Emirates, a passport population holding the the passport holding population is 1,400,000.
And the number of foreigners or mostly adult males are in The Emirates is, like, 10,000,000 or so, I suppose. So they are very vulnerable and weak. Yet Iraq, with a population of 45 to 47,000,000, for example, is is can't we compare to Bahrain or Kuwait or or anything like that? So if it's going to be a regional war, it's not to the benefit of The United States. It's something that Trump cannot manage.
And Iran is also preparing his firepower too. The United States is bringing in everything that it has, but Iran is also preparing everything that it has soon. The fact that oil and gas go through the Persian Gulf or the the West Asia and the Caucasus, that gives Iran a huge advantage. And in addition to all that, I think there's the fact that none of these family dictatorships are very stable. None of them have real popular support.
In in some of these countries, the overwhelming majority are foreigners. So a war could actually change the the map of the region. And you may see that some of these pro Trump regimes will fall. War will be devastating, no doubt. And, sitting here in Tehran, obviously, I recognize and people here recognize what it could mean, but it is not Iran that wants to carry out aggression.
It is Trump and Netanyahu, and, of course, the collective West, which supports all acts of aggression, including genocide in Gaza. So what Iran can do and will do is that it and its allies will hit as hard as possible. It will they will bring down the global economy. And I think, ultimately, what will happen after great devastation across the region is that Trump will fail. He will fall, and the Israeli regime and the regime in Washington will be blamed for the catastrophe that befalls the entire world because when oil and gas prices go through the roof during such uncertain times, and I know you've discussed this on your show, how the global economy and this and The US economy in particular are facing major major challenges.
This would be catastrophic at under any circumstances, a war of this nature. But under these circumstances, it would be even more devastating. And I think that people in The United States, those the MAGA crowd, which now, of course, has no problem with endless wars. It has no problem with killing shooting white women in the face or shooting nurses, white nurses in the back who take care of veterans. The MAGA crowd who, you know, they they don't care about Epstein and all his crimes, they when their pockets are badly hit, when they lose their jobs, when factories shut down, when business go businesses go bankrupt, I think they will be the first to seek out those who are pushing for war.
Speaker 0: Yeah. It's quite extraordinary to see them in so such short time in one year that how the MAGA crowd has changed. I mean, I I was quite sympathetic to to Trump's arguments during the the campaign that is ending the forever wars, re industrializing, all of these things. But, yeah, the monstrosity that has evolved out of this is well, it's exact opposite. So it's very strange to see the support continuing even though the policies have been put on its head.
But in terms of the Israeli media, though, I mean, say what you will about the Israelis, at least their media, they tends to be a lot more honest than the Western, I feel, especially the Hebrew language. They they're quite open about their their participation in the in in instigating the insurrection, coordinating it from abroad, supplying the weapons, also the objectives. They while the Americans and Europeans talk about nuclear deal, they're quite honest. That's not what we want. We want, you know, for Iran to be weakened, ideally destroyed.
So you you do see a very different yeah. Let's celebrate it as honest. But I I'm curious. What is the what what is the objective here, though, towards in this for the Americans attacking Iran? Because they don't they won't commit ground troops, and and, again, that that would be a disaster of its own.
But they talk about regime change, but there's no replacement government. Some talk about destroying the nuclear program, but that's, you know, allegedly been obliterated. I just don't see a story here how, you know, even best case, if they get their objectives, what exactly is achieved. They can deliver, as you said, a lot of death and destruction to Iran. Of course, Iran can deal a heavy blow against The United States and its allies as well, But I don't see at the end of this security being enhanced for for The United States.
They're not gonna walk away from this stronger. So what is the objective here in terms of, you know, what what do you want to expect when the strikes comes in? Because it seems, well, predictable. They're gonna go after political leadership, military leadership. But how how will this, your success, be be defined?
Because I'm watching, you know, our different well, our own journalists reporting on Iran, which means that they're sitting in Syria where they're celebrating the former success, and it's telling us what they're hearing from Iran. I mean, it's a it's a bit yeah. It's parody, but but it's but but I but I was wondering how how you see this, the the objectives.
Speaker 1: Yes. And, of course, Trump also said that he was the one who brought Giuliani or Ashara to power. I mean, everything now is everyone has been exposed, you know, and regional allies of The United States, Turkey and Jordan and Qatar and and others. They've all been exposed to those who want to go. So those who don't want to open their eyes, they'll they will remain closed until the end of their days.
But everything is clear who stands with who and who is actually supporting the Palestinian people, who is actually opposing genocide, who's actually actively opposing genocide. It's those entities that are being punished by the collective West and those entities that are always antagonized by Western allies in the region, whether it's Qatar through their immense gas money or others through their immense oil money or through Erdogan who gets gas money from Qatar to to carry out his both propaganda operations and his military operations and his support for ISIS and Al Qaeda and other such terror groups. I think you touched upon key point, and that is that The United States has not brought in ground troops. And if it wants to carry out a war with Iran, it will have to bring in maybe a million and a half soldiers, which would, I think, on its own, wreck The US economy. It's probably not even doable.
But without that, The United States loses the war because the Iranians are on the ground, And Iran's allies are on the ground in Iraq, in Yemen, and elsewhere. And of course, in these dictatorships in the region, there, as I said, there are millions of people who are slaves effectively or indentured servants, and workers who have very few, if any, rights. And if there's chaos, if there's if these countries, their economies go downhill very fast, I can envisage a situation where the ruling families will be overthrown. In fact, I don't think they'll stand I don't think they'll stay. I they're probably already leaving many of their their the people around them or their families or some of the princes.
They're probably already in their palaces in Europe and North America waiting to see what happens. So without a huge brown presence, how is The United States going to even defeat Iran? They can kill Iranians. They can't bring about regime change. Whoever they murder can be replaced.
We have a constitution. Everything is clear as day. The country will be managed until the war comes to an end, and people will defiantly resist. And but after it starts, The United States can't stop it without losing face. So when the price of oil and gas go through the roof, when The United States starts giving casualties, when its loyal proxies and the vision begin to wobble and collapse, how is Trump going to retreat, or how is he going to shift away or or move away from conflict and present himself as a victor.
He he won't be able to do so. And it's at a time, all this, when the situation is terribly bad for The United States anyway. We saw what happened with the Supreme Court yesterday. We've seen the conflict inside The United States over ICE and the murders carried out by ICE. We've seen how the gap between rich and poor in The United States is growing, how the Epstein class, most importantly, has been exposed, but has also been shown to be above the law, and it will remain above the law as things stand.
All of this is going to cause the Trump to be in a a very, very difficult situation. In fact, I would say it's it would be more than difficult, an impossible position. So this is not like 2003 where Western media back then could mobilize support for war and the US government could get away with it. The American people are not as gullible as they were back then. They've seen the genocide in Gaza.
They've seen Epstein. Well, a little bit of the Epstein files. But I and when the economy collapses, I I I think that Trump will be in an impossible position. And as I said, it's it's the resistance that has troops on the ground, not The United States. Yemen today is much stronger than it was a year ago.
Even when The United States carried out its seven week war against Yemen and failed, that Yemen is different from this Yemen. In Iraq, the resistance is preparing itself. We've already shot seen them reveal underground bases full of drones and and other capabilities. So it's not as if The United States is the only side that is preparing for war. The other side is preparing, but they also have ground forces in large numbers, and they have the ability to destroy everything in the Persian Gulf and on the other side of the Persian Gulf and in the Caucasus.
And there's nothing that The United States can do about that. Not absolutely nothing. If if anyone looks at the map, they'll see that the Persian Gulf is not very wide. Iran does not need long its long range missiles that it used against the Israeli regime and force it to beg for a ceasefire. It has hundreds of thousands of drones that could strike anything in the Persian Gulf, oil rigs, ports, petrochemical facilities, refineries, tankers, of course, and and other cargo ships, gas wells, oil wells, everything can be destroyed.
And it would take many years to restore them. The longer the war lasts, if after three days, it'll be far worse than two days because it'll be more irreversible. After four or five, six days, it'll be it'll just get worse and worse. And even when the war comes to an end, it will take it will take a lot more time to restore these capabilities. And no doubt, the Iranians will be demanding compensation from these regimes anyway for hosting those US bases.
So I don't see how The United States could win. It's not possible. They can slaughter people, and they will. We saw how the Israelis bombed apartment blocks, and Western media pretended that these were precision strikes because they have no sense of morality. They have no sense of humanity.
They are tools of the Epstein class. So Trump will bomb and slaughter we saw last night. Israelis murder a large number of Lebanese children and an entire family as they were breaking their fasts. No one in the West cares. In Gaza, they're slaughtering every day.
No one cares. I mean, in the in the ruling class, in the media, the Epstein class, and and those who work for them across the Western world. So they won't care when Trump bombs a civilian infrastructure and murders ordinary Iranians, but that won't bring The United States victory. It will this will all lead to defeat, and it's it will just be a matter of time when Trump will be forced to declare some fake victory and retreat, but everyone will know that the failure is his. I'm not for certain that I I'm not sure that there will be war, and I'm not for war, but this is what I believe will happen.
There will be destruction, a lot of destruction in Iran because The United States and Israeli regime and Western regimes in general are are all ruthless and inhumane. And we've seen that from the Epstein documents, what the nature of this crowd. But I think that the damage that will be done to the global economy will be far greater. When factories shut down with business when businesses shut down, the bill the building may still be there, but it'll be an empty building. And so then you will see, I think, people across the world on the move.
Basically, in Latin America, they're upset about immigration, the movement the movement of people will be far greater than ever before in Africa and Asia. Even though Europe and North America will be in in in crisis mode themselves, but that's those are the traditional destinations. So there are so many bad things that can happen to the world, but Iran is going to defend itself. It's not Iran that has brought about this situation. It's not Iran that's engaging in genocide in Gaza.
It's not Iran that is is pushing for war. In fact, the reason why Iran is negotiating is partially to see if The United States is sane enough to have a an acceptable deal. But even more importantly, what Iran is doing is it's telling the world that it's not us. It's them. So when the global economy goes down, everyone knows who to blame.
Speaker 0: I guess the source of my pessimism, though, is with all this military hard hardware moving in and all this chest beating, it's, yeah, impossible almost then to, yeah, to to to to step down to yeah. Again, as I began saying, finding this off ramp. Of course, as Trump suggests, you know, all of this is, to push Iran into a deal. But, you know, as you said, Iran is negotiating. But the whole question is, what what kind of deal can actually be made here?
At this point, you know, some critics would say that, the negotiations, they they they appear to be a fraud, that that is they're so far apart. And, the even what's what's on the table to be negotiated is is not even agreed yet. Do do you see the same problem with the negotiations? Do are they too far apart, or do you think that it could be a deal could be made if if Trump wants a victory to pull this whole thing back? I mean Oh, Iran is for not example.
Speaker 1: Well, the the thing is is that The United States is not so far, from its public comments, it's not talking about a JCPOA. It's talking about Iran's regional allies. That's off the table. Iran won't discuss them. It's talking about Iran's military capabilities.
That's off the table. Iran won't discuss them. It's talking about, in public at least, Iran giving up its nuclear program and its right to enrichment, all of that is off the table. But and a sign of Iran's strength and its position was what we saw during that show in Turkey when The United States was calling for the negotiations to be held there, and Turkey, of course, being a NATO entity. And then we saw from Al Jazeera a Turkish Egyptian Qatari proposal, which was quite disgusting, where Iran would stop supporting its regional allies, including Hamas, which shows that none of these these three entities are supportive of the Palestinian resistance in reality.
They're just you know, they're in The US camp. And reducing its military defense capabilities and so on, and its its nuclear program. But Iran said no, and Iran said they will only negotiate with Americans, not in some group with you know, at some table with multiple countries, and that it will only negotiate in Oman. And, ultimately, the Americans were forced to accept that. And the indirect talks that were held in Oman and then in Europe, but still with Omani mediation, showed that Iran how in how firm Iran is in in its position.
But then again, we also have to remember that this is highly symbolic for Iran too. Iran is trying to remind everyone by restarting the indirect talks in Oman that this already happened once. And before the twelve day war, Iran and The United States had indirect talks. Thereafter the first round, as you recall, The United States accepted Iran's right to enrichment. Wyckoff went on Fox News and admitted as such.
And then in round two, they moved the goalposts. And three, four, they kept The US kept moving the goalposts at the insistence of the Zionist lobby, obviously. And and, ultimately, The United States, it turned out it was conspiring with Israeli regime all along to and it was being deceitful, and and it carried out an attack. So the negotiations now that are taking place are of the same nature. The Iranians are not going to be fooled by the Americans, and they're telling the world that basically that we did this before, and we all recall what happened back then.
I I again, I can't say what will happen. Iran, though, is preparing for war, and every day, it is preparing further. Iran's capabilities today are significantly greater than they were during the twelve day war. The twelve day war was very helpful for Iran to discover its weaknesses and and to and to improve its strengths. And since then, Iran has been working very hard on high-tech capabilities, air defenses, drone defenses, and, of course, improving its offensive capabilities.
But again but again, I would like to stress that the difference between the twelve day war and this war are on two fronts. One is that this will be a regional war. This will be a game changer. The second is that overwhelmingly, Iran's capabilities are directed towards The United States, not towards Israel. The the long range missiles that are directed towards occupied Palestine and the Mediterranean are necessary for entities that are far away.
But Iran has far larger numbers of middle range and short range missiles and drones that can strike anything across the Persian Gulf region and the Indian Ocean. And those missiles are far larger in number and much more easy to move around. You don't need these big launchers. The same is true with the drones. And those underground bases that have been that are spread out across the the the the southern and central parts of Iran, they were they've been created or they've been building them since The United States invaded Iraq and Afghanistan.
And when Iran was declared the axis of evil and Bush and o and then Obama started saying all options are on the table. So Iran's firepower that's directed towards The United States and its proxies and its assets in the region are far greater than what it used against the Israeli regime. And, of course, Iran can still use those long range missiles, which are now much larger in number, more precise, and with bigger payloads.
Speaker 0: It's a good point to make about this changing the goalpost because the negotiation tactic from Washington now, it is quite strange, especially given that Trump sold himself as this ultimate dealmaker. You do see some similarities with the negotiations with the Russians. That is, you know, they may they met in Anchorage. They made this basic deal, they recognized that the Russians made some kind of painful concessions, and and then once they have this in place, then they start to move the goalposts. Well, how about a little bit more?
And and after a while, the the foundation of that original deal is all but gone. It reminds me a bit well, less of a political negotiation, more of a real estate deal, you know, where the real estate agent will call the buyer or the seller, oh, you know, just have to move a little bit more, a little bit this direction, and, you know, essentially, the former talk was all meaningless. Well, given that they are real estate negotiators, it is not I guess, it could be a suitable analogy. But I I I wanted to ask though about Britain allegedly blocking America's use of Diego Garcia for an attack on Iran. Again, this is a quite important piece in the puzzle for for the Americans if they as they can then strike Iran from the South.
And I was wondering what you make of this. Is this simply the the the the divisions brewing between The UK and The US over other issues? Is this actually about what the British say, their concern for international law? It's an effort by the British. Yes.
I've my reaction was the same when I read the that official reasoning. Or is it a an effort to stay out of this? Or, again, alternatively, it could also be attempted as deception against Iran. Don't, you know, don't worry about this direction. We're, you we're not gonna hit you from Diego Garcia.
But how are you seeing this? Because it is it is unusual for for The US to not have, you know, the unconditional support from the British.
Speaker 1: Yes. It would be unusual, and that's why I think the Iranians are basically going to view this as deception. It may be something else, but that's not something that the Iranians are going to think about in their planning. There are lots of very strange things happening. If you watch the Iranian foreign minister's interview on an American morning program, he was saying that the at the negotiating table, the Iran the Americans were not demanding zero enrichment.
And so this could be one of two things. Either The United States is putting on a show or trying to put pressure on Iran, but it wants a deal. And so at the table, it's doing something very different. At the negotiating table, it's behaving very differently than what's happening across the region and what it's saying in the media and in public. Or this could be deception again.
And that The United States, the talks were fake or are fake, and just like they were during before the twelve day war. It was clear that the talks were a form of deception. So I think for the Iranians, the safest bet is to just take everything as deception. The British have always been good poodles, the British government, of course, good poodles to The United States. There's no reason to think that they will behave differently this time around.
And and if they do, it's not something that the Iranians are going to plan for. They're going to plan for the worse. Just like the at the negotiating table, if The United States is behaving reason reasonably, Iran will continue to negotiate. But that is not going to change Iran's plans, And it is assuming that there will be war, that Diego Garcia will be used, that the United States will carry out or try to carry out a sudden attack. It may happen tonight.
It may happen tomorrow night. It may happen next week. It may happen in two weeks. But what is clear is that the window of opportunity for The United States is not all that long because the expenses incurred by the Trump regime are huge, and they will be it will be very difficult for them to sustain this for very long. For Iran, this is its own home turf, and therefore, the costs are much more limited, and Iran can wait The US out.
So the Iranians are waiting for war, but they will continue to negotiate. Because last time around, even though Western media collectively were supporting the Israeli aggression, And it was it's you know, it's I think after Gaza, Western media has been fully exposed. And anything that they say about Iran is just nonsense or about Lebanon or about Palestinians. It's all nonsense. I think people have reached that stage where they recognize that except for maybe 70 year old Americans or six year old Americans, but or Europeans.
But I think back then, it was quite clear. It was evident that across the global South and inside Iran too, the fact that Iran was at the negotiating table and The United States chose to attack helped Iran a lot. It helped enhance Iran's support across the world and strengthen resolve among ordinary Iranians at home. So even though because some people are saying, why are you negotiating? This is just a lie.
This is just deception. Quite possibly. But Iran is not going to be fooled. Iran is negotiating because it wants the world to see that it's not Iran that's going to carry out aggression. If there is war and Iran is not negotiating, of course, Iran is Iran is carrying out indirect negotiations.
If there's war, then Western media will say, well, if the Iranians had negotiated, this would not have happened. Because Western media has no you know, these journalists, mainstream journalists, they have no sense of dignity or honor or honesty. We see it in their the numbers that they write about, the, you know, peaceful protesters, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands killed. They're basically just trying to prepare the ground for war. That's their job.
Again, whether it's The Guardian or Independent or MSNBC or Fox News and Brightbarn and Sky News, they're all the same. They're all the same. One is more subtle, sophisticated. One is more bombastic, but they're all the same. So they will go out and say, well, this could have been avoided if only Iran had talked.
So Iran is not going to give them that opportunity. Iran is going to show the world and ordinary Iranians that we tried. If it works, fine. If it doesn't, it hurts the Americans.
Speaker 0: And I wish I could have disagreed about the media, but I I I find it, yeah, troubling the way this is reported because when they're now building the case for war in the media, they they're essentially saying repeating the same thing that is, you know, tens of thousands of civilians were slaughtered by the regime. We have to do something. This is, you know, the yeah. This is the usual humanitarian intervention argument being pushed. But the the media has a role here because only today, the the foreign minister of Iran, he he tweeted out that Iran had now well, it already released this list of all the victims during the insurrection, which amounted to 3,117, but that included, of course, all the officers and government officials who had been murdered.
So if if you're if you're a journalist and your you your job is to inform the public, indeed, you look for what is true and of public interest, what do you wanna go and do then is go through this list. And then if if there are names, you know, in these tens of thousands which aren't on this list, okay, well, bring it forth, and then, you know, you can expose if if there are if this is not truthful. But if you you just ignore what is happening on the other side because you fear that could undermine the narrative for selling a war to justify the war that's coming. You're not a journalist at all. You are war propagandist.
And, again, this is I the fact that no one is responding to this, that they're not investigating it, indeed, that just the dismissal that, well, Iran, this is Iran. Everything they say is propaganda. There's no point to even take it because it's serious. It's very it's not great for for the journalistic practices. So let's be you know, choose the words in this way.
Just a last question, though. You said that
Speaker 1: Iran one just one point that I'd like to add here, and that is they do the exact opposite. The the independent journalists that came to Iran for the February 11 celebrations of the forty seventh anniversary of the victory of the revolution, they saw massive protests and or demonstrations in support of the constitution. 4,000,000 people came to the streets and ran alone, and there were tens of millions across the country. They came to see because during the after the the the deadly riots or the semi coup attempt, the armed insurrection on January, there were mass demonstrations across Iran against the rioters, and there were up to 3,000,000 people in Tehran. And the mask and and the West, they were saying this is AI.
They they they showed helicopter footage of of the crowd in Tehran, which was massive, and they were trying to pretend that this is AI. So on February 11, you sat we saw independent journalists coming to Iran, and the and they went and saw the protests. And the and the people in Tehran came in even larger numbers probably because they saw how Elon Musk and Western media were trying to downplay the the real numbers. So the the the rally in Tehran and everywhere else was larger. And but those independent journalists, western journalists who went back, they're now being attacked and smeared.
And because they went to Iran and exposed how, in fact, people are not with these terrorists and with these, you know, the Pahlavi and the MEK terror group and the separatists and all those people funded by Western intelligence agencies. And the people do not believe there are fake numbers of, you know, thous many thousands and tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands. And, yes, if they were if they had any integrity, they would say, okay. Let's bring in show all let's see see the names and compare them and see what other names we have. They won't do that because they don't have such names, and that's not the objective.
Again, no one should be fooled. There's no difference between the BBC, the Guardian, Time, The Times, or, you know, Breitbart and the New York Times, they're all one in the same. They're they're owned by the Epstein class, and they are there for propaganda purposes. These are the people who've been whitewashing the ongoing genocide in Gaza, the slaughter of Palestinians and Lebanese. Again, the yesterday, Israelis carry horrific massacres across Lebanon killing children, but that's not of interest to the Western media.
So they have no credibility, and Iran isn't you know, I think Iran recognizes that the best way to deal with them is to direct their is to to is to focus on the global majority and ordinary people in the West who are seeing the reality increasingly. And the Western media obviously does not have the influence that it had a couple of decades ago. It is deteriorated. It has declined very rapidly, and Gaza was a turning point. So Iran has lots of support across the world, and people across the world, many people across the world don't believe the propaganda.
And I think that as US propaganda capabilities and Western propaganda capabilities decline, their military capabilities decline, their economic capabilities decline, it's going to get worse for them and more difficult. And if they if they carry out war with Iran, I think we will see a very rapid collapse of the Western or US empire, much more rapid than we were expecting.
Speaker 0: Yeah. No. I'm have quite a few problems over here myself for interviewing people like you, which I'm accused of assisting regime propaganda for Iran. So it's no. The yeah.
It's not not well, you can smell the the the no. Well, the desperation there when when one loses narrative control and yeah. The what what happens to free speech under those conditions. But the the last question I had for you, though, was you mentioned before that Iran is just now waiting for the war to begin, which well, it seems not to be unavoidable, but it seems that it's coming now. But at the same time, I'm also watching all these Chinese satellite pictures showing all the concentration of the American military hardware.
And, you know, when you mentioned that Iran's waiting, are are there any discussions or considerations about preemptive strikes? Again, I just make wanna make it clear. I'm not advocating anything. I'm very curious about the strategic thinking in Iran. That is if this is, as you said, an existential threat, a war of for survival, there's this unprecedented military hardware being lined up all around Iran.
The the capabilities are there. The intentions are clear, and there's a strategic benefit in striking first. Is this entering the strategic discourse in Iran? Again, it's you can say it's better to be attacked first, so it's you know, Iran doesn't get accused of an unprovoked attack on on The US, but but on the other hand, who who strikes first can be quite critical. I'm just curious how if this is a discussion at all in Iran at the moment.
Speaker 1: This is a a key point, actually. Iran, based on its religion, especially in Shia Islam, it will not initiate war. Just like Iran never produced chemical weapons when the West was giving Saddam Hussein chemical weapons to to use extensively against Iranians, according to the religious views of the the of the Iranian leadership, those chemical weapons are not moral, so they never produce them. The same was true with nuclear weapons. Iran could have had nuclear weapons many, many years ago.
Iran has had that capability for a very long time, but it itself chose not to have them. Of course, the Iranians have also said that under if if the fate of this the nation is at stake, then they would change their nuclear posture. But in any case, that is their this is all based on their religious belief. But what we're having what we are seeing now is what the is a situation where the Iranians were saying that we'll not wait to be hit first. As soon as we're sure that we're confident that an attack is about is about is is happening, we will strike.
And that, of course, creates enormous danger too because it if the The United States could do something stupid and create misunderstanding and start a war through its stupidity. Because, again, we're we're not for sure. It's not clear that The United States wants a war yet. We're assuming they do, but we don't know. Because because the Zionists want the war, we're assuming that that's that will happen, but we don't really know.
It could go either way. So The United States may carry out some sort of stupid provocation or send a large number of planes into the air, and then the Iranians will interpret that as the preparation for attack, and then the Iranians will strike. So Iran is not going to wait till The United States carries out its first wave and then respond. So Iran is not going to initiate war. It never has.
It's always been I mean, aggression has been carried out against Iran. We saw that when the West encouraged Saddam to invade and then assisted him with all sorts of weapons and funding, especially from these regimes in the Persian Gulf. They they too were a part of it. And, of course, the Germans were the ones who gave the chemical weapons, which I survived, but many didn't. Then there was the 12, the sanctions regime, which is a brutal regime.
I mean, it's quite stunning, Glenn. It's quite stunning. As you and I are speaking, they are starving Cuba, but the Western media is not talking about it. They are starving kids in Cuba, women and kids, and, you know, the imposing a siege. And even this you know, Trump alluded to this in his when he was bashing out at the at the Supreme Court, he alluded to the what he's doing in in in countries like Cuba, but he was, I think, alluding to Cuba in particular.
Quite a few admissions were made in that in in a few during the last few hours about Joe Lani, about strangling countries, about all sorts of things. But but the point is that as we speak, the Western media is now focused on dehumanizing Iran and Iranians and and trying to portray it as utterly evil to prepare the grounds for war, but their government is strangling the people of Cuba, 10,000,000 people, and they won't even talk about it. So, you know, this is this is where we are right now. This is the world that we live in. It's an it's a war it's a world where the Epstein clad class the Epstein class has exposed itself, and it's it is now functioning out in the open.
And Trump is the most important representative of the Epstein class. So it's really in in the world today, it is the axis of resistance against the Epstein class. And I have no doubt that the Islamic Republic Of Iran and the axis of resistance whose sin is opposing genocide. Whose sin is that they are the only ones, the only states, the only entities that are actively opposing genocide. They're saying don't kill Palestinian kids.
They're not Amalek. That's their sin, and I have but I have no doubt that they will persevere.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Now for a class which has this collective identity and legitimizes all action based on humanitarianism. It is quite shocking that one can't even talk about Cuba, that it doesn't even appear in the media. But, yeah, there we are. So I well, thank you for taking the time, and, yes, please stay safe.
This looks like it could be some very dangerous days ahead.
Speaker 1: We do what we have to do, and I will do what I have to do like everyone else. I will continue being with you and other colleagues as far as as as long as I can find an Internet connection. And I'm not going to be intimidated, somewhat.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Ian Proud: Economic Reset with Russia to Save Europe https://youtu.be/MZpF1IAVPjY https://t.co/trN0rtbXu8
Video Transcript AI Summary
Ian Proud argues that while ending the war and accelerating Ukraine’s EU membership are important, there is a missing focus on the future relationship with Russia and a broader, Pan-European security framework. He notes that Europe is already experiencing economic decline as energy policy shifts away from cheap Russian energy toward more expensive sources, which he says contributes to factory closures and cost-of-living pressures. He warns that simply ending the war or admitting Ukraine into the EU could result in a hostile, “anti-Russia” posture within Europe, unless the long-term security architecture is reset.
He emphasizes two key consequences of the Ukraine crisis since 2014: (1) Europe’s energy and economic policies are driving a decline, partly due to cutting off cheap energy from Russia; (2) focusing only on ending the war and integrating Ukraine into Europe risks creating a new, hostile dynamic with Russia if the relationship is not normalized. Without addressing the future Russia-Europe relationship, he suggests Europe could end up with a remilitarized Europe and higher defense spending, while postponing a durable settlement.
Regarding peace negotiations, Proud argues for a treaty-based, comprehensive approach to pan-European security rather than only ceasefire promises. He contends that peace cannot be achieved by refusing to discuss Russia’s security concerns or by treating Ukraine’s EU accession as a standalone solution. He traces a long history of failed attempts at a broader European security architecture—from Helsinki Accords to the OSCE and the 2005 Common Space—showing that NATO expansion and Western reluctance to embrace a wider security framework undermined these efforts. He asserts that “the red line” on Ukraine’s status was drawn too late and that a durable peace requires a broader security settlement that includes Russia and the European Union, not just NATO.
If advising Putin, Proud suggests pushing for a broader, treaty-based agreement on future pan-European security, rather than accepting merely tacit assurances or expanding NATO. He argues that Ukraine’s EU membership could become “NATO light,” potentially achieving the same military posture as a formal alliance but under EU institutions, thus reinforcing Moscow’s concerns. He calls for a comprehensive accord that reorganizes European security within a broader framework—reinstating indivisible security, sovereign equality, and an integrated approach to security that encompasses Russia, the EU, and potentially broader Eurasian arrangements. He warns that without such a deal, the conflict risks a prolonged stalemate and a dangerous re-escalation.
Proud notes that the atmosphere around diplomacy is terribly toxic, with Western leaders and institutions increasingly sidelining Russia from formal talks. He criticizes the Munich Security Conference for excluding Russia from diplomacy and laments the overemphasis on military solutions and the symbolic, sometimes confrontational rhetoric by European leaders (for example, chancellor statements about arming Europe and projecting suffering onto Russia). He argues that Europe’s foreign policy today is driven by a single objective—defeating Russia—and that this approach has left Europe economically and strategically paralyzed.
Towards the end, Proud cautions that post-war Europe will face a transition to a multipolar world, where the United States will shift priorities toward Asia and the Western Hemisphere. He questions Europe’s readiness to engage in a multipolar order and stresses the need for Europe to reestablish normal relations with Russia to avoid a new Berlin Wall-like division. He also critiques the perception of Ukraine’s resilience and Zelensky’s role, suggesting that Europe should develop its own foreign policy vision rather than being dominated by Kyiv’s stance.
Overall, the dialogue centers on the necessity of a broad, treaty-based security framework for Europe that includes Russia and the EU, a genuine normalization of relations, and diplomacy that moves beyond ceasefires and symbolic gestures to a lasting peace architecture.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined today by Ian Proud, a British diplomat. Between 1999 and 2023, he was a senior officer and also the economic counselor at the British Embassy in Moscow between 2014 and 2019. He's also the host of the popular podcast, the Peacemonger, and I will leave a link to it in the description. So thank you, Ian, for coming back on.
Speaker 1: Thanks, Glenn. It's really nice to see you again.
Speaker 0: Likewise. You also have a a Substack, by the way, which is definitely worth reading. And I saw your article there now recently with the title, without an economic reset with Russia, a peace deal for Ukraine might might may render, Britain and Europe weakened relics of a unipolar past. I was wondering if you could, yeah, perhaps, present the argument. Why is this economic reset with Russia of such great necessity?
Speaker 1: Well, the the first thing I'll say thanks, Quinn. The first thing I'll say is that a lot of the focus now is on negotiations to end the war, right, to to end the fighting and the killing and all those terrible things, which frankly should have stopped a month after the war began at the start of 2022. And and that is a really, really important process because it's long overdue, quite frankly. And I hope it kinda bears fruit, although, frankly, I'm skeptical that it will in the next kinda few months at least, but let's let's see. Within the context of that, there's also discussion about accelerating Ukraine's membership of the EU, which is fraught with all sorts of kind of problems, of course, because it's nowhere near completing, you know, even half of the kind of 33 chapters that it needs to kind of meet the aqueue and all the rest of it.
And not not to mention the fact that it is still fighting a war, so any attempts to kinda do reforms have been put on ice and will remain so until kinda the war finishes. So anyway, but trying to accelerate, you know, Ukraine into EU, which, you know, in principle might not be a bad thing. I think there's as I said, there there are lots of challenges around that. In all of this process, one thing that's missing really apart from what the Americans are doing so trilaterally with Ukraine and Russia is is any real discussion about the future relationship with Russia. It's all about ending the war, which is good.
It's all about normalizing and rebuilding Ukraine, also good, possibly joining the EU.
Speaker 0: You know, I think that's
Speaker 1: gonna be quite a complicated process, but, you know, potentially good in the long term. Nobody's really talking about what will the future relationship with Russia is going to be, and of course, there there are two aspects to that. You know, firstly, one of the consequences of war and actually really the Ukraine crisis which started in 2014 is that Europe is going into economic decline because as a matter of policy choice, it is cutting itself off of access to cheap energy and instead choosing more expensive energy from The US instead, which is causing factories to close, you know, in Germany and across the kind of continent, which is causing ordinary people to face cost of living crises, you know, and that sort of thing. So, you know, that is a direct policy consequence of actually cutting links, you know, with with Russia, given its plentiful supply of cheap energy, you know, and so on. And the second challenge, you know, for Europe is that actually, if you only talk about ending the war and incorporating Ukraine into Europe, which, you know, may not necessarily be, you know, a bad thing, but you don't talk about the relationship with Russia, what you risk ending up with is a situation in which, you know, as with the poll, you know, Poland and the Baltic States, you have a very, very antagonistic Ukraine joining the European Union that wants to maintain an essentially hostile posture towards Russia.
And through that, you know, all you're doing really is pressing pause on the much bigger wall with with Russia as Europe remilitarizes and, you know, pushes towards 5% of GDP and defense spending. So unless you really try to address in a holistic way, you know, how how Ukraine can be normalized, how the war can end, and how, you know, you reset relations with Russia, you know, longer term, we may simply be storing up problems for ourselves in terms of Europe, you know, pressing for a much some more damaging war with with Russia in the long term.
Speaker 0: Well, this is why the I find the the recipe for how to resolve the war is so interesting because what you hear from the Europeans more or less is, well, you just have to do a ceasefire. Stop fighting, and then everything would be fine. You know, they would, of course, then begin to pump in weapons. They would perhaps send their troops, and there wouldn't be any political settlement. So this is why I'm curious.
Well because when the Russians, they say a peace deal has to address the root causes, Well, for them, you know, you can address the root causes. Well, if you put yourself in the shoes of the Russians, to some extent, you have to address what has happened since even 1945, that is when, Europe was divided. Again, some of this was resolved thirty years later in at least the main format at the Helsinki Accords in 1975, and they said, okay. Here we have the how how we can make east and west work together. We build on it.
And then this was, of course, how the Gorbachev started doing this common European home. In 1990, we finally had agreement for the charter of a the the the charter of Paris for a new Europe. This was, you know, one year after the Cold War. Now we would have indivisible security. We would have sovereign equality, a Europe without dividing lines, all these ideas.
We, again, took these ideas from 1990 and the Helsinki Accords, built the OSCE in '94. So we're always on this path building on what came before. And now and then, of course, that's why NATO expansion, I think, is so devastating for them because that canceled the entire project of a pan European secure architecture, which would end dividing lines and be able to facilitate this, you know, indivisible security. And but even then, we the it hasn't moved in thirty years. That is the Russians, both Yeltsin and Putin said, you know, we can join NATO.
They weren't they there were no such things forthcoming. The EU and Russia, they had this common space agreement back in 2005, but, you know, they agreed that they would harmonize integration efforts towards the common neighborhood, but that was breached before the, you know, ink was dry. Almost 2008, the Russians proposed this pan European security architecture. You know, NATO could be preserved, but it has to be under this wider umbrella. The Europeans and and Americans didn't really wanna discuss this at all.
The Russians proposed the EU Russia Union back in 2010. They didn't wanna hear about this either. And everyone knew that at least no Ukraine. This is the red line, as William Byrne said, the reddest of all red lines. And yet, we did it.
We have the conflict, so we tried to solve it. The Minsk agreement, seven years, turns out to be a fraud. Istanbul, it was sabotaged. And I guess where I'm going, given this whole history, you look at the root causes, the inability to for the West to want to develop a Europe based on indivisible indivisible security. If you were advising president Putin now, you're sitting in Moscow, what would you tell him?
Would you say, well, now they're ready. Now they want to make peace. They want to have a Europe where we respect each other's security, where one side shouldn't enhance its security at the other side, Or would you think that anything anything the Europeans come with now will be a temporary pause to rearm and prepare to strike again pretty much? I know I just I can understand why the Russians are are critical, which is why I'm saying the it seems like the Europeans, in order to have a peace, we have to be we should go a little bit deeper than just a ceasefire. We have to at least you know, we don't have to meet the Russians on everything, but there's no recognition even that this has very deep roots, this failure to end this block politics and accept an inclusive security format.
I was just wondering how you would do you see any prospect that would put anything else in place than a temporary halt to what we've seen over the past decades?
Speaker 1: Well, Putin has played hardball. That has been his political strategy so far. That's absolutely clear in terms of not settling an end to the conflict until he gets clear treaty based commitments about about the future and discussion of that is ongoing right now. And if I were to advise him, I'd say that actually that strategy of playing hardball is working because, you know, just accepting tacit assurances, for example, NATO expansion, which at this stage is not nearly enough actually, there needs to be something much bigger than than just NATO expansion. I'll come on to that in a minute.
Just accepting tacit assurances won't won't work anymore, and the Russians should stick to something which I know that they want because Russia's ambassador to The UK has actually told me so. They want some sort of treaty based agreement on the future. And whereas maybe at the start of the war, that should only deal with actually the kind of the the root causes of the conflict itself, the NATO expansion, you know, and that sort of thing. I think now the terms need to be much broader in terms of pan European security Because I think without that, you know, I think actually, Ukraine going into into the EU is just like NATO light now, frankly, because EU and NATO, goals are now almost indistinguishable from each other. Indeed, there was a Harvard professor, I think, last week in Project Syndicate, you know, magazine.
They're saying, well, actually, on the back of recent concerns, for example, in Central Europe, Europe should actually devolve more economic competence back to its member states, which, you know, actually I think is probably quite a good idea on the back of the blockage, for example, of the Mercosur trade deal and so on. But one trade off for that is to kind of centralize more common foreign and security policy, which immediately rang sort of arm bells, you know, for me because with massive increases in NATO spending commenced 5% with a greater centralization of decision making power in the European Commission under common reform policy and security in the future. Actually, Ukrainian membership of the EU therefore becomes NATO light, which, you know, while Russia may secure a treat a treaty commitment not to expand NATO. They may actually have de facto NATO expansion anyway by the Ukraine joining the EU. So the point being that actually in any kind of treaty that is discussed to end the conflict, there needs to be a much bigger, you know, agreement on the future of pan European security, you know, within that, which includes both obviously Russia's commitments, but also includes European Union's, not just NATO's, but the European, you know, Union's commitments to that and some sort of pan Euro Asian agreement through Congress to kind of manage interrelationships including on the economic side, you know, in terms of reopening up of of links and the breaking down of barriers that have been created by by the conflict.
So a much bigger a much bigger treaty now is needed, I think, and and Putin should actually play hardball and stick to that as a condition for sort of ending the war because half promises now and if you listen to anything that people like Mertz and and Kai Calais and Ikir Starman say, there's no obvious commitment that, you know, they have any faith in in the process or they want really to kind of offer any sort of compromise to the Russian side at all. So I think hardball is the way that he should continue to play. And the reason I say that because a, without that, he just won't actually. He'll just end up back in the situation, you know, before even the Ukraine crisis started. A new cold war, a new sort of iron curtain, you know, will have been created and actually the the tension across here will be even worse than it was, you know, before 2014, which long term will will not be in in Russia's interests.
And but he'll know that by playing hardball as well, you know, Europe will start to kind of creek under the financial pressure of maintaining the war, you know, which, you know, will continue for as long as Europe hold out on any sort of a deal. So I still think that even though Russia is feeling economic pain, he understands that actually Europe is feeling more economic pain and will take the gamble on actually sort of hanging out the war a bit longer to get this sort of treaty deal, which I think he believes meets Russia's needs.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, thought about the EU membership as well, and I I I think on the one hand, I think it would be a good consolidation price or for for the Ukrainians because, you know, they they lost a lot in this war. The, yeah, the economy, the human you know, the male population, so many people have fled not coming back. And at some point, people are gonna ask, what was this all about? If, you know, they could have gotten a much better deal with, you know, Minsk, with Istanbul.
You know, every day gets worse and worse. So I you I don't think any peace where one side is completely humiliated is stable in any way. And, also, I guess, all fairness, while I think much of this conflict was manufactured, Ukraine has very reasonable security concerns, about Russia. So I'm thinking it wouldn't be an the EU could be a a good solution as a middle way. The problem is that the EU used to be seen by the Russians as being the good West versus NATO, which had The United States in it, was the bad West.
But the the EU has changed so much, though, over the past few years now. It's become so militant, so aggressive. You've probably seen chancellor Mertz at Munich Security Conference, you know, boasting about how he he has a post unsuffer well, unprecedented suffering on the Russians. And, you know, the this only way this can stop is when they break the Russians. I mean, it's this kind of language from a German chancellor.
You know, he wants to have the largest army again in Europe. It's, yeah, it's it's not the same Europe as as in the past, the same EU. But but I I can see why the Russians would probably make some good concessions if they would be getting some kind of a settlement, some treaty, some agreement because there's so so many other conflicts which are lined up unless we address, you know, the root causes. Even once Keith Kellogg, he made this point that a deal would have to probably also include NATO's relationship with Moldova and Georgia, given that this is something that, you know, again, is part of the root causes because it looks like we can have another fight over the large Finland frontline now, the Arctic becoming more militarized, the Baltic Sea, the threats which were made against Kaliningrad, possible efforts to regime change Belarus. I mean, there's so many possible flashpoints we have now.
But but but you did mention, though, that the Russians want something else besides NATO now. Is this what you were alluding to? Or
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, what I what I meant was was actually, you know, without some, you know, without some deal, which takes us back to the the the beginning, sort of regulating Russia's relationship with the European Union, which has become practically indistinguishable from NATO now, particularly at a time when the when the Americans are looking to pull away from NATO and essentially kind of just have, you know, a much bigger kind of European NATO, you know, replacing it as it focuses on on China. The point is that actually, even if you even if you get NATO to kind of signal and formally, you know, attest in some sort of treaty that it won't expand further to the East, Ukraine joining the EU may simply be NATO light anyway, you know, because if you look at Callis and Kubilius and all these kind of dreadful, dull potentates in in Brussels, It's hard to distinguish what they say from what what Marwata says in terms of militarization and that sort of thing. So a very antagonistic bruised, resentful Ukraine joining the EU may have the same net effect as an antagonistic bruised and hurt Ukraine joining NATO, you know, in terms of how the Russians see it.
And I also think actually, you know, that so so so there needs to be some sort of deal with with the European Union on it's always been the case right from the start of this conflict that actually the Ukraine's best future was having closer relations with Europe and maintaining close relations with Russia, and that has never really really changed. If Ukraine goes into the EU, but the EU doesn't have any sort of normalization with Russia. You just have a new Berlin Wall, effectively, new sort of iron curtain and that sort of thing between, you know, Russia and the rest of Europe. So the the economic piece is vital to that. You need to open up borders so people can move freely, restore flights, you know, and all the rest of it.
So buy buy Russian gas. Not because Russia needs Europe to buy their gas, but I mean, I I just think it because they've shifted a lot of their exports, of course, to to Asia. But it just in terms of the normalization of relations helping to kind of boost Europe's economy as well, opening up reopening up people to people links, you know, across Eurasia. All of these things can help to moderate the the the really toxic at the moment relationships that exist. So that that's what what that's what I meant.
EU membership is basically NATO light. And so that for that reason, you know, Putin should be seeking a much broader kind of treaty. And that's why whether we like it or not, whether I mean, and I I I'm embarrassed, frankly, by by some of the people leading both the institutions of Europe and European nations as well, including Merz, Macron, and Starman. Actually, Europe has to play a role in the negotiation at some point, even if that role is only to kind of have a treaty on their future relations with Russia after Ukraine joins. That's what I meant.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, how much you mentioned that the atmosphere now is quite toxic here. Do do you see any willingness, though, to move forward on this? Because in order to reach any peace, one would have to discuss the mutual security guarantees. I don't see I mean, if you listen to the people of, like, Callas, and I I, of course, understand she's one of the more radical elements within the EU, but, you know, they're saying very openly that Russia does need security guarantees.
It's the aggressor Ukraine needs because it's the victim. I mean, this is the intellectual level of these people if they actually mean what they're saying. But also the whole concept of having some inclusive diplomacy. Again, at this Munich Security Conference, Mertz made the comment that, well, what's the point of talking to the Russians? Orban tried to do it two years ago, and he didn't achieve anything.
So why what's the point? There's no point of talking. I mean, this is this is a country that came up with the Uzpolitik. You know? This is it's just disgraceful, but but but they all frame it as if this is somehow in Ukraine's interest.
But, you know, as long as they don't talk to Ukraine, the country continues to burn. It's Yeah. It's just the whole idea that a peace agreement has to be accepted by both sides because we had four years of all these peace summits where they didn't even invite the Russians. Remember the
Speaker 1: Well, yeah.
Speaker 0: Switzerland talked about breaking up Russia in pieces. I mean, they called it a peace summit. It's just it's it's really, yeah, strange.
Speaker 1: And it and it hasn't changed. No. You know, the the Munich Security Conference doesn't have the world's largest nuclear power attending it. It doesn't, you know, Russia isn't included. Russia is not welcome in in forms for diplomacy, and in any case, the Munich Security Conference is no longer a form for, you know, for for diplomacy, quite frankly, if you look at some of the bizarre things, you know, that that that people say.
And, you know, we've made Ukraine a far bigger asset than it really is. You know, Ukraine is a large by geography kind of country, but not huge, you know, by, you know, by, you know, population and and, you know, objectively poor and functionally bankrupt with, you know, resources, but not a huge kind of wealth of of resources in its society, broken cities, largely depopulated, a massive demographic crisis facing it. I mean, and you know, that we invite them to these big grand global events like their royalty and and, you know, exclude Russia. So we're in a position where, you know, talking talking to the Russians is just seen as as unnecessary despite the fact that Russia is appears to be navigating the turbulence of conflict in terms of the economic sort of consequences, but also the political consequences in terms of Russia's standing in the wider developing world, you know, better than Europe. We've collectively got our heads, you know, in the sand that if we carry on doing what we've been doing, and I've been saying this all along, if we carry on doing what we've been doing since 2014, which is not talking to Russia, eventually things will be fine, but they really aren't they really aren't fine.
We have to get back to diplomacy, as you say, inclusive diplomacy. We have to talk to the Russians. Now, there is a small shaft of light at the end of the tunnel after about six months of discussing it. You know, the Europeans are nudging in tiny steps towards, you know, somebody in Europe actually having a dialogue with with Putin. That could be Macron, that could be Alexander Stubb.
It definitely won't be Kai Callus because, you know, the Russians won't agree to that, of course. But it's taken them months to agree that, and they haven't even agreed. I mean, that that maybe somebody should talk to the Russians. If it takes them that long to agree, who should actually have any sort of dialogue with, you know, are these children? This is this is not school.
This is like the most dangerous kind of war since for us in Europe since the end of World War two. You know, are they are they school children like deciding what who should talk to that nasty person over there? Maybe it should be you, maybe it should be me. Oh, no. Let's don't Let's not do it because he's too scary.
I mean, this is ridiculous. I mean, if it takes them this long to decide who can talk to Putin, how long is it gonna take them to decide what they actually discuss, you know, and what the agenda should be and what Europe's position is in any future dialogue with Russia. It's ridiculous. And that that's why I think that war will run on until 2027. You know, Europe have borrowed the money to kind of lend Ukraine another 90,000,000,000, so they're covered until the middle of next year.
They don't really they fail, you know, They don't need to talk to Putin before then. They just give them some breathing room. And they're so slow to agree anything on dialogue with Russia that things would just drag on. I mean, that's you know, I see nothing to suggest otherwise, I'm afraid to say.
Speaker 0: Yeah. This is, like, parody, the having discussions among themselves whether or not to talk to the opponent. I mean, this is diplomacy now. Just a bunch of guys sitting in a room who agrees with each other Yeah. Discussing whether or not to even talk to the other side.
It's the the problem is at some point, you do need the Europeans to be brought in because you Yeah. Sometimes European security architecture without talking to the Europeans.
Speaker 1: But but
Speaker 0: they just seem to exclude themselves, this obsession with ex with isolating Russia. I mean, the whole world now is dealing with Russia, be it the Chinese, Indians, now Yeah. Even The United States. It's just the Indians. So what what is the point here?
I this whole dream in 2022 to isolate Russia internationally, I mean, at some point, you have to accept failure. This is if yeah. Alright. Just a last wider question, though. I was gonna ask about those 800,000 troops as well, but I guess that falls under the yeah.
How they perceive what peace to be. That is 800,000 Ukrainian troops in peacetime. I mean, it's hard to see the Russians agreeing to this as well. But but the wider question was, how do you think Europe is capable now of adjusting to a multipolar world? Because in a multipolar world, The United States have other priorities.
They can't be everywhere, they have to, again, focus on the Western Hemisphere and Asia. Yeah. And the the Europeans, they don't seem to have much that many common interests besides the, you know, the the war in Ukraine now. I mean, what happens when the war comes to an end? You know, how will the Europeans agree on some money that has to be returned to Russia?
What would happen with EU unity? What would they do about United States now seeing this is solved and they can intensify their pivot? I mean, can they can they afford peace? How how how do you think Europe can adjust to multiple world goals? Again, we both live here in Europe.
We would like to see Europe having some success here, but, I I just don't see, any plans.
Speaker 1: Well, I was gonna say exactly the same thing. I mean, I live in Europe a bit large in in The United Kingdom as as part of the bigger kind of concept of of Europe, of course. I mean, anything I say is about the stability of Europe itself. I don't say these things because I want, you know, Russia to benefit. I wish Russia no harm, you know, by the way, but but my thoughts and my proposals are rooted in what would be good for Great Britain and what would be good for, you know, Europe as a whole, including, I suppose, in some respects, you know, Russia too, but that's not my primary concern.
You know, the I mean, on the sort of tactical point of of the 800,000, well, Ukraine said we can't afford that. Is it you know, and in any case, when the war ends, won't they need all their young men to be doing some some sort of productive labor rather than sitting around in barracks polishing their boots, you know, know, waiting for another kind of war? I mean, sure surely, they'll need as many men and women as as possible actually sort of working in their economy to kind of regret again rather than sitting around in uniforms, hey, buy Brussels because Ukraine won't be able to afford to to buy that to pay for that itself. There's absolutely no sign that that Europe wants to pivot to a multipolar world at the moment. It it has become a single issue foreign policy, and that single issue is defeating Russia and it's failing at that.
You know, it's trying to have free trade agreements. They can't even agree those because it's coming up against national sovereignty where certain countries block them, you know, block deals. You know, Europe is paralyzed. Europe is in the state of absolute paralysis, you know, right now. And for its sake, not just for Russia's sake, but for Europe's sake, they need to have a normal relationship with, you know, with Russia.
And it's it's blindingly obvious and and sting them in the face, and yet they can't see it. Part of the problem is, I hate to say this, part of the problem is Zelensky. I think they've overinvested in him as such that, you know, they can't let him go despite all of his kind of failings. I mean, I heard Zelensky in the political interview, I don't know if you saw it, making some bizarre, you know, comment about needing compromise while, you know, Russia have had all the compromise that they need because Putin is not in jail. Well, this is this is not the comment of a serious states person.
This is the comment of somebody who's clinging onto power and will do anything that actually makes people in Brussels smile. You know, he's just a comedian and a joker and a performer, but he's not actually running his country very well. Zelenskyy is running his country apportingly badly. If he really cared about Ukraine, he would agree for the war to end because Ukraine is losing, it's becoming more bankrupt. And in the process, Europe is becoming more bankrupt too, or at least de industrializing and getting into economic decay.
But it's because Europeans continue to kind of humor him as a little kind of pet project. They can't, you know, engage with the fact that actually, you know, Ukraine will be better off without Zelensky. You know, the the that that you know, while Zelensky is in the room saying all these kind of comedic and hostile things about Russia, you know, I see no prospect of of, you know, Europe's coming up with its own ideas on foreign policy because Yurich's foreign policy is driven by Vladimir Zelensky. That's that's how I see it. I mean, that's how it appears.
You know, he he has outsized influence in the process, and unless you kind of break those bonds, unless, you know, the Europeans can actually come up with their own ideas for what their foreign policy should be, blanking out the white noise that comes from bank over, then they are screwed, I'm afraid to say, you know, because they just lack ideas, and they're overcommitted to a fell pod that they can't get out of.
Speaker 0: When this war comes to an end, though, a whole new chapter begins because there there might be some not just collapse in Ukraine, but it's also interesting to see what's gonna happen to the EU because if defeating Russia is the only like you said, that's the only foreign policy there is now, Well, what what direction will it take thereafter? You know? No. It's gonna be quite interesting. But, you know, Zelensky is not the only one making these comments.
Kayakalas also said that Well, no. After, like, a war as a peace agreement should include reducing the size of the Russian army. I mean, this is the losing side seeking to dictate the terms on the winning side. And and she's saying this at the same time as the Germans and the rest are talking about arming themselves to the teeth. Yeah.
Yeah. So it is just
Speaker 1: And you know what make it
Speaker 0: a sense. But everyone has to nod along and say, Of course. Of course. Otherwise, you are disloyal, and you are a Russian asset because the only way you can show patriotism in Europe now is to bang on the same drum that, you know, if it's bad for Russia, it's good for us. This is then this is the whole logic.
It's Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And and you know what? I mean, you know, she's the person that Plitico and and, you know, the Financial Times and The Telegraph and all these kind of mainstream Europeans have, you know, talking all the time on the TV all the time, talking this nonsense because that's what the market will bear and and Russians are not in the room to present their case. So I mean, that that is why, you know, European citizens, you know, are so drugged on the endless propaganda that comes out of her through the mainstream media, and that that is how that is how the system works, you know. She doesn't say this because she thinks it's true.
She's and failing foreign policy. And, actually, people love to hear what she has to say, and that, unfortunately, is a very cynical, but I'm afraid very realistic take on on why, you know, we're in such a dreadful state in Europe right now. People people like her, she's she's not a cause. She's a symptom of the cancer, if you like, you know, that is eating up our internal foreign policy mechanisms.
Speaker 0: Well, if people wanna see how bad things have become in Europe, just tune in and watch this
Speaker 1: Watch Guy Kells.
Speaker 0: Conference. It is just, it's ridiculous. I I mean, it's so beyond absurd, and this is supposed to be the most respectable security conference there is. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, you get better foreign policy by going to the Edinburgh Fringe Comedy Festival, quite frankly. I hate to say it, but, I worry that it might be true.
Speaker 0: Mhmm. Well, thank you for taking some time out of your day, and I appreciate your insights, and, keep on writing those articles. So
Speaker 1: Yeah. I was gonna say, Glenn, it should should I don't know if our wife should be worried that we're talking to each other on Valentine's Day, but it's always it's always nice to talk to you.
Speaker 0: Thank you. Yeah. I should get back to the missus. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Me too. Take care. Bye for now. Bye.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Patrik Baab: Europe's New Iron Curtain - Freedom of Speech Dies https://youtu.be/PNbF9qYx0Mg https://t.co/IEXWdNaLrL
Video Transcript AI Summary
Patrick Baab and the host discuss the perceived erosion of freedom of expression in Europe and the role of governments and institutions in pressuring speech.
- Baab asserts that there is “no freedom of speech in the EU anymore,” citing a 160-page US Congress report published in February that allegedly finds the EU Commission created a system of complete censorship across the European Union. The report states the EU regime “pressured platforms in the Internet to suppress lawful speech, including speech that was true simply because it was politically inconvenient,” and that the Commission is transforming itself “into a censorship authority against democracy.”
- The discussion moves to Jacques Baud (spelled Baud by Baab, sometimes Jacques Baud), a Swiss colonel and analyst who argued that the war in Ukraine had been provoked. Baab notes Baud was sanctioned by the EU, with consequences including travel bans, frozen assets, and limited monthly food funds (€500). Baud cannot travel to Switzerland; his bank accounts and property are frozen, and neighbors reportedly cook for him. Baab calls these measures extralegal, asserting they punish a person for an argument, not for crimes, and claims such sanctions illustrate a mechanism to suppress dissent.
- Baab elaborates that Baud’s sanction is part of a broader pattern: “extralegal sanctions” against multiple individuals (Baud and 58 others) within and partly outside the EU, aimed at silencing those who challenge NATO or EU narratives. He argues this signals a “death of freedom” and a move to shut mouths through sanctions.
- The host asks if the media’s shift toward propaganda is temporary or permanent. Baab responds that the transformation is structural: democracy in Europe is becoming anti-democratic and warmongering despotism. He cites Viktor Orban’s view that the EU intends to wage war against Russia, with propaganda and censorship as two sides of the same coin to close public debate. Baab says the war will be ugly, as Russia has warned it could escalate to nuclear conflict, and ties this to investments in Ukraine (Shell deal) that were lost when territories changed hands, implying economic motivations behind policy and casualties for profits.
- The conversation turns to self-censorship. Baab describes widespread fear among journalists and academics; many refused to join a board intended to assist Baud, fearing repercussions. He cites a US Congress report alleging the EU manipulated eight elections, including Romania, Slovakia, and France. He also notes the EU Commission’s engagement with major platforms (Meta, Google, TikTok, X, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Rumble, Reddit, OpenAI) to enforce content management under EU rules, threatening sanctions if not compliant.
- Reputational attacks against critics are discussed. Baab shares experiences of smear campaigns, such as being misrepresented as a “Putin poll watcher” in Germany, and notes that state- and EU-funded NGOs sometimes amplify misinformation. He argues mainstream media generally ignores these issues, turning to “new media” and independent outlets as alternatives for information.
- On Germany specifically, Baab identifies EU-level figures (German-origin leaders) who drive censorship: Ursula von der Leyen as EU Commission President (authorized COVID-19 disinformation monitoring), Vera Jorova (values and transparency), Thierry Breton (pressures on platforms), Prabhat Agarwal (Digital Services Act enforcement), and Renate Künast (translating DSA into practice). He says national governments decide sanctions but pass the burden to Brussels, creating a “kickback game.” He notes the German Bundestag extended EU sanctions into national law, punishing any helper of a sanctioned person with up to ten years’ imprisonment.
- For optimism, Baab says Europe needs external help, such as the US Congress report, and citizens must seek alternative information sources and organize to defend democratic rights, including voting for different parties. He suggests that without broad public pushback, the propaganda system will persist.
- The discussion closes with reflections on broader geopolitical dynamics, warnings about a multipolar world, and a dystopian vision of a Europe dominated by conflict and state control, with elites colluding with Western powers at the expense of ordinary citizens.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back to the program. Today, we are joined by Patrick Baab, a German journalist and author, to discuss the massive pressures there currently is on the freedom of expression in Europe and how our various governments are working very hard to reduce this freedom. So thank you very much for coming back on the program.
Speaker 1: Always my pleasure, Klan.
Speaker 0: Well, we we can go into some specific examples because it's really quite hard to believe the extent to which freedom of speech is speech is being snuffed out across Europe. And but I I thought a good place to start always how you see the freedom of expression and in what ways it's coming under pressure. Can you, I guess, describe the main mechanisms, both the formal and informal, to reduce the freedom of speech in Europe?
Speaker 1: So there is no freedom of speech in the EU in the European Union anymore. This is not my personal opinion. This is the result of a report of the US Congress of 160 pages published in early February. And according to this US report, the EU Commission established in recent years a system of complete censorship all over the European Union. And the result, let me read that.
The result of this congress report is so just a moment. EU regime pressured platforms in the Internet to suppress lawful speech, including speech that was true simply because it was politically inconvenient. And this is one of the results of this House of Judiciary Committee report of the chairman Jim Jordan. And it is very clear that the European Commission is transforming itself into a censorship authority against democracy and in opposition to all democratic constitutions all over the map in the European Union.
Speaker 0: There's a, well, a person we both know, which is colonel Jacques Bou, who again, he's a colonel in the Swiss intelligence services. He's retired now. He's very well known for his great analysis, and he he has worked for NATO as a Swiss intelligence agent or colonel, and, apparently, the EU didn't like his analysis. That is, he reached a conclusion that the war in Ukraine had been provoked. Again, one one can agree or disagree.
I happen to agree with this analysis. But but he never had a day in court or anything. He just one day, he woke up, and the EU put him on sanctions list, not because he said anything, that also was false, proven that he's received payments from anywhere, but just because his conclusion or analysis, it was seen as accepting or repeating a Kremlin talking point, which was then seen as, yeah, advancing the Kremlin narrative. And for this, he was punished with sanctions. What exactly does this situation look like?
Speaker 1: Well, I know colonel Jacques Baud personally, and I visited him in Brussels. He's okay so far, but he's also really nervous because he is a Swiss citizen living in Belgium. He cannot travel to his homeland. It's not allowed for him to travel. His bank accounts are completely frozen, and all his property is confiscated.
The only thing the Belgium state allows is he can take €500 a month to buy food. And I heard that the neighbors are cooking for him. So this is just a situation to censor and to bring men under pressure and persons under pressure who don't align to the NATO propaganda and the EU propaganda. And this is completely extralegal. So the EU minister, as the EU ministers, created an instrument, a tool to bring people under pressure and to shut their mouths by sanctions, which is completely illegal, completely illegal, and, again, against all democratic constitutions in the EU.
So the only conclusion I can have, and this is the same conclusion of the US Congress, is European political elites are destroying democracy to stay in power.
Speaker 0: What is so shocking, though, with the colonel Bow is that there's no laws that have been broken, and he's not even in a position to defend his argument. He can't defend himself in court. There is no legal recourse. It's just now you're not allowed to travel. You all your assets frozen.
You can't you're not allowed to receive help from anyone. And it's this again, as you said, this is there's no laws for this. It's illegal. This is it's just, yeah, sanctioning citizens for no who have committed no crimes. It it is quite shocking.
So for anyone who argues that this US paper is hyperbolic or exaggerating, I mean, it's very hard to justify what has actually been done to him and others for that sake. And that this is propaganda. This is when governments aren't able to defend their position anymore. Anyone challenging the official truths come under this kind of attack by the government. It is it is the death of freedom.
So but but you you've argued, though, that the media has become much more propagandistic. How how do you do you see this as simply being a transitional issue because we're in a well, we're pretty much fighting now a direct war against Russia, or is this simply or do you think this is permanent? Because it's very hard to go back to normal the way things were after we see European governments doing this kind of things against their own citizens.
Speaker 1: I think this is a complete transformation of democracy on the European level into a kind of, yeah, anti democratic and warmongering despotism. And this is the goal. According to the Hungarian minister president Viktor Orban, the EU decided to wage a war against Russia in the next years. And so warmongering and going into new wars and propaganda and censorship, on the other hand, are two sides of the same metal. They want to close-up the public debate space to make it easier to bring their own citizens into a new war.
And this is very dangerous because the Russian Federation announced that this won't be a war in a Ukrainian style. So a low level war. So the Russian Federation made very clear that this will become a nuclear war at once. So it's very, very dangerous. But the background of all this warmongering and all this censorship is they lost control over their investments.
NATO General Secretary Margaret Rutland signed in 2013 as prime minister of The Netherlands a contract with the Ukrainian government and the company Shell to explore the gas, minerals and the the minerals and the gas in Eastern Ukraine. So it's a it's an investment of billions. It was an investment of billions. But now, all these territories are in Russian hands. So they miscalculated their investments.
And now, European citizens should die for their profits. And that's the background. And so people is sleeping against the abyss. They don't go to the streets and they don't fight for peace in the European Union. And that is a result of permanent propaganda and permanent censorship in the EU.
And I don't believe that the political elites won't stop that. They will go on and go on to keep to stay in power.
Speaker 0: Yeah. That's my concern. All these lies which have been told, the lack of accountability because it's very easy to expose a lot of the lies which have been telling. I mean, this is to a large extent what colonel Jacques Bou was doing as well. He was using Western sources to prove that it doesn't make any sense, the the narratives which which they're spinning.
But the problem now, of course, is if you win the war, you can write the story afterwards, but we are losing this war. And, well, our political leads are not gonna be in a position to to to write the story afterwards. Indeed, it's gonna be proven that everything they've essentially said has been a lie. And it's quite dramatic because we're talking about a legitimacy crisis when governments overstep their democratic mandate in this way. And as these governments become more unpopular, they they seem to be, you know, immune from the ballot box.
You know, irrespective of what one thinks about the opposition parties across Europe, it is concerning that the, you know, the most popular party in Germany now and the polls are is AFD. Again, it doesn't matter if people support it or not. They're being criminalized. They're openly talking about banning it. In France, they arrested Le Pen.
Just in Romania, the election result was essentially just ignored and canceled. Let's do it over again. We saw how the the Moldovan election was manipulated. And if you mention these things, yeah, the the the governments in Europe essentially comes comes after you. It's it's quite scary the way well, all this talk about our democracy, our values, how it's just sitting on eggshell eggshells, essentially.
But how how significant do you think the role is of self self censorship as well? Because now we're talking about direct censorship, the way they're punished, the way election results are reversed, the opposition parties are banned, but the citizens are not just smeared, censored, canceled, but also sanctioned. But but in terms of self censorship, how how do you see this changing among journalists or academics?
Speaker 1: Well, let me start with my personal experiences as a journalist and book author and the manager of a news channel and interview and analysis channel on YouTube, I'm receiving thousands over thousands of letters. And most people are telling me, you have the courage to say what I cannot say anymore. I cannot have free speech, and I cannot say my personal position, my personal arguments to my colleagues because it is too dangerous. So self censorship is following censorship. And this is the situation in Germany today and in other countries.
The member of the European Parliament, Michael van der Schulenburg, tried to establish a board of people to help Jabou, and he asked professors for justice and all that. And most people refused to join the board because because they are living in fear. So what we see right now all over the EU is government by fear and suppression. And this is not democracy. This is an Orwellian dystopia.
And we have a lot of instruments to reach this goal. First of all, it is proven by the report of the US Congress that the European Union manipulated eight elections all over the EU. The most known case is the Romanian case, but also in Slovakia, in France, and other countries. You can download this report in the Internet. The next level is Internet censorship.
The EU Commission invited Meta, Google, TikTok, X, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Rumble, Reddit, and OpenAI and explained completely clearly that they have to manage content in the sense of the EU. If not, they will they will pay hard sanctions. Hey. They have to pay a lot of money. And this this also is not democracy.
And then the extralegal sanctions against Jack Bo and 58 other people, not only in the EU, but partly in the EU. And everybody knows that. And on the other hand, the mainstream media, and for me, the so called propaganda media, don't cover that. They don't report on that. And that means the mainstream media are part of the propaganda system of NATO.
Speaker 0: But how how do you see the attack, though, on reputations? Because when you say people are afraid to speak up, the it's the attack on reputation, which not just affects professional life, but also private life that this is a key a key aspect of it. So, you know, like like in this country, I've noticed this even against my myself. We have, you know, governments, sometimes they go indirectly. They just they they finance NGOs.
They call them human rights NGOs. Yes. But, you know, you see them, they they they they take, you know, writing all these smears on social media. They would write articles denouncing me as a propagandist for Russia. They write letters to my university, you know, questioning whether or not I should be allowed to work there.
Even put pictures of my house on social media after I had to get after I had essentially removed my address from from, yeah, the public realm. And and recently, we even had the defense minister of Norway coming out. He was making a speech that warning that Norwegians are exposed to Putin's propaganda. And I thought this is weird because Norwegian media only permits one narrative, that is everything is unprovoked. The Russians, you know, just the new Hitler who wants to restore the Soviet Union.
So, so when he was asked, you know, who where do they get Putin's propaganda? And he mentioned my name, only my name. And this is a problem that journalists essentially shouldn't talk to me because that means they're giving platform. And and my and the great crime, according to him, I I said that the NATO had contributed to provoking the war. I mean, if we had open discourse, if you're allowed to discuss what's actually happening in Ukraine, if you wanna solve it, it's very easy.
It doesn't I mean, there's an abundance of evidence where to to prove this. But what I found fascinating, they don't look at evidence as a way of how to solve a crisis. They see it as almost treasonous that you pick the a side of the enemy by suggesting that perhaps we contributed to this, so perhaps there's a political solution. It's quite scary to see how I mean, this is the this is essentially the executive branch, which is saying this is the official truths which the government has the right to promote, and anyone who goes against it will be then smeared and attacked by the government. I mean, it's just it is such a far cry away from anything that can be considered to be democratic.
Of course, it's not even in the ballpark what has happened to colonel Ojakpo, but nonetheless so I got off point there. I was gonna ask, yeah, in terms of this reputational pressure, do you how how are you assessing this?
Speaker 1: I made the same experience as you in Germany. If you read Wikipedia or according to the mainstream press in Germany, I was a poll watcher of mister Putin during the referenda in the Donbas in fall two thousand twenty two, which I was not. And I brought this to a court, and the court made in in its decision very clear that I was not a poll watcher, that I was on my way as a journalist. But they are repeating all the way the same shit. And responsible for that is, among others, a government financed and EU financed so called nongovernment organization called fake observers.
And I was not a fake observer. Absolutely not. So we arrived in a state of fake news, completely fake news. And Jabbour wrote and published recently a book on that, Government by Fake News. And this is the world we are living in.
They are betraying and lying to the people all over the EU because the reality on the ground on the battlefield is completely different to the press reports. And it is completely different to the information of the news shows. They were not on the ground. It's just fantasy. It's just propaganda.
And all ideological apparatuses are supporting this propaganda systems. The school, the universities, the so called nongovernment organizations, the think tanks, the institutions of the government, and so on and so on. All these institutions and the churches as well, they are all spreading the same and publishing the same propaganda, and that's the problem. So the only way to get out of this propaganda system is for the citizens to make their own investigations and to choose other sources, possibly the new media, and that would be best. But this is the way by destroying the democratic debate space.
This is the way for the established party to stay in power.
Speaker 0: How is but what is interesting with these sanctions, though, is that they come from the EU. So it kinda allows national governments to just assign responsibility to the EU instead. But how does how do you see this in Germany, though? How what which one of these sanctions and pressure comes from the EU directly? And where where does the German government come in?
Because we mentioned the the Swiss colonel in in Belgium, but but there's also been a lot of sanctions against the German citizens, some who apparently aren't even able to return back to their own country. Again, this is you know, we we went through a whole cold war without doing any of these things. The it's it doesn't really communicate a lot of confidence, I guess, in governments when they have to take this dramatic and authoritarian measures. But yes. Sorry.
Back to my question. What is the German do government doing as a if you wanna contrast it to to the European Union?
Speaker 1: So we can identify the actors on the different levels. The head of the EU Commission is a German, Osella Fonderlein, and she's personally responsible for EU censorship because she approved the campaign on COVID nineteen in June 2020. And she started the COVID nineteen disinformation monitoring program and forced the Internet platforms to report and to delete and to, yeah, to manipulate. And the second one is Vera Yorova, the vice president for values and transparency, and the former, head of the EU Commission for Justice. And she managed the whole thing, the discussions with TikTok, Meta, Google, and other platforms.
And the third one is Thierry Breton, a former commissioner for the domestic market. And he wrote to Elon Musk on 08/12/2024, we will not hesitate to make full use of our toolbox. That means, he said, x under pressure. The next one is Prabhat Agarwal, the head of, Digital Services Act enforcement. He has to yeah.
He's the manager of all these things. And the fifth one is Renate Nicolai, the deputy director general of DG CONNECT, direct directorate general for communications, networks, content, and technology. And she has to translate the Digital Services Act into action, into a control of recommander systems. But we have to keep in mind that the national governments are playing a kickback game. So responsible for the sanctions, for example, is the EU minister council of the different nations, of the different states.
And that means the EU commission and on the EU level is it will be done what the national governments have decided before. That's the problem. So it is a kickback game. The national governments decide to set somebody on the sanctions list, and they kick the they kick to Brussels, and then Brussels has to do. And then the ball will be kicked back to the national level and also to the German level.
The German Bundestag transformed the EU sanctions against persons on January 15 into national law and reinforced the sanctions. Any helper of a sanctioned person can go can be punished and can go to prison for ten years, and this is completely crazy. And there is no legal ground for that. No legal ground. It is just illegal and is completely voluntarily.
So we are not in a, yeah, in a in a in a government defined by law. It is a government just a despotism. Nothing else. We lost ground of democracy in the European Union.
Speaker 0: Is there any source of optimism coming anywhere, though? Or do you see any institutions or media, civil society, academia, anyone who is pushing back against this, at least marginally successful? Or where I guess, where where does the hope come in here? Or should we rely on as we got from The US national security strategy of December 2025, put it in the hands of The United States to promote alternative governments in Europe because that doesn't seem like a very ideal outcome either.
Speaker 1: Yes. On the first level, I have to say Europe needs help from outside. And this is exactly what the US Congress did. They published a report because US citizens are affected by that. Europe, US citizens are affected by traveling through the EU, and so the rules of the EU are work working worldwide.
So US citizens are affected by that. And the second level is we both, Glenn, you and me, we can do just our job and make that public, what they are doing to create a consciousness about that. But in the end, people has to fight for their rights, and they don't do that at the moment. We are looking back into a history of democracy of, let me say, three hundred years. And all over this time, people had to fight for their rights, and there was a lot of blood flooding out.
And now we are in a time we have to go back to these people, and we have to fight for our rights. People have to go into the streets and to fight for their democratic rights against antidemocratic elites.
Speaker 0: Why do you think this isn't happening yet, though? Because it's do do people not realize what what is happening? Because, of course, the media is not gonna cover much of this. But, of course, the but also they're not really exposed to any of these, I mean, alternative perspectives. I find it shocking because every every dissent is simply pushed back as a source of treason.
You know? But but but key important leading officials who no one could accuse of having sympathies with Russia, who still argues that this was provoked, they will simply never appear in the media because you have this very strict narrative control There are that is irrespective of what is reality. The information is often assessed by to what extent they support the NATO narrative or the Russian narrative, and this is a simple binary. And and anything that doesn't support the NATO narrative is seen as, well, essentially being propaganda. So how do you overcome this?
Speaker 1: I think EU citizens have to learn that the mainstream media are part of the propaganda system, and they have to check out for news sources. They have different possibilities. They can use the new media, like your channel, or my channel, or in Germany, or in The United States, Consortium News, or in Canada, the Postal magazine, or something else. And then they can evaluate the situation in a better way. They can trust their eyes and their ears.
They have to keep in personal touch to each other and to change exchange their experiences. That helps. We are not alone. We are not alone. But I think the majority of German citizens is living actually like zombies in, well, in a in a kind of second reality.
And this feeling comes from the corona restrictions. I think most people in Germany are broken. They are frustrated. They are hopeless. And the background are the corona restrictions, which made clear to everybody the arm of the state is very long and to have, well, only minor chances to stand up to these measures.
And many people believed in the corona restrictions, but it is very clear. It was politically initiated and not initiated by medicine. So it is they most people are part of this system of lies, and it's very hard to understand that I lost my life partly in believing in, yeah, let me say shit. And it's difficult to make that clear for myself because I'm I'm losing my face looking into the mirror. That's the problem.
And I think, well, the only hope is people have to to vote for other parties, not for the established party cartel anymore because this is a warmongering party cartel, and this is a party cartel who is destroying democracy. This is very clear. They have to vote for other parties, and they have to fight for their rights. This is the only way I see.
Speaker 0: I'm wondering to what extent, though, this actually matters who you vote for because in The UK now, they see this radical alternative possibly coming to power, which would be Nigel Farage. And they think, oh, this is radically different. But then when you turn on the telly and the time to talk about something Epstein files, which delegitimizes a lot of the British officials and elites appeared in these documents, you know, he says, well, you know, this is this might be just Russian propaganda, that they are behind the Epstein files, that he was an agent of the Russians. I mean, it's just that the the worst kind of Russiagating there is after doing this whole Russiagate of, you know, Trump being a spy agent of the Kremlin, then you had the Biden laptop being a Russian conspiracy. Now they're they're actually trying to Russiagate the Epstein files, and it's quite clever in one way because it doesn't make any sense.
You don't need any evidence behind it because anyone who contests it saying, well, how does that make sense? There's no evidence. Then they are smeared as a Russian asset, so people just go along, it seems. It's it's quite frustrating. But do do you see any alternatives, I mean, across Europe, at least, who would take a radically different stance in the defense of freedom of speech?
Speaker 1: Actually, not. So the Epstein files show that Epstein was not an agent, a spy of Russia. He was linked to the Mossad and to Israel. That's the one level. That's the first level.
And the second level is it is an introspection of our elites. They do everything. Well, it's completely moral hazard. They are doing everything. So and this is frustrating the citizens much more because they learned from the Epstein case that they can't do nothing against it.
But this is the wrong way of learning from the Epstein Files. So we have to learn from the Epstein Files that our elites are so decadent that we need new elites. We have to exchange our elites. And this is the only way. So the problem in Germany and possibly in The UK and France is, So this all is in favor of right populistic parties like the AFD.
And what we see right now in Germany is a transformation of the AFD into not a peace loving from a peace loving party to a transatlantic party. So in the end, if the AFD will come into power after the next Bundestag's elections in Germany, we will have a new instrument of Washington to influence the German government. So it's the same process that we saw in Italy with miss Malone Maloney. And they Washington tries to repeat this process, and this is part of the new American security strategy. They will bring these parties like AFD, and the right populists party into power as an instrument of American influence?
Speaker 0: Well, it doesn't give much room for optimism, I guess. But given that what is I guess well, from my perspective, a a key problem is that we've had this external fear for so long. The this there's essentially the search for in internal dissidents or or enemies within. This is something that, you know, Carl Schmitt was was was writing about. That is also when when one is human beings are faced with an external threat, there's more instinct for group loyalty and solidarity in which one essentially seeks to snuff out any dissent, anyone, you know, deviating from the group and the, you know, the authorities' official narratives.
It just seems that we went through all this decade of searching for internal enemies. That is, first, we had the the Russia gate where everyone you know, if you anyone who voted for Brexit or voted for Trump, and anyone could be a Russian agent, essentially. And then, of course, this was replaced by COVID, which we also look for in internal enemies to some extent. And then, of course, the Ukraine war, and we're also yeah. The public has to be policed that they have the right opinion.
It just seems that, yeah, the Europeans need a few years of break to essentially, you know, nor nor normalize and be allowed again to actually dissent from from the governments, because this is my main concern. It's very much been normalized. But given that the war is now seen as the justification for restriction, just as a last question, do you do you think any of this can be restored to normalcy after, the Ukraine war is over?
Speaker 1: Well, I'm not very optimistic because we are facing a new century of wars and a century of the destruction of democracies. And this is exactly a result of your analysis, Glenn, as well. We see the decline of the West, of the unipolar world, and the rise of the multipolar world. And in this process, the vessels will see more and more restrictions. The United States will keep the line shorter for the vessels, and they are cutting claims with Russia and China.
And that means, in the domestic sphere, a loss of democracy. And, well, the only hope in a global perspective is the rise of the multipolar world and new governments in Asia, in China, in Africa. So the European governments made so many mistakes from my point of view that the game is over. We will become the backyard of The United States and the backyard of Russia as well. And my personal dystopia is the Hollywood movie Mad Max.
Criminal bandits will cruise around Europe and terrorize the population. And these terrorists are the governments, which are governing, which are running the state against their own people. They are exploiting their own people in favor of themselves and in favor of The United States because this war in Ukraine means the transfer of money of the EU as a whole to The United States militarily military industrial complex. So the citizens of Europe will get poorer and poorer, And that's the situation. An increase of exploitation, an increase of the danger of a nuclear war, and, well, a decline of social welfare.
This is the new twenty first century.
Speaker 0: Well, thank you for not just taking time today, but also the work you do on, while trying to, restore some freedom of speech, in Europe and also, yeah, taking up the case against colonel Jacques Bou as this is just a horrible, horrible precedent being set. So thank you very much.
Speaker 1: Thank you for your work, Glenn, and it's always a pleasure.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Nicolai Petro: Europe at a Crossroads at Munich Security Conference https://youtu.be/BjW_x4S5kJs https://t.co/S00mSvdFez
Video Transcript AI Summary
Nikolay Petro and Gwen were discussing the Munich Security Conference and the broader shift in global order. The core theme is the destruction or breakdown of the post–Cold War order as the world moves toward multipolarity, with the United States and Europe following diverging paths.
- The transition to multipolarity is described as chaos and a vacuum of strategic thinking. From a European perspective, this is an unwanted transition into something unfamiliar, while the US debates a more pragmatic approach that may bypass traditional institutions to position itself favorably. The multipolar world would be more democratic, with more voices in actual discussion of each nation’s needs and contributions, in contrast to the hegemonic, rules-based order.
- The concept of multipolarity presumes multiple poles of interest. Nations at the top of the old order feel uncomfortable; they had a lead dog (the United States) and knew where they were going. Now the lead dog may be wandering, and the rest are lost. There’s a push to engage voices from the global South, or the global majority, though the term “global South” is viewed as imprecise.
- At Munich, Kaia Kallas and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (Mertz) urged order to avoid chaos. Kallas favored restoring or preserving the structures of the past, arguing the European Union should reconnect with the US and dominate collectively as the political West. Mertz used aggressive language, saying Germany’s army must be the most powerful in Europe and that the war in Ukraine will end only when Russia is exhausted economically and militarily; he argued Europe imposed unheard-of losses on Russia.
- In response, the US role in Munich was anticipated to feature Marco Rubio as the delegation head, signaling a security-focused agenda rather than deep internal European discourse. The discussion suggested the US may push a strategy of returning to or reshaping a hegemonic order, pressuring Europe to align with American priorities, and highlighting that the old order is over.
- There is a perception of internal German political dynamics: the rise of the anti-establishment party (IFD) could challenge the current SPD/CSU coalition, potentially altering the German stance on Russia and Europe’s strategy toward Moscow. The possibility exists that internal German shifts could counter aggressive German policy toward Russia.
- In Europe, there is a tension between those who want to sacrifice more national autonomy to please the US and those who advocate diversifying ties to avoid total dependence on Washington. In practice, EU policy has often mirrored US priorities, thereby delaying a truly autonomous European strategy.
- The EU’s foreign policy structure remains weak due to political diversity among member states, the need for cooperation with national governments, and resistance to surrendering power to Brussels. There is no cohesive grand strategy within the EU, making it hard to present a unified vision in a multipolar world. The EU’s reliance on crisis-driven centralization contrasts with those internal contradictions.
- Ukraine’s war exposed tensions in Europe’s cohesion. Initially, there was a rallying effect and unified front against Russia, aided by US support, aiming for a rapid Russian defeat. Now the EU’s rhetoric shifts toward seeking a ceasefire and preserving what remains of Ukraine, labeling victory in terms of saving Ukraine rather than expelling Russia. EU funding for Ukraine—about €90 billion over two years—may be insufficient, with Ukraine claiming higher needs.
- The discussion suggested that European leadership’s view of Russia and Putin is unstable: some European circles believe Russia could collapse economically, while others see Russia’s leadership as capable of countermeasures. Reports of France reestablishing high-level political contacts with Russia were noted as part of this flux.
- The conversation contrasted backward-looking US/EU visions with a forward-looking multipolar vision promoted by BRICS, especially Russia, which could be more promising due to its forward outlook. The EU, dominated by internal divisions, struggles to articulate an autonomous multipolar path, while the United States appears intent on reviving its dominant position and reshaping the international order, sometimes in ways that delay the shift to multipolarity.
- Overall, the speakers highlighted a shared but backward-looking orientation between the EU and the US, versus a forward-looking, multipolar alternative; they also underscored the strategic vacuum, internal European divisions, and the continuing tug-of-war between attempting to restore past structures and embracing a new global arrangement.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. Today, we are joined by Nikolay Petro, a professor at the University of Rhode Island, who also served as The US, state department special assistant for policy on the Soviet Union. So thank you for coming back on.
Speaker 1: Nice to be with you again, Gwen.
Speaker 0: So we see that this annual Munich Security Conference has started, and theme is the, well, destruction of the international order. And my interpretation, though, is more or less that, yeah, this is a reference to the disorganized and, well, let's say, destructive transition into a multipolar system. It didn't necessarily have to be this messy, but it also appears that The US and Europe are moving in very different directions. So the this yeah. The split in this transatlantic alliance, obviously, is a key theme.
But the Americans, obviously, seems to be, well, at times, maybe overly pragmatic and disregard some of the traditional institutions in order to position themselves more favorably. The Europeans, on the other hand, seem to be trapped in wishful thinking and a strategic vacuum. That being said, the obviously, at the security conference now, is multipolarity is the a key theme, and the breakdown, therefore, of the post Cold War order. How do you define, though, the, I guess, the current transition to multipolarity?
Speaker 1: Chaos. They're the the word you use, a vacuum of strategic thinking. Yeah. That's that's a good way to think of it. The absence of strategy in a transition to something we don't know, and from a European perspective that we don't necessarily want.
And that combination has led to the very vacuum you're talking about. You and I are not at the Munich conference this year, security conference, but I wonder if there will be any defenders of the proposition that a multipolar world could be a more secure world if approached correctly. In other words, if engaged in such a way that all the participants received and saw the benefit of participating as equals in a multipolar world. The main difference between the hegemonic order, also known as the rules based order, and the multipolar order, it seems to me, is that the latter is more democratic. It involves more voices in an actual discussion of the needs of the the nations themselves and how they can contribute as well as benefit from a new participatory multipolar arrangement.
The very concept of multipolarity presumes the existence of multiple poles of interest. So from the perspective of the nations that saw themselves at the top of the international pecking order, this is an uncomfortable transition. Even though they may not have been, as in the case of Europe, the at the very top, they were nevertheless behind the lead dog, so to speak. And as a result, they knew where they were going because the lead dog, The United States, was leading them in that direction. So now that the lead dog is going who knows where and may even be biting his his harness to free himself from from the rest of the pack, well, the rest of the pack is a bit lost, I guess, I would say.
But it would be good for them to at least be able to engage and perhaps listen to the voices that are coming out of what used to be called the global South, but I think that term doesn't do it justice. It's better to refer to it as the global majority.
Speaker 0: Yeah. And then well, if you listen to some of the speeches being made there, especially Kaia Kallas as well as the German chancellor Mertz, well, from Kallas, more or less the message was that we need order, otherwise, there will be chaos. But order can only more or less be achieved by the structures of the past. That means more or to restore the system we had so the Europeans must work and reconnect with The US, and collectively, we should be allowed to dominate, that is the political West should dominate the international system. This is a well, from my perspective, this seems like a key weakness, though, for for the Europeans, the the inability to, I guess, put have have any imagination for a post hegemonic world, a world where the political West aren't unified and they aren't in a dominant position.
In other words, reluctance to accept this new distribution of power as a reality and how for Europe to find a new position. Indeed, the Mertz also came out in a most aggressive language. You don't really wanna hear from a German chancellor. That is he said, yet again that the German army must be the most powerful one in Europe. He said the war in Ukraine will only end when Russia has been exhausted economically and militarily.
And he also argued that we, being the Germans and Europeans, imposed unheard of losses and costs on Russia. So this is, yeah, the new language of Germany where this essentially sounds like Germany has gone to war now with Russia, and the defeat of Russia is what should bring stability and order back. It's it it it doesn't seem to make any peace with new realities, not just the the international dis the new international distribution of power, but also where the war is actually going. How do you how do you see the on the coming months as this as The US will continue to chart its own path, the Ukraine war war will continue to, well well, Ukraine will continue to unravel. How how are Europeans gonna, I guess, respond to this new international system?
Or how can they just
Speaker 1: If Mats were a politician here in America, we know the playbook. It would be this is not Germany's war. This is Mats' war. And I think that that was the playbook certainly that Donald Trump played successfully against Joe Biden with respect to his adventures overseas. So I suspect something similar will have to happen.
I mean, there is not a lack of political voices in Germany and other countries calling for a new approach toward Russia. There is a resistance by the established elite which has too many sunken costs in the current policy that it cannot distance itself from the policies that have been conducted so far without without damaging their own
Speaker 0: political
Speaker 1: reputation and the political reputation of the pardon. It is possible I don't know how likely it is, but it is possible and because it is logical to assume that the more the the more aggressive the tone of the German government, the more it will be opposed by other interests in Germany. Other political forces will coalesce against it. The difficulty is entirely internally German at this point. The grand coalition between SPD and TEDU, so Social Democrats and Christian Democrats, with satellite parties around them has defined, has said for so long to the German people that there is no alternative to them, that the German people will simply have to wake up one day and say, there is actually an alternative.
In this case, today, right this very moment, is the IFD, and they are the biggest party. So they just have to overcome the psychological unwillingness to have essentially what is it? A real two party system. A two party system in which there would be the establishment and then the anti establishment and to vote for the anti establishment. You know, we can speculate endlessly about how close this is, in which countries the shift to anti establishment is closer than in others.
It is a reasonable bet to assume that if things continue along the present deteriorating trajectory in foreign policy, in economic policy for the EU, The voters will respond in this way, but we just don't know when.
Speaker 0: Well, I I was thinking I was wondering how you see the or what you expect from the Americans at Munich Security Conference. I guess last year conference was very much, colored by the appearance of, JD Vance. He, you know, shook the Europeans to their core by arguing that the their threat didn't derive from China or Russia, but from within this creeping authoritarianism, which was made or sorry, which was met with outrage by the Europeans. But, you know, it it's not as if the the authoritarianism in Europe has been stable. It's been, I think, escalating over the years.
I mean, if you go back twenty years when the Europeans tried to pass this EU constitution back in 2005, You know, by back then, only France, you know, France and Netherlands, they kept they did a referendum. It didn't go through, and kind of the EU mentality has always been, well, let's just steam ahead. So they repackaged the whole thing then as the Lisbon treaty, in which you don't need any referendums at all in 2007. Yet one country demanded a referendum, which was Ireland. And as you remember, they voted no, so they were forced to vote again until they voted yes.
But this was kinda seen as laying the foundation for some authoritarianism. But since then, of course, we saw the banking crisis two thousand thirteen in Cyprus, then in Greece, where where bank closures were posed by forcing denying liquidity. And, of course, now you jump forward another decade, it's very different as the political, I guess, support collapses among the leadership. France, I mean, the rest of the now the main opposition figure, Le Pen, Germany, they have already criminalized the alternative for Germany, which is the most popular party now in Germany, Considering actually banning it, Romanians voted the wrong way, and their election was annulled on this fraudulent claims of foreign involvement. The EU is pushing now for Orban's removal in Hungary.
The EU even sanctions its own citizens, denying money and travel, essentially making their own citizens hostages. And these efforts to continue to centralize power, you know, taking advantage of this crisis, we know how. It's a it's a very authoritarian process, and you get the feeling this is not the final station, that we're gonna continue down this path. So while they were very dismissive of Vance, the Europeans, I don't think that the the view of JD Vance and all The US has changed much. Indeed, in just in December, with the new US security strategy suggesting that perhaps The US should begin to cultivate opposition in Europe to get rid of some of these authoritarians.
Do you expect something similar to be played out this year as well?
Speaker 1: It'll be interesting to see what who who the head of the delegation is. I I don't know. Do you? Of the the senior person at Munich will be?
Speaker 0: No. I didn't see the American side. No.
Speaker 1: So it'll be interesting to see if they send another symbolic figure, like the vice president or a much more junior figure. Yeah. That'll say something. And then it is likely if it's a junior figure, it'll not be so much a political statement as a new sort of vision of some kind. It'll be a restatement of the principles of the new national security strategy, which we already know about.
What I don't expect to see is and and this is this is curious in a way or something worth thinking about. The EU leadership is rejecting multipolarity, rejecting the principle in favor the principle of looking toward a diverse and multipolar future in favor of looking backward to a hegemonic past in which they knew their role. The United States, however, is not looking forward either. It is not looking forward to playing a new role in a multipolar world. It is also looking backward to reestablishing hegemony with an emphasis not on obligation to its subordinates, to its the states that are tied to it in some sort of form of dependence, but rather going its own way, asserting its primacy and demanding obedience by those states with which it is it is tied economically and politically in treaty organizations.
So that's the real source of the friction, but it doesn't help the world order, doesn't help the world move toward multipolarity. And there could easily be times when The United States and Europe reach an accommodation to further delay and undermine the transition to a multipolar world. I see that as more likely than a willingness of this or any future American administration to truly think about the benefits that The United States might gain from a multicolor world.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, I I was gonna say that Marco Rubio is going though. So I'm guessing the delegation is led by Marco Rubio that Right. Well, there wouldn't be any well, I guess, I'm ex yeah. But
Speaker 1: Well, it could have been the NATO ambassador US ambassador to NATO. But, no, Morubio is a more senior figure, a more predictable figure, I think one who will speak probably less to the internal disagreements, the philosophical disagreements that exist between the EU and The United States and probably more on the secure from about security issues as The United States sees them and therefore, from Rubio's perspective, how the Europeans need to deal with them helping The United States to solve them for the Europeans.
Speaker 0: Yeah. That's it. I think the well, it seems like The United States essentially making wants wants to make the point to the Europeans that the old order they want to bring back, that it's over, that it's a new era. But but, of course, I think Marco Rubio will deliver this in a more, let's say, diplomatic manner than perhaps j JD Vance. But but I don't think that's enough for the Europeans, though, because you heard already from chancellor Mertz that, you know, we have to repair the transatlantic ties, you know, get the gang back together, and, well, essentially go back to the way things were.
But I think
Speaker 1: No. The Trump strategy, if they haven't figured out if Europeans haven't figured this out yet, I think probably other nations have, but the Trump strategy is to place especially dependent allies, and that's a very key point, allies that that the Americans feel are totally dependent on The United States before an inevitable choice. The inevitable choice being the one that The United States will graciously allow them to have. But first, they will point out all the reasons why the European leadership needs to abandon any other course than the one set out for them by The United States. And what's interesting when you look at examples like Greenland and the other complaints that America has made about Europe in terms of defense spending and other things.
The Europeans go along with this because of their fear. In other words, they as I said, to continue the analogy of the the dog sled, they're only interested in following the leader's butt. The rest of the world is too frightening for them to go out on their own or to Well, now we see perhaps Mertz, sometimes Macron, but mostly Mertz, you know, trying to argue that he's the new lead dog. Well, I frankly don't think enough time has passed since World War two for the majority of your Europeans to feel entirely comfortable with that choice?
Speaker 0: Well, I think the Europeans are too divided in too many ways, though. First of all, in terms of how they should deal with The United States because some said suggest that the the Europeans should just sacrifice more national interest and bow to The US hoping that they will be rewarded. And the other group of Europeans think it's necessary to diversify ties so they won't be captured by The US. In other words, you have other partners, then The US won't have that much leverage over the Europeans. But this
Speaker 1: That's a long term strategy. Yeah. In the short term, it's their actual policy is very similar to the first group, which only plays into America's hands, I think.
Speaker 0: Yeah. But it's also the expectations they have because some assume that as The United States packs up and, you know, reprioritizes its where to devote its resources now, so the Western Hemisphere and Asia, that this some believe that this will force the Europeans to integrate more than ever before, that now we'll finally move out of uncle Sam's basements and stand on their own feet. The other group thinks that, well, The US has always been the pacifier. So if The US leaves, then there's there's no way the Europeans will get along that much. I mean, you just said the Germans think that they're gonna be the top dog now in Europe with they're gonna build the largest conventional army, which I don't think any European countries look forward to this prospect.
Meanwhile, the French thinks that they should probably have a key lead, while the the the British obviously think that they are the junior partner of The US, something to connect, you know, the The US and the Europeans. So they all have their different views in terms of who should take leadership. And, again, this is what the American pacifier prevented or removed.
Speaker 1: So But the the question the the most the key point, I think, that you raised is the second group believes that so the first group is given a leader and an ideology they don't have to think about because it is provided to them by the the leader of The United States. The second group argues for an alternative position of the EU in world affairs, but what is it? What what is the EU vision of its role in the world? If it is essentially a liberal order like the one that The United that that they believe The United States used to be the leader of, then its only real competitor again is The United States. So they're not helping themselves, and I don't think there's enough of a commitment to I mean, I may be wrong, but I don't think there's much of an institutional commitment of the EU to having an in a real global presence and to fostering some sort of autonomous or independent EU agenda, the position that the current leadership of the EU has always been comfortable in is providing a little bit of extra funds, a little bit of extra support to whatever The United States vision and agenda was around the world, but not to take its own initiative because that would involve debating what the substance of an EU worldview might be.
It would be interesting to speculate what such a worldview might be because at its heart, given the diversity within the EU, which is not matched by anything in The United States, multipolarity should ring a bell in the hearts and minds of many European countries and achieve and and be seen as recognizable a alternative to hegemony. But at least I think for the current political leadership of the EU, they don't have the vision and therefore to establish some sort of individual identity distinct from The United States. And therefore, they they they can't compete. Again, it's not it's not they don't have the resources. They cannot compete because they have no intellectual vision of their role in the future.
And that's a much deeper problem for the EU that won't be resolved, well, until there's a sweeping change in the current political in the leadership of both national and EU, institutions.
Speaker 0: Yeah. No. I think that's a great point. And that was one of the benefits, for the Europeans to be led by Washington. That is they they could outsource this strategic thinking instead of coming up with competing ideas and resolving it.
And whatever Washington decided, it was sold in the language of, liberal democratic values, which would then unify and create consensus. The the problem now, of course, is the, yeah, the the there's no there's no vision anymore. So, they just and and they're just stuck with this empty rhetoric where everything they do is about values, and they keep reassure reassuring themselves that they are the champions of this liberal democratic ideals. But it does beg the question, though, do do you think the European Union could realistically position itself as an autonomous poll, or is this yeah. It it it's not how power politics work.
I mean, too many divisions.
Speaker 1: The the the problem is that there, as you say, there is no consensus within the EU on the role that the EU should play in foreign policy. The EU foreign policy structure is still still in its process really of of of coming into its own, and it and it competes sometimes directly with the foreign policy leadership of the national states. So in a way that is much more dramatic than, for example, in the financial sector where the banking system is structured under the European Central Bank, and there are budgetary limits, things like that. Now there are ways of getting around this, and there are always exceptions, but nevertheless the structure is in place. The EU in terms of its foreign policy still relies, has to rely, on the cooperation of national governments, and that makes it tremendously ineffective ultimately at coming up with a grand strategy because there is too much political diversity within the EU.
I'm sure that visionaries of a of a grand EU, an imperial EU, would want to see that go away and to insist, for example, that there be a united and therefore more forceful policy that could tap into the resources of individual states. But that will never be in the interests of individual states to concede that sort of that sort of power to central organizations like the EU. And the and the EU so the fight is on two levels, and it's very difficult to see how the EU can can overcome it. One level is the institutional level at which the EU bureaucracy does not have the strength to impose its will in areas like foreign policy or even defense policy. And on the other level, there is the simple matter of political diversity within you and nation states.
So nation states faced with the prospect of the EU becoming more intrusive and taking over more functions will fight more against it as well delaying the prospects, perhaps weakening it, perhaps leading, as some often speculate, to an unraveling of the of the EU. It's not it's it's not clear what the future will hold. But again, if I'm right in speculating that anti establishment the time will come when anti establish forces that are today considered antiestablishment will be in the majority, then that will also be accompanied by a weakening of EU institutions and the strengthening of national policies.
Speaker 0: I think it's a problem with the EU. There's too many of these internal contradictions because on one end, one gets the impression that the EU prefers weak national leaders because this makes it easier to rule from Brussels. But these weak leaders, they fail then to advance, you know, basic national interests. So you hollow out not just the, yeah, the political power in the nation states, but also their economic prowess. So it it hit and then it goes from it only gets weaker and weaker, and this the stability isn't really there.
And to a large extent, the EU is also based many of the EU projects is based on the idea that, you know, you don't let a good crisis go to waste. This is when you can centralize power. Indeed, this was part of the criticism of the euro because the euro was kind of conceptualized as a half built house. That is, you know, if you impose a monetary union, you can't really make it work without a fiscal union, and you can't have a fiscal union without a political union. But they never had consent for political union, so they just put the current common currency there.
Obviously, fiscal problems will come, then you will force through a fiscal union. And in order to have this, you have to force through a political union. So, essentially, predictably cause crisis, and in this crisis, there's an opportunity to centralize power. But but the problem is that
Speaker 1: compliance EU policy in Ukraine.
Speaker 0: Yeah. But there's a problem. Once there's a crisis, shows that the EU is a problem, in weakening the continent, this is used as a reason for giving them more power. So they keep saying we need more Europe when Europe is failing. It's a very strange and contradictory approach.
But, well, I'm I'm glad you brought up Ukraine because that was kind of my next question was, do you see Ukraine having strengthened or weakened than the internal cohesion of Europe? Because on one hand, Russia's the boogeyman is now seems to be the main unifier why why we can why 27 member states can have the same foreign policy. On the other hand, it has also increased dependencies. And, of course, this whole concept of a geopolitical EU is well, it's seemingly a disaster. So it's very hard I don't know how you assess this.
Is it going both ways?
Speaker 1: I think it pulls in different phases of the conflict. So at the very outset of the conflict, there was predictable rallying effect within Ukraine, and there was a largely predictable response of the EU to support Ukraine cautiously, but to look over their shoulder at The United States to see what they would do. And when the Biden administration said, yes. We're going in, and you can go in too, basically permitting the EU to to support The United States effort. And then then we had a combined and unified front against Russia.
But it but that unified front expected a rapid defeat of Russia. So now, without going into the technical details of who's winning at this point, the rhetoric has changed. At the very least, we could all see that the rhetoric has changed. And that specifically going back to the EU, the EU no longer talks about victory in real terms of Ukraine. It is talking about a ceasefire that preserves Ukraine's what what is left of Ukraine and now defining that as victory.
The victory is no longer pushing Russia out. The victory has now been defined as saving what can be saved in Ukraine. And this is a huge defeat for the EU if if one looks back even four years over what the original demand and policy was. And of course, a large part of that comes from the perceived withdrawal of The United States from the conflict. Although as many analysts point out, it has on the one hand rhetorically withdrawn, but on the other hand continues to provide essential intelligence and technical support when needed to Ukraine, whether that's to actually achieve a peace settlement or to drag it out is is at this point not entirely clear.
So the the strategy of the EU is again, to return to the first thing we talked about, a lack of strategy because the strategy that they had at the outset of the conflict has failed, but they have no alternative. And to this day there is no EU peace plan and apparently no group that in the within the entire EU structure that is tasked with the objective of devising a peace plan. Instead, all of this is given over to to Ukraine and to ostensibly follow what Ukraine says. But, of course, that's only a viable strategy so long as the all that the EU needs to provide is funding, and funding, by the way, that comes in drips and spurts. It's not a reliable source of funding that the EU provides to Ukraine.
And over the next two years, the amount that has been allocated to date, namely the €90,000,000,000 funding for two years, is about a quarter shy of the actual amount that Ukraine believes it needs to carry on essential state functions and continue the war at a minimum level. That's all. So the EU strategy is to basically wait. Wait for what? Well, we see maybe part of the answer in the new media campaign that we've seen over the last two months or so flooding major Western newspapers and media outlets.
The expectation, again, that the Russian economy will soon collapse. We just see article after article, which when you read them, they read as if they were from the same script. They're from the same small group of think tanks, and they are based on projections off of past trends, trends that are a month or two months in the making at the end of the year that we know are seasonal trends. So any serious analyst can look at these and say, Well, there's always a downturn in the fourth quarter, and then there's a recovery in the spring, and there are these cycles to economic life that every economist knows. But the fact that we are portraying these cyclical downturns as an inevitable as leading to inevitable ruin without ever talking about the measures that the Russian government has in the past successfully taken and is already beginning to take now to counter these first.
And secondly, without ever actually discussing in a comparative fashion how the same problems are affecting the Ukrainian economy, their own problems, leads to the distorted impression that seems to be the one that the EU wants to promote. Namely that if somehow the Ukraine with the EU's assistance can continue this devastating war for at least another year or so, well two years given the the budget outlay so far by the EU, then certainly this time unlike previous times, the Russian economy will indeed collapse and then I'm not sure what exactly is supposed to happen, but in some way shape or fashion Russia will withdraw or want to make major concessions, and that can be sold as a greater defeat of Russia than the current the current terms that are being discussed. And therefore, again, Ukraine is sorry. The EU is saying to Ukraine, keep fighting, keep dying. We'll pay most of the bills.
Speaker 0: So okay. We come full circle then. We're back to the Europeans' wishful thinking and strategic vacuum. That is keep fight a little bit longer and hope that, somehow Russia will just fall apart without Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, the main thing
Speaker 0: clear how economic crisis what what actually a victory would look like. Yeah. Think if we're honest that the Russians sees this as an existential threat, we would have to reconsider some of these assumptions. But yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The the main weakness of the current spate of articles about the imminent collapse of the Russian economy is not that we've seen this argument before, although that should be a cautionary signal to anyone, but that there is no actual new information here. And the information as it is provided is extremely one-sided. Every economy has its ups and downs. Economy is a is a is a complex organism that when one side of it becomes weak, other aspects, particularly in things like interest rates, lending patterns, things like that, foreign trade partners, they all step in to rebalance the structure.
So an actual economic collapse, whatever that may mean, and again it is telling that that is never defined, is is nearly impossible to envision in the modern world. Curiously, for all the rhetoric that EU leaders occasionally spout about Putin being unreasonable, unwilling congocean, etcetera, the assumption that they are making about the impact that the collapse of the of the Russian economy would have on its military strategy is based fundamentally on the reasonableness of Putin and the Russian leadership because they say, well, once costs of this amount have been imposed, a reasonable leader presumably like Putin will indeed decide to withdraw. So there is this two facedness about how European leaders actually view the Russian leadership. And again, there are persistent reports from both Russian sources as well as European sources now that France, and for example the French administration, if not Macron personally, but the French administration has in fact reached out and begun to reestablish high level political contacts with the Russian leadership. So that is also in the wind, although not being publicly discussed.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, I think that's an excellent point. Yeah. Betting on the reason of Putin, which they're warning that there is no reason. Yeah.
There was another contradiction coming out now as well. That is the German chancellor was making the point that Smurz was saying that, you know, two years ago, Orban went to Moscow. He didn't have a mandate, you know, because the prime minister of Hungary needs permission. And and to talk to to Putin and achieve nothing. So what's the point of talking to Russia?
This was more or less the argument. But, of course, he said at the same time, you have Macron now looking to set up diplomatic ties. So there's no I think this is another indicator of the strategic vacuum that they're just punching all in different directions.
Speaker 1: Right. And seeing what sticks.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, thank you very much for sharing your insights on this. It's, yeah. To summarize, The US is seeking to revive dominant position for itself in the international system by shuffling reshuffling the deck, and the Europeans are running around like headless chickens. So
Speaker 1: If I could summarize something I sort of a one phrase that I want to emphasize, it is that the EU and The United States do share a great deal in terms of their of their political vision, but it is essentially backward looking. And it's in the but they have different visions of what they are trying to get back to, and that's going to lead to conflict even though it is backward looking, which is not a good thing in either case. By contrast, the multipolar view promoted by the BRICS nations, including in particular Russia, is forward looking. It's looking to some alternative to what was in the past. And therefore, I think that makes it ultimately more promising because it is more hopeful.
Speaker 0: Yeah. But, again, there comes the contradiction. I don't think it's possible for the Europeans to consider a multipolar system within the format of bricks because they keep looking backwards. I mean, I I've suggested that perhaps the the Europeans should consider, you know, even joining BRICS as well as the Americans. But this was seen as interpret as let's join the Warsaw Pact, you know, because they see this this block versus this block.
So going back to the Cold War, I tried to make the point that the BRICS isn't a block. That is the you know, The UAE and Iran aren't in a block. India and China aren't in a block. It's it that that's not the point. But, again, they they keep looking backwards, so there's no
Speaker 1: They keep looking for someone to discipline them. And the BRICS world, the multipolar world, is less disciplined in many respects, but it is in some ways easier it will be diplomatically easier to reach accords because questions that are values issues, axiological issues, issues of what gives you the right to have the kind of government that you have within the BRICS context, within a multipolar context are off the table. And those are the main sources today of conflict in the world.
Speaker 0: Well, yet again, let me thank you for letting me pick your brain, and have a great weekend.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Thank you. You too. Good.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Seyed M. Marandi: Ready for War - Iran's Major Retaliation https://youtu.be/E6dyFfZCnFU https://t.co/OXFIzqVAvM
Video Transcript AI Summary
In a discussion with Glenn about rising US-Iran tensions and the prospect of war, Syed Mohamed Marandi, a professor at Tehran University and former adviser to Iran’s nuclear negotiation team, outlines several key points and scenarios.
- He asserts that Iranians are preparing for war, with the armed forces building new capabilities and underground bases, while ordinary Iranians remain calm and continue daily life. He notes large demonstrations on February 11, with up to 4,000,000 in Tehran and 26–34,000,000 nationwide, seen as a show of solidarity against what he calls Western “rioters or terrorists” and against aggressive posturing by Israel. He stresses that Iran government negotiations will be framed around Iranian sovereignty: Iran will not negotiate who its friends are, who its allies are, or give up its rights to a peaceful nuclear program or enrichment, but could consider a nuclear deal. He argues any new deal would not revert to JCPOA terms given Iran’s technological advances and sanctions. He says a deal is unlikely under current conditions, though not impossible, and that even with a deal, it wouldn’t necessarily endure long. Ultimately, Iran is portrayed as preparing for war to deter aggression and preserve sovereignty.
- The conversation discusses broader regional security, linking Israeli-Palestinian issues to potential peace. Marandi argues that Zionism has ethnosupremacism and that Western media often whitewashes Israeli actions in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon. He emphasizes that a genuine peace would require recognizing Palestinian humanity and restoring fair treatment, arguing that a one-state solution could be the only viable path given the West’s failure to secure a lasting two-state arrangement. He contends the West has allowed colonization of the West Bank and that only a one-state outcome will resolve the situation, while portraying growing international hostility toward the Netanyahu regime and Zionism, including among young Jews.
- On possible US strategies, Marandi rejects the notion of token strikes, arguing that even limited actions would invite broader conflict and potentially false-flag provocations that could be used to escalate toward war. He warns that Iran would respond with full force and could target US bases, naval assets, and regional interests, potentially shutting the Strait of Hormuz or sinking ships, with widespread economic ramifications. He predicts a regional war involving Iran’s allies in Iraq (where PMF played a key role against ISIS) and Yemen, and Hezbollah, suggesting that Arab Gulf regimes hosting US bases would likely collapse quickly in such a conflict. He stresses that Iran’s missile and drone capabilities are heavily focused on the Persian Gulf area and that war would be existential for Iran and its allies, but a dangerous, protracted challenge for the United States.
- The potential consequences of US oil and petrochemical disruption are discussed. Marandi notes that Iran could retaliate against Iranian tankers or, conversely, seize Western tankers in response to piracy. He emphasizes Iran’s comparatively lower dependence on oil exports due to sanctions and sanctions-driven diversification, arguing that attacking Iran would backfire economically for the US and its allies. He also highlights that such a war would be regional, not just Iran versus the US, given Iran’s relationships with Iraq, Yemen, and other actors, and that Gulf regimes would be under immediate pressure.
- Regarding current US leadership and narrative control, Marandi critiques the inconsistency of Western narratives around regime change, human rights, and democracy, pointing to the Epstein files as revealing a distrustful climate in Western politics. He argues Western media often uniformly pushes a narrative of Iranian repression while ignoring or whitewashing similar or worse actions by Western allies. He suggests that the lack of a cohesive, credible Western narrative signals a shift in geopolitical dynamics and could limit the ability to mobilize public support for aggressive actions against Iran.
- They also touch on US-Israeli diplomacy, noting Trump and Netanyahu’s posturing and the Epstein documents’ potential implications. Marandi contends time is not on the side of aggressive policy, given midterm political pressures in the US and growing public skepticism about war, which could undermine leadership like Trump and Netanyahu if conflict escalates. The discussion ends with acknowledgment of the complexity and volatility of the situation, and gratitude for the opportunity to discuss it.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. Today, we are joined by Syed Mohamed Marandi, a professor at Tehran University and a former adviser to Iran's nuclear negotiation team to discuss what, yeah, could be a pending war. So thank you for coming back on the program.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much for inviting me, Glenn. It's always an honor being on this show.
Speaker 0: Well, thank you. And, well, we see that The United States keeps building up more and more military capabilities and at the same time engaging in these talks with Iran. So, you know, one can only reach two possible conclusions. That is, one, either the US is building up military power to put pressure on Iran to accept a deal favorable to The United States. Alternatively, the US is preparing to attack Iran and merely using the talks as a cover.
I guess all of it kinda depends on how probable there is that there is an interest in in any talk. But how are you assessing this increasingly tense situation?
Speaker 1: The Iranians are preparing for war. There is no doubt about that. And the armed forces are preparing, from what we are hearing, they are swiftly building new capability. Excuse me. Building new capabilities and creating new underground bases for a potential war.
And I think ordinary Iranians are very calm about the situation. They do talk about it, but it really isn't in our hands. So the Iranians are going about ordinary Iranians are going about their lives as as you've seen when you came to Tehran many months ago, it's the same now. So it's business as usual. We saw on February 11 the anniversary of the the forty seventh anniversary of the revolution.
We had much bigger crowds than usual across the country in demonstrations. In Tehran, up to 4,000,000 people participated. Across the country, anywhere between 26 to 34,000,000 people are estimated to be have been there. There are many international journalists, some people that you know of, or at least know about. They they were there.
And I think that was a show of solidarity, a show of force by ordinary people to say that we're not intimidated, that we're not afraid, and that and contrary to what I would call the Epstein class media in the West, people do not support the rioters or the terrorists or the West their aggressive posturing with the Israeli regime. So the country is very united. The armed forces are preparing, but no one wants war. So the government, of course, is going to negotiate. It has been negotiating, and it has negotiated negotiated in the past.
But the framework that the Iranians have given for negotiations is respect for Iranian sovereignty. In other words, the Iranians have told the Americans we will not negotiate who our friends are, who our allies are. We're not going to negotiate our military capabilities because we know if we give up our capabilities, you will attack us. And the the Iranians will not give up their rights to have a peaceful nuclear program or enrichment. What they're willing to do is to have a nuclear deal.
They've already had one before, the JCPOA in 2015, where they give assurances that the nuclear program is peaceful. Now if there is a new deal, hypothetically, it's not very likely under these circumstances, I think. But if there's a new deal, it won't be like the JCPOA because the Iranians will not go back to 2015. They've made many technological advances over the decade, and they've been sanctioned for this decade. So there's absolutely no reason why Iran would relinquish what its scientists have achieved.
And, therefore, I think all of when you look at this and look at what Trump has been saying, it's very difficult to imagine that there will be a deal. It's not impossible, but it's very difficult to imagine, especially since Trump flip flops, pairs up deals, goes against what he said earlier, and and then flips again. So even dealing with the even if you have a deal with The United States, that doesn't mean it's going to last more than a few days. So, ultimately, that means that the Iranians will be preparing for war. It doesn't mean that if we don't have a deal, there will necessarily be a war, but I think the Iranians are playing it safe and saying we will prepare for war.
The best way to prevent it is to have a strong military, and the best way to preserve your country in case of some attack is to have a strong military.
Speaker 0: Well, the the the scope or conditions in any piece, this is also an interesting topic because if it comes from The United States, as you said, they they demand well, more or less, Iran shouldn't even have a civilian nuclear program, you know, for energy. Also, more or less, capitulation, as you said, has to give up its conventional weapons, that is ballistic missiles, and give up its partnerships. So often, you know, Iran Iran responds by saying, you know, if you wanna deal with Iran the nuclear issue, let's do this separately, not link all these other things into it. But we also saw that Iran's foreign minister, he gave a speech on February 7 in Doha, and and, you know, it could also then suggest that instead of narrowing it, one one could widen it to have a much more comprehensive peace agreement because, again, for The US and the Israelis, they complained that Iran is, you know, working against the Israeli interest. But, of course, what what more or less we can take away from the Iranian foreign minister is if, you know, if we begin to resolve some of the root causes, is the issue of a Palestinian state, then, you know, perhaps the tensions wouldn't have to be there to begin with.
This is how traditionally security mutual security is enhanced. You reduce mutual security threats instead of just one side forcing the other one to capitulate. Do you think there's any prospect there for a wider or larger peace agreement where essentially, well, Israel makes peace in in America as well with the Palestinian in terms of accepting a state and, you know, something that allows this the the the source of these tensions to be addressed?
Speaker 1: I think the real problem in our region is the fact that the ideology of Zionism has ethnosupremacism along with it. It comes as a part of the package. And therefore, respect for other human beings is is really nonexistent. And right now, there's a ceasefire between the Israeli regime and Lebanon, yet they bomb Lebanon every day. They kill kids.
And the Western media, which is controlled by the Zionists, the the Epstein class, they will justify it somehow. It's a ceasefire. No one is supposed to shoot. But they will somehow try to either whitewash their the regime, or they will look away, or they will try to create some sort of outlandish justification. The same is true in Gaza, even worse so, or the West Bank.
Every day there are murders, children being slaughtered, women being slaughtered, but these are all being ignored, and the and the regime is continues to do it without any shame. And, of course, Trump says that we have peace in in this region. So, obviously, the lives of Palestinian children are of zero worth to Western legacy media journalists, to Western elites, to to to this to the people working for the Epstein class and those who are in control. And so under those circumstances, don't think that a solution is anywhere nearby. I don't think that we are close to a solution.
Ultimately, the only way that we can have peace in our region is if the Palestinian people are treated as human beings, And that is not impossible because the world has changed. The the mood towards the Israeli regime, towards Zionism has evolved dramatically. Here in Moscow, I've been in conversation with many people. I've had more conversations on this particular trip with different Russians than in any of my previous trips, and I'm quite stunned to see how hostile they are to the Netanyahu regime, but to the whole project in general. And this is something that I've noticed in my other travels in in China and elsewhere, places where people in the past really didn't focus on Palestine.
It wasn't a priority for them. They had very little knowledge about it. But now there's a a clear dis disgust and hatred for for what what the Israeli regime is doing to the Palestinian people. And this reminds me of Apartheid South Africa. When I was young, I was an anti apartheid activist in Iran, and, it was before the Internet age, so our activism was very different from how activists work today.
But back then, no one that I knew of ever contemplated that the apartheid regime would collapse so swiftly. And I think the reason was because awareness across the world had grown, and the and it became, in general, much more difficult to sustain apartheid. So I think what is important is that people across the world in The United States and elsewhere, and I think the Epstein files will have something to do with it too, They're increasingly becoming aware of this group of people and their mentality, and that is going to weaken the foundations of the Israeli regime. And one of the important factors in all this is how young Jews have turned against the Israeli regime. We see how activists in The United States say that this we do not accept this Jewish activist.
And, of course, they've they've shown the world that Zionism is not Judaism, just like ISIS and Al Qaeda are not Islam, and neo Nazis are not Christians. They are just people who use these labels to justify their actions. But in general, I think that the tide has turned against Israeli regime. For Iran, the solution has always been a one state solution, and that Jews, Muslims, and Christians should be able to live alongside one another in peace. And I think the the Israeli regime has ironically pushed Palestine towards that scenario.
That's the that's the only solution left because when there were there was talk of the two state solution, the West allowed the Israelis to undermine it. They allowed them to colonize the West Bank. The Iranians were saying even back then that thirty, forty years ago, forty five since the revolution, they were saying that the Israelis will colonize the West Bank, and the West will allow them to do it by kicking the can down the road and talking about some hypothetical two state solution. And now after forty some years, we've seen that's exactly what's happened and what is ongoing. So now that the West Bank has been colonized by the most extremists of the extreme Zionists, I think the the only solution left is a one state solution.
So either the Israeli regime is going to have to expel and ethnically cleanse half over half of the population of Palestine because the Palestinians constitute the majority if you include the West Bank in Gaza, and the world is not going to accept that anymore. Or, ultimately, with the changing mood across the world, the the regime simply, at some point down the road, I don't know when, I'm not say I'm not speaking in weeks or months or even a couple of years or anything like that, But I think, down the road, it it will not be able to, to to continue to exist in this way and form.
Speaker 0: So the, yeah, the underlying sources, it doesn't seem like we're moving towards a political settlement then, which is why there's concerns now about The US intentions. There's there's been this report that Washington had contacted Irondo about the possibility of carrying out some token strikes that is, you know, we'll just launch a few missiles at you so we can say that we, you know, we held the regime accountable, this and that, and then, you know, you can fire some missiles back, and then we'll call it a day. I'm I'm not sure if well, you've seen these reports. I'm not sure if you know whether or not well, you can verify whether or not this is correct, if you heard anything on the Iranian side. But how how will Iran respond to this, though?
Because as you and I have spoken about before, it could be dangerous to let the deterrent slip even further just to make it a casual thing that every now and then, one can just drop bombs on the Iranian capital.
Speaker 1: Yes. That is something that the Americans have put to the Iranians that we will carry out some token strike, and you can carry out some token strike? And the Iranians said no. Iranians have responded to the Americans that even a token strike will be met with full force. And the the reason is twofold.
One is that, even a token strike is an act of war. But more importantly, I think, is the fact that the Iranians recognize that if The United States is allowed to carry out some limited strike, that only opens the door for future strikes. And so, four months down the road, some false flag operation will be carried out somewhere in Europe, somewhere in North America, somewhere in our region. Mossad will kill a few, I don't know, Israelis or something like that, and then they will blame Iran, and then there will be more threats against the country and and attacks. Or they will stage more riots or hire people to bring chaos to some city in Iran, and then again, Trump will come in to save the Iranian people by murdering Iranian people.
This is something that the Iranians are saying we we cannot tolerate. So it it has to end now. If you want The United States attacks, whether it's symbolic or whether it's a major assault, the Iranians are going to launch an all out assault, and it will be directed towards US bases, of course. It will be directed towards the US Navy, of course. But it will also be directed towards all US interests across the region.
And that can mean many things that are nonmilitary, and that means trillions of dollars of assets will be targeted. And, course, Iranians have already spoken about shutting the Strait Of Hormuz, which it's it's it's very easy to do. It's not just about the Strait itself that can be shut down. They can sink the ships that go through the Strait. They have thousands of anti ship missiles based in the Persian Gulf that can destroy everything that's in in the in in the Persian Gulf region.
They can destroy the ports, they can destroy the oil and gas facilities, they can destroy the pipelines, and they can do the same outside the Strait Of Hormuz in in the Indian Ocean. So if there is war, I believe that the oil and gas trade in West Asia, across West Asia, and the Caucasus will come to an end, and that will lead to a global economic crash. So and US assets in the region will, of course, be targeted. And those entities, Arab tiny Arab countries that host US bases, which are, as we speak, being used to plan against Iran, they'll they'll be complicit. And I don't think these Arab regimes will last more than a few hours or a few days or at most few weeks.
These tiny entities, some of them have passport holding populations of a few 100,000 to a million, and the the foreign workers outnumber the the citizens five, ten to one. And most of the foreign workers are adult males. So if there is chaos, then I think the regimes will collapse, and that will change the map of the region permanently. So from my understanding, it would be insanity for Trump to attack Iran. But, Trump is surrounded by, Israeli firsters.
Congress and the Senate are, controlled by Israeli firsters. The Epstein documents give us a very small view into the ugly reality of the ruling class. So even though it's insanity, but it's quite plausible that an attack will happen.
Speaker 0: Well, then I'm glad you went mentioned the oil trade because in well, in Washington now, they're a bit high on hubris after the successful kidnapping of the Venezuelan president. So they they they kinda wanna you you heard on many occasions from different people that they kinda wanna ride on this success, if you'll call it that, but also apply to Iran. So many some politicians also made a comment that, oh, Iran surely should watch this. This will happen to the Ayatollahs next. You know?
This is kind of the the the rhetoric coming. You know, it doesn't make much sense, but in terms of you know, no one's gonna kidnap the president of Iran, for example. So that doesn't really make any sense. But but this being said, this one of the instruments against Venezuela, which could be used against Iran, would be the piracy. And indeed, only two days ago, we saw the Wall Street Journal and others posting this article that United States is considering starting to seize Iranian tankers.
Well, essentially, it's taking its oil. So, yeah, the same policy of piracy applying it to Iran. But it I guess part of the success in Venezuela is that they're not doing anything much about it. They're just they're just standing down because, well, anything else would then result in a a larger American reaction. How can this be, I guess, applied to Iran?
Do you do you see how how do you see Iran reacting if the Americans begin to steal, their tankers on on the open sea?
Speaker 1: Well, first, I think it's it would be good to keep in mind that if The United States and Iran are in conflict, Venezuelans will have a lot of room for maneuver. And it's not clear if they will export oil under US supervision. Even though the amount of oil that it exports is limited, the Venezuelans would quite possibly stop exporting oil altogether to increase the pressure on The United States to force it to back down against the Venezuelan people. So because, you know, we have a good relationship. There is an excellent relationship between Paracas, Caracas, Tehran.
And, you know, I don't think the the story in Venezuela is over. We have to wait and see how things play out in the weeks and months ahead. But with regards to Iran, we've already had that game before where the Americans and their allies carried out piracy and the high seas and took Iranian tankers. And what the Iranians did was they began to take tankers that belonged to Western countries with oil that were destined to Western and non Western countries. So it is the Persian Gulf region, and therefore, there's no shortage of ships that are linked to The United States or its allies.
And I think it would be foolish for The United States to try to stop a couple of Iranian tankers because I think the Iranians could, in return, stop 10 tankers for each Iranian tap tanker, hypothetically, of course. I don't think that will work. I think it'll only make the oil market more nervous, and it will hurt the global economy and the American economy at a time when the economy is not doing well at all. So I I I don't see that as being a successful option that will do The United States any good. And, you know, someone asked me about the fact that Iran itself needs oil for export, which is true.
But because of decades of sanctions and maximum pressure, Iran's dependency on exports is less than other country far less than other countries in the region. So those countries that are in the American camp and host American bases are far more vulnerable than Iran. Iran can easily outlast all of them. So, again, it would be the Americans shooting themselves in the foot if they go down the road of war or go down the war of piracy or anything like that. And on and another issue that I'd like to just say before I forget is that this is this won't be a war between Iran and The United States either.
It will be a regional war. Iran's allies in Iraq are very powerful. We know that Iran trained the popular mobilization force to defeat ISIS in Iraq. They will get involved in the war, And they already showed footage a couple of weeks ago of one of their underground missile bases. So you have a country of like Iraq with over 45,000,000 people where powerful elements in the country will stand with Iran.
And we saw that Iran's allies won the elections in Iraq just weeks ago. And Yemen is preparing itself for war too. So two very powerful and influential countries will be fighting alongside Iran. Of course, there's Hezbollah and others as well. And then who are the American allies?
Bahrain with a population of what? Or Qatar, population of what? 400,000, 300,000? The Emirates, a population of 1,400,000. There's there's no way that the Americans can manage such a war.
And in addition to that, something that Americans don't talk about is that Iran's missile capabilities that we saw used against the Israeli regime to with such such success, those long long range missiles are a very small part of Iran's military capability. Most of Iran's military capabilities are directed not towards Palestine or the Mediterranean, but towards the Persian Gulf. Short range and medium range missiles and drones that can easily destroy anything in the Persian Gulf and on the other side of the Persian Gulf. Why has Iran created so many underground bases with these short and middle range missiles? Because The United States, after 09/11, invaded Iraq and Afghanistan in Iran, and Iran was called the axis of evil, and Bush and Obama kept saying all options are on the table.
So Iran for has been preparing itself for war with The United States. Israel has never been a a real threat to Iran. It can it can kill. It can but it cannot. It's too small and and and weak and dependent on the West to be a real threat.
The real threat is The United States. So Iran has been preparing for a war with The United States for a very long time, and therefore, the real firepower is focused on the Indian Ocean, the Strait Of Hormuz, and the Persian Gulf. And then if you add all that, Iran's regional allies, it's not it won't look pretty.
Speaker 0: But how where where would the war likely spread, though? Because I heard, well, for example, Saudi Arabia said that they would wanna stay out of this. That is they wouldn't want Americans to use their airspace, for example. While countries like Bahrain has warned that, you know, they yeah. They will not stay silent if if if the war is taking to them.
Perhaps not the most powerful country in the region, of course. But how do you see where might this war actually be fought then?
Speaker 1: I think the elites in these tiny Arab dictatorships in the Persian Gulf will probably be the first to flee. They have already taken many, many billions of dollars out of the country, and they have estates and palaces across Europe and North America. So they won't be around to see the war. I think that you're going to see a collapse in these regimes. It it I think, you know, and also Hamas put out a statement saying that a war against Iran is a war against the entire Islamic world.
I don't think that, you know, there's any way for me to envisage what the boundaries will be. But what I what I can say, Glenn, is that for Iran and the resistance and the axis of resistance, it will be a, fight for survival. It will be an existential war. For The United States, it will be a war of choice. And so, obviously, when it's an existential war, you're going to fight very differently than for that entity that just chose to carry out this war because Netanyahu and and the Zionists and and the the Zionist lobby, they wanted it.
It's a it's a very different thing. And I don't I think the circumstances for such a war today are very different than after nine eleven. Overwhelmingly, people in The United States are against war, they're tired, the economic situation is not good, and I think the Epstein files ironically have created a new level of distrust. And so if there is war, people are going to point fingers very swiftly at the Israeli regime, the Zionist lobby, at a time when they're, becoming increasingly unpopular, especially among the youth. So war against Iran, where American soldiers are dying and where the price of gasoline and energy goes through the roof at a time when the Epstein files are being one by one revealed to the public, at least those that haven't been redacted or hidden from the public view, I don't think that is a a a combination that, will allow Trump to go on for very long.
I think it would lead to a swift end to his presidency, and I don't think, and I and I can't, of course, predict the future, but I don't think that they can continue a war for very long under such circumstances. So Iran will pull no punches. They will hit as hard as possible to make it very painful and for the elites in Washington to be forced to back off as swiftly as possible. And as the world economy collapses, everyone will blame Trump and the Israeli regime and Zionism. It it won't look good for them anywhere.
Speaker 0: Well, if we wanna get, I guess, insights into what direction The United States is taking, it's, I guess, good indicator would be to look at the risk meeting between Netanyahu and Trump. I I was wanted to know what what your takeaway is here in terms of, how that how that meeting went. I I've seen some some belligerent rhetoric come out afterwards, but, again, this is hard to read the language of Trump because, well, it's often deceptive by intention, and it tends to swing a bit different direction, you know, on the same day. So how do you see this meeting as having gone? I assume that a key purpose would be for Netanyahu to make sure that, yeah, The US was still on the path towards increasing pressure if not attacking Iran?
Speaker 1: Well, at least on the surface, it appears that Trump doesn't want or for now, it could be for one of two reasons. One is that he's he knows what what this would mean, and it would mean the end of his presidency. Or and but still, either he doesn't want it or he wants to bring in more assets into the region, a second aircraft carrier into the region, so that maybe that will tilt the balance, which it won't with there's no doubt it won't. There the vulnerability of The US and its allies in the Persian Gulf region is just too great. Anyone who's been to the Persian Gulf would know that there's no way that any of these assets can be protected.
But in any case, it could be that he wants to bring in more assets. But either way, it's exactly as you said. Trump changes his position very easily. He flip flops. We don't know what they have on him in the Epstein files, what files the Israelis have that the that the Americans don't have.
We don't know anything, really. And so the assumption in Tehran is that we have to be prepared for war. If you look at the way in which Netanyahu spoke upon leaving, it seems that he was not happy. If you look at Trump's Truth Social statement, it seems as as if that he was, for the time being, insistent that there would not be military strikes. But then again, we were negotiating with The United States before the twelve day war.
On day one, Whitcove said that The US will recognize enrichment for Iran. The Iranians saw that as a positive step. Then on from session, the second meeting, he moved the goalposts and kept moving the goalposts. And then between, the fifth round and the sixth round, The United States and the Israeli regime carried out they conspired to secretly carry out an attack on Iran. So for Iran, negotiations or statements from Washington really mean nothing.
They are just going to prepare for war and see how things play out. But, you know, on on another note, I think what is in is important to keep in mind is that time is not on the side of Trump either because we, every day, we move closer to midterm elections in The United States, and things are not looking well for Trump. And if Trump attacks Iran, even if he succeeds in killing a lot of people and their families and leaders and their children and their grandchildren and their neighbors, and we have a constitution. And the leadership will issue will not be a problem. Iran will continue to fight the war.
The armed forces have been told how to fight on their own, and the underground missile bases, are in their hundreds and which have been improved dramatically over the past eight, nine months, thanks to the experience that they've gained during the war, they will continue to fire away. And the anti ship missiles, the submarines, the the speedboats, the 100 thousands of I don't know how many speedboats they have, but, they will all carry out asymmetrical warfare. So Trump will not have a short war. It will not be a one day, two day, three day affair. Iran will destroy and destroy and destroy until the global economy crashes and until The United States backs off.
Trump can declare some sort of token victory, but, you know, at the every day that we move forward, we're moving in closer towards the midterm elections, and a war like that would be catastrophic for not just Trump, but it would be catastrophic for all those who are bound to Trump.
Speaker 0: Well, I'm glad you mentioned this moving the the the the goalpost. Actually, this is always been one of the reasons of my pessimism is that what The US now demands in a peace deal that is for Iran to essentially disarm itself by with missiles, drones, and also give up part allies in the regions is that, yeah, this will be a stepping stone toward a war because, you know, wars if you know, there's a security dilemma. If a country disarms itself, that doesn't necessarily lead to peace on the country. It allows it to be steamrolled. And so it doesn't really resolve some of the underlying problems.
But but on this issue of moving the goalpost, what is strange to me though is the narrative. Usually, the narratives are a bit more cohesive. There's more yeah. It is clear what is being said. Now it seems to go in every direction.
I saw that, you know, Trump said the Iranians should cease the institutions, especially topple the government. They want regime change. But then we see JD Vans saying, hey. We don't really need the regime change if the Iranians want to do it, it's up to them. We just wanna make sure they don't have nuclear weapons.
So, you know, others are pointing them to human rights, democracy, others, again, only on a nuclear program and missiles. It goes a bit in all directions here, and even the efforts to topple the government. On one hand, it's this insistence that everything is was organic, and anyone who disagrees with this is Ayatollah apologist. On the other hand, Besant gives interviews saying that, well, we this is economic statecraft. We put a lot of work into trying to break the Iranian economy and currency to bring people out to the streets.
So it's very hard to see no. It's it's not impressive, the the narrative control, because usually the Americans are quite good at this. The the narrative control is excellent. You know, the media, the government, they all march intact. They all repeat the same talking points.
But how how do you make sense of this, the the the the the lack of a common narrative?
Speaker 1: Well, you know, one thing that I've I believe is that the West in general, they've lost their soft power capabilities. And The United States and Israel and the Israeli regime and the British regime, they're all very similar in that respect. When you look at, for example, Russia, it doesn't matter if you're reading The Guardian or Fox News. The narrative on Russia is the same. One may be more subtle and more sophisticated, and the other may be more bombastic.
The same is true with Iran. Those who hate Trump, when it comes to bombing Iran, they they they they they they support it. They they they support the narrative. Iran is evil. During the the riots, we now know that this was a conspiracy from the from day one.
As you pointed out, the US secretary of treasury said, we brought down the currency to bring people to the streets. And then what happened two days after we had mild protests about the currency, with no arrests and no intimidation, and the government saying, you're right, and we have to sort this out, Then we had this influx of very violent rioters and and armed terrorists. And they, on the January, slaughtered police officers, murdered innocent people. Yet the collective media from The Guardian to Fox News, Breitbarton, The Independent, The Times of London, and the BBC, and The New York Times, all of them have the same narrative, that these are just peaceful protesters being gunned down even though Pompeo said in his tweet that Mossad's on the ground, even the former head of the CIA, even though Pompeo on channel thirteen of Israel said The US was supporting these rioters, even though channel fourteen of Israel, which is close to Netanyahu, was saying that foreign governments, meaning Israel and probably The United States, brought in the weapons to murder hundreds, as they said, of police officers and security agents. And even though we have the statement by Mossad in Persian saying that we're on the ground in Iran.
And, of course, more recently, we have heard that they were bringing in they brought in, 6,000 starlings. For what exactly? For who? So, obviously, they had people on the ground, and Trump was saying, take the buildings, take the cities, take so these starlings were basically to coordinate these, terrorist elements. So the footage is there.
The evidence is there. The admissions are there. The boasting is there. But Western media, pro Trump or anti Trump, all have the same fake narrative. These are peaceful protesters, and the government is gunning them down.
They went up to eighty thousand deaths. And then when the Iranian government gave all the names of everyone who was killed, whether police officers or innocent bystanders or the or the rioters, they they was 3,117, and then those fake numbers went down to 6,000. Well, I they couldn't accept the Iranian numbers, so they had to say 6,000 or some other number. But the point is that all this Western media, which was saying ten, twenty, thirty, fifty, they said there's no Internet, but they they were inflating the numbers. They were the ones who were responsible.
Their own governments were responsible by admission for what happened, yet they inflate the numbers to and blame Iran because they wanted to create an environment for war. This was what it was all about. What they wanted to do was to create chaos in Iran, say that the Iranian government is evil, is gunning down women and children. You know, the the obscene class media. They they really care about women and children, obviously.
And then they would that would give a justification for Trump to strike, and Trump was on the verge of striking Iran. According to what we're hearing, and I don't know if it's true, Netanyahu at that time, being fearful of the implications for the regime and the Iranian missiles raining down on on the regime, he asked for Trump not to to attack at that moment. Again, I don't know if it's true. This is the the what we are hearing from from Western sources. So, you know, while there is no clear narrative, but it is interesting how, I mean, there's it's it's difficult to understand what's going on behind the scenes in The United States.
But it is interesting how Western media is so, monolithic in in certain ways. And it reminds me of about Venezuela when, before the war, you saw these the so called left, and they're not left, but the mainstream left in the West and the and the so called liberals in the West. Some of them were calling for strikes and and and attack on Venezuela, and some were saying, no. No. The regime, as they liked it, that whenever someone says regime, you should be suspicious of that person.
The you know, when they talk about the Venezuelan regime or the Iranian regime or whatever. When as soon as a westerner talks about regimes, you you have to be suspicious about that person. But, anyway, not everyone, but, you know, because a lot of people are just used to using the the the term. But in the media, you have to be suspicious. So, you know, the Venezuelan regime is evil, Maduro is evil, but we shouldn't attack.
These people are just as guilty for war crimes as the Zionists and neocons who support war because they are sort of attempting to legitimize war, legitimize death and destruction, instead of being courageous and saying, no. Venezuela is none of your business. The president of Venezuela is none of your business. You are the criminals for murdering Venezuelans and fishermen and ordinary people in the country and carrying out aggression. Instead of saying that, they say, yes.
They are evil, but let's not do it. Right now, as you and I are speaking, Glenn, they The United States has imposed a siege on Cuba, starving 10,000,000 people. So these, these journalists in The Guardian or The Independent or The New York Times or or these, you know, none of them are screaming bloody murder and saying that, you know, this is outrageous, that they're starving women and children in Cuba. No. It's all they will they'll focus on Iran as much as possible.
They'll criticize the US government, but they'll never use the language that they use about Iran or Venezuela about their own regimes.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Now this is the, yeah, the political version of, you know, why do you why do you hit yourself bully. That is, you know, they spent these decades now choking the Venezuelan economy, and then, of course, they referred to the mismanagement of the government, why the country's poor, and why we will actually help now to bring all that sort of language. We're gonna help to the Venezuelans. Finally, now they can have prosperity, and of course, the same with Cuba.
You actually see this rhetoric coming up as well. They just implemented this oil embargo to suffocate the population there, which affects everything, even the hospitals. And then, of course, well, we we owe it to the Cubans to help them to, you know, have a more dignified, better lives. It's it's just very strange to watch. I maybe just the credibility disappears.
I mean, only today, there's an article in Politico which which sees a bit of a contradiction. That is the different western governments have been hyping the, you know, the the threats. You know, everyone's coming to take us, to get us, the Chinese, the Russians, the Iranians. Everything's a threat. World War three is coming.
And then in the in Politico, the report that the polling shows that even though everyone now is afraid of World War three and and, you know, threat is up through the roof, they still don't give their leaders the license to to cut out of their welfare to spend on the military. So it's usually when you inflate the well, engage in threat inflation, what you cash in on is more money for the military, but it doesn't appear that it's working as efficiently within these countries. We should poll the I can't remember who it Germany, France, UK. Yeah. The the usual.
No. So it is it is quite some something's wrong, because in the past, these kind of the narratives, they had very clear, predictable outcome in terms of what it would legitimize. But now, yeah, there there's no cons cohesion in the narrative, and they're not achieving what they're supposed to. So, yes, probably good news for Iran.
Speaker 1: In fact, there's so many Europeans, including in your country, are implicated in the Epstein files. And, again, we don't we know very little. Most of the files are not going to be released, and the files that have been released are largely redacted. The most sensitive parts are redacted. And yet despite that, you see that the foundations of Western politics are are are shaped are shaking in certain countries, The UK, without a doubt, in The United States.
So when the political elites could no longer have the trust of the population, Four years ago, maybe people would would have believed them, but now people are far more skeptical and cynical about their intentions. And that's why I think that as we move forward, it's going to be more difficult for the likes of Trump and Netanyahu and the Epstein class and for to to deceive the public because life is becoming increasingly difficult for people across the world and and the West in particular for for the sake of our own discussion. And people's eyes are more they're they're more impoverished. Their eyes are more open, and I don't think that's a a good indication for, the elites in the West, to be able to push their agenda much further.
Speaker 0: Yeah. No. I think a lot of the tricks of the past don't work anymore. I mean, back in 2016 when when there was such a disgruntlement with the American politicians that they voted in Trump, the the the first response was, well, let's blame the Russians. So Trump was an agent of of the Kremlin.
I mean, it was very ludicrous, and it didn't make any sense. But, you know, they they went with it. And, you know, most people believe that there was something there. And then, of course, in 2020, you had the Biden laptop scandal, and then they went with you know, how how can I explain this? And they went with the Russia thing as well.
It never made any sense.
Speaker 1: And remember then
Speaker 0: You you probably went.
Speaker 1: Why they went yeah. Exactly. But one reason why they they began to blame Russia was actually because of WikiLeaks and the fact that WikiLeaks had discovered a lot of corruption in the political system. And instead of dealing with the evidence that WikiLeaks had discovered and Julian Assange exposed to the world, they tried to distract public attention away from that and blame Russia for for the leaks, instead of dealing with the leaks and the reality of the leaks. And it's apparently the young man who took that evidence, he was murdered in Washington, and so they didn't want that scandal to be blamed on on The United States or on the intelligence agencies or on Zionists or on the Epstein class, so they went and tried to blame Russia.
Now and back then, it worked to a large degree. But now, after this whole with this Epstein affair, again, they're trying to blame Russia, but it's not working anymore. So in 2016, blaming Russia had far more effect. Not that I'm not saying everyone believed it, but many did even though it was fake back then. But now they're trying again to say that Epstein was a Russian spy, but no one's buying it.
That's why I think that things have changed dramatically.
Speaker 0: No. I think that's, yeah, this is an interesting breaking point. I saw the same now after all these millions of documents coming out, all of them pointing very clear direction where where this influence operation is coming from. And in instead of, you know, dealing with it, like, did we allow things to get so bad? You know, how do we allow this kind of influence operation driven by intelligence agencies using all this money and, yeah, pedophiles to, yeah, to to run wild.
It's well, let let's just Russiagate it. And, you know, it's it's it's the Russians without the evidence and the you know, on the contrary, there's so much evidence which suggests it makes no sense. But but why so it's not just that desperate, but because it's obviously false. The last sliver of credibility is thrown away at this. So it's just and then why?
To protect some pedophile influence network? I mean, it's just yeah. No. The the amount of self harm going on now is beyond belief, and, you hear from them from governments, well, you know, who who are criticizing this. They're they're trying to reduce trust in government as if they're not doing this on their own.
So, no, something might break, I think, if they continue down this path. But, anyways, something wrong with the narrative control. So thank you very much for taking that time. I know you have a busy day ahead of you.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much, Glenn. It's as I said, it's always an honor being on the show, and thank you very much for giving me this opportunity to
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Richard Wolff: Overextended America vs. Subordinated Europe https://youtu.be/aAHMYBfBMvI https://t.co/8dIGJo3YgC
Video Transcript AI Summary
Richard Wolff and Glenn discuss Trump’s political project, the trajectory of US capitalism, and how Europe is adjusting to a perceived decline of Western hegemon.
- Trump’s politics are, in Wolff’s view, more traditional Republican strategy than a wholesale break with the past. The core priority remains to “make money for the top one to 5%” of people—corporate executives and the employer class that the US census identifies as about 3% of the population. The first-term flagship was the 2017 tax cuts for corporations and wealthier individuals; in the second term, the “big beautiful tax bill” of April likewise serves the core financial base before other issues like immigration or tariffs.
- Trump’s more radical or theatrical moves—anti-immigrant campaigns, ICE enforcement, heightened rhetoric toward immigrants, and provocative international actions—are political theater intended to mobilize the traditional Republican coalition and reassure the business constituency. This theater targets the mass voting blocs, while the core funders provide the money to sustain the spectacle.
- The domestic political dynamic: while a sizable segment of his base remains supportive, there is growing election-time anxiety within the business coalition and among some voters who are unsettled by his handling of events, including the Epstein scandal. Still, his base numbers hover around 30–35%, giving him a platform to push ahead, though the broader economic critique remains largely taboo in US politics across parties.
- The fundamental economic problem: US decline as a structural issue is not debated openly by Trump’s circle or rival parties; the decline persists as China continues to outpace the US in growth. Even with tariffs, China redirected exports to other markets, maintaining a large overall export footprint and signaling the limits of unilateral US pressure.
- The “tribute economy” concept: Trump’s international approach can be read as trying to convert other countries into tributaries—using tariffs, coercive measures, and diplomacy to extract relative gains from others while protecting US interests. This aligns with a broader narrative Wolff attributes to a waning hegemon resorting to coercive leverage rather than genuine economic strategy.
- Andrew Jackson frame vs. reality: Trump’s use of a Jacksonian nationalist rhetoric is a superficial political device, not a deep historical redefinition. The honest historical view is that Trump adopts a veneer of Jacksonianism to justify a broader, conventional Republican agenda oriented toward the business class, while the world has changed in ways that the Jacksonian frame cannot fully accommodate.
- The European reaction: Europe faces a difficult, shrinking trajectory. Wolff argues Europeans are increasingly likely to become an adjunct to the United States, with growth constrained by dependence on outside high-tech powerhouses (the US and China), shrinking industry from auto to other sectors, and rising social strain as welfare states come under pressure.
- European policy implications: leaders may resort to increased militarization and a stronger anti-Russia stance to justify repression and social control at home, even as Russia’s actual military threat is overstated as a rationale. Wolff foresees growing social fragmentation, a potential class split between ruling elites and the working/middle classes, and the risk that external threats become a justification for expanding state power and military spending.
- A longer arc: Wolff suggests that the current European and American trajectories reflect a broader decline of liberal hegemonies post-World War II. The solution would not be to return to a full Cold War-style confrontation but to acknowledge new multipolar realities, diversify alliances, and address domestic social needs rather than pursuing an ever-expanding militarized security paradigm.
- The Minneapolis example and domestic politics: events like the ICE deployment in Minneapolis reveal a troubling trend toward heavy-handed, performative state power that could backfire politically for Trump, especially as more Republicans question Epstein-related narratives and other scandal-driven headlines intensify.
- In Europe, the declining empire dynamic suggests a potential return to earlier anti-establishment currents, but leaders face the dilemma of maintaining welfare states while contending with reduced imperial leverage. The conversation anticipates rising social tensions unless new economic strategies and political alignments emerge that recognize changing power structures.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back to the program. Today, we are joined again by professor Richard Wolff to discuss Trump's politics, and how also the Europeans are adjusting. So thank you as always for coming back on.
Speaker 1: Glad to be here, Glenn.
Speaker 0: So you recently published an an article about what you define as, yeah, Trump's politics and the decline of US capitalism. Now after we see now a full year of his second term, what do you think the how well, how would you, I guess, conceptualize or explain what you think Trump is trying to achieve here?
Speaker 1: Well, I think I am perhaps mellowing, I don't know if that's the right word, a little bit. I see better than I think I saw before where he's coming from, what it is he's trying to do. And I I suspect, if I can if you allow me a moment of self introspection, that his growing isolation, his growing difficulties, the growing opposition to him here in The United States, which is happening faster than I thought it would, even though for most of last year, I thought it was taking longer than I thought it would. So I think all of that is is shaping me as follows. More than I understood before, what he is doing is really very traditional Republican Party politics in The United States.
In other words, his difference from the conventional Republicans is very marginal, is very particular, is focused on a very specific aspect. It's not a wholesale rejection. It's not a wholesale departure. None of that. So what do I mean?
The first priority of the Republican Party has always been and is with mister Trump to make money for the top one to 5% of our people. The corporate executives, the employer class, which The US census says is 3% of our people who which includes self employed people, by the way. That's what this party is based on. That's who staffs all the upper echelons of the party, and that's what its priority has been to serve them. Though to give you an illustration, the first piece of legislation that was the real focus of mister Trump during his first term as a president was one of the largest tax cuts in American history, the one that was passed in December 2017.
Enormous cuts for corporations, enormous cuts for wealthier individuals. When you go to his second term, it's exactly the same. The first priority was what he came to call his big beautiful that his words, big beautiful tax bill of last April, more or less. So he that's his first thing. Before he goes into his persecution of immigrants, before he goes into his tariff stuff, in a major way, he takes care of his core constituency.
The people who, if they do abandon him, and they are now thinking about it in a way that they were not before, it's leaking out, if they do abandon him, then he will be in very serious trouble. Up until this point, they have not abandoned him at all. He a third of them, a quarter of them, are still very happy and supportive, and the other ones are quiet, either out of agreement with him or out of a desire not to be, attacked publicly by him or simply having no reason to be upset with him. But he has them. And as long as he has them, given the concentration of wealth in The United States, you know, five companies control the media, all the rest of it.
He's quite secure, and he can now be, here we go, daring. Well, daring in what way? Daring in securing the support of the other part of the traditional Republican Party coalition. You might call that the mass, the the voting blocs. Though the one to 5% that is the core business community that supports the Republican Party gives the party the money with which then to go and put on the symbolic theater for the voters.
And that theater, which is becoming more expensive, is the ICE, a new army that can go out and hassle immigrants in a very dramatic way and attack brown and black people, and it'll kill people in in, Minneapolis, all of that. This theater, which is mostly what it is, very violent. I I don't mean to minimize it, but it's it's political theater of of his own private army being dispatched into the cities. It's not done very well. It has overshot the mark and produced an enormous backlash, which continues in this country.
But it is the theater that takes one third of the people who have been persuaded that immigrants are the problem and shows the Republican leader going further than earlier presidents dared to do, both Republican and Democrat, and so he he's showing that. Then he shows it in every other way that he can. Lots of bluster, to other countries. Tell you whether it's abducting Maduro from Venezuela or, you know, basically thumbing his nose at the Europeans or outrageously dealing with Canada, Mexico, Greenland. I mean, you can see.
These are theatrics, that may or may not involve real risks of war, seizing the ships in the various oceans of the world, the view that which many of my colleagues have, that he is going to attack Iran in some major way with air power. He will do those things, but those are mostly performative, designed to get the needed voting blocs to vote for him. That's what he is doing. The problem with that for mister Trump is while it is reasonably successful, it got him into the White House, No denying it. And he's holding on to well, his polling numbers are are deteriorating, but he he still gets 30, you know, give or take, maybe 35% support, broadly speaking.
But none of that addresses the fundamental economic problem, and that remains a taboo topic in The United States. No one discusses it. And by that, I mean not only no one in mister Trump's entourage ever, and no one in their larger Republican party ever, but no one in the Democratic party either. Even the progressive wing, so called, Bernie Sanders, Ocasio Cortez, the mayor of New York, mister Mamdani, and others, they don't go there. They are careful not to talk like that.
I mean, I can talk now, and that's an achievement. The audience in The United States that people like me have, I'm not alone, is greater than it has ever been in my lifetime. I can talk about a decline of the American empire. I used to have to explain it in great detail with lots of statistics. I don't have to do that anymore.
Those statistics are now fairly well known even by people who don't say a word the way I do about that. So we are still in a state of decline as a nation. And what that means is the decline continues because, basically, nothing is done to stop it. So for example, the fact that for thirty years, the People's Republic Of China grows at two to three times the percentage increase of GDP per year than The United States simply continues. Even in 2025, when growth rates around the world were lower than they have been, still China got its 5%, and and we're fooling around at 2%, two and a quarter percent.
It's exactly what we have, you know, more or less had all along. The successes of the of the, Chinese simply continue. During the last year, just to give you one or two statistics, during the last year, because of the tariffs imposed on China, China was able to export to The United States 2 or 300, billion dollars, if I have my numbers right, less than the year before. There was a serious drop in Chinese exports to The United States, But it didn't matter because China exported more to the rest of the world than it lost in selling to The United States so that at the 2025, China was able to announce over $1,000,000,000,000 in net exports. I mean, it's an extraordinary performance, but it is a screaming demonstration that whatever little leverage mister Trump thought he had by hitting China with a tariff didn't work.
Really was a a failure, and the same is true whether he interferes with oil going from Venezuela to China, which it looks like he's gonna do, or all of the other jumping on the tankers. This it's way too little, and it's way too late. And so he he's in a problem that whatever he does isn't addressing the actual issue nor is there any discussion that can make that clear. And I wish I could tell you that there was an opposition that understood this, but there isn't. There is only outside of the mainstream of American politics.
There is a growing but it's still very small and it's still quite marginal to the thrust of the political scene here, and so we will be distracted. And much as I share the horror of the whole world about this Epstein scandal as it ramifies, it has the unfortunate side effect of once again, you know, distracting the population from the the bigger, more structural issues that are shaking this society. Even though it it, you know, it may end, Keir Starmer's position in England, and we we don't know yet how far, it's gonna go here in The United States, but it is already threatening the careers of two or three cabinet members, and we'll see how much further it goes.
Speaker 0: Yeah. I, I like this idea of, well, the failure to recognize the significant time we live in. That is the the decline of the US empire, which results then in the fragmentation of the West. I I don't think the basic ideas in for also for the Europeans, that is how to readjust to a multipolar world, that these key questions aren't really addressed. Instead, they're looking at the consequences, symptoms, and is simply responding to this.
I there's something I wanted to ask you about, though, which is to what extent do you think president Trump draw inspiration from president Andrew Jackson? Because well, I know it's been two centuries now, but he has named him as a personal hero. And as we know, just to see some structure in this policy because Andrew Jackson, you know, he he liked to use tariffs as a way of collecting revenue and also, of course, give domestic companies more competitiveness. He had the same well, similar nationalist style, pushing very hard, a strong national identities. The ice of his time, I guess, you know, deporting Native Americans under the Indian Removal Act.
He also had this anti establishment rhetoric that is challenging Washington's, you know, norms, institutions, trying to, yeah, position himself as being, you know, man of the people. But also wider, the if you see The US position as struggling against, for example, Britain and other great powers in the nineteenth century, a lot of the policies such as restoring primacy in the Western Hemisphere, his the his desire to reannex the Panama Canal. As we know, the The US backed the Panama secession from Colombia back in nineteen o three to then claim this territory as sovereign US territory, so it couldn't connect the Atlantic with the Pacific. Again, all of this is the very important in geoeconomic and geopolitical power. And, indeed, after the The US bought Greenland in 1867 sorry, bought Alaska, They they also pitched a possibility of buying Greenland as a way of cementing control over the oceans and also, of course, block then blocking Britain now, it will be different adversaries.
But nonetheless, there there's a lot of it's well, I wouldn't call it precedent, but sometimes it reads like a bad historical rerun. Is is is this do you think he sees it in this way that The US has lost or weakened during this liberal hegemonic era and now has to essentially revert back to the policies which made The US great?
Speaker 1: The honest answer is no. I think that this is not I think this is very, I'm trying to think of the the right way to say this. You know, there are two ways of doing history. There's the serious effort. Go back, look at the record, collect the information, and try to understand how the different pizza fit together.
And then there's what we would call in the university the condensed Reader's Digest version of all of this, which reads like a morality play in which adversity arises until the good people get together and vanquish the bad. It it this is a veneer over what he is doing. Let me explain it in a different way. To be blunt, what mister Trump's international game is to at least slow, since you can't admit it, but to at least slow the decline of The United States by using whatever power it still has by virtue of having been the hegemon for a century and being large and being obviously an important market for exporters around the world, a certain important source of capital and all the rest, to use it to convert as much as possible of the rest of the world into a tributary state. Really, the model you ought to use is ancient Rome when when all of the parts of Europe had to deliver a certain number of bushels of corn or wheat or chickens or or animals.
It's all tribute. Vanderland has to come and give tribute. You we're gonna buy your natural gas. We're gonna invest in your country our money. It's an extraordinary tribute economy, and it is done by brute threat.
If you don't do this, we are going to hurt you. Even though the tariff is paid either by the American company importing or the foreign company's subsidiary, which will damage its profitability here, or the prices will be raised to the consumer. But any way you cut it, this is costly for the American economy, which is why traditionally Republican parties didn't do taxes. This one does it, but he has to do it both for home consumption and for foreign consumption by telling an Andrew Jackson story. In other words, if you read what mister Trump actually says, the whole world is cheating us.
He is rising up. Alright. If you're a little country, if you're a corner of the big British empire, if you're dealing with colossal economies like France or Britain back in the early nineteenth century, okay. You can you can tell such a story. It has a plausibility.
But you can't do that now. Now you you are the colossus. You you can't I mean, the story that United States has been cheated by everybody, every country large and small, and that instead of The United States being so inordinately rich that it can buy everything from the rest of the world while getting the rest of the world to put its savings here so we can buy everything from them and to turn that into out we were cheated? I mean, only in a country with the media as docile and as craven as ours is could even imagine pulling that stunt off. But here it works.
It works because it gives a plausibility to what is otherwise very ugly. When I for example, when I give talks and I explain what I said before, this is a tribute. We are becoming a a society that says, you must give us tribute or else we will hurt you. And I do it with humor. I point to you know, in this country, the, the story of criminals had an incredible fascination.
We endless movies about criminals and endless book. It's just the people are fascinated with crooks. And one of the most standard images in countless films and books is the following. Imagine a small store, a dry cleaning store, a laundry store, a little restaurant, and in the front door come two gentlemen dressed in trench coats with bulges under their jackets suggesting they have guns. And they come up to whoever in charge, and they say, we're here, and we want you to understand we need our payment for your protection.
To which the proprietor then says, what do I need protection for? Who who's threatening me? And the two gentlemen smile, and they answer, we are. And if you don't pay us, we'll burn the place down. And then in a in a sequence two minutes later in the movie, they burn the place down because he has or beat him up or whatever it is they're going to do.
The joke is you have we are protecting you from us. Well, The United States is doing that. It's recognizable here. And when I use the metaphor, they get it, and my audience laughs with me. They see it.
But within thirty seconds, it's out of their mind. They much prefer the story of and when I asked them, tell me, how is it cheating? It's ridiculous. The fact that you have a a a deficit with one country and a surplus with another tells you how this system works. It has nothing to do with blaming one of the what are you doing?
They don't have any answer to me. It's like, they don't know international trade theory enough to explain any of it anyway. So they get the image, but they don't want that image yet. My prediction, within six months, they will, but not yet. So at this point, they like mister Trump, and they might go for the Andrew Jackson if it could be spun as we were abusively treated by the British and the French and whoever else, and we were standing up, the way we did in the war of independence in 1776 and again in the war of eighteen twelve, we defeated the British Empire, and we are coming into our own.
That is the that is the acceptable story, and that story is you can tell. But when it comes to any specific, in his early first term, he referred to himself as an admirer of William McKinley, also an earlier American president toward the end of the nineteenth century, who also was an advocate of tariffs at that time. So he champ until someone pointed out that McKinley was an advocate of tariffs when he was in the, congress. But when he became the president, he changed his position. It wasn't anymore.
You know, he hadn't done enough work. You know, mister Trump is not a scholar. Never was. You know, he he he doesn't nobody around him is either. So what you're getting is the most superficial grabbing at some historical character, to clothe yourself, to make it all appear that it's somehow more deeply grounded.
It isn't. Miss that's why I let me go back. He's a conventional republican politician. The only difference is that where earlier poll Republicans were so concerned with holding on to the business community that they limited what they did for their voters to symbolism. Let me give you an example.
A core constituency of mister Trump are fundamentalist Christians. Another one, people who love guns, and they like to have guns in their automobile or guns in their home. Another one are people who are dead set against abortion. I could go on. These people wanted a ban on abortion.
Traditional Republicans, the two Bush presidents, they said, oh, yes. The abortion is terrible. They didn't stop it. They just didn't do it. Yes.
They blamed the Democrats for all but the bottom line was you had an amass of people for whom the conventional Republicans were, in fact, people who took care of business but didn't give them more than a passing shot. You know? That he would invite the Christian fundamentalist ministers to the White House for a prayer breakfast. They they actually do that. They love that.
They sit around. They bow their heads. They go through a kind of Christian prayer to God for guidance and all of that sort of thing. And and and they the people love that, and the Democrats don't do it or or don't do it anywhere near as ostentatiously. But it it's never more than symbolism.
Mister Trump, if he deserves anything, deserves credit, if that's the right word. He understood you've got to give those people more. If you don't, you will lose them. And if you give them enough, you'll actually win the presidency because the business will help you as it always does, and now you'll get the votes. And and that's what he that's what he did.
And his problem now is that in the event in the events in Minneapolis, the ICE, army went too far, and the population is horrified. And he has to withdraw quickly because if this goes bad, which it looks like it, he's in terrible, terrible trouble. He doesn't have that many cards to play, and he's looking very bad on the Epstein. I mean, he the level of lying that he's been caught in is you know, it's a bit grotesque. And there are too many headlines, and they're coming too fast.
And there are too many people even in the Republican Party who are seeing a loss in the election coming in November and are already backing away him and now increasingly, becoming advocates of looking more deeply into the Epstein. And I I do have to tell you, case folks in Europe are not aware, this stuff is getting uglier, and we you'll we're looking at really as horrible as these things ever get, that's what this is now looking like. Far beyond sex with underage girls, that's bad enough. But this this goes yeah, I'm not gonna talk about it. You'll find out about it soon enough, but it's weakening him.
This this is not the theater that his people want. They don't want any of this, and they're getting it every day all day. And because it's got a lot of sex in it, it has that salaciousness that keeps the headline big and bold.
Speaker 0: Yeah. I guess it doesn't help that the that he's punishing, what is it? Marjorie Marjorie Marjorie Tyler Taylor Greene or Thomas Massie for for trying to push for yeah. Having for publishing the Epstein files given that Trump actually ran on this. They're doing what Trump said he would do, and now he's punishing them.
It's it's very bad look overall, of course.
Speaker 1: Hopefully, he is He is so thin skinned. He is so vindictive. He he is so over the top. He is so unable or unwilling to work anything out without the theatric. You know, he is a theater.
He's he's a he's a performer. That's how he got to be the president. I understand. He's gonna continue to do that. It's gotten him to where he is.
I wouldn't imagine he's gonna change anytime too. But Marjorie Taylor Greene is now a serious problem for him because she's she's gone. She doesn't support him anymore. She I mean, if she keeps talking the way she has been, she will become a democrat because she is actually moving in that way. And, you know, and the others are Massey is is they've lost him.
They've lost now they didn't have many. They are predicted to lose in the November the house of representatives, and now it looks like they may also lose the senate, then he can't do anything. I mean, they will they will effectively block him. That's the one thing the party system does. The the party that's out, if they can control the congress, they can basically neuter the president.
Very little he can do.
Speaker 0: You used the word tributary state, and I was wondering to some extent, it seems sensible, the the the policies of The United States well, not sensible, but it it there's some logic there, the policies towards Europe. That is if The United States recognizes that the the the age of global primacy is over, it has to adjust to the rise of alternative or new centers of power such as China. You know, The US wants to focus on the Western Hemisphere to make sure that it's dominant in its own backyard. It wants to go to Asia to contain China as the main rival. In other words, they can't focus on Europe anymore.
So Europe becomes a cost rather than a force amplifier. So it makes sense then for The US to essentially assign Europeans the role of a yeah, that they have to pay tribute. They become an exclusive zone. They should only trade with The US, ideally buy all the weapons, energy, invest any profits back into The United States. Yeah.
So pay pay tribute. But but but what what's how do you assess how the Europeans are adjusting to this new world? Because they're they're taking a very different approach than the Canadians. Europeans keep saying, oh, well, now we're gonna stand together strong and, you know, united against Trump. We've we've learned that it doesn't help to, you know, bow to Trump and hope that he will, you know, treat us well.
But it's all talk, it seems. They're not doing anything. And they continue to bow and do whatever it takes and hope that their obedience will be rewarded. How how do you see the European reaction, and what is it that Europe should be doing, you think?
Speaker 1: Well, the way I I look at it, and I don't mean to be how shall I put it? I don't mean to be negative, but I know you're asking because you want me to tell you what I think. So that's what I'm going to do. I think that the Europeans have decided that they are in an extremely difficult situation and have no way out. That's how it looks to me.
What what do I mean? They are now going to be a declining global area for a long time. They're gonna end up being an adjunct to The United States, a place where tourism will flourish, a place where vacation homes for rich people will be everywhere, a society of quaint historical memory in which young people will be fleeing to where the work, the jobs are, which will be everywhere else in the world, but not in Europe, as a basic picture. That means that because of the tribute they have to pay and because of the lack of a growth dynamic that they can do the high-tech is not under their control. The Americans and the Chinese dominate in all the high-tech areas.
The Europeans will no longer be able to produce automobile, anything. I mean, they will be secondary or nothing in in the world of production of most goods and most services. What this means is they're going to have to preside, these leaders that are in power now, which I would say in general are centrist or centeritis in most cases. I understand the socialist one in Portugal and and all of that, but you know what I mean. It it it's center center right kind of, government.
And here's what I think they they they are going to be doing. Whether they understand this or not, not clear to me. They don't talk like this, but whether they don't see it, that's another matter. So they're in for shrinkage. They are going to be a declining empire like The United States, but without the compensating phenomena that at least slow the process here.
It's more accelerated there and will become more so in the years ahead. What that means is that they are at at real risk of social disintegration. Why? Because when an empire declines, whether it is the outer reaches of it that can no longer feed it, the fact that the Europeans don't have an empire anymore, it's not feeding them. There is you know, Holland doesn't have Indonesia.
Britain doesn't have the empire. The French don't have Africa, all the rest of it. And not just the fit you know, the political independence, but the real economic independence, which wasn't possible until now because the Chinese are there, because there really is a non European alternative to relate to. So they're gonna shrink. They're not gonna be able to offset it.
And when an empire declines and can't stop it or or slow it, a certain kind of terror sets in. And it's a terror both in the ruling class, the people who, during the empire, were able to accumulate extraordinary wealth and extraordinary power. They are in the best position when the empire declines to hold on. But the problem is if you are successful in holding on, and I would argue that the upper class in Europe still is successful in holding on, it means you're going to have to offload the costs of a declining empire on your middle and lower classes. In Europe, what that means is you're you have to you have to destroy your social welfare state.
You're going to else are you gonna you're either gonna have to tax the mass of people, or you're gonna have to take away their spending on their health care, on their housing subsidies, on their childcare, on all the things that Europe in a way became famous for, either starting with Bismarck in Germany and then all the other parts of Europe that, at various points, did all this. You're not gonna be able to afford that. You're not gonna wanna tax your own people because they're the ones with the power and the wealth that they don't wanna give up, and they're the politicians. They've bought the politicians. They've done that long ago.
And so now mister Mertz has to give speeches, telling the German people we can't afford, you know, it's not a. It's a that's going into the toilet. So you got your problem. How is this gonna be managed? And now the the darkness is gonna get darker.
How are you gonna manage this? You have a pretty strong socialist history. You have pretty strong anti capitalist political parties. You have a pretty strong socialist cultural base that values these social welfare policies. You are not gonna be able to take those away easily.
My family is French, and they're not particularly political. But you start taking away, you're gonna get my family is gonna go into the streets in France, and I mean that. And not just the young ones, the older ones too. So here's what I see. I see a growing split in European societies, and I wanna make it start.
It's a split between the working class and the ruling class. Very classic split that Europe has had before. It's gonna get much worse. And the only way that the people in charge could get away with sustaining their own well-being in a declining empire is if they have two things. Number one, an external threat that allows them to deploy nationalism as an ideological program rather than class conflict between the mass of people losing their social welfare and the ruling class.
But ideology alone won't be enough. You also need a military. You need a police and a military apparatus much bigger and much stronger than what you have now. Therefore, the ideal solution that solves both those problems is to make a demon out of Russia and one that requires you to militarily build up in a hurry because that'll give you the military to repress your own people. And I'm gonna go a little farther than I should, but I want people to understand the the point.
This militarization has nothing to do with Russia. Russia is can't take over the rest of Europe. Would be crazy to undertake such a project. Makes no sense. They don't need it.
I mean, I I noticed even yesterday, the the Estonian, intelligence department in Estonia issued a a document that Russia is not the danger that people think it is. I don't know what hap maybe something changed to Estonia. But in Estonia, the the idea is gone. For me, I understand this as an American. And why?
Because you're replicating American history. The Great Depression in The United States produced in this country a lurch of the working class to the left. The workers in America joined unions the way they never had before. They joined two socialists and one communist party, and the unions and the communists and the socialists all worked together, and you mobilized and you had a president Roosevelt who had to accommodate because he wouldn't have been president if he didn't. What happened at the end of World War two was the business community was beside itself.
The way that the communist and socialist and the labor movement handled the Great Depression was to punish the ruling class. If you look at all the statistics, inequality in this country dropped like a stone. They were taxed. They were forced borrowing from them. The market was thrown away, and rationing was substituted World War two.
You really whacked the working, the ruling class. And what did you do? You established social welfare. That's when Social Security, our general old age pension system, in the middle of a depression, we passed Social Security. We passed unemployment compensation.
We passed a federal jobs program that employed 15,000,000 unemployed people, and on and on and on. And it was so horrible for the ruling class, here we go now, that when the war was over, 1945, Roosevelt dies, the war is over, the business community says, we have got to undo all of that. That by the way, that program was called the New Deal, Roosevelt framework, the New Deal. We have to undo the New Deal. How did they do it?
By the following, demonizing the Soviet Union and mobilizing a perpetual defense industry that would keep The United States better armed than the whole rest of the world. What Dwight Eisenhower, the last traditional Republican, said we should not do is what they all did. They produced a military which could control the American empire and serve as the foreign danger that would justify a nationalism to erase all of the socialism that had become important. That's what we did. That's what you're gonna do in Europe.
You're gonna do it at that's why the fact that Russia is now not a communist country, that that seamlessly we went from demonizing Russia because it was communist to now demonizing Russia every bit as much minus the communist. Communism was never the issue. The issue was we need domestically to have that enemy to use nationalism as the rationale for the military, which we need to use against our own people. Why? Because we're about to take away from them what the last century of struggle by them got for them, and they are going to be very dangerous for us.
We're going to face serious upheaval, but mister Mertz wants to be sure that you have an enormously enlarged, you know, Wehrmacht so that you can deal, not with the Russians. Deal with your own people. That's your problem. And I don't I don't at this point, let me be provocative. Just like in this country, we cannot face, we need to deny at every level that we are a declining empire.
In a similar way, the Europeans likewise, even though they are further along in that process than we are, your empire is earlier than ours. Nonetheless, there is this, we're not gonna see any of that. Instead, we're gonna tell ourselves these extraordinary stories while we get ready because somewhere we understand where we are headed. Do I know whether the the leaders in Germany understand who they're gonna use their military for? I don't know.
But let me assure you that when mister Trump, and I hope the Europeans noticed this, when mister Trump, two and a half weeks ago, announced that the defense budget for this coming year will be $1,500,000,000,000. This year, it's 900,000,000,000. That's an increase of 600,000,000,000 on a base of 900,000,000,000. That we've never had anything remotely what is that for? What is that for?
Really? You think against Russia and China? No. We already have spent more money than they do on all of this. This is a much bigger project, and my guess is when they sit around at the War College at the Naval Academy, they talk about what?
The city of Minneapolis just showed the American people that there's a problem, that if you bring federal military into a city, you may discover you've got a much bigger problem than you thought. And let me tell you, I'm I'm talking to you from New York City. If the ice comes here where we have a socialist mayor and and more foreigners, immigrants than you can find anywhere else in America. There will be pitched battles in the street. And at this point, unless they do a lot to expand ICE, ICE will lose.
Even the the police department in these cities is not cooperating. So you have conditions here that are going to be suggesting to policymakers the very perspective in a different different language that I'm offering you here.
Speaker 0: On the European aspect, though, it's, it just seems like a lot of the policies seem so unnecessary. That is, if the Europeans believe that there's still hope to revive the collective hegemony of the political West, then these policies would make sense that if you you prevent the rise of rivals, so you join in on not trading with China and instead trading only with The US, it could make sense. If you wanna revive the collective hegemon in Europe, of course, you can continue to pursue this new Cold War with the Russians and fight for drawing new dividing lines closer and closer to Russian borders. But if if you do recognize that the era of collective hegemony is over, then you would have expected very different policies. Suddenly, the rise of China can be an opportunity.
Now you can diversify. You can reduce some of this excessive dependence on The US, which allow which enables Washington to, you know, treat Europeans, you know, like like vassals, the Europeans complain about. You can diversify, same as the Russians. The you know, a a lot of the dependence on The US, both security and economics, is exactly because we we have pursued this policy for the past thirty years of redividing Europe, restarting the Cold War as George Kennan said. And, you know, if if we would have ended this reckless proxy war against the Russians, we could have had a big trading partner, cheap energy.
We wouldn't have the security dependence. And the the only argument against it is, well, we have to stand with Ukraine, but the best thing you can do for Ukraine is remove it from this front lines of a divided Europe. If you remove it from this geopolitical position as a pawn on this chessboard, you know, this is what would save Ukraine. So none of what we're doing makes any sense at all. But as you said, the the only goal now is, oh, forget about the economy.
We'll just militarize, and you see this creeping authoritarianism now sweeping across Europe. It's it's just, yeah, one foolish policy after the other. I just wish they would decide. Either you try to revive the hegemon or or you adjust to these new realities. But but there's no discussions.
It's just slogans, talks about Hitler and the Soviet Union being revived, the Russians marching on Poland, all this nonsense which makes no sense at all. This is what's driving policies, it seems. It's quite frustrating to to watch.
Speaker 1: I agree with you, but I here, maybe I see it more positively than you. I don't think this is sustainable. I I think what you're seeing is the the last gasp of an entire generation of political leaders. You know, coming out of World War two, The United States basically said to Europe, we need you as a buffer with the Soviet Union. We will help you in certain ways, Marshall Plan, all that other stuff, and you have to be our friend.
You are in danger, not of the Soviet Union so much, but you are in danger of your own internal communist and socialist parties. Remember, Greece was effectively controlled by their communist party. Half of France was controlled by their communist party. The early government of mister De Gaulle had communist party ministers in the cabinet and on and on and on. And you had the great fear in Europe that I don't think came from Russia.
That was the the nationalism talking, that you had to make it you had to make a local communist the agent of the foreign power even though that was at best half true. That's exactly what we did here in The United States where it was also basically untrue. But you did all that because The United States could go to these people, the the the the old capitalist ruling class, and say, under the name of fighting communism, we are gonna protect you. We will put troops in your country. We will teach you how to do a propaganda war against them.
We are going to help you isolate, destroy all left wingers in your country. I mean, if you go back and you look at everything the CIA did in Italy, in France, everywhere, in the cultural magazines, in the political parties, in the secret funding of who got money and who got shot down in the street by anonymous gangsters, etcetera, etcetera. That was the deal. And these are the people who got into power because they were the people set up by The United States. They are the loyal ones.
They're keeping it going. They want they don't wanna have to do anything else. They for them, it is a matter of self definition that they are the guardians of Euro American, whatever, democracy, whatever word would be necessary. That's why they can't see. Of course, underneath them, and and this I know.
I know it's true for Germany, and I know it's true for France, there are many members of the ruling class who are eager to make deals with China, who do not see their future with the West. They see their future there. They want to be able to buy cheap Russian oil and gas again. Absolutely. And they don't hide that.
So somebody's talking to the people that they know they're not strong enough yet because the, the political class comes out of the American alliance and dependent on it. Their careers were built by that. They have made countless compromises as they went up the ladder to become prime minister. All those compromises were playing the game of the Anglo American dominance.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Jeffrey Sachs: U.S. Economic Coercion & the Death of the Dollar https://youtu.be/ls3ynNpMMPk https://t.co/w5SOVbWR9H
Video Transcript AI Summary
Jeffrey Sachs argues that "economic statecraft" is a euphemism for coercion, describing it as "war by economic means" used largely by the United States to crush other economies rather than to promote development or cooperation. He notes that treasury officials have framed it proudly as a tool to bring about regime change, citing Scott Besent’s Davos remarks about crushing the Iranian economy to foment change. Sachs emphasizes that this machinery is "warfare" aimed at destruction, not at improving well-being or enriching the United States, and it has real human costs—driving impoverishment, health crises, and rising mortality.
To understand this tool, Sachs situates it within American imperial practice, which he says relies on indirect rule through puppet regimes rather than outright territorial conquest. He traces the lineage to the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii, the phasing of interventions in Latin America under the Monroe Doctrine’s Roosevelt Corollary, and the 1954 Guatemalan coup against Jacobo Arbenz. He cites Lindsey O’Rourke’s Covert Regime Change, which counted 64 covert regime-change operations by the United States between 1947 and 1989. Economic statecraft, in his view, can function as a regime-change instrument by weakening an economy enough to destabilize a government, facilitating CIA-led or CIA-backed interventions, sometimes wrapped as color revolutions.
In the Venezuela case, Sachs traces the shift from a failed 2002 coup attempt to economic coercion as the primary mechanism of pressure. He explains how Venezuela’s oil wealth, once seen as the world’s largest reserves, interacted with U.S. corporate and political power—ExxonMobil and Chevron among them—and how that dynamic fed efforts to topple the Chávez/Maduro governments. He describes the sequence starting with 2014 color-revolution attempts, the role of U.S. funding and media operations via organizations like the National Endowment for Democracy, and the crackdown that followed protests. Sanctions escalated under Obama with the designation of Venezuela as a national security emergency and intensified under Trump, including confiscating foreign-exchange reserves, freezing accounts, and declaring PDVSA under sanction. This culminated in Severe economic collapse: oil production fell about 75% from 2016 to 2020, currency and import capacities deteriorated, and per-capita output dropped by about two-thirds, which Sachs characterizes as "worse than a war." He also points to Trump’s unorthodox actions, such as naming Juan Guaidó as president in IMF context, signaling a unilateral reshaping of legitimacy.
For Iran, Sachs describes decades of comprehensive sanctions and Trump’s renewed push to crush the economy using OFAC and extraterritorial sanctions. He cites Scott Besant’s interview claiming that by December, the currency had plummeted and dollar shortages followed, framing this as a deliberate regime-change strategy. He notes that mainstream media largely omitted the causal narrative—U.S. role in provoking protests—despite Besant’s public account.
Looking ahead, Sachs discusses the multi-polarity challenge. He suggests that the dollar's dominance is waning as alternative settlement systems emerge, such as non-dollar currencies and parallel institutions, notably driven by China and BRICS members. He envisions a shift toward non-dollar settlements—potentially 25% of global transactions within ten years—enabled by digital settlements and new infrastructure that reduces the reach of U.S. extraterritorial sanctions. However, achieving this requires new, dollar-independent institutions, since existing banks remain reluctant to abandon dollar-based business due to sanctions risk. He concludes by noting that the United States’ heavy-handed currency policy may not be sustainable in the long run, as sanctions reach could lessen once non-dollar settlement networks gain traction.
The host closes, recognizing this as a pivotal moment where U.S. coercion could either deter rivals or precipitate broader self-harm, and thanks Sachs for his insights.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined by professor Jeffrey Sachs to discuss, economic statecraft and, how it might be used, excessively and, coercively. So thank you for coming on. Economic statecraft, though, it can be a very effective tool of governance that is using money, trade, finance, and access to markets as an instrument of influence and facilitating cooperation. But economic statecraft, it feels, has begun to replace diplomacy, and we see economic statecraft almost exclusively now in an accordive form.
What do you see being, I guess, the long term risks of relying on this economic coercion as opposed to, yeah, having negotiated multilateral solutions?
Speaker 1: Economic statecraft is a euphemism. It is coercion. You could call it war by economic means. So economic statecraft, if you just hear the term, could suggest that you're using economic tools for promoting development, or promoting cooperation, or supporting trade, or stabilizing the economy. No, the way that the term is used right now is rather cynical.
It means using economic tools by The US to crush other economies. This is a very strange use of the term in my view, and it's a very pernicious set of policies. I have a personal resentment about it because my whole life is, my career is aimed at trying to help economies to be more productive, more prosperous, to help people's well-being. But economic statecraft in quotation marks, as our treasury secretary, Scott Besant used the term recently in an interview that he gave in Davos meant, and he said it proudly, to crush the Iranian economy in order to bring people out onto the streets with the idea of fomenting regime change. So this is quite a remarkable use of economic power.
It is warfare. It aims at destruction. It doesn't even transfer well-being. It's not extraction or appropriation. It is not aimed at enriching The United States.
It's aimed at crushing other economies. And if you're in the line of activity that I am of economic development, and you know how hard it is, and how many years, and how much effort it takes of everyday people to create economic prosperity and well-being, to escape from poverty. Watching the deployment of these instruments to bring people to impoverishment, to misery, to health crises, to rising infant and child mortality, to measured reductions of years of life expectancy. It's terrible. Now having said all of that, it is now a very common tool, if you wanna call it that again, a euphemism, an instrument of American power.
And I find it deplorable as I've explained, but it's used pervasively. And I think, Glenn, to put it in context, we have to understand something unique about the American imperium, about American imperialism. In American imperialism, unlike the British Empire or the French Empire of the nineteenth century, America rules indirectly. America has rarely done what Trump says he wants to do, which is just take over territory. We've done that for a lot of islands and military bases, but generally it hasn't been The United States invading in order to directly rule an overseas territory.
It's been The US invading to impose a puppet regime in an overseas territory. And this idea is regime change. So a core of American foreign policy is regime change. Just to say, that's an extraordinarily unusual kind of foreign policy. For most countries, in most of history, you dealt with other countries as they were.
You didn't dream of overturning their government and running their country. You had to address their country either through diplomacy or deterrence or some other way. But The US mentality that started in the eighteen nineties when The US overthrew the Kingdom of Hawaii, and then when The US created the pretext for war with the diminished and disappearing Spanish Empire in order to claim The Philippines, Puerto Rico, Cuba in 1898. The idea came to put The United States that it would create an overseas empire by controlling the governance of overseas territories by regime change, overthrowing governments. And you could say that it, that idea came naturally because creating the Continental United States was dozens of regime changes, but against indigenous populations, or war with Mexico, and so forth during the nineteenth century.
But for the overseas empire, that started at the end of the nineteenth century. Then The US practiced this under the Roosevelt corollary of the Monroe Doctrine, where Theodore Roosevelt basically declared, we will be the policeman of The Americas. And what that meant in practice is we will determine who is in government in The Americas. And when a government arises that threatens American land holdings, for example, that wants to do land reform as Jacob Arbenz wanted to do in Guatemala in 1954. Well, company United Fruit picked up the phone, called its law firm Sullivan and Cromwell.
They called their old associate John Foster Dulles, who at the time happened to be The US Secretary of State. He picked up the phone and called his brother, Alan Dulles, who was the CIA director. And they overthrew Arbenz. So it was a regime change operation. If you count the number of these operations, it's amazing.
There have been dozens in The Americas alone. And in one of my favorite books of recent times by Lindsey O'Rourke, a student of John Mearsheimer and now a professor at Boston College. She wrote in 2018, I think it is, a book called Covert Regime Change, where she counted 64 covert regime change operations by The United States between 1947 and 1989, the Cold War era. I mention all of this because this is where economic statecraft so called plugs in. Economic statecraft can itself be a regime change operation because you can squeeze an economy to the point where a government collapses.
It's not so hard to do. More often, you can squeeze an economy to the point where the government doesn't collapse, but it is fragile, and then you push it over through a CIA operation. You bring people out onto the streets. You do what came to be called, in the last thirty years, color revolutions. Because they often were CIA operations that operated under a banner of a color in the flags that were being waved, or the Rose Revolution or the Orange Revolution, in Ukraine in, 2004, 2005, and so forth.
What these are are instigated regime change operations, often softened up by economic means that have weakened the regime. So we have to understand that the so called statecraft is part of a broader strategy of empire. But the American empire is rule through puppet governments rather than through directly changing the map to put The US flag on it. Though Trump, because he's especially vulgar, seems to want to do that as well. So he wants to put aside the covert part because that's nothing to hide.
He wants to do overt regime change. And at the same time, maybe, Canada, and Greenland, and other places under The US flag. But typically it's not that. So when we come to recent events, both Venezuela and Iran have been targets of US regime change operation in which economic means played a very direct role. And in the case of Venezuela, The US has been aiming to overthrow the left wing government that has been in power for a quarter century in Venezuela.
America is absolutely at a government level, always aiming to overthrow so called left wing regimes because left wing regimes threaten American extortion by US companies or plunder by US mining companies or big oil like ExxonMobil and Chevron and so forth that operate in poorer and weaker states. So The US has been out to overthrow the the Chavez Maduro government that has been in power in Venezuela for a quarter century. In 2002, they tried the direct route, which was a CIA engagement with a local coup attempt by a part of the Venezuelan military. The coup took place. The US said that's great.
And then within a day, the coup failed because Hugo Chavez, was the president, had popular support and he was back in the Presidential Palace within a day. After that, The US then used economic means. These accelerated interestingly by the curse of natural resources that occurred in the late years of the first decade of this century when the US Geologic Survey officially determined that Venezuela's petroleum reserves were the largest in the world. And that set in motion on the Venezuelan side a determination to essentially make those reserves owned by the Venezuelan nation and by the lead Venezuelan company, the state oil company, P. D.
Vesa. And it put Venezuela on a war path with The United States because there is ExxonMobil, there's Chevron. These are powerful companies that pay for the presidents, that pay for the congress, and that suddenly are being pushed aside by this quote unquote left wing regime. So in 2014, The United States worked to try to make a color revolution in Venezuela. People came out on the streets.
If you think that's spontaneous, I have some more, stories to tell you. But this is what color revolutions are. The CIA is all over, these operations. Other institutions like the National Endowment for Democracy, the National Democratic Institute, the National Republican Institute, and so forth, work with the local media, work with groups that they create or that they fund to foment unrest. That's a standard playbook for such covert operations.
They're not very covert, but they're called covert because The US role is denied. Well, the government cracked down on these protests. No doubt there are local protesters, by the way, because people ask that have many objections or disgruntlements with the government, no doubt. But the organization, the financing, the bussing in of people, the mass media, that doesn't happen spontaneously. And so The US played its role.
There was the crackdown, and then part of the game is, oh, when the crackdown comes, now we put on even more overt sanctions. So Obama declared an emergency that Venezuela represented an emergency to US national security. Can you imagine? We were so threatened by Venezuela. It was so dangerous.
That's what Obama declared in 2015. He started the escalation of the sanctions. Then Trump came in in 2017. Trump being Trump said, I don't get it. Why don't we just invade?
And he had a dinner with Latin American presidents on the margin of the UN General Assembly in September 2017. And I've spoken with two presidents that were there at that dinner at some length. And they described exactly the scenario both of them ended separately to me. And basically the scenario was that the president's assembled and then Trump said, why don't I just invade Venezuela? And they were shocked by this.
And they explained, mister president, maybe that wouldn't be such a great idea. Maybe it would be a little complicated. There might be a backlash. It could result in chaos. It could result in millions of refugees.
It could result in big loss of life. In Latin America, there's a lot of anti Americanism, anti US sentiment. It would stoke that. So they tried to talk him down from this. And Trump said, okay, I'll just crush the Venezuelan economy.
So what began was a ratcheting up of punitive economic measures, confiscating Venezuela's foreign exchange reserves, freezing Venezuela's accounts, designating PDVSA as an entity under sanction so that other companies couldn't do business with Venezuela. And The US tools are varied and many. And we have a number of emergency acts, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the IEEPA, which gives the executive branch essentially unbridled authority to impose a very wide range of financial sanctions, cutting off the economy from the dollar based payment system. So for most of the world, doing international business involves using dollars as the medium of exchange, and doing it through international banks that facilitate the payments and settlements of an international transaction. And because these are dollar based transactions, ultimately they involve dollar accounts of US banks held with the US Federal Reserve.
And so The US can impose a blockade, a choke point on payments for international trade. For example, on Venezuela's ability to receive dollars for the oil that it exports, or the ability of PDVSA, the oil company, to pay for repairs for operations in the oil fields. So Trump imposed extraordinarily comprehensive and very tough sanctions on Venezuela. And between 2016 and 2020, oil production collapsed by about three quarters. That's the physical flow of oil.
And since that's Venezuela's essential, essentially only export, the Venezuelan economy collapsed. The currency collapsed, the inflation soared, the ability to make imports collapsed, the standard of living collapsed. And according to the data of the International Monetary Fund, for example, the national output per person fell by about two thirds between 2016 and 2020. That's worse than a war. That is a cataclysm.
That's not a downturn. That is a destruction of the economy. Of course Trump did many other things that were seemingly farcical, but were not treated as farce. He named a different president. Suddenly one day, the White House said, no, mister Maduro's not president, it's Juan Guido.
So we all scratched our heads. Who's Juan Guido? Oh, he's in the National Assembly. And The US just picked him out, said he's the legitimate president. And you might think this is a comic book, this is a joke.
But it had two implications. One is that The US used its economic sanctions to say they now belong to mister Guido. And this could hold from The US unilateral point of view. The US said in the IMF, it's mister Guido that gets to appoint the executive director and so forth. So The US, by using its power, just declared a different president.
And the second point was about 60 other countries, basically vassals of The US, that means Europe, and others said, oh yes, Mr. Guido is president now. In a way you can't even imagine. Okay, fast forward to this past year. Trump just decided, now we're gonna invade.
We've crushed the economy, we've put on the sanctions, we've weakened the regime, we're just gonna invade. And all of our so disheartening mainstream media, like the New York Times, says, well, there's so much unhappiness about the Maduro regime, and people are suffering, and they don't explain one word about what the root causes are. I don't know whether they're just utterly ignorant, utterly bought out, whether the reporters God knows who they work for. But the point is they don't understand or tell the story. Iran is the same story.
Of course, played out in a very different context. But The US has been imposing comprehensive economic sanctions on Iran for now, actually decades. But when Trump came in to power again in the second term, one of the first actions was to take extra steps to crush the Iranian economy. And the Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, who is there, I think mainly because he is willing to use the US Treasury to crush other countries, invoked the emergency operations mechanisms. Trump gave the order that Venezuela constituted an emergency.
And as Besant explained in an interview to Fox Business on January 20, just a few weeks ago in Davos, Trump ordered the crushing of the Iranian economy. And OFAC, which is the part of the US Treasury that operates the sanctions, went to work to basically bring down the Iranian currency by cutting off Iran from any remaining dollar based transactions internationally. And you tell banks all over the world, if you do any business directly or indirectly with Iranian entities, we will sanction you. You may be 5,000 miles away just facilitating a trade transaction, but we're coming after you. And that's how extraterritorial sanctions by The US are enforced.
And what Bessen says in this interview is quite remarkable. He says, we went out to crush the economy, and by December it worked. The currency plummeted, the dollars ran out, there were shortages of dollars, and people came out onto the streets because of this, Bessen says. And then he says, this is all moving in a very positive way. So the cynicism of it is extraordinary.
Of course, go to the New York Times, go to the Washington Post, go to the Wall Street Journal. What is the narrative there? That people came out onto the streets to protest the corruption and mis management of their regime. And what is amazing for me, Glenn, is that even after the US Treasury Secretary explained it, for those people who know the Wizard of Oz when the dog Toto pulls the curtain aside and exposes the wizard as some old guy speaking into a megaphone. Even after the game is exposed, no mainstream medium reported it.
Nobody had an article saying, oh, this is why people came out onto the streets. This is the reason for the protest. This was a US game. This is a US regime change operation. Not even noted.
Even after it's explained gleefully with that grin on the face of the treasury secretary, not discussed. So that's the background as I see it. This is regime change, top to bottom. This is economic instruments, and The US has them because of the role of the dollar in the international system, and the fact that The US alone of any country essentially controls the IMF because it alone has the veto. And I like to remind people, the World Bank is on 18th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, one block away from the executive office of the president, two blocks away from the White House, and three blocks away from the Treasury.
And the IMF is one block further on. And so it it is the row of US international power to crush other governments.
Speaker 0: Yeah. This isn't, though, without consequences anymore, I think. Yeah. Well, after the Cold War, of course, America was the only game in town. So without any alternatives, one can do this economic coercion quite efficiently and without that much consequences.
But it seems that as this multipolar world emerges, there's there's a dilemma because on one hand, it is more incentive to use this economic coercion to prevent the rise of rivals. On the other hand, the economic coercion comes with consequences because now there's alternative centers of power that offers access to technologies, to industries, the supply chains, physical transportation corridors, as you said, the banks, the currencies, alternatives to SWIFT. So it seems it can be a very self destructive process as The US goes into hyperdrive and new alternatives are set up by organizations such as BRICS. But I guess that belongs to a different day.
Speaker 1: Well, just if I if I may just say, not to keep us too long, but these alternatives are moving faster than people realize. And one of the reasons is that it is not technically difficult to have settlements in a non dollar basis. But the point is the following. If you are a Russian enterprise, or an Iranian enterprise, or a Venezuelan enterprise, and you say, I wanna settle in rubles, or in renminbi, or in some other currency. You cannot go to your bank to do that.
Even though for the bank it would be very straightforward to have a correspondent account, not in dollars, but in these other currencies. And the reason is that even if you make the transaction in rubles or in renminbi, the bank is still vulnerable to The US reach if it also deals in its normal business with dollars. And that's because the sanctions could still be imposed on that bank. So what is needed is not sophisticated technical fixes, because that's not so hard to do the plumbing. But it's institutions that are completely separated from the dollar system so that they're not subject to US sanction.
So what's being set up is a parallel system of settlements. It can't go through the main banks, but in non dollar currencies. It has to be in distinct institutions. In Russia, there is a new set of digital institutions that have nothing to do with the banks, but can affect transboundary settlements almost in real time. It's better than swift in many ways.
And that has emerged in the last couple of years. China has determined we've got to move forward, because otherwise, we are constantly under the gun of The United States. We're constantly threatened. Chinese banks don't wanna be cut off from The US settlement system, the swift settlement system. So China is creating an alternative system, and non dollar new institutions are arising to operate under the Chinese interbank payments system.
So my view is this will move faster than people think. I would think that in ten years from now, maybe an extra 25% of global transactions will be settled in non dollar currencies. Because technically, it's absolutely feasible. With new digital settlements, it's even more efficient than swift to do it. But the challenge is it requires setting up a wholly new set of institutions, because any institution that has at least some dollar business can't do that non dollar business except under the shadow of potential US sanctions.
The bottom line for me is that The US use of the currency as a weapon, which has gone into overdrive across the world, will not be sustained. It won't end immediately, but within the next five or ten years, The US itself will have dethroned the US dollar by misusing it, by abusing the privilege of being the issuer of the key currency. And we will have a very significant proportion of global settlements in non dollar currencies. And then the reach of US sanctions will fall decisively because The US won't be able to impose its will extraterritorially. In other words, it may still be able to prevent US businesses from doing business with a targeted country, but it won't be able to stop third countries from doing business with that targeted country.
Speaker 0: Well, interesting times indeed. It seems this is a all or nothing moment where The US can either break its rivals or destroy itself in the process. So as always, I know you have a busy day there in Greece, so thank you very much for giving us the time.
Speaker 1: Of course. Pleasure to be with you, Ben. Thanks.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Larry Johnson: Decision Has Been Made to Attack Iran https://youtu.be/bQePSXNo8I8 https://t.co/LkmhQBtpO1
Video Transcript AI Summary
Host: Welcome back. We’re joined by Larry Johnson, a former CI analyst, to discuss what looks like a war with Iran coming sooner rather than later. The world is watching as the US mobilizes more military assets to the region. How should we read this? Is this preparation for war, or a show of strength during negotiations?
Larry Johnson: I hoped it was intimidation, but people I trust in national security say this is far more serious. It’s described as one of two things: either a reprise of Midnight Hammer, when US and Iran coordinated two raids into northern Iran, or they’re preparing for an Israeli attack and to back Israel. It’s not just to force concessions at the negotiating table; it’s a warning indicator. Steve Bryan, a former undersecretary of defense, reacted emotionally to US–Iran negotiations, arguing that Iran is using a rope-a-dope strategy. This pressure toward attacking Iran is enormous, and Netanyahu’s visit suggests coordination. The issue has moved beyond nuclear weapons to ballistic missiles and support for Hamas and Hezbollah. The rhetoric around Hamas and Hezbollah is, in my view, a red herring; Israeli claims don’t match the facts. Trump is under heavy pressure from the Zionist lobby to act, and I think a violence outbreak in the next two weeks is plausible, though I hope I’m wrong.
Host: The debate you referenced about motives is revealing. If the goal is to destabilize or create chaos to justify action, which past interventions show that hasn’t produced sustainable stability. If the aim is negotiation leverage, what can be achieved now? It seems the US insists on tying any nuclear deal to Iran abandoning its allies and deterrence.
Johnson: Iran has built a formidable arsenal: 18 types of ballistic missiles, a recently reportedly successful intercontinental ballistic missile test, five types of cruise missiles, and over 15 types of drones. They’ve learned from decades of conflict with the US and see themselves as at war with the United States. The US narrative of Iran as the aggressor clashes with historical US actions that damaged Iran’s economy and civilian life. Iran’s patience has been tested; they’ve drawn a line in the sand and are prepared to defend themselves, retaliating massively if attacked. They now have support from China and Russia, including advanced radar and air defense, with Chinese and Russian ships headed to the Arabian Sea for a joint exercise. If conflict escalates, Iran could retaliate across the region, with regional actors potentially joining in.
Host: You mentioned the tactical realities of the region. The US has deployed many F-35s to the region, including land-based F-35s for SEAD. There are reports of a large US presence in Armenia, and Iran’s potential to strike Haifa or Tel Aviv if attacked. The geopolitical picture is complex, with Russia and China providing support to Iran. The US carrier fleet in the Gulf would face Iranian, Russian, and Chinese air defenses and missiles, including hypersonics. The question is whether the US can sustain a prolonged, scalable war against Iran.
Johnson: The US’s sea-based strength is being tested. In the Red Sea, the US faced difficulties against the Houthis with two carriers and a robust air-defense screen; in the current scenario, Iran’s capabilities—air defenses, missiles, drones, and support from Russia and China—make a quick, decisive victory unlikely. Moreover, Israel’s own readiness for a broader war is uncertain; Netanyahu’s visit to the US could signal coordination, but Israeli media note that they may join only if Iran is on the back foot. There’s concern about intelligence reliability: Mossad assets that aided last year’s operations in Iran may be compromised, while Iran benefits from new radar and integrated air defenses.
Host: Regional reactions could be pivotal. Iran has contingency plans against regional targets, and Armenia/Azerbaijan might be used as launch pads. Saudi Arabia and Qatar may sit this out if possible, while Iraq has aligned with Iran. The broader question is whether diplomacy can prevail, or whether the cycle of treating conflicts with force will continue. There’s a critique of Western policy: the idea that Iran wants to destroy the US is simplistic, and the region’s dynamics are far more nuanced.
Johnson: Iran’s potential to escalate, regional dynamics, and great-power backing mean this could be more than a localized conflict. The overarching point is that there are limits to military power; politics and diplomacy remain essential, and the West’s current posture underestimates the complexity of Iran’s deterrence and regional links.
Host: Thanks, Larry. I’ll link to Sonar 21 for more of your writings.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined again by Larry Johnson, a former CI analyst, to discuss what appears to be a war coming sooner rather than later to Iran. At least, the world has its eyes now on Iran given that The United States, continues to mobilize more and more military assets to the region. How should we read this? Is this preparation to war, or is this just The US building up, well, some show of strength during negotiations?
Speaker 1: Well, I was hoping it was simply a, you know, an intimidation gesture. But what I'm hearing from, friends that are still involved with national security matters, this is far more serious. They've described it as it's one of two things. This is either going to be a reprise of Midnight Hammer when the, you know, he's launched United States launched b two raids into Northern Iran. Of course, that was done in, let's call it, collaboration or coordination with Iran.
Or it is going they're preparing for an Israeli attack and to be able to come back back up Israel. One of two things. It didn't say it was just this was to try to force Iran to make concessions at the negotiating table. The other, you know, sort of I see it as a warning indicator. This, there there's a former undersecretary of defense, a gentleman named Steve, Steven Bryan.
And I know Steven. I I like him. I consider him, you know, a friend. You know, we're acquaintances via email and Zoom calls. But he is a he's a he's a Zionist, and I'm not using that as a pejorative.
I mean, that's his view, believes that God gave that land to Israel and they have a right to occupy it. However, he is very moderate. He's usually very he's not a Ben Gavir crazy or a Smotrich crazy, he writes good solid analysis. Well, put out a piece two days ago reacting to the recent negotiations between The United States and Iran. They're very emotional.
I mean, tearing Witkoff apart and describing that Iran is using a rope a dope strategy, referencing Muhammad Ali, the technique of allowing a puncher to punch out, you know, until they would exhaust themselves, and then they could then they could strike back. So when I'm seeing someone like Steve get that emotional, you know that there is enormous pressure now coming down on Trump to to attack it to to attack Iran. And the issue now has you know, they moved on from nuclear weapons. It is ballistic missiles and support for Hamas and Hezbollah, which is just, you know, the particularly the latter support for Hamas and Hezbollah, complete red herring. The the rhetoric and claims by Israel don't match the facts.
The the and I saw, you know, I saw your recent debate with this fellow Rosenberg Joel Rosenberg. Thought you did an excellent job. But again, he can he continued to put out the lies that massive terrorist attacks by Hamas and Hezbollah. And if you just you know, I challenge anybody. Go do the research.
There are plenty of AI search engines out there. Just ask the questions. How many Israelis have been killed by Iranian proxy groups since 1982? Because that's when Hezbollah came into existence. And the answer is fewer than 5,000.
And you match that up against the 70,000 plus Palestinians that have been murdered by the Israelis during the course of the last, two years and three months. So it it it just doesn't add up. So this is, Trump is under great pressure now to, to attack, and I think that's one of the reasons that Bibi Netanyahu's coming to town, not just to press Trump to do it, but also to coordinate. I I think it's highly likely we could see violence in the next two weeks. I man, I hope I'm wrong.
I love to be wrong.
Speaker 0: Yeah. That I thought that debate was interesting because it was it's so dishonest, but you you see this always with arguments because they say, well, look at this government. They treat their population so horribly and they, you know, they you know, the the whole pitch is quite manipulative. But but then when you ask, well, what do you tend to achieve with a military strike like this? Because if you look at all your previous military adventures over the past twenty, thirty years, which one has ever led to success?
And then, well, we didn't stabilize any government, but we created chaos divisions to make sure that it would be weak enough not to threaten Israel. So so so you can't have it both ways. You can't say in one hand that the the key objective is to create chaos and instability and hardship for people. At the same time, you're doing it because you want to help them. So it's all I just you know, if if if that's your goal, you think that every country in the entire region have to be divided, destroyed, and in chaos in order for Israel to security, make that argument.
I just find it very dishonest that they have to pretend there's they're humanitarian humanitarians, like, caring about protests while they're actually doing everything they can to destabilize the economy pumping weapons in, fueling violence. I mean, it's it's, again, at least if you say we wanna destroy the Iran, at least you have honesty, but there's not even that. But if we go with the first hypothesis here, though, that the objective is simply I I do not believe that's the case, but the the objective is to simply put a lot of pressure on Iran in the negotiations. What actually can be achieved now with the negotiations? Because it appears that The US has wedded itself to this idea that you don't just get the nuclear deal, but it has to be tied to Iran abandoning all allies, Iran giving up its conventional weapons, that is its ballistic missiles, that's its entire deterrence, and just, you know, bet its entire future, its existence on the hope that Israel and the United States won't take advantage of its weakness.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, they've if Iran hasn't learned that lesson yet, they're gonna be in bigger trouble, but I think they have. You know, they've got 18 different types of ballistic missiles, Both old and very modern. They just tested an intercontinental ballistic missile, reportedly successfully tested it. They've got five different types of cruise missiles.
They've got an excess of 15 types of drones. So Iran has been preparing over the last you know, they finally came to the realization as a result of the events of the last forty six years since the arrival of the Ayatollah Khomeini and the establishment of the Islamic Republic back in, you know, February I guess February 1979, that they're at war with The United States. The United States has repeatedly attacked Iran, not the other way around. The The United States is very fond of creating this narrative that it's, you know, here we are. The we're just minding our own business, looking around, and these nasty Iranians come up and attack us out of the blue.
And, you know, they cite, yeah, look what Iran was behind the bombing of, the marines. We call it the marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon in October 1983. Well, what what happened in September 1983? Oh, yeah. That'd be right.
US battleships, but we still had those deployed, were shelling the Shi neighborhoods and villages in the Bacau Valley, killing Shi women and children. So, you know, when we kill a bunch of civilians and then their relatives or the friends retaliate, we act surprised. The the you know, from the early outset in 1980, even before even before Hezbollah existed, The United States is encouraging Saddam Hussein to invade Iran, and we then supply Saddam Hussein with precursor chemicals used to produce mustard gas, which when all is said and done, then that war was over. At least 500,000 Iranians were dead as as a consequence of that war. So, you know, if if you killed 500,000 of my relatives and countrymen and friends and I was chanting death to Glendee Sin, at least you'd understand why.
You know? You killed half a million of my my people. And, again, here's The United States, a complete disconnect. We don't we don't seem to understand that. So Iran now has they've they're almost naive in some aspects.
If you go back to October 2024, when they launched a demonstration attack, they were wanting to show Israel what they could do with drones and missiles, hoping that that would persuade the Israelis to back off. It had the opposite effect. They just assumed, oh, Iran's weak. They took Iranian patience for weakness. And the same happened in June, the twelve day war.
Continued to lie to the public about the claim that Iran really inflicted no damage at all on Israel when the exact opposite was the case. So now Iran's come to the place that they have drawn a line in the sand. They have been a victim again of an act of war by the West, admitted act of war by Scott Bessent, that we attacked your economy to inflict maximum economic damage on you and your people. And happy about it. Look at look at what we did.
So now Iran is gonna be fully justified and and they're prepared to defend themselves. They're not gonna throw the first punch. But if attacked, they will then retaliate on a massive scale. And I don't think and they're not gonna stop until there is a negotiated settlement to the war that will include lifting of economic sanctions on Iran. That's where I think this is ultimately headed because this time Iran's got the backing of China and Russia.
There there are reports that China has provided an advanced three d radar, one that allows it to determine, you know, specific locations, specific height, and direction of travel. If they it can use that to identify inbound threats. They've got air defense systems supplied by both Russia and China. And right now, there are Chinese and Russian warships headed to the Arabian Sea where they are scheduled towards the the February or the March 1 to conduct a joint naval military exercise, which this will be the eighth iteration of it. They started it in 2019.
So it's a far different tactical position situation right now than what confronted Iran in the surprise attack of 06/13/2025.
Speaker 0: I just it's very strange to me that the solution every time becomes war. This is not just something that applies to Iran, but it's whether it's Russia or well, any any any adversary. I mean, usually, when you have any conflict with a large or a great power, well, even large in this case, you know, usually, people look for areas, well, where the key strategic security interests can be harmonized. So where could the The US respect Iranian? What does Iran have to respect from The US or Israel?
And if there's areas that can't be harmonized, then look for areas ways to manage the competition. If none of this is possible, then, of course, war is is an option. That's why I often like talking to people from the intelligence community. At least, you know, they have the the maturity to sit down with the other side to appreciate their politics, their traditions, cultures, all of this, exactly because, you know, you don't hate opponents. You you have to be able to chart out the possibility of where how far diplomacy can go before you go down the path of war.
The problem, I think, is the drooling idiots, which is yeah. Which are our politicians, our journalists. It's it's just the the the hatred and the the the contempt for the other side. It's so blinding that this that as you said, now with Iran, the assumption that they're just these bad guys always coming to get us, and anyone who disagrees with that, they're either naive or they're just in their pockets of diatollahs. You know, this kind of extremist radical thinking, it's really very destructive.
I don't know where it's coming from, though, within the West. If it's just, something left over from hegemony that all adversaries have to be vilified, never understood. It's it's very strange. We didn't used to be like this. We used to be able to sit down and appreciate the other side.
Again, not hating adversaries. But sorry.
Speaker 1: No. No. I was just gonna say the it's a combination of two things. The Zionist lobby starting from the early seventies has been very you know, so fifty years of propaganda to persuade the The United States that Iran in particular is the biggest Islamic threat. And what I find fascinating, and I saw this firsthand when I because right after nine eleven, I'd been working with the US military special operations command and Joints and JSOC, SOCOM.
And the level of ignorance about Sunni Islam vice Shia Islam was incredible. They had no you know, one Muslim is the same as another Muslim. And then when you tried to explain that, you know, particularly in Iran's case, Iran had been repeatedly attacked by these Muslim extremists that are Sunni. They're based in the the Wahhabi sect out of Pakistan. They're known as the Deyabandis.
But, you know, for many years, Iran was fighting those very Islamic extremists that we in The United States claim attacked us on 09/11. So right off the bat, that that should have made us a natural ally of Iran. But then we got this deep dark undercurrent where the CIA had been funding and enabling many of these radical Sunni groups during the war in Afghanistan against the Soviets and had developed relationships and contacts and then continued to use them. And to the point that we deployed them in the second Chechen war against Russia. And we just we saw it recently with al Jelani.
I mean, you know, bona fide come out of Al Qaeda, part of ISIS, then from ISIS to al Nusra, and then from al Nusra, he sets up his own organization. And he's getting getting hugs in the White House, in the Oval Office for God's sake. So, you know, this we we create this simple narrative about Muslim bad, US good, and then we put, you know, Iran into the bad category without actually understanding how they have been fighting against the very Islamic extremism that we claim that we oppose, and yet with through my old old organization, fund and enable the those very extremists. I mean, it's just that that's where you step back and realize the the world's not as we're told that it is.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, there's a lot of things that could have been done after the September eleven attacks. People often forget that the first, I think, foreign leader to call Bush was president Putin and, you know, essentially saying, well, we we we we can cooperate with you. Let's build a partnership on this. And that was a genuine idea that as long as all the relations between The US and Russia were focused on the redivision of Europe through NATO expansion, everything will always be zero sum, but they thought we also have problem with the with these fundamentalists.
So maybe this can be an opportunity to essentially overcome the legacy of the Cold War and become profound partners. That was not taken. And as you said, the same with Iran. They actually fought against the same people. The Iranians also approached The United States.
Nothing. Instead, we afford, what is now, 25, and instead, we, not just The United States, but the political West, allied itself with Al Qaeda in Syria. I mean, you couldn't make it up. What are we doing here? We could the the paths not taken are just quite extraordinary.
But on this path to war now against Iran, as that seems to be well, that's where we're heading. What weapons have The US assembled? Do you have any clear overview in terms of because it it doesn't look like this is just going for another ten day war, that they need an incredible amount of not just air defenses, but also offensive capabilities if they're gonna go after a massive adversary like Iran.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm told that we we've deployed a a very large number of f 35 fighter bombers to the region. Now you have the f 35 c that operates off of the aircraft carrier. But in addition to that, you have other f 30 fives that are land based that are not going off of carriers. And those are used to try to what's called SEAD, s e a d, suppression of enemy air defense. You know, if you we're gonna ever gonna talk military stuff, you gotta use acronyms because that's all they use.
But the CIAD mission is such. I I did get a message from one of my readers that who is in Yerevan, Armenia, and said that there is a huge US presence, huge buildup of US c seventeens and other aircraft there. Didn't mention if any personnel had disembarked. So The United States is moving forces into the region, but they're doing so on the assumption that Iran's not going to be able to detect much less stop these these aircraft. The f 35 is known as a stealth plane.
The problem is the Chinese reportedly have deployed a radar that is specifically designed to detect self stealth aircraft. So this thing is this is wading into very, very dangerous waters because it's not just Iran that's then say, okay. We're gonna fight back. You know, during during the twelve day war, they could have bombed all of The US bases. There are at least 10 to 12 different bases scattered from Qatar up to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, into Iraq, Syria, but they didn't.
Didn't touch him until the very end where Trump got the bomb and, quote, obliterate Fordo, and then Iran struck the radar station at Al Hudid Air Force Base in Qatar. Then it was over. That that's not gonna be the case this time. You've already had the Shi'i throughout the region, particularly in Iraq, rise up and then declare that they will go on a full attack against The US interests, US personnel. So this could rapidly, rapidly get out of control.
And the ability I believe Iran has the ability to inflict such devastation on Israel. They'll they'll they'll stay away from Jerusalem, but they will destroy Haifa and Tel Aviv and in in a way that Israel has never you know, Israel got hit last time in a way it never been hit before. This time will be much, much worse. And the the reliance upon Thad or Patriot or Goldendum or Iron Dome, they won't work. Iran's got too many missiles to overwhelm and and deplete the air defense systems first and foremost, but they also have missiles capable of traveling at hypersonic speeds and being maneuvered, which makes it impossible for them to be shot down by those three systems.
Speaker 0: Yeah. I don't like it when there's too much unpredictability at stake here, but this is what I mean. We the The United States doesn't know exactly what Iran has. All they know is that the Israelis are warning them that Iran is being able to replenish most of the things they either fired off or lost during the last war. But if we add to this, I think the Russians, as I said, and the Chinese know that this war will not be a short one like the other.
It will be much more brutal and prolonged. So I think that they will also find ways of assisting, even if it's just offering intelligence, some radars which can detect, well, better than the Israelis. I mean, the in any way they can help with weapons short of, of course, engaging any direct shooting war with The United States. Yeah. But with with all this unpredictability, it's still very strange that The US is willing to go forth with this.
I mean, there's been war games in the past which haven't turned out very well. So the the decision to still go forth with this, I mean, this is the only almost source of of optimism I have that it seems too crazy to actually that they actually will go through with this. But but what is yep.
Speaker 1: Well, no. I was just gonna say that so unlike what happened on 06/13/2025, that twelve day war, and then this latest attempt at the sparking a color revolution that started on December 28 and lasted until, you know, roughly January 10, there were primarily Mossad intelligence assets on the ground in Iran. They played a critical role, especially during the twelve day war of helping to destroy some air defense systems as well as laser guide weapons and on them. To my knowledge, Israel was not flying aircraft in and over Israel wasn't flying that aircraft in and over Iran during the twelve day war. They were still using standoff.
Well, that those intelligence networks now, I think, have been completely compromised to what these Iranians discovered last year and then what they've done this time tracking with the Starlink terminals. So you start right there that they've got less intelligence capability on the ground. In fact, they're they're more blind now than they ever have been. But then also we've got the record of The United States with its carrier task force or carrier strike group in the Red Sea last March, and now operation Rough Rider. So in that operation, the Navy was given the specific task of establishing freedom of navigation in the Red Sea.
That meant a ship could sail wherever it wanted to go without being harassed or sunk or attacked and to deplete, degrade the offensive capability of the Houthis as well as to degrade their relationship and support from Iran. Those those were the three missions. And to do that, at one point, for there was one aircraft carrier arrived and then a second one. So you had two aircraft carriers, and each of them with they had five destroyers four destroyers and a cruiser. And the and the purpose of those ships is they provide a defensive screen that they shoot.
They have air defense missiles, usually about a 100 per boat per ship, and they were to be fired at incoming Houthi missiles. Well, when we look at what what we've got off the coast of Iran right now, we got one carrier. Okay? So we got half of what we had in the Red Sea, and instead of, you know, a total of five ships capable of air defense, we only have three. And what makes them what makes it even a a weaker situation is each of those the destroy the three destroyers, instead of having a full complement of, like, say, a 100 air defense missiles in these vertical launch system cells, and just imagine these are these are like tubes put together.
They're in the deck of the ship. The missile goes in and missile fires out. Well, instead of having a full complement of a 100, they've got only half, 50 to 60. The rest are with Tomahawk cruise missiles. Now he said, oh, well, they they could fire those Tomahawk cruise missiles with GPS.
The the I my understanding though is those ships are staying a thousand miles off the coast of Iran because Iran has drones and anti ship missiles that can travel more than a thousand miles. And the what's what's the range of a tomahawk? A thousand miles. So if they fire them off from see, it's gonna barely reach the beaches. It's not like you can travel anywhere at once in, in Iran.
So when you're stepping back and looking at this militarily, you gotta say, based upon the situation in the Red Sea where The United States had every military advantage over the Houthis. Houthis didn't have an air force. Houthis had a limited missile supply. They they didn't have a an air defense system at all, and yet we failed. We completely failed to stop them from interfering with ships that they wanted to attack.
And so now we're going up against Iran who has a modern air force. They have modern air defense systems that have been supplemented by Russia and China. They have an incredible array of ballistic missiles and cruise missiles that are buried underground, underground cities that are well protected. They can't be destroyed from just a cruise Tomahawk cruise missile as an example. And so we're gonna get into that fight.
And like I said, I share your puzzlement. What the hell are they thinking?
Speaker 0: What are the thoughts on the Israeli sides? I'm not sure if you're following the Israeli media, but especially now that Netanyahu is set to visit Trump this week already. Yeah. But the Israelis, they suffered lot of destruction last time. I heard by some that they're planning to sit this one out and only join in if Iran is on its back foot, and it will be, I guess, a low cost military adventure.
Well, hoping that America can do this on its own. Again, one never knows. But what what is the impression you're getting from from Israel? Is it is this fair? Is that this it has it has to be done now before Iran can build itself too strong, or is it con are there concerns that Israel is also not ready for this war?
It's I often you know, to the credit of the Israelis, I often find that their media is at least at least more honest about Yeah. Their intentions than ours. But I was wondering how, yeah, how how you see the Israeli view on this.
Speaker 1: Well, the the Israeli press is commenting that this this is an urgent visit by Netanyahu. Now I cannot rule out that this is not a visit to coordinate a military operation. You know, and because the last time Netanyahu was just in DC, so we're on the ninth, the third 40 about forty one days ago on December 29 when Beebe was in meeting with Trump, and there they were coordinating on that color revolution that was launched on the twenty eighth. And I think at that time, my understanding was there it was anticipated to have The United States carry out an attack as the thing as the protests culminated in the effort to destabilize further destabilize and cause the collapse of the regime. Well, that plan didn't work out.
The whatever the CIA and Mossad had promised, it didn't didn't come to pass. So here's Beebe now for the second bite at the apple. Trump is under enormous pressure from the Zionist lobby, both from Israel and here in The United States. I mean, people like Sheldon Adelson's wife, Miriam Adelson, the donors. You know, I wrote a piece at sonar21.com last night commenting on a recent article by Stephen Bryan.
I know Stephen. I, you know, I think he's a very decent person. He used to be the undersecretary of defense under Ronald Reagan back in '81 to '88. So, you know, good Lord, forty forty plus years ago. But he wrote a piece just trashing the talks that took place in Oman, just a blistering critique of Steve Witkoff and, you know, they call it for action, you know, so that Trump's gotta do something.
So the the the there is no support when when I I guess, what I'm saying is when I see someone like Stephen Bryan adopt that position, he's not a Ben Gavir or Smotrich. You know, he those guys are crazy. They're fanatics. Stephen's not a fanatic. He I mean, he's a Zionist, but he's usually does rational thought and analysis.
He he was all emotional. And if he's feeling that way, I guarantee you that same view is said not just within the Jewish community, but within the Zionist community among Christians. And so with that kind of pressure coming to bear on Trump, the odds are he's gonna cave. And what is so dangerous about it is we keep telling ourselves how great we are militarily. You know, we're like the evil queen in Snow White, you know, mirror, mirror on the wall.
Who's the fairest of them all? And the mirrors go, oh, you are. You're the best. Nobody better than you. And yet we can't step back and objectively look at, okay.
How did we do in Afghanistan after twenty one years? How did we do in the Red Sea against the Houthis after more than a year operation prosperity guardian and then succeeded by rough rider. We failed. And so without recognizing that we've we've entered an era where the the US military that as it exists institutionally, it was designed for a particular period of time when technology was different. It's now changed.
It it it We're witnessing something as fundamentally different as took place from say the Spanish American war and then World War one. So in Spanish American war, you got Teddy Roosevelt riding up the hill on his horse. Horse cavalry was still important. But somewhere in that next twenty years with the advent and of tanks and machine guns, machine guns in particular, horses were no longer really relevant in the I mean, they were a liability more than an asset. So now look at what we're doing with aircraft carriers.
We we spend, you know, years building them, tens, you know, $15,000,000,000 or more. And all of a sudden they can be taken out by a 500,000 hypersonic missile that China has them, Russia has them, Iran reportedly has them. So all of a sudden, you can't use that aircraft. And then just just before coming on your show, was reading an article sent to me by one of my Air Force buddies. They're now they've the the The US think about this.
The US Navy has now created a jet, a combat jet and a trainer that they will not allow it to land on a carrier. Okay? So they're developing a new jet technology, but it's not gonna be carrier based. So you're going, so why do we have aircraft carriers? Particularly now, like we're seeing with the in the case with Iran, we have to keep them so far offshore that the weapons that they have normally that could be used if they were, say, a 100 miles offshore are now basically useless because they are so the distance is so great.
And so with the advent of drones, I mean, just from a technology standpoint, when you realize those destroyers that are supposed to provide the air defense screen, they got a 100 missiles. Normally, if they got an attack coming in, they'll fire two of those missiles, sometimes more, but let's go with just at least two to take out the one target. That's 50. You get 50 shots. And so imagine that you're flooding an aircraft carrier or the the the that destroyer with 300 drones.
That can be done. And all you can't shoot them all down, and then they can attack and cause damage. And once once the destroyer is out, has fired all those missiles, it has to sell to a another port to get reloaded by a crane. They don't know why it's not a simple matter of just, you know, grabbing them off some other ship and stuffing them in in the tube. Because I mean, so we've we've created this dysfunctional, highly technical, very advanced, and it's unworkable in a combat environment.
And that's what, you know, that's what these people aren't thinking through. And look at it with all of the advantages we had us then on paper. I mean, in say, let's go to Afghanistan. We had tanks. We had artillery.
We had fixed wing aircraft. We had rotary wing, you know, helicopters. We had mortars. We had overhead imagery. We and we're we're fighting a bunch of guys who are carrying rifles, basically.
They got some mortars. They got some heavy machine guns, but they're not they're not anywhere well equipped like we are and we couldn't beat them after twenty one years. We had to withdraw because we we could not win that insurgency. So that as I said, this it's one thing to have the most expensive military in the world, but the capabilities, can it actually defeat an enemy or someone you've labeled as an enemy and then control the situation? And it's it's not just The United States.
I mean, it's happened to Israel. Look at think think of it from here's Israel with a 300,000 man army. They have surrounded an area that's five miles wide and 25 miles long. They're fighting against a force that again is armed with sidearms and rifles. They're not armed with tanks and artillery and heavy equipment.
And with all of that advantage that Israel has because it's got them completely surrounded. I mean, it's not like they've got an easy way to resupply themselves, and yet Israel was unable and still has been unable to defeat Hamas and take actual control of the territory, which means you can walk the streets. You don't have to worry about getting ambushed. So that's where we've got we gotta get away from this Hollywood mentality of military prowess and recognize there are always limits to mill military power, which, you know, as Klausowitz talked about, the military force is just one part of the politics of it. You gotta deal with the actual politics.
So and that's where I think The United States fall short. We refuse to deal with the actual politics of this. Instead, we indulge these fantasies. Yeah. Well, just
Speaker 0: as a last question, that is, how do you see the the other countries in the region reacting? Because as Iran has said, this would likely be a regional war. That is the they would strike at least The US basis of the region, but they would also consider countries who join in on this to be well, they should be held accountable. That is Yeah. Launching or refueling from their territory.
I know Saudi Arabia said that, you know, we're not gonna permit it just to make sure that they wouldn't be struck. Again, you don't know if they're actually gonna follow through on this. But how do you see the rest of the region possibly joining in? And, you know, before you mentioned Yerevan or, you know, you can also put Baku on that list. To what extent Yeah.
Do you think The US could come down from the North? Because, know, Tehran is all the way up there in the Caspian Sea. It wouldn't surprise me if there would be some efforts of of using, yeah, as at least Azerbaijan as a launching pad now that, you know, Trump has brought peace to that region.
Speaker 1: Yeah. No. In fact, I think that's how this war will spread. I fully anticipate that Armenia and Azerbaijan will be used as launching pads for attacks against Iran. They've Iran has held discussions with the Azeris, but this wouldn't be the first time that that a government betrayed another government.
But I I think also Iran has contingency plans in place to take out the military targets and those they're not big countries. So that that's that's one advantage that Iran has. The other is Russia as well is is providing intelligence support to Iran with respect to Armenia and Azerbaijan because Putin and his government, they're not real happy with either of those two because they recognize that The United States has embarked on a plan of subversion to, you know, turn those countries so that they can be used as springboards to attack Russia. So you're right that I think Saudi Arabia, Qatar, they're gonna choose to sit this one out if they can. Iraq has already basically declared itself fully aligned and supporting Iran, which, you know, is that what a remarkable accomplishment because we go back, you know, forty years, and, Iran and Iraq were enemies killing each other.
And and, again, and they were doing so at the bet at the behest of The United States. And and most, you know, most people today don't recall that at least through the first eight years of the, you know, '19 from 1980 to 1988, one of the biggest supporters of the Islamic Republic Of Iran in helping them acquire weapons was Israel. So it was only after Saddam, you know, went off the rails and was no longer considered a threat that Israel turned its attention and said, oh, we've got to now be worried about Iran as a potential nuclear threat. So, know, we always like to portray these things as a very simple black and white, you know, we know who the good guys are. We know who the bad guys are.
No. It is it's a it's a far more complex nuanced situation, and unfortunately, the West has no clue about it. Absolutely no clue. We we go with the cartoon version. The evil the evil Ayatollahs killing innocent children while the America the beautiful is running around planting trees and and opening flower shops.
Couldn't couldn't be further from the truth.
Speaker 0: Well, just yeah. As a final thought, that was something I mentioned at debate you referenced before as well. That is when the Chinese came in and began to seek to improve relations between Saudi Arabia, the other Gulf states, and Iran. What what you heard from the former head of Mossad was, hey. Listen.
If the whole anti Iranian coalition is gonna fall apart, we should also explore our, you know, opportunity or possibility of making peace with Iran. You know, we don't have a share we don't share a common border. We don't really have that many interests that has to be in coalition at least. Maybe it's time to start talking about when how how we can negotiate, what core interests are theirs. We have to respect what core interests of us.
They have to respect. At least start to talk. I mean, it it's it baffles me that there's no efforts at all to at least explore the opportunity. I mean, I don't see why Iran would have to be this, you know, diehard enemy. I think, as you said, this idea that it just runs in their blood, that they wanna destroy America, it's I'm I'm not sure where this comes from.
I think, if anything, there's been efforts over the years which proves that, at least Iranians look towards the possibility or hoped that they could, yeah, improve relations with The United States. And, again, no country on the planet in its right mind wants to have a confrontational relationship with The US, which has the biggest army. So this is no. It's it's absurd to see how far this has gone. Yes.
I Yeah. The final thoughts before we wrap up?
Speaker 1: Yeah. The the this, you know, Iran and Israel once had good relations, and they can have good relations again. And that was under the Ayatollah Khomeini. So, you know, it is it's well within this the scope. Part of this though goes to because Iran has been willing to support the Shi'i populations in in Lebanon, in Syria, and in Israel, that for that reason Israel wants to destroy Iran.
And, you know, that until until the Zionist element is reigned in, until until they get to the point that they no longer believe that they have that they are entitled by a deity. They claim that this deity has given them this specific land and given them permission to kill the people who are already there. I mean, that's you know, it's it's a racist mentality, but it's you can't you can't ignore it. It's real because people act on those beliefs. And and when when you feel like you're entitled, you can do whatever you want to these Palestinians and to Shi'i.
You know, that that's not gonna get resolved easily. But the thing we have to remember about Iran is since the Ayatollah took over Khomeini took over in '79, Iran hasn't been going out with sending military adventurers out to attack other countries. They did provide military support to Bashir al Assad against an Islamic insurgency that The US actually was supporting. I mean, there's the there's the other we were supporting the very people who attacked us on 09/11. It doesn't make sense.
Speaker 0: Well, Larry, thank you as always for taking the time. I know you're in high demand. And as always, I will leave a link to Sonar 21 in the description, and I highly recommend for, yeah, all the listeners to check out your articles there as well. At least that's what I do. So thank you again.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you for what you do because your your program provides a a really a wide variety of information that people just take time to watch. They'll be better informed, much better than mainstream media. I'll say that.
Speaker 0: Doesn't take much these days, sadly. Thanks.
Speaker 1: Alright. Bye bye.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Michael Hudson: Destiny of Civilization - Financialization & Collapse https://youtu.be/QUPNhAaS_tw https://t.co/K4FE4MEdgv
Video Transcript AI Summary
Glenn welcomes back Professor Michael Hudson to discuss the direction of civilization and how to assess civilizational decline through economic lenses. Hudson says he won’t remake his previous work The Destiny of Finance but will offer a sequel that revisits classical political economy and why it framed industrial capitalism. He emphasizes a distinction between the decline of an economy and the decline of an entire civilization. He describes a civilizational conflict between finance-led rentier capitalism in the West and the industrial capitalism with Chinese characteristics, noting that the latter mirrors early British, American, and German forms in its own way. The takeaway of industrial capitalism, he says, was to free the economy from feudal legacies—most notably hereditary landlord power—and to reduce three central rent-seeking blocks: landlords, monopolists, and bankers.
Hudson recounts Ricardo’s 1817 warning that Britain’s industrial takeoff depended on cheap labor and the cost of subsistence, which was tied to food prices under the corn laws. Tariffs on food imports kept wages high, hindering investment by keeping costs high for employers. The landlords sought to protect rents; the fight for free trade (1815–1846) aimed to overcome landlord power and move toward a rent-reducing, production-focused economy. Ricardo’s labor theory of value held that value is produced by labor, but prices reflected rent and not true value; excess of price over value constituted economic rent, an unearned income. John Stuart Mill described rent as income earned in sleep. Classical economists saw economies as divided into a production sector and a rentier sector—where rent and credit relations acted as an overhead on the productive economy. The industrial project, they argued, was to align prices with real costs and minimize rents.
Hudson argues that modern economies have shifted from industrial capitalism to finance capitalism, where rentier interests—banking, land rents, real estate, monopolies—back the financial sector and monopolies. Real estate endures as a transfer of wealth via debt-financed housing and commercial property; mortgage interest and fees become a form of rent. GDP growth increasingly reflects economic overhead and financial profits rather than productive output. The classical economists were opposed by late 19th-century rent-seeking forces: in the U.S., John Bates Clark; in Europe, Austrian School and utilitarian economists; all arguing against government intervention. Neoliberal reforms from Thatcher and Reagan onward privatized public infrastructure, supposedly increasing efficiency, but Hudson contends this raised costs (energy, water, rail) and deepened rentier power.
Hudson contrasts the West’s rentier model with China and Russia, which pursue mixed economies with substantial public subsidies and government credit to support industry, wind energy, and infrastructure. He argues that China treats money as a public utility and uses credit to finance real construction rather than corporate takeovers, enabling broader growth. He asserts that Europe’s elites have pushed privatization and energy dependence on the United States, undermining European industry and security. He claims the U.S. uses NATO to constrain Europe and allies with sanctions and energy dependence, while Russia and China diversify from Western finance and technology to strengthen their own systems.
The discussion then turns to ancient precedents: debt cancellation and land redistribution in Hammurabi’s Babylon, Egypt, and Judea’s Levitical laws, as examples of civilizations resetting rent and debt to maintain public legitimacy. Hudson argues that civilizations tend to polarize as wealth concentrates, and debt cancellation was a recurring tool to prevent oligarchic domination. He links this to modern-day neoliberalism, which denies rent and unearned income, presenting rentier gains as productive growth. He concludes that China’s approach—public-directed money and credit, mixed with private enterprise—reflects the civilization he believes resilient, whereas Western neoliberalism allows rentier control to dominate policy.
Glenn thanks Hudson for the thorough, provocative explanation and notes the value of understanding rent seeking. Hudson highlights his works on rent, including an audiobook version of Super Imperialism, and contends that economics today often uses a deceptive vocabulary that obscures rentier dynamics. Glenn concludes, praising the discussion and noting links to Hudson’s books and website.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined today by professor Michael Hudson, to discuss, the direction of civilization. So thank you very much for coming back on.
Speaker 1: Well, thanks for having me again, Glenn.
Speaker 0: So, I'm thinking when we assess the economic, political, and social condition today, I can't help but to feel that we're no longer at the peak of civilization. And you, of course, have written a book in the past with the title The Destiny of Finance, Capitalism, Industrial Capitalism, or Socialism. And I'm thinking there must be a lot of new material for your book now if you wanted to make do a remake. But I thought, overall, a good place that we could start is, how do you link the economic system to to the rise and fall of civilization? And what are the economic indicators of a civilizational decline?
Speaker 1: Well, I'm not gonna write a remake, but I will make a sequel. And the sequel goes back in time to really review what classical political economy was all about and, why classical economics was really the plan for industrial capitalism. And so I have to review some economic theory here because there is a great difference between the decline of an economy or an economic system as we're seeing today and the decline of a whole civilization. Even though there's called us a civilizational conflict between today's finance, rantier capitalism in the West and the industrial capitalism with Chinese characteristics, which is amazingly like the American protectionist characteristics and the British, characteristics under David Ricardo and John Stuart Mill and the German characteristics. All of the industrial societies and the whole takeoff of what we think of as our civilization, is actually a transformation of, the economy itself.
And the the takeoff of the industrial capitalism was really in Britain. And I think if I we look at what they thought the course of industrial capitalism and the civilization and the world that they were going to dominate was all about, that'll set the stage for what went wrong. And, why haven't we achieved what all of the classical economists were expecting for industrial capitalism to develop a mixed economy, public private, with rising government spending on infrastructure to keep the costs low, and especially to do the one thing that was revolutionary in industrial capitalism, and that was to get free of feudalism and get free of the legal legacies of feudalism. And the major legacy was the hereditary landlord class that still dominated the House of Lords and wanted to protect the land rents of the landed aristocracy, mainly in their agricultural lands. Real estate rents and housing rents hadn't really taken off yet, but the big problem that faced by Britain was how to feed the population in the face of this protectionist landlord class.
And Ricardo, in 1817, explained what threatened to block the takeoff of British industry, and or at least to bring its expansion to a halt, was, the need to employ labor to produce commodities, to sell at a markup. And, ultimately, the end of these, most of these products, according to Ricardo, as labor theory of value, the price and value of them was reducible to labor. And that included the labor that was embodied in the machinery that industrialists used as well as to produce the food and the other products that labor had to pay for out of its wages. Well, employers excuse me. Sorry.
Employers had to pay high enough wages to cover the cost of subsistence. And because well educated and well clothed and healthy labor that was well fed was more productive, these costs had to be covered by the employer. Well, the aim of the industrial capitalists, therefore, was to reduce the costs of consumption needed by labor in order to for employers to hire it. And the most pressing cost of his day, certainly the most pressing rising cost of Ricardo's day, was the rising price of food that resulted from the corn laws, the tariffs on food imports that prevented free trade in food. Britain in 1815 had emerged from the Napoleonic wars where had isolated Britain.
And as a result, Britain had to depend on its own landlords, its own land to feed itself. And as soon as foreign trade began after the return to peace, the landlord said, well, our rents are going down. You have to protect them by imposing tariffs on them. And that prevented British employers from being able to import lower priced food to feed their labor so that they didn't have to pay such high wages. I think, when I say this, think of the parallels with, the modern economy, which, I'll get into.
The landlords, demanded, land land rent. And so the fight for thirty years from 1815 to the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 was for free trade. And the fight for free trade, that was the first step in overcoming the landlord's resistance saying the economy for us is all about land rent, not for industrial profits. We don't care about industry. We just want our rents.
And Ricardo gave the explanation for what would happen if you lent if you permitted the economy to turn into a rentier economy, paying its rents to landlords, first for food and in time for housing, for land rents, for housing. And later economists of the nineteenth century said, well, it's the same thing with monopoly rents. We don't want monopolies because that'll increase the cost of living and doing business. And then finally, at the end, they said, well, you know, the the biggest payment of rent, rentier income at all, is to the creditors, to the bankers, and the bondholders in the form of interest and financial fees. And so the role of industrial capitalism in all these countries was to minimize these three classes, the landlord and raw materials producing classes, the monopolists, and the banking classes.
And that that's what made industrial capitalism so successful in countries that were undergoing these reforms. Because in countries that, didn't have the reforms, because the landlords were powerful enough to block free trade, to block taxation of their rent and rental income, and to block governments from, minimizing rents to streamline the economies and, cut the costs of, living and doing business, they were they were going to be left behind. So what Ricardo did was formulate classical value theory, which said value is produced by labor and the oh, but prices don't reflect this value. Prices are much higher than this value, and the excess of prices over value was economic rent, and that rent is unearned income. John Stuart Mill said that landlords collect rents and also the rising prices for their land in their sleep.
So every economy, as viewed by the classical economists, was divided into two parts. There was a production part of the economy, and then there was a rentier part of the economy. The property relations and credit relations and rent relations that were superimposed on the productive economy as an economic overhead. And, the idea of the industrial economy was to bring, prices in line with the actual cost value, as little as possible, and, that was what was going to make economies more successful and make industrial capitalism, so much so much more powerful. Well, if the if, the corn laws continued to block lower priced imports, that was going to keep food prices up and hence the subsistence wage, that would discourage new investment.
Well and the landlords were going to waged a huge campaign. They lost. And Ricardo said that would bring capital accumulation to an end. That and that he he wrote, capital can then yield not yield any profit whatsoever, and no additional labor can be demanded. And consequently, population will have reached its highest point.
Long indeed before this period, this very low rate of profits will have arrested all accumulation and almost the whole produce of the country, after paying the laborers, will be the property of the owners of land and the receivers of tithes and taxes. And the taxes were mainly to, pay financial, charges. And I sent you a chart, that you could even put up during this, and the chart will show how the the economy will grow. But as, rent takes more and more, the profit will fall to a point where it's utterly extinguished. And without profits, there's no incentive for industrialists to invest.
And Ricardo wrote all this in his chapter on profits in his book, on the principles of political economy and taxation. And in the destiny of civilization, I discuss in more detail the reform program of of industrial capitalism. And the point of my writing my book on civilization is there are two kinds of economies. We're no longer in an industrial capitalist economy. And most people call our economy capitalist, but it's not the industrial capitalism that was discussed in the nineteenth century or what Marx meant in in in capital or what Werner Sumbert, meant when he coined the word capitalism in the nineteen twenties.
It's finance capitalism. And, the the financial sector now has backs the monopoly interests and the rentier interests and the real estate interests. And you've had land no longer belonging to a hereditary monopoly. Anybody can buy a house or a commercial building, but they have to go into debt to do it. And the land rent is all paid to the the banker, not to a landlord class anymore.
And over the course of, say, the thirty year mortgage that was standardized after World War II and created the American middle class, the banker actually got more money in the form of interest than the seller of a house or a commercial property building got. So, you you you, have the price of housing, or whether you rent it or whether you buy it, that, employees have to pay in The United States and Europe, has to be high enough to cover the costs of, paying interest and fees, to the banks. And, you have, if you look at both the European economy and the American economy, what what they call gross national product, it, seems to be growing, but almost all this growth in gross national product is rentier income. Interest is charged as providing a service, and, late fees for banks, for credit cards that are, higher than the interest rates charged are providing a surface. And monopoly prices are all included in GDP.
And so there's very less of product in gross domestic product and more and more of economic overhead. Well, how did this come about? By the late nineteenth century, the landlords, and especially the financial classes fought back against classical economics. And the classical economics was the ideology of industrial capitalism, of free economies from rent. A free market was a market free from rent.
And the, the reaction in The United States, it was led by, John Bates Clark. In Europe, it was led by the Austrian School of, anti government, anti socialist, economists in Britain. It was led by the utilitarian theorists that said, well, there's no difference between price and value. The, price is whatever, utility consumers are going to pay. They used a circular reasoning for all this.
So I I think it I I had my next book, that I'm working on now has to take a step back and say, how do you think about an economy and how it works? And that is the key to understand why this fight between, your the West, America and Europe, looks at that China and Asia and other countries that are following this original plan of free market classical economists as civilizational because they look at the rentier interests, the interests of bankers and bondholders, the interests of landlords, the interests of monopolists. For them, this is civilization. And for, the the whole takeoff of, individualism and free markets in the nineteenth century, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, and, what became the whole socialist movement and social democratic movement that was backed by the American industrialists and the conservative party and parties in England. They said, well, we all want to make our economies more productive and we have to get rid of, classes that collect income without adding to production, without working, that make money in their sleep.
So there's this fundamental distinction between earned and unearned income, a productive sector and an overhead sector. And none of that occurs, is taught in today's economics curriculum. They fight by the finance and real estate sector mainly together says there's no such thing as economic rent. There's no unearned income. And, they've used, the rental, income that they have and all of the debt financed capital gains from, real estate and from, their investment in corporations to buy control of the political process and to privatize it.
And since nineteen eighties, from Margaret Thatcher in England to Ronald Reagan in The United States to the Social Democratic parties of Europe, you've had a a movement towards privatizing public infrastructure, saying, well, private managers can do a much better job. So let's privatize the water system. Let's sell Britain's water to Thames Water Company. Private enterprise can certainly be much more efficient and less bureaucratic. Let's have British railroads and, turn turn privatize.
That's certainly going to be more efficient. Well, you you've now seen water prices go way up for British consumers and industry. You've seen the railroad prices go way out and they're not they're not serving suburbs like they were before. The busthebuscom pub company that was public was privatized and to make more money it just cut back the routes to places that had low ridership further out from London. You you have the whole thing, free in Europe.
Well, what do we have, today that's the the equivalent of the high price of corn and grit meaning grain, for England? The equivalent today would be energy because every industry needs energy, houses need electricity for heating, and they need gas for cooking if there is a gas line, you know, around. And the labor theory of value did not take into account capital productivity. The Americans did, starting in the eighteen fifties. The Americans be, and I wrote my dissertation on, the economist Erasmus Pechaine Smith who developed this theory as the basis for the Republican Party platform when it was created in 1853.
They they said, well, the shift of the progress of civilization has been from natural wind energy and water power to, first to coal and then to oil and gas. And at that time nobody had seen, other other forms of electric electricity, atomic power for instance, And nobody had anticipated that, what had been windmills in Holland and other places would be these gigantic, wind power, constructions that China has made in the Gobi Desert and throughout China. And, today, you have, China realizing that, well, we're not going to leave this to private enterprise to develop because it takes a long time to develop electric power as an alternative to oil and gas. It takes a long time, to to make an electric utility in The United States. When you go through all of the filing and the meeting, all the requirements and the bureaucracy, it takes ten years for a new electrical company utility to be built in The United States.
Well, there's another problem that the one of the major rent seeking classes that's taken over politics in The United States in addition to banking and real estate is the oil industry. And the coal industry in particular states is very powerful too. And they've bought control of the Trump administration. And Trump has said, I represent the coal industry. We're really the oil industry.
We're really going to take off, with oil, with natural gas, and we're gonna use that, as a as power. We're going to, number one, we're going to, block Europe from, depending on energy and oil that is not produced by The United States and its allies. We're we're going to say, you cannot, import oil from Russia, anymore or from Iran or from Venezuela. You have to buy oil and LNG, natural gas, from us. So and that's happened.
And one of the results of America selling the liquefied natural gas to Europe is that, gas prices in The United States are rising. Well, all of this has become, what the government, describes as civilizational because of the intention of the American economy to say, we have a problem. We no longer can, compete with other countries in an industrial capitalist way like we could in 1945. We're no longer an industrial company. We've offshored our labor and industry to other countries, mainly to Asia.
And the only way that we can have other countries subsidize us is to say, there's a cold war with Russia and China, and we have to defend Europe from the imminent invasion in a year or two that Russia's going to be willing to lose another 22,000,000 people trying to invade Europe and recapture East Germany for itself. Well, this is all nonsense. But on but but on the umbrella of this fiction, this fictional narrative of a cold war, The United States convinced the NATO members, yes, you have to avoid free trade. Well, this is the fight that British industrialists won in 1815 and German industrialists lost, today after 2022 by cutting off the trade, the energy trade, with Russia and other countries and following it up by cutting off technology trade with Russia such as Holland did when it said it closed Nexperia down and said we're taking it over because we cannot permit any Chinese owned firmed in the West. And just a few days ago, Donald Trump America put pressure on Panama's Supreme Court to confiscate China's investment in, the port development in the Panama Canal, to try to prevent that.
So you're you're having what, does indeed threaten to be a civilizational war. And if the war about is there going to be a government that represents the development of the people at large and economic growth and prosperity, or will it be the government of the enemies of prosperity, the rentier class? If you let the financial sector and the real estate sector and the monopolies take control of all of the public utilities, of the land and and tax it, and create credit to essentially create financial wealth by creditor claims that represent the debts of the 99% or at least the 90%, well, then you're going to have the economy coming to a halt. And if the United States is really serious about the Cold War, if it says to Europe, we've already convinced you to fight to the last Ukrainian for land. We can't give Russia an inch of land.
So mister Zelenskyy tells us, we'd rather have the Ukrainian people die. People don't matter. Control of land matters. Hurting Russia matters. And the fact that, you Germans lost to, Russia twice, World War one, World War two, maybe you can get even this time.
Let's fight the war all over again by military Keynesianism. If you make the military arms, you're going to actually use use them in Russia. Well, this fight between rentier finance capitalism centered in The United States based on infrastructure, on artificial intelligence monopoly, on computer monopoly, and information technology, is supposed to be able to replace America's industrial profits that it had made in agricultural exports, which were the key to America's balance of payments and dominance of the system after 1945. They want to replace this with monopoly rents for information technology and artificial intelligence. Well, the Europe had threatened to say, well, one of the problems is not only are you charging monopoly rents, but you're insisting that we Europeans don't even tax them.
We're supposed to tax our labor. Shift it on the labor, shift it off business and rentier income, and especially shifted off the Americans. And so Trump said, well, we'll stop that. We're gonna slap tariffs on you and disrupt your economy, and you won't be able to ex your companies will not be able to have access to The US market. And, also through NATO, fortunately, we've used NATO to control the European Union as you and I have discussed before, and, they're surrender monkeys.
And, they surrendered and said, okay. We're not going to tax, the, The United States monopoly. We are going to be dependent not only for gas on, the natural on on The United States, but on on information technology. We're going to let all of our growth in, wages and growth in income be paid to The United States after all because we depend on you to protect us from the threat of, Russians marching right into Germany on their way to Britain. This is crazy.
And, I guess you could say that civilizations fall because they don't understand the economic dynamics that, have, made them successful in their takeoff from the very beginning. My whole my book on the collapse of antiquity showed that the first form of rentier income that, ended up destroying antiquity after, centuries of, civil war from the seventh century BC right down to, the time of Caesar And the end of the Roman Republic was, the demands of the population for a cancellation of debts and a redistribution of land. That that fight failed and, the result was feudalism. So we've had, the Roman, empire, which was, I guess you could call it Western civilization at that time, lose its quality that had made its civilization and, become decadence. You're having the same thing happen today, in similar terms.
The the the Asia, for thousands of years had a completely different basis for for social philosophy and government all the way from Confucianism that said that if you have an emperor, the empire emperor's role is to keep the population happy and not revolting. If there's a revolt, then the emperor loses his justification for being an empire emperor. Same thing in the takeoff of western civilization, which was really in the Middle East, in Mesopotamia, in Egypt, in Sumer, Babylonia, and Egypt. And all, all the early Bronze Age civilizations from the third millennium BC down to the first millennium BC regularly canceled the debts to prevent an oligarchy from taking over. Every king of Hammurabi's dynasty began his rule by canceling the debts, re returning land to cultivators that had lost it so they could regain it and begin to pay taxes again and serve in the army and serve, as corvet labor building the infrastructure projects that, Mesopotamia had.
Same thing in Egypt. The when archaeologists and Egyptologists finally began to be able to translate what the Egyptians wrote, it was the Rosetta Stone that was a debt cancellation, canceling tax debts. When, the young pharaoh was told, we'll do what the earlier pharaohs did, cancel, the debts and free the population so that it can work. Otherwise, you're going to have a concentration of land ownership and it'll be impoverished. The same thing happened in the Jewish lands in Judea After the Babylonian captivity and the Jews returned, they brought the laws of Leviticus, the Mosaic Law 25, saying word for word what Hammurabi's debt cancellation did.
Free the debt bond servants, cancel the debts, and redistribute the land that had been forfeited. That was put at the center of their religion because by that time in the first millennium, kings were no longer good. Certainly in the West and Israel had become part of the West pretty much at that time. And so you could say that change in civilization occurred really beginning two thousand years ago, twenty five hundred years ago between the West that did not cancel the debts and restore order by circular time. They the the, Asian countries, from the Middle East to China, all recognized that economies tend to polarize as the wealthy people take over government, become divested interests, and essentially try to dismantle public authority and, take and prevent, rulers from, protecting the population and its means of living and its its land tenure from being concentrated in the hands of an oligarchy class.
The West has, emerged as an oligarchy from the from the beginning. In that sense, we're in a civilizational conflict today because, again, it's between the rentier class, originally the creditor class, they're becoming the landowning class, for land rent, and, gradually monopolies that were created in, the feudal Europe in order to, enable kings to find a, income source to pay the international bankers for the war loans they were taking out to fight each other and take over land. So you have a complete you do have a civilizational dynamic, and the civilizational dynamic begin to merge and become more reasonable in the industrial revolution. It was industrial capitalism that was radical. It said, we don't we're we want the same thing that was fought over in Rome, in Babylonia, and, in the Jewish lands.
When, Jesus opposed the vested interests and and gave his first sermon, all unrolling the scroll of Isaiah and saying, I've come to announce the cancellation of debts. That was the original of Jewish Christianity or Jewish you could say Jewish Christianity. So this is is what's tearing things apart today. Well, mentioned in The United States, there's a problem with, how can America get the monopoly in artificial intelligence and computer manufacturing and other high Valley technology if it doesn't have electricity. And Trump has prevented America from getting electricity in the form of windmills or solar energy.
And the reason he says coal is one of the fuels of the future. And the Trump administration has canceled the planned coal closed down of coal utilities because they the Biden administration and at least had scheduled these for closed down because of global warming. And so Trump not only has closed alternatives to carbon energy, but he's also withdrawn from the Paris agreements and is opposing the whole movement by the rest of the world to try to free energy production, which is the key to productivity, from, from, dependence on on carbon. That has become a civilizational, threat because global warming is, in the natural environment, is, one of the things that destroyed the Babylonian civilization in after 1,200 BC, when, there was a global freezing that caused droughts and huge population movements. Climate change had also destroyed the Indus civilization in 1,800.
So there are certain external factors in addition to internal dynamics that, threaten to destroy a civilization. It's happened before, and you can trace it throughout history. And it's threatening to transform and even destroy the way in which Western civilization and the world that's been brought into submission to Western civilization's values live for the present. The financial return lives for the present. The present is the future.
All that matters is year to year. The oil companies don't care if the burning oil is going to add and accelerate global warming and make it worse because they're in the business of making profits, I should say, economic rents from their oil. Well, without Western civilization, going back to the analytic value, price, and rent theory of the classical economists is not going to realize the the fact that, oh, we're not really being productive anymore and we've de industrialized. And by, by letting, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan be the tools that have represented this anti government, anti socialist philosophy saying it's the free market not to distinguish between productive and unproductive labor. No such thing.
It's a free market to let the rich, property owners do whatever they want and take control of government and finance the election campaigns and, essentially wage war against, any countries that do not follow the same anti government pro rauntier, pro oligarchy form of government that Western civilization has become. Well, I think that, the the the problem you could the great threat to Western civilization is neoliberalism, which denies this existence of economic rent, and it treats rentier income as an actual product and thinks that well GDP is going up. If the bankers are getting rich, all of this debt service payment of interest is going up, that's a product. All of the rents that people are paying for the rising cost of real estate, that's a product. And somehow monopoly prices are all well, it's all if people are willing to pay it, it's consumer choice to pay the monopolies.
There's no such thing as economic coercion. The the whole rhetoric of economic thought has been changed into a kind of vocabulary of deception instead of a vocabulary, explaining the actual dynamics of how economic systems and ultimately how civilizations work. I think that was a long answer to your question.
Speaker 0: Well, no. It's an excellent answer. And, well, I find it fascinating because, you know, as I said with the classical, economists, the industrial capitalists, they focused so much on exactly this issue of, well, reducing the role of the rent rentier class or at least, yeah, reducing the rent seekers altogether. And, again, this is a key focus. And but yet now that we've seen this shift into this finance capitalism where we now look at, yeah, the rentier class as, you know, just great, excellent capitalist, it's fascinating because we invoke the we refer to John Stuart Millenall to to justify why there should be no redistribution as if the concept of, yeah, classical economy or industrial capitalism is some kind of a socialist conspiracy.
But so it it is strange to see how, yeah, the the the neoliberal capitalist idea, how it formed an ideology which allows it to borrow from the same thinkers, you know, their minds to some extent. I just, yeah, had a last question about well, when you refer to the Europeans, obviously, The United States, as it can't compete with with China, it seeks now rents, yeah, from around the world, which is a beneficial position The United States has been in. But with Europeans, it appears to become more aggressive. As you said, they say, you know, you have to buy weapons. You have to buy energy.
And as you learn, there's a very heavy markup there or or an an ability to extract a lot of rent. And, also, if the Europeans want security, they should also make sure that their profits are reinvested back into The United States. And, of course, Europeans are doing so, but this is also resulting in, well, economic devastation for the continent, which will then, I guess, at some point play out both in political and security problems. But but China and Russia, though, they seem to be as they decouple from the American led system, Is this, I guess, a source of economic growth for them? Because one of the ideas was we're gonna put sanctions on the Russians.
We're gonna crush their economy. If you remember at the beginning of the war, you know, the ruble was gonna become rubble, we would have their economy smashed before the end of the weekend. And it didn't work this way. Instead, we saw that as the Russians cut themselves off from Western technology, banks, currency, that instead they had a significant growth, of course, based more in the industrial sphere as opposed to, yeah, this traditional or not traditional, but this new finance capitalism. But do you see part of the successes for both China and Russia being that they cut themselves off from this, I guess, uncompetitive rent seeking American technologies, banks, and currency?
Speaker 1: Well, it's not that, they cut themselves off. Donald Trump cut and America cut them off, much to their benefit. You mentioned that socialism was a conspiracy. That's not it. Socialism, was viewed as, the next stage of industrial capitalism.
In the late nineteenth century, not only Marx was talking about socialism. There were all sorts of kinds of socialism. There was Christian socialism. There was anarchist socialism. There was social democracy.
And what everybody was in agreement, all of the vested interests was you needed governments to play an added role in the economy to provide basic needs at subsidized prices. And, they it was the America's, first economics professor at the first business school, the Wharton School, that, said Simon Patton said that public infrastructure is a fourth factor of production besides labor capital and land, which really isn't a factor of production but, rent extraction. And but a public infrastructure doesn't aim at making a profit. It aims at minimizing the price of basic needs so that, labor can doesn't have to cover these costs and employers can, won't have to pay for these costs because public investment is more productive and less high priced than private investment because, the aim of public, infrastructure, canals, railroads, public health, is not to make a profit, it's to make the economy profitable. Well, it was, the conservative prime minister Benjamin Disraeli in Britain that said health, public health, that's the center of things.
And it was Disraeli that promoted public health as opposed to the, The United States under President Obama that says we've got to privatize public health and, the American Medical Associations as ever since the nineteen fifties fighting were against socialized medicine. Well, it ends up that instead of socialized medicine taking over the medical practice of doctors, the private health insurance companies have taken over what doctors can do here and pressed cost of medical care to 20% of GDP. Well, this is far in excess of what other countries from Europe to, China do. China offers a public health and also free public education as England, did for a long time and as many European countries did. But now it's very expensive.
Everywhere from over 50,000 a year at least in The United States to high prices for English, Australian, and other Western English speaking universities, and I guess in German universities. All of these functions that were supposed to create a competitive low priced economy are now being privatized, high priced, and the countries such as China and Russia are keeping the price of basic needs low, and they're doing what is supposedly what democracies are supposed to do. The Americans say we're democracy against autocracy, but that's not what this fight is all about. It's against Western oligarchy versus socialism, state in in industrial capitalism with a strong public subsidy. And this subsidy prevents an financial oligarchy from developing because what China has done in going further than other socialist movements have advocated in in the West is to say money is a public utility and we're creating money and credit through the People's Bank of China to not to finance corporate takeovers and making money financially by financial engineering, we're using money and credit to finance actual construction.
Well, they've over financed housing construction obviously, but they've also financed their industry, they financed their wind farms, They're financing their basic research or at least providing government subsidy and support for private enterprise doing all of these. There's mixed economy. Every successful civilization in history has been a mixed economy. And when you have the vested interest saying, we don't want a mixed economy. We don't want government regulating or taxing us.
We want to control the economy ourselves. We want the money that the government would tax to, come to ourselves as our own income. We want to impoverish the rest of society and make it dependent on ourselves. Maybe it'll create a revolution, then we've just got to fight them. And we've got to fight other countries that, that want to, get rich by a strong public sector.
So, it was it's China above all that's doing what Western democracies claim to be doing, but they're not doing because they're not democracies. They're oligarchies. And the vocabulary that is used for the western narrative is, well, China is is an autocracy. And if if any they say, if you regulate a company and regulate monopolies, that's autocracy. If you tax the rich instead of taxing the wage earners as much, that's autocracy.
If you're preventing us from charging monopoly prices or exploiting people or raising, interest rates to, usury levels. Well, that's autocracy. Anything blocking what we want to do to make money by indebting the population and by, turning it from home owning self sufficient class into a rentier renting dependent class. That's autocracy. Well, they're making autocracy sound like something that is really, really good.
And of course, it used to be called socialism. So again, you're having the economic vocabulary of deception become the basis of this narrative. And I wrote my book J is for Junk Economics on exactly this transformation of vocabulary and a few, have a an adequate vocabulary that's going to help you understand the actual dynamics of how the economy, any economy, works.
Speaker 0: Well, thank you for the, yeah, extensive answers. I I I really think people should appreciate more the concept of of rent seeking in order to, yeah, appreciate the the stage we have in in the current economy and also what this means for civilization. So oh, as always, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom on this. And for anyone who wants to buy the book, I will leave a link in the subscription. Again, you're quite a prolific author, so there's plenty to get there.
And also, of course, I'll leave a link to your website as there's excellent material there all the time. So thank you very much.
Speaker 1: Well, thanks. I also describe, the this whole account of economic rent and killing the host, which which is an early version of my history of Renthurian, what's happened there. And my super imperialism has just been created by the way as an audiobook and that's just being made available now. So people are picking up this idea But the fact that, you know, if you look at what are the Nobel Prizes given for, they're given for denying the theory and the concept of economic rent. They're essentially, it's for junk economics that that denies all of this.
We're really that is the civilizational fight over how do you understand an economy and think of its dynamics. That's really what this is all about. So you've asked the right quest you always ask the right questions, Glenn. That's why I like being on your show so much.
Speaker 0: Thank you. Appreciate that very much.
reSee.it AI Summary
Glenn Diesen’s post cites Mearsheimer warning that NATO push risks Ukraine’s destruction and labels such views as anti-Ukraine bias. In reply, DietHeartNews presents a timeline of Western leaders’ statements on NATO and Ukraine, argues US/NATO aim to prolong the war and maximize Russian casualties, portrays it as NATO encroachment and neglect of Russia’s security concerns, and cites disputed casualty figures from Ukrainian and Russian sources.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
In 2015, Prof. Mearsheimer warned that NATO countries were encouraging Ukraine to take a confrontational stance toward Russia. The predictable result would be the destruction of Ukraine. This is smeared as "anti-Ukrainian" speech by the political-media establishment... https://t.co/DytQ9jVgy1
Video Transcript AI Summary
The speaker argues that the United States is shaping Ukrainian strategy to be aggressive toward Russia, asserting that Ukrainians are being encouraged to believe they will ultimately join the West because the United States will prevail over Putin and achieve its aims. The speaker notes that time is on the side of the U.S. and its allies, and that the Ukrainians, according to the speaker, are largely aligned with this perspective. The speaker claims that the Ukrainians are almost completely unwilling to compromise with the Russians and instead are pursuing a hard-line policy.
Building on this assessment, the speaker states a consequence: if the Ukrainians continue to take a hard-line stance, the end result will be that their country is wrecked. The speaker contends that the policy and posture being encouraged effectively drive toward that outcome, implying that the approach is counterproductive for Ukraine’s welfare.
From the speaker’s viewpoint, it would be more sensible for the United States and its partners to work toward creating a neutral Ukraine. The speaker asserts that achieving neutrality would be in the United States’ interest, as it would help bury the crisis quickly. The speaker also claims that it would be in Russia’s interest to resolve the crisis in this manner, implying mutual benefit from moving toward neutrality rather than escalation.
Most importantly, the speaker emphasizes that it would be in Ukraine’s interest to bring the crisis to an end. The underlying claim is that ending the crisis through neutrality would align with Ukraine’s best interests, contrasting with the consequences of a prolonged hard-line policy and continued conflict.
Throughout the statement, the speaker presents a contrast between a hard-line Ukrainian posture and the proposed alternative of neutrality, framing the latter as a quicker, more beneficial resolution for all parties involved. The overall argument centers on the idea that current encouragement of a tough posture leads to a wrecked Ukraine, while a shift toward neutrality would serve American, Russian, and Ukrainian interests by ending the crisis promptly.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: What we're doing is encouraging the Ukrainians to play tough with the Russians. We're encouraging the Ukrainians to think that they will ultimately become part of the West because we will ultimately defeat Putin and we will ultimately get our way. Time is on our side. And of course, the Ukrainians are playing along with this. And the Ukrainians are almost completely unwilling to compromise with the Russians and instead want to pursue a hard line policy.
Well, as I said to you before, if they do that, the end result is that their country is going to be wrecked. And what we're doing is, in effect, encouraging that outcome. I think it would make much more sense for us to work to create a neutral Ukraine. It would be in our interest to bury this crisis as quickly as possible. It certainly would be in Russia's interest to do so.
And most importantly, it would be in Ukraine's interest to put an end to the crisis.
@DietHeartNews - Alan Watson
2008: Bush: Ukraine has "roadmap to NATO." 2014: Obama toppled government in Kiev. 2017: Trump provided lethal weapons. 2021: Biden: Russia has no say who joins NATO. 2022: Jens Stoltenberg: Russia has no say who joins NATO. 2025: Mark Rutte: Russia has no say who joins NATO. US/NATO goal: Keep the war in #Ukraine going as long as possible. Ukrainian casualties do not matter. Make the war against Russia as costly to Russians as possible - the more rubles spent and the more young Russians dead or injured, the better. The war in Ukraine is not about territory; it's about NATO's encroachment into the Russian borderlands and the West's refusal to address Russia's legitimate security concerns, principally, the Nazi presence in Ukraine and the risk posed by NATO medium range missiles in the Ukraine. According to a Ukrainian army database, over 1.6 million Ukrainian soldiers are KIA, MIA or were wounded, permanently disabled. According to Baltic-based Mediazona, Russian KIA is 163,606. Russian losses have been exaggerated; Ukraine’s losses hidden or minimized.
reSee.it AI Summary
I note that General Harald Kujat, former head of the German Armed Forces and ex-Chairman of NATO's Military Committee, warns that NATO's effort to defeat Russia will destroy Ukraine.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
General Harald Kujat: NATO's Attempt to Defeat Russia Destroys Ukraine - General Harald Kujat is the former head of the German Armed Forces, and he held the highest military position in NATO (Chairman of NATO's Military Committee). General Kujat warns that NATO's obsession with defeating Russia will destroy Ukraine https://youtu.be/qUA1GpRfnvE
Video Transcript AI Summary
General Harald Kuyat discusses the origins, dynamics, and potential endgame of the Ukraine war, emphasizing that the conflict is the product of long-term political developments beginning after the Cold War rather than a single moment. He points to early post-Cold War efforts to integrate Russia into a more stable European security order, noting Bush’s Mainz speech in May 1989, which aimed to reassure Soviet security interests and propose confidence-building measures such as open skies and CSCE expansion. As NATO expanded in the 1990s, Russia sought a buffer zone to manage crises near former Warsaw Pact states and the Baltic region, a concept reflected in the NATO-Russia Founding Act. The crucial mistake, in his view, was suspending this mechanism, a move that has contributed to today’s tensions.
Kuyat highlights turning points in the 2000s: the ABM Treaty’s termination in 2001, the INF Treaty’s withdrawal, and the Open Skies Treaty’s departure; the 2008 Bucharest summit, where Ukraine and Georgia were pressured for NATO membership, a move that foreshadowed later crises. He notes warnings about red lines and Crimea’s annexation followed those developments. He contends that the war could have been avoided or ended earlier if 2021-2022 draft treaties and Istanbul negotiations had been pursued seriously, and argues that Europeans bore responsibility for not advancing peace proposals during those moments.
Regarding current U.S. policy, Kuyat asserts that he believes former President Trump’s effort to end the fighting is sincere, aiming to end killings and seek peace for historical recognition. He says Europeans failed to end the war with their own proposals over the past four years, and that military victory over Russia was never feasible. He stresses that the goal must be to end the conflict and suffering as early as possible, not to secure a decisive military victory. He recalls that negotiations could have progressed if Europe had embraced negotiations instead of prolonging the conflict.
On the prospects for peace, Kuyat discusses concessions and security guarantees, including Ukraine’s neutrality and the possible deployment of NATO-country troops in a manner framed as reassurance rather than combat troops. He notes that both sides must be willing to make concessions and that negotiations must begin soon to avoid a military decision by Russia. He recalls a 2023/2024 proposal for negotiated peace with a small group, which he believes deserves consideration, and emphasizes that a lasting settlement would require mutual security guarantees and a mechanism for enforcement.
Regarding Russia’s objectives, Kuyat states that Russia seeks to avoid NATO proximity to its borders and maintain a buffer zone; it views Donetsk and Luhansk as regions with Russian-speaking populations and as independent states should they be recognized, potentially under UN trusteeship. He suggests Russia might accept recognizing these regions as independent rather than reincorporating them into Ukraine, while Ukraine would withdraw from parts of Donetsk, and Russia would maintain access to its land corridor to Crimea. He notes that a peace settlement would require both sides to concede and that the European approach should also offer security guarantees for Russia and acknowledge Russia’s interests. He acknowledges that Russia’s goal includes a regime change objective, which complicates negotiations, and stresses that any durable peace must involve direct talks, possibly with American mentorship, and must include a long-term security framework.
On European strategy, Kuyat argues Europe should strengthen its own security, reduce overreliance on the United States, and build a balanced, Europe-centered NATO pillar while maintaining the indivisibility of allied security. He warns against a perpetual European commitment to Ukraine’s reconstruction beyond what the United States is willing to support, and urges Europe to act more confidently for its own security interests. He also warns that without timely negotiations, the conflict could spread beyond four regions and threaten critical Black Sea access, potentially tying Ukraine’s fate to broader regional security concerns.
In conclusion, Kuyat reiterates the need for an eventual peace order that includes direct talks with Russia, robust UN monitoring for any demilitarized zones, and a framework that ensures long-term normalization of Russia–Ukraine relations, while Europe strengthens its own security posture within a renewed European security order.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. Today, we have the great privilege of being joined by general Harald Kuyat, the former head of the German Armed Forces. General Kuyat, was also the chairman of the NATO military committee, which is the highest military position within NATO. And the purpose today is to discuss how peace can be achieved in Ukraine and the risk we face by failing to achieve this. So thank you very much, general, for coming back on the program.
My pleasure. So we may be entering the end of the Ukraine war, hopefully. And there are finally some efforts at least being made to find a peaceful solution. However, to resolve the war, I think it's important that we first have to address the causes and dynamics of this war. So how do you assess this?
What are the root causes of this war that must be addressed? Yeah. Yes.
Speaker 1: We live in a time that looks very little to the past. The historical memory is very short. A war does not arise from one day to the next, it is the result of a political development, it emerges from a political situation and leads to a new political situation. And to understand it and also to understand how such a war can be ended, it is important to look back at the causes. I'll start simply at the end of the Cold War.
The Soviet Union imploded, the Warsaw Pact was dissolved, and Russia, which emerged from it, went through extremely difficult times. And Russia tried to meet its own security needs by seeking closer ties with NATO. That is often forgotten today. A crucial milestone in this process was a speech given by then US President Bush in Mainz, in May 1989. In that speech, Bush said the Soviets should know that we do not intend to undermine their legitimate security interests.
That was not our goal. And he made far reaching proposals, such as expanding the CSCE process and reducing American combat troops on European soil, with the aim of establishing a military balance with Russia. But there were also other proposals such as confidence building measures through the introduction of unarmed flights over each other's territory, what is known today as open skies, so very far reaching proposals. And in the following phase up until, I would say, the 1990s, especially when NATO began in 1997 to conduct the first accession negotiations. At that time, I myself conducted the accession talks with the first group, Poland, The Czech Republic and Hungary.
During that period, of course, significant concerns arose on the Russian side, and those concerns related to the military balance. Does the military balance change or not change with the increase in NATO member states? And back then, the Russians approached NATO and proposed establishing a buffer zone, specifically, a Kordon Sanitaire. The goal was to jointly manage crises and conflicts that could arise in the area of the former Warsaw Pact states and the former Soviet Republics, that is, the Baltic states, to extinguish a fire, as it was phrased at the time, before it turned into a wildfire. The aim was to prevent situations in which Russian and NATO security interests would inevitably be affected and to prevent a war between NATO and Russia from emerging as a result.
That was the real goal. This idea was then shortly afterward incorporated into the NATO Russia Founding The question was, can we establish a mechanism that allows us to jointly manage such a situation, a consultation and decision making mechanism. And that wasn't easy to arrange, but it was arranged. Anyone interested can still look into the NATO Russia Founding Act today. The crucial mistake we made was that we suspended this procedure.
This institution that was meant to prevent conflicts and was created during a time of close political coordination and very close military cooperation, precisely when we needed it. That is a major historical mistake made by NATO, and we are still dealing with the consequences today. I'll keep it brief and focus on just two points, without going into the details. There was even a rapprochement afterward, to the point that Russia in the year 2000 proposed joining NATO that was already Putin speaking to Clinton at the time. But the decisive turning points in this relationship were military and strategic ones.
It began in 2001 with the termination of the ABM Treaty on an anti ballistic missile defense system, which had been concluded in 1972 as a complement to the then existing limits on continental strategic offensive systems. This was followed by the termination of the INF Treaty, which was extremely important for Europe, by The United States, and finally also the withdrawal from the Open Skies Treaty, which President Bush had proposed in 1989. The political turning point was the two thousand and eight summit in Bucharest, where the son of then President Bush, George W. Bush, tried with considerable pressure to issue an invitation, which of course requires the consensus of all Member States, to Georgia and Ukraine to become members of NATO. That effort failed, and as is often the case in such situations, a far reaching perspective was included in the communique as a kind of face saving measure for the American President.
At the time there were warnings, including from the American side, that this would effectively cross a red line. In particular, the later CIA director, who was then The US ambassador in Moscow, predicted this precisely, and that is exactly what happened with the annexation of Crimea and the subsequent events we all know.
Speaker 0: It's it's interesting that, as you said, from the nineteen nineties that at that time, one spoke more openly about the challenges to Russian security and this possible reactions which would come. But since then, it's now considered to be controversial as if this might challenge the mandate of NATO as a force for good by discussing this, and I it's also, as I said, with 2001 that, at that time, many European states expressed caution about withdrawing from the ABM treaty as it could disrupt the strategic nuclear stability, but now they don't speak about this anymore. And same with 2008, you heard a lot of opposition from Europe, but also some American leaders such as Robert Gates. But but one isn't really allowed to anymore to discuss it either anymore now. It's seen as being controversial, which I find, yeah, quite quite troubling.
That is the inability to actually discuss mutual security concerns, how we might threaten each other. I did wanna move on to the war which we're currently in though because The US has shifted its position, and you are one of the, well, few people who who said this in an early interview that at some point, the war would be lost and the Americans would then pull away from this. I think you said it about three years ago. Now how do you assess American policies today? What are the objectives and motivations by The United States?
Are they attempting to end the war in Ukraine, or are they just trying to outsource it to the Europeans? I
Speaker 1: am convinced that president Trump's effort to end this war, or as he himself puts it, to end the killing, is sincere. Of course, part of it is that he wants to go down in history as a President of Peace. The Nobel Prize also plays a role, of course, but that's not the decisive factor. What matters is the effort, the seriousness, the genuine pursuit of actually ending this war. And I welcome that for two reasons.
One is that the Europeans, in fact, have neither found the strength nor the will over the past four years to end this war with their own proposals. It was always just a question of whether it might still be possible to defeat Russia militarily, which was hopeless from the very beginning. Everyone who gave in to this illusion contributed to the destruction of Ukraine, to the fact that the human suffering in Ukraine has grown day by day. I believe we Europeans also need to reflect on the degree of responsibility we bear, that we have, for years, fueled this war instead of, alongside our support for Ukraine, putting forward proposals to end it. That is really the crucial point in this whole discussion.
As I said at the beginning, a war arises from a political situation, and it leads to a new political situation. And of course, this new political situation must be brought about through political and diplomatic means. It's also impossible to do this by military means. When it comes to the use of the military and weapons, the only question is: Victory or defeat? Is the enemy destroyed or not destroyed?
But that can no longer be the goal in the twenty first century. The goal must instead be to end a conflict, whatever its cause, as early as possible and to end both the suffering of the people and the destruction of a country. That is the major problem for Europeans. And as for the Ukrainian government, it must be said, there was more than one moment when we reached a turning point, when a decision had to be made: do we continue this war, or do we seize the opportunity to finally enter peace negotiations and bring this war to an end? And I'll repeat something I've said many times: this war didn't have to happen if we had responded to Russia's draft treaties from December 2021 and at least made a serious effort.
And this war could also have been ended very early if we had completed those far advanced negotiations in Istanbul, which, up until 04/15/2022, had even produced a largely developed draft agreement. Of course, there were still some very important points that needed to be resolved. None of that happened. At all these turning points, including the later ones I won't go into detail now it was also up to the Europeans whether the war could have been brought to an end or not. That must be stated today, looking back, as clearly as possible.
And regarding the current prospects of ending this war, it is the case that the American President has indeed made reasonable proposals, some of which were later revised, also under the influence of the Europeans, through what one might call shuttle diplomacy between the Russians and the Ukrainians. But at the moment, we don't know exactly which points have been definitively settled and which remain open. Based on what is publicly known so far, the main issue concerns the question of Ukraine's neutrality. That also means the question of NATO membership. And also the question of the deployment of armed forces from NATO member states.
I am deliberately not saying NATO troops, but rather troops from NATO countries, as favored by the so called coalition of the willing. Another issue is the question of security guarantees for Ukraine and, of course, the major problem of ceding Ukrainian territory. But there are possible solutions to all these problems. Both sides must be willing to make concessions. Without that, there will be no outcome.
And what is especially important, we may come back to this, is that these concessions should be made as soon as possible so that both sides no longer cling to their maximal demands. Because if an agreement isn't reached soon, this war will be decided militarily, and in fact, it's already been decided. Everyone needs to keep that in mind. The Ukrainian Armed Forces are no longer capable of maintaining a coherent defense. The number of casualties is extremely high, as is the number of deserters.
The personnel problem will become so severe in a short time that a successful defense can no longer be sustained. What we're seeing is essentially a delaying action, that's what it is, nothing more. So the question remains: If the Americans want to bring this conflict to an end, are there any approaches on the part of The United States that would be acceptable to both Russia and Ukraine in order to resolve the core issues I just mentioned? By the way, and I did say that I do see the possibility and just want to point it out, we already made a proposal for a negotiated peace with a small group back in 2023 and again on January 5. Of course, this is not noticed by the German public, I'm well aware of that, but these are indeed proposals worth considering that could help lead to a solution.
Speaker 0: I always thought it's a bit of a tragedy, though, that the Europeans, to a large extent, refused this diplomacy and negotiations for four years. And, you know, in 2022, Macron, he tried to keep the dialogue open with the Russians, and there was a lot of pressure for him to stop talking to Moscow. And there was a good comment, I think, we came directly from Macron, where he said that the problem in the future might be that the the future of Europe would then be decided in Moscow Moscow and Washington if there was no diplomacy. And I think this is obviously, yeah, a problem which has now come true. But you mentioned the discussions for peace that is it has to include the issue of neutrality for Ukraine, but it also needs security guarantees.
These two objectives though, they could be in conflict. Of course, it depends on the extent of the security guarantees. But obviously, Ukraine has legitimate security concerns, the Russians as well. So how can this be balanced? And I guess my question is, what are the objectives here of Russia?
Because my concern is that if a peace agreement does not entail restoring the neutrality for Ukraine, then Russia would essentially cease all the territory from Kharkov to Odessa. And in such a state, I think Ukraine would be unable to recover from this war, and indeed its entire nationhood could collapse. So Yeah. How do you see or assess the Russian objectives? And the yeah.
What what they are prepared to do if they do not get, their security concerns met?
Speaker 1: I fully agree with what you just said. That's exactly the point. If we fail to reach a result soon and at least begin concrete negotiations, then this war will be decided militarily, and it will be decided in Russia's favor. That's a very, very important point. So what are Russia's interests?
As I mentioned at the beginning, Russia has a historical interest in ensuring that Russia and NATO do not move so close together that a human or technical failure could lead to an escalation that can no longer be contained politically and that could actually result in a major European conflict. I believe this interest in maintaining a buffer zone remains a very important aspect of Russia's strategic objectives. The second point is that the territories currently being discussed, these two regions, especially Luhansk and Donetsk, are in fact no longer meant to be handed back to the Ukrainians. There are several reasons for this: one is that these areas were and still are, if the refugees return, predominantly inhabited by a Russian speaking population The second is that these two regions have a special status since both declared themselves independent people's republics. Russia did not recognize this independence for a long time, only on 02/21/2022.
But that, incidentally, could also serve as a possible basis for a compromise. If both sides were truly willing to make concessions, the compromise could consist of Russia reaffirming its recognition of them as independent states. That means that, in the event of a peace treaty, they would not become part of the Russian Federation, and Ukraine would do the same. This would mean that we would have two independent states here, which could theoretically also be placed under UN trusteeship. That's a proven approach that in the past has helped states or territories involved in war regain their sovereignty and independence.
So in that sense it's an important aspect. The second point is that Russia will, of course, try to maintain the land bridge to Crimea. That means the two regions of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson would be affected. It seems, however, that Russia might be willing to give up part of the territories it has captured. But, and I deliberately didn't emphasize this earlier, the first solution for Luhansk and Donetsk would, of course, also mean that Ukrainian forces would have to withdraw from the areas they still control in Donetsk.
That's not the case in Luhansk. If these issues aren't resolved, there won't be any progress in negotiations. That's something we need to keep in mind. There's another point to consider, one that isn't all that easy to accept, at least not for the current government in Ukraine, namely this. From the very beginning in 2022, Russia's approach in Ukraine was aimed at bringing about a change, a regime change, as we say today, in other words, to remove this government.
And that remains one of Russia's key objectives. But it's also the case, and you can see this if you take a look at Trump's 28 plan from early last year, that the Americans, too, actually want presidential elections, followed by parliamentary and local elections. That basically means that this current government will leave office and a new government will take over. In my view, those are the main goals that Russia is pursuing. But the European approach also plays a role here, namely, the attempt to provide security guarantees for Ukraine.
You made exactly that connection in your question by saying that we are discussing troops, European troops on Ukrainian territory, not at the front, not on the front line, but more in the West. But that would essentially be a reassurance force meant to deter Russia from launching another attack. What's important here, and the Europeans have apparently understood this, is that they cannot successfully handle this task on their own. Rather, they need, so to speak, and I say this somewhat ironically, an additional reinsurance policy from The United States for their own reinsurance force. And by now, there is supposedly an agreement between Ukraine and The United States.
But I would also like to recall what President Trump said not all that long ago: We are ready to step in here as a guarantor power because we know that Russia has no intention of attacking again. If the opposite were true, we would not do it. I think that's an interesting statement. It should serve as an incentive to consider whether it really makes sense to keep pushing this idea of a coalition of the willing. And I believe that other solutions can be found that would serve Ukraine's security better than such an approach.
It is true, and I think this needs to be emphasized once again, that the end of the war in Ukraine would be the prerequisite for a new peace security order to emerge in Europe. And in my view, this peace and security order would be the greatest and most effective security guarantee for Ukraine.
Speaker 0: I I understand the motivations of most of these actors in this war. That is well, the Russians say that they face an existential threat if NATO entrenched itself in Ukraine, so they want to have neutrality restored. So it makes sense. The Ukrainians Ukrainians say that they face an existential threat from the Russian invasion, so they have to fight. This also makes perfect sense.
And the the Americans, we heard, they wanted to use Ukraine as an instrument to weaken Russia as a strategic rival, but it failed. So now they give it to the Europeans, which also makes sense. But I have a hard time understanding, the policies of the Europeans. So I want to ask therefore, what are the objectives of the Europeans? Because it appears that many European leaders would prefer, the continuation of the war rather than a bad deal.
And, there's also a concern that, of course, The US would, United States would reduce its presence in Europe once the war comes to an end. How do you assess this European position? What is our strategy?
Speaker 1: It is true that The United States, specifically the previous administration, had the particular goal of weakening Russia as a geopolitical rival, politically, economically and militarily. At the same time, efforts were made to integrate the Europeans into an Asian network, with allies such as Japan, New Zealand, Australia and South Korea, in case a war over Taiwan were to occur. After all, China is the real challenge for The United States, and the effort to weaken Russia is closely connected to that. If Russia were unable to provide further support to China, the situation would be easier for The United States. In my view, the current president, President Trump, is pursuing a different policy.
He tends to think in terms of hemispheres, as we can see from the issues involving Greenland, Canada and the Indian Ocean. And the real question is, would he be willing, after the end of this war, to grant Russia its own hemisphere, disregarding The United States' long standing close security and strategic ties with Europe. That is a development we must of course watch very carefully. Personally, I do not believe that The United States will completely detach itself from NATO or fail to honor its mutual defense commitments. I am rather of the opinion that the Americans have always been in Europe, not out of benevolence toward the Europeans, but because this is about American security interests.
And anyone who looks at a map can see the importance of Europe, for example, for The United States policy toward the Middle East. Europe and Germany in particular is essentially a hub for such military operations, and it's no coincidence that the commands, the headquarters for Africa and The Middle East, for instance, are located here in Germany. I think that's something we always need to keep in mind. Well, this question doesn't seem as pressing to me as it's currently being discussed in public, although it certainly means that more will be demanded of Europe. Europe really does need to do more for its own security.
If Europe were to do that, and obviously all governments seem determined to do so, it would also mean that the bond with our close American ally would be strengthened. In the past, and still today, I have spoken of Europe's self assertion. Europe must be able to stand on its own, politically, economically, technologically and not least, militarily. Militarily not within the European Union but as a European pillar within NATO. Of course, that means we cannot replace The United States in certain areas, but we can move toward a balanced sharing of responsibility for our common security.
And as Europeans, we should keep emphasizing that NATO is founded on a basic principle that also applies to The United States, namely, that the security of the Allies is indivisible. There must be no zones of differing security. Yet that is precisely the danger we are currently seeing, and Europe must, of course, take action against it.
Speaker 0: Well, ideally, we are heading towards some diplomatic settlement. But what I hear from Moscow, though, is lack of trust in any agreements with the West, and they therefore prefer the capitulation of Ukraine to get, essentially, Western intelligence agencies out of Ukraine once and for all. The argument from Russia is that the West deceived them with the Minsk agreement from 2015 to '22 and also the sabotage of the Istanbul agreement that is mainly The United States and Britain. And, essentially, the fear is that any peace agreement will be something temporary until they can restart the war again in the future. How how do you assess this view and the fear that the Russians are expressing?
Speaker 1: Politics isn't just about facts. In politics, a great deal of experience from the past also plays a role. Trust is a crucial foundation, both for concluding agreements and for ensuring they are honored. And what you've described is indeed a major problem. It has not been possible to build trust between the two warring parties.
Yet that is an essential prerequisite, not only for the negotiations themselves, but also for the period after a peace treaty. That's why I consider it extremely important to make provisions so that both sides can trust that the agreement they reach will actually be upheld. What does that mean? That means it is completely out of the question for the Europeans, who, as de facto allies of Ukraine, were involved in this war not directly but indirectly, to take on the task of monitoring compliance with the peace agreement. The Russians will not accept that, and I also think they are quite justified in not accepting it.
In other words, if one truly wants to find and agree on a viable solution, viable not just for a short time but in the long term, one that also normalizes relations between Russia and Ukraine, then the agreements must be monitored, it must be ensured that they are upheld, and the only real option for that is the United Nations. That's the crucial point. If it actually comes to establishing a demilitarized zone, and our proposal envisions such a zone with a depth of 60 kilometers, then this zone must be monitored, specifically by a UN force under Chapter seven. That means a force that can actually enforce compliance. We saw in the past with Minsk II that the OSCE, which was tasked with monitoring compliance with Minsk II, was simply unable to do so because it lacked enforcement capability.
Essentially, it only documented the violations, which is not unimportant either. I don't want to downplay it, but she wasn't able to implement what had previously been agreed upon. That means this is, so to speak, the real solution, overcoming the reservations that exist on both sides, and I should say, I don't want to judge that right now, and establishing a certain level of trust that is necessary to contribute in the long term to a normalization of relations. Because this normalization of relations essentially also means the normalization of international relations on European territory.
Speaker 0: You recently, though, signed under a document for proposing a peace. Now you discussed as well in the past the demilitarized zones and the role of the OSCE. But how how do you think we can achieve a permanent piece here? Is is there agreement in which we can, I guess, bridge the different competing security requirements of all sides because at the moment, one gets the impression from Europe that we only want to discuss security guarantees for Ukraine, not for Russia? So how how how do you envision a peace through diplomatic means in Ukraine?
What
Speaker 1: tends to be overlooked is that in an agreement between two warring parties, both sides must agree to the respective security guarantees. That's the crucial point. It can't be that Russia is expected to accept any security guarantees the West decides on for Ukraine if they don't align with its own security interests. Essentially, this is a give and take situation. Both sides must be willing to grant the other side security guarantees and, in return, accept its security interests.
And Russia has emphasized this in the past as well. When you look back and consider what actually happened in the years after the war, after the coup, the Maidan coup, after the Minsk II agreement, after the civil war that broke out there, a mistrust has developed that is practically boundless between these two states, and we too must contribute to addressing that. And, you know, you mentioned earlier that Macron said one must also talk with Putin, He has repeated that even quite recently. I consider it extremely important that Europeans abandon this isolation of Russia and especially of Putin and that they be genuinely willing to enter into direct talks. That will not be the case in the peace negotiations, because the peace negotiations will ultimately be conducted between the two warring parties, possibly under the mentorship of Trump or the Americans, but in any case not the Europeans.
However, a European peace and security order cannot come into being unless the Europeans themselves take that step and are willing to include the largest European country, namely Russia. And that is the crucial point: that we look to the future, leave this war behind us, and develop a stable security order in Europe that prevents new wars. That's the crucial point. And unfortunately on the European side, I do see some who argue in that direction, but I don't see any constructive willingness to actually act on it. There are still many who cling to the fiction that this war could somehow be won militarily by Ukraine.
That's not only absurd but also irresponsible toward the people of Ukraine, and toward us Europeans as well. Because the longer this war lasts, the greater the risk that the war in Ukraine will turn into a war over Ukraine. That risk grows every day. And we will see this. If negotiations don't start soon, Russia will of course continue this war and it will also expand it.
Not to all of Ukraine, that's not Russia's intention, nor are they capable of that. But they will go beyond their original goal, namely those four regions at the center of this war, and I assume already in the spring, perhaps even in March, they will make a push toward Odessa. That has strategic significance for Russia, because from the Russian perspective, it's a Russian city, and it would also mean that Ukraine would be cut off from the Black Sea. In a sense, Russia could then link up with its stationed troops in Transnistria. Because the Black Sea in particular is of great strategic importance as it allows Russia access to the Mediterranean, or denies it, if the situation were to take a negative turn.
So that's something we really need to keep in mind, and that's why I keep insisting we need to move away from maximalist positions. Let's start the negotiations. Negotiations can't be decided before they've even begun. But I increasingly get the impression that both sides believe they need to make commitments that match their positions even before the negotiations have started. That's not going to work.
Of course, before negotiations begin, people stake out maximal positions, but they also have to be willing to scale them back once talks are underway.
Speaker 0: I just have one last question, which is about the risk of war now. Because if we do not make a peace agreement, I was wondering what what are the risks of a war between direct war between Europe or NATO on the one side and Russia on the other? Because at the end of such wars, the dynamic appears to change. That is, there's talk now in Europe about getting more directly involved in the war. And in Russia, I hear a lot of growing anger that they need to restore their deterrent, which have been violated.
And essentially, sides now seem prepared to escalate, which is extremely dangerous. Do you see this threat of a direct war?
Speaker 1: Well, what I don't see is any indication that Russia has plans to attack NATO or NATO member states once the war is over and once they have, so to speak, rebuilt their own armed forces. By the way, that's also the view of the US government. The respective threat assessments clearly state whether that is the case or not. And here, both the 2024 and 2025 threat assessments make it clear that Russia has neither the intention nor the capability to carry out such an attack. In addition, the data we hear, like the Russians could attack in 2027 or in 2029 or 2030, indicate, according to The United States, that the reconstitution of Russia's ground forces will take about ten years after the end of the war.
So I want to separate that deliberately. But the risk that a war could still break out, as I already hinted in response to your last question, lies in the possibility that this war could spiral out of control. And we know that Ukraine has in the past repeatedly tried to draw The United States and also the Europeans into this war, for example, through attacks on Russia's strategic early warning system, on its strategic bomber fleet, on nuclear power plants, and similar actions. That, by the way, was also a very crucial point for both governments. President Biden has repeatedly emphasized that his intention was to prevent a third world war.
And the starting point, of course, was what I just said. But even President Trump recently emphasized once again that this risk existed and, in my view, still exists. That means this conflict could develop out of the dynamics of the current war. And in Europe, there are indeed discussions about what could be done to prevent such
Speaker 0: a thing
Speaker 1: to defend oneself. However, these discussions assume that a future war would unfold roughly like the war in Ukraine, essentially a mix of the trench warfare of World War I and the limited maneuver warfare of World War That is a completely wrong assessment. I want to stress this explicitly. A war between Russia and NATO or even the beginning of a war against a NATO member state would be entirely different from the war in Ukraine. The Russian Armed Forces remain capable of achieving both regional and international dominance.
The Russian air forces, as well as the strategic and medium range missile forces, have been practically unaffected by the war. On the contrary, their combat effectiveness has even increased significantly during the conflict. This means we must be fully aware of what it would entail if such a situation were to occur, namely, if this war were to spiral out of control, for example, because negotiations fail and Russia continues the war by launching a new offensive in the south of the country. We need to be clear about that. The answer can basically only be, as I've already suggested, that negotiations must begin as soon as possible.
And we must also be ready, in the spirit of rebuilding trust and restoring predictability, to talk with Russia. Helmut Schmidt always referred to this as the predictability of political action. Only by talking with the other side can one properly assess its interests, capabilities and intentions and draw the right logical conclusions from that. That is a deficit in European security policy that is extremely serious. Let me just add this in conclusion: We are preparing to support Ukraine in every possible way, even after a peace agreement is reached.
Just consider President Zelenskyy's demand to provide €800,000,000,000 for rebuilding Ukraine's economy and for the country's industrialization. For Europeans to take that on because the Americans are not willing to continue providing that support in the future is essentially also a factor that shapes relations with Russia. One must be clear about that. We are tying ourselves to Ukraine in a way that prolongs the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. I would like Europeans to act with more confidence and be willing to represent their own security interests, not against The United States, not against Russia, not against China, but for us, for our own security.
That is legitimate, the American President does the same. And I believe it is necessary in this new world order of rival powers for Europe to be capable and willing to take its destiny a bit more into its own hands than it has so far.
Speaker 0: Ottendor Koyat, thank you so much for your, yeah, sharp analysis on the competing security interest and also, yeah, your wise words in terms of trying to find a way of bringing an end to this war. And I really hope that political leaders such as chancellor Mertz are listening to you so we can, yeah, get some common sense back in and restoring peace on our continent. So thank you very much. All the best. Take care.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Alastair Crooke: Iran Defeated Insurrection & Restored Deterrence https://youtu.be/7VVpOvmw9SE https://t.co/OpRrMUuPRd
Video Transcript AI Summary
Alastair Crook discusses with the host the evolving US strategy toward Iran, the credibility of Iran’s deterrence, the role of Israel and Gulf states, and what is known about Iran’s domestic unrest.
- Trump’s strategy toward Iran has shifted. Initially, he sought a big, quick victory with minimal entanglement, including a possible attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities in June and assistance from Israel to identify a gap to exploit. Crook says Trump hoped for a toppling of the Iranian leadership via a “Maduro-style” operation that could be quickly achieved with outside support. Over time, outcomes did not align with those hopes, and the plan became far more complicated.
- The naval armada near Iran was intended as a pressure point but, from the Pentagon’s view, is more of a liability. The armada is loaded with Tomahawk missiles rather than air defense missiles; estimates suggest 300-350 Tomahawks among two destroyers and one carrier. Iran has countermeasures: anti-ship missiles along the coast, submarines (including mini-submarines) with anti-ship missiles, and fast attack craft. Drones threaten the fleet, and the air defense burden would be high if a drone swarm attacked. Hormuz could be shut by Iran in the event of war, a long-term strategic lever that Iran has signaled.
- Iran’s deterrence has matured: any attack by Israel or the US could trigger full-scale war and Hormuz closure. Symbolic exchanges were proposed by intermediaries (an empty IRGC building and an attack on a US base), but Iran rejected such symbolic moves, insisting on a broader, sustained response if attacked.
- Israel’s posture and constraints: Israel has told the US it does not view the nuclear issue as the sole determinant, but instead urges action to destroy Iran’s ballistic missile system and deter future threats. Netanyahu, meeting with Whitlock, indicated opposition to any nuclear deal if the US does not secure certain Israeli demands, warning that without Israeli endorsement, a US deal would fail. Israel insists on conditions that make a broader deal nonviable for the US.
- The Arabs’ restraint: Gulf states, especially Saudi Arabia and the UAE, do not want direct involvement in an attack on Iran, including airspace use or refueling. Several factors influence their position: fear of Iranian retaliation, concerns about broader regional instability, and shifts in regional alignments. Saudi Arabia has grown more anti-Israel, viewing Israel as destabilizing and expressing concerns about the region’s security order. There is also a fear that a major war could trigger an Arab Spring-like upheaval in Gulf monarchies.
- Iran’s internal unrest: The insurrection in Iran involved trained insurgents (MEK operatives trained by the Americans in Armenia and Kurds trained in Northeastern Syria) and some Baluch participants. Corridors through Turkey and Kurdish groups facilitated their entry into Kermanshah Province. The strategy aimed at creating chaos to provoke a Western intervention, with reports that attackers were paid (roughly $5-$10) to inflame violence, burn buildings, attack ambulances, and kill. The Iranian government reports nearly 3,000 killed during the protests, with about 150 more unidentified; the majority of casualties were security forces due to exchange of fire. The narrative contrasts with outside accounts, noting the opposition did not lead to defections from key state institutions, and Israeli intelligence assessment reportedly concluded the unrest did not threaten the regime’s collapse.
- Regional and great-power dynamics: Russia and China have signaled opposition to letting Iran be pressured by the United States, with discussions in Russia about offering a nuclear umbrella or naval support for Iran, though official policies are unclear.Originally planned joint exercises near Hormuz were paused; there are ongoing considerations of Chinese/Russian involvement that would complicate US options. A Chinese-Russian naval presence near Iran could limit US maneuvering. A recent drone shot down by the USS Lincoln reflects continued attempts at signaling and potential negotiation.
- Overall assessment: Trump faces a dilemma between projecting strength and avoiding a costly escalation, with Israeli opposition complicating any potential US move. The US cannot easily sustain pressure without risking market turmoil and broad regional and great-power entanglements. The likely trajectory involves continued “negotiations about negotiations” rather than immediate, decisive action, while Iran’s deterrence and regional recalibrations constrain what any use of force might achieve.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. Today, we are joined by Alastair Crook, a former British diplomat and negotiator who spent decades working on conflicts and political Islam in The Middle East. He's also the founder and director of the conflict forum, and I will leave a link in the description to his substack with his fascinating analysis. So thank you as always for coming back on the program.
Speaker 1: No. It's a pleasure. Always a pleasure to join you.
Speaker 0: So I I thought a good place to start would be what is the strategy of Trump with Iran? Because it appears that he's been building up all these military assets in the region. However, is this in preparation of a strike, or or is he actually looking for a way out? Because it's been, well, per per per perplexing or confusing to many what exactly is going on here?
Speaker 1: Well, I think he's what he wanted has changed. That is one of the reasons why I think it's been a little bit confusing. I think al Qiyas said this, if you like, when the insurrection in Iran began, he was looking at this as an opportunity for a big event, a quick victory, clean, quick, short, no entanglement. He would go in in boom, ask, as he said, about, the attack on the Iran, the nuclear facilities in June. But he he's been looking for this and asking the Israelis for help in identifying, if you like, the gap into which he can bring off I call it rather rudier stump, but bring off, if you like, something like a Maduro attack.
And for him, it would be fine, you know, if he could find someone number two in, you know, Iran that an attack that could topple The States and that someone else would come in. So he I think this is what he was, you know, sort of first toying with. And now things have turned out to be very much more complicated than he, you know, originally hoped. He thought maybe he could kill the supreme leader or do something that would support the protesters. And none of these things have really sort of come out as really he was expecting in a number of ways.
I mean, firstly, the weapon, the armada that he has against he's put on at the Pershing Ghar as a sort of pressure point or a threat to Iran is really turning out from the point of view of the Pentagon to be a penalty, slightly something of a liability. The the Amada has been loaded more with Tomahawk missiles than air defense missiles, put it briefly. And Tomahawk missiles, even the Tomahawk missiles, are are not really sufficient for a major operation in Iran. I think people I'm not a military expert who estimate it to about three three hundred, 350 Tomahawk missiles aboard the two destroyers and the associate task forces, only one carrier in position now. So I think he'd hoped that this would be actually a sort of major pressure point on on Iran that would perhaps persuade them to back down or or whatever.
In fact, it's done the opposite because Iran has honeycombed the coast opposite this armada with anti ship missiles. It has also populated the area with the seas there with submarines. They have mini submarines which have anti ship missiles and also they have speedboats which have anti ship missiles. The anti ship missiles from submarines, although there are mini submarines, can be powered while they're submerged. So the risk to the Armada has meant that it has got pushed further and further back from the coast of Iran.
It has been pushed further back because of the danger of, you know, drone attacks. And the number of air defenses for, if you like, a number of ships like this is is small. Again, I'm no expert in anything, but I'm told maybe, you know, 50 to a 100 air defenses per missile destroyer. And a swarm of 300 Iranian drones would mean almost a depletion of many of that air defense system because you have to fire two or three defense missiles to to to against one drone. So a drone swarm would be problematic for them.
And the anti ship missiles along the coast are problematic. It's much more complicated than Yemen, and yet the forces are not very comparable. They're actually slightly less opposite Iran than they were opposite Yemen at that time, and that didn't work. And one of their carriers got hit and was dashed. So that sort of pressure has become more of a complicated fact.
The other part to this was, of course, the threat to shut of that and long term. And the moment war starts, the Iranians said we shut Hormuz. And they can do that quite easily. They don't need to mine it. They can shut it.
They could allow the passage of certain vessels. They perhaps those vessels belonging to Gulf States that had not been complicit in any attack on. But the most important element has been a complete shift in the Iranian position from June. The the position of Iran is simply any attack on us by Israel or by The United States full war and the closure of Hormuz or the mafia. So America sent messages by intermediaries, so just first of all suggesting, well, let's have a symbol symbolic exchange.
You know, we will attack, you know, an empty IRGC building or something of that sort, and you can attack something in one of our, you know, military bases, Al Udeid or something like this, and then we'll say, call it quits. Immediately rejected by Iran. Said absolutely no. Any attack from whatever court, and it immediately starts full scale war. At that point, Israel entered and sent messages to Iran saying, oh, you know, we're not gonna join in this attack.
This is an American attack, and we won't join in and therefore we don't expect you to attack us. Iran responded, Absolutely not. As soon as we are attacked immediately upon being attacked, we start the war altogether. So I think that Trump has now, you know, been looking at various options, searching around, sort of looking for where's the chink in this, you know, deterrence system that Iran have erected that I can go in and and attack. And also because, you know, the pretext of the attack is now is not really present.
I mean, it's Trunk and Selk who said the nuclear threat has been obliterated. There are no protests. And the Israelis have said, categorically, the Israeli intelligence have said to Trump's people that a standoff air attack into Iraq would not bring the collapse of the government or the stake. That is a characteric assessment of the Israelis because they saw what happened during the recent insurrection within Iran that was, if you like, controlled and managed and arranged from outside Iran, from Kurds and from the Mujahideen al Qaq and other elements in order to try and create the conditions for what they see as the house of God with Iran to collapse. And the even the Israelis admit, you know, it didn't happen.
First of all, Iran rounded up most of the insurrectionists because they had cracked the Starlink link and severed the Starlink link, but it also seemingly enabled them to trap and arrest those who had the satellite connections to be outside world and who were being, if you like, orchestrated by controllers outside of Iran. So they've been rounding up so much of the sort of CIA Mossad network in Iran. I mean, some of it may still be there, but it's taken a big, big hit during this period. And there are now no demonstrations. So what is the peg that front is going to hang it on?
I mean, the the the nuclear issue, even Israel says it's not the issue, and then, there is, you know, no protest to join. I know Lindsey Graham has been out there saying, you know, well, you need to put troops on the ground. Go there and support the protesters. And, you know, you can you can have a good laugh at that because there's no organized process movement in Iran. And, you know, the straw man of Pahlavi was set up by the Iranians largely, the idea that some of the shark could come in.
He has no support. I mean, the Israeli technology has no support in Iran, and they put it up because their objectives for Iran are simply and as they've already started, to balkanize the country. So, they set up constitutions for Kurdish area and Amun Shah and a Baluchi area up in Sistan, and then, you know, a Zeri area, and that it would the aim most from the Israeli point of view is to dismember Iran and have Iranians killing each other from these various sort of ethnic sections rather as they've achieved in in Syria. But that doesn't appeal very much to the West, you know, ethnic civil war as an objective. So Bolhavi, Palhavi has been put up because that sounds still as well in Europe and America.
So I think Trump is still trying to find a sort of quick, clean operation, but he entangled himself. You know, he he went maximum in saying, you know, we're going to attack and, you know, support is coming. Help is coming to the protesters. We're going to support the protesters. But there is not really a great deal of what could he do.
He could bomb some buildings, some symbols of the state from afar, but he may lose aircraft. He could, you know, find this damage to the to his armada, his greatest in mother of Persian Gulf. So he it it a dilemma that he's got himself into. And I think at the moment, the effort is trying to to try and find how he can reverse Al Shaddaf's, And the Israelis are not helping. And so that's where it is.
And the Israelis, if you like, really put roadblocks in in the way to stop him, if you like, moving towards an exit based on some sort of nuclear opinion.
Speaker 0: So the real, I guess, achievement by Iran is this ability to establish a very firm deterrence because, it seems as if, well, what you're describing is The US attempting to dictate the rules for a coming war. That is, Israel will be on the sidelines. We bomb a little bit today, and then we'll call it quits by the evening. Essentially, this deterrence would also entail denying The US any escalation control, that is to choose when to start a war, how the war should be fought, and when it should end. But my what I found interesting, though, is that a lot of America's Arab allies, they do not want to participate in this in any way.
That is, they don't wanna have their airspace used in an attack. They don't want The US to refuel or any way that's seen as assisting in the attack on Iran. I think it's especially Saudi Arabia and The UAE, but but but also other Gulf states have expressed similar concern. Is this about their the fear of retaliation? Is it the assumption that Iran cannot be defeated, or are they worried about the goal of essentially destroying, balkanizing Iran, what it would mean for them?
Or how can we, I guess, understand this restraint from the Arabs or the Gulf States? Is this just a deterrence?
Speaker 1: No. There I think there are a number of elements. One element is, I mean, of course, the closure of Hormuz would have great impact on Gulf States whose vessels traverse. Theoretically, they could get passage by, by not being involved in any attack or colluding in any attack. But I think it's more than that.
There are two other factors that are are changing. The first is Saudi Arabia has taken a quite strongly anti Israeli line, seeing Israel as a threat to Saudi Arabia, its ambitions. After all, Greater Israel incorporates part of Saudi Arabia. And their see, Israel's sort of plan is to have sort of weakened, organized, if you like, a region. And so they are becoming very much antagonistic to Israel.
There was an extraordinary speech by the previous head of intelligence in Saudi Arabia when he described the the Israelis in no uncertain terms as genocidal and killing Arabs and others. So I think this is an important element, the sense that, you know, Iran is Israel is not their friend. Israel is a destabilizing factor in the Middle East, a a deep redist in a way that they would have never believed a few years ago, but now see the sort of you know, that there are no restraints. The attack on Qatar, the attack on Lebanon, the attack on Yemen. They see, you know, there's no restraints.
There's no one there to help save us from from from from Israel. So there's been a change in in mood, and and the vibes are different, shall we say. But I think the other thing is something which is not much seen, but is that in Iraq elsewhere, the Mujah, the the the leaders, Shi'ism, the the the people that are emulated and followed, have warned that if there is an attack on the supreme leader, the ay pal HaMeni, then there will be a calling of global. There will be a fatwa of mandatory global jihad against Israel and America. And that this has been signed also signed off by Sistani, who has a huge standing in the reach beyond just the Shi'i, and also many all of the other clerics.
And many people, leaders of Hashab and others, have signed martyrdom certificates of declarations that they would like to become masters in this course. Now that I think is unnerving, the Gulf States. I mean, Bahrain is 80% Shia. Even Saudi Arabia has about 13% Shia. Know, Kuwait, all of them are anxious.
They're seeing where there's the possibility, if this is a big war, that this would set off the equivalent of the Arab Spring. I mean, a different, not exactly as Arab Spring was, but if you like, that sort of turmoil and popular sentiment that might threaten their own their own emirates and kingdoms and so on. So I think that's another big factor. However, going back to what you asked, what what is Trump's objective? Well, you know, what is happening at the moment in Israel is that his objectives have been upended and inverted.
When Netanyahu went to Mar A Lago on the December 28, he he presented the new Israeli doctrine. And the new Israeli doctrine was, listen. We're not saying anything about the nuclear issue. We're not here to tell you that Iran is going to get a nuclear weapon in the next few weeks. We're not here to say, you know, oh, dear.
The bomb. The bomb. No. What we are telling you is something much more serious, that these seven months since June, Iran has not merely repaired, replaced and enhanced its defense system. They have changed the whole paradigm of defense, of the umbrella of defense.
It is a completely new paradigm and it is a huge threat, including in the nuclear field because it is so threatening to us that even if we had intelligence that, Iran was about to make a nuclear weapon, we could do nothing about it. So what you have to do, mister Trump, is destroy the ballistic weapons capability of Iran. And so when, Whitcoff was just been talking to Netanyahu, was in Israel talking to Netanyahu, they had a long meeting, And Netanyahu insisted, no. No. We want you to negotiate on the nuclear issue.
We want an attack on the on the ballistic missile system, on the Iran's missile system. So we will actually prevent you and oppose any agreement on the nuclear issue if it you have it. Now I am not sure there will be one because the preconditions Trump has has outlined are unacceptable. We the first one is that the Iran would have to hand over all of its enriched uranium stocks completely. Secondly, no zero enrichment, forevermore.
Thirdly, severe limitations on its missile systems. And fourthly, severing all links with Hezbollah Hamas and all of its other allies in the region. So, I mean, you know, those are nonnegotiable largely. The Iranians have said, look. We will talk about the nuclear issue first and only the nuclear issue.
And then if that is settled, we can perhaps move to other tiers of negotiation. They don't say what, but they're saying, no. It has to be the nuclear issue. You can't start talking about ballistic missiles or anything else if we can't settle this first nuclear issue. And and, you know, I ask you, I mean, you know, is Trump prepared to offer the ending of all sanctions on Iran to go back to what was the JCPOA of 2018.
I I, you know, I can't see that being seen as a win in Trump's, you know, in Trump's sort of psychology which wants to present him as strong, is always coming out the winner and the other person being losers whom he despite it. But that doesn't sound like, to me that it's gonna come out to Trump as as a winner. So as things stand, it's not clear what's going to happen. People are talking all the time saying, oh, negotiations are starting. This is not free.
What has happened is negotiations about opening negotiations have started, which is a completely different thing than actually the solid negotiations. So there are negotiations about whether it's possible, what are the parameters, what are the limitations, what is going to be the framework for negotiation. Yes. That is happening, but the actual negotiations haven't started and may not have.
Speaker 0: Yeah. I know. Well, both you and I were in Iran back in May, and when I visited the nuclear facilities there, that that that was impression that I got as well that the Iranians, in any negotiation, they wanted to decouple the nuclear issue from all the other because they seemed quite frustrated that whenever they talked about, well, as a transparency, for example, on their civilian nuclear program, that this had to be linked into ballistic missiles, their partnership with Yemen or Hezbollah or Hamas. And, yeah, essentially, the efforts to pack everything into one that this was not acceptable.
Speaker 1: And I'm saying, why the Iranians put so much emphasis in saying it has to be the nuclear issue? Is really simply because, no, the arrangement has always been a nuclear agreement and a lifting of all sanctions on Iran. So they don't want to end up with, you know, it being contingent now on other factors. That has been the basis of the understandings. That is the basis of the JCPOA negotiations.
And so with Trump trying to add other files to it, you know, links to the, you know, Hezbollah. I mean, you you know, how would you ever define that? I mean, you know, the the Hezbollah had links to Iran going back five hundred years. They they actually founded the state. They they took people from from South Lebanon, were taken from the houses in Lebanon, and they set up the satyr of its state.
I mean, you know, it's in marriage in every way. It would could not be disentangled. So I I mean, they can't have all these other issues put on it because then sanctions would never be lifted. It has to be alright. We have an agreement on the nuclear issue, all sanctions lifted.
And I you know, that's a matter of judgment. But I as I say, I don't think that would be acceptable, and the Israelis are saying, we will not allow that to happen. I mean, literally those terms, they said that to the Americans. We will put an Israeli bloc on that, and without a kosher they used the term without a kosher label on your negotiation, they want 16. So they're fully blocking that.
So I think Kant is still looking for some sort of, as I say, how to sort of reverse out of his out of his dilemma with, you know, Lindsey Graham urging him to put horses on the ground and go and support support, you know, these land in in Tehran and start looking for the opposition and trying to support them. I mean, you know, I think these things are are fantasy. So Iran does have a strong it has a strong position vis a vis The United States, you know, both against the Armada, against the military bases in the Persian Gulf, and against Israel itself with the threat no longer qualified, no question of sort of a symbolic exchanging of missiles or IPA.
Speaker 0: Well, it seems that in any military campaign against Iran, the Americans would like to have some, as you said, some opposition or allies within Iran to assist them. So this insurrection is quite important. But what what is it that we actually know about this insurrection now? Because there's, again, there's a battle of narratives. And to be honest, I also don't have a clear overview of the actual facts.
That is what happened in Iran during the riots. I mean, how much was had a domestic origin in terms of upheaval, and how much was directed from abroad? I know it's not either or. It will always have a component of both. But also what you make of these numbers that were provided in terms of how many people were killed, you know, who were they killed by?
How has the Iranian government rolled up this this armed opposition groups? Well, what do we know so far?
Speaker 1: What we know about about this is really the following, that a number of trained insurgents, trained by the Americans in Armenia in their base where they have 3,000 MEKs under train, and Kurds from Abil and Kurds who were being trained by the Americans also in Northeastern Syria. These were the main components coupled with some Baluch, but the Baluch didn't play a big part on it. They came in, and they were inserted and then controlled overseas. They were inserted in Kermanshah Province. The curse were came through corridors in Kermanshah Province, and Turkey provided the intelligence to Iran about their arrival and the corridors they were using.
So most of those a lot of those were killed or or arrested on on arrival. I think it was about four or 500 came came in there. MEK, mostly CIA trained, came into the stake, and they had clear instructions about to create maximum damage, maximum, if you like, maximum killing, maximum attack on people. So the strategy was an old strategy which we've known from other places that the intelligence services use. They tell people to select bypasses, someone that they can, you know, anyone chosen at random.
And then usually, at the same time, the women with the videos and with the cameras are then saying to the young men, Attack him. And they attack him and then they start shouting and they say, Kill him. Burn him. Burn him. And they choose locations where there's a a horror affair with many people there.
And so people come and say, well, what's all the hubbub about what's going on and where what have this man done that you're attacking him like this? And then there is usually someone on a rooftop who falls into the police or the security services when they arrive. And then contrary to how, you know, the television narrative, if you've ever been under fire, you know that you do not know where your shot is coming from directly. So then it becomes and it was very vicious. These were more killing was much more vicious.
They were paid by something like young men were paid $10 to go and kill someone on the street. Older men were paid $5 to set dustbins in fire or to attack ambulances and break the windscreen. And this was there were lots of security forces. The majority of those killed were security forces and police because of the exchange of fire coming in. And the aim was to create the impression of, you know, a building on fire and that all the occupants of relief flooding out of the building and the building was about to collapse.
And then Trump would come in with an attack, and the whole thing would collapse and fall. The total number the Iranians have produced the figures, It is just about just under 3,000 killed during the process, plus it's actually two nine something, plus a further 150 or so who have yet to be identified. But they name them, and they say, alright. If anyone says it's, you know, 5,000 or 30,000, let's have the names of of these people. But they have named everybody that has been killed in this except for, as I say, Samar.
One of the things that the protesters did was they burnt people alive. So, well, sometimes elderly people just they poured gasoline on them and burnt. And there are images. You can see them if you have the stomach for it, but there are, you know, videos taken by bystanders at the time of this happening of people being set on fire. It was the playbook from what I the management of savagery.
This is the sort of thing that ISIS did when they came in Iraq into Mosul. You know, they just were stabbing anyone that, you know, that they saw that they didn't like, they chopped their heads off. And it was really terrible. I remember talking to a young girl who had come from Mosul when I was in Iraq at Kerala, she was in there. And I went to say something to her because she had an adult with her.
She was young, maybe about 10, something like that. And I said, what's your name? And I got a blank blank look, and I said, again, you know, what's your name? And so I just want to know your name. And the woman next to me said, she has not said a word since she saw her whole family slaughtered in Moscow.
All her brothers, her sisters, and her parents were killed in front of her, and she has not asked a single word since. So that image from from the sort of the sort of tactics of extreme of arts to create a situation in which it seems that it would be, you know, that the whole fabric of the state was coming apart. Now even the Israeli state. Well, look. There have been I mean, there were no defections.
There were no defections from the political leadership, from parliament. No one got up and condemned the the government or the state. There were no defections from the IRGC. There were no defections from the army. There were no defections from Basij.
All the institutions and structures of the state remained intact during that period. And you can see that in the Israeli press. I mean, if you come through it, you'll see the the Israeli intelligence saying it didn't work. I mean, there wasn't and what is more, their intelligence assessment was, you know, this did not come close to bringing down the state. And what's more, Haxit never would have cut down the state.
I mean, that final sentence was telling, saying effectively, this was perhaps, you know, a bad intelligence, a bad analysis of the situation that that Iran could be brought down in this way, and that's the Israeli Security Establishment Intelligence assessment. I presumably pass back on to to to Trump, which is why he doesn't know what to do and why he's in a pickle, and he's in a pickle for other reasons because things are not looking good. And, also, you know, trouble in hormones, trouble on the oil thing could easily precipitate a a sell off in the in the markets. I know you follow you're following the sort of what's happening to the dollar and gold and silver quite closely, so you know that we've been in a period where we've seen the markets having about three clash crashes and then recover a bit and then another flash crash and then a recovery. And, I mean, in short, they're very volatile, very febrile.
And and so, you know, sudden, you know, closure or war on in Hormuz could be enough. I'm not saying it would, but it could easily topple the markets. And for Trump, you know, the key thing is the look. That's what matters. It's got to look.
It's got to look as if he's strong, he's emerged as the dominant figure in this proster. And much of this depends coming up to the Midland for him on having the markets still writhing and soaring away. And, you know, they are now so overvalued by historic comparison that, you know, there are tremors in the markets as well as in the debt in the debt market. So so, you know, there are lots of calculations that he has to and so the Israeli conclusion as of this morning some we looked at through the extension, you can see it on our Substack, what is being said in Hebrew press. This is nearly all in the Hebrew press, which is usually quite different in the English language press.
In the Hebrew press, they're saying, you know, there's no decision yet, and there may not be a decision for even weeks from Washington about whether to attack or what to do about Iran. So they are very cautious about it. But as I say, they have said Netanyahu said categorically to Whitco when he messaged me and said categorically, I will oppose it. You won't get endorsed. And if you don't get the endorsement of Israel for a nuclear deal, it won't work.
It won't run-in The United States. You appear a loser.
Speaker 0: So The US can't afford to go to war, and they can't afford to walk away without losing face. It's no. It's difficult to predict how this will how how this will play out. Just as a well, of, I guess, a brief final question. If given that the Iran deterrence is more or less based on, well, attacking going into a full scale attack and also setting the region on fire by going after American bases and such, Israel as well, How much to what extent could this pull in Russia, China, I don't know, Pakistan or others?
Not necessarily directly, but but if if this war is not contained as simply The US and Iranians exchanging missiles, suddenly a lot of other great powers will have their interests affected.
Speaker 1: Now just to be clear, both Russia and China are saying absolutely not about what the nature of their health is. But the mood I can't say that this is in the Kremlin because I don't know. But the mood in, for example, in the Duma, the the Russian parliament, I mean, is that, you know, it is unacceptable to let Iran be rolled over by what they call the America first juggernaut because then they'll start rolling over other states as well. So they have to do something, And I'm not suggesting this is official policy. In fact, I don't know what is the official policy, but I think, you know, there have even been talks in the doom are about saying maybe Russia ought to lend its its nuclear umbrella to Iran for this period, or even its nuclear equipped ships should be spaceship offshore.
Now what we do know is that the originally, they were going to have exercise in home oats over this weekend, and they were canceled as part of an arrangement with Whitcot by which the carrier and its associated fleet would would move away from the coastline of Iran, would move towards Yemen during to set the theme for possibility of talks. This was sort of, you know, the preamble to the talks. But now it seems, first of all, a Chinese satellite ship I mean, by satellite ship, I mean, an intelligence gathering vessel is coming into position or or more. And the the or not going to be joint exercises by China and Russia. In case confirmed, you have to be I'm not entirely certain when they are due to come or or whatever.
But that will make it very complicated for America if they have Chinese and Russian ships together with their armada of of Iran. And it will be a very, very much inhibiting factor, I think, for the Americans who will not want to get caught up. And so all of that then fell apart because then the Americans shot down, and they were in an armed drone, I think yesterday. You know, this was they were trying to maneuver to see if there was any prospect of starting negotiations, nuclear negotiations in Oman, and then a drone was shot down by the Lincoln, USS Lincoln, because they said this has been the drone that has been up there shadowing the American carrier from the beginning. It's a drone that's not a threat to the aircraft carrier.
Who'd who ordered that? I don't know. I imagine it must have been ordered by CENTCOM in the final analysis. I don't know. But, anyways, we shot down, and the Iranians have another drone up, if you like, shadowing the American carrier fleet.
So, you know, then if we have Russians and Chinese vessels in the equation, it's it's going to, I think, complicate things.
Speaker 0: Well, meanwhile, keeping that whole armada parked outside with great distance, of course, from Iran's coastline, it sounds expensive, though, especially when the stage of diplomacy, as you said, is to negotiate about negotiations. So I guess something will have to give. Well, thank you very much for taking the time. I always, yeah, look forward to reins it for your insights. So thanks again.
Speaker 1: No. Well, thank you. Thank you.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Scott Ritter: Threat of Nuclear War as the Last Arms Control Treaty Collapsed https://youtu.be/sCgRDO9leIY https://t.co/nAqL7IOSwH
Video Transcript AI Summary
Scott Ritter and the interviewer discuss the looming end of the New START treaty and the broader implications for global arms control, stability, and security.
- The New START treaty, described by Ritter as the remaining nuclear arms control framework, expires, and without a moratorium on deployed caps or a new treaty, the risk of nuclear war between the United States and Russia, and also with China, could rise significantly. Ritter calls this “earth ending significant” and says the six-decade arms-control legacy would be at risk if no replacement is negotiated.
- Ritter emphasizes that New START has provided a framework of stability through on-site inspections, data exchange, and verifiable limits. He notes that the treaty’s value rests on confidence that numbers are correct, which requires robust verification, something he argues was compromised by the lack of inspections in the last two years and by political gamesmanship during negotiations. Rose Gutermiller’s warning about needing a confidence baseline for a potential one-year moratorium is highlighted.
- The historical arc of arms control is traced from the Cuban Missile Crisis to the ABM treaty, which Ritter says was foundational because it established the concept of mutually assured destruction. He argues that many subsequent arms-control efforts, including START and particularly INF, were intertwined with the ABM framework and mutual deterrence. The INF treaty is highlighted as the occasion where Ritter was the first ground-based weapons inspector in the Soviet Union, underscoring the value of on-site verification.
- Ritter recounts how START was negotiated amid a collapsing Soviet Union, and how post-Soviet realities (nuclear weapons in former Soviet states under Russian control) affected negotiations. He contends that Soviet/Russian leaders perceived START as potentially “bullying” and that Western confidence in Russian strategic deterrence diminished after the end of the Cold War, which contributed to tensions over missile defenses and strategic postures.
- The dialogue reviews the evolution of U.S.-Russian relations and how perceptions of threat or weakness influenced policy. Ritter recalls that Russian leadership warned of consequences when the ABM treaty was abandoned and that fear and respect shaped early arms-control cooperation. He asserts that American arrogance toward Russia, including dismissive attitudes toward Russian concerns about missile defenses, harmed trust and contributed to instability.
- The involvement of China is treated as a separate but connected issue. China’s position, as outlined in its white paper, is not seeking an arms race and endorses a “no first use” policy, but argues that the United States and Russia must first resolve their bilateral arms-control arrangements before China would join in a broader framework. China argues for all parties to reduce numbers, while insisting China should not be treated as a mere subset of a U.S.-Russia framework.
- Ritter asserts that the current U.S. approach to modernization and expansion of strategic forces could precipitate a three-way arms race (U.S., Russia, China) and notes a planned shift in U.S. posture, including potential reactivation of underground testing and revamping warhead delivery systems. He argues that if the process proceeds, other nations might follow with their own nuclear programs, eroding the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) framework and undermining decades of nonproliferation efforts.
- He contrasts the current situation with past arms-control muscle memory. He laments the loss of experienced negotiators and Russian area expertise, arguing that today’s policymakers and some academics treat arms control as transactional or overly adversarial rather than as a reciprocal, trust-based process. He claims there is a shortage of genuine arms-control specialists and describes a culture in which the media and academia have overlooked or mischaracterized Russia’s behavior, often blaming Moscow for cheating when, in his view, the problem lies with Western overreach and a lack of mutual understanding.
- The conversation ends on a bleak note: without renewed treaties, verification, and mutual recognition of security concerns, the world could regress to a “Wild West” dynamic of proliferation and competition, with Europe’s security umbrella eroded and a broader risk of renewed testing, modernization, and potential conflict.
Overall, the discussion frames the expiry of New START as a pivotal moment with potentially catastrophic consequences for strategic stability, arguing for renewed arms-control engagement, better verification, and a recognition of the intertwined histories and motivations of the United States, Russia, and China.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: So welcome back, everyone. We are joined today by Scott Ritter, a former UN weapons inspector, a US Marine Corps intelligence officer, and an author. Today, though, I really wanted to explore your well, the job you had more of a weapons inspector because we have only had one nuclear arms control treaty left, which is the new START, that is the new strategic arms reduction treaty. And, well, this expires today. So this essentially leaves us, if I'm not mistaken, without any nuclear arms control agreements.
And it's kind of strange because the consequences could be quite dire. Yet, I don't see much concern coming out of our governments or media for that sake. One would have thought this would be a priority, But how how significant is this?
Speaker 1: No. This is earth ending significant. I wrote a book called Highway to Hell, and I called it a highway to hell because I said if we allow the New START treaty to expire and we don't have either a moratorium on the caps of deployed nuclear weapons awaiting a new treaty or a new treaty, we've just we've increased the likelihood of a nuclear war between The United States and Russia, United States and China, by an order of magnitude. I mean, right now, by holding on to the New START treaty, we're holding onto six decades, six decades of arms control legacy. You know, this all began back in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis when John F Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev realized, oh my goodness, we almost did the unthinkable.
How do we begin to get out of this? But before they could begin a dialogue, Kennedy took a bullet to the head and Khrushchev got kicked out of office by Kosygin Brezhnev and one other of the triumvirate. I can't remember. You know? And and, you know, Johnson came in.
It took him a while to to, you know, find his arms control legs. By the time he was ready to enter into a meaningful arms control agreement with the Soviet Union, Prague Spring came and Soviet tanks in Prague made it impossible for Johnson to to move forward, it was up to to Nixon. You know? But under Nixon, we began the ABM treaty. I just finished writing a three part discussion of the ABM treaty and why it's so important because if you read it, you'll see I'm not just talking about the ABM treaty.
Everything was attached to this treaty. We couldn't have had strategic arms limitation talks without the ABM treaty. We couldn't have strategic arms reduction talks without the ABM treaty because the ABM treaty sets the stage. It creates the concept of mutually assured destruction. Why is that important?
Because it means we can't win a nuclear war, so there's no reason to fight a nuclear war. So maybe we don't need as many nuclear weapons as we thought we might need and you can begin the process of reduction. But it's all interlinked. The START treaty, the original START treaty, was signed I believe in 07/31/1991. Late in the game, George Herbert Walker Bush sat down with Mikhail Gorbachev signed it.
A little more than two weeks later, there was a coup in Moscow and a couple months later, the Soviet Union was done. So new for so STAR Treaty came in and it immediately got hampered by the fact that the Soviet Union didn't exist. And so it took several years to, you know, figure out what to do with former Soviet nuclear weapons still under Russian operational control in Kazakhstan, Belarus, and Ukraine. And by the time we got all the nations together to sign the START treaty, the mentality that led to this because you know, the reason why we were willing to do arms control with the Russians is that they could kick our ass. We could kick theirs, but they could kick ours too.
We respected them. We feared them. And that respect and that combination of respect and fear made arms control necessary. Once the treaty that I was involved in, initially, the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty signed in 1987, went into force in 1988. I'll say it once and I'll say it again.
I was the first weapons inspector on the ground in The Soviet Union to implement that treaty, and I'm planting that flag every time I get because I'm very proud of that role. We wrote the book on on-site inspection. On-site inspection is what makes modern arms control treaties possible. The the certainty of compliance verification that comes with a well trained, you know, human eyeball attached to a well trained brain. It's it's unbeatable.
And we invented it in with the INF treaty, and then it carried on to start and and all that. But, you know, that was a good treaty because we respected them, they respected us, and it was done on a mutually beneficial basis. START treaty was negotiated under a cloud because, you know, it got delayed and delayed by the time that, George Herbert Walker Bush sat down with Mikhail Gorbachev on 07/31/1991. Gorbachev was making concessions to The United States that many in the Soviet Defense Department, Ministry of Defense, were saying we shouldn't be giving this away. We're giving away too much.
We're not getting enough. And so START was always viewed by the Soviets than the Russians as sort of a vehicle of bullying, arms control bullying. Why? Well, because we no longer feared Russia. We felt that the Russian strategic nuclear deterrence was weakened.
It was still dangerous. We still had to pay attention to it, but we didn't fear it. We didn't let it dominate our mind. And what happens when that happens is that we start thinking outside of the box. For instance, what about Iran?
What about North Korea? What about their ballistic missiles? What defenses do we have against a rogue missile attack? And then we begin to talk about building ballistic missile defenses that are in violation of the ABM treaty. And when we were notified by, you know, the Russians, it was actually when Vladimir Putin came in and the now it's past it was Clinton still, that the Russians were like, if you do this, we're going to because there was original start, then there was start two, which was almost ratified, and start three, which would be negotiated.
The the Russians said, we're we're gonna pull out the key out of start two. We're not gonna ratify it. The key thing about start two was it demerved missiles. You downloaded these missiles that had multiple warheads. Again, part of arms control is, hey.
We don't need multiple warheads because there's no ballistic missile defense to overwhelm. That's why we went to MERS. Missile defense, we need to overwhelm them. No missile defense, we can come down. See how it works?
Cause and effect. But the Russians said, well, we may have to put warheads back on. And Colin Powell, the secretary of state, said, we don't care. We're not worried about the Russians. They're they're just not they're not us.
They can do anything they want. It doesn't impact us. The arrogance of that statement. And that carried over to George w Bush who then just did away with the ABM treaty altogether because we didn't care. Vladimir Putin tried to warn everybody, there will be consequences.
This is destabilizing. This is not a good thing. But we still viewed Russia as the weaker sister. Didn't fear them. We didn't respect them.
STAR treaty continues. It expired in 2009. Bush tried to negotiate a new STAR treaty. Couldn't get it done. Pass it off to Obama.
It was interesting though because there was going to be a gap between START treaty ending and new START coming into force. And the Senate said, Hey, you can't have this gap. See, right now, we're comfortable with the Russian nuclear capabilities because we know what they are. We have inspectors on the ground. We exchange data.
We have this treaty and it makes us comfortable. We know what they have. They know what we have. Things are calm. But if you stop the on-site inspections, we don't know what they have anymore and suddenly there's uncertainty comes in and we have to assume the worst and this thing could spiral out of control.
They told the Obama administration to get it done quickly. So, New Start came in. But the thing about New START is we didn't negotiate in good faith. Rose Guttermiller was the lead American negotiator. Her counterpart was Anatoly Antonov, the former Russian ambassador here to The United States.
I had numerous lunches with ambassador Antonov where we talked about New Start, about this process. And he said, you know, The United States started playing games with language. You know, what it means, for instance, to decommission a b 52 bomber, what it means to decommission a a Trident submarine launch tube to get down to the deployed, you know, because we're dealing with talking about deployed nuclear weapons, cape you know, systems they will watch. And he said, it was clear to us when we talked about decommissioning a b 52 that it was permanent, and it's done. You decommission it, it can't carry nukes forever.
The same thing with the, you know, the submarine launched ballistic missile tubes forever. And what happened is The United States just went into B 52 and cut a couple wires. They said, there, can't launch snoops. And the Russians are going, but what happens when you connect the wires? Yeah.
But we're not going to. But what and the problem is, see, we had generals testify for congress because congress are going, well, what if the Russians cheat? What if the Russians have a breakout? Come out of bus. We can bring the b 50 twos back in very short period of time.
We can bring the the launch tubes back because they weren't permanently decommissioned. Within months of Russians cheating, we can be right back to where we were. Don't worry about it. That means the treaty is meaningless. And the Russians were saying this treaty is absolutely meaningless because you've admitted that you can reverse this instantaneously.
So, New was a problem. The other thing is that the Russians said we can't really talk about strategic arms control because when START treaty was negotiated, the ABM treaty was still in place. But now, new START is being negotiated. There's no ABM treaty. The Russians are like, know, guys understand.
If you build a missile defense, we're negotiating about strategic arms, you know, numbers and you're building defense. That means our numbers, which are calculated on the premise that, you know, we're not gonna have a war and a mutually assured destruction, we we have to recalculate because we have to assume you're preparing for a first strike. Then we need retaliatory capability. It changes our mix. Guthermost said, no.
No. No. No. Don't worry about it. Obama told Medvedev, don't worry about it.
It's just a political thing. You see, we got this thing called congress, and we're having a hard time getting this new START thing through. So we're gonna get it through, and then afterwards, we'll come back and we'll do ballistic missiles. They did a a joint signing statement. And The US, you know, after, you know, doing what the Russians said to get this thing, came out afterwards and said, it's meaningless.
The signing statement is meaningless. Anatolian Antinoff waited for Guthamoto to call as she promised to do. She didn't. He called her. She said, we ain't doing ABF.
They lied. So Newstart was snake bit from the very beginning with bad intention on the part of The United States and lies by The United States. But nonetheless, it's an agreement that has a framework of stability attached to it. That's why in 2021, when it was expiring, they went ahead and signed the five year extension that the treaty allowed for automatically. But it was assumed at that time that they knew that there was no more extensions allowed, that you'd need a new treaty that would have to be negotiated.
The Biden administration never made any effort to negotiate because of Ukraine. When Ukraine started, what happened was the European Union denied airspace to Russian aircraft that were sending inspectors to The United States. The United States sent inspectors to Russia, the Russians are like, okay. Come in. You get to see everything.
Blah blah blah. When the Russians sent their inspectors, they got blocked. And Russia turned to The United States and said, you this is our treaty. You have to guarantee that our plane and we went, no. No.
That's a that's between you and the Europeans. The Russians said, well, then no inspectors. And that was the end of the story. And then the United States started talking about the strategic defeat of Russia. And Russia was like, well, the only thing that prevents us from being strategically defeated is our nuclear arsenal.
So, just not going to play this game. They stopped giving data. Pretty much the New START treaty died twenty twenty two, twenty twenty three. It stopped functioning, but the caps remained in place and both sides committed to keep those caps in place. It's interesting, Rose Giltemiller, as we approach the termination, the expiration of New Start, she said it's imperative because we come back to what I was telling you about Kyle and Luger, the two senators.
She said it's imperative that we have confidence if we're going to do this extension, this one year moratorium, we have to have confidence in those numbers. And because there's been no inspections in two years, we need to rebaseline the inspection, that is just to get the inspectors back in and reconfirm that everything is the way it's supposed to be, so that when the cap comes in, you have a level of confidence that these are good numbers. Well, we didn't even do that. So what's going to happen now is this treaty is going to expire. There's no trust amongst the Russians towards the Americans.
We just assume that the Russians just assume that we negotiate in bad faith. And we're going to let the treaty expire because of China. And we need you know, China because Donald Trump and Joe Biden threatened nuclear war against China. If China dares to attack Taiwan and America intervenes on behalf of Taiwan and China kicks America's ass, we'll nuke China. And then we said, well, we might have to nuke China preemptively.
And the Chinese went, wait. Wait a minute. Our current nuclear posture doesn't work. 200 old delivery systems we need to modernize. And so they began to modernize and The United States accused the Chinese of, you know, seeking to match our numbers 1,500.
The Chinese said, no. We're at 600. We're sort of happy with this because we're not here to play that game, but we're not going to enter we're not going to allow The United States to lump us together with Russia. We're not Russia. We're China.
We have an independent nuclear policy. Before we can begin to talk to The United States, we need the United States and Russia to solve their bilateral nuclear disarmament issues, get their treaty in place, and then maybe get your numbers to come down to us. And once your numbers come down to us, then we can all talk about the three way treaty. But the the the Biden administration and later Trump administration you know, under the Biden administration, we changed our nuclear weapons employment plan. That means our war plan to take into account China.
So we redid our targeting, way we target, the warheads we use, etc, that we could launch a preemptive first strike against China and still have sufficient nuclear weapons left over for Russia. But people said that's just plagued the the Chinese go even higher. That's not gonna work. We need more nuclear weapons. And so there's no interest in the Trump administration to negotiate a new treaty because the Trump administration plans starting tomorrow to reupload warheads onto our our Tridents, take them back from from eight back to twelve or fourteen on the Minuteman three from one to three so we can get our warhead count back up.
And with our warhead count back up now, we'll be able to say we have parity with both Russia and China. The problem is what happens if Russia starts to upload their their warheads to now we're into an arms race and the trajectory of, you know, the stockpiles is going in the wrong direction. And now we come back to one of the real problems here. Before ABM treaty, there was the nuclear nonproliferation treaty. There was also the comprehensive test ban treaty has never been ratified, but it's it's out there.
Both sides have agreed to comply with it. The the new the nonproliferation treaty basically solidified the five existing nuclear weapon states, said they get to have nuclear weapons, nobody else does. But you signed this treaty and it's a, you know, commitment that you won't develop nuclear weapons, you'll have safeguard inspections, etcetera. But the other part of it was the nuclear weapon states were supposed to work to get rid of their weapons. That was a promise.
That was the deal. It's been stalled and now we're going in the wrong direction. This could be the end of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty. This could be the end of the legacy of nuclear nonproliferation. There's a real risk that if The United States and Russia get involved in a new nuclear arms race and begin to build new nuclear weapons, deploy thousands more warheads, that other nations are going to say we have to have nuclear weapons now.
This is as destabilizing as it gets. This is a disaster, absolute disaster. And, I point out six decades of work, six decades of arms control experience flushed down the toilet because some idiots in Washington DC don't know their history. Every argument they make today about why they need to do x y and z are arguments that were made in nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies that showed to be fundamentally flawed arguments, which is why we transitioned into arms control. We shouldn't have to reinvent the wheel.
We shouldn't have to relearn these lessons. But those who are those who forget the lessons of history are condemned to repeat it. So here we are going right back. This is a reset right back to square one. It you know, hopefully, it stops if we retain the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, but there's a chance this is gonna be reset right back to the time where Kennedy and Crusoe have just finished staring at each other over the Cuban missile crisis.
We have to start all over. We may not survive at this time.
Speaker 0: Yeah. In my opinion, though, it's the the the problem is I think you always need a balance of power as a condition for international law and treaties, and this is why, you know, the UN system and all of this functioned after the after World War two. But after the Cold War, I think the challenge for not just international law, but for any treaties would be that all states don't constrain themselves, and and there was no constraints on the West. So it was essentially asked to constrain itself, and the the relationship you said with Russia was largely defined by essentially managing its decline. So the whole concept of strategic balance, I think, was increasingly just rejected.
And as you said, the the whole pitch of doing strategic missile defense, yeah, giving up on the whole idea of mutual assured destruction, I think it fit nicely into this context. Because if you listen to the language back then, actually, a lot of the European leaders in the nineties when they heard talk of missile defense, they got concerned. They talked about strategic defense. They don't do anymore. Anyways, I think the old treaties stay unraveled, and you would think there's an opportunity now, though, that the world is being rebalanced, that states, you know, they grow some, again, some respect for each other again, the great powers realizing, yeah, mutual security concerns and arms control, but, you know, you really have a huge challenge.
You need political giants these days, and it seems we're all cursed with horrible leaders. And, of course, the Ukraine war, as you said, complicates things much, much more. But this you mentioned China, that this is what may could make it more complicated to get new new treaties in place. And, well, Trump expressed this desire for a nuclear disarmament agreement that also includes China. So do you think China could realistically be brought into such a strategic arms framework, or is this out of the question?
As you said, the the the Chinese wants a separate one from the Russian US one.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, Chinese have already answered this question. They published a white paper on disarmament policy and arms control back in either November or December. And what they've said is, know, China's not seeking an arms race. China has a purely, you know, no first use policy. But China has been confronted with the fact that The United States is seeking to develop a nuclear preemptive strike capacity, basically to neuter China and hold make China helpless in the face of American nuclear supremacy.
So China has reacted to that. The Chinese numbers now are part of a strategic posture that the Chinese are comfortable with. They believe that they can survive an American first strike with sufficient strike capacity to inflict fatal harm on The United States. Therefore, deterrence exists. But what the Chinese don't want to do is play a game where they're drawn into negotiations where, you know, they're going to be factored in with Russia when it comes time for their security.
The United States is gonna view them as being linked with Russia, and this could create some vulnerabilities for China. So what the Chinese have said in their paper is what I already said. They said that the United States and Russia need to solve their arms control once they get an agreement, once the numbers are set in a treaty, then China is willing to step in and say, okay, now how do we do this? But it's not going to be about numbers going up. China is basically going to say, we need all your numbers to come down you know, because we're all we're all equal here.
This is problematic for The United States because we wrongly link Russian Chinese nuclear arsenals as if they operate under a joint, you know, joint operational control. They don't. But, you know, again, we have people in The United States right now who are sitting in positions that are nominally involved with arms control and and this sort of thing, who know nothing about it. These are pure ideologues. They're pure piece through strength, might makes right kind of thinking.
And they're not going to do the right thing. There is a path forward that can be taken that can say, you don't need more than 400 nuclear weapons to destroy the world. That's sort of the reality of the situation. Know, right now, we have 1,550. Russia has 1,550.
You know, we already have massive overkill. China has 600. You know, we can be very realistic about bringing down the numbers of deployed missiles except that, at least in The United States, it's attached to a military industrial complex that makes a lot of money off of this. This arms race that we're getting ready to enter into is going to be a multi trillion dollar affair that The United States simply can't afford. But we're gonna do it because the defense industry is just sitting there cashing checks already.
We're gonna do it because congress, you know, gets elected by donations from the companies who are gonna benefit from congress's allocation of money to defense projects related to this new nuclear arms race. It's a vicious circle that Dwight Eisenhower warned us about when he gave his famous, you know, farewell address. Just I guess I'll leave with this. Russia right now outmatches us across the board. They have more modern nuclear weapons across the board than anything we have.
Many of our weapons are old and outdated. We don't even know half these weapons work, which brings up the the next problem, which is when we do all of this increase, we're gonna be pulling, you know, w 76 and w 82 warheads out of storage and putting them on missiles. But the question is, do they work? I mean, without getting into too much nuclear weapons design, I think the w 76 is a peanut design that that, you know, basically, you know, people think in terms of a sphere of the old plutonium device that, you know, World War two. But a peanut device is actually shaped like a peanut.
It's two devices. And you'll have one go off, generate a whole bunch of neutrons, and and they and then the second one goes off, feeds off of that, and you get your hydrogen bomb explosion. So you get a conventional atomic bomb explosion, which is fission, then you get fusion and boom. But to hold those in place, there's a foam. And that foam isn't just foam.
That foam contains is embedded with all the neutron generating stuff so that when that first thing goes off and the phone disintegrates, it's just throwing out all the things that then are necessary to create the fusion, enhance it, boost it. Boosted nuclear weapon, that's why they call it that. The problem is the phone deteriorates over time. So now you got these weapons the phone's there, but they don't know if the phone works. When they tried to refurbish the w 76 a couple, I guess a decade or so ago, they found there there is no formula.
This was sort of just done by scientists who, you know, figured out, you know, how to do it and maybe handwritten some notes and they did it. They produced the bombs. When that's done, it went they're all dead. They're all seen out drooling in a cup and nobody knows how to make this foam. It's a very specific design because it you know, you have to boost the weapon in a very precise way.
So, spent a lot of time and effort trying to reverse engineer to try and figure out how to make this foam. They made something, but they don't know if it works. The weapon is supposed to work as designed. The reason why we have weapons of different megatunters and all that is you know, we need a weapon to hit here, compress the ground so we could collapse, you know, silos. In order to do that, you know, we need to boost to, you know, the the the sufficiency necessary to achieve the result.
But if the foam doesn't give you that boost, you get a fizzle. So now we're firing missiles into, you know, Russia expecting to collapse their silos and we get a poof instead of a boom and the silos aren't collapsed and now we got missiles coming back. This is problematic. It means we don't have deterrents anymore because everybody's gonna and so there's a lot of temptation now. This is why heading in the direction we're in is very bad.
I believe the Trump administration will probably succumb to pressure to resume underground nuclear weapons testing and then when that does, the Russians will do the same thing and then all bets are off. Everybody's going be doing it. And like I said, we're right back to square one. This is a disaster, an absolute disaster. The American people have been asleep at the wheel.
The American press has been asleep at the wheel, but the American press has bought out. This is why you can't trust the New York Times. David Sanger has been writing for the New York Times for some time, but all he is is a stenographer. He gets information from the Pentagon that the that that tells the story they wanna tell. He doesn't expose reality.
You know, there used to be Seymour Hirsch who could write about this stuff, but he's, you know, he's playing the the administration game right now, repeating the the nonsense. There's there's nobody in the mainstream that's telling the truth about this. And when people try to tell the truth, the next thing the mainstream will say is, well, the Russians cheat. I'm here to tell you right now the Russians don't cheat. I mean, I Ray McGovern's one of my best friends.
I love Ray McGovern. You know Ray. Good guy, smart guy. But the other day we were talking and he said that the Soviets cheated on the ABM treaty and he decided to trash and ask radar. And I went, time out.
Time out. They didn't cheat. That radar is incapable of doing the technical functions necessary for the ABM treaty. So, there was no intention to cheat. To have the intent to cheat, you have to build a radar that's capable of doing the things you're not allowed to do.
They positioned the radar because it was a satellite tracking radar and this was where the gap was in their satellite tracking coverage. It turned out that the positioning of it was in technical violation of the ABM treaty, so the Russians agreed to destroy the radar and they did. But the Russians don't cheat. I've worked with these people. They are assiduous.
What's in the treaty is what they do. I learned that in Vodkaitsk because we got shoehorned into building this thing called Cargo Scan, but it was thrown at the last second literally days before Reagan and Gorbachev signed the INF treaty. They said, my God, you got to put inspectors outside of Bodhkins. And they didn't know how to do it. And so what happened is they put all the onus on the inspectors to write the rule book.
And so we're in there trying to do this cargo scam thing and the the Soviets are going, no. You gotta obey everything that was written down. If it's if you're not doing as it was written down, you can't do it. And, you know, and and then people like senator Helms, So Russians are cheating. Russians don't cheat.
Russians don't cheat. Russians did exactly what they were supposed to do. We're the ones that bend the rules, play loosey goosey, that that cheat, that lie, that manipulate. But people will say, well, we can't deal with the Russians because they cheat. I mean, I just attended a meeting with Christopher Ford, a former arms control guy with the first Trump administration.
He's the guy that helped kill the INF tree. And one of his going in philosophies is the Russians cheat. I'm like, well, no. They don't. You cheat.
And I can prove you cheat, but you can't prove the Russians cheat. You know, they accuse the Russians of cheating with this nine m seven twenty nine missile. The Russians said, well, here's the missile. Come on out. Send your inspectors in and look at it.
And Christopher Ford went, no. He ain't sending inspectors. Why not? Because it'll probably show that they're not cheating. And that's the outcome the Russians want us to see.
And I said, well, it's probably because it's the truth. They didn't want the truth. They created a fiction that the Russians are cheating, and they let that fiction ride. How do you do business with people like this? So here are the Russians right now looking at the situation.
Russians don't wanna have an arms race. First of the Russians already won the arms race. Vladimir Putin warned everybody about it in 2016. He warned Bush about it when he withdrew from the ABM treaty. So if you do this, there will be consequences.
2016, he told the American media, but there will be consequences. Why aren't you guys write more about this? They didn't write anything. 2018, he announced that that they were building new weapons. And these weapons, the Sarmat, Avangarde, and other Poseidon, they're now deployed, operational.
Russia outclasses us in every category of nuclear weapons. So this arms race isn't gonna be really a race because the Russians are already crossed the finish line. Should be about The United States trying to buy a pair of shoes and tie them at the starting line and see how far we can get. We're so far behind, and we can't afford any of it. We can't afford any of it.
The ground launch deterrent system is gonna you know, they were talking that it was gonna be, you know, initially, 75,000,000,000, then they said a 120. I will tell you right now, it's gonna cost between 1 and $3,000,000,000,000 by the time it's done, and that's just that. We can't do that. We can't afford that. New submarines, in order to replace the Ohio class submarines, we have to produce submarines at a rate of, I don't know, like, 2.7 a year.
Our maximum output right now is 1.5. We don't have the shipbuilding capacity to do this. The b 21 bombers is too damn expensive. We can't afford too many of them. And and and we're gonna break free of the the security of the New START treaty to engage in an arms race that we've already lost.
Speaker 0: I feel part of the problem with, letting all of this arms control die, though, is, not just the lack of trust, but it's the lack of fear of a nuclear war. I feel every generation, as a cliche would go, have to learn the horrors of war to respect it. But I even now hear European leaders refer to whenever Russia refers to its nuclear deterrent, they dismiss it as well as nuclear blackmail. So we can't respect it because then the Russians will be allowed to use it. I mean, it's it's very dangerous way of thinking.
And but but I'm I'm worried about the ignoring the the security competition here because he said once this weapon starts to roll out, you know, one country's security is another country's insecurity. So they they will have to be some kind of an arms race coming out of this. So, yeah, I guess there's a well, what what kind of question sorry. What kind of weapons do you think we should expect to see being rolled out over the next months or years?
Speaker 1: Well, first of all, when we talk about American weapons, we don't roll anything out in months. We're talking decades. So, you know, they're they're now talking about extending the Minuteman three, which is already, you know, good lord, 50 years old. They're talking about extending it through 2050. I mean, I'll be 81 years old, 2050.
You know? So and how do you begin to operate that that that way? I mean, we so we're not gonna have a new missile until 2050? I mean, when we started the Minuteman program, you know, it was conceived and built in a couple of years. Today, can't because our defense industry is just as corrupt as the day is long.
It's all about making money, making money, making money. We don't do anything right. Bottom line, bottom line, they won't do anything for the national good. So I'm not expecting to this this, you know, golden dome system that is already again, let's just assume that Donald Trump said, okay. I wanna extend the new start treaty, the caps.
The Russians, you know, had caveats. They said, well, you can't build a Golden Dome, you know, because we come back to the same ABM equation. This isn't the first time we've been through this. The Russians have said this over and over and over again. It was a good argument, which is why we built you know, we signed the ABM treaty.
But the Russians say we can't even begin to talk about numbers, control, etcetera, if you're building a missile defense system because that missile defense system now requires us to overwhelm it, to defeat it, and we gotta be able to do that. Now the Russians have already built systems that are designed to overwhelm and defeat, you know, any conceivable defense system. Iron I mean, the Golden Dome, the contracts were let. The initial contracts were let. Again, the Sentinel missile, which is the ground based deterrent system or whatever they call it, that's the one we we were gonna replace the Minuteman with.
Congress learned from other programs that if you you know, that the defense industry lies. They start off by underbidding. So they know that the it's gonna cost a you know, but they underbid. Boom. And then they say, oh, there's new technologies we have to bring into.
And they and so they increase the bid and all this. And next thing you know, you have a system out of control. So congress has put in automatic breaks. So if a contract deviates by a certain percentage, it gets the brake put on. The Sentinel system started running in and immediately deviated.
Think the first time it was like 54%. Bam. Congress put the brakes on it and said, reconsider. They said, we're gonna reconsider. They reconsidered and said, we're ready.
They restarted it. Boom. Spiked to 81%. They shut it down. We can't afford Sentinel because the defense industry is so damn corrupt, they don't know how to build something responsibly.
It's always designed to make money. So, where are we going to get that missile? God forbid, we have to develop a new submarine launched ballistic missile. Right now, we have a new a new submarine coming out. And as I said, we don't have the shipbuilding space to produce it, so we're gonna run into problems there.
But if we needed a new missile, you know, we went from, what, Polaris to Poseidon to Trident. Now we're up to the Trident d five. If we needed a new missile, I don't think we could build a new missile. Right now, we're building the Trident. We upgrade the Trident.
But to build a new missile, we're not Russians on the other hand, they have the Nataraji Design Bureau, now Moscow Institute of Thermal Technology. Those guys have been designing solid rocket models motors since the nineteen sixties. They never stopped. And they have the vodka machine building plant where I inspected that does the production. They have relationships, and they've never stopped.
They are always looking to to improve existing systems, and they're looking to the next follow on system. They understand that when you build a missile, it has a life expectancy, operational life expectancy of twenty twenty years. They've worked it during the nineteen nineties to get thirty years out of it. But they say in thirty years, we have to have another missile ready to go. So this is why you had the SS 25 Topol still in service when the Topol M came out, the '27, because you didn't run into this panic where you had a gap where everything got retired, had to run it.
It's a phased here comes Topol M, they get all the Topols out. Here comes Yars to replace Topol M and Topol M slowly getting phased out Yars. Then after Yars comes the Cedar, the Kedir. It's gonna replace that. They're always one step ahead and they produce these missiles quick.
They're modern. They're efficient. And the cost is low because they don't have to reinvent the wheel. When we build a missile system, we have to basically say, oh, we need to build a whole new factory and we have to train whole new people. Well, the Russians don't have do that.
They got people. They get new technologies. They train them up. They use the same workshops and their costs go way down. The Russians are kicking our ass across the board, but you're not gonna see any new weapon systems from The United States.
What you're gonna see is an effort to upload onto the d five and upload on the Minuteman three and then you're going to see a panic where they say, well, we don't know if these weapons that have been stored work and we need and now there's talk about in defense budget, this $1,500,000,000,000 budget, You know, they're talking about building, what, 10,000 nuclear pits for the next weapon. 10,000 for a new design, which means you're probably gonna wanna test it. This is this is absolute insanity. It gives me a headache just to just to think about where we're where we're going on this one.
Speaker 0: Just seems like a strange time to do this as well, though, because the whole idea of of The US pulling back from the Ukraine war was that The United States should seek to improve its relations with Russia. That is, you know, Trump's old mantra that it's a good thing to get along with Russia. And, know, the focus was on improving bilateral relations, and this is one of the reasons why we have to solve the Ukraine war. But it seems if bilateral relations while improving it and it's hard to understand how this can be done without arms control. I mean, this is where trust is built, isn't it?
Speaker 1: Yeah. Look. Look. Again, you know, I I apologize because I'm there's nothing every I told you six decades of arms control legacy. We've there's nothing happening today that we already haven't handled, that we already haven't confronted.
Today, they talk about the Russians, you know, nuclear blackmail. Well, Richard Nixon, when we transitioned from, I don't know, SIOP 62 to SIOP 64 or whatever, the the the the single integrated operations plan, which was what they used to call the nuclear war plan. You know, Nixon was briefed on it and he said, you guys gotta give me options. Basically, you're telling me that if we have a little crisis here, we're going full scale nuclear war and I'm gonna be responsible for killing, you know, hundreds of millions of people, including, up to 60,000,000 Americans. I don't like this.
This is crazy. I need options. And the Pentagon was thinking, they said, well, we could take our European nuclear war plan And, you know, we we have this plan that says that we can hit a couple Russian cities and and then the Russians will be won't retaliate to Europe because that could trigger a full scale American attack. And Nixon said, well, couldn't the Russians do the same? They said, oh, yeah.
Yeah. We already thought about that, and we don't know what the answer is. Meaning, The United States admitted that if Russia nuked the Soviet Union nuked European cities, we hadn't made the decision yet whether or not we would retaliate with that we would commit suicide. This is in 1968, 1969, 1970. We haven't solved that problem yet.
I'm here to tell you. And the Russians are sort of cut out. I mean, you know, Sergei Karagunov? If you ever get a chance, you should talk to him. He's a he's an interesting guy to talk to.
But he's the guy that wrote a paper a couple years ago that said, you know, we should we should nuke Poznan as a demonstration. And he said The United States will do nothing because no American president can sacrifice Boston for Posenen. And he's right. Europe needs to wake up to the fact that we will not die for you. That it's always been a myth.
The nuclear umbrella has always been a myth that if you and especially if Europe creates a situation where you provoke Russia into using nuclear weapons against a European city, you're on your own. We're not going to die for you. This is, you know, another one of these things that, you know, needs to be discussed now because now as we go into this arms race understand the arms race The United States is getting engaged in is totally disconnected from the European rail. France and Germany France and England did themselves any favor. You know, they just did something.
I forget the the Nottingham or Notting I don't know the name of the the accord where they they met and, basically, they have a unified nuclear response plan now that they will coordinate with each other in nuclear war. The French have promised I think I got this right. England promised Poland and France promised promised Germany the the nuclear umbrella. So now they're saying we have to replace The United States. We're putting our own nuclear umbrella in.
All this guarantees is that the Russians are gonna take out all of Europe now, including France and and, of course, England. And The United States will do nothing. We're not gonna die for Europe. And so this is also, the Europeans have to understand that when this arms control goes away, the the premise of the arms control was always the fiction that the American nuclear umbrella extended over Europe. We get into this new arms race.
That American nuclear umbrella is gone, and Europe will be on its own. And now we run into a situation where Germany decides they don't want a French nuclear umbrella. Germany wants nuclear weapons. Sweden decides they want their own nuclear these are both programs that nations that have nuclear weapons programs. We just don't talk about it.
The the Swedes have been secretly working on nuclear weapons potential. The Germans I spoke to the German nuclear weapon scientists who said, yeah, we could do it. We could we build nuclear weapon tomorrow. We just don't. That's the other danger of losing this arms control is we're gonna look at a global proliferation.
Japan, South Korea, Brazil. Nations are gonna be developing nuclear weapons because the the foundation of security that existed with New START Treaty, the premise that, you know, there won't be a nuclear war, that we're gonna be we're working on controlling this. When that's gone, it's the Wild West all over again. People could be strapping on six guns, walking the street, looking for people to shoot.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Actually, Sergei Karaganov, I've had him on this podcast because he used to be my boss. He was the head of my department in Moscow, and he told me in his office, though, more than one occasion is that he that he doesn't buy the article five premise of NATO, that there's no chance the the Americans would come to the well, to commit suicide for the Europeans. And, again, he pushed over hard for several years for Moscow to change the nuclear doctrine. At the end, you know, Putin went along with it.
And, of as he said, now he's arguing that, you know, perhaps it's necessary to consider using a nuclear warhead against the Europeans given what what they're doing against Russia and Ukraine. So it's it's quite serious stuff we're talking about. But Yeah. But everything seems to be falling apart, as you said, because if, you know, in the past, when people talk about Iranian nuclear weapons, it's like, how could they even consider something like this? This is pro nuclear proliferation.
Now the casualness of this, where the Germans say, oh, perhaps we should get a nuclear weapon. So, I mean, this is this is I mean, even if they think they are the good guys, it doesn't do any good if if this is gonna only result in other countries doing exactly the same. So, no, I think we're going down a very dangerous path. So I'm hoping, yeah, some But there's statesmans will come along.
Speaker 1: There's another aspect to this too, and this is again from a former Russian arms controller who I knew. I'm getting senile, so I can't remember all names anymore. I've never been good with names, but I'll get it. But he wrote an article where he talked about the fact that we're not exercising the arms control muscles. I mean, if you think about it, the INF treaty was negotiated by Paul Nietzsche.
Nietzsche was at Hiroshima, wrote one of the studies after that. Nietzsche wrote NSC 68, which was the foundational document of the cold war containment policy. Nietzsche was a cold warrior. He understood all. Nietzsche was there at ground zero, to talk about nuclear nonproliferation treaty, to talk about, you know, ABM treaty, SALT, etcetera.
So this is a man who understood the Cold War, understood every aspect of it, and could negotiate arms control responsibly because he was there. He had big arms control muscles. I mean, all of our guys had big arms control muscles. We used to be able to do this. Arms control trees are extraordinarily hard to negotiate.
If you ever read, gosh, Gerard Smith, I think was his name. I know the last name was Smith, but he was the negotiator for the SALT Treaty and he's written some great books, a series of books about that experience. It should be mandatory reading for everybody because you see the complexity, the nuance, the patience. It's not brinksmanship. It's not Donald Trump transactional this, that.
You have to understand where they're coming from. You have to understand their calculations. They have to understand yours. You have to get each other to understand. It takes a long time and a lot of effort to get these things out.
People just don't sit down overnight and go duh duh duh duh duh. It's hard work, very hard work. And you need people who know how to do this hard work, who think this way. They're gone. They're dead.
I mean, look, I was one of the young guys when this started. Gosh, When I started my work in in 1988, I was 27 years old. Alright? One of the youngest guys doing it. I'm 64 now.
I was the young guy. I go to INF reunion get goers and they're just dying off. All the guys that that, you know, the colonels, they're just dying off. They're dropping like flies. Everybody else is just old, you know, and so I come in with a handful of other guys and we're the young people.
We're in our mid sixties. We're young people. We're the last people who trained on this. The people who followed us didn't train on real arms control. They trained on arms control as a vehicle to guarantee American nuclear supremacy, American nuclear superiority.
That's not arms control. That's something totally different. We don't Christopher Ford is not an arms control specialist. He's an American nuclear supremacist who views arms control only as being effective if it guarantees American nuclear supremacy. Arms control requires people who view the other side as your equals, who believe in mutually beneficial relations, reciprocity.
We don't have people that think like that today. The muscles are gone and the Russians are the opposite. The Russians, their ministry of foreign affairs used to be sort of the lead arms control people. Now the ministry of defense and their job isn't to think about how to get rid of nuclear weapons. Their job is to look at America and say, these guys lie, they cheat, they steal, and we have to be prepared to deal with liars, cheaters, and thieves.
So they build a Russian nuclear weapons capability designed to operate in that environment. They're not conditioned to think diplomatically because they look at America and the Americans don't operate diplomatically. Nobody has arms control muscles anymore. They just don't exist. Not in The United States, not in Russia.
So, we're going have to retrain a whole new generation of people to do this. So, it's not just that we have to negotiate treaties, which are extraordinarily hard to do. We have to find people who are capable of negotiating treaties. And where do they come from? Our academic institutions are corrupted with Russophobia.
We're not training arms control specialists because to be an arms control specialist, you not only have to have the technical knowledge, you have to have a fundamental understanding of your opponent, genuine Russian area expertise. We don't teach Russian area expertise. We teach Putin is a dictatorial thug. I mean, that's it. You want a PhD in Russia area studies?
I'm just telling you right now. Make your thesis. Vladimir Putin is a dictatorial thug, and you will get a PhD, and you can go off and do anything you want. But God forbid you write, you know, the path towards, you know, reciprocal arms control. You'll fail.
Because they say, what do you mean reciprocal arms control? You mean treat the Russians with respect? Treat the Russians as legitimate? Treat the no. This is academia where we're supposed to be teaching people to think.
We don't create thinkers. We create ideologues who are anti arms control for the media, which is why the media isn't reporting on this as one of your first questions. Why is the media ignoring this? Because they're not conditioned to understand the reality of the threat and they won't be conditioned until they vaporize, and then it's too late.
Speaker 0: Yeah. No. Well, that's a grim note to to end on, but I know I couldn't agree more. As yes. Someone who I'm a professor at the university here.
It's ideologues, I think, is the right description, and they all march in line. And that there's no good explanation either, I think. If you want to explain how the media has absolutely no interest in this seemingly, that the arms control has now come to an end. But here we are. Anyways, Scott Ritter, thank you very much as always.
I appreciate. I don't know who would be better to explain the the severity of the decision to let this arm control arms control expire. So thank you very much.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Douglas Macgregor: Russia, China & Iran Seek to Contain U.S. Military https://youtu.be/EiWAwoB7ANM https://t.co/xWRzOkuwxC
Video Transcript AI Summary
Colonel Douglas MacGregor and Glenn discuss the current strategic picture across Ukraine, the Russia–China–Iran axis, and the broader Western political environment.
On Russia and Ukraine:
- MacGregor notes a major “Cauldron battles” situation in Southeastern Ukraine, with remaining Ukrainian forces being encircled and largely annihilated by precision strike weapons, and a Russian swarm anticipated to complete the encirclement.
- He identifies two focal points of Russian activity: Odessa (where Russian special operations are reportedly active at night, Odessa largely undefended with air defenses degraded) and Kharkov, with ongoing pressure toward Kyiv. He emphasizes that none of these alone solves the core problem of removing Zelenskyy’s government in Kyiv, which he describes as a facade Europeans seek to preserve.
- Russia has increased its force size, adding reservists and training new draftees; options for Moscow appear to be Odessa, Kharkov, and Kyiv. Putin is watching Western European political developments to gauge timing, potentially waiting for Western government changes to move decisively.
- MacGregor argues NATO is effectively irrelevant to Russia’s calculus and asserts the United States does not want a war with Russia over Ukraine, giving Moscow more freedom of action than Western audiences realize.
On Russia–China relations and Europe:
- Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin are pursuing a bilateral strategy to mutually reinforce military and economic capabilities, forming a large continental fortress against the United States. The two powers seek to strengthen ties as they view the U.S. as increasingly belligerent.
- MacGregor contends that European leaders, including Starmer, Macron, and Metz, are aligned with globalist and financial elites (referencing ties to BlackRock and others) and that personal relationships between leaders are not meaningful in the international arena; strategic interests drive policy.
- He argues that many European elites’ rhetoric about Russia serves to deflect from domestic vulnerabilities and to mobilize anti-Russian sentiment as political cover.
On the Middle East and Iran:
- The talk about Iran is framed as not serious; MacGregor describes a plan to escalate toward regime change in Iran, driven by U.S., Israeli, and allied intelligence communities, despite Iranian resistance and regional risk.
- He claims Mossad, MI6, and CIA influenced President Trump regarding Iran’s fragility, while Iran’s internal protests (economic grievances) were legitimate and quickly mischaracterized as attempts to overthrow the government. He asserts Chinese and Russian assistance helped Iran counter covert efforts, including providing satellite imagery and assisting integrated air and missile defenses.
- The declared Western goal is to destroy Iran as a nation-state, with the Iranian leadership prepared to respond with full use of capabilities if attacked. He suggests a potential air and missile campaign could target the regime and strategic hubs, with the United States likely relying on high-altitude precision strikes and long-range missiles, while questioning the effectiveness and survivability of U.S. platforms like B-52s against Iranian defenses.
- China and Russia are depicted as unlikely to allow Iran to be pulverized; they could intervene if Iran is near disintegration, possibly through non-nuclear actions such as a collision at sea, leveraging their submarine capabilities and influence.
On European political legitimacy and future:
- MacGregor connects the Epstein-related discourse in Europe to a broader critique of ruling elites, comparing the potential for political upheaval to late-18th-century France. He argues that as publics grow disillusioned with elites, there could be a crisis of political legitimacy and a shift toward more realistic leadership, with potential upheaval in Britain, France, and Germany.
On Putin and future moves:
- He suggests Putin views the possibility of reconciliation with Washington as unlikely, having reached somber conclusions about the prospects for meaningful agreement. He predicts Russia will act on its terms, potentially advancing toward the Dnieper River, Odessa, and perhaps Kyiv, while noting Russia does not intend to govern Western Ukraine long-term. He emphasizes that events will unfold on Russian terms, with European irrelevance in the decision-making process fading as Moscow executes its plans.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. Today, we're joined by colonel Douglas MacGregor, a decorated combat veteran and former adviser to the US secretary of defense to, well, hopefully, some sense of our current war. So as always, it's good to see you, colonel.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Makes sense. That's a tall order. We'll we'll do our best to describe, but making sense is difficult in Washington.
Speaker 0: Well, maybe we can first try to make sense of what's happening in in Russia then because the the it appears that their strategy is undergoing some change. There's some escalation happening. How are you assessing the Russian strategy at this time? Are they looking to knock out infrastructure, electric grids ahead of some major spring offensive? Or I I guess this is, like, the calm before the storm.
I know they're not telling you what they're gonna do, but how how do you make sense of of what is happening at the moment?
Speaker 1: Well, the first thing I think is that you've got another major Kesselslaft going on down in Southeastern Ukraine or what they call cauldron battles. If you move a little east and then South of Zavarisia, you see a large concentration of remaining Ukrainian troops that are being gradually encircled, and that circle is tightening rapidly. And they're being largely annihilated with a precision strike weaponry, but eventually the Russians will swarm over it. That seems to be at least in the Southeast, perhaps the last bastion of Ukrainian resistance. At the same time, we see a lot of interest right now in two things.
One is Odessa. Russian special ops is already walking around in Odessa at night. Odessa is lightly defended. Most of its air defense capability has been eliminated. So it's a function right now, I think, in Moscow deciding what you want to do next.
It will involve major operations. That could easily be Odessa. At the same time, they're closing every single day with Kharkov. Now, none of that, in my judgment, solves the ultimate problem, which is Kyiv. As long as that government under Zelensky exists, there is a facade, There is the impression of something significant in Kiev, and that's really all the Europeans have at this point.
The Europeans are preeminently interested in keeping that facade alive. And, unfortunately, even though president Trump says that he's no longer really interested and is upset with Zelensky and so forth, we continue to ship cash and and equipment over to the Ukrainians as well, which I think is a source of endless frustration for president Putin. So it's you know, I don't know which direction, the Russians wanna move in, but they've also increased the force size. They brought on more reservists, and they're currently training soldiers that came in as part of the regular draft. So I think the the options are are obvious, the the three that I mentioned, Odessa, Kharkov, and Kyiv.
I think, once again, president Putin is watching carefully what happens, politically in Western Europe, and he's waiting, and to some extent, I think, for the West Europeans to remove governments. That should have happened a long time ago, but for some reason, Starmer, Metz, or Metz, and Macron are still there. So he may decide that it's no longer possible to exercise continuous patience and and to move decisively. But again, he's always been very sensitive to the possibility that if he moved decisively in a in a major offensive, that this would awaken sleeping NATO. Maybe he still thinks NATO amounts to something.
I certainly do not. I think NATO is effectively irrelevant at this stage, and I don't think The United States wants to go to war with Russia over Ukraine. So I think he has more freedom of action than he thinks, but that's as close as I could come to explaining what's going on there.
Speaker 0: Well, of course, in Europe, where all our politicians and media speak of Russia's desire to restore the Soviet Union and, you know, marched on Poland, this and that. But, you know, in but we heard from Russia now and China that the one of the most recent news that they should develop a new grand plan for the development of bilateral relations. At least this is what, Xi Jinping was saying. What exactly do you see in the cards there for Russia and, China? And, of course, I think this is one of the problems a lot of the Europeans haven't, woken up to that since 2014, the Russians have been taking great steps to seek an economic future in the East.
So this idea that their foreign policy focus should be Europe, I think this is very, very misplaced. But what is it that you think this bilateral relationship will look like, and what are the objectives?
Speaker 1: Well, I think militarily, the two understand that they have a permanent interest at this point in mutually reinforcing their capabilities and their strength. If you were to draw a line all the way around Russia and all the way around China, you're effectively identifying the largest fortress in the world. These are the two great continental powers that are prepared to pool their military and economic resources both to increase their prosperity, enhance their economic productivity, but also to protect themselves against us. Because with each passing day, whether or not Donald Trump understands it, we appear to be more and more belligerent. Each each week, we're threatening some new country somewhere with some sort of drastic action.
So the only conclusion you can reach in Beijing and Moscow is that we need to reinforce our ties. We need to very seriously band together against the possibility that this unstable country called The United States could present a real existential threat to them. And, again, I think this is a source of unending bewilderment for president Putin because when president Trump says, well, I know president Putin. We have a good relationship. I think president Putin interprets that to mean something serious, but it it's meaningless.
Individual personal relations mean nothing in the international arena. Interests strategic interests are everything, And the strategic interests we seem to represent are hardly what most Americans would sign up for, but they reflect certain, what I would say, domestic constituencies interests. We would not be in The Middle East at all at this point, and we certainly would not be in a position of hostility towards Iran without the enormous Israel lobby and its its money, its financial power to elect, to de elect, to remove, to appoint people in the United States government. You also have the Cuban lobby, which is very well funded and quite large and influential. In fact, president Trump mentioned it when he talked about Cuba, when he took declared a national emergency vis a vis Cuba.
People said, well, effectively, why are you doing this? And he said, well, we have lots of people from Cuba inside The United States. Remember, this this whole administration has been a pay for play operation. You you donate enough money to the Trump family interests as well as to the interests of others associated with Trump, and then we'll seriously entertain your request. If you can't do that, we're probably not going to pay much attention to you.
Those are the things that are driving us external to The United States, sadly. I think it's outrageous. And and this also applies to Russia because many of these same groups have a long history of hatred towards Russia, and that hatred has translated into policies that are fundamentally hostile to Russia.
Speaker 0: Well, one area where we could also see The US and possibly its NATO allies, coming in conflict with this new block being shaped that is, with Russia and China at the center is, of course, The Middle East. It it appears I'm not sure if there's a stalemate going on with with Iran. It appears that Trump, I guess, wanted an easy victory or a short war, but the the Iranians appear to have essentially threatened with with, yeah, a massive retaliation against any attack, which makes it very difficult for for,
Speaker 1: you know,
Speaker 0: asserting any escalation control that is, you know, decide when the war should start, how it should be fought, when it should end. But how how does this affect the wider, I guess, strategic picture here? To what extent would, for example, Russia and China involve themselves or probably already involved themselves to some extent?
Speaker 1: I think we have to understand something. The Mossad CIA m I six triumvirate was successful in persuading president Trump a few weeks ago that Iran was on the verge of falling apart, disintegrating, all based on what they claimed was this concerted effort inside the country to overthrow the government. In reality, the protests that began were quite legitimate. They were not violent, and they weren't aimed at overthrowing anyone. These were large numbers of people who are extremely upset over the state of the Iranian economy for which we and The United States are mightily responsible.
Their currency is was being systematically destroyed, and they all are aware of that. And that was the foundation for the protests. They were not necessarily aimed at regime change. Then the Mossad, with support from MI six and CIA, introduced themselves into the equation. And we don't need to go back over the 40,000 Starlight terminals that were smuggled into the country and the Mossad agents who were operating within the crowds and providing money as well as weapons to people and urging them to shoot at police and kill members of the government and so forth.
All of that was thanks to Russian and Chinese assistance were very, very rapidly suppressed and eliminated, frankly. The 40,000 Starlight terminals were shut down, and the Russians and the Chinese both helped in identifying where they were, and that helped the Iranians to eliminate that that threat. But the people that went in to tell Donald Trump that Iran was weak and vulnerable and easy easy to essentially overthrow are still there. And what they then went back to president Trump and said, well, you know, our attempt to overthrow the government surreptitiously utilizing intelligence forces failed. So his answer was, well, what's the next step?
And is it the answer the question was a legitimate one, and he got an answer. The answer was provided both by the intelligence as well as by the chairman of the joint chiefs. We don't have enough firepower. We don't we don't have enough force on hand to affect anything inside Iran. The reason nothing has happened thus far is because we're still waiting for additional assets to show up.
There are probably two more, at least two more carrier battle groups on their way to the region. Now one may be in the Mediterranean. I don't know what another one will certainly be down in the Indian Ocean, but I also don't know what's going on in the air force side of the house. We have to remember that the real power behind the strikes on Iran won't come from the fleet at sea. It will come from the United States Air Force.
They will deliver presumably from high altitude out of range of Iranian air and missile defense capabilities enormous firepower in the form of glide bombs, precision strike weapons, and so forth. So these talks that have now been convened, think, are meaningless. I don't think the Iranians are terribly fooled. They're showing up because the Chinese and the Russians said, go to the talks. Listen to what they had to say.
But they've also made it very clear right up front of mister Netanyahu's talking points, which form the basis of president Trump's demand. Two out of those three talking points have been dismissed out of hand, and that is any change or dismantlement or restructuring of the missile arsenal so that Israel need not worry about being within range of Iranian weapons. That's off the table. And the notion that Iran will then stop supporting or working with its allies in the region, that's off the table. So the only thing they're willing to talk about apparently is enriched uranium.
Now how far can that reach? I'm not sure it can get very far because if you start talking about levels of enrichment and storage issues and where it's going to be, you're on your on the road back to the GCPOA that was there under the Obama administration. So I I don't think these talks are serious at all. I think they're buying time, so I wouldn't expect anything to happen for another week, maybe two weeks, but certainly not for at least another week or ten days because more assets are required. Now that brings us to the next question which is most important.
What's the objective of the probable air and missile campaign which will start in another week to ten days? Is it regime change? Is that where we're are we back to that, or is there something else? Well, I think that you're still going to have a concerted effort to identify, find, target, and destroy the government if it can be done. But I think this is about destroying Iran.
People need to understand that. This is a ruthless war of destruction that is designed to promote the disintegration of the Iranian nation state. They think they can do this. I don't know. I have my doubts.
I mean, this is, after all, a nation of 93,000,000. The area is the size of Western Europe, but of course, the areas of greatest interest are still largely in the North and the central part of the country. They're not down south, which means that the targeting challenge is not as immense as it would be if you went after Western Europe. But it's still a significant challenge, and I think that's where they're headed. They they simply want to destroy this nation state, cause it to divide, to fragment.
And again, you go back to the intelligence assessments to the people who've been telling Donald Trump and who told Biden, by the way, Russia is weak. Russia will be easy to defeat. Russia can't withstand the pressure. We're hearing the same kinds of things now about Iran. Now Iran is not Russia, and Iran has several very serious vulnerabilities.
You're familiar with them. Water is a huge problem. Food for the people that live in the country, they are dependent on external deliveries of food. Can the Russians and the Chinese help of those? Perhaps.
But I think that's a real danger. The question is, can they do enough damage to the point where somebody stands up and says, enough. We can't take it anymore. Now the what's the Iranian response to this? Well, the Iranian response is that they have no incentive to exercise any restraint.
So if they are attacked, their predisposition, Glenn, is to use everything they have. Now the the issue for us is I don't know how effective that will be. I've always said, and I think others agree with this, the Iranians can handle Israel. But can the Iranians handle Israel and The United States in terms of its military power? That is unclear.
Now enormous amounts of weaponry and munitions and missiles and so forth have been delivered over the last few weeks by the Chinese. The Russians have been on the ground and have been working to help with the integrated air and missile defenses. The Chinese, and I I presume the Russians as well, but we know without without a doubt the Chinese have done this, have provided satellite imagery, real time feed to the Iranians. So the Iranians are not in a position that they were the last time where they may not know where things are, that they're going to be surprised. I think they know where everything is, and that includes the ships at sea.
Now if you look at the weapons, I don't know how many of these missiles, I think it's the d f 21 or 23 that the Chinese have produced exclusively for the purpose of targeting ships at sea. We haven't seen them used. We don't know how effective they are. But given Iran's performance during the twelve day war, it turned out that their weapon ry was actually very, very accurate and very precise. So I think that in addition to firing whatever they've got at Israel, they will very definitely hit our bases, and they will probably go after our ships at sea.
What they can affect, obviously, are massive bombing runs right now. Now we don't know. Perhaps perhaps depending upon the path our bombers take and the altitude, can they be tracked? Well, stealth is is something that is not the miracle that most people think of it as being. Stealth in terms of the design that's built into aircraft can delay detection, but it can't make you invisible.
So you you can delay the detection for some period of time. I don't know what that delay looks like. So what we can't address right now is what happens to b twos that overfly. Can you use b 50 twos? You the b twos have to be very effective against the air and missile defenses as well as the critical targets before you can use b 50 twos.
B 50 twos are wonderful delivery systems for massive numbers of bombs, but they are very vulnerable because they're an old aircraft. They're easy to target and shoot down. So we we just don't know. There are a lot of questions we can't answer. I don't know what the answers are that are being provided to Donald Trump, but I suspect that he is being the victim of what I would call the rosy scenario.
Then the final point is how long can this last? And I think ten days to two weeks is about it because at that point, we're actually scraping the bottom of the barrel for missiles, and that's not a minor issue because you've got to protect your ships at sea, you've got to protect bases at home. How many missiles can you afford to expend before you're at an unacceptably dangerously low level, especially if the Chinese and the Russians become involved? And I think that's the final question. Everybody says, what do you think the Chinese and Russians are going to do?
And the only answer I could give is that neither China nor Russia will allow Iran to be pulverized out of existence. In other words, if it gets to the point where Iran really is on the ropes and could disintegrate, then Russia and China, I think, will act. Now what will that action consist of? It won't be nuclear, but it could involve a collision at sea very easily because both China and Russia have plenty of submarines, and we're not very good at tracking modern nuclear powered submarines in deep water.
Speaker 0: I think people often think China is, very cautious, and, well, I would agree with this, but but allowing Iran to fall in such a manner, it this is nothing to do with caution. This is extremely dangerous. And but it's hard to see either Iran or China wanting to go toy well, directly against The United States, but but that something has to be done to prevent Iran from falling. Yeah. But given that Iran would go all in, since they see this being existential, they will deny any limited, you know, bloody nose attack and, allow the war to be stopped.
And given that the Chinese and the Russians cannot, afford to see, the Balkanization or destruction of Iran, Do you think the war would still happen, though? I've I've heard some suggest that Trump is trying to walk this one back, or is it simply too late by now?
Speaker 1: Well, I don't know that it's necessarily too late. I think the decision has been made. That's what my point was about the talks. I don't think the talks are serious at all. I think it's just a matter of time to assemble more assets for what is obviously going to be a much larger challenge than they originally envisioned.
I think they thought they were going to have an easier time destabilizing and then ultimately destroying the regime. I think they had assembled what they thought they needed to attack the regime at the point when they were convinced it was very, very vulnerable. That turned out to be a falsehood. Now there's something else that deserves mention because we don't bring it up very much, but I noted that the Komenei, the Ayatollah in charge, supreme leader, whatever he is, who actually speaks very rationally when you listen carefully to what he says, has made it clear that this war will not be like the last. This will be a regional war.
Now people are interpreting that to mean, well, that's because the Iranians can target all the bases in the region and may ultimately go after ships at sea. That's part of it, but I don't think we're looking at the region through an objective lens. And I'm talking specifically about Turkey or Turkiye. The the Turks are very concerned for the following reasons. First of all, they see no benefit to the destruction of Iran for them.
What they expect to happen is if Iran disintegrates, fails to hold together, that they'll be overwhelmed with tens of thousands, maybe millions of refugees. That's probably also true for Iraq and the other surrounding Arab states. None of those states wanna face that. And frankly, many millions of those people will probably be redirected towards Europe. I'd be very surprised if that didn't happen.
Turks don't want anything to do with that. Secondly, the Turks are dealing with the Israelis right now in Syria and to a lesser extent in Lebanon. They know what the greater Israel project is all about. The population of Turkey itself is enraged over what has happened in Gaza. The hatred of the Israelis in Turkey is so thick that you could cut it with a knife.
In Istanbul, there is an exhibit. We would refer to it almost like the Holocaust Museum, something similar to that. And this exhibit is all about Gaza. Now I have not seen it, but I have friends and relatives that have been in there to see it, and they've told me that it is absolutely shocking. The the images of the of the murdered children and the starving population and the destruction are overwhelming.
Turkish population is streaming through this place in Istanbul, gets coverage all over Turkey, and there is a readiness in Turkey, to be frank, to fight. So if you're sitting in Turkey and it looks like things are so bad in Iran that the place could in fact fall apart and disintegrate, do you wait to be next on the menu? Because from the Turkish vantage point, Iran goes down, that leaves only us to oppose Israeli Jewish supremacy in the region. And I don't think the Turks wanna be alone on that. Now given that situation, what would you do as a Turk?
Well, you would also talk to the Russians and the Chinese. The Russians have a lot invested in Turkey. They're building a nuclear power station there. They've had their ups and downs with the Turks, but this is an existential question. I think the Russians and the Turks and the Iranian or the Chinese will all work out something at some point, and they will be united in their opposition to the destruction of Iran.
Now the other Arab states in the region are militarily irrelevant. Unfortunately, Egypt is a ambulatory patient. It has plenty of troops, it's got plenty of equipped, plenty tanks and so forth and aircraft, but they seem to be unable to do anything because internally Egypt simply isn't very stable. Egyptian society is not very cohesive. The government seems to be more concerned about the threat presented to it from its own population right now than it is about the Israelis.
That doesn't mean they're not sympathetic to everybody else in the region, especially the Iranians at this point because Egypt and Iran have had good relations now for several years. But I wouldn't expect any of the Arab states to do anything unless it appears that the three states I just mentioned are actually prepared to intervene in some fashion. In other words, this is a disaster on a regional scale that could ultimately spill over and and become almost global. That's the bad news. And I don't think there's an appreciation for that in the White House.
I think you're once again, you're dealing with people who say just as they did about Russia, it's weak, it's it's it's that, and no one will challenge us. No one will stand up to us. What happened the last time? Did the Chinese or the Russians do anything? The answer is no.
But the last time was not an existential question. The last time, it ended after twelve days. Now set all of that aside and consider the following, I don't think president Trump wants this to happen. I really don't, but I don't think he has much choice. I think he is a prisoner of his commitments to others over the last couple of years that ended up putting him in the White House.
So I don't think, he can back away from this.
Speaker 0: Yeah. One of the major weaknesses, no way I see, is this illusion of escalation control. It's as similar as what's happening in Europe. That is the idea that we can just put the war against Russia on the slow burner. They will just slowly kill each other, and, you know, we could put an end to it if we want to in negotiation table or but but I don't it just seems that this can explode at at any time.
If the front lines begin to collapse, which they appear to do, then and the Russians are able to start making massive ground forward. It's very hard to see why they would accept any compromise which would would allow NATO to revive, yeah, the Ukrainian front line against Russia in the future. Same with Iran. I think once this war has begun and, you know, the same thing happens, The US or Israel would run out of missiles, I don't think you can just hit the pause button and, you know, fight it again six months later. I think it would be very difficult to get this thing under control.
So, again, the illusion of escalation control seems to be a problem. But in this, you know, more chaotic environment, how do you assess the Europeans here? Because they they seem to be supportive of the campaign against Iran just like they're have been more than supportive on the campaign against Russia.
Speaker 1: Well, before we leave Russia, let me just make an observation. It was passed to me a few hours ago by someone who has spent hours, many, many hours, perhaps hundreds of hours watching video and speeches by president Putin. We pointed to something I found very interesting. You realize that February is the anniversary of the fall of Stalingrad. Americans pay no attention to this.
We know that the Russians or the Soviets at that point sustained at least a million casualties defending Stalingrad against the Germans. It was not the end of the war for the Germans by any means, but it was a tremendous setback. But it was an important turning point for the Russians because they had had very little success against the German armed forces to that point. Putin went to the memorial service in Stalingrad, and this man remarked it wasn't so much what he said, which was predictable, but he had never seen Putin so somber, not just deeply moved by the event because that's not unusual in Russia, but this man was especially somber, almost downcast in his posture and his look. And he tied this to some discussions that have gone on in Russia between various people that suggest that president Putin may have reached the point now where he's not sure there's much hope for any kind of I don't wanna say reconciliation, but any kind of useful agreement with Washington.
I think president Putin has now come to the conclusion that Russia may have to oppose us, and it's not something he wants to do just as I I contend that press Trump doesn't really wanna spark this war in The Middle East. But in Trump puts on a great face. He's a natural marketer. That's his greatest genius is marketing, and he speaks and and he conveys an impression that is totally divorced, I think, from what's really bothering him. But that's not the case with Putin.
This apparently was very, very obvious. So I say that because there are a lot of people in the West who don't understand the Russians and certainly don't understand president Putin. And I would urge everybody to take the time to go look at that memorial service for the February 2 and watch him very carefully, not just the translated statements, but look at him and his posture and how he behaves. He's very, very somber. I think he's very serious, and I would take note of that if I were in Washington.
Now you mentioned the Europeans. I listened to Donald Tusk this morning. I don't know when he said it, if it was today or yesterday, but try to make the claim that there was some sort of connection between Putin and Epstein, which is absolutely absurd. There's no evidence for that at all. Putin is not in need of any tax advice from Mr.
Epstein, appears to be or appeared to have been in the business of telling people how they could avoid paying taxes. He also didn't need any of Mr. Epstein's other famous services, But I think that tells you something about the Europeans right now. Tusk is a globalist. Macron's a globalist.
Starmers is a globalist. Mats is a globalist. All these people are BlackRock affiliates and associate with all the people that frankly I would avoid at all costs if I I can in The United States. These are people whose morals and belief systems are absolutely anathema to me and I think most American citizens. But the fact that they were going out of their way, especially Tusk, to try and make a link with Epstein strikes me as being an act of desperation, to try and convince people not just that the Russians are coming, the Russians are coming, and the Russians are not coming, and that's becoming increasingly obvious to people in Europe.
It's also to try and and defame once again president Putin and his government as evil incarnate, which it isn't. It never was. So I think the Europeans are stuck, and what we're all hoping for is that the respective electorates will throw these people out sooner rather than later because there's no reason for the conflict between Europe and Russia. But that's something that hasn't happened, and we hope that it does sooner rather than later. I guess the place according to David Betz that's most likely to burst at the seams first and now turns out to be Great Britain.
So perhaps that's where it begins. France won't be far behind, and I don't think the Germans will do much until they see it happen elsewhere.
Speaker 0: I did an interview with Betts David Betts, and I was yeah. I was asking, you know, when it's too late to reverse some of this, but he seemed quite convinced that that point has passed long ago. So some kind of a something resembling at least a civil war is more or less unavoidable. But it's interesting with Britain, though. The of all the media across Europe, it's the British media that has, over the past few days, really worked hard to try to rush a gate the whole Epstein scandal.
That is to suggest, well, perhaps Epstein was run by the KGB as if that's, you know, still a thing. But it's no. It's it shows to the the the the attempt to rely on the continued hatred of Russia to deflect, but also a very cynical way of trying to provide political cover for their own elites who are a lot of them implicated in this. But since you brought it up, I wanted to ask last day about this the this this Epstein files. What is it that can be con concluded from this?
I mean, you have a very strong hidden network of power. It's not a deep state, but it's still a a very profound network of power suggesting that power doesn't really reside with the voters, but instead well, to discard a polite language, a lot of the power reside among, you know, perverted elites. What is it that this what's the what is the significance you see in for for the foreign policies and, yeah, of of the West.
Speaker 1: I think it's very reminiscent of the discoveries in the late seventeen eighties in France by the French people about their own ruling class. By the time you get to 1789, the French have really developed a serious loathing for the aristocratic leadership in the country. The aristocrats flaunt all the morals and values. Now the French are not and never have been unreasonable people. But when you go out of your way to pour buckets of filth and abuse all over the institutions of the country, whether it's the church, the army, you know, the ruling ruling government, you're you're telegraphing to the population that you effectively had nothing but contempt for them.
And one of the reasons that you got the revolution in 1789 wasn't just because the price of bread was no longer affordable, it was also the willingness to say these people don't deserve the positions they hold. I think increasingly in The United States, more and more Americans are concluding that the people who govern them are unworthy of the positions they hold. They're also increasingly aware that the people governing them really aren't governing them. It's this group of billionaires behind the scenes that have their various tentacles into congress, the courts, even now into the senior military leadership, into the White House, to the point where they're beginning to wonder who is actually calling the shots, and more and more of them are concluding. It's it's not the people we elected, it's the people that paid for the election.
Speaker 0: So a crisis of political legitimacy, at least This what we appear to have brewing in Europe as well. So well, before we wrap up, do you do you have any other predictions in terms of or not predictions, but thoughts about where we might be heading off at least here in Europe in in terms of yeah. Especially what the Russians might have planned next.
Speaker 1: Well, the Russians are gonna do what the Russians are going to do. To be perfectly frank, the Europeans are increasingly irrelevant to that process. And what we don't know is what's being decided in Moscow, but I think based upon the observations of this individual who is a professional Putin watcher, and also what we see happening on the ground in Eastern Ukraine with the military, this is going to be ended on Russian terms, and the decision is about to be made when, where, and how that will happen. But what we're going to see in the future is going to be different from what we've seen over the last nearly four years. Russia, remember when they began this process, their military was far too small and completely ill equipped and incapable of coping with the crisis, and it took a few months for that to settle in, but by June, July, President Putin met with his leaders and decided, you know, we're gonna have to change everything we thought, our all of our original assumptions are wrong, and we're gonna have to build a new force.
They've done that. So I think they're in another situation now where they know they have effectively a dominating position on on ground in Europe, and they know that the Europeans have nothing with which to stop them. So the question is how much further do we go before we finally say enough's enough? And there are lots of Russians that are saying we need to go all the way to the Polish border, but I think a predisposition is to go to the Dnieper River certainly to seize Odessa and potentially, although it's not something that Putin wants to do, march straight into Kiev and rid rid themselves of this government. There are others that can take the reins and run government in the rest of Ukraine, but what people have never understood is that the Russians do not want to govern Western Ukraine.
They don't, And they have a long history of experience with the people there, so do the Poles by the way. The only people that seem to have had any real success governing Western Ukraine for any length of time, believe it or not, were the Austrians, And that that's actually viewed by most Ukrainians in the West as having been a relatively positive period in their history. But everybody else doesn't want anything to do it. It's it's kryptonite. Everyone wants to stay away from it.
So it may be that eventually these governments in Europe will fall down, will fall apart and be replaced by people that have a more realistic view of themselves. I'm still surprised that Germany, is on the path to national suicide given its passion for deindustrialization, has not already awakened, but these things are coming. What I've learned, I think, over the last few years is everything takes longer than you think it would. That's the best I can do for you.
Speaker 0: Yeah. That makes it difficult to time it, but the the the path is nonetheless it seems very clear clearly charted. So, well, colonel, as always, thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 1: Hey. Thank you, Glenn.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Peter Schiff: Economic Meltdown & Dollar Collapse https://youtu.be/064gjPOITvY https://t.co/XFrskZWIU0
Video Transcript AI Summary
Peter Schiff argues that the economic crisis ahead will be much bigger than 2008 and will center on a dollar and sovereign debt crisis. He says gold’s rise to and beyond $5,000 (and his longer-term view that it will go much higher) signals that the problems that previously led him to forecast $5,000 gold are now much larger. The core issue, he says, is not just a mortgage crisis but a loss of confidence in the United States’ ability to repay its debt and manage deficits and inflation. He contends that the problems were delayed for over a decade by policy “kicking the can down the road,” but have grown more severe, making the coming crisis broader and more damaging.
On the dollar and U.S. debt, Schiff contends that the world is moving away from the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency. He notes foreign central banks are buyers of dollars, but argues the United States has alienated many nations and created incentives for diversification away from the dollar. He predicts gold will become the primary reserve asset for foreign central banks to replace U.S. treasuries. He emphasizes that the U.S. economy relies on the world supplying goods and saving money, and without that external support, the U.S. economy would not function as it currently does.
Regarding housing and wealth creation, Schiff dismisses the idea that housing-price gains create true wealth if buyers cannot afford to purchase at inflated prices. He accuses former President Trump of aiming to sustain or enlarge a housing bubble through inflation, noting that the only way to keep home prices from falling would be higher inflation. He distinguishes between genuine wealth and artificial price levels created by monetary policy.
Inflation is presented as a consequence of expanding money supply and credit. Schiff points to the dollar’s four-year low and a record low against the Swiss franc as signs that the dollar will depreciate further, leading to higher consumer prices in the U.S. He expects a protracted downturn accompanied by high inflation and higher interest rates, with the dollar at the epicenter of the crisis.
On timing, Schiff believes the crisis will unfold differently from 2008 because the U.S. government cannot bail itself out in the same way. He foresees a dollar crisis that benefits other nations through a realignment of purchasing power: as the dollar weakens, prices rise in the U.S. while goods become relatively cheaper elsewhere. He foresees increased demand for gold and possibly other currencies as the dollar declines, with central banks more inclined to hold gold.
Regarding policy distortions, Schiff argues that current fiscal and monetary policies distort markets beyond Keynesian ideals, with deficits seen as perpetual. He critiques GDP as an imperfect measure, noting that it includes expenditures many would rather avoid, such as disaster-related spending, health care costs, and crime prevention expenses, and excludes beneficial aspects like leisure time.
On the political economy, he suggests that the U.S. debt problem will worsen as long as there is no political will to cut spending, predicting creditors will increasingly stop funding the U.S. debt. He cites Japan as a potential large seller of Treasuries, which would push interest rates higher. He says that if the dollar falls, Americans will lose purchasing power while the rest of the world gains access to cheaper goods, and global investment will shift away from the U.S.
In summary, Schiff foresees a coming, substantial dollar and sovereign-debt crisis, with gold and other real assets serving as refuges as the U.S. economy confronts devaluation, rising prices, and a reconfiguration of global reserve currencies.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined today by Peter Schiff, the CEO of Euro Pacific Asset Management and host of the very popular Peter Schiff Show podcast. So I will leave a link in the description and also for his business, and thank you for coming on. You initially became very famous for predicting the crash of the housing bubble. However, you did it all the way back in 2006 already.
And I I remember back then, it was met with mockery by many as the housing market was supposed well, considered safe. And in 2012, I think it was you made the prediction that gold would go over $5,000, also mocked by some before of course, now last week, it did cross into 5,000 before now slightly dropping down. But it's important to note that back in 2012, I think gold was about 1,600. So you don't have a crystal ball, but obviously, you're reading the market quite well. But you're saying that we're heading into a huge economic crisis now.
How how do you think this will play out compared to 2008?
Speaker 1: Well, first of all, you know, when I made that prediction back then, I didn't think it would take this long for gold to get to 5,000. I I thought it would have happened sooner, so it was a little bit premature. But at this point, though, I think gold's going a lot higher than 5,000, and that's because between then and now, the the problems that led me to believe that we'd have $5,000 gold are are are much bigger. You know, we we were able to kick the can down the road for over a decade, but in doing that, all of the problems got much worse. So, unfortunately, now I think it's gonna be a much bigger economic crisis.
I think we're gonna have a dollar and a sovereign debt crisis. And and and I think gold is is pretty much a warning that that's what's gonna happen. You know? Back in 2007 when the subprime market blew up, that was something that I had been forecasting would happen for years, and I knew that was gonna be part of a of a broader financial crisis. And so when that happened, I became, you know, more convinced that, you know, the financial crisis was gonna happen soon, and I was, you know, warning about it.
But, you know, most people just believe that what happened with subprime was an isolated event, that it was contained to subprime, and and I knew that wasn't the case. And I think what we're seeing now in in in the gold market is a similar warning. And I think it's also going unheeded, but I think that the crisis that's coming now will be a lot worse than what we had back then. It's not it's not just a mortgage crisis. This is sovereign debt we're talking about.
This is, you know, United States government treasuries that are falling into question and the the value of our currency.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, back in 2008, I think the debt was 9 or 10,000,000,000,000. Now it's 38 and a half. So a lot of the situation much of the situation is worse. But but at least in 2008, there were there weren't that many good alternatives.
They said, you know, whatever flaws the US dollar had, it was still the cleanest shirt in the hamper, it was said, and people tended to flock to US bond. But, what what do you see happening now with the bond market and the US dollar? You think it's gonna be less of a safety net as opposed to what it was back in 2008?
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, I think the world is trying to move away from the US dollar. That's pretty clear with foreign central banks being major buyers of US dollars. And I think that, you know, The United States has alienated a lot of countries and, you know, created a situation where they have an an added incentive to move away from the US dollar as a reserve currency. And so I think they're accelerating that move, and I think that gold is gonna be the primary reserve asset to replace the US dollar and US treasuries in in reserve for foreign central banks.
And I think that, you know, the the the world is going to move away from from The US, and this is gonna be a big problem because now the world depend The US rather depends on the world. The world supplies us with the goods that we don't produce, and they loan us the money that we don't save. And without, you know, the world doing that, The US economy does not function. It's not viable unless we have the world propping it up.
Speaker 0: Do you think the upcoming economic crisis, though, will, prick another housing bubble? Because I saw that Trump, he was arguing for driving house prices up in order to make homeowners wealthy. Well, I guess, what do you make of this sort of, wealth creation, if it is? And how, how how can this impact the stability of the housing market?
Speaker 1: Well, it's not it's not true wealth. If you're talking about overpriced homes that nobody could sell because nobody can afford to buy them, then the homes are not worth what people pretend they're worth. You know, real estate is only worth, you know, what the market will bear. If people can't afford to buy the properties, the property prices have to come down. And I think it's interesting that Donald Trump's goal is to not only sustain a housing bubble, but to make the bubble bigger just so people can pretend that they're richer than they really are by owning, you know, homes that they can't sell.
But, you know, the only way that that Trump could do this is to create inflation, Although he's also promising to get rid of inflation, or he's claiming he's already done that, but the only way to keep home prices from falling is with a lot more inflation.
Speaker 0: What are the real inflation levels now, though? Because, if one looks at, you know, education, health care, all of these things, the the price but, of course, food as well. The prices are increasing. This is not just an American problem, by the way. Across Europe, the inflation levels are starting to look, kind of awful as well.
But how do you assess the inflation levels now?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I think inflation is a big problem, you know, because remember, inflation is the expansion of the money supply and credit. And, you know, we're we're we're still on undergoing a major expansion in you know, money supply is growing. You know, the government is trying to provide more credit, and all of that is inflation. Ultimately, it's gonna bid prices much higher. And I think that when the dollar really starts to crack, and we just recently hit new four year lows in the dollar index, and the US dollar hit an all time record low against the Swiss franc, I think we're gonna see substantial US dollar depreciation in the years ahead.
And all that, of course, is gonna result in much higher consumer prices here in The United States.
Speaker 0: Do you have any, timeline you you see for the economic crisis, which is now looming? I I spoke recently to Jim Rogers, and he he's very reluctant to to give any prediction in terms of timing. But he, you know, he says what what he knows will come, but and he's not sure when it's gonna happen. But but, nonetheless, how how can we expect to, well, I guess, experience this financial crisis coming our way? Is it I mean, is 2008 still a good model to follow in terms of No.
How it might unravel?
Speaker 1: No. I think it's gonna be very different than 2008 because, again, 2008 was about private credit. It was about mortgage credit, and the US government was able to bail everybody out by substituting its own credit. But this is very different. This is where the US government is really gonna be the epicenter of the crisis.
It's the fact that there's been a loss of confidence in The United States' ability to honestly repay its debt and, you know, to get control of the deficits and, you know, and and inflation. And so it's very different. There's, you know, there's no way for the US government to bail itself out. And, you know, during the financial crisis, the dollar strengthened. You know, when when we entered the financial crisis, the dollar was at a multiyear low, and it actually got stronger during the crisis, which actually helped mitigate the harm.
But this time, I think the dollar is gonna be at the epicenter of the crisis. The dollar is gonna be tanking, and that's going to add to the problems. Right? Because it's gonna fuel higher interest rates and higher consumer prices. So we're gonna have a protracted economic downturn but with high inflation and and higher interest rates.
And it it it could be very high, very high interest rates.
Speaker 0: But if people are fleeing the dollar, where where will they go? Is it just the metals or crypto? Or, again Well,
Speaker 1: I don't think I don't think much of it will go into crypto. I think a lot of it is just going back into their local currencies, or stronger currencies, and then gold. You know, I think central banks will, you know, be more likely to hold gold as a reserve. But, you know, I think, you know, it's just gonna be on balance, you know, not wanting to hold US dollars. You know, it's not like you have to get into anything.
You just don't hold dollars.
Speaker 0: Well, in the dollar crisis, what exactly would this look like? Are we talking hyperinflation? If so, I mean, it's it's hard to picture because The United States has been the financial and economic center of the world for so long. Hyperinflation or collapse of currency in a country like The US, it would well, it's very difficult to, I guess, model it after anything we've seen before. So Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, nothing lasts forever. And, you know, we have a tremendous amount of debt in The United States, and, you know, a crisis was pretty much inevitable. Now you hear this you know you know, Powell said at his most recent press conference again that our debt is on an an unsustainable trajectory, but that the level of debt is not unsustainable. And I and I think he's wrong. I think the level is unsustainable, and we're gonna we're gonna find that out.
Because the reason that they have to keep interest rates so low is because if interest rates normalize, we couldn't afford to service the debt, let alone repay the debt. But, you know, whether we end up having hyperinflation in, you know, Weimar Republic style, you know, I don't know if it's gonna get that bad. It could, but I think there's gonna be a considerable devaluation of the dollar, and and that means prices in The United States will rise substantially. I mean, a lot more than what we've seen in recent years. I I could see the general price level in The United States doubling or tripling, and and that, you know, that would result in a very substantial decline in the standard of living of of of Americans.
But it would also result in a in in an increase in the standard of living of of non Americans Because every as everything got more expensive here, it would get cheaper every place else. So, you know, the the world has a lot to gain, from from from this.
Speaker 0: So where do you think the good money is going? That is, if, there there's a lot of money in The United States and around the world. Where where do you think the money would be invested? Because a lot of money has been reinvested simply in in The United States over decades and decades. If all this money is going somewhere else due to a lack of trust or, you know, like yourself, where where do people put their money then?
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I think, you know, money is gonna flow out of US dollar denominated assets, US stocks, US bonds, and and, you know, people are gonna bring their money home and invest, locally. Or in other countries, just not The United States, you can already see that. Last year, the returns on foreign stocks greatly exceeded the returns in The US, and the same is happening this year. So I think that this trend has already started, and I think it will persist for many, many years as a lot of the capital that came into The US leaves The US.
Speaker 0: I see that because of some of the political turmoil, though, that even some allied countries like German Germany are now considering repatriating their gold because they want to make sure it's safe. But but in this wider, I guess, more aggressive economic policies being used, especially this economic coercion, how does that play into it? And then especially Trump's tariffs because I I, to be honest, initially thought they would be used more as cautiously in part of some industrial policy focused on specific sector to develop international competitiveness or, you know, some industrial maturity. Mhmm. But instead, the last threats, I think, was countries in Europe who opposed, yeah, The US from taking Greenland, that they would also have tariffs.
So, again, it's not how I had hoped hoped it would be used. But how does this play into, I guess, undermining or triggering a dollar crisis or a debt crisis?
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think I think all of this is adding to the problem. I mean, certainly, the threats of invading Greenland, I think, were a real wake up call as to the the real risks to the world of continuing to finance US military buildup. I mean, without the world loaning us money, we could not afford the military that we have. And the fact that we then threatened to invade a peaceful country simply because we wanted its territory, because we thought it was somehow strategic to The United States, I think, you know, was a huge mistake on the part of on the part of Trump, as are the tariffs.
Because, you know, Donald Trump is vilifying the entire world, claiming that the world is ripping off America, taking advantage of America, when it's actually the reverse that's true. And the tariffs that he's imposing are, of course, on Americans, but it is disruptive to global trade. It's disruptive to companies operating in other countries because it makes their goods, you know, less affordable to Americans by by raising prices. And and so, you know, I I it shows that The United States is an unreliable trading partner, partner, and The United States should not have the reserve currency because the only reason or the reason we have these huge trade deficits is because we have the reserve currency. I mean, that's kinda like the deal because the only way that you can earn dollars is to have a surplus with The United States.
But that benefits The United States because we don't have to produce all this stuff. We get to consume it, but without having to do the hard work of making it. Also, we get to borrow a lot of money without having to save it. So, you know, we've got the better half of the bargain, and and I think we're about to lose that privilege. I think the world recognizes finally that that this this relationship is not advantageous to the rest of the world, and they need to move on.
Speaker 0: And, how do you see over time when you have this much interference into the markets? It's reasonable to expect that the markets become distorted. I mean, we keep referring to this to this as Keynesianism, but even Keynes, I don't think, would have expected or condoned the kind of policies we're seeing today, especially in terms of keeping the interest artificially low and, you know, fueling all these asset bubbles.
Speaker 1: I mean, even Keynes and I'm not a Keynesian by any stretch, but even Keynes believed that you ran deficits during a recession or hard times, but that you ran surpluses during good times so that you would pay off the debt that you accumulated during bad times. He never advocated perpetual debt that you so we don't even have Keynesian policies anymore. We have something even worse.
Speaker 0: How about other distortions in the economy? It's often pointed out that our GDP is measured in a very poor way. And, you know, the the British example, I think, is interesting. That is in 2014, The UK's office of national statistics began including prostitution and illegal drugs, I think, into the measurement of GDP. And I guess, in all fairness, it's they're supposed to measure all market activity, but but there's always this incentive to make the economy look bigger than it actually is to to, I guess, boost confidence.
But
Speaker 1: Yeah. You know, I've I've I've never thought that GDP was the best measure of of an economy because, yeah, there's a lot of things in there. You know, legal legal expenses, you know, are part of the GDP, but most people would rather not have legal bills. You know, when there's a disaster, you know, when there's, you know, a hurricane that destroys houses, that adds to the GDP, but we'd rather not have a hurricane destroy our houses. I think medical, you know, medical spending.
I mean, most people would rather not have to go to the doctor. If I have to spend a lot of money on health care, I'd rather be healthy. I'd rather have no medical bills. So you have a lot of things. I mean, let's say there's a lot of crime, and and now you have to spend money on, you know, burglar alarms and fences.
I mean, I'd rather have a safe community where I didn't have to spend that money. So, you know, you're you're measuring a lot of things that people would rather not do, and then there are a lot of things in there like leisure that don't even count in a GDP. If I have a lot of free time, which most people value free time. There's there's nothing there's nothing in in the GDP that that that measures that. So, yeah, I mean, it really doesn't show, you know, the standard of living that a society has just just because you measure you measure GDP.
But that that's that's what what everybody uses.
Speaker 0: Wouldn't there be growing pressure now in The US to restore some fiscal responsibility? Because, just from a, well, a practical perspective, that is, if one spends more on servicing debt levels than on the entire military, this is, this is becoming a real national security problem. Is how is the climate in The US now? Is there any push towards just starting to reduce the debt levels, or and has that ship sailed?
Speaker 1: No. I mean, none whatsoever. I mean, if you remember during the campaign, the most recent presidential campaign, there was a lot of talk about cutting government spending, reducing the debt. Elon Musk was going to lead the Department of Government Efficiency, Doge. And initially, you know, he came to Washington with the intent of cutting spending, and he was ran out of town.
Right? So there is no appetite at all in the Republican Party for cutting government spending. And I think that's a big part of the problem now because I think our creditors are finally coming to terms with the fact that there will never be any kind of deficit reduction in The United States, that so long as the world is willing to loan us money, we will keep borrowing it. And so the real solution is for the world to stop lending, stop buying our treasuries. In fact, start selling the treasuries they already own, and I think that's what's going to happen.
I think it's already happening.
Speaker 0: Yeah. That was my question. To to what extent is this happening? I know that China and Russia began dropping a lot of the the investments, but that was kind of out of necessity because the, yeah, the political and, well, security competition intensifies. But, but the Japanese, the Europeans, do you see them also scaling back their investments in the US treasuries?
Speaker 1: I think so. I mean, I think Japan is in a particularly difficult spot right now, with the rising yields in Japan and the amount of Japanese government debt outstanding. And so I think that one of the things that Japan could do to lessen its problem would be to pay down a substantial portion of its debt, and the only real way to do that would be to liquidate US treasuries. They're the largest holder of US treasuries, but if they sell their US treasuries, they could repay their their own debt and and shrink the size of the debt that they have. So I think that's a real risk to The United States that the Japanese do that because that would be great for Japan, but it would be bad for The United States because it would put significant upward pressure on on interest rates here.
Speaker 0: Well, given that your, yeah, your other predictions have all come true, if this economic crisis now plays out, it becomes a massive dollar crisis. How will this affect the the rest of the world? Because, again, The US isn't, you know, isolated island. There's a lot of investments that has been done, a lot of dependencies, on The United States. So how are some regions safer than others, or how are you assessing this?
Speaker 1: Well, again, I think a a dollar crisis is bad for The United States. I don't think it's bad for the rest of the world. In fact, I think it's a net positive for the rest of the world because the dollar going down, it it just means that other currencies go up. And and so what happens is there's a realignment of purchasing power. Things get more expensive in America, but they get cheaper every place else.
So Americans end up consuming less, but the rest of the world consumes more. And that's a win for the rest of the world. You know, every everybody competes. You know? There's there's only a certain amount of goods that are produced every year, and they get allocated based on who could pay the most.
And Americans have been at an advantage because of our currency. It's been the, you know, the exchange rate that allows Americans to outbid other people for the goods that everybody wants. But if the dollar goes down substantially and other currencies go up, all that happens is now Americans get outbid, and people in other countries get to enjoy the products that they may not have been able to afford before. Whereas Americans no longer have access to those products because because because we can't afford them. Right?
So I I I see it as a win. And especially too, I mean, America, we've sucked up a lot of capital. A lot of savings around the world have been invested in The US. Now to the extent that the world stops doing that, where are they gonna invest their savings? Well, they'll invest it in their own countries.
So I think the rest of the world will see an increase in investment capital, which can only benefit the rest of the world. The United States is the loser because all of a sudden, we no longer have those investments because we we we don't have the savings. You know, Americans just spend everything. We rely on the rest of the world to do to do all the savings.
Speaker 0: My my last question is what's do you have any predictions for 2026 or at least almost falling in under 2026?
Speaker 1: For the elections?
Speaker 0: Oh, no. In general, for the economy and the, yeah, the election as well. That's
Speaker 1: Well, I look. I think the I think I think the economy gets worse throughout the course of the year. I I I I think the economy is already pretty weak. I think, you know, the reports of this strong economy, I don't think are are are accurate. I think the GDP numbers have been, skewed by the massive investment in AI and the build out of AI.
But a lot of debt has been accumulated too, which, you know, they don't count that. Right? If you goose your GDP by on a lot of debt, they don't look at how much debt you accumulate. They just look at at at the numbers. But I think beneath the surface, you know, things are difficult.
I think the cost of living continues to rise. I think, you know, the job market continues to be very soft, and more and more Americans are struggling to make ends meet. And I think those problems are going to worsen as as the year progresses, which is why I think that the Republicans are going to lose probably the house, but maybe also the senate too in the midterm elections later this year.
Speaker 0: K. Well, thank you. And where can people find you, by the way?
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, you know, I I do my own podcast once or twice a week at the the Peter Schiff Show on schiffradio.com or on my YouTube channel. You could follow me on social media. You know, I'd I'd I post a lot on X, and and I'm also, you know, on, you know, YouTube and Facebook and Instagram and TikTok and all those. So you can you can look for me on all those platforms.
But I think most importantly too is people need to be prepared for what's gonna happen financially in The US. People should get ahold of my representatives at Europe Pacific Asset Management to talk about the ways that we can incorporate my investment strategies into your into your portfolios. I do have mutual funds too that people can buy on their own. They can get the information on all the funds at the Europe europac.com website. But my mutual funds and strategies are specifically designed, to benefit from the economic events that are gonna be unfolding over the next few years.
And it's also important that people buy gold and silver. I mean, we've had a pullback recently. You know, gold got up to almost 5,600. It's now back down a little bit below 5,000. Silver got up to 121, and it's now back below 90.
And I think people should be buying this dip. I think we've got a long way to go higher in precious metals. And so Schiff Gold is my company, and I'd recommend that everybody go there and buy some physical precious metals, especially the silver while it's still available. I can already see that the supplies are running low, and a lot of the products that we that we would typically stock are no longer available, because of the the short supply of silver.
Speaker 0: We could add your books to that list because I I initially began buying gold and silver when I first read your book about twenty years ago.
Speaker 1: My most my most recent book, the real crash, America's coming bankruptcy, how to save yourself and your country, was from 2013. But I would suggest that people read that book now because it's actually a lot more relevant today than it was then because I think the events that I was forecasting in my book back then are much closer to happening now than they were at the time.
Speaker 0: Well, I'll leave a link to that as well. So thank you very much for taking time.
Speaker 1: Alright. Take care.
reSee.it AI Summary
I argued in 2015 that Russia’s dream of an inclusive Greater Europe had died, as NATO expansion and Ukraine’s coup aimed to forge a Europe against Russia, pushing Russia to reorganize eastward and build a Eurasian geoeconomic order to balance the West and fragment its politics. If Europe had embraced multipolarity, it would gain cheap energy, an Arctic Europe, diversified ties, and peaceful Georgia/Ukraine/Moldova frontlines; but realism was dismissed as Russian propaganda.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Posted this picture of my book chapter on Facebook, exactly 10 years ago today: “Russia’s Pivot to Asia: Constructing a Eurasian State in a Multipolar World.” I argued that Russia’s dream of an inclusive Greater Europe, based on Gorbachev’s Common European Home, had died, as NATO expansionism and the coup in Ukraine had the aim of creating a hegemonic format for Europe. As the efforts to create a Europe without Russia would inevitably mean creating a Europe against Russia, the overwhelming incentive for Russia was to reorganise its entire economy to the East. Once the geoeconomic architecture for Eurasia was established (technology, industries, transportation corridors, and financial instruments of power), the collective hegemony of the West would be balanced, and the political West itself would fragment as economic and security interests became too divergent. *** This argument was difficult to make back in 2015, as the Russia–China partnership was denounced as a “marriage of convenience,” BRICS was a “talking club,” de-dollarisation was considered science fiction, and there was a religious conviction that the West would forever be unified by “common values.” A weakness in human nature is to assume that the conditions of the present time are permanent, as opposed to a temporary state resting on a weak foundation. Much of what is happening in the world now should have been very predictable, but it demands that we first recognise the legitimate security concerns of our adversaries in order to calibrate our economic and security policies accordingly. In Europe, recognising the security concerns of adversaries is denounced as “legitimising” or supporting the opponent, which is considered treason. We thus walk deaf, blind, and dumb into the future—and believe it is patriotic. If Europe had adjusted to multipolarity and accommodated Russia in Europe, there would have been an access to cheap and reliable energy resources and a huge export market, the Arctic would have been primarily a European region, Europe would have diversified its economic connectivity and been less reliant on the US, and the frontline states in a re-divided Europe (Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova) could have prospered and been in peace. However, the ideological fundamentalism is out of control in Europe, and even recognising the realities of a multipolar distribution of power is largely considered to be "Russian propaganda".
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
John Mearsheimer: Cold War 2.0 & NATO's Defeat in Ukraine https://youtu.be/OV75YsYnE8U https://t.co/PFufC76D24
Video Transcript AI Summary
Glenn: Welcome back. We are joined today by Professor John Mersheimer to understand what is happening in the world with this new great power rivalry and how the outcome of the Ukraine war will impact this new Cold War. Have we entered a new Cold War? Who are the players, competing interests, and the rules?
Mersheimer: I think we have entered a new Cold War. We're in a multipolar system, and the United States, China, and Russia are the three great powers. The United States is certainly in a cold war with China. China is powerful and threatens to dominate East Asia, and the United States will almost certainly go to great lengths to prevent that from happening, which axiomatically creates an intense security competition in China. An intense security competition is a cold war, and the name of the game is to make sure that security competition does not turn into a hot war. We are in a cold war with the Chinese, or the Chinese are in a cold war with us. The hot war is avoided.
Regarding Russia, since we moved into multipolarity, the Russians and the Chinese have been close allies against the United States. This is largely a result of the Ukraine war, which has pushed the Russians into the arms of the Chinese and caused closer Sino-Russian cooperation. The United States, through the Biden administration, was involved in a cold war with both Russia and China. Trump tried to change that, seeking good relations with Russia to form a Russia-plus-US alliance against China, but he has been unable to make that happen. The result is that the United States is basically still in a cold war with both Russia and China. The war in Ukraine has made me worry greatly that the Cold War in Europe could turn into a hot war, even as the U.S.-China relationship remains cooler so far.
Glenn: European leaders hoped the United States and Europe would unite in this new Cold War, with liberal hegemony fading and a return to unity against Russia. But Ukraine has instead divided Europe. How do you explain this? Is it the US not seeing Russia as the same threat as Europeans, or a concern about pushing Russia toward China, or Europe’s costs of the partnership? Is this uniquely a Trump-era approach?
Mersheimer: From an American point of view, good relations with Russia make sense. China is the peer competitor, and the United States wants to pivot to East Asia to prevent China’s dominance. Russia is the weakest of the three great powers and not a major threat to Europe. The Americans believe Europe can deal with Russia, freeing them to focus on China. Europe, by contrast, is threatened by Russia’s proximity and thus prioritizes Russia. NATO expansion into Ukraine is seen by many Europeans as a disaster, poisoning Russia–Europe relations, making Europe deeply committed to using Ukraine to weaken Russia. The transatlantic alliance becomes strained, especially with Trump raising the possibility of leaving NATO. Europeans fear losing the American pacifier that keeps centrifugal forces in check, which would complicate European coordination with Russia.
Glenn: If the United States signals a departure, won’t Europe face greater challenges in managing Russia? And is Russia truly an empire-building threat, or is this a post-2014 narrative that intensified after February 2022?
Mersheimer: Bringing Ukraine into NATO was destined to cause trouble. The crisis began in 2014, and the 2022 war is ongoing. The Ukrainians and Europeans want a security guarantee for Ukraine, essentially NATO membership, while Russia demands territory and rejects a security guarantee that would enshrine NATO’s presence near its borders. The Europeans see NATO expansion as threatening, while the Americans view Russia as the weaker power and the need to pivot to China. The controversy over responsibility for this disaster arises from competing interpretations of NATO expansion and Russian aggression.
Glenn: Do you see Russia changing course soon? There has been escalation—Odessa blockades, port attacks, and targeting infrastructure. Could this signal a new stage of the war?
Mersheimer: The Russians believe Ukraine is on the ropes and expect to win on the battlefield in 2026, possibly expanding fronts in Kharkiv and Sumy. They may consider increasing conventional force and possibly using nuclear weapons if the war drags on. They view the conflict as existential and fear losing, which could push them toward drastic measures to end the war. The Russians could escalate if they think they cannot win conventionally.
Glenn: What are the non-nuclear options to win quickly? Could the Russians deliver a decisive conventional victory?
Mersheimer: It’s a war of attrition. If Ukraine’s army is weakened, Russia could surround large Ukrainian formations, disrupt logistics, and open larger fronts. They may build up forces in the rear, potentially for a breakthrough or to deter Western escalation. The battlefield outcome may determine the next steps, including whether nuclear options are considered.
Glenn: How will Ukraine end? Is it a military defeat, economic collapse, or political fragmentation?
Mersheimer: Ukraine is likely to be defeated on the battlefield. Its economy is in desperate shape, and losing Odessa or more territory would worsen it. Politically, Ukraine will face internal divisions once the war ends. Europe will face a broken Russia–Ukraine relationship, with some European states viewing the conflict differently. Ukraine’s demographic decline compounds its bleak outlook, and the country may become a problematic rump state. The war should have been settled earlier; the negotiators in Istanbul in 2022 could have sought a different path. Zelensky’s choice to align with Western powers and walk away from Istanbul negotiations deepened Ukraine’s predicament.
Glenn: Any final reflections?
Mersheimer: The war’s outcome will reshape Western unity and European security. Historians may view this as a major mistake in weakening the West. The blame for the disaster will likely be attributed in the West to Russia’s imperialism, but the expansion of NATO is also central. Europe’s economic and political landscape will be altered, and Ukraine’s future will be deeply challenging.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined today by professor John Mersheimer to get a better understanding of, what is happening in the world now with this new great power rivalry and also how the outcome of the Ukraine war will impact this new Cold War. Thank you for coming on. And I thought I wanted to open up with a very big question, which is have we entered a new Cold War? And if so, who are the players?
What are the competing interests? And what are the rules of this new Cold War?
Speaker 1: Well, I think we have entered a new Cold War. I think we're in a multipolar system, and I think, The United States, China, and Russia are the three great powers. And The United States is certainly in a cold war with China. Now what exactly do I mean by that? I think as a result of the fact that China is so powerful and threatens to dominate East Asia and that The United States will almost certainly go to great lengths to prevent that from happening, You axiomatically have an intense security competition in China.
And I, excuse me, think you've seen evidence of this over the past few years. And for me, an intense security competition is a cold war. And I distinguish a cold war from a hot war. A hot war is when two countries, like The United States and China, actually get into a fight with each other. And of course, that's what we want to avoid.
But the fact is we are in a cold war with the Chinese or the Chinese are in a cold war with us. It's an intense security competition. And the name of the game is to make sure that that security competition or that cold war does not turn into a hot war. Now this raises the question, what about Russia? Well, it's quite clear that since we moved into multipolarity, the Russians and the Chinese have been close allies, against The United States.
And this is largely a result of the Ukraine war, which has pushed the Russians and into the arms of the Chinese and caused the Chinese and the Russians to have very close relations. So The United States, certainly through the Biden administration, was involved in a cold war with the Russians as well as the Chinese. Now what's happened with president Trump is he tried to change that situation. He doesn't wanna have an intense security competition with Russia. And in fact, if anything, what the Trump administration would like to do is have good relations with Russia and make it a Russia plus US alliance raid against China.
I think that's the basic goal of president Trump. But he's been unable to make that happen. And the end result is that The United States is basically still in a cold war with Russia as well as with China. And in both cases, we wanna make sure, as I said before, that that cold war or those cold wars don't turn into a war. And if anything, if you look at what's happened with regard to Ukraine in recent years, if there is one place where it's likely that the Cold War could turn into a hot war, it's in Ukraine.
Ukraine so far, or Europe so far, or The US Russian relationship so far has actually been more dangerous than The US China competition. We've had no major crisis in East Asia involving The United States and China. So that Cold War has remained very cold, which is all for the good. But the war in Ukraine, and given some of the events that have taken place there, have made me worry greatly that the Cold War there would turn into a hot war.
Speaker 0: Well, I guess the the hope and expectation of many European leaders was that The US and Europeans would unite in this new Cold War. So the liberal hegemony is over, so they thought now we would retreat into this well, let's say, we go back in time, and we would return to this complete unity as we had in the first Cold War. That is unity in opposition to Russia as a common enemy. And, well, this was the assumption of NATO as well that Ukraine would unite us, but instead now it seems to divide. What what is it that how do you explain this, and what is it that the Europeans don't understand?
Is this The US not seeing Russia as the same threat as the Europeans? Is it the concern of pushing Russia towards China? Is Europe too costly of a partner as opposed to being a force amplifier? Or is this just a uniquely Trump policy or approach to international security?
Speaker 1: Well, just to take The United States, from an American point of view, it makes eminently good sense to have good relations with Russia. China is the peer competitor. If you sort of array these three great powers from top to bottom in terms of which one is the most powerful, there's no question that The United States remains the most powerful state on the planet. But the Chinese are a close second, and many argue that they're closing the gap. So we have this situation from an American perspective where there is a peer competitor in the system, and that peer competitor has the potential, and I underline the word potential, to dominate East Asia, which The United States does not want to have happen.
So we have a vested interest in focusing on East Asia over Europe because Russia is the weakest of the three great powers and Russia is not a threat to dominate Europe. And to the extent that Russia is a threat in Europe, and again I don't believe it's a very great threat at all, but to the extent it is a threat, we believe, and this is certainly true of President Trump, that the Europeans can deal with that threat which should free us to pivot to Asia more fully to deal with this peer competitor called China. So, we have a powerful structural incentive. And when I say structural incentive, I'm talking about what the balance of power tells us we should do. We have powerful structural incentive to pivot to East Asia and let the Europeans deal with Russia.
So that's our incentive structure and that's not Europe's incentive structure. Europe is in a very different situation. Europe, because the Russians are right next door, has to think first and foremost about Russia. Now, my view is that Russia was not a threat to Europe. But the Europeans, and of course the Americans, foolishly pushed forward NATO expansion into Ukraine, which has led to this disastrous war.
And for a variety of reasons that you know well, Glenn, the Europeans got into a situation where they ended up seeing Russia as a mortal threat. And they are therefore deeply committed to using Ukraine as a battering ram to weaken Russia because they see this Russian threat at every turn. And whether you and I think it's foolish or not is largely irrelevant because they do think that way. So the Europeans have a very different view of the so called Russian threat than the Americans do. And as I said, if anything, the Americans have an incentive to ally with the Russians against the Chinese.
This is anathema to Europeans. They don't want to hear that. And where you see this dispute between The United States and Europe, this transit transatlantic dispute playing itself out is over Ukraine. Because what's happening with regard to Ukraine is that the Americans are trying to shift the burden of dealing with Ukraine and dealing with the Ukraine war onto the shoulders of the Europeans. The Europeans, on the other hand, are scrambling like crazy to keep the Americans involved in the fight and keep the transatlantic relationship alive and well.
But it's very hard to do that when you're dealing with Donald Trump.
Speaker 0: But is it still an incentive of of the Europeans? Because if you go back to the nineties, I can see the argument for having for for redividing the continent and essentially recreating the logic of the Cold War because you would, yes, you would make an enemy out of Russia, but you bring in The United States and Europe as the main pacifier. And and, well, you essentially may maintain the same structure we had throughout the Cold War, the political West also keeps Europe united. However, now that The United States has signaled clearly that it wants to leave, won't this continued division of Europe only create more problems? Also, because we can't manage Russia on our own.
We're betting everything on The US, and The US doesn't even wanna be there. We're creating excessive dependencies. Wouldn't wouldn't make sense for the Europeans to shift the position on Russia, or or is what is the threat of Russia? I know that it has big capabilities, but but this assumption that they are an empire, that they wanna rebuild the Soviet Union, This all this narrative appears to have emerged after 2014, but, you know, it didn't appear in a vacuum. This happened in February 2022.
This is when, I guess, they began lashing back. Sorry. Lashing out, I think, is the term.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, as you and I have said on numerous occasions, there's no question that bringing Ukraine into NATO was destined to lead to big trouble. And, of course, in February 2014, a major crisis broke out. And then eight years later in February 2022, a war broke out, and that war is still going on. In fact, that war between Russia and Ukraine has lasted longer than the war between Nazi Germany and The Soviet Union during World War two.
That's really quite remarkable. And the end result is that it's poisoned relations between Russia on one side and Europe on the other side. And there's no evidence that relations between those two rival sides are going to improve anytime soon. It looks like you're going to have poisonous relations between Russia and Europe for a long time to come. This is disastrous for the Europeans in large part because Russia is just not a serious threat.
And I believe if you look at Putin's behavior over time, Putin wanted to work out some sort of modus vivendi with the Europeans. He's not an aggressor. He's not bent on creating a greater Russia despite the fact that many people in the West make that argument. He wanted to live a rather peaceful existence with the Europeans. But that's all gone down the toilet bowl now.
That's over with. So you have this terrible situation where the Russians and the Europeans are bitter enemies. That's point number one. But point number two, and this is what we were talking about a few minutes ago, at the same time this poisonous relationship has developed, the Americans are talking about greatly reducing, if not leaving Europe. President Trump, as we well know, would like to take a sledgehammer to NATO if he could.
He'd wreck the he'd wreck that institution if he could. And this is another way of saying that the Americans are threatening to leave Europe, which means the American pacifier, which has played such an important role in keeping the peace in Europe, will disappear. And the Europeans, of course, understand, almost to a person, that this would not be good. That you want to keep the Americans in Europe because the Americans serve as a pacifying force. They keep all those centrifugal forces that are just below the surface in Europe below the surface.
And if the Americans leave, those centrifugal forces will come above the surface. And you will have huge collective action problems trying to work out arrangements among the European countries to deal with this Russian threat that they have done so much to create. So you're getting the worst of both worlds here. And the Europeans seem incapable of recognizing this and doing anything to fix the situation. They're just so deeply committed with Russia, and they're having so much trouble dealing with President Trump that it appears that there's no way out for them.
And the future therefore looks bleak for Europe.
Speaker 0: So how will this war end then? I mean, are you optimistic about about these negotiations taking place? Because, I guess, on one hand, we do see that the situation is going from bad to worse on the NATO and Ukraine side, which would you know, if if there's, well, if we're being rational, we would seek to, cement a good deal today if, well, better than what we would get tomorrow. On the other hand, we saw before Christmas that the this, you know, 20 plan of the Americans, which they were trying to sell to the Ukrainians and the Russians, which was already bit far apart. But the Europeans came in, essentially, trying to pull it further away towards the Ukrainian side, which would make it even more untenable for the victorious side, which is the Russian.
But but a lot of things are happening now. Do do you do you have any optimism about these negotiations?
Speaker 1: I have zero optimism. I think there is no reason at all to think that these negotiations are gonna produce a real peace. If you look at Russia's demands, which have been clearly laid out many, many times, and you recognize that these are basically non negotiable demands, at least a handful of them are and we know them well. They're non negotiable. And then you look at what the European slash Ukrainian position is on these demands, they are polar opposites.
They're just there's no overlap. The Europeans and the Ukrainians are completely at odds in terms of their demands with Russia's demands. So I I don't see how you can even come close to having some sort of agreement. I don't think maybe you can point to any of Russia's major demands where the Europeans have caved in. The Europeans and the Ukrainians both, still want Ukraine to have a security guarantee.
And from a Russian point of view, this is unacceptable because it is just another way of putting Ukraine inside of NATO. It's de facto NATO membership. The Russians do not want The United States giving Ukraine an article five security guarantee, But that's what the Ukrainians want, and that's what the Europeans want. With regard to territory, the Russians have made it manifestly clear, again, on countless occasions, that they want all of the territory in those four oblasts that they have annexed. As best I can tell, the Ukrainians and the Europeans won't even agree to give the Russians full control over those two oblasts in the Donbas, much less all four oblasts on territory.
There's just no sign of meaningful agreement. And with regard to the size of the Ukrainian army that would exist in any peace agreement, the two sides are light years apart. The the Europeans and the Ukrainians are talking about a Ukrainian military that has somewhere between 600,800 men in it. At the Istanbul negotiations back in 2022, the Russians were insisting on a Ukrainian army that had about 85,000 soldiers. So when you contrast 85,000 with 600,000 to 800,000 soldiers, you see the two sides are light years apart.
Has there been any movement, any sign of a compromise on this issue? No. Has there been any sign of a compromise on the territorial issue? No. Has there been any sign of a compromise on the issue of a security guarantee?
No. So what is all this talk about getting some sort of meaningful agreement? This is all, as I like to say, a giant kabuki dance. There's just no there there. And, nevertheless, just to take this a step further, the Ukrainians and the Europeans continue to talk about a ceasefire, and even occasionally the Americans talk about a ceasefire.
The Russians have again made it unequivocally clear there will be no ceasefire. And in fact, when Trump met with Putin in Anchorage last summer, Trump came out of the meeting saying the whole subject of a ceasefire was off the table because Putin had made it clear to him there was gonna be no ceasefire, that this war was gonna be settled one way or another on the battlefield. And Trump said that. He recognized it at the time. But with the passage of time, he's back to occasionally talking about ceasefires, and the Europeans and the Ukrainians much more frequently talk about ceasefire.
But it's not gonna happen. This one's gonna be settled on the battlefield. There's eventually gonna be, I think, an armistice because one side or the other will prevail. And that's just another way of saying it'll be settled on the battlefield. But it's not going to be settled in diplomatic negotiations in Abu Dhabi or in Istanbul or in Moscow.
It's not gonna happen, at least based on everything we've seen up to now.
Speaker 0: Yeah. I find it's very strange a lot of the rhetoric around, you know, especially when Europeans are calling for this compromise because they the compromise they could have gotten was pretty good back in 2022, but they waited for years, a long time, and they still expect the parties to somehow meet in the middle and and come to an agreement. Even more than this, they want the Russians to make the greatest concessions, it seems. And the kind of concession they want, essentially, the reason the reason why the Russians went into Ukraine to prevent the victory or sorry, prevent NATO from embedding itself into Ukraine in essentially, a peace agreement, which, you know, after a Russian victory, the it appears that the Europeans want why what the Russians went to war to prevent, which is, yeah, European NATO troops within Ukraine. And I was it baffles me a bit, though, this very normative language they have because they make the point, well, Ukraine can't make the greatest concession.
It's not fair because Russia's the aggressor. Ukraine is the victim. So they they won't even talk about security guarantees for Russia as as there's no recognition of the security competition. It's just goodies and baddies, an aggressor, and a victim. And so the Russian seems to speak in a language of of power that is, you know, we have won.
We get to dictate the terms while the Europeans are speaking this normative language, but that's not fair because you're a digressor. It's very strange to watch. It's like they're not speaking the same diplomatic language. But sorry.
Speaker 1: Yeah. If I can just jump in, Glenn. I actually have an explanation for that. I'm not saying it's the correct explanation, but it's just how I think about this issue. I think that the vast majority of people in the foreign policy elite in Europe, and this is true even in The United States because I think Trump is something of an anomaly, they all believe that Ukraine in NATO is not an existential threat to Russia.
They believe that what is going on here is that Putin is an imperialist, and he's trying to create a greater Russia. Yes. It matters for security, but, there's a deeper cause at play here. It's just that imperial gene that all Russian or Soviet leaders have, and Putin is particularly aggressive. And this has nothing to do with NATO expansion.
How could anybody possibly believe that a benign alliance like NATO and, again, this is where you see the rhetoric about us being the good guys that you were just talking about. How could a benign alliance like NATO possibly be seen by any Russian leader as a mortal threat? That's our worldview here in the West. There are of course people like you and I and a handful of others who don't accept that argument, but we're in the minority. Then on the Russian side, they have made it manifestly clear over the years that Ukraine and NATO is an existential threat.
It is, from their perspective, an existential threat. And once you understand that they see what's going on in Ukraine as a threat to their survival, again, we in the West like that argument or not, there is an abundance let me change my rhetoric there is a superabundance of evidence that they see what's going on in Ukraine, and especially with the Europeans and the Americans backing the Ukrainians as a mortal threat, as an existential threat. And that's why they are unwilling to make any meaningful compromises. And in fact, as you well know, Glenn, if anything, the situation from their perspective gives them great incentives to take even more territory than they have already taken, to annex more oblast, to go to greater lengths to wreck Ukraine, to really turn it into a dysfunctional rump state, to poison relations inside of Europe, to poison relations across the Atlantic, between The United States on one side and Europe on the other side. Again, once you understand that the Russians see this not as a case of imperialism but as a case of an existential threat, it looks very different.
But we refuse, we in the West, and this of course doesn't include us, I want to be clear on that, but people in the West, people in the foreign policy establishments in European countries and in The United States, for the most part, refused to accept that Russia's got a legitimate point of view, that the Russians actually see things this way. And that's what I think accounts for the fact that the two sides are so far apart. And furthermore, it explains why people in the West are so baffled that the Russians won't make any concessions. They should make concessions, we think, but that's because the picture we have in our head of how the Russians are thinking is simply wrong.
Speaker 0: It is interesting, though, the reluctance to accept that the Russians do see NATO as an existential threat because well, there's a good point behind the Russian view, I feel often, that if you try to create a Europe without Russia, it would unavoidably become against Russia. Because how how can you have a Europe where the largest country doesn't belong? It would be as if you create a security architecture in Americas ruled by China, and The United States would be the only one not being allowed to participate. It would unavoidably be seen as being aimed against The United States. So it's very it's very difficult to understand why there's no understanding for this, though, and especially this assumption of our benign intentions after Afghanistan, Iraq, or Yugoslavia as well, Libya, Syria, Iran, Gaza, the last twelve years in Ukraine.
There should be some understanding, though, that perhaps the yeah. It's not just a group of democracies spreading values. But you you mentioned this idea of
Speaker 1: Glenn, can I can I say can I just jump in and say a word or two about that? Because I've thought about that question. First of all, I think that it's important to understand that the decision to bring Ukraine into NATO was made in April 2008, And that was during the unipolar moment. It was at the height of the unipolar moment. And we viewed ourselves as the good guys.
We were the benign hegemon. And the Europeans bought on to that rhetoric at the time. And we thought that NATO expansion could not possibly be seen as threatening by the Russians in any meaningful way because, again, we were the good guys. We were The United States was a benign hegemon, and the Europeans were tagging along with us and behaving in benign ways as well. Now, you could argue that that was wrong, but that's how we thought about it.
Then the crisis breaks out in 2014 and, of course, the war breaks out in 2022. But as soon as the crisis breaks out in 2014 and you have really serious trouble, then the question becomes who is responsible? Right? And this question is sitting out there today. Who is responsible for this disaster?
Well, if you believe that it was NATO expansion that's largely responsible for causing this war, this disaster, this unbelievable disaster, then you're saying the West is responsible. If you say that Russia was driven by imperialist ambitions, that Putin is a classic Russian imperialist who had to be stopped, then Putin has to be blamed. So we in the West have a vested interest in making the argument that Putin was an imperialist and it was his imperial ambitions that caused the war because we want to put the responsibility for this war. We want to blame him for this war. If you go down the road that we have gone down, you and I, and make the argument that NATO expansion is principally responsible for this disaster, you're in effect saying the West is responsible.
And for leaders in the West, this is a categorically unacceptable argument.
Speaker 0: But where do we go from here on, though? Because there's been a lot of pressure on on the Kremlin, well, on Putin to to change his tactics a bit. I mean, this is not new. I remember all the way back after 2014 when he tried to patch things up with Europeans. There were a lot of hawks in the Kremlin who was making the argument that, you know, if if they don't act more assertively, the NATO would interpret Russia's efforts to make up with NATO as as weakness.
So they said, well, why are we negotiating? We should be preparing for war, essentially. But this has gone on, you know, all the way since, until now, 2026, when they're saying, why why aren't we taking off, you know, these these gloves and, you know, putting an end to this war? Do do you see it? Do you see Russia changing course anytime soon?
Because I do see some escalation lately. That is not just the efforts to destroy all of the electric grids to turn off the lights, but also this quasi blockade on Odessa by attacking ships going in and out, the ports, the bridges. It is it it seems like we might be entering a new stage of the war, or do you see it differently?
Speaker 1: Well, I think the Russians believe that the Ukrainians are on the ropes, and that there is a good chance that the over the course of this year, 2026, that Ukraine will collapse, that the Russians will win on the battlefield. And they can do that conventionally, of course. Whether that happens is hard to say. It's quite remarkable how tenacious the Ukrainians have been on the battlefield. I thought that by the end of 2025, the war would have been over.
There would have been an armistice. I didn't think that the Ukrainians would still be hanging on. They are hanging on. I think they're hanging on by a thread, but they are hanging on. And they are continuing to get support, especially from the Europeans, but also from the Americans.
So it's possible that by the end of 2026, they'll still be in the fight. It is possible. And I think as this coming year plays itself out, what you'll see is the Russians upping the ante at the conventional level. I think they'll commit more forces to the fight. They have large reserve armies that they've not committed, and I think they'll commit them.
And I think they'll try to finish off the Ukrainians in 2026. If that doesn't happen, I think there will be powerful reasons for the Russians to up the ante and even think about using nuclear weapons. If you look at Sergei Karagunov, who I take to be a mainstream Russian strategist who's been around for a long time, knows all the arguments about security and international relations theory and deterrence and so forth and so on. You listen to him talk, he's basically saying that the time is right for the Russians to use nuclear weapons to put an end to this war. But I think if the West believes that it can keep the Russians engaged in a war of attrition and prevent the Russians from winning that war for a few more years, they're wrong.
The Russians will do something to end the war. And that's something I think might very well be the use of nuclear weapons. Again, you wanna remember what I said before when I described this war as an existential threat from Russia's point of view. The Russians view what's going on as a mortal threat, number one. And number two, if they get into a position where they think they cannot win this war and in fact that they are suffering greatly because the war just hasn't come to an end, they will be in desperate straits.
When great powers with nuclear weapons are in desperate straits, you ought to really worry about what they might do. And so I think that in a very important way, everyone should hope that the Russians win this war at the conventional level rather quickly in the first part of 2026, and there's no incentive for the Russians to really go up the escalation ladder.
Speaker 0: I guess another reason why they might wanna finish off sooner is all the the logic you hear coming out of some European capitals that we have to keep the Ukrainians in the fight a bit more so we can prepare ourself. I mean, if there's a possibility that the Europeans are preparing themselves and possibly entering the war at a later stage, then it would be much better to finish the war now before it has the time, I guess, to actually expand into a wider, like, pan European war.
Speaker 1: Can I ask I ask you a question, Glenn? What is your sense of, the pressure that's on Putin to sort of up the ante to to escalate and to get this war over with? Do you have a sense that he's under tremendous pressure to do that? And if so, how do you see this playing out?
Speaker 0: Well, I think there's a lot of pressure for not to take any any, weak deal coming out of Washington because of all because they paid a heavy price as well. This has been four years of war. They lost tens of thousands of men, and and and the idea, I think, is that if they agree to any deal which would allow the West to essentially revive the Ukrainian frontline in the future, and they would have to fight this whole thing over again. That that would be completely unacceptable. So there there's many who, I guess, are questioning why why he hasn't brought this to an end already with more fierce means.
I mean, this is not just Russians. I I've spoken to many foreign ambassadors to Russia and well, not not the Europeans ones European ones, but others who who also have expressed, you know, confusion about why he hasn't taken a much harder approach yet. And, no, I I don't know. I I just Putin's not whispering in my ears. I'm not quite sure.
But it's but I do think on some level that they're also preparing that if Ukraine does fall when it falls, that this would cause massive desperation in the West, especially in Europe, and this could lead to some reckless behavior possibly joining in on the war. And if this happens, it's better for Russia to be prepared. So having built up enough weaponry, at least enough Orashnik missiles, which can strike critical infrastructure in Europe is if this is what the decision the Europeans are going for. So but, again, I'm I'm I'm, yeah, I'm I'm not sure where or what direction they're that they might be going. I know that a lot of the pressure which came from on Putin before, he rejected it.
You mentioned Karaganov. He, you know, he he would come to every yearly Valdai meeting. He would ask, you know, more or less Putin, why why aren't we changing a nuclear doctrine? And Putin every year said, well, said, now this is not the time for it. We have we have to keep it.
And then, of course, at the end, he he listened to Karagnov, and now they changed the nuclear doctrine. And and, you know, many people think this is political theater. But, you know, when I I used to work as professor in Moscow, and I actually worked in the department with Karagnov being my boss because this was the greater Eurasia focus. They focused on Russia's pivot to the East, so looking at how, yeah, the techno technology mix, how how Russia can cooperate with China. And, you know, I I I spoke to him many times, and he's quite convinced that the and, you know, NATO article five, it wouldn't be implemented in the way many people think, you know, to read the text carefully.
And, also, I I don't think this is theater. I think there's a lot of people within Moscow who who really wants this to be escalated in a big way, but I'm not sure how Putin is influenced by it, though.
Speaker 1: And if you don't go nuclear, right, what what do you think that the Russians can do at the conventional level, to win a quick victory, this coming spring or summer? In other words, do you buy the argument that they have large reserve armies that they can bring to bear, that they can change their strategy and punch through the front lines, and collapse the Ukrainian defenses? I mean, what do you think the options are that the Russians have at the non nuclear level to win this war, or put an end to this war?
Speaker 0: Well, it is a war of attrition. So, once, the adversary's army is weakened and you have opportunities to punch through the frontline, there's there's other opportunities. Now you can disrupt a lot of the communication, the logistics. It's it's more possibility to surround large grouping of troops. So I think this is where where they're going with it because now that you see the Ukrainian army being weakened, they have a massive manpower shortage.
At this point in time, the Russians seem to be opening new fronts, especially in Kharkov and Sumy. So I assume that as Ukraine seem to be on the yeah. Don't what's it called? The point of breaking, then this will be the time to open up a large frontline larger frontline. And you also had reports which have been confirmed in western media that a lot of the new military hardware being developed that is armored vehicle and all is not actually going to the front.
They're building up in the rear. So I I, again, I I it's hard to know in the fog of war what's real or not, but my impression is that they're building up a big force in the rear. Whether this is for while taking advantage of a massive breakthrough in Ukraine or if this is for us, that is, if the Europeans decide to enter the war. For me, this is unclear, though.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 0: Yes. Just a very brief last question as we run out of time. How what is CST being the likely way if if Ukraine is, and NATO's being defeated in this war, what is it that would bring Ukraine down? Is it a military defeat? Is it economic, political fragmentation?
Do you have any views on this?
Speaker 1: Well, I think that what will happen here is that at some point, Ukraine is gonna be defeated on the battlefield. And given all the problems that the Ukrainians have and given the fact that the Europeans can only do so much to help them and the Americans are trying to wean themselves from the Ukraine war, it's hard to see how Ukraine can hang on over the long term. So I think they lose on the battlefield. At the same time, I think their economy is in desperate straits. And if they were to lose Odessa and even more territory than they've already lost, that would just add to their woes.
So I think economically, the rub state that results from this war will be a basket case. It'll be an economic basket case. And then on the political side, I would imagine that you're gonna have huge political fights inside of Ukraine once the war is over with. There's gonna be a big blame game. Who's gonna be blamed for losing this war?
And it'll be ugly. So I think economically and politically, life in this Ukrainian rump state will be ugly. And then, of course, they will have lost on the battlefield as well. And then the question you have to ask yourself is what do Ukraine Russia relations look like moving forward? And as I said before, I thought European Russian relations would be poisonous.
I think there's no question. The relations between Ukraine and Russia will be poisonous. And I think relations between Ukraine and Europe will be very messy because there'll be some countries in Europe like Hungary and Slovakia that have a very different way of thinking about Ukraine than countries like France, Britain, and Germany. And even countries like France and Germany or France and Britain will be at loggerheads on some key issues regarding Ukraine. So Ukraine's Ukraine is facing a dismal future, and we haven't even added in the demographic issue.
I mean, this is a country that's facing, you know, a democrat a demographic death spiral. It's just horrendous what's happening. There's a piece in the Wall Street Journal this morning that says it's time for Ukraine to begin to mobilize younger people, people who are in their late teens and early twenties who've been largely exempt from the draft. That would be really good, you know, take all those young people and feed them into the meat grinder. I mean, this is crazy.
Right? It'll just exacerbate the demographic situation, which is already disastrous. So once this war is over with, Ukraine is going to be in terrible shape. There's no way that it comes out of this war winning in any way. It loses on almost every dimension.
Excuse me, Glenn. And this of course is why people like you and I have long argued that this war should have been settled a long time ago. This is why the Ukrainians should not have walked away from the negotiating process at Istanbul in the 2022. Their situation has just gotten continually worse with the passage of time and if they manage to hang in there for another year or two, their situation is not going to improve. That's what's very important to understand here.
Staying in the fight has never been a smart strategy from their point of view. They should have put an end to this a long time ago. So when you add it all up, it's just categorically depressing. And by the way, this gets back to my earlier point, Glenn, that the question of who is to blame for this disaster is going to come racing to the fore once it's over, once the war is over with, once the fighting stops, once you get some sort of armistice, then the question is gonna become who caused this? And, of course, the vast majority of people in the West or in the foreign policy elites in the West are gonna argue it's the Russians who caused it because they were imperialists.
But you and I know better that this is largely a result of NATO expansion and that the West is principally responsible for this utter disaster.
Speaker 0: Well, even in the unrealistic scenario that the Ukraine would win, you know, the best possible scenario, who who would be left there to enjoy the victory, you know, with this demographic, you know, downward spiral? I I this is why it's very strange to me. And what makes it so much more sad as well is the fact that Zelensky, he he kinda knew what would be the consequence of going down this path. You mentioned this, the negotiations in early twenty twenty two. Recall that back in March 2222, he gave this interview to The Economist where he said, there are many countries in the West who don't want us to take a deal, who wants a long war.
That is the word he used, long war with Russia, because we could weaken the the Russians even if it meant the destruction of Ukraine. So it is just it's it's such a, yeah, tragedy that, yeah, we've gone down this path now for the past four years, and I'm I'm I I think the war is probably the war will end in, I say, in Odessa, as you suggested before, if this will be the best trick for the Russians, I think. Because if they can landlock Ukraine, not just would it be weakened and not be a future threat, a future frontline, but it would also lose its market value to NATO in terms of being an instrument of pushing Russia out of the Black Black Sea. And even the policies you see, the idea of de Russifying Ukraine, I mean, this would entail de Russifying Odessa, a historical Russian city, which would be just impossible for the Russians to accept and and watch. So it's it just seems to me that this is where the war would end, by the Russians, yeah, essentially stepping into a crime in the start, stepping into Odessa.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Glenn, just one more point, that came to my came to mind when you were talking about Zelensky, back in 2022. Before the war broke out this is 02/24/2022, that's when the war broke out. As you remember, in December, January, and February, the Americans were saying that war is coming. War is coming.
We were constantly saying that. And Zelensky was saying, stop saying that. You're gonna make war happen. Zelensky was not interested in getting into a war with Russia. And then, of course, once the war breaks out, he is willing to go to Istanbul or he's willing to send his negotiators to Istanbul.
He's willing to work out a deal with the Russians. But then he makes a fatal mistake and he sides with basically the Americans and the British, walks away from the negotiations in Istanbul and commits himself to a long war that he thinks he's gonna win. He buys the Western rhetoric that Ukraine's initial successes on the battlefield, and you remember they did reasonably well on the battlefield once the war started, that those initial successes coupled with economic sanctions and military backing from the West would finish the Russians off. And then what happens over the course of 2022 is that, again, the Ukrainians do quite well on the battlefield. You remember they roll the Russians back in Kherson, they roll the Russians back in Kharkiv, and by the 2022, they think they're in great shape.
And then you remember the June 2023 offensive that was supposed to, you know, produce this giant blitzkrieg that would egregiously damage the Russian military. So once he buys on at the end of the Istanbul negotiations to the western view of what's gonna happen, once he reverses direction, he he's in deep trouble because he doesn't realize it, but he's joining the losing side. You you remember general Milley again, very important. General Milley said in the fall, this is in the 2022 after the Ukrainian successes in Kharkiv and Kherson, General Milley said, now's the time to cut a deal. This is the high watermark for Ukraine.
And of course, Milley was correct, but nobody wanted to hear what Milley had to say. And that includes Zelensky because Zelensky was thinking that he was on the winning side. He was on the march. Ukraine was gonna win a great victory, and we would finish off the Russians or at least wound them mortally in the 2023. That was their thinking.
And what happened is he just got sucked into the vortex and there's no getting out. And the end result is he's gonna be seen by historians as having played a key role in destroying his own country.
Speaker 0: Well, that was on that topic as well, contributing then furthermore fracturing the political West as well. So there is I think the outcome of this will be profound. So as you suggested, I think future historians will look back at this as being one of our greatest mistakes in terms of weakening the position of the West.
Speaker 1: And it's not only political, Glenn, it's also economic. Europe has not only suffered politically, it's suffered economically from this war. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 0: thank you very much. I we went a bit over time there, so I apologize. And, thank you very much for coming and sharing your insights.
Speaker 1: My pleasure as always, Glenn.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Seyed M. Marandi: Iran Warns of Overwhelming Retaliation to ANY U.S. Strike https://youtu.be/I6XHVDtHRX4 https://t.co/a58twiafZJ
Video Transcript AI Summary
Saeed Mohamed Marandi explains that Iranians view current events as an extension of the twelve-day war, where Israel and the Trump administration allegedly collaborated to undermine Iran and failed. He cites US Treasury remarks at Davos about manipulating Iranian currency to provoke protests, which he says led to peaceful demonstrations followed by highly trained groups that caused destruction and police casualties. He asserts that Israel claimed responsibility, with Mossad statements and Channel 14 reporting that weapons brought into Iran caused police deaths, and he notes Western media glossed over these facts. He argues this campaign aimed to push Trump toward confrontation with Iran, while messaging about Iran’s nuclear program and regional alliances shifted over time. Iran’s response, he says, has been that any attack will be treated as all-out war with an overwhelming Iranian retaliation. He contends Trump is boxed in: a larger strike would provoke a massive Iranian response across the region, affecting oil and gas flows through the Persian Gulf and potentially collapsing the global economy. He suggests the “smart” outcome would be to back off and end peacefully, potentially declaring victory without concessions, as Trump did in Yemen, though he believes Iran will not accept any deal that compromises sovereignty or core capabilities.
Marandi lays out Iran’s view of the regional and strategic landscape: Iran’s counterstrike would target US interests across the region, not just bases, and would involve allies in Iraq, Yemen, and other areas. He argues the Persian Gulf is highly vulnerable because regional regimes hosting US bases are complicit, and a war would disrupt global energy supplies. He asserts Iran’s capabilities are primarily directed at the United States, given US threats since the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions, and that Iran has strengthened missiles and drones, along with air defenses. He contends Israel is vulnerable, and the aim of some in the US political circle is to sacrifice US interests for Israeli interests. He asserts that Iran’s real objective is to prevent a repeat of the “sword over Iran”—to avoid six-month cycles of provocations—and to end the possibility of ongoing CIA-backed unrest being used as pretext for further strikes.
On the possibility of negotiation, Marandi says Iran will not give up nuclear enrichment, missile capabilities, or regional alliances. He notes there was a JCPOA, but Iran would not accept a repeat of that deal; any future agreement would need to be better for Iran. A deal could be discussed about the nuclear program, but not one that cedes sovereignty or enrichment rights. He suggests Trump could try to retreat by declaring victory or offering a hollow concession, but Iran is ready for all-out war if attacked. He emphasizes that if the US backs down, it would be a major defeat for Washington; if it engages in war, it would be a world tragedy and the US would be defeated, with global implications. He argues Iran’s stance is clear: they will respond massively to any attack, and the only viable path for the US would be to walk away and pretend it gained something it did not.
Glenn notes that regional allies feel exposed as world power shifts toward multipolarity, and asks about whether Iran would treat this as an existential threat and how it would fight. Marandi responds that Iran views the objective as balkanization, supported by Israeli interests, and that Iran would confront attempts to seize control of the country. He reiterates that Iran will not compromise sovereignty or support for Palestine, and that a conflict would be devastating for the world, with Iran prepared to fight to defend its existence.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined today by Saeed Mohamed Marandi, a professor at Tehran University and a former adviser to Iran's nuclear negotiation team. So thank you very much for coming on now. I know the situation there must be very tense as The US appears to be possibly moments away from actually attacking Iran. And, I was hoping that you could clarify or explain how you see this situation because, well, to me, it seems that Trump wants to deliver a, well, a so called bloody nose attack on Iran.
That means a limited attack. So essentially, bomb Iran, by the end of the day, essentially offer to stop it on the condition that Iran doesn't retaliate. However, it also seems that it's very difficult to for Iran not to retaliate. Otherwise, its deterrent means nothing, and the the Americans will likely be back for some more bombing. And, indeed, this is what your foreign minister indicated.
He wrote on Twitter that Iran's armed forces are prepared with, quote, their fingers on the trigger, and they would respond to any aggression. And he put any in bold, again, maybe I'm reading too much into it, but but for me, it was essentially a caution against any such ambitions or about, yeah, so called bloody nose attack. So but this nonetheless means that Trump Trump is more boxed in. He was beating his chest. He assembled this very powerful military force in the region.
However, given that this would likely be a very big strategic mistake, if not a disaster in the making, that there could be some hope for reversal. Again, I'm not sure if this would would be the case, but I was wondering if you could share your thoughts around what you see happening now or what you expect. Do you see things in the similar light?
Speaker 1: Well, thank you very much for inviting me, Glenn. It's always a great pleasure. It's pretty clear for the Iranians that what we're seeing today is an ex an extension of the twelve day war. In the twelve day war, the Israeli regime and the Trump regime, they collaborated to undermine Iran, and they failed. And the riots and the terror attacks that we saw in the last couple of weeks, a couple of weeks ago, on, January, they were an extension of that.
And we saw how The US secretary of treasury, he admitted this in, Davos. He gloated about it. He said this is statecraft that he was able to manipulate Iranian currency and bring people to the streets. Now when people came to the streets, it was peaceful. Nothing happened.
And then after on the third day, we saw these very highly trained groups, terrorists and rioters in different cities and in different parts of big cities come to the streets and create great destruction. And on the eighth and the January 9, they were killing large numbers of people. Especially on the eighth, they killed large numbers of police officers. And that's why on the ninth, the armed, policemen and the security, forces, they came down very hard on them and ended this. So, this was this project killing 350 police officers, many also killed many ordinary people because they wanted the casualty numbers to increase to make the case for war.
And then after that, we saw and, of course, the Israelis took responsibility. They they proudly took responsibility. Western media pretends that they didn't. They call these peaceful protesters even though the footage clearly shows them shooting and killing police officers, beating them to death, and so on. But, the Israelis I mean, Pompeo, the former head of the CIA, said the Israelis were there.
Mossad issued a statement saying that they were involved. And channel fourteen of Israel, which is close to Netanyahu, said very clearly that the weapons that we took into Iran caused the deaths of hundreds of Iranian police officers. So imagine if something like that happened in your country, in The United States, what the state would do in response. So the and then this media campaign that we saw afterwards, from conservative to liberal, from The Guardian to the to Fox News, from neo you know, the worst of the neocons like Levin to the supposed progressives like AOC. They're all talking about, you know, helping Iran, you know, and, of course, we know what that means.
So this was obviously a project, and it was an extension of that war, which failed. But what it succeeded in doing was to encourage Trump or push Trump, depending on how you view it, towards confrontation with Iran. And, of course, the intentions keep changing because one day it's about the protesters, then Trump himself admits that both sides were shooting. Then it's about the nuclear program, which was apparently destroyed a few months ago by Trump. Obliterated, I think was the word.
And so it's constantly the then they talk and then The United States sends messages to Iran saying you have to put aside your missile program, and you have to put aside your support for regional, organizations and allies, and you have to, of course, end your peaceful nuclear program. We have conflicting messages coming from The United States, but the Iranian response has been clear. Any attack on Iran will be seen as an all out war, and the Iranian response will be overwhelming. And I think Trump has boxed himself in, as you said. I think that's a very good way of putting it.
Trump has come in beating his chest, and now he either has to back off or he has to attack. If he attacks, it is going to be the retaliation is going to be massive, and it won't just be directed at American bases. It'll be directed at American interests across the region. And those Arab dictatorships, family dictatorships, or even Aliyev's dictatorship in Azerbaijan, all of them, they've been complicit. They've hosted US bases, or they've assisted the Israelis in the twelve day war.
All of them, therefore, will be punished, and oil and gas from the Persian Gulf region will be disrupted for a very, very long time. The Caucasus, the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, and that would, of course, bring down the global economy. So war with Iran would be horrible for everyone, but it will bring down The US economy. Now some in the The United States said say we're energy independent. That's not really relevant because, those companies, those corporations that produce oil and gas in The United States may make a lot of money as a result of the price of oil going through the roof or the price of gas going through the roof.
But consumers, factories, corporations, individuals, families, it will be catastrophic for all of them because they'll have to pay, much more for energy, and that is not possible. So The US economy will collapse, and this would be at a time when The US economy is already in a very, very difficult situation as we're seeing with gold and and silver and what it seems to me mean and what people are saying about the future of the economy, this would just add, much more fuel to the fire. So the smart thing for Trump to do would be to back off and to end this peacefully. Maybe, like in the case of Yemen, he can capitulate but say he won because that's what happened in the war with Yemen as we recall. He initiated the World War.
He and his secretary of war, as he likes to call himself, attacked and said, we're going to destroy the Houthis, as they call them, or Ansar Allah, to be more precise. And after a month, he declared victory and walked away even though he was defeated, and he gained nothing. So maybe Trump will just say, well, I got concessions from Iran and I won, which obviously would mean that he was defeated, but it would be the smart thing to do, or he will feel that he has to do something. Even a small attack, Glenn, even a small symbolic attack is going to have a very harsh response. And the reason is clear: the Iranians are not going to allow The United States to create an environment where every six months, they can stage an event an event in Iran, they can make some sort of accusation, they can cause some sort of armed insurrection in some place, in in some territory, and then use that as an excuse to create another crisis.
So the Iranians are saying, we end it here.
Speaker 0: Well, it's, you know, it's no secret, I guess, that the Israelis have been pushing hard for United States to strike Iran again. On the other hand, it also seemed that Israel would like to stand on the sideline to in other words, not, yeah, not be the target of any retaliation of Iran. But how how do you again, you're you're not serving the Iranian government. You're an academic. But how how do you expect the Iranian government to to retaliate from what you know?
Do would they strike against some US target, all US target, Israel, other allied countries? Because I saw that, I think it was Saudi Arabia, that announced it would not permit its airspace from being used. So it looks as if some countries are, well, seeing the severity in this and would like to sit this one out.
Speaker 1: Well, increasingly, countries like Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, they are they are worried about the Israeli regime. And I think that even the Turkish government deep down recognizes that what they did to Syria has now made them very vulnerable. But but, ultimately, Glenn, we have to take something we have to look at something first and discuss something first before I can answer that question. Iran and the Israeli regime had a twelve day war. Although the Americans and Israelis conspired, regional assets in for the Persian Gulf and Turkiye were used, the radar systems.
The entire West was behind the Israeli regime. They supported them. They lost despite the Blitzkrieg attack. We all know that. After a few days, the tide turned, and the Israelis were seeking a ceasefire.
It's something that is is is well known except for in propaganda circles, but even Steve Bannon has pointed this out. But Iran's so Iran's capabilities against Israeli regime are much greater than the Israeli regime's capabilities against Iran. That twelve day war showed it. Iran's military capabilities are not focused on Israel. They're focused on The United States.
Why? Because ever since The United States, in particular, ever since The United States invaded Afghanistan and Iraq during the unipolar moment moment and surrounded Iran, And ever since what US leaders, including Bush and Obama, Clinton, Hillary, started saying all options are on the table and US officials saying real men go to Tehran, Iran began to prepare itself for war with The United States. So most of the underground missile and drone and drone bases in Iran are armed with short range and middle range drones and missiles that are directed at the Persian Gulf, that are directed at the Indian Ocean, the Gulf Of Oman, and the other side of the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Peninsula. So that capacity, that capability, including the underground, the underwater capabilities that Iran has, Those capabilities are much greater than than Iran's capabilities that it can use against the Israeli regime. So if there is an attack, Iran cannot only just shut down the Strait Of Hormuz, it can destroy ships on both sides of the Strait Of Hormuz, and it can destroy the energy assets.
And then in addition to that, its allies in Iraq, they can shut down the oil trade, and they can deal with The United States in Iraq and in surrounding territories. The same is true with Yemen. Yemen today is much stronger than it was a few months ago. They've been preparing themselves. They'll shut down the Red Sea and any oil and gas exports to the Red Sea or the Indian Ocean.
And Azerbaijan and Aliyef, who helped Israelis during the twelve day war, their oil production and gas production can be shut down very easily. So Iran's real capabilities are focused on the Persian Gulf region, and they're massive. And the Persian Gulf region is extremely vulnerable. There's nothing that the Americans can do to protect their assets there. And all of the regimes in the Persian Gulf, these family dictatorships, they're complicit because they host US bases.
So a war would, without a doubt, lead to the collapse of the a a war between Iran and The United States would lead to a collapse of the global economy. Now the Israeli regime, from what we've been hearing, does not want to be involved because it's extremely vulnerable. We saw during the twelve day war that they failed, and they've not only has Iran's missile capabilities been enhanced significantly, but its air defenses, especially with regards to drones, has been strengthened, and the Israelis have failed to be able to catch up. So the advantage today is much greater for Iran than it was back then. So what the Israeli regime and the and Zionists want is for the Americans to sacrifice themselves for the Israelis.
And the people surrounding Trump, people in Congress and in the Senate, they're Israeli first serve. They will sacrifice US interests for Israeli interests. So there is a good chance that, despite the fact that this would be catastrophic for The United States, that they may actually carry this out because they're doing it for the sake of Israel. Actually, if we go back at the case of the murder of General Soleimani, This also happened. Initially, general Soleimani was supposed to be murdered in a joint operation between Israelis and the Americans.
And at the very last moment, Netanyahu pulled out. And I think that that was the intention all along. US drones, of course, went from Qatar and murdered general Soleimani, something that the Iranians are not going to forget. So Qatar, The Emirates, and others, Adiyaf, and Azerbaijan, if The US attacks, they had better be very you know, they have to they should have their bags packed. But this, I think, is what the Israeli intention was all along with general Soleimani, to push Trump towards confrontation with Iran, but not to get involved.
It's quite possible that this is what we're seeing today. I don't know if Trump is going to attack because even though I don't consider him to be completely sane, but I don't think he's totally insane either. And I but I don't know what sort of information he's being fed. I think maybe he was hoping that if he brought in this, what he he calls an armada, that Iran will be intimidated and that they will somehow capitulate. Not a chance in the world that that will happen.
Then maybe he thought that he could get away with it because he did send messages to Iran that, okay. Let me strike, and then you can have this token retaliation, and it'll be all over. Iran said, no. We're not playing that game. Because as I said, that is a violation of Iranian sovereignty.
It's an act of war. But more importantly, it leaves the door open for another round of terrorism in Iran and pretending that these are peaceful protesters and the Western media being obedient to power will just repeat the nonsense that Trump and and and the White House wants them to repeat, and then we'll have a new round of airstrikes that we cannot have normality that way. So the Iranians are saying, it all stops here. You either back off and go away, or you start something, you pay the price. And I think that either way, The United States loses.
But if it initiates a conflict, it loses much bigger. And I think that things will get very bad. And remember that Iranians know The United States very well. The United States does not comprehend Iran. Just doesn't.
You know, general Soleimani once said, we are the nation of Imam Hussain. I don't think The United States even comprehends what that means, But the Iranians know The United States. Iranians monitor The United States. They know that the economy in The United States is doing poorly. They know how the the Trump poorly Trump is doing in the polls.
They know the divisions in The United States. They know that there's a hardcore group called MAGA that will support Trump no matter what. If, doesn't matter apparently about what Epstein has done and who's a friend, who was with Epstein, or who in the Epstein class was involved, they'll close their eyes. You can shoot white women in the face. You can murder nurses who were helping war veterans.
You can, you know, all of the things that MAGA used to talk about, the the endless wars and all that, all of that had that has been dropped. MAGA will follow the cult leader wherever he goes. But if the price of gasoline goes through the roof and factories are shut down, the first who'll chase Trump with their guns, the the same people who were saying, by the way, that the the the the nurse murdered, he shouldn't have been carrying a gun. These same people will be seeking out, Trump, and they may be carrying their guns with him. So with them with themselves.
So everyone will turn against Trump when the economy falls because they'll see him as being responsible for it. Iranians understand that, and that's why their priority will not be a few US military bases. They will strike them. They will strike military targets. But when they say that US interests across the region are targets, they're sending a message to Trump that your presidency will come to an end if you start a war.
Speaker 0: I think a lot of America's regional allies recognize they're a bit exposed, but part of the problem, I think, is this shift in world order or at least the distribution of power. Because under the unipolar moment, that is in the nineteen nineties, because America was the only game in town, everyone more or less recognized that if you were allied to The United States, this would will essentially be the only source of security. Yes. This is the one central power. However, as the world power shifts towards a multipolar system, we see very different.
That is instead of an alliance with The US being a source of stability, we now see The US becoming more reckless. I'm not sure how many countries Trump has bombed now. But also then The US being less capable of defending allies, even sometimes turning, not sometimes quite often recently, turning on allies, and this leaves allies very exposed. So it is for countries, be it Qatar or others who have linked their security this intimately close to The United States. They find themselves in a very awkward position now, so it there is not much time for them to shift their position.
However, I I wanted just in terms of trying to assess the possible Iranian response here, to what extent would Iran treat this as an existential threat, as an, I guess, as an indicator for how it would fight? Because I am well, professor John Mersheimer, I he well, he just recently said that the objective of The United States in Iran would be regime change, but he also made the point that there's no replacement regime, no one unifying opposition which they can actually hand over power to, which means that the what they are after then is regime change and then the destruction of the country that is breaking it up, essentially chaos, and then ruling over the chaos. Is is this kind of ideas informing Iran's, I guess, intentions and the the extent to which it would actually respond to an attack?
Speaker 1: Yes. I think for Iranians, it's clear that the objective is to balkanize Iran and that the Israeli regime wants this more than anyone else. Just like what they've done to Syria over the past decade and a half, they've succeeded in wrecking the country and balkanizing the country, and now there's no sense for it. In fact, one of the interesting things about Syria, Glenn, is that Hezbollah today has an easier time rearming than it did under Assad, because under Assad he increasingly was he was increasingly becoming less cooperative. But now you can just pay a few a bit of money, and you can do anything in Syria.
That's how bad the situation is. So, that is the objective, and The United States doesn't is not going to do anything that's against Israeli interests. And the riots and these rioters in Iran, these were like ISIS. They were horrific. They were just gunning down people on the streets.
They were burning they burned 15 people alive. They beheaded people. They smashed people's faces. They bur they burned down hospital clinics. They burned down hundreds of ambulances and fire engines and, public buses and private.
I mean, it's extraordinary what they did in such a short period of time. But, the groups that were behind it, the monarchists, they have no popular support. These, when they left the country, they stole billions of dollars, and now they are calling on The United States and Israelis to bomb their own country. Does anyone in their right mind think that they're going to have popular support? Or the MEK terror cult?
They fought for Saddam Hussein as foot soldiers against their own country in the nineteen eighties. Does anyone think that traitors are going to be popular? Or the Kurdish terror groups, the separatists, or the ISIS and the Taqfiri Wahhabis in Balochistan, the remnant or the on the remnants of ISIS. These were the groups that were involved. Does does anyone think that one of these groups can rule or govern or would have any popular support?
The point is to bring down Iran, and which is not going to happen, but the Iranians recognize that. But in addition to that, what I alluded to earlier is the fact that The United States wants to have this sword above Iran. So if they can bomb Iran, even a symbolic strike, it would give them that opportunity to use this sword again six months from now. And so that would always prevent the Iranian economy from normalizing, and that would always keep pressure on ordinary Iranians. And we saw how The US secretary of treasure treasury in Davos was gloating about hurting ordinary Iranians, making ordinary Iranians suffer.
So the Iranians said, you know, enough is enough. Trump strikes. We take this as an existential fight, and we will fight the war as a war for our existence and survival.
Speaker 0: Well, I've been watching all day on the screens here the different kind of American military hardware moving into the region. So ranging from warships to, yeah, this transport flights, refuelers, of these things. And so, again, Trump is, you know, building up a big momentum, which makes it very difficult to walk away without anything. So he's put some demands, again, that Iran can negotiate. But Iranian government has has said that it's always willing to sit down and talk, negotiate, but not while the US military is there aiming their guns at Iran.
But also from the from American media, it suggests that the deal the the Americans want would entail halting nuclear enrichment, which would be a big economic hit for Iran, but also limit long range ballistic missiles and also cut off its ties with regional allies, which could then leave Iran very exposed to a to a future attack. Is there anything at all, do you think, to negotiate here, or is this essentially seen as a stepping stone to regime change anyways? I mean, how how does the Iranian government view the possibility of reaching an agreement with The United States?
Speaker 1: Well, giving up nuclear enrichment or its missile capabilities or its alliances is just out of the question. With regards to a deal, we had a deal, the JCPOA. Actually, we weren't satisfied with it. And if we're going to have another deal at some point in the future, if, it's not going to be like that, it will have to be something better for Iran. Now how do we how does Trump escape from this position that he's boxed himself in?
I have no idea. Either he strikes, and we have all out war, as I said. Doesn't matter the nature of the strike. It will be an existential war for the Iranians. Or he declares victory like he did with Yemen and backs away.
There could be a deal to discuss a deal about the nuclear program, but not a deal where the Iranians give up sovereignty or the right to enrich uranium. There there are creative ways of doing things, and Trump, of course, he can easily lie and convince MAGA that, you know, he won, even though he gained really nothing. That is that is a possibility. But the Iranians are not counting on it. The Iranians are ready for war, and they're ready for all out war.
And if there is war, I think that some of the countries in the Persian Gulf region will cease to exist, at least under current management. But it it is possible for Trump to walk away because that's what he did in Yemen. He he he he always declares victory even when it's clear that he had to back down in the case of, let's say, the trade war with China, in with Greenland. In in many instances, he said one thing and then he did something quite different. In the case of Yemen, as I mentioned, this could also be something like that.
I'm sure the Iranians would be willing to let him get himself out of this box in a way in which he can pretend that he got something, but the Iranians are not going to give him anything that will violate their their sovereignty. That era, you know, that Iran is not that not that sort of country. Iran is not, you know, Turkiye or Saudi Arabia or Egypt or you know, it's it's a different kind of country. It's fiercely independent, and and it's resisted The United States for almost five decades now, so it will continue to do so. This time around though, Glenn, I think, is going to be decisive.
If The United States backs down for whatever reason and declares victory, they can do that. If it backs down, it's a major defeat after all these threats. But if it engages in war, it is a tragedy for the world, but The United States will be defeated. And by default, Iran will win the war. But it will change your life.
It will change my life. It will change the lives of people in the Southern tip of Latin America and the Southern parts of Africa and then the the Eastern and Western parts of Asia. It will change everyone's lives. Because if there's an energy crisis, the world will change.
Speaker 0: So if there's any calls from Washington to Tehran today with a proposal that, listen. We'll we'll walk away from this, but we have to drop a few bombs so we don't lose face. This is not gonna be acceptable to the Iranians.
Speaker 1: No. Zero. Nothing. Not at all. Iran's counterstrike will be massive, and they've already said that.
What the only thing that can be done is for The United States to walk away and pretend that it got something, whereas it didn't get anything. But, that's the only way left for Trump. The rest is war, and, we don't want war, and we've been saying that. The foreign minister has said that, others have said that, we're willing to negotiate. We've always been willing to negotiate, but to give up any part of our sovereignty or our support for the Palestinian cause or defense capabilities is just simply out of the question.
And so Trump has put himself in a very, very dangerous situation. If there is war in this region, Glenn, it will be far more consequential for the world than Ukraine.
Speaker 0: Well, if if anyone was to reverse position, I guess, Trump would be the ideal president. He is an artist in BS, so he could shift focus. I mean, only last week, we talked about invading Venezuela, invading Greenland, so he could always shift focus to, you know, annexing Canada or whatever is next on the menu or destroying Cuba. So yeah. But it's sad if world peace now depends on yeah, the BS skills of president Trump.
So, anyways, I know you guys must have a lot of things to do there at the moment, and thank you for taking the time, and stay safe.
Speaker 1: It's always an honor, Glenn. Stay safe.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Larry Johnson: Decline of the U.S. Dollar & End of Empire https://youtu.be/p9hU1lavcpY https://t.co/TBrTJpFt9S
Video Transcript AI Summary
Larry Johnson and Glenn discuss the shifting dynamics of the US dollar, the international financial system, and the rise of competing powers.
- Johnson recalls the 1965 term exorbitant privilege describing the US dollar’s reserve-currency advantages. In 1971, the US closed the gold window, ending fixed gold value for the dollar; the dollar later became backed by “our promise,” enabling the petrodollar system as oil purchases were conducted in dollars. The dollar’s dominance rested on predictability, a stable legal system, and non-abusive use of the dollar as an economic tool rather than a political weapon.
- Trump-era sanctions expanded broadly, impacting friends and adversaries alike, and BRICS nations began moving away from the dollar. Russia’s disconnection from SWIFT after its 2022 actions is noted as a turning point that encouraged the BRICS’ development of alternative financial infrastructure, including China’s cross-border interbank payment system (CIPS). This shift accelerates the decline of the dollar’s dominance.
- Nations like Russia and China (and India, Brazil) are unloading US Treasuries and increasing gold and silver holdings. This is tied to concerns about the dollar’s reliability and the reduced faith in paper promises. The BRICS countries reportedly plan a currency tied to gold, with components of their reserves backing individual BRICS currencies, signaling a structural move away from the dollar.
- The paper-gold issue is central: for every ounce of real gold, there is a range of 20-to-1 to 100-to-1 in paper gold. This disparity can undermine trust in the paper promise and create a run on physical gold. The price gap between New York (lower) and Shanghai (higher) for gold demonstrates a market dislocation and growing demand for physical metal.
- Glenn emphasizes that a unipolar dollar system allows the US to run large deficits via inflation, which acts as a hidden tax on global dollar holders. Weaponizing the dollar through sanctions challenges trust and accelerates decoupling, prompting other nations to seek alternatives to reduce exposure.
- Johnson argues that the US is confronting a historic realignment: the Bretton Woods order is dissolving, the dollar’s international dominance is waning, and sanctions and coercive policies are provoking pushback. He highlights Japan as a major remaining dollar treasuries holder that is now offloading, further increasing dollar supply and depressing its value.
- The geopolitical implications are significant. Johnson warns that potential US actions against Iran—given their strategic position and the Gulf oil supply—could trigger a severe global disruption, including a price surge in oil. He notes that such actions would complicate global stability and magnify inflationary pressures.
- The discussion also covers NATO’s cohesion, Western attempts to shape global alignments, and how rapidly shifting leverage could undermine existing alliances. Johnson suggests that Russia’s strategic gains in the war in Ukraine, combined with Western missteps, may prompt a rapid reevaluation of settlements and borders, while also noting that Russia’s position has hardened.
- On Venezuela, Johnson argues that the stated pretexts (drug trafficking, oil control) were questionable and points to economic motives, including revenue opportunities for political allies like Paul Singer, and to Greenland’s strategic interests as possible motivators for US actions.
- Looking ahead, Johnson predicts hyperinflation for the United States as the dollar loses value globally, while gold and silver retain value. He asserts that the ruble and yuan may hold value better, and that a mass shift toward de-dollarization is likely to continue, potentially culminating in a new multipolar financial order.
- Both speakers agree that trust and predictability are crucial; the current trajectory—threats, sanctions, and unilateral actions—undermines trust and accelerates the move toward alternative currencies and stronger physical-commodity holdings. The overall tone is that a pivotal, watershed moment is unfolding in the global monetary system.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined again by Larry Johnson, a former CIA analyst, to help us make sense of what's happening with the US dollar and indeed the entire international economic system, which has been very US centric, at least since 1945. So thank you for coming back on.
Speaker 1: Hey. Thanks for having me. Boy, we are we're living in interesting times. That Chinese curse is coming to pass. May you live in interesting times.
Speaker 0: Well, it is interesting also because a lot of the things people have been warning about over the decades is now happening and at a very rapid speed as well. It's worth remembering that it was actually back in 1965 when the French finance minister used the term exorbitant privilege to describe the advantages of of The United States of having the US dollar as the world's reserve currency. However, only a short six years later, partly due to The US welfare state and the warfare state, that means over overspending, Nixon had to close this gold window in 1971, thus no longer linking the US dollar to the value of gold in fixed terms. It's worth remembering back then, it was $35 an ounce. This was the the set value.
In January, it was about $2,650, and one year later now, it's 5,160. So you just see this, yeah, crazy rise in Yeah. Well, not so much that the gold is rising. It's more that the paper money is diminishing in value. Right.
So what what is it that's happening here, and how significant do you see it being?
Speaker 1: So I'm friends with the owner of Bit Shoot, a man by the name of Jeffrey Warnick. And he wrote an excellent piece that I put put up at, sonar21.com, three days ago. And it was describing what the role you know, what the meaning of the US dollar's reserve currency is. And and one of the reasons that, you know, as you pointed out prior to '72, the dollar was directly linked to gold. So you knew it was backed by gold.
After '72, it was backed by our promise. Hey. Trust us. You it it will your money will be there. And at that point, it became the primary means of purchasing oil.
So it was, you know, call it the petrodollar. Well, being that reserve currency like that means one of the reasons people liked it was The US was predictable. We had a stable, we believe stable legal system, a judicial system that were generally played pretty fair. There wasn't you know, there there's normal political tussles back and forth, but there was not great instability and unrest. People had confidence.
And The United States didn't use the dollar as a political club to beat foreign countries over the head and shoulders with it. It was used as an economic tool. That has changed now under Donald Trump dramatically. I mean, Trump's not the first one, but the application of sanctions on a wide on a wide spectrum. It doesn't matter whether you're a friend of The United States, whether you're an alleged adversary of The United States, everybody's getting sanctioned.
And under the with with the BRICS countries, you know, this started with Russia in after the special military operation in 2022. And when they disconnected Russia from SWIFT, they actually did Russia favor. SWIFT for those of, you know, who are listening or watching, basically, it's an email system between banks for moving money. Like, I'd say, hey, Glenn. I'm sending you a thousand dollars from this account and credited to that account.
Well, just like email that people use at home, there's something called spam. Some of the messages get lost. Some of so it's not a digital system. It really is an analog system that sometimes instead of one day, two day, three days to settle movement of money. Well, the Chinese now have come up with something called the cross border interbank payment system, SIPs, digital.
I send you it's like I send you the text message. Boom. It's done. So Russia started distancing itself. It was forced to distance itself from the West.
And then with China facing all of these threats from Trump and Biden, the the all of a sudden, they then accelerate the development of bricks, financial infrastructure. So what we're seeing right now is one of the reasons for this dramatic rise in the price of silver and gold, silver in particular. Silver in October, October is like $45 an ounce, and today it's hovering around $1.13, $1.14 an ounce. Incredible rise. So what's happening is all of these countries, particularly China and India, who used to buy US treasuries, And when you're buying a US treasury bill, you're essentially lending money to The United States.
United States is giving you an IOU. Okay. Yeah. We'll pay you. You know, we're gonna pay you x percent a month, and then we will there'll be an x amount due at the end of the term if it's a six month or two year or nine year, you know, whatever.
Well, these countries that used to hold US treasuries in massive amounts have been unloading them, and then they're buying gold and silver because they've now they want to hold something of value. I don't want to get into all the nuts and bolts of the paper market. You know, a can paper promise that silver will go up or silver will go down and that you will have a financial stake in that. But if those, the holders of that paper don't actually possess the silver, you can just get an IOU from you know, you're not gonna have any real money. So people are actually going for the real silver.
What we're seeing right now is they're in New York City where they're trying to keep the paper amount connected to the physical amount if they're selling it for $1.13. Well, in Shanghai, they're selling it for $1.27. So all of a sudden, people in The United States, they can go buy they buy the gold here for a $113. It costs roughly about 50¢ an ounce to transport it overseas, and so they can transport it to Shanghai. So now you bought it for a 113.
Now you got 50¢ on top of that, $113.50, and then you sell it in Shanghai for a $127, you made $14.13 dollars, 50¢. So that that shows how the the market now is broken. And one of the major factors in that is that the BRICS countries, Russia, China, India in particular, but also Brazil, they're offloading the US treasuries. They're buying gold and silver, and they reportedly are gonna come out with a with a a BRICS currency that will be each it'll be tied to gold that each country owns and a and a percentage of their currency. You know, it's still it's in development, but but what we're seeing is the breakup, the collapse of this, international financial system, the Bretton Woods system that The United States erected in the aftermath of World War two and has been really the dominant factor in global economy for the last eighty plus years.
Speaker 0: The issue of the paper gold is is quite critical because, again, this works when there is trust. If I if I sell you some paper gold
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 0: It this is fine and well if you think that you can hand that paper back to me, and I'll give you real gold. But there's different estimates to how much paper gold there is out there. It tends to range from 20 to one to a 100 to one. That is for each ounce, you have in real gold, people would trade between 20 and a 100. This is pay yeah.
Fake or paper gold. I mean, this is quite extraordinary. People actually want to see the gold because they no longer trust that they would get it if they ask for it, that is to trade in the paper for real, essentially, it be a run on the gold. Wouldn't this would all fall apart. But it's also something that keeps the prices down, though, because once you have this much, I guess, fake paper gold out there, it helps to keep the prices down.
Now
Speaker 1: Well, and it's it's what we call the it's it's the devaluing fiat currency. So if you go back to what the like, the let's take The US stock market as an example, September 1972. You know, I just started my senior year in high school then. The the price of gold was 35, and then you could look at what the size of the stock market was, and you can you can come up with a number that shows the relationship of and and I heard the number. Think back then, that would have bought the it would have bought like four 45 ounces of gold.
This the price of what the what the stock market price was, what the price of gold was. You could have bought with the value of the what they call the Standard and Poor Index or the Dow Index. You could buy, let's say, 45 ounces of gold. Today, even though the stock market is soared from, you know, back then it was say 3,000. Now it's 49,000.
But but how many how many ounces of gold can you buy with that? Now it's like eight. So, yeah, eight. Yeah. About eight.
So all of a sudden, you know, what what has happened is the paper currency has lost its value dramatically. Gold, you know, continues. Gold and silver continue to hold their value, which is why countries are increasingly buying it up, which is now it's also creating a shortage, which is one of the other factors driving it up. So but but people shouldn't look at this strictly as an economic phenomenon. This is this is a political economic phenomenon, and it is it is historic.
We're witnessing something now that, you know, is like when you're growing up and I was growing up, you'd hear about the great depression and how stockbrokers in New York City were jumping out of windows and killing themselves. We're we're now actually going through a similar kind of phenomena that people will look back. I'm not sure what they'll call it. The great the great currency realignment, but but the the the reign of the dollar, it's over. It's just it's it's sort of like that chicken.
You cut the chicken's head off. The chicken can still walk around for a while with its head off, but ultimately, it'll fall over dead. The US currency is in serious, serious trouble.
Speaker 0: Well, what do you say about predictability and trust is is important? Because, well, there's a there's an advantage to having one world currency that is everyone using the same the same money in terms of transaction cost. I mean, there there's a lot of benefits if it's done responsibly and, of course, keep inflation at an acceptable level. But but but it gives The US an immense amount of power to run massive deficits because inflation is a form of taxation. That is you can print new money, and then you devalue the existing money in the international system.
So in other words, the US government can print new money for itself, and then the dollar holdings the whole world is holding is then diminished in value. It is a form of taxation. And Yeah. Yeah. And you you don't wanna see irresponsible taxation in during imperial decline.
So and what makes matters worse, of course, is if the dollar is you said before, is also weaponized, that is by restricting its access. Now for a country like The United States, which has been running, well, essentially a global empire on the back of the US dollar, this is a catastrophe, though. This I mean, even America's main adversaries, be it China or Russia, they don't wanna see The US fall on its knees. They would like, I think, to see a gradual retrenchment and, you know, being a stable pole of power in the international system. But this could be a real horror show, though, if this Yeah.
Isn't done in a proper way. So how what is it that can be done at this point? Because I don't see any big incentives for countries like Russia or China to actually hold the dollar.
Speaker 1: Oh, no. They're they're dumping it. They are they're all floating it. One of the actually, of the biggest remaining holders of the dollar has been Japan. And Japan is now in a huge financial crisis.
Now we thought The US debt to GDP ratio, was like a 127%, the one was enormous. Japan's number one. They're like 260, 300%. They are now in the process of starting to offload their shares of treasuries, which means in a way you're flooding the market with dollars, and as the supply of something goes up, the price of it goes down. And then you get into this so the dollar is devaluing, and and so what that means is if, you know, one day I could buy a bottle of vodka in Poland for $10, but now you know, the $10 to the zloty.
But now, you know, four days later with the drop in the value of the dollar, I have to pay $14 for that same bottle of vodka. Now when when currency falls on the one hand, there is a potential positive economic effect. It means whatever you're producing in your country, it's gonna be cheaper for people overseas to buy it, so that might actually have a positive economic effect. However, if you're buying a lot of things from overseas, that means you're gonna pay a lot more money for them, which means, like, in the bottle of vodka, instead of $10, you're paying $14. That's called inflation.
And but ultimately, what this means is up to this point, The United States has been like that kid that goes to college, and he's he's got parents and relatives who've all given him a credit card, and he gets to he gets to buy what he wants, you know, and and he runs up the bills on the credit cards and never has to pay because it's it's the relatives that are that were the owners of those credit cards they have to pay. But all of a sudden comes the time they go, wait a second. This kid's a deadbeat. He's doing poorly in school or he's threatening us. We're not gonna pay anymore.
And once once those payments stop, then the the independence of The United States, in this case, stops. So the the and that's I I can't emphasize enough that this is what we're witnessing is historic. The historians like yourself or maybe, you know, 30 from now when you're an old guy like me, you'll be looking back at this and saying, hey, I was there. Let me tell you what happened. This was a watershed moment.
The realignment, the, you know, the collapse really of, if you will, of the UN system in part, but Bretton Woods, IMF, World Bank, the dollar is no longer what it once was, and it goes to the heart of what you had pointed out earlier, Glenn, the lack of confidence and predictability. I mean, Trump Trump is an he is acting very erratically and with the support of some of his key advisers. And as we're talking, they are threatening it. It looks like The United States is going to launch an attack on Iran. And just think through the economic consequences of that if they do because Iran Iran this time has vowed.
We're gonna shut down the Strait Of Hormuz. And the roughly 45% of the oil that's produced every day by OPEC and non OPEC countries, 4045% of that global production comes out of the Persian Gulf. And so if that's disrupted, all of a sudden, you know, you tell me what an almost 50% cut in the volume of oil per day does to the world economy. I mean, it's it'll be good news for Russia because price of oil will probably go up to, $152,100 dollars a barrel. Hey.
Russia's gonna be, you know, swimming in black gold because they they've got they they're they're not blocked from exporting. But, those countries that are dependent on, the exports for the Persian Gulf, their economies, you know, then they're in the situations. Do they have strategic reserves? How long do those strategic reserves last? So and and here's The United States threatening this.
Now I I I postulated that Trump may just be doing his typical threatening posture, but because of this turmoil with the silver and gold market, he may not want to add to the unpredictability chaos factor. But if he does, this this is gonna turn really ugly.
Speaker 0: But Trump, he has a strange way of fighting against this. That is as you see countries reducing their treasure holdings and also seeking to diversify away from the dollar. He he essentially threatened countries, though, that if you try to de dollarize, I will put tariffs on you, which is a very strange thing because, if you become dependent if you try to reduce dependence on our economy, then I will weaponize your dependence on this economy. I mean, it's something that could work to short to medium term that is countries would, you know, just to try to get, you know, Trump off their backs saying, okay. We're not gonna do it.
But but gradually, though, this is it will only convince them further that they need to decouple. It's so destructive because if you want there's a lot of countries China, for example, it sees a lot of benefits in using the dollar if it just doesn't make it so difficult for them. Putin even made this comment as well. He said that Russia never decided to quit the dollar. That was America that made that decision by by by restricting its use.
So it just seems like rebuilding trust would be the way to go, but this approach of threatening countries not to seek to use other currencies. This is just it reminds me of a meme I saw on the after the Taliban took over. You had a guy with a machine gun and his feet up on the desk, and he was, you know, the new finance minister of of Afghanistan combating inflation. You know? Something like this.
But but this is more or less the same, isn't it? You can't Yeah. Britain countries into into not using your currency.
Speaker 1: Well, we saw I mean, so last year, you know, like September, October, one of the while other countries are dumping treasuries, some of the largest purchases of US treasury bills was out of Europe. And what did Trump do in response to Europe essentially helping out The United States by buying treasuries? Insults them. So we're gonna take over Greenland, tell Denmark to screw off and insult, you know, Macron and Starmer and Merck. You know?
It's like, you know, I call it a head scratcher. Why are you trying to deliberately anger and enrage the very people that you want to help you? That's, you know, that's, you know, in my experience, that's not normal. You know? I wanna be kind to people that help me.
I want to be thankful to people that help me. I don't wanna insult them and and and then threaten to hurt them because human nature is such. I don't care whether we're talking governments or people. When you when you do when you do that, people seek both revenge and they seek separation. Like, you know, I gotta get away from this person.
They're crazy. There is there's nothing that Donald Trump is doing right now that would reassure world leaders that he's in full possession of his faculties. And candidly, I don't know why Russia is even negotiating with The United States because no matter what Trump says, you have to ask the question. If Trump reaches an agreement with Putin, will that agreement be supported, accepted by the rest of the government, by the members of Congress? And I would argue, no.
Absolutely not. Or the only way you could guarantee that is instead of having a politically binding agreement or agreement between two people, hey, or his friends, you want something that's legally binding. That means treaty. And if I I see no basis of support in the US congress, US senate in particular, but that treaty would have to be ratified to support a deal that would leave Russia with the the five former oblasts of Ukraine and Crimea, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Donetsk, Luhansk. I keep hearing the West this nonsense that, oh, yeah, Trump they're negotiating with Trump to possibly give up, surrender some territory.
News flash people, he ain't giving it up. Not none of those five, Crimea, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Dinesh Ruhansk, they are now firmly constitutionally part of Russia, and and Vladimir Putin does not even have the legal authority to negotiate about giving up those that territory. And I just spoke a little a little bit ago with Alexander Babakov. He he's the number two guy in the Duma. And he basically said, yeah.
No. No. We're not we're not giving anything out. Now could they make some concessions on places like Dnipro Petrov, Kharkiv, Sumi, Pultava? Maybe.
But that's what the West doesn't get. So Russia's position is hardening, and they they look at they look at Trump right now. You know, one of the objectives of Russia in this special military operation was to demilitarize Ukraine, and part of that demilitarization and the root cause has been NATO. Now they're stepping back and watching. It looks like Trump on his own is destroying NATO from he's blowing it up from inside.
So I I postulated that Vladimir Putin went out, just got a big box of popcorn and with butter on it, sitting there eating popcorn, watching this, just enjoying himself. That was cheap entertainment.
Speaker 0: Well, that's the that's the interesting dilemma that that that this whole approach by Russia presents because on one hand, I think that the incremental increase in Russia's demand in terms of territory, that this is the main thing that puts incentives on NATO to make a compromise. Because imagine if you just had this stagnant front lines, nothing is moving, just Ukrainians and Russians killing each other. This will be there would be zero incentive in NATO to make any concessions. It would just use Ukrainians to bleed out Russia. This is again, this is also the main goal.
However, once territory begins to shift rapidly in Russia's favor, the strategic territory, which NATO doesn't wanna see in the hands of Russia, be it Odessa, for example, then you want to have a compromise and, and end the war as soon as possible. The problem, though, is that the more territory which shifts hands, the more difficult it is to actually make a piece. So it's it's just so you have this intensity growing up, growing and growing all the time, and it's hard to see how they're gonna solve this. Yeah. But how do you make sense of the the the fear, though, of The US growing tendency to use all this extra territorial you you were using, essentially, the the dollar to export its own sanctions to others?
For example, back in at the g seven meeting in in 2019, you had at that time, you had The US treasury secretary, Steven Moo Moochin, who told the Europeans that if you wanna participate in the dollar system, then you have to abide by US sanctions. In other words, The US passes unilateral sanctions, and the whole world has to abide by them. Otherwise, you get cut off the the US dollar, the SWIFT, The US banks. And it's an interesting system because, essentially, The US has fined its even its partners in the past for failing to live by sanctions, which are American sanctions. So it's essentially yeah.
It's quite strange, but you can only do this to a certain limit, it seems.
Speaker 1: Well, The United States was in a unique position in the in nineteen nineties following the collapse of the Soviet Union. When we were the de facto, we had a de facto monopoly. In other words, we people didn't have an alternative outside the financial system that we controlled. And so we got accustomed to telling people do this, do that, jump this high, you have to obey us. But what has now happened as, you know, it happens in the world of economics all the time, it creates incentives to for people to seek alternatives.
And now as they sought those alternatives, the action of The United States is to try to act with more force just to hang on to that influence, and in that those actions actually end up driving more people away. And we saw just this in the last few days where Trump's threatening South Korea, one of our supposedly closest allies threatening South Korea with with 25% sanctions. We saw now that, the EU has signed this major new trade agreement with India. And now in the past, we thought we could threaten. We're gonna threaten India with sanctions as if we're the only market for them.
And then he's gone, never mind. We're we'll go to Europe. We'll go to South America. You know, there are other countries other and there's Africa. And so all of a sudden, The United States is not the owner of all, you know, the sports equipment.
You know, we've got the we use the metaphor of a kid. When you get a group of kids that are playing baseball or or soccer, and the kid that owns the soccer ball takes it home so nobody else can play. Well, you found now now what we're finding is all the other kids have their own soccer balls. So, yeah, we we can take ours and go home, and they'll probably be glad to be rid of us because we're off the playing field, we were frankly a pain in the neck. And and so these these countries are now they're very serious about pushing back against the bullying and threatening tactics of The United States, and it is we'll we'll see if Trump backs off now of his threat to attack Iran.
Right? Because, again, this is we we don't even sure why he's attacking. Apparently, has something to do now with he wants some deal on nuclear and unspecified. And and Iran has they've made it very clear because they're they've got the backing now of both Russia and China, and they've got intelligence support. They've got military support that includes robust air defense systems.
They've conducted they're actually supposed to conduct in about a month their annual naval exercise, and they've been doing that for the last seven years. So, I mean, this is, you know, this is very dicey, and and Iran's made it clear. They're going to retaliate. If they get struck, they're going to retaliate. This will this will set West Asia on fire.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, this was always a wider problem, though, with the the unipolar system. That is once new centers of power begin to emerge, also in the economic realm as well, then the hegemon would would always have a a dilemma. What do you do? Do you if you don't prevent the rise of these rival centers of power, then the hegemony is over.
On the other hand, if one tries to use the hegemonic control over the international economic system, that is limit access to technologies, different products, industries, physical transportation corridors, banks, payment systems, yeah, currencies, whatever whatever it would be, it would just incentivize the rest of the international system to decouple faster. And indeed, it would be worse instead of just creating a a multipolar system where The US would merely be one. It would be a multipolar system to some extent built up against The US. And this is a tragedy, though, for The US to go from a hegemonic system to a multipolar system organized around the principle of managing the rationality of Washington. I mean, it just it's very hard to see why this would be the best approach for The United States.
But what do you see happening now, though, move moving forward? Do you see all of these wars, all of this you know, the going after Venezuela, going after Iran, going after Russia? Is this to what extent is this linked up to the, I guess, financial insecurity of The United States now?
Speaker 1: I I think very it's a huge factor. I mean, let's take the case of Venezuela. All of the reasons that were put forth to justify going after Maduro were lies. Oh, that Venezuela was this major drug trafficking center. But look, according to I went back and checked the state department's annual product narcotics report.
It's called the INSCR, I n s c r. For the last ten years, 99% of all fentanyl that's been intercepted, confiscated is coming out of Mexico. 1% is coming out of Canada. None was coming out of Venezuela, so that was a lie. Or that The United States needed to get control of the Venezuelan oil.
Well, Venezuelan oil, it's not like if you have coffee and a coffee cup and a straw, you suck out the coffee, then replace that coffee with half coffee, half peanut butter, and then try to suck it out. You know, you got, you know, a lot more work to do. And so the Venezuelan oil that gets pumped out of the ground to the tune of 700,000 barrels a day represents less than 2% of world global world oil supply. So it's not, you know, it's not significant. I mean, if it disappeared, the the price of oil would still be about the same.
However, there's a guy named Paul Singer, a billionaire, owner of Sitco. He happens to have three refineries on the Gulf Of Mexico, aka now Gulf Of America and Trump world, that is specifically designed to process Venezuelan oil. And by refining it, that means you add roughly 15 to $20 of cost per barrel of oil. And that money goes into Paul Singer's pocket. Well, just do the math, 700,000 barrels a day, $20 per barrel added on because of the refining.
All of a you know, that's worth probably $4,000,000,000 a year in revenue to mister Singer. Singer is a political donor to Donald Trump. That's what was going on in there. This was this was all this was a payoff to a political supporter. Similarly with Greenland, you know, you look back at Greenland and go, for seventy five years, I don't recall of one instance, maybe, you know, you can cite one, where The United States wanted to do something militarily from Greenland with US forces, put more people in or move, you know, do something.
And the Greenland said, no. No. You can't do that. Or Denmark said, no. No.
Stop. I don't recall a single instance in which it was denied. So you gotta step back and say, you know, what's going on here? Because we've already got bases there and the right to use those bases. What is it that Trump's trying to do?
And there's another billionaire, Ron Lauder, and he's got some economic interest in Greenland that he wants to exploit. So this is, you know, this really looks like Trump is just using the world as his own piggy bank to, you know, pay off supporters and cut sweetheart deals. It has nothing to do with, you know, in his claim, oh, we gotta stop Russia and China. I mean, China's not gonna sail. You know, they they go through the barren straits straight up into the Arctic with Russian to help.
They don't have to sail halfway around the world to quote, you get by Greenland. Not gonna happen. And similarly, Russia's already got, like, 53% of the Arctic Circle surrounded by itself. It doesn't need to add Greenland. So the the like I said, if we look at these, these decisions that aren't being made with strategy and vision in mind, they're being made in you know, for, you know, just pure pure corruption.
Speaker 0: Yeah. Well, I was wondering, though, how the the the problem, of course, for the, of course, for The United States is that all all over these decades, they've been able to export a lot of their inflation that is all this excess of dollars. They've been welcomed by the rest of the world, so you can just keep the money printer on, you know, burning hot. But now that countries are no longer buying the treasury bills, they don't need to trade using the dollar, not just a reserve currency, but as a trading currency. All of those dollars could just flood back to The United States.
Yeah. Yeah. It comes like a game of musical chairs. You don't wanna be the last on holding these dollars when the music stops, though. So what do you see happening moving forward?
Just yes. Last question. Do you see a do you see a a massive financial crisis coming our way? Because I've been seeing, yeah, a a lot of re reports about billionaires selling off, you know, a lot of assets preparing for a horrible crack. So Yeah.
What what is it that you hear or see happening at the moment?
Speaker 1: Well, I I think the most likely scenario is The United States is gonna get hit with a wave of hyperinflation. I lived in Argentina from I arrived at the December '83, lived there throughout '84, the first year of the presidency of Raul Alfoncin. At that time, Argentina was ravaged with a thousand percent annual inflation. It's really something to live. I mean, you know, people aren't dying on the streets necessarily, but it's just a complete disruption of the economy.
Prior to that, so this was 1984, six years before that, and lived in the city of Cordova, which was the second largest city in Argentina after Buenos Aires. And they used to, in 1978 in Cordova, they'd have a plane that would take off like 10:00 at night because it was about an eight hour flight up to Miami. People would get on the plane, fly to Miami, get off the plane, clear customs, and by 9AM, they're out shopping, and they they just buying up stuff to take back to Argentina. They'd get back to the airport, Miami, by, you know, say, 2PM to fly back to Argentina, getting back home at, you know, 10:00 at night. And they they were basically doing this to go shopping.
I mean, the the the Argentine currency was so strong at the time that they could, you know, buy anything. But then six years later, when they're hit with hyperinflation, I had a friend who was a baker. He he actually provided the pastries to Arulenius Argentina. So, you know, he was he was he was making pretty good money. And when when he sold his house, he received wanna say it was like 2,000,002 million pesos, which at the time was pretty good money.
A year and a half later, those 2,000,000 pesos could buy you a bottle of Coca Cola. K? I mean, it's just the devaluation of the currency. So that that's where I think The United States is headed. We're we're going to face something like that because our debt and and the Japanese as well, it's it's not gonna be confined to just The United States.
Every country that has been borrowing fiat currency is now going to be faced with the fact that that currency has lost its value completely. Gold and silver will remain intact. You saw, you know, I've I've lived through something like this, and I and I think that's what we're gonna face. And it is it it what it does is it guts just cuts the intestines out of your middle class. It really creates you know, the very wealthy aren't really that touch.
You know, they're not affected much by it. Okay. They gotta pay some more money, so be it. But they're holding gold and silver so they can exchange that. I mean, one of the most one of the most prosperous businesses in Argentina during that time was the money exchange places, the Casa de Cambios, because everybody every day was going in.
They're trying to buy dollars or trying to or going into you know, I was going in to sell dollars because, you know, I could and this was back at a time I could take my wife and son and Beetho and his family, the four girls or two girls and his wife. We could go to dinner at an Italian restaurant, beat everybody for $15. You know, that so there there will be some currencies that are going to retain their value. And I actually the the irony here is I think the the Russian ruble and the Chinese yuan, the renminbi, the the their value is gonna remain intact. It's it's the US dollar that's gonna suffer.
Speaker 0: Well, with all the international crisis coming out now with China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, five, six more countries in Latin America, if we will take Trump's war right, it's definitely gonna be interesting to see, yeah, massive financial crisis dropped into the mix just to add to the unpredictability. So chaotic times indeed. Well, Larry, I know you have other places to go as well, so thank you very much for letting me pick your brain.
Speaker 1: Hey, my friend. Well, you call it slim pickings, but take care.
Speaker 0: You too.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Alex Krainer: Rise of the Oligarchy & the Risk of Civil War https://youtu.be/4jMsptVKYIs https://t.co/s1MzlWHbLK
Video Transcript AI Summary
Alex Kraner and Glenn discuss the idea that democracy in the West is largely a façade with real power exercised by an unaccountable oligarchy, a phenomenon they compare to historical patterns from Rome and other periods.
- Kraner argues that while democracies are presented as rule-by-the-people, in reality Western nations exhibit a shallow democracy on the surface, with an oligarchy actually governing the system. This, he says, leads to crises, repression, censorship, declining living standards, deteriorating infrastructure, and endless wars, despite repeated mandates for prosperity and security from voters.
- He cites empirical evidence and references a video analysis to support the claim that democracies deliver outcomes unlike their professed ideals. The same syndrome, he notes, has repeated itself across different eras, from ancient Rome to Lombard banking in Italy, suggesting a persistent pattern of oligarchic control under democratic veneers.
- A key contrast is drawn with Russia under Vladimir Putin. Kraner asserts Putin did not exterminate oligarchs but “rounded them up and laid down the rules”: pay taxes, treat employees fairly, stay out of politics. Oligarchs were allowed to keep wealth but were constrained to a sandbox where the state runs the country and politics remain within established channels. According to him, this check on oligarchy contributed to Russia’s economic revival and resilience even amid severe sanctions.
- He contends that in the West, oligarchs and elected leaders are effectively intertwined, with leaders subordinate to oligarchic interests. He points to policy directions—such as rapid social changes (LGBT agendas), perpetual warfare, financial crises, and energy policies— as examples of decisions that appear not to reflect the democratic will of the people.
- The “expert class” is described as a mechanism through which elites impose policies (e.g., net zero, carbon capture) by claiming scientific consensus and complexity that ordinary citizens cannot grasp, thereby narrowing democratic control.
- Tocqueville’s concept of democratic despotism is revisited: democracies can be vulnerable to oligarchies because of trust in representatives, expansion of the administrative state, and manufactured consensus. The danger is a paternalistic state that treats citizens as infants, while wealthier interests consolidate influence over institutions.
- They discuss the perception problem: many people feel they cannot critique the system without seeming fringe or conspiracy-minded, though awareness is growing—polls, journalism, and academic work increasingly recognize that voting has limited impact on policy, illustrating the oligarchic influence.
- The conversation covers the political consequences: populist and anti-establishment candidates gain traction (e.g., Trump in the U.S., nationalist movements in Europe) as mainstream options become less credible. Courts are used as tools to disqualify or sideline challengers, a phenomenon described as lawfare.
- On the trajectory ahead, they contemplate whether Western society is heading toward pre-revolutionary conditions. Guardian signals include declining trust in politicians and media, the failure of the old narrative to enforce obedience, and growing calls to reform rather than escalate with new wars.
- Strategically, they propose broadening anti-oligarchic reform by engaging soldiers, police, and other institutions to prevent a collapse into civil conflict, stressing that reform is essential to avert violence and preserve stability.
- In closing, they acknowledge the paradox of liberal democracy: it holds strong ideals, yet its vulnerability to oligarchic capture necessitates clear understanding and reform to prevent cycles of debt, imperialism, and conflict. They express cautious optimism that, despite resistance, a shift toward reform is possible if more people recognize the systemic dynamics at play.
Throughout, the speakers emphasize the need to reexamine Tocqueville’s warnings, understand the role of the expert class, and confront the entrenched power of oligarchies to preserve democratic legitimacy and avert future upheavals.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined again by Alex Kraner, a market analyst, author, and a former hedge fund manager. You can follow him on his podcast. That is the Alex Kraner podcast as well as his Substack, and I will leave a link in the description. So thank you for coming back on.
Speaker 1: Always a pleasure, Glenn. Thank you for the invite.
Speaker 0: So I like your combination of your, well, your market expertise as well as your political analysis, which is why I thought you had some very interesting takes on the threat of the rising oligarchy we have. Well, you can say in The United States, but I would also say this applies to Europe, how they are essentially hijacking democracy. And you even you know, you you and your podcast, you draw links to the ruin of Rome. I was wondering how how do you to what extent do you see an oligarchy, and why is it undermining democracy?
Speaker 1: Well, we have to be clear about it's a little bit complicated because I think that the way we've been culturally conditioned to regard democracy, we think that it's ruled by the people and of the people and for the people, And that's how ideally it should be. But I find that in reality most Western nations, and we have very good empirical evidence of that for Great Britain and United States, what you what you what you get in actuality is a, like, a shallow type of democracy that is a democracy only on the facade, while the system, the government, the economic system is actually being ruled by an oligarchy. And so this is clear from empirical evidence that I cited in the in in the video that you were mentioning, and this is why I think our societies are that is our democracies are not delivering at all what people want because if you you know, we've been living under democracies for the last three generations, at least, in the West. And, you know, people when they go to vote, what they want is prosperity, they want high standards of living, they want peace, they want security.
But somehow they always get rolling economic and financial crisis, repression, censorship, insecurity, deteriorating standards of living, disintegrating infrastructure and forever wars abroad. So something's obviously not working correctly. But nevertheless, you know, the media continue with the promotion of democracy as one of the highest values and ideals that we should pursue and never question and so forth. But if you analyze what the system actually delivers as opposed to what we are told that it should deliver, we realize that the symptoms of social decay, of these economic crisis, of wars because we have to face it, most wars in the world are instigated by democratic governments around the world, primarily Britain and The United States. And then when we see the syndrome, we see that it's the same or very similar to what we saw in Rome, in ancient Rome and in Greek antiquity, and also during the Lombard banking period in Italy in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
It's always the same, and it continues to propagate itself. And I think that by today in the Western world it's become how do you call it undeniable that our democracies are dysfunctional. So obviously we have to reform them somehow. And I think that in order to reform them, we have to start from the clearest possible understanding of what the the problem is. And to my mind, the problem is that we are in fact being ruled by an oligarchy that is completely unaccountable.
And then we also by today have a very handy model about how to deal with oligarchies from Russia, because Russia was one of the best examples of what happens to society when it has an unrestrained oligarchy in power. So that was Russia in the 1990s. And then in 2000 Vladimir Putin came to power, and we had a spectacular turnaround in Russia in every respect. And what Vladimir Putin did is he didn't round up all the oligarchs and kill them or put them imprisoned. He basically rounded them up and laid down the rules.
And he said, you stole what you stole, it's yours. Continue to run your businesses, continue to enjoy your profits, but you have to pay your taxes correctly, you have to treat your employees correctly, and most importantly, you have to stay out of politics. And so, you know, at that time, this was in, I think, in March 2000 or 2001, that may have seemed like a very reasonable thing to propose. So, you know, I remain super wealthy, I remain a billionaire, and I don't have to deal with politics. Fine.
You know? Everybody should have been able to make peace with that. But the problem is that the oligarchs became used to the idea that they that Russia was their private fiefdom, that they could do as they pleased, that they could nominate ministers and take them out at their discretion whenever they chose. And so this was practically a declaration of war, and a a number of oligarchs tried to oppose Vladimir Putin, and it went badly for them. Mostly, this was not you know, these were not shootouts.
I mean, none of them were shootouts. They were legal battles, so the oligarchs took the government to court, the government defended itself, and they prevailed. And then the only oligarch of the seven bankers that ended up in prison was Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was a bit brazen because he was representing Jacob Rothschild's interests in Russia. This is not a conspiracy theory, this is now a well understood fact, It's on record. And so he challenged Vladimir Putin politically, and then he ended up in prison over tax evasion, kind of like Al Capone, you know.
And he spent nine years in prison, but basically, Vladimir Putin put the oligarchs into their sandbox and said, you may play here, but that's it. The I run the country. The country has a government. It has a parliament. You don't dictate politics.
And so we we saw a spectacular economic revival of Russia. It has become, if not a superpower, then definitely a global power to be reckoned with. The standards of living increased spectacularly for the Russian people. During Vladimir Putin's reign, Russia's economic development was I looked at these numbers a few years ago, so I don't I I don't wanna say that they're still true, but Russia even outpaced I think up until 2017, for sure, Russia Russian economic growth even outpaced the Chinese economic growth. And now, you know, with this war in in Ukraine, we see that Russia is not only an advanced economy, it's a very robust system that even though Russia was hit with the the biggest sanctions package ever imposed on any country in the world in history, it didn't unbalance Russia, it didn't destabilize her.
And so this is the effect of checking the power of the oligarch. It's something that is unthinkable in the West because, you know, while while Vladimir Putin could summon all these oligarchs to the Kremlin and lay down the rules for them, it is unthinkable that an American president or a British prime minister or a French president can, you know, line up the oligarchs and say, well, from today on, it's going to be like this. In fact, oligarchs are the prime ministers and presidents in the West are subordinate to the oligarchs. So we don't know for sure who the oligarchs It's all in the conspiracy theory domain. We don't know what their agendas are, but we do see that very strange things are happening.
You know, we have the sudden offensive of the LGBT agenda that nobody voted for. We have forever wars that nobody voted for. We have these financial crises that are unexplained and resolved in ways that nobody supports. We have this irrational, hostility towards Russia that is causing our leaders to implement completely insane policies like destroying our energy infrastructure and energy security just because they think this is a way to hurt Russia. We have insane policies like net zero that nobody voted for and investment of tens of billions of pounds into something called carbon capture.
So they're building these immense industrial facilities to extract carbon from the atmosphere and store it underground, which is completely insane. It doesn't serve any purpose. It doesn't make anybody else better off. They're saying, Oh, we're saving a planet. But nobody voted for this.
This is not the democratic will of the people. And then, you know, you go beyond, you go into these even sinister ideas of covering the prime agricultural land with solar panels and at the same time investing tens or hundreds of millions of dollars into technologies to dim the sun. You know, ordinary people wouldn't vote for this. They wouldn't support it. They would oppose it.
So obviously the West has gone pathogenic and dysfunctional, and we're going to have to reform the system. But to reform the system, we have to understand where the problems are coming from. And, you know, basically, this is this is the the motivation behind behind the video you you you referenced.
Speaker 0: Well, I've a colleague of mine in Australia, an American, Salvator Babonis, who wrote a similar well, a a book about, well, essentially, the rise of the expert class, how that would undermine democracy. And that that kind of fits a little bit within the category of oligarchy as well. And the the main premise is that some aspects of governance should be outside democratic controls. For example, military. People don't know how to be ruled, how well, what the military requires, so this is something we we do on the side, which shouldn't be, you know, under, yeah, direct democratic control.
But then they say, but also technologies are quite important, these aspects. So central banks, you know, normal people don't understand this. And one after another, each one and one aspect of governance is begun to be centralized and kind of falls outside democratic control. And at the end of it, democratic control more becomes you know, can can vote on the minor things, but the major policies, they're written in stone and into and cemented into a kind of permanent bureaucracy, which the Americans often refer to, you know, as the blob or the deep state. But I want I love what you're talking about, though, is I I I really like Alexis de Tocqueville.
You know, he wrote these books when he visited United States in the nineteenth century to inspect how democracy worked there, and he he has this chapter in the second volume on democratic despotism. And contrary to what the, well, I guess, the the common assumption now is, he writes that democracies are uniquely vulnerable to oligarchy because, you know, there's very little pushback due to the belief that their representatives are actually represent the people, and there's and they use more soft ways of regulating more and more of the aspects of life. And because of this trust in governments and the preference of material security and social peace, there's there's a there's a willingness to essentially hand over a lot of the autonomy of people's lives. And people in you know, he has a fascinating paragraph where he writes that people become more and more infants in the democracies because if everything should be equal and and and essentially, this requires a very big government, and it creates this soft tyranny. And the government becomes paternalistic and guides citizens like children, And, eventually, the citizens enjoy this.
They they like, you know, not not to do make all the hard decisions. And while this is happening, you will have wealthy interests growing and growing and increasingly dominate all the democratic institutions where, after a while, the consensus is just manufactured by the elite. So democracy is just a bunch of rituals. And even as oligarchy asserts itself, the democracies, he argued, would still maintain the democratic language, the institutions, all these rituals of voting, even though it didn't really matter because power was centralized. The civic responsibilities were in decline.
There was a massive pressure for conformity, and and, again, very little oppression is needed because people simply fall in line. It's a it's a fascinating chapter to read. It's it's a bit as well, if you would have read it thirty years ago, you know, at the end of the Cold War when liberalism was a silver bullet to fix everything and democracy would just thrive and change the world for the better, you know, some kind of utopia, this would have been, you know, I guess, Alexis de Tocqueville would have gathered a lot of dust on the bookshelf. But these days, when you see how governments begin to behave, I think it's time perhaps to to, yeah, dust off these books and have a have a look at some of the early assessments of the challenges of democratic despotism. But do you do you see it the same way, this population being, well, I guess, treated like infants and just accepting the comfort that this is why we hand over more and more uncritical power?
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think this is definitely the case, and I think it's by design because, you know, the problem when you have, you know, what the Greeks called tyrants, what the Rome Romans called kings, and what we today called autocrats or whatever, you know, there's an obsession to in our society there's an obsession against tyrants, kings, autocrats and so forth. And we see that, you know, in The United States of all people, of all places, they have these organized protests called No Kings Protest. Of course, that doesn't happen in Britain or in Canada where the prime minister swears his oath to the king. It doesn't happen in Denmark, Holland, Spain, in The United States.
Why? Because I think when you have a true sovereign at the top of governance structure, then they can hold the oligarchy in check. So if the oligarchy becomes abusive, a true sovereign can curb their power. And this is something this is the transition that happened in Rome in May when the last Roman king was deposed. And from that point on, Rome was basically ruled by an oligarchy in a in a in a completely unrestrained way ways.
And then, obviously, you know, they have to give the people some some semblance of democracy, of of influence, ability to change the system through its institutions, but you're always forced into this maze of rules and regulations and structures and institutions that are almost impossible to navigate for any ordinary person. And at the same time, the oligarchy can implement changes top down very easily because they control the economic power. So they can, you know, they can buy all the congressmen and senators and they can pay all the lobbies that they want. And they have an absolutely massive return on investment into politics. So this is what we have in the West, but obviously they're not going to be us about you know, they they try to they try to conceal this.
And then, you know, when when it when it happens here and there that democratic will of the people manage to actually effect some change, then they're going to promote this story as like you see you see, this is a this is a true democracy and, you know, it's the people hold all the power. At the same time, they they use their control of the media to convince us basically to go against our own interests and to very often, that does involve what you call the rule of the expert class because they always bring the experts that tell us, oh, you know, to save the planet, we have to go to net zero because climate change and, you know, it's very complicated. So the ordinary person, I cannot understand it. So you go and you listen to experts, and the only experts that come in the media, you know, the 97% that agree on all this, is that human activity is causing climate change. So guess what?
We have to, you know, stop driving fossil fuel powered cars, and we have to dismantle all the nuclear power plants, and we have to basically commit an economic suicide, and you have to have no job and you have to freeze in your apartment. Why? Because if we don't do all this, we can't save the planet. We're going you know, the whole planet is going to burn up. And then the same thing with the water shortages, which are also an invention, you know, the pandemics, the very, very terrible, dangerous, deadly viruses that are going to kill us unless we, you know, have vaccines and pass passes and boosters and eventually chips under their skin.
It's all it's all means to control the population, and the expert class plays an extremely important role in this. And then the ruling oligarchy has very effective ways to choose which experts we will get to hear and which experts they will silence. However, I think that this deception can only go so far and then not farther. And I think that in our experience, in our lifetimes, the the pandemic of two thousand and twenty was the watershed moment where I think maybe very few people or a very small percentage of people would read Alexis Stockville and say like, hey, you know, he he was right. This is really what we're experiencing.
I think by today that segment is much, much more significant. I don't know what it is, but I think it's, you know, maybe before the pandemic it was one percent and maybe today it's 20 or 30 or 50%. The problem with the people are still made the people are still made to feel that if they question the system that they are in a minority, that they're like a loony fringe. And so what I often find is that if I speak to somebody they will be maybe shy to really say what they think. But when I tell them what I think openly then suddenly they go like, oh, yes, I completely agree.' You know?
Somehow media projects this idea that there's these loony conspiracy theorists out there who are completely wrong about everything. And if you agree with them, then you're one of the loonies, you know? So people kind of feel isolated, so they don't like to say what they really think about this and that. But when they realize that you agree with them, they feel relieved, and then they're ready to talk, and then they tell you everything. And so I think at some point you hit an inflection point where many people realize that they're not loony fringe, that they're not crazy conspiracy theories, that their views are actually based on reality and that we are facing an actual enemy in our societies and that these experts that they bring in front of us are actually deceiving us, that they're not telling us the truth.
And so I think at this point things start changing and you get the Trump, you know, you get Donald Trump in the White House because he was the only alternative. You know, you could have the fourth Barack Obama administration through Kamala Harris or you had to go a different direction. And so clearly the American people chose the alternative. And we see that even in Europe they have to increasingly intervene in our democracies to prescribe candidates because people would vote for Colin Georgescu and for AFD in Germany and for Rassemblement Nationale in France and so forth. But they won't let them so they use courts as they did in Rome, you know, the lawfare.
They use courts to simply disqualify certain candidates and say like, yeah, yeah, you can have a democracy, but you can only choose among these candidates and not those other ones that you really want to vote for. Well, know, as John F. Kennedy said, if a peaceful revolution is made impossible, then you end up getting a violent revolution. And I'm afraid that this is the direction in which the Western world is going.
Speaker 0: Well, this idea that you can't question the system, I think it's the the problem is I think that they made this liberal ideals into an identity and ideology. That is the that's how they identify they are they are a democracy, essentially. They represent democracy. So very critical it's very difficult to challenge the democratic authority they have because then, yeah, that's essentially what what what to build the whole legitimacy upon. But there's also this appeal, I guess, of ideological rule because in human nature, you know, as we organize in groups, we tend to identify us as in group versus out group, who is the other, and always frame it in the language of good versus bad.
So, you know, splitting up the world as democracy versus authoritarian, this becomes our entire worldview. So once you begin to disagree with, I guess, the democratic credentials of the political leadership and whether or not they become oligarchs. It's seen as an attack essentially on on the political legitimacy itself because, well, to some extent, it is. But often, the the people scream the loudest about our democratic values. You know, there's people like Van der Lehne and Kaia Kullas who no who nobody voted for them.
Even Kaia Kullas recently referred to Van der Lehne as a dictator, so they don't even shy away from, you know, having this infighting. But even the actual elected people who people had a chance to vote for, the Starmer's, the Mertz, Macron, I mean, we have BlackRock Mertz, obviously, heavily influenced from his from his background in finance. You had the same with Macron. When he was if you remember back when he was sold into politics as the leader to take over, you know, he used to be an investment banker with Rothschild, and the way the media sold him in as this was the new open liberal guy who would be able to transform France. I mean, it's it's very much managed managed election, and I also don't like for how referencing the rise of oligarchy is somehow treated as some kind of a conspiracy theory because you actually had academic work on this.
There's a paper by Yale who looks at all the policies in The United States and compares it to how people vote. And since the nineteen eighties, they more or less confirmed that voting has little to any impact on policies at all. And so, yeah, you can choose who sits at the throne, but policies won't change. You even have former US president Jimmy Carter, all who passed away now, who who said that, well, The United States isn't really a democracy anymore. It's an oligarchy.
You have to see where the power rests. So but still, it's it's treated as as something on the dark corners of the Internet, something you would you know, even if you can see there, you can't deny the distribution of power in terms of economic, how much is concentrated. You can watch the inauguration of Trump. You can see the whole frontline just being lined up by tick tech billionaires. And still, no.
No. It's not an oligarchy. It's still a democracy. But as you suggested, once you can only do this for so long before the game is up, people begin to realize that they they do want different policies as well. They they begin to throw a wrench into the political system.
They look for alternatives, which are very different, populists as they're referred to. And and there's very little that can be done now except for the the political leads to become more and more coercive. As you said, ban elections, overturn elections, arrest political opponents, like in France. But how how far can this go? Because it's you know, you can feel that the trust in the politicians, trust in the media.
It it's all declining. And the great irony, of course, is, you know, liberal democracy has a lot of, you know, a lot of great ideas there. But if you're not able to criticize a system that is, for example, the concentration of wealth, democratic despotism, you you you can't manage the weaknesses, and you end up killing it. So it's quite ironic that they we almost banned the criticism of the system. But we we how how where do you see this going?
Are we heading like, are we entering a pre revolutionary era?
Speaker 1: It does it does appear that way, Glenn. What what the oligarchies did traditionally through history is when when the social pressures became unbearable, meaning, you know, when the when the oligarchy completely lost credibility and people wanted to overturn them, then they would cry barbarians at the gate. You know? And so they would they would project all the problems onto an external enemy and then they would provide all kinds of incentives or or coerce the men of the population, the fighting age males, to go and fight the external enemies. And if they didn't have a war, they would invent one.
They would they would simply contrive one because what that what that happened is is, you know, they would they would deflect the they would deflect the the the grievances onto some external enemy and then they would send men to war and then these men would be sacrificed in very large numbers. And it's controversial to say that that's a deliberate policy, but that's very apparently a deliberate policy that you send men to war and then you don't just try to win the war and bring the men home. And now these men are heroes and they're still maybe, you know, your your potential enemies, you try to get rid of as many as you can. And then, you know, you also use the use the fighting to recruit those who might be your Praetorian guard, you know, the the most compliant, the most ambitious ones who want to serve the the power. The problem today is that it doesn't seem that the old playbook is working anymore because they are losing the control of the narrative.
And, you know, in the past, they could cry enemies, barbarians at the gates because they controlled the means of communications, because we all relied on newspapers, magazines, radio, and television. So it was very easy for them to control the narrative, and we didn't have, really, alternatives. But today, we have the Internet and the social media. So when they cry, barbarians at the gate, that is, you know, the Russians are coming, the Russians are coming, people do not believe them because people have more discerned understanding of what is happening. And the the old tropes that the Russians, when they're done in in with Ukraine, that they're going to start invading the rest of Europe, most people don't feel that way.
They don't fear Russia as much as they should. And so when, you know, when the leading politicians and military leaders tell them, well, guess what? You're going to have to sacrifice your children, people say no, we don't want to sacrifice our children, we will not, we don't think Russia is our enemy, we should bridge all our differences at a table. And so, you know, the social tensions have become very acute, our leaders have lost all credibility, the expert class has lost credibility, standards of livings are deteriorating radically, the external enemy, you know, the red cloth of external enemy is not having an effect. So now what what happens now?
I think either you get a social uprising or a revolution or a civil war. So I think that this is the direction in which we're headed, and hopefully, it can be averted. But the these people are not just going to go silently into the night. I I think that it would be extremely important for us all to try to get as many members of their praetorian guards on our side, meaning to try to communicate with people in the in the military, with the police forces, firefighters, you know, whatever territorial defense units, whatever you have, and to tell them that, you know, the enemy is at home, and we need to reform our societies. So let's not, you know, go to war one against the other, but see how we can best reform the the our systems.
And then, you know, the the oligarchies will have no choice. They they, you know, they cannot go against the people.
Speaker 0: Well, if you if you read Plato's Republic, he he, what to some extent, writes what you what you say now, though. He makes a point that this oligarchy governments, they tend to have a bias towards instability and war. Interestingly, Obama said that when he entered the White House. I talked to colonel Lawrence Wilkerson who was there in the White House. He was making the point that Obama told him that in this town, no matter what you try to do, there's always this bias for war.
And, you know, if you look towards Plato's Republic, this was essentially his argument that the rich elite will begin to accumulate wealth. You would have growing inequality. Resentment will begin to spread. And and then, of course, the oligarchy would, I guess, lean towards war for two reasons. One, as you said, they do also to accrue more wealth given that they wouldn't carry the cost of of this conflict, especially the peasants who will have to die.
But but also starting wars abroad is a good way of uniting the population. It distracts from internal conflicts. It reinforces the power of the elites. Again, it goes back to human nature. We are, you know, group animals animal.
The more the external threat stronger external threat you have, the more it's in human nature to seek internal cohesion and solidarity, and we will essentially punish each other for failing to, yeah, to toe the line. But is this how this is the last question. Is this how you see many of our current wars? Because we have a lot of problems with the oligarchy. First of all, on the international arena, there their power is in decline due to power rise of countries like China, but also the decoupling of energy centers and or and also great power like Russia, but energy centers like Venezuela, Iran falling, you know, out of control, and you see the hegemon declining.
It has external element of new centers of power, but also domestically, you have more growing resentment from a from a population. Is this how you see the war against Russia, potentially China, Venezuela, likely in the near future Iran, and I guess the troubles of our time. Do you see it's linked to the oligarchies?
Speaker 1: Yeah. It is linked to the oligarchies, but I think it's it's not in all cases to deflect from problems, you know. Sometimes they just genuinely want to conquer other nations' resources. That is, they want to gain political control over resource rich nations. Why?
Because in that way, they turn that nation's labor and resources into their own collateral, which is an amazing way to create it's an amazing way to credit to yourself someone else's wealth. Because the moment the moment you've issued loans to your clients like KBR, ExxonMobil, Shell, whoever, to go and develop an oil resource in Iraq or Iran or wherever, Venezuela, that nation's resource wealth becomes your wealth, the the moment you issued that loan to your client. And throughout history, these ruling oligarchies were always the moneylending the moneylending class, including in Rome. So just as as an example, you know, Julius Caesar, who to this day is being demonized in our, you know, historical curriculum as a, you know, as the man who almost destroyed Rome's democracy, he actually wanted to reform Rome and curb the power of the oligarchy. Brutus, who was one of the people who assassinated him, was one of those oligarchs.
And Brutus wasn't this republican defender of democracy, he was a rapacious moneylender and a usurer. And there's a there's a there's a story about him extending a loan to to the officials of the Cypriot town of Salamis or Salakis, I forget, and charging them 50% or 48% interest. And then when they disagreed, when they said this is, you know, excessive, we owe you this much and not that much, He sent cavalry to lay siege to the town and at least five city officials died of starvation. But Brutus insisted on payment in full even though he was charging 48% interest. And this was basically the modus operandi of the Roman Empire because it was run by the money lending oligarchies, by the bankers.
And so this this should be a warning to us because Rome when Rome fell and it deteriorated in a very ugly way, it was it was constantly torn apart by civil wars. Roman generals spend more time fighting other Roman generals than barbarians or other invaders. But the way way history presents as the, you know, the Roman Empire and how it all went, they always concealed the most important lessons. They always concealed that it was about debt and banking and oligarchy and colonizations and imperialism and so forth. And so we have to we have to uncover all these lessons now because we can, because we have the Internet, because a lot of resources are coming out, and many, many clever historians endowed with imagination and willingness to dig through the, you know, old documents are now publishing extremely interesting books and and new interpretations of things that they try to conceal from us.
And so I think in this sense, I feel very very optimistic about the future, but it's not you know, again, they're not just going to be going silently into the night. They will put up a fight. They will resist. So we have to we have to stand firm and we have to demand real changes, not just let's go to war again and then we're gonna start from a blank slate. And then for a generation or two, we're gonna think that everything is wonderful until the the debts become unpayable again, and then we're gonna do the whole thing again in in cycle after cycle and, you know, sequence more world wars because we had two.
Why not have the third one and then maybe the fourth one and so forth? So I think we have to break this cycle of history but the only way we're going to break is by really understanding where the problems are coming from with as much clarity as is possible. And I think that today this is possible. So it's going to take some effort, It's gonna take many podcasts like this one. But I think that we have to do it because that's that's the future we're gonna leave behind to our our our children and their children.
Speaker 0: Well, I like it when we finish on an optimistic note. So I so there are well, there there there are there are changes coming. You do feel beside not from the newspaper headlines, but obviously, you see the the shift in sentiment that there are some who actually want to restore some of the values and virtues which political leaders claim to represent, although clearly abandoned a long time ago. So thank you very much for taking time.
Speaker 1: Thank you for the invite, Glenn. Always a pleasure, and until the next time.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Jeffrey Sachs: U.S. War on Iran - "An Attack Is Imminent" https://youtu.be/sYAW_XvvreU https://t.co/Q1QXZV3EA4
Video Transcript AI Summary
Jeffrey Sachs and Glenn discuss the threat environment around Iran amid Trump-era tensions.
- Observed mobilization: The United States has a massive military build-up in the region; allied transports appear en route to the Middle East. The impression, from Tehran’s view, is that an attack seems unavoidable, with Israel and Washington seemingly seeking regime change.
- Threat framing and regime change: Sachs says Israel has pursued over thirty years to overthrow the Iranian government, with the United States broadly acting in lockstep with Israel. He notes that last summer’s effort aimed at regime change did not succeed, and that a carrier task group is now moving toward Iran, signaling imminent attack. He asserts that “the goal here has never been negotiation.”
- JCPOA history and negotiations: A nuclear deal, JCPOA, was reached and ratified by UN Security Council resolution 2231 (2015). Trump ripped it up in his first term. Sachs argues there has never been genuine readiness by the United States or Israel for a negotiated settlement; when negotiations occurred, Israel resisted, and the attack on Iran two days before scheduled U.S.–Iran negotiations in June 2025 is cited as proof that the goal is regime change, not diplomacy.
- Hybrid warfare and tactics: The plan is described as a regime change operation carried out through hybrid warfare—cyber, street unrest, economic strangulation, bombing, assassinations. Trump is characterized as blustering to pressure Iran to comply with demands that would amount to dismantling the regime.
- UN Charter and legality: Sachs invokes UN Charter Article 2(4), stating that all members shall refrain from threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, and argues the current posture is a gross violation of the charter.
- Venezuela comparison and propaganda accusation: He likens the current stance to the coercive U.S. approach seen in Venezuela, accusing the United States of invasion, kidnapping, oil seizures, and confiscation of oil profits, with Trump claiming the money goes to him. He alleges similar propaganda is present in major media regarding Iran, including misrepresentation of economic collapse as a sign of Iranian misgovernment.
- Economic statecraft and its effects: Scott Bessent, the U.S. Treasury Secretary, is cited as stating that sanctions aimed to “collapse” Iran’s currency and provoke mass unrest, enabling a political outcome favorable to U.S. aims. Sachs claims sanctions caused a December economic collapse, bank failures, currency issues, and imports shortages, driving people into the streets.
- Marketed outcomes and media treatment: Bessent is accused of describing a “positive” outcome from destabilization, with mainstream media avoiding coverage of this stance. The claim is that weaponized finance is a tactic to destabilize Iran without conventional warfare.
- Containment risk and nuclear considerations: Sachs warns that if the situation deteriorates, Iran could decide to dash for nuclear weapons, particularly if existential threats mount. He emphasizes that a broader regional war could involve many countries and risk nuclear escalation, making prevention imperative. He argues the UN Security Council should convene immediately to stop escalation.
- Prospects for Europe and regional actors: He criticizes European leaders for not resisting aggression, noting skepticism about who would oppose U.S. aggression. He suggests some regional players (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Turkey) may not want a wider war, but questions whether they can prevent it given U.S. leadership and Israeli influence.
- Final note: Sachs calls for a strong, principled international response to prevent an explosion in a highly volatile region, urging opposition to unilateral threats and actions.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined today by professor Jeffrey Sachs to discuss, the threats now being made by Trump against, Iran. So I'm very grateful you could come on because if you're sitting in Tehran, you're assessing threats. Essentially, you assess capabilities and intentions. Now you would then see this massive accumulation of military force by The United States in the region.
You would see the British, German, Spanish, Italians transport plane seemingly heading towards the Middle East. And in terms of intention, it seems that an an attack is unavoidable. The Israelis want it. Washington wants it. It's speaking of regime change.
And on social media, Trump writes that, yeah, quote, a massive armada is heading to Iran. It is moving quickly with great power, enthusiasm, and purpose. Then goes on writing that time is running out. What do you make of these threats?
Speaker 1: I think it's clear. Well, for Israel, this has been a thirty year effort to overthrow the Iranian government. The United States basically does what Israel says, and so Israel has been pulling The United States into war with Iran and attempting to do that endlessly. It did that last summer. The goal was to create regime change, to have an overthrow that didn't work.
The US then has been using economic instruments, what our treasury secretary Scott Bessent called economic statecraft. But he laid out the deliberate measures by The United States to destroy the Iranian economy. The idea again was regime change. That didn't work. And so now we have a carrier task group, strike group on its way to attack Iran.
So an attack is imminent, I think. The goal here has never been negotiation. Whenever there has been negotiation, Israel has jumped up and down saying don't negotiate. Of course, a nuclear agreement was reached with Iran a decade ago, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, JCPOA. It was actually ratified by the UN Security Council resolution twenty two thirty one on the 07/20/2015.
Then Trump ripped it up, in his first term. So there's never been any desire by Israel to have a negotiated settlement. And since The United States does what Israel tells it to do, there has never been a readiness of The United States to have real negotiations with Iran. And, Trump proved that again, last summer, because we can recall that when Israel, with US support bombed Iran, which was, on the June 2025, that was two days before scheduled negotiations between The United States and Iran. So this whole idea that this is about Iran negotiating is phony.
This is a regime change operation that's being carried out through hybrid warfare, meaning, you try cyber warfare, you try, street, unrest, You try crushing the economy, and, you try bombing. You try assassinations. They're trying, in every which way to overthrow this government and Trump, being Trump, blast this out, that, well, if you don't do what we say, I this is, like Venezuela. We this what does it say? This fleet is ready, willing, and able to rapidly fulfill its mission with speed and violence if necessary.
You know, it's pure thuggery. People should understand under the UN Charter, which Trump's deputy chief of staff called a nicety. It happens to be the international law, not for the gangsters in the White House, but for the rest of humanity. It says under article two section four, all members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state or in any other manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations. So this is where we are right now, Glenn.
I I think, of course, we just went through this with Venezuela. Brazen gross threats followed by an invasion, a kidnapping of the president and the first lady and a claim by The United States that it runs Venezuela, including stealing oil off of tankers and sending that to The United States with Donald Trump declaring that the money goes to him. So this kind of brazenness and lawlessness is part of our scene right now, but Iran is is vastly more dangerous for the world and still waiting for a European country to say boo about it, to say something, oh, maybe that's not a good idea. Maybe we shouldn't have a war. Maybe we should obey the UN Charter.
The question for Europe is does it only speak up when The United States is about to attack Europe? Or does Europe have any principles at all? And we're gonna find out in the next few days.
Speaker 0: Chancellor Mertz, who said during the first attack on Iran that Israel is doing our dirty work, has now said that Iran's days are numbered. It may be weeks, but this regime has no legitimacy whatsoever to govern. So I think the the Europeans are jumping on board on this fully.
Speaker 1: But
Speaker 0: But Trump also said that, well, now it's time we now it's time for Iran to make a deal. Otherwise, we'll hit them hard. What deal is he referring to? He's is it we're still back at the nuclear deal? Because this seems very dishonest at this point, because they're already been very open that the goal is regime change.
And any regime change, you wouldn't be able to get a unifying opposition. So this is the destruction of Iran we're looking at, which is
Speaker 1: That is correct. There there is no interest in any negotiated deal because negotiated deals have been available for more than a dozen years. And whenever they've been reached, The United States has ripped them up. And Israel has been the chief proponent of ripping up any negotiated deal. And since Trump works for Israel, there's absolutely no intention of any negotiation at all.
They are out to overthrow the government. Shame on Mertz, but again, it's it's just so typical. I had not seen that statement before. The thuggishness of Europe shouldn't surprise me, but it always disappoints me. The only attempt ever to rally to principles it seems is when Europe's own narrow interest is on the line.
Then suddenly it's not right for The US to attack Denmark by claiming Greenland. That would be an abuse. But overthrowing the government of Iran, that is fine. I think it's worth us spending just a a few minutes on the propaganda that is now flowing freely in The New York Times, The Washington Post, I'm sure in the European media that the economic collapse shows the corruption and mismanagement of the Iranian regime and why they're not fit to govern like chancellor Mertz has just declared as you read to me. And people should understand this is part of the game.
And the game is absolutely vulgar, but it is perfectly understandable if one directs just a little bit of attention to it. And it happens that our treasury secretary in The United States, Scott Bessent, laid it out very clearly and explicitly in Davos, almost in a cartoonish way. And if if I may, Glenn, just to read his words so that people understand what has been happening during the past year. He's asked by the interviewer, what do you wanna say about sanctions? Something else you've been working on, of course.
What are you planning there in terms of Iran and the impact there? And Bessent says, okay, okay, there are treasury sanctions. And if you look at a speech that I gave at the Economic Club of New York last March, I said that I believe the Iranian currency was on the verge of collapse. That if I were an Iranian citizen, I would take my money out. President Trump ordered Treasury and our OFAC division, Office of Foreign Asset Control, to put maximum pressure on Iran.
And it's worked because in December their economy collapsed. We saw a major bank go under. The central bank has started to print money. There is dollar shortage. They are not able to get imports and this is why the people took to the streets.
So this is economic statecraft. No shots fired and things are moving in a very positive way here. It's an amazing statement. So amazing that the New York Times didn't dare to report it. The Washington Post didn't dare to report it because what Besant is explaining is that The United States has used its financial means to bring down the government, to bring people out on the streets, to bring mass unrest.
And things are going in a very positive way, says mister Besant. So the vulgarity of it is so stunning that, of course, the mainstream media won't even touch it. But what they do is run stories every day about the mismanagement, the corruption, the economic collapse, the suffering of the people without saying that our treasury secretary explained that's the American game. And I have spoken to, people recently explaining, yes, they cannot get paid for their oil because of what The United States is doing. The payments don't come.
Everybody's under sanctions. Everybody's under threat. Every bank, in the world refuses to handle, any of the transactions. That's The US weaponization of the dollar. And the design is to create chaos, to create bank failures, to create a currency collapse, to bring people out on the streets.
As Besson says, this is why the people took to the streets. So he even gives the chain of causation and blesses it. It's moving in a very positive way here. Okay. If this is the kind of world that people think we're going to be safe in, I'm sorry to say they're going to find that this is the absolute route to annihilation and disaster.
This is pure gangsterism against every principle. And why Mertz is a party to the gangsterism or the Europeans are a party to the gangsterism beats the hell out of me, I have to say. Because they were also parties to the negotiation of the JCPOA. And they watched how The United States killed it. So they know the truth, but they don't speak the truth.
Speaker 0: Well, this is the overwhelming propaganda because you can have all evidence in front of you. You can have Bessent sitting there as he does, say, this is how we're gonna destabilize or how we did destabilize Iran that has caused an economic problem. This will drive people to the street. You have Mike Pompeo saying, well, in the street, they're among the rioters. We have Mossad agents on if you turn on the Israeli news, they explained that they're pumping weapons into this to fuel the violence among the riots.
And, you know, I was in hope debate about what's happened in Iran because I didn't say that this was, you know, a completely organic movement without any Western interference. It meant that I do not care about the suffering of Iranians, and I'm a regime apologist. So if you really care about Iranians, you will advocate for the bombing of it. I mean, this is how perverse but this is with all wars. If you care about the Syrians, you would call for the toppling of Assad.
If you care about, Ukrainians, you would keep the war going forever. It's just it's so it's so vile.
Speaker 1: Yes. But what's interesting is that if you care for the Iranians, then you might pay attention to what Bessent himself said, which is that they're out to hurt the Iranians. That's the goal, to hurt them so much that people pour out to the streets. And then when it happens and there's violence and so forth and much of it false flags and stoked by provocateurs and by Mossad and so forth, then Besson says it's moving in a very positive way here. By the way, he had a little smirk on his face.
He couldn't he could not resist the smirk as he finished that last sentence. It was just an added touch of vulgarity. People should understand who Besant is, by the way. He's our treasury secretary. You might think that this means he knows something about the macro economy or that he knows about fiscal policy or he's a tax policy expert.
No. It has nothing to do with that. He is a hedge fund operator whose claim to fame is working with George Soros to destroy the British pound more than a decade ago, and that's what brought him this in when when the pound was attacked, excuse me, in the 1992, I guess it is. And that's that's his credentials. Here's a man who can destroy currencies.
So this this is so vile and flagrant that, again, it's it's not worth reporting.
Speaker 0: Well, when the treasury secretary is a economic hitman, you should be worried, especially Yes. Trump's behind the wheel. Let me just ask, though, about the possibility of this war actually spreading because it seems that both what The US side is aiming for as well as the what the Iranians are indicating is this will be very different from the former war, that this is essentially all or nothing. So how how likely do you think that this can be contained to the region? Because Israel Iran's been already saying that anyone who participates will be they will retaliate against.
But and then you had Saudi Arabia saying, well, our airspace won't be used, so they take it serious. But but do you think this will be contained? Because this is gonna be very different, I think, from the the previous war.
Speaker 1: I I think we learned again, I'm not a a military expert, but from what I gather, we have learned a few things. One is that Iran can penetrate Israeli air defenses. And I think they clearly demonstrated that they have hypersonic missiles that can do that. They did not aim them at highly sensitive targets the first time in a war that is existential. They will aim them at highly sensitive targets.
So this is, one thing that I think, will be very, very different. They are prepared for that. A second thing we learned is that the strikes on the nuclear facilities obviously did not end or perhaps even hinder Iran's path to nuclear weapons if they want that path. The amount of enrichment that they would have to carry out to take their current enriched uranium to the levels for a an atomic bomb or several of them, in fact, is not much. And so if this became an existential struggle, Iran could, I think, absolutely, without question, make a dash for nuclear weapons.
They have said, and they have said credibly, we don't want that. We want the IAEA here to monitor. We will keep stringent limits on, any kind of, enrichment processing. But that's what The United States ripped up already a decade ago under when Trump came in in his first term. So the next point is that Iran themselves and especially, I I think, the, revolutionary guard, could decide this is the fate of our nation, and we make a dash for nuclear weapons.
If the situation became dire for Iran, I assume that, other countries would support Iran. Iran is a big country. It is, of course, Israel tried through assassinations and through Mossad attacks and through the bombing, a decapitation strike. It did not work. I don't believe it would work.
And so this could be quite the prelude to greatly expanded war. This is not Venezuela in America's backyard. This is would be a war in the most explosive region of the world with plenty of nuclear armed countries all around here and with significant stakes in what would be happening. So I think it would be completely reckless and potentially globally ruinous. And so it should be prevented now before we have to speculate about how it's going to end.
And again, I'm just dismayed to hear the German view of this. Not shocked, but dismayed. If we don't have countries in the world that are ready anymore to say you cannot launch wars like this in, these explosive regions completely against every principle that we have of the UN system. The chance for utter wreckage is very, very high. I believe the UN Security Council should be forced to meet immediately and stay in meetings and take its responsibility, which is unique in the world, to stop this and to say clearly to The United States, to the president of The United States, no, you cannot even threaten that way, much less make an attack.
The threat itself is a gross violation of the UN Charter.
Speaker 0: Yeah. I fear that it can't be prevented anymore, though, if all these capabilities are built up and the only way to avoid it according to Trump is a deal which essentially is nonexistent. It does it's hard to see what else they can go for.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Trump Trump sometimes backs down if he faces really a wall of opposition. In fact, he often backs down. He hasn't faced that wall right now. But I wouldn't stop trying to create the wall of opposition up to the moment and even after, but up to the moment where Trump recklessly pulls the trigger.
It hasn't happened yet. And God help us, there must be someone in Europe that has a brain left that, if only you were in charge, Glenn. But, there must be someone in power, that has some minimal sense of responsibility for humanity. And there are many countries around the world that don't want this to happen. And interestingly, I firmly do believe that the Saudis don't want a war, that Qatar doesn't want a war, that The Emirates do not want a war, that Turkey does not want a war?
Do they really want to be in another Israeli created regional war that could escalate to full disaster? I don't think anybody wants that other than Israel and its vassal state, The United States.
Speaker 0: On that grim note, thank you very much for sharing your thoughts on this, and I really hope, yeah, there will be pressure and doubt from the Europeans, but ideally from some of the regional allies. So thank you very much.
Speaker 1: Great to be with you, Glenn. Thanks.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Scott Ritter: US-Iran War Could Be Imminent as Military Buildup Peaks https://youtu.be/rYpPsDXV0o4 https://t.co/EP09I0drBF
Video Transcript AI Summary
Scott Ritter argues that indicators suggest a major US military action against Iran is being prepared, with US naval forces and air power in the region and discussions of precision strikes against Iranian officials.
He assessment that the move toward war seems likely, noting Iran’s capabilities to retaliate in multiple devastating ways: Iran can terminate regional energy production at will and inflict horrific harm on American bases, potentially killing hundreds or thousands of American service members; Iran could also deliver near-lethal damage to Israel. He warns that the US could suffer losses of ships, including an aircraft carrier. Israel reportedly has told the US it is prepared to absorb up to 700 Iranian ballistic missiles if the US ensures removal of the Iranian regime from power.
Ritter contends the US lacks the means to remove Iran’s military and civilian leadership from power, especially after telegraphing a strike. He recalls the 2006 or 2008-style dynamic where Iran would respond forcefully if attacked, including a possible knockout strike against Israel with long-term consequences for regional energy security and the global economy. He discusses Iran’s preparedness, including underground command posts and buried enrichment capabilities (citing Ferdow as an example) and the likelihood that Iran has continuity plans that would withstand decapitation attempts. He asserts Iran would respond by disrupting energy and possibly Hormuz, with a broad, existential resilience against disruption.
On the objective of potential operations, Ritter believes the aim would be to destroy Iran’s national-level command and control, suppress regional security institutions, and enable uprisings in various regions (Balochistan, Arab regions, Azeris, MEK-supported factions). He notes the CIA-backed groups and a possible attempt to resurrect a monarchy, suggesting Trump may have been influenced by expatriate anti-regime voices. He says Iran is prepared for such moves, including networks in Northern Iraq, Kurdish forces, and other regional proxies, and anticipates a surge of paramilitary activity, assassination campaigns, and widespread sabotage to create chaos and fracture the country.
Ritter asserts that Russia and China would resist a US-Israeli strike against Iran. Russia has strategic ties with Iran and could push for Iranian retaliation against US assets, including the possibility of shooting down US B-2 bombers to humiliate American military superiority. He argues that Moscow and Beijing would support Iran to blunt US actions, including potential disruptions of US naval power or shipping.
Regarding a possible off-ramp, Ritter suggests that an off-ramp would require the US to claim it forced concessions and to double down on sanctions, avoiding another large-scale strike. He cites that a “deal” from Trump would resemble a gangland arrangement rather than a treaty, warning that Iran should seek a comprehensive treaty based on international law rather than a high-pressure bargain. He contends Iran should avoid preemptive strikes that might invite nuclear retaliation, though he believes Iran could justify self-defense under UN Article 51 if threatened imminently.
In closing, Ritter states that the situation is dangerous, with surveillance and reconnaissance ongoing, and notes that while war seems likely, an off-ramp could still be presented through sanctions and political messaging rather than immediate military action. He acknowledges the tension and pressures on both sides, and offers a cautious, war-weary perspective.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back. We are joined today by Scott Ritter, a former UN weapons inspector, a US Marine Corps intelligence officer, and a prolific author. So thank you for coming on. We're seeing now a lot of indicators that another attack on Iran could be imminent. That is some US naval forces are arriving in the region.
Try Trump claims that this is a greater armada than what was sent to Venezuela. There's also a lot of US air power coming in. We see some disruption to the airspace. That is some civilian flights are being redirected, and there's media reports about the plan of doing precision strikes against Iranian officials. How how are you assessing the information?
Are we heading towards war?
Speaker 1: It certainly looks that way. You know, Donald Trump has a history of pulling back from the brink, you know, on Iran because the consequences of conflict remain the same. If you know, there's the old saying that don't strike the king unless you plan on killing the king. Because if you strike the king and the king's still alive, king's gonna kill you. Iran's the king of the region.
Let's just be straight up about that. Iran has the ability to terminate all energy production capabilities in the region at will. In addition, Iran has the ability to inflict horrific harm on American military bases to include the potential of killing hundreds, if not thousands of American service members. I think we have to keep in the back of our head the possibility of The United States losing some ships up to and including an aircraft carrier. And Iran, of course, has the ability to deliver near lethal damage to Israel.
Israel has told The United States that it's apparently, according to news reports, that it's prepared to absorb up to 700 Iranian ballistic missiles if The United States can guarantee that whatever military action is taken removes the Iranian regime from power. Yeah, I've got bad news for US military planners. Let's just be straight up and honest about this. You don't have what it takes to remove Iran's military and civilian leadership from power, especially now that you've literally, literally broadcast your punch. This isn't gonna be a repeat of June where you lulled the Iranians into a false sense complacency by leading them to believe that there would be ongoing negotiations about their nuclear program.
They went to bed at night only to be attacked by Israel with the backing of The United States in a decapitation attempt that failed. The Iranians have been preparing for more than twenty years now to wage an existential conflict against Israel, The United States and the West. You know, they have divided their nation up into self sustaining military and governing districts under the assumption that there could be a decapitation strike against Tehran. Not that it would eliminate the leadership, but it could eliminate the ability of the leadership to communicate with the various regions of Iran. So the Iranians have built underground cities, underground command posts that are capable of independently overseeing the designated terrain.
And they're also capable of independently continuing to resist against, you know, enemies, both those who may be threatening Iran from within and also striking those without. The Iranian government has a a buried city in Mashad. I would imagine that, you know, they have their own, you know, continuity of government plan in place and that the appropriate leaders have been sent to the appropriate places. As we learned with the case of Ferdow, the underground nuclear enrichment plant, you know, Ferdow was was basically a modified preexisting underground cavern that was created by the Iranians for resilience. They have dozens, if not more, of these around the country, many of which we don't know about, where they can hide production equipment.
They can hide sensitive military equipment. They can hide documents. They can hide government office spaces. They can hide enrichment capabilities. The Iranians would be fools not to have implemented whatever plans they need to implement for national existential resilience.
And so, we blew it. I mean, if you're going carry out a decapitation strike, it has to be done by surprise. You don't telegraph your punch. Even if The United States were to come in with nuclear weapons, and I don't see them doing that, they're not going to eliminate the Iranian regime. It just isn't going to happen.
And what's going to happen is that the Iranians are gonna deliver a knockout punch against Israel that very well may end Israel's ability to survive as a modern state by taking out critical infrastructure that will not be repaired anytime soon, making Israel basically uninhabitable for millions of people who have to flee Israel and demographically that's the end of Israel. The Iranians are prepared not only to shut down the Strait Of Hormuz, but to permanently disrupt the ability of regional energy producing nations to produce energy. This will have, a near fatal impact on the global economy. I mean, I fear for me and for my family and for The United States the consequences. The dollar has already lost 10% of its value in the past year.
We're looking at the potential of the complete collapse of the dollar. Energy prices are out of control and this will resonate globally. I fear for you because I Norway produces its own energy, but you will be impacted by this as well. This is the consequence of this. And hopefully, there's people that are smart enough to say, hey, mister president, this isn't this isn't going to work.
It's not going to work at this time. Let's not do this. This is foolhardy. You will lose the midterms. You will be impeached.
All the things. So we'll see what Trump does. But you know, right now, it looks as if the pieces are being put in place to carry out, you know, a major military attack against Iran.
Speaker 0: Well, what would the objective be here, though? Because there's no longer any talk about the nuclear program that is well, Trump claims that this was already destroyed. Doubtful. But but but, anyways, the the talk now is about precision strikes against the government. It's about holding to account the government for the the killing of protesters.
Essentially, they're talking about regime change. And given that there's no unifying opposition, it begs the question whether or not the main objective therefore is to destroy Iran, that is to break it into many smaller manageable pieces. Indeed, there was this Wall Street Journal article recently, which had a title that fractured Iran might not be so bad, and it recognized that, yeah, there's a distinct possibility of a civil war following a regime change operation, which seems like it could well, either you wouldn't need an extremely authoritarian opposition to take over capable of controlling it, something like the, you know, the jihadists who were put in place in Syria, or it would be the fragmentation of of Iran. Do do you see this being the the main game plan just to destroy the country?
Speaker 1: Absolutely. I I see, you know, the the plan would be to destroy Iran's ability to carry out effective national level command and control, to suppress regional security infrastructure, institutions, units, organizations, etcetera, and then to facilitate uprisings. In Balochistan, we know that the CIA actively backs a Baloch liberation army. We know in Havas, we back Arab liberation. We know we back Kurds.
We know we back Azeris. And so you'll be seeing uprisings in all of these areas, CIA backed uprisings. And then you'll have the MEK and the monarchists working to destabilize Iran from within, you know, what the the the, I guess, the core of Iran. You know, I I think Trump believes that he could put the Shah in power, the Shah's son in power and resurrect the monarchy. You know, Trump is not the smartest man in the world.
He literally isn't. I think people need to understand that, especially about the world we live in. And he's extraordinarily susceptible to nonsense being whispered in his ear. And right now, he is being presented with what appears to be, a solid front of anti regime Iranians, expatriates in Los Angeles, a very strong group there, but also throughout The United States. People who are saying that it's time regime for to fall, that the monarchy is ready to go.
Remember, the CIA has been backing the monarchy. Israel has been backing the monarchy for, again, close to thirty years. So I think Trump has bought into the nonsense and he he believes that this plan can can succeed.
Speaker 0: But if there is a regime change operation, as you suggested, you need some groups on the ground. I had the impression that the the efforts to instigate all these riots and anti government violence, which died off recently, that this was essentially the well, the opportunity to to go after the Iranian government. And once it failed, that the The US or Israel would come in bombing in the during the chaos in in a way of supporting an uprising. But given that this, well, fell apart, it it didn't just die down. It appears that Iran was able to essentially roll up a lot of these covert networks, which have been built up over years, if not decades.
So has has The US and Israel lost a lot of its, I guess, ground assets in Iran, which could could have been used during a war or at least, as as a necessity for a regime change operation?
Speaker 1: Again, not being read into the covert plan, I can only speculate here. Yeah. What I what I think happened is that a network of an internal cellular network of agents working for hostile foreign intelligence, primarily Israel, United States, Great Britain, were sacrificed to create the conditions of unrest. If I know the Israelis the way I think I know the Israelis and the CIA the way I think I know the CIA, You know, they operate when they do something like this, it's called shaking the tree. I've done it before.
You go in and you tickle the system, then you see how the system responds. And they tickled the system. They sacrificed an entire network, and we're talking hundreds of of assets to to achieve this. But what they didn't do is mobilize the the actual paramilitary organizations that would lead the insurrection. I think the goal was to create the unrest, and then there was supposed to be a bombing campaign to suppress those security nodes identified that were activated to suppress.
So now, to be honest, The United States knows exactly how Iran responds. They got it all. They collected it all. They're not stupid. They sacrificed these people, but the Iranians had to communicate, had to activate, had to mobilize.
They identified units, personality structures that responded. This was their first team and the team's been identified. And this is a team that's going to be bombed when strike begins and they're going to suppress this. And this is when the paramilitary forces come in, the people that are training that are in Northern Iraq, the Kurdish forces there, the Kurdish forces that operate along the border of Iran. This is where Azeri forces that are operated inside Azerbaijan under CIA and and and Israeli control, the Baluch Liberation Army.
All of these paramilitary forces, actual terrorist armies, are gonna mobilize and make the move. At the same time, the Mujahideen al Kalk, which is one of the most resilient, survivable organizations, they will mobilize from within. These people have networks that weren't sacrificed, that are still in play. These are the networks that the Israelis used to assassinate scientists, etcetera. They're gonna be killing everybody they can get ahold of.
They're gonna be running around putting plastic explosives on cars, rooms. This is gonna be the full scale go after everybody and kill everybody. Not necessarily the senior leadership which should have been evacuated, but all of these security nodes that were identified when they shook the tree. They're gonna die or at least they're gonna try and die. The idea is to create massive confusion, airstrikes, on the ground activity, paramilitary moving in, resumption of the uprising because now there won't be security forces to to lower it down, and this will cause Iran to fracture and break apart.
Whether Iran is is is is actually split up and, you know, you you'd have to have the Pakistani government willing to absorb parts, and I don't see the Pakistani government doing that because it's, you know, issues. But I I I think you're gonna see Iran be be fractured into autonomous regions of chaos and anarchy that will be uncontrolled by the by the center. And from the Israeli perspective, this is a success. Israelis don't care about the Iranian people. The Americans don't care about the Iranian people.
All we care about is getting rid of the Ayatollah regime and that's what we're going to be trying to do. Again, say this understand that what I just laid out, which I believe is actually what's going to happen. The Iranians know this. They've been preparing for it. So it's not as though the Iranians are going, oh, you mean the MEK is gonna come out of the woodworks?
Oh, you mean the Baluch's liberation aren't the Iranians are ready for this. Now now how ready you are, it's like saying I'm ready for Mike Tyson to punch me in the face. Can you really be prepared for Mike Tyson to punch you in the face? You know, he knocks you out, you're knocked out. But at least you know the punch is coming and you can prepare for it.
We'll see what happens. I think this is a horrible there's no reason for The United States and Israel to be pushing for the elimination of the Iranian government at this time, except to Benjamin Netanyahu desperately needs this for his political survival. So once again, The United States is willing to sacrifice everything, our national security, our national legitimacy, everything on behalf of Israel.
Speaker 0: Well, if you're advising the Iranian government or if you're just in Tehran, how would you assess their likely response? Because in the first attack on Iran, I I would have thought that the the main objective of Iran would have been to to essentially show the the strength it has, the the resilience, the ability to strike back, essentially to build up its deterrent, to to make sure that the aggressive forces were pushed back and that they would be deterred from doing this again. But but what you're describing, though, this is an existential threat. That is the goal is, you know, not some limited strike. It's it's to destroy, essentially, Iran.
And if if they fail, they would perhaps go back, regroup, and try again. So given that this is how Iran likely sees, the threat against it, it would have incentive to react differently this time, I would think. That is to not hold back in terms of striking various, western military assets, Israel in the region, Or even, you know, some have suggested Iran might even do a preemptive strike if if, all the American warships and, and fighter planes, bombers all are in position and and, you know, it looks like they're going for the go, then it would be better for Iran to hit them first. Do again, I'm not this is speculation, so one scene is in the media. No one in Tehran is whispering my ear either.
So I'm just wondering how how how do you assess the likely way of the the Iranians who would behave differently this time as opposed to the first time they were attacked?
Speaker 1: Well, the first time they were attacked, they weren't expecting that attack. It took them by surprise. So right off the bat, if Iran is taken by surprise, then shame on them. I mean, that's that's their own issues. I don't I mean, if I were the decision maker in Iran, the Abraham Lincoln would already be sunk, American bases would already be destroyed, Israel would be eliminated, and I'd be carrying out massive operations against the Kurds in Iraq, the Baluch.
I'd be wiping out Avaz. I'd be killing anybody suspected of the of of m a MEK ties. I'd be sending assassination teams around the world to kill the Shah's son, and I would kill everybody. But that's just me. I'm not Iranian.
I'm just a bloodthirsty son of bitch who doesn't believe in in standing by and getting hit in the face first. The Iranians, unfortunately for them, are very civilized. They're very proper. And I believe that their government still holds out hope that war can be avoided. And so they're not going to take, I believe, the actions that would be necessary to preempt this.
Iran has every right to. Mean, the statements made by The United States and Israel already justify this. There there's no doubt that there's an imminent threat that's building up. Yeah. Iran should go to the United Nations and declare, you know, an emergency and demand international intervention and declare that there there's an imminent threat.
And if that imminent threat can't be eliminated in a period of time, Iran has no choice but to, you know, carry out preemptive self defense on article 51 of the United Nations Charter. They'd have every legitimate right to do this. But I also think they're being advised by the Russians and the Chinese to be patient too that, again, we know of at least two occasions when Donald Trump pulled back from the brink. And so maybe there's people advising here on into this could be the third time that there's no reason or justification to to go forward because, you know, a preemptive strike again, if you're gonna if you're gonna strike the king, kill the king. So the preemptive strike has to be a knockout blow to The United States and to Israel.
One of the things that happens if you carry out a very effective preemptive strike is that you open yourself up to nuclear retaliation and that would be, again, the end of Iran, Which is why, hopefully, if I were advising the Iranians, you'd have some rational people say, that's okay Scott. Go sit in the back corner and eat your raw meat. We'll get back to you later. Know, but no, I I I think, you know, Iran I have hope and I have confidence that the Iranians understand what's happening and that they are preparing to ride out what's going to be one hell of a storm. I also need to say this, you know, I'm an American.
I don't wish harm on any Americans. You know, I don't want any American hurt in this and you know, yeah, I just I, you know, this is gonna just be a bad bad thing, a very bad thing because it's a war of choice. And I just hope and pray that the the leaders of the American men and women who are in harm's way do their jobs right and bring as many of their boys and girls home as possible.
Speaker 0: Well, meanwhile, Trump, though, he he made some comments that as this massive armada is heading towards Iran, he said that the Iranians now want to make a deal. Again, his words, we shouldn't necessarily take it literally. I don't think the Iranians necessarily said we're ready to make a deal. It's it's just words. But but it does beg the question, what what kind of a deal would we even talk about?
Because this is no longer about the the nuclear deal. So is this just more trying to give them a sense of security that this is just to put pressure to negotiate, or or is he actually looking for a deal? Because he surely, Trump must see the disaster that awaits if if he goes forth with this, and he kind of fits his approach to not get dragged into something too big. He seems to always wanna know, even if it's if it's Yemen or Venezuela, just go quickly in, quickly out and have something to show for it as opposed to being you know, taking massive casualties on the American side. So do do you think he's actually looking for a deal?
Or if so, what what exactly would that deal be? Because I I it would have to be something else. The Iran is gonna disarm. Are they gonna accept voluntary regime change? I mean, what would the such an a deal actually entail?
Speaker 1: Well, I think a deal would first of all, you know, Karen Knissel, she's a former Austrian foreign minister that's currently residing in Saint Petersburg. She heads up what's called the Gorky Center. A very, very smart lady. She abhors the term deal. She calls it the language of gangsters.
Well, which is why Donald Trump uses it. A deal isn't I mean, Donald Trump wants a deal because a deal is a one way street. Donald Trump wants everything for him, nothing for you, and he could break it anytime he wants because he'll call it a bad deal and I'm looking for a better deal. It's it's the language of gangsters. And the Iranians should understand that and not be looking for any deal.
You don't deal with the mafia. They always win because that means that you've gone down to their level and you're playing their game. Iran needs to be looking for a comprehensive treaty based agreement founded in international law, which is problematic because Donald Trump has stated that he doesn't believe in international law. So right off the bat, I'd say that we just have incompatible visions on what conflict resolution looks like in Iran and in The United States. But to answer your question, a deal would be nuclear, you know, to bring to close the nuclear file and ballistic missile that Iran would have to voluntarily disarm of the one thing that gives it viability.
And once they did that, then Israel would come in and finish them off. I mean, that's the deal. What The United States is saying is voluntarily get rid of anything that gives you, you know, deterrence capability and then Israel will finish you off because we want regime change. Israel will not be happy until the Ayatollahs are gone. And frankly speaking, the core of American policymakers share that same sentiment.
You know, they shouldn't have gone over the embassy walls in 1979 because when they did that, they taught an entire nation to hate them. And that hatred is still there. It's irrational hatred. It doesn't make any sense but it doesn't matter. You don't take Americans hostage for four hundred and forty four days.
You don't poke the dead bodies, the charred bodies of eight American service members who were sent to Iran not to invade it but to rescue hostages that the Iranians took hostage. I mean, Iranians aren't the good guys here in terms of what happened in 1979. I know the Shah, Sabaq, culpability and all that. American people don't care about that. You know, I mean, people need to understand that when you insult the American people, that insult says we don't forgive and forget.
We hold grudges. And right now, there's a big grudge against Iran. There's not too many Americans out there. I'm one of the few that articulate for good relations, normalized relations with Iran. Most Americans would be very happy to see Ayatollahs go away, because they know anything about the Ayatollahs or they know anything about how Iran functions, but because they have been programmed into linking the ayatollahs with holding Americans hostage, taking American embassy, know, a failed rescue mission, eight dead Americans burned on the desert floor, desert one.
You know, this is this is the reality. So, you know, it's there should be no compromise on the part of the Iranians because the moment they compromise, the moment they make a deal, it's over. You don't make a deal with the devil. You don't make a deal with the mafia, and you don't make a deal with Donald Trump.
Speaker 0: Well, given that this is an existential threat to Iranians that is even if they make a deal or not, as you say, they will the regime change is nonetheless the key objective. How does this impact how the Russians and the Chinese would respond to an American and Israeli attack on Iran? Because, well, I heard that there was good possibility that the Russians had something to do with with shutting down the Starlink during the riots. But but overall, Iran is a key regional power, and and the wider Eurasian continent is a key pillar of this greater Eurasian partnership. So and for countries like China, it's also an important source for energy.
And if it was able to be knocked out, it would certainly be taken advantage of, to go after Russia or China in the future. So, it's it's hard to it's hard to expect, to be reasonable that they would allow Iran to go down in a similar way as Venezuela, for example.
Speaker 1: I I think you hit the nail on the head here. Iran's not Venezuela. Iran is much closer and much more important. It's a BRICS member. Russia has a strategic relationship with Iran.
There's a secret military annex that now has been ratified by both the Russians and the Iranians that's in play and the Chinese have likewise been working with the Iranians. I wrote an article a couple weeks ago that many say is the reason why I got debanked. Basically, I basically said give the camel a bloody nose, that you can't let the camel stick its nose under the tent or else the camel's coming in. And The United States is the camel that's trying to, you know, stick its nose under the under the tent here and that somebody needs to give it a bloody nose. Now, again, I'm not advocating for any harm to come to any Americans.
I don't want that at all. And I was more or less talking about, you know, economic actions that can be done to hold The United States back or punish The United States for bad policy. But if I were the Russians, again, The United States isn't as smart and clever as it thinks it is. The b two strike that was conducted gave away every American capability you could imagine. When they talk about precision strikes, they're talking about penetrating Iranian airspace with b two bombers, with f 30 fives, with f 20 twos.
That profile has been flown, has been captured, has been recorded. Every aspect of it has been, assessed by Iranians and Russians and Chinese. And if I were the Russians, I would say that my goal is to shoot down one or more b two bombers and prove once and for all that the concept of American supremacy, that America can't be touched, America is able to do anything it wants is is a fundamentally flawed concept. Now if they do shoot them down, I hope the American air crews get out, are rescued by American search and rescue, there's no prisoners of war and all that good stuff. But the the point is, again, if I were advising Donald Trump, don't do this, you could be entering a trap because the Russians aren't going to sit back idly and let you bomb Iran.
Russia is not going to respond directly. They're not going to go to war for Iran. But Russia is going to do everything they can to ensure that your military adventure is a failure, a fundamental failure. You know, and then this is up to and including, you know, the Iranians have the ability to hit American shipping in a way that no other nation that has recently fought the Americans could, including the Houthi. We're talking about a Reshnech like missiles that cannot be intercepted, that will rain death and destruction down on the the platform, penetrating the deck, potentially penetrating the nuclear reactor, potentially sinking the ship with catastrophic loss of life, sinking other ships that are part of the carrier battle group.
The United States have become very cocky, and we've we've become accustomed to inflicting harm on people without having harm inflicted on us. I believe that the Russians and the Chinese are gonna do everything possible to to help the Iranians give The United States a bloody nose, a broken nose in this fight. And that's, again, another reason why you have to ask yourself, why are we doing this? Why might go through this this motion? Because of Trump's ego.
I mean, it's it's really comes down to that and it becomes also the control that Israel has over American foreign policy and national security policy. But, you know, I'm not saying the Iranians are perfect, and I'm not saying the Iranians can't mess it up, and I'm not saying the Iranians are going to succeed. But if I were the Russians, I'd be doing everything I could to ensure that the Iranians shoot out at least one, maybe two b two bombers in the strike forces strike package that's gonna be coming in. That that will be a humiliation to Donald Trump that he won't be able to survive.
Speaker 0: Well, as we speak now, I'll see on one of the screens here that the the there's an American surveillance aircraft over the Strait Of Hormuz, and there's also Iranian drones near while doing reconnaissance on the American naval assets in the region. So it does look as if both sides are preparing for, yeah, for for war now. But this is her last question, dude. What if if if we're not going to war, what what would be an off ramp by now? Because it's very hard to step back from this massive show of force unless there's, you know, something to show for it, to to show that, you know, your pressure tactics were successful, and, you you can come home with something.
Otherwise, it it looks as if war seems very certain by now.
Speaker 1: You know, Donald Trump is somebody who has little problem telling lies. And, you know, he'll he'll be able to if he wants to, he can craft something about, you know, I received a phone call, assurances that Iran will behave properly. Know, once again, American military strength has compelled the Ayatollahs to back down and you know, things of that nature. That's the off ramp. You know, we're going to you know, because this war has no legitimate foundation.
Because normally an off ramp is an off ramp that takes us away from the issues of concern. Now here, they they say the issues of concern are the nuclear program of ballistic missiles, but, you know, Iran's not gonna give those up. Not in a vacuum, not anytime. You know, so it's I I think, you know, Donald Trump, if he wanted to end this, could do what he did last time. You know, I made a decision to save Iranian lives.
That, you know, when I was briefed on the totality the damage that would be done by this strike, I realized that the Iranian people have suffered enough, you know, at the hands of this regime. And I am not going to facilitate continued suffering. Thousands of Iranians would be killed if we struck, and instead, we're going to pull back and double down on sanctions and work to further isolate the regime. We always will have our military here in the background ready to pounce, know, something like that. So because Donald Trump has no problem telling lies and manufacturing, you know, his own reality, he can say anything he wants.
And unfortunately, we have an American population that's just dumb enough to believe
Speaker 0: That could be a strength now, though, wouldn't it? Because usually, countries, they lock themselves. They get stuck in a rhetorical trap. It's Trump's skills in terms of lying, getting away with it, disputing pure BS, or or just this ability to shift focus. I mean, one day, you're talking about Venezuela.
Day two, you're talking about Greenland. It is a talent, I guess, this managing the media. It it could be an off ramp if one just wants to be optimistic. So Well, that's Final thoughts?
Speaker 1: Yeah. Let's look. I mean, I you gotta take the silver lining when it's offered. Okay? You know, there's a dark cloud over us, but look, you know, it's sort of reflective of the of the state of affairs that we're confronted with today where having a lying leader with no moral compass is a good thing because his lies, his lack of moral compass could actually prevent a war.
So I'll take it.
Speaker 0: Well, on that optimistic note, thank you very much for taking this time and, yeah, sharing your insights.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me.
@Glenn_Diesen - Glenn Diesen
Gilbert Doctorow: Russia Retaliates, Hidden Diplomacy, & EU Chaos https://youtu.be/biVJcpYDqtY https://t.co/M4AhyNNEkE
Video Transcript AI Summary
Gilbert Doktorov and the host discuss the evolving, multi-layered negotiations surrounding the Ukraine war, stressing that talks involve more than Ukraine and Russia, extending to US-Russia dynamics and broader European and global interests.
- They note that trilateral talks among Ukraine, Russia, and the US have begun, with the first phase completed. The conversation emphasizes that the US-Russia dimension is crucial because the conflict is viewed as a proxy war between NATO and Russia, and that “the US toppled the government in Ukraine” with intelligence support, military planning, weapons, and targets coordinated through backchannels. The implication is that any durable settlement would require some deal between the US and Russia to de-escalate the proxy confrontation.
- On US-Russia relations, Speaker 1 identifies several dimensions: renewal or non-renewal of New START, and the functioning of embassies, as negative signs, but points to positive changes elsewhere. He highlights Kislyov’s Sunday night program remarks, noting Russia’s proposal to contribute $1,000,000,000 to become a permanent board member using frozen US assets (total US assets frozen around $5 billion in equivalent value). He mentions that Trump was asked about using frozen assets and reportedly declined, but the implication is that Moscow views this as a potential lever. Kislyov also notes that the additional $4,000,000,000 in frozen assets would be allocated to reconstruction in Palestine, and that Russia’s participation on the board would influence regional diplomacy, including with Palestinians and Israelis.
- The discussion suggests that the absence of official diplomacy (e.g., embassies) does not necessarily indicate a lack of progress, arguing that backchannels between Putin and Trump are functioning well. The speakers discuss the broader context of Russia’s strategic posture, including alleged advancements in space-based and other new military capabilities that are not fully captured by New START, and the sense from Moscow that the US is preparing a space-based missile system that would enable first strikes, a point the Russians emphasize in public discourse.
- On Ukraine, Zelensky’s stance is described as uncompromising: Ukraine will not cede territory and will demand security guarantees, which could undermine a neutral status. The dialogue suggests Zelensky is using a posture of firmness to buy time for negotiations, with Ukrainian leadership potentially exchanging assurances for a broader settlement that could include regime change and financial support for reconstruction.
- The potential for compromise is discussed in terms of strategic timing and leverage. The Russians’ primary interest is regime change, and there could be an understanding with Trump about a democratic replacement in Ukraine, possibly replacing Zelensky with a pro-Russian administration under conditions tied to substantial monetary reparations for reconstruction. The timing and mechanism, including potential referenda or buyouts, are considered critical elements that could determine the settlement’s architecture.
- The European role is analyzed as increasingly fraught. Europe’s diplomatic engagement has been limited, but Moscow is open to leveraging European assets in a peace process. Lavrov’s stated position that talks with Ursula von der Leyen’s European Commission leadership are unlikely, and the broader fragmentation within Europe (France, Germany, Finland, the EU leadership) are highlighted as complicating factors. There is speculation about European figures who could bridge talks, such as Finland’s Stubb, though there is skepticism about Kalas’s leadership within the EU.
- The speakers speculate that Davos and Trump’s stance have reshaped European perceptions of US leadership, with European elites increasingly questioning the reliability of US-backed security guarantees. The conversation closes with an expectation that the year 2025 will be dominated by Trump as a central variable in resolving global issues, and that Moscow remains optimistic about achieving a settlement with Washington while signaling a tougher stance toward Ukraine if needed.
Overall, the discussion portrays a complex, interwoven set of negotiations across US-Russia, Ukraine-Russia, and European dynamics, with backchannels, asset controls, potential regime-change considerations, and timing as key levers for reaching any settlement.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Welcome back to the program. We are joined again by Gilbert Doktorov, a historian, political affairs analyst, and author of War Diaries, The Russia Ukraine War. So thank you for coming back on. We see now that this trilateral negotiations between Ukraine, Russia, and The US has, well, already begun and well, the first phase finished. I was wondering how you assess this because whenever we speak of negotiations, it tends to be very simplified, that it sits between Russia and Ukraine, which doesn't appear to be moving forward.
However, we shouldn't neglect that The US Russia negotiations are also quite important as this is then primarily a proxy war between NATO and Russia. And we often, you know, seem to forget this part because Trump wants to present himself as a mediator, and the Russians appear to humor him by allowing him to play this role. But, you know, beyond below the theatrics, the the wars between Russia and The United States still have to be resolved. That is it's still The US that toppled the government in Ukraine. It's US intelligence agencies that port into Ukraine.
The day after the coup, it's The US that hijacked the Ukrainian government and built up this massive proxy army. It's The US that sends military planners, the weapons, provides the intelligence, picks the targets, and at times, even pull the trigger. So given that this is also a US war and one year into his presidency, it's also Trump's war, there, you know, must be also some deal between The US and Russia that is to improve bilateral ties, which means to ending the proxy war, at least downgrading it. So sorry for the very long question, but in this wider context of the complexity of these negotiations and the absence of clear information coming out, How are you assessing the negotiations?
Speaker 1: They are confusing. And my colleagues who would have commented on this in the past few days have raised some points which I I would like to address as as we get into this. There there are many dimensions to The US Russian relationship, and reestablishment of normal state to state conditions takes in these various issues, like the renewal or nonrenewal of the New START treaty, which comes up in just about a week. The question of reestablishment of normal functioning of the embassies in both countries. These are two issues which you can put on the negative side of the of the balance, suggesting that there is no progress in US or Russian state to state relations.
But there are contradictions here because in other areas, I see dramatic and very important changes in a positive nature. And I will start with that. And it comes out from the latest news, which virtually nobody, nobody in mainstream or in alternative media has written about, spoken about, to my great surprise. I have in mind what was was said on Sunday evening's news wrap up, the news of the week, the Asty Netieri, hosted by the doyen of of Russian news reporting, the top of world's state television news reporting, Dmitry Kisulyov. And what he had to say is is was not we've gone way beyond the very the the kind of bland, almost meaningless statements of the presidential adviser, Ushakov, when he spoke to reporters on the results of the meetings in Moscow when Kushner when Kushner and Witkoff and Kyrgyzstan were present and the follow on meetings in Abu Dhabi.
Now what comes out of this? As I I hope we'll have time to get into the question of the the Russian Ukraine war side. But let's look at The US Russian relations. What came out of this in the presence of Grindel and the meetings in in in Moscow were they're heavily on the question of US Russian relations. The unlike the Chinese, who very quickly decided they're not taking part in the peace board, mister Putin held off, making this firm comment, although a kind of hint was probably pre coordinated with Lukashenko and Belarus.
The Belarus who also got such an invitation instantly accepted it. And since Russia and Belarus are joined at the hip, it was a good sign that the Russians probably would join also. Nonetheless, there was no statement until what Kislyov devoured on Sunday night. They greened down, and and Putin had discussed the the Russian proposal to to make its contribution of $1,000,000,000 in order to become designated a permanent member of the board from the frozen Russian state assets in The United States, of which there are a total of $5,000,000,000 in equivalent value. That's remarkable.
I know that Donald Trump was asked by a reporter on one of his flights whether he accepted this proposal of frozen Russian assets being used, and he begged off. But you can assume that it's accepted. From the Russian side, it's outstanding, considering something else that mister Kislyov very quickly inserted into his comments on the meeting with that same day the same day that Kushner and and Ritkoff were in Moscow. He met. He received Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the of the Palestinian state.
And, of course, he's discussed with with Palestinians the 1,000,000,000 contribution is and that Russia will be on the board, which, of course, forces the hand of Netanyahu. They absurdly also have to be on the board. Although, again, Avi, you're at the you're at the meeting table or you're on the menu. So that that is of great importance. But there's still, as I said, the little additional detail, which you had to listen closely to pick up, is that Kisladov said that the additional 4,000,000,000 in frozen Russian assets in The States will be assigned to reconstruction in Palace of Palestine.
Well, I mentioned this because it bears heavily on the Russia Ukraine war. I said a year ago that the Russians could probably end the war very at once if they offered to make their $202,100,000,000,000 dollars in assets in Belgium available for use for reconstruction of the whole of Ukraine, including the part that they that they occupy. That, of course, passed without much notice, but maybe it was noticed. Not because it's a brilliant insight, but it's so obvious That and particularly in line with what we now know of how mister Trump conducts foreign policy. Foreign policy has an extension of real estate transactions.
So I believe that what we just have heard that or heard and was sneaked in, as I say, by Kisalev gives us an inkling of what could be coming, and how does mister Greenbald find 800,000,000,000 to buy off the Kiev and reach a settlement of the war in a real estate transaction. If the Russians 300,000,000,000 in assets in Europe are used, then he only has to find an additional 500 This is something tantalizing. And it is I say, no. I'm mixing the two issues of the Russia Ukraine war and American Russian relations, but they are so totally interrelated. As for the other the rest of the of the improvements in US Russian relations, we know very little indeed.
But I want to make a pushback to what my my peers have said, suggesting there's no progress. They say there's no progress on restoring full functionality of the embassies because of opposition or interference of Marco Rubio. Well, that's possible. After all, that is his department. And he could put the brakes on there if he so wished, though I'm not sure I understand why he would directly contradict and frustrate the initiatives of his boss.
But that's a separate issue. Still, it is reasonable to say there is no progress there. However, it isn't really an issue of any importance because we know that the back channels, communications between Putin and Trump are working superbly. And they are effective in that. And perhaps this is why the State Department isn't being brought in because there are no leaks.
There are no leaks. I was looking you mentioned my my book. I can say that the volume two on 24 will be coming out in about six weeks, and volume three on 2025 will be coming out in about three months. I'm doing final editing of these, I'm reading through the texts again and looking for themes, red lines that pass through it all, or red lines is not a good word today. Is Common threads.
Yeah. Threads that go through these periods of time. And I find and one is just clearly, since I'm doing 25 now, I'm looking at the period from September 25 through October 25 when Vladimir Putin, whom I had criticized them severely and saying maybe you should step down because he gently, gently approach was doing damage to Russia's deterrence because Trump had called Russia a paper tiger. And then suddenly, there's a remarkable change in Putin's language that I am supposing took place because it was, if it took place, behind closed doors within this back channel. And the back channel, I believe, was extremely effective because the front and to the public, Putin continued his fawning behavior towards Trump that we that you and I both saw at the Val daikon discussion club meeting in Sochi.
But something very important happened in the in this period of of late September or October, which suggests that Putin was showing his teeth to Trump and did so effectively. What do I have in mind? In these periodic flip flops, is mister Trump pro Russian or pro Ukrainian? There was a flip in September when Trump was siding with Zelensky saying the Russians have to sit down at once and sign up a a general truce, or I'm going to impose enormous sanctions, and we will be shipping the tomahawks to Kyiv. Well, we heard that for a very brief time, and then the tomahawks to Kyiv disappeared completely.
And I am firmly believing that that Vladimir Putin sent a message to in his back channels to Donald Trump that you do this, you send tomahawks to Kyiv, and we will utterly destroy Ukraine at once. I have to say, mister mister Putin turned from slowly, slowly to exactly the position of his opponents or his critics. There are no opponents as such, critics within the high circles in in the Russian elites and was and was a get tough, and we will we will annihilate Ukraine as we are capable of doing. And it worked because we never heard again about Tomahawks going to Ukraine. So here I'm suggesting that the fact that there is no regular diplomacy is not necessarily of any significance because the regular diplomacy would go through Rubio's hands, through State Department people who are neocons, and who would do everything possible to wreck things.
And so Trump is using back channels. Therefore, it is a narrative to to to construe the failure to revive diplomatic operations as being a failure to carry through on the Anchorage agreements. So the situation is much more complicated. Oh, yeah. So the same thing about this failure to renew a new start.
I don't see this as having I'm sorry. I will be I will say something that will surprise and and displease a lot of people, but so be it. My view on things is that the new the New START treaty has no relevance to 2026. In the last two years, with the rollout of completely new weapon systems by Russia, the Bureau of Yasnik is not covered by anything remotely conceived in Newstart. And a missile that can circle a globe three times essentially, let's be honest about it, essentially, though it doesn't legally violate the terms of no weapon systems in space is, in fact, the weapon system in space.
So, I mean, it could it it travels at such a high level into the atmosphere that, practically speaking, it doesn't go into orbit as such. But, practically speaking, we're we are talking about a weapon system that is not covered by Nustacht. Therefore, the simple renewal or extension of Nustacht, I think, is an irrelevancy and a distraction preventing us to focus our minds on what will be the proper arms negotiations in the present situation of wholly new strategic offensive and defensive systems that have been implemented by Russia. And let's be all good about it. The systems are now being planned by Donald Trump in his 1 and a half trillion dollar defense budget.
Everyone is laughing at his golden dome. But what I'm talking about, what the Russians are talking about, and I say this because my peers are not listening to what the Russians are talking about. They rely on their favored relations to Russian generals, as they say. Well, I'm listening to what the Russians are saying. And what they are saying on public television is that The United States is preparing for a space based missile system, which will be called a defense, but is actually an offense, making possible first strike.
So there's a lot in play here that is not being openly discussed and which bears on the judgments made by my peers about the validity or importance of new starts, renewal, or extension.
Speaker 0: Well, I also, yeah, picked up on Russia escalating as well. That is Trump no. Sorry. That Putin not only rhetorically has become a bit more aggressive, but also the action speed from, you know, Dessa go striking ships and ports and bridges to, of course, trying to shut off all the electricity across Ukraine, all not all of it, but it's just turning off the lights in the important areas. And I even saw it in the British media.
They they they try to present it as all the Russians are trying to humiliate Trump by having these massive attacks during the negotiations, but I think, anything else would be interpreted by Trump as a weakness, which they if if, if if the Russians would halt this. I mean, The US isn't halting the attacks either on on Russia. So I it is it is interesting that that this is intensifying, but it doesn't really get that much coverage. However,
Speaker 1: though,
Speaker 0: in in the wider context there, to to what extent do you think it is a possibility now with a reset between Russia and The US? Because as you see, as The United States, as it wants to improve relations with Russia, it's still trying to ramp up sanctions on Russia. It's still continuing the war efforts. It's and and beyond the the not just indirect, but also direct confrontation with Russia. We also see Trump going after oil supplies.
We can look at the attacks on Venezuela. Probably soon, yet another attack on Iran. Yes. Much of this is targeting China, but but overall, The US is looking to under Trump to assert its dominance under a new form format, it seems. So it it's very hard to see how this this could conform with this wider objective of finding a new acceptable status quo with the Russians?
Speaker 1: Well, first of all, with overarching view, the the Russians are both hot and cold in their optimism, pessimism just as you and I do. That is official Russian. And so what you've what mister what mister Sovyov shows on his program of this high level talk show or what mister Kisladov shows on his news of the week wrap up. They range from optimistic to gloom, although fairly regularly, not necessarily the following the same wave as ours, but following their own. I will be disruptive of what the consensus is in alternative media and what I'm about to say, and it bears on what you just said a moment ago about sanctions.
It is the consensus of my peers, those peers who are Putin's cheerleaders, that the Americans can do nothing to damage Russia economically. Russia has gone through 16,000 sanctions, voila, the economy is doing just fine. Or if it's not doing fine, it's because of the wrong headed interest policies of the central bank, not because of any harm that's being done to the fundamentals of the Russian economy by the sanctions or by American actions. Wrong. Again, they don't listen to Russian noobs.
They don't listen to Russian authoritative and expert opinions. If they did, they would hear what I heard on Sunday night regarding mister Trump's move on Venezuela and what it means. The the There was one panelist who was quite expert in the field who was saying, yes. This is due this indicates that The United States is going to reach 35% control of global trade in oil. The taking over of Venezuela is a contributing factor in that.
With this level of control and on prices and production, The United States can do a lot of damage to our economy. And it is a strong argument for continued industrialization, re industrialization, and diversification of our economy, which, incidentally, the same people are saying has to be guided by a dirigiste economic policy domestically. Forget about. Out the window all of the 1990s capitalist notions. We need a dirigiste, state planned investment in perspective and important sectors of the economy, which de facto is going up presently with the allocation of subsidies on credits for those favored industries and companies that cannot and should not be exposed to 20% interest rates.
But they want to institutionalize this to make certain that the Russian economy will be more directed and less free free market. And it's only because of the damage the damage that The United States is doing and will do to the Russian economy. And those people who say that The United States has no power over Russia are simply dead wrong. They're not listening to Russian experts. So that is a very important feature.
At the same time, I can say that that officially Russia of around Putin is very enthusiastic about prospects for doing a deal with Trump. And nothing is more important in their evaluation of his sincerity, not as a friend, but de facto because of his own interests in restoring normal relations with Russia and ending the sanctions and so forth. This is a result of what they saw at Davos. They were delighted to see the Europeans utterly humiliated, taken off their perch. They were delighted, and and and so of showed twice on this program.
Our Belgian pre prime minister, Bart De Weber, saying that it was one thing to be happy as vassals. It's another thing to be miserable as slaves. They lapped that up. And that destruction of of the EU and of NATO is understood by the Russians as essential to Trump's delivering what he promised to Putin in Anchorage?
Speaker 0: Well, while the negotiations in between Russia and The US continues to be, well, let's call it, unclear or is ambiguous what direction this is heading. And I think part of it's also the way Trump tends to work whenever he he flatters its offer. Sometimes it's to conceal the growing pressure and the damage he's trying to do. But but if we shift a bit to the Russia, Ukraine aspect of the negotiations, How do you make sense of these recent statements? For example, Zelenskyy made made a comment that Ukraine will not make any compromises or cede any territory, and then, of course, also going on to demanding security guarantees to the point which would undermine the yeah.
Ukraine as a neutral country. So in other words, taking everything that the Russians demand off the table at the point in time when the Ukrainian manpower crisis is getting out of control. It's suffering more on the battlefield. The economy is going poorly. The infrastructure then, especially, the electric grids are going down, and international support is veining.
It's it's very strange to to see this absolute uncompromising tone. And it seems that he's shifted a bit backwards because it looked like he had the door open for some compromises, and now he seems to be going in the other direction. Is this just posturing? Is it for a domestic audience to appease the nationalist? How how are you assessing this?
Speaker 1: I think your last remarks are exactly what it's about. It's to buy time for himself by not letting his compatriots know what he's doing. Of course, they agreed to give up the dumb the dumb boss. The Russians wouldn't be there if that had not been pre agreed. They wouldn't have sent whom they sent, their military experts, their head of military intelligence, to discuss security issues.
Well, what are the security issues? This was clear for mister Solovyov. Security issues are the conditions under which the Ukrainians will be withdrawing all of their troops from from Donbas. That is what they were meeting about. And the creation of a, I think, 60 kilometer buffer zone on either side of of the new of the new frontier between Russia and Ukraine.
Well, if there were no the agreement on withdrawal, 60 kilometers would mean right back to what? To the to the area that from which the the Ukrainians had been lobbying all of their missiles and and drones and and artillery at at Donetsk. So, of course, it's not gonna be that frontier. It'll be the frontier probably at the Dnieper River in which the Russians can afford to have a demiolis rise 60 kilometers. What's the difference?
That's essentially the the territory that they haven't yet conquered. So it's no question, Buffett, what Chiselinsky was saying, was really addressed to his compatriots, not to the West. Alone, the West, the BBC, of course, picked it up as if this was, oh, he's not agreed to anything. Rubbish. He's agreed to everything, but the Russians wouldn't be there.
The Russians had hesitation to be there because of the significant role given to Budanov as the head of it. From the Russian perspective, he is a terrorist and a killer. He's the one who was who was behind as the head of of Ukrainian military intelligence. He was the one who was behind the plots, the successful execution, the assassination of Russian generals. They had to bite their tongues to go into these meetings with Ukrainians and having Bardano Bardanov as their talking partner.
And they did so only because they'd gotten their way on what counts to them, which is that the Ukrainians have essentially capitulated. Now that's where we are. I'm sorry. I think I'm missing the broader question that you had about relations with Ukraine. Could you maybe restate it?
Speaker 0: Yeah. No. Well, if the you know, in in this proxy war, you do have to solve a lot of things. Well, Ukraine is very much in the center, but you'd have to restore Ukraine's neutrality, and you need the territorial concessions. But but I I think that the Russians are do have left themselves some room to to make compromises.
On on, again, on neutrality, you can always have, well, you can have some limited security guarantees. You can have some ties besides having, Western troops or weapons in Ukraine. Same with the with the, with the issue of territorial concessions. Of course, they have to get out of Ukraine has to pull out of Donbas. That's that's just written in stone for the Russians, but they might be able to make some compromises that is to accept that they won't get all of Khersonos, Saporizhye if they get to keep what they've taken in, you know, Sumi and Kharkov.
So, you know, there's there's always room for the maneuver. But on on the on the basics, how how close would we actually be to the, at least, Ukrainians and the Russians agreeing on on something? Because, I mean, I I think just for self preservation, continuing this war now, it does seem suicidal. So I guess my my my wider question was just, yeah, simply, is it any is there a possibility of actually Ukraine and Russia reaching some agreement?
Speaker 1: I think there is to my surprise. And I can say that there are people even on the show of this general Brzezinski retired, who is very well connected, was saying that, well, we would prefer a caucasian right now. But listen to what our supreme commander is doing, and I will not criticize Well, of course, in saying that, he is criticizing him indirectly, nonetheless. I think there are several things in play here, and we can't we can't miss all the marbles. I think that this question of money monetary offer being made for the settlement will come into play a little bit further down the line.
I think that remember, the Russians' main interest is regime change. And I think they may have an understanding with Trump about how how this is take place in a democratic manner, not by the Americans replacing Zelensky with with Sierski or or or. No. I think that Trump, even though Americans are fond of calling him an autocrat, is going
Speaker 0: to behave in a very
Speaker 1: prodemocracy way with respect to the settlement regime change in Ukraine. And if the Americans and the Russians are truly conspired on how this is to be done, it it may be done. When do they insert the question of the buyout? If they when do they raise the question of a referendum, which mister Zelensky has rightly seen as his off ramp? He can leave with his with his his fortune and say that he's done his duty to Ukraine if there is a proper vote by his people.
So the timing of this will be essential. We are not we are not privy to any of it, and we have no right to be. But I can imagine that there is a way that the Russians and Americans can can remove Zelensky from from the scene, see that he's replaced by someone some Ukrainian politician who favors the acceptance of the Russian conditions in return for very solid monetary payment that can help Ukraine rebuild and will not be stolen, which is what mister Trump's peace board could do if it has the right people in charge. And I suppose that he that he that he is picking his his assistants like like Fink, the head of BlackRock and of the World Economic Forum, to ensure that the reconstruction will be proper and and the monies will not be wasted.
Speaker 0: Well, I wanted to ask about the European component because you can, of course, say that both the Ukrainians and Americans have to negotiate the peace with with the Russians. The Europeans obviously have cut themselves off from the diplomatic process, But some, of course, within Europe now push for restoring talks with Russia after four years of boycotting diplomacy. Now I don't see the Europeans having any role in resolving the or engaging in the Ukraine Russia talks. They although they're trying to insert themselves with this coalition of the willing and this other, well, I guess, nonstarters. But this is also a war about European security architecture.
I mean, this war, to a large extent, was predictable as, you know, by many already since the nineteen nineties when the decision was made to cancel the pan European security architecture and instead pursue this incremental expansion of NATO. If you go through the academic literature, there was many who would make the point, well, where exactly would NATO stop? It wouldn't be any logical stop before it actually reached Ukraine, and this would never work. And it was widely understood that this would mean war. So it even though the Europeans aren't talking to Russia, they're not gonna have any role in in the Ukraine Russia process.
Nonetheless, there has to be some diplomatic settlement, doesn't there, between the Europeans and the Russians?
Speaker 1: Well, the Europeans have to be brought in a certain point. But I just said that the frozen Russian assets in Europe would be handed over to to the peace board. Well, controlled by the Europeans. So you can't just do it without the permission of the Belgian prime minister and everybody else. I think that the Russians, as I said, were very satisfied to see the Europeans shattered at Davos.
And we heard something quite remarkable coming from the very diplomatic mister Lavrov, foreign minister, when the past week he said, we absolutely never will will have talks with Kai Kollops. Never. And I don't believe that her tenure has a head as the vice vice chair, the deputy president, I should say, of the European Commission under under Oslo van der Leyen. I don't think her tenure was going to extend very long. The Europeans are now scratching their head whom to send as their emissary to reopen, discuss direct talks with with with Russia.
Of course, mister Macron couldn't miss this opportunity to rush forward and present France as the intercessor. Even at Davos, he sent this this secret message, a private message to Donald Trump inviting him to come to a hastily formed g seven meeting in Paris just after Davos closes or failing that to have a private dinner with himself. And then Donald Trump did the unthinkable. He published this message making McCrane Macron look like an utter fool, which was his intention. I understand that the Russians are putting up sorry.
The Europeans are putting up Stubb, the prime minister of Finland, as the possible candidate, as an intercessor, because it's supposed that he has a good relationship both with Trump and some kind of relationship with Putin. That's possible. Stubb has gone this way or that way from day to day on whether or not the Russians are should be engaged in in a civilized way, a normal way with Europe. In the future, when the war ends, he's he's had it both ways. So he could be useful, although his remarks about the the peace treaty that Finland concluded 1944 with the Soviet Union, ending their their participation in the in the Hitler coalition and join and the Axis and joining the allies joining Russia at the expense of significant territorial concessions.
That was a peculiar thing to say since it cut both ways. Nonetheless, Mr. Stubb is there eligible. And since Europeans generally think that because Finland is a neighbor of Russia, every Finn necessarily knows Russian perfectly, which is a big mistake. But nonetheless, he's putting put up.
Someone will step forward. But what I see is regime change in in Europe. If Kalakalops, Kayakalops, is thrown out, she will take her boss with with her. I don't know if it's reached you, but here in Brussels, the rumors are that she is denouncing von der Leyen as a dictator. Yes.
A dictator. Somebody you can't work for. So I think when she goes, she'll go screaming, take Ursula with me, And that will happen.
Speaker 0: Well, this is yeah. That was political. They actually covered this that Callas had called Wonderlane dictator and, you know, pointing out the the fracture between them. But you also see the tensions between the Germans and the EU. You see the tension between the French and the Germans.
You there's a lot of fracturing which is taking place, and the fact that not just the Russians don't see any point of talking to Kalas, but the Americans aren't too excited about her either. Marco Rubio has, I think, humiliated her more than once. But but this is becoming common now. That is Trump Davos. He humiliated the Europeans, and and Mark Rutte responded by celebrating him as the greatest leader there was.
He had Zelensky get on on the stage, give a speech where he was just criticizing the Europeans as being weak and unable to do anything, and he'd he was met with a standing ovation just by the Europeans applauding him for scolding them. I mean, it's something very sad happening in Europe. And as as a European, this is a I yeah. It's you you can't help but to think this isn't gonna last. And all of this is happening, all these fracture points, also now that you're having a deeper rift between the actual public and the political leaders.
I mean, we're having a legitimacy crisis, I think, brewing. This is not merely unpopular politicians. These are politicians which have overstepped their mandates. They've been lying excessively, and they've been taking, all their respective countries down a very dark road. So I at some point, the Europeans have to change course as well.
And you would think that, yeah, this war coming to an end would would be an opportunity, but they seem to push so fiercely back. So do you have any final thoughts before we wrap up?
Speaker 1: No. We we we have a a wealth of news coming as every day now. The as I I look at what do I call '25, my volume three, it's the year of Trump. No question about it. And he is the barometer of the resolution of so many global issues, some of which he himself precipitates.
But at the moment, the Russians are very official Russians. I mean, Kremlin and its folks in a person like Kisladyev are very optimistic about the reaching agreement both on the war in Ukraine and on normalization of relations with the Americans. At the same time, Mr. Solovyov and his program is pointing out the way that The United States is a very dangerous competitor and is capable and will be doing serious damage to the Russian economy as it was configured in the 1990s as a major exporter of raw materials. So the argument for major economic financial changes in Russia is being made in light of the future of a of a world dominated by Trump.
Speaker 0: Well, still, though, I I think the the Russian approach to Trump is seemingly shifting. The Europeans, they seem convinced that if they just bow to Trump, do as they're told, they will, somehow be spared. As we saw in Davos, the Canadian seems to reject this now, saying that this will only embolden Trump. It it seems to me that Russia the Russian position has been shifting, and that is it began a little bit like the Europeans just make Trump happy. At least worst case, this will at least direct his focus towards the Europeans instead of and and and this and his objective in terms of decoupling some of from this old security arrangements.
However, I think, yes, Putin stated recently that any any any restraints and trust would only be abused as a sign of weakness. So I I don't think that they're gonna that they're it seems to me, at least, that some of their ties with Trump aren't aren't gonna be as, well, as European, let's call it, as it was in the past as we both saw the speech of Putin in Valdez back in was it October or November? That I I think this you you probably won't see a similar speech from Putin the next time around. At least that's my expectation after, again, the the Russians learning a bit about how to deal with Trump.
Speaker 1: The the destruction of Europe's self confidence and arrogance, I think, and their their new understanding of the dangers of of counting on mister Trump and The United States. We have to add to that the views that Bhuta made in his speech to the European Parliament a day ago in which he said that without American umbrella and support, Europe is utterly defenseless and will be for many years to come. I think all of this pushes anyone in European leadership positions face the reality of necessity of sitting with the Russians and devising a new security architecture that puts an end to the threat of a war breaking out. So a lot of things are going to change, not just the the name of the party boss from this group or that group in a coalition government in any one of the European countries, but a basic policy change and understanding of how security can be arrived at by an agreement with the Russians instead of ganging up on the Russians.
Speaker 0: That would be an advent an advancement. And, again, I wish we would have had this thinking back in the nineties when we started moving towards this disaster. So thank you very much for taking the time.
Speaker 1: No problem.